question Mobile Phones

[Chewy509]

Hi all,

As many of you are aware, my wife and I sick of our current Samsung mobile phones (plus hers' is starting to die), and have put together some $$ to purchase 2 new mobiles. Unfortunately, we still have 12+ mths on our current contracts, so can't change carriers, or get new phones as part of a new contract.

We're with Telstra, which means having to find phones that'll work on the NextG network (which uses 850MHz/2100MHz for 3G connectivity).

We've narrowed the list down to the following based on our budget:
1. HTC Wildfire. (Android based).
2. Nokia E72. (S60 based).
3. SE Xperia X10a mini (Andriod based)
4. SE Cedar
5. Blackberry Pearl 3G.

Does anyone have direct experience with any of these handsets, and able to offer some advice on the good/bad/terrible.

The main requirement is decent standby time, decent camera and something that actually works without any major issues. eg, rebooting itself, dropped calls, not ringing on an incoming call, poor reception. We've both spent countless hours trawling Internet forums on issues, and found that the majority of phone model all have some significant issue.

The only concern with any of the models, are with the Nokia, and continued support for the S60 powered E-series, due to the recent agreement with Microsoft. And with the BB, and the requirement to use a BB plan to get decent functionality out of the device. With this model BB, do you actually need one of the Blackberry plans to browse the internet and use email via IMAP?

We have also looked at the iPhone 4 (lots of them cheap on eBay), so that is an option, but Apple is on my do-not-buy list so it would be a last resort.

Any other suggested makes/models would be appreciated as well, as long as it's under $300 for each handset.

 

[ddrueding]

I am advising everyone to avoid BB due to a very shaky/questionable future.

I am recommending Android-based phones, due to their pending dominance in the marketplace, and the abundance of apps.

I've sworn off Nokia and Motorola phones due to reliability/stability issues. HTC seems to be doing things right.

 

[time]

The Blackberry Pearl is excellent for texting, but the screen is always going to be too small in that form factor. Historically, it hasn't been the world's most stable phone (you have to remove the battery to fix some issues with Blackberries, although I've also had to do the same with my Android).

In their defense, I'd have a lot of confidence that the features worked as advertised. An awful lot of thought goes into a Blackberry. As far as I know, you don't have to use their email service etc (ours is an old 2G model).

I've sworn off Nokia more than once, and despite firmware updates, our touchscreen Nokia's stability has not been great. The old E63 on the other hand, is like a tank (although display too small, etc), so I'd assume the same for the E72.

Sony's on my do-not-buy-list, otherwise the Xperia looks good. You might want to check whether users have managed to get any updates for that phone ...

The HTC Wildfire looks to be the pick of your list, assuming a full SmartPhone is what you're after. You might want to confirm warranty and return policies.

Another point is do you have at least 200MB quota on your plans?

 

[Chewy509]

Thanks guys,

In regards to data allowance, we get basically nothing (5MB), but can up that to 1GB per mth for a small increase ($10) in our monthly plan rate. Not something we want to do, but will if we have to.

dd, I ddi read about BB shaky future, but I doubt various agencies will let them go under without another option for them. (AFAIK most big corporates/gov agencies all use BB).

I know the E63 is a tank, and it was on our list. But the Telstra NextG compatible version is next to impossible to get! Mind you, I could go out to any store and get the other version (that operates on 900MHz/2100MHz) for around $99.

We don't care if it's a smartphone, a feature phone or a dumb phone, as long as it does what we need it do. Unfortunately, a lot of dumb phones have crappy cameras, and most of the featre phones have various and significant issues, hence the lean towards a smartphone.

The only convern with HTC, is that a few people I know who had older HTC models (which IIRC are windows based) all had poor battery life. Do the Android ones not have that issue? Otherwise it would seem the HTC is on top of the list.

 

[Sol]

The 2 Androids on the list will probably have the worst battery life of any of those, they're full smart phones and that's just the nature of the beast. That said, as long as the battery will last out a day without trouble you just have to get used to plugging it in every night. Since I've moved to a smart phone I actually run out of battery power less because the need to charge it is so much more predictable.

BBs have fairly good battery life an OS which will soon be entirely replaced and a UI that makes me want to punch the designer. They have the most efficient push email system and they do very little else well, if at all. Those who use both tell me the Pearl is much better than the Torch.

I had an E71 for a while, in the end the worst thing about it was the browser. I didn't use the internet on my phone much, but when I got my Android handset I discovered that was mostly because of how bad the E71 browser was. I'm guessing the E72 is much the same.

Of the phones on your list the Wildfire would top my list except that I'm not a fan of the low-res screen. (Also I'm not a fan of HTCs sense UI, but it's not that bad) If you don't mind a bit of playing around I would suggest looking at the ZTE Blade, also known as the Orange San Fransisco in the UK. It's specs are between the HTC Wildfire and the HTC desire but it costs a little bit less than the Wildfire. The playing around would be carrier unlocking and installing Android 2.2 (or later, not sure what's available for it now) which apparently improves the performance a lot. I'm not sure if you can buy them anywhere in Australia but in the UK they're about 115 pound without contract so importing would not be expensive.

If you really just want a phone and a camera though might I suggest you consider buying a phone and a camera? You could get a very cheap phone and quite a reasonable camera which, together, wouldn't be vastly larger than a smart phone when put together and would give you much better quality and battery life. (O.K it's not quite as convenient, but it's a thought)

 

[Chewy509]

Interesting enough, the Wildfire is listed as having 600+ hrs on standby, mainly contributed to the lower spec'ed (and slower) CPU and smaller screen size. Browsing forums indicates that with average call usage, but no internet access or excessive gaming/app usage, over 1 week on a single charge is common. (Which is similar to our current usage pattern, but that may change).

The X10a mini on the other hand, and most mention of other HTC phones (and any other smartphone including the iPhone) certainly do indicate a daily recharge cycle is common and to be expected. However most people do indicate they use their phones heavily, not only for calls, but Internet access, gaming, etc.

But if we did end going with a smartphone, and we use it a lot, then a daily recharge wouldn't be out of the question, especially since even my mp3 player which the phone would most likely replace if capable, (esp if it has flac support**) needs a daily recharge.

Something else that is to mention, that the DesireHD is coming shortly, which may see a price drop of the normal Desire into our price range. Would it be worth waiting a month or two to see if this happens?

As for getting a separate phone/camera, that's also something we considered, but having the 2 integrated is nice on space saving and allows both of us to have a camera for those ad-hoc family shots when out with the kids. Both of our previous phones had decent cameras (SE K800i and SE K660i), so we're not after top DSLR quality, but a phone that can take an in-focus low-noise shot at approx 2MP at a similar quality level to the previous SE phones we had. (Which is something that even our current Samsung's can't do at 1MP, despite having a 8MP sensor).

We have looked at the ZTE based offerings (which Telstra here rebadge as their own, similar to Orange in the UK), and the ones on offer don't seem to be that good of a build quality, or users tend to report significant issues with them, mainly contributed to very poor battery life.

Likewise, we've ruled out LG, a lot of the Nokia models - even the Nokia E5 looked promising until I read the nokia support forums - and a lot of other brands due to issues that the manufacturers don't seem to care about. I can certainly understand that any product is going to have issues, and most mobile phones do, but when the support services are not there to assist or down-right mention that there are no more updates (despite the fact there are several severe software based issues), it quickly rules them out. That is something I must give Apple some credit for, they do release regular updates for their devices that do address most of the common issues.

For those that have a 'droid based phone and use Linux (or something other than Windows), is there anything to watch out for? Has anyone come up with a nice sync' utility between the phone and thunderbird, without having to sync your data to a cloud based provider, like Google or funambol? (mainly for contacts/calendar/tasks, not email).

** All of my music is in both flac and mp3 at the moment. In flac for at home listening, and in mp3 for out-and-about listening. Getting rid of mp3 would save some storage space.

 

[mubs]

What everybody said.

The Nokia E71 s a better phone than the E72. I have been using an E71 for the last 2.5 years, and it's the best phone I've used. Anything online on it sucks because of the small screen and poor support, but higher speeds like 3G at least make it somewhat usable (like Google Maps, a quick check of something online, etc.). The E72 (which a colleague has) is much slower for some odd reason, and is more cumbersome interface wise. Battery life on both are awesome. When new, I was charging my E71 twice a week.

With all the smartphones (especially HTC), you'll be lucky to get a full day out f the battery.

 

[time]

Interesting enough, the Wildfire is listed as having 600+ hrs on standby, mainly contributed to the lower spec'ed (and slower) CPU and smaller screen size. Browsing forums indicates that with average call usage, but no internet access or excessive gaming/app usage, over 1 week on a single charge is common.

I don't believe any of that for a second. The best part of a month on standby? Give me a break.

The CPU isn't that much slower and the screen is still 3.2". If you turned off GPS, 3G data, bluetooth and WiFi, and didn't listen to music, I suppose it might be usable for a few days. Wouldn't be a smartphone then though, would it?

I have a similar phone and it's probably useful for up to two days if I don't use much data or use it as a navigator. I very much doubt that the SE X10a is any worse or the HTC any better.

Larger screens come at a premium and that doesn't fit with what you said you wanted to achieve.

 

[Chewy509]

I don't believe any of that for a second. The best part of a month on standby? Give me a break.

Don't worry, I won't believe it until I see it with my own eyes.

If we do end up with the Wildfire, and only get 1 day before a recharge, then that's something expected (as with any smartphone). But if we get more, then that's a bonus!

 

[Sol]

At least one guy at work has a wildfire, I'll ask him about battery life if I remember on Tuesday. I'd have thought he'd have mentioned it if it was anything special though, he generally has at least 3 Android phones on hand for testing so he has plenty to compare it to.

I don't know anyone who uses an Android phone who doesn't also use GMail and Google calendar. Without a Google account you can't even use the market place so you're pretty much stuck with it out of the box. There are probably applications that let you use other things but I've never really looked. Google's cloud services work really well on the Android, I often get my mail on my phone before it hits my desktop, my calendar syncs in less time than it would take me to plug the phone in (And I have a micro-usb cable always attached to my work PC for debugging so that's seconds). I've been playing with custom roms of late (The Galaxy S hardware is better than it's software) so I've factory reset my phone more than a couple of times, with pretty much everything on the phone synced to the cloud it's all back up and running in a couple of minutes. Sure Google know way too much about me, but it's bloody convenient.

If you were looking at a Samsung Android phone then you'd need to watch out for their update software which only runs on Windows. But you're not looking at Samsung phones (And in any case custom ROMs can be installed from Linux anyway).

With a bit of mucking about I got my phone to play Flac files with an app called PowerAmp, there are probably others and they might be better but as a proof of concept that worked.

 

[time]

Had a possessed phone moment tonight. My Android 2.1 phone was switched off, yet we heard a (slightly truncated) text alert tone.

I confirmed it was off, but when I powered it back on, I could see two recent texts from my daughter. A bit disconcerting, I like my appliances to do as they're told rather than what they think is best.

 

[Pradeep]

The X10 mini is not anticipated to get further Android updates, unlike the full fat x10.

http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2011/03/25/update-on-xperia™-x10/

The successor to the X10 mini should be out next month if you are not in a rush.

 

[LunarMist]

Had a possessed phone moment tonight. My Android 2.1 phone was switched off, yet we heard a (slightly truncated) text alert tone.

I confirmed it was off, but when I powered it back on, I could see two recent texts from my daughter. A bit disconcerting, I like my appliances to do as they're told rather than what they think is best.

Do you think it is hackers or perhaps the goverment? I'd put the phone in a grounded metal cabinet when not in use.

 

[Chewy509]

The X10 mini is not anticipated to get further Android updates, unlike the full fat x10.

http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2011/03/25/update-on-xperia™-x10/

The successor to the X10 mini should be out next month if you are not in a rush.

Thanks for letting me know. We're not in that much of a rush, but sooner the better.

 

[Stereodude]

Do you think it is hackers or perhaps the goverment? I'd put the phone in a grounded metal cabinet when not in use.

That'll work real well if you want to receive calls on it. :drunk:

 

[time]

A microwave oven should do the job rather nicely. Open the door to make a call, close to hang up? And when you take your phone out to use, the oven can heat your coffee: a true multifunction device. :idea:

 

[LunarMist]

But then it will smell like the popcorns. :smurf:

 

[Mercutio]

re: Android Phones and battery life. Mine (a notorious battery hog) lasts about 36 hours of casual use if I don't charge it at night and it'll go more than 60 hours if I entirely forget that I have it and don't use it for a whole weekend.

I just charge my phone when I get home from work.

 

[timwhit]

The HTC Wildfire has a very low screen resolution (320x240). I wouldn't buy anything that low. I like my HTC Evo 4G a lot. If you are really concerned about battery life, just carry a spare with you.

 

[time]

Wow, you're right! I missed that.

 

[time]

What about the SE X8?

3" screen @320x480, currently running Android 2.1.

Available for $150-$160 (prepaid) from Optus and Vodafone - shouldn't be too hard to unlock if it is locked. Or already unlocked for $170 from some online store.

The main downside I could see is that the camera is only 2MP, so you'd want to check some reviews.

 

[time]

Tricky Dicky has the unlocked Motorola XT5 3.2" with Android 2.1 on special for $259, but you'd have to be quick (I now nothing about the phone, just saw the offer).

 

[timwhit]

I would personally avoid Motorola phones. They make it a real pain in the ass to root them.

 

[time]

And also the Garmin-Asus A50 for $199. AFAIK still comes with a 2 year warranty, supplied by Optus but I very much doubt that it's locked. Slightly bigger 3.5" screen, Android 2.1 and Garmin navigation software and hardware extensions.

 

[time]

Why would he need to?

 

[Mercutio]

Why would he need to?

I like being able to run Samba on my phone, enable tethering and turn on the 802.11 hotspot capability. Also to remove some of the cruft that came with my phone, like a Nascar racing application and the Facebook app, neither of which could be removed prior to obtaining root privilege.

 

[timwhit]

Why would he need to?

Let's rephrase that. Why would he buy a phone that restricts what he can do with it?

 

[ddrueding]

Let's rephrase that. Why would he buy a phone that restricts what he can do with it?

Don't they all?

 

[timwhit]

Some manufacturers make it harder than others.

 

[Mercutio]

Motorola actually has phones that check to see if the boot image has been altered and write back the default one on power-on.

 

[timwhit]

HTC and Samsung phones are generally easier to root from what I've read.

 

[time]

Let's rephrase that. Why would he buy a phone that restricts what he can do with it?

Because he's trying to replace existing phones halfway through a contract.

I like being able to run Samba on my phone, enable tethering and turn on the 802.11 hotspot capability.

Samba? To access a MicroSD card that's already immediately shareable by just plugging the phone into any PC with a standard cable? And thereby charging it rather than draining its battery?

My 2.1 phone has tethering built in, although you can always use Easy Tether etc. And presumably you know that 2.2 is supposed to include HotSpot functionality. I doubt that I'll ever see that upgrade for my current phone though.

 

[time]

I would personally avoid Motorola phones. They make it a real pain in the ass to root them.

Z4root seems to handle these Motorolas:

XT5 (Quench)
Defy
Droid 1, Droid 2, Droid X but NOT Droid Incredible
Backflip
Cliq
Flipside
Milestone 2

It DOESN'T work with these HTCs:

Desire (requires nand unlock)
Desire HD (requires nand unlock)
Magic
Evo
G2
Wildfire

 

[Mercutio]

Samba? To access a MicroSD card that's already immediately shareable by just plugging the phone into any PC with a standard cable? And thereby charging it rather than draining its battery?

My phone gets plugged in to a wall outlet rather than a computer, because that's where my charging station is. I have a 32GB card in it, and it's rather nice to be able to copy music to or from it without having to futz about with cables.

I could move the cables easily enough, but since my phone has samba and is rooted, I don't need to bother.

My 2.1 phone has tethering built in, although you can always use Easy Tether etc.

Some carriers in the US lock out that functionality until you pay extra for it. IIRC, AT&T does that in the US. I'm not sure whether my phone was in that category or not because I rooted my phone about an hour after I got it.

HTC phones all pretty much unlock the same way, with Unrevoked.

 

[Chewy509]

A small update - we stopped by a few phone shops today (AllPhones, Fone Zone, T-Life store), and all recommended the HTC over the others. Second place was either SE, Motorola Defy or Nokia. None recommended the Samsung or cheap Nokia range of phones.

My wife even liked the HTC Desire, and now wants that model! She's hoping that with the introduction of the DesireHD, the normal Desire model will drop in price to something we can afford, even if we have to save for another month...

 

[timwhit]

The HTC Desire looks nice. Good choice.

 

[mubs]

The Desire has been the top ranked phone for a year at http://www.techradar.com/ . Battery life in the low side, (like all smartphones), but I think you folks will like it.

 

[time]

What I took away earlier from skimming Whirlpool is that you want to be sure about the HTC warranty details, particularly how you go about getting service.

 

[Pradeep]

Thanks for letting me know. We're not in that much of a rush, but sooner the better.

Here's the scoop on the replacement:

"Sony Ericsson is preparing to launches it new Gingebread smartphone to replace its Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro. According to the source, the upcoming replacement for x10 mini/pro Xperia smartphone will be powered by 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8255 processor with Adreno 205 GPU chips and will running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS. It also will comes with larger 3-inch (320 x 480) multi-touch display. As noted, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini only has 2.55-inch touchscreen display and is powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor and comes equipped with 5 megapixel camera, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and FM tuner.

http://kuntien.com/gadget/replaceme...ia-x10-mini-pro-with-android-2-3-gingerbread/

Some benchmarks:

http://androidcommunity.com/sony-ericssons-1ghz-xperia-mini-pro-replacement-leaks-20101229/

 

[Santilli]

Chewy509:

Your use looks a bit like mine. I hated my Samsung, sold it on ebay for a decent price, and went with a Nokia 5230 for 119.00 from Costco.

Here is why I like the Nokia:
I don't want to spend a price fixed 30 dollars a month for a smart phone data plan.
My provider offers an unlimited data plan for 10 dollars. With the 5230 I've put Opera on the phone to get around the really poor browser included. It works, and, it's just this side of horrible.

I like the Nokia Suite Software, since tethering in nothing more then a click of the trackpad, and, I'm up and browsing the net on my laptop, mobile.

The screen is ok, the touch screen works, ok, and the music player is passable.

Battery life is one to two days, depending on how many apps you leave open.

Camera is ok, but, no flash.

Don't know if that helps much, but, it's much cheaper then a HTC. What I will say is that I will NEVER buy another phone without testing, or being able to return it.

The Samsung Highlight was really a dog...