Please help me choose the best smartphone for the few things I need to do with it.

[acrobat]

I can get a new device on my Orange contract, and I don't have to pay. I just need to choose one.

I need GPS first and foremost, but I'd also like to play movies and my music from MP3/WAV/Whatever on it, and ideally have wireless internet access. Also battery life is pretty important to me. I don't care whether it has a touch screen or not, don't care about radio, don't care about outlook because I use gmail, don't care about anything at all really. It's just those 5 main things: GPS / Movies / Music / WiFi / Battery.

My choice isn't everything available, but still fairly broad. I looked at HTC devices and the something cruise I loved but isn't on my list There was a brand new one which got horrible reviews, and then there is the TyTN II which was better but still sounds bad to me. User reviews say both music playback and the microphone for talking to people are far too quiet - in a serious way. And that it cracks too easy, buttons fall out, far too slow, terrible battery life, annoying password protection, limited and bad quality video playback, etc... the list is endless.

I looked at a few others, and then after reading about several phones, I realised that everyone kept referring to one phone as being the daddy. That phone is the Nokia N95 8gb. The specs look amazing and the reviews look good, although mixed (like all reviews I suppose..).

I won't be able to wait for the N96 unfortunately Because I need to make my decision on Monday.

So what should I get? I figured the N95 would be my choice because it has a nice high quality screen for watching movies, does a good job with music, has wifi, and has GPS. But I just wasn't completely sure because some say the battery life sucks and I don't know how well it does GPS compared to say TomTom 6 on Windows Mobile which I've seen and works well. I am assuming it's just as good, and I'm also assuming the battery is equally crap on all these devices. But I just wanted to check that there's nothing definitely better for me.

Thanks

[arthurleung]

For music volume, just use some software (like MP3Gain) to increase the volume.
For movie, with the relatively slow CPU on some of the phones (as low as 200Mhz), you can't expect it to play x264 video. Perhaps Divx and Xvid without all the "enhancements" like QPal and GMC. 524Mhz is just about enough to play Xvid smoothly, perhaps WMV9 too. Some phones have extra decoder chip to handle video decoding at low cpu speed..

For battery life, a smaller phone obviously mean smaller battery, which you either have slow CPU and good battery life or fast CPU with crap battery life.

Oh BTW N95's screen resolution is only QVGA, which is same as most windows mobile devices. (I wouldn't say that resolution is high, just it appeared to be high due to the smaller pixel pitch).

I would say, ignore the battery issue. You can just buy an extra battery and swap if you really run out of battery.

Personally, I would say, get the most expensive phone that you can get for free

I'm a fan of brick-sized PDA phone (From XDA2 to HTC Universal ), so I've never used those smaller phones. So I couldn't really suggest a phone for you to pick.

[acrobat]

Thanks

I think the big deal with the N95 isn't so much the resolution, but the colour depth. It does 16m colours, or on the N95 8gb version, it does full 16.7m colours which is the same as my home PC Most of them just have 65k. Although I think even that is enough. so long as it's fast and bright enough.

So on that N95, I'm assuming a movie would look great. I can actually play movies on my little old Sony Ericsson W810i, but the screen is the size of a postage stamp, and it's a bit dark, and I have to look at it at a slight angle. So I'm assuming on any of these bigger and better phones it would be great, or at least watchable.

I like that idea about the batteries by the way! I could just charge up two, and swap them out if I am on a long trip. Most of the time it would be ok though because I'll either be at home, in my car, or at a PC somewhere and it can be charged in all those places.

I'll probably get the N95, but I'm still researching just to check that there aren't any better options. I wish I could get the N96.. but it's not quite out yet Bleh.

[Ferral]

Just got my staff upgrade and got the N95. Charged it fully yesterday morning, had a mess about with Ngage on it (Used wireless to download the games), played a few tracks, used the wi-fi for about a half hour. Got up this morning and it had gone flat and needs charging, think I need to give it a good 16 hour or overnight to condition the battery. Wireless seems to be the thing that really drains the battery.

Movies look great on it, it comes with Spiderman 3 on the actual mass memory, looks awesome. It is really loud also!

Looking into getting a symbian based Commodore 64 emulator at the minute that is free, Frodo is available but you have to pay to get a sound codec. There is so much you can actually do with with a N95 its where to start!

[Templar87]

Aye that's an always always always with a new phone - full 16 to 24 hour charge first time whether it needs it or not

[Ferral]

Yeah I know, but new toys need playing with constantly for the first few days! I work in the mobile business and know all to well about not giving a phone like the N95 a good charge before use!

Looking into Commodore and Speccy emulators at the minute, got the main program for Frodo but need to donate to get the sound for it. Speccy is supposed to be free but there are no free links to it, quite weird really.

[acrobat]

thanks guys

I think I'll get the N95 and hope for the best. As long as I can get TomTom working on it, and it plays films and music, then I'll be 100% happy