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I've got that nasty shopping fever on me where I want something, and look it up on the internet lots and lots and lots, but don't want to spend the money.
Orange contract expires in early may.... do I splash out and get the ubiquitous Apple soul replacement?
Decisions, decisions...
How much is the contract/handset? I believe that the best thing to do, is to go to a shop and play with one (along with other alternative) and see how you find it. Here you'll find both praise and dissing, but I think you can and perhaps should use your own judgement on this (though keep in mind that the next gen is probably going to be out 2-3 months after your contract).
You looked at the Palm Pre Shooty?
I looked at a youtube review showing it in-use the interface was lovely and web browsing very nice, and it can multitask....
iPhone is old, insecure and surpassed by many phones out there at the moment.
My personal recommendation atm is the HTC desire :)
Be patient.
You may want an iPhone..thats for you to decide really, but if you do, wait until June/July when there is a very high chance that a new one will come out. Would be terrible to pick up a 3Gs now and then see the 4G appear a month later.
There are plenty of phones that are "better" than an iPhone in terms of more flexible, faster, feature wise etc (HTC HD2 and HTC Desire for example), but the iPhone is a different beast really..so depends what you are after in a phone.
I'd probably advise against a Palm Pre..one of the most over hyped phones of the past year tbh, mainly due to its poor hardware quality, very short battery life and cramped keyboard. I am sure there will be a much improved Pre-2 at some point in the future. WebOS is very much a love/hate thing too tbh..
Yup I agree. Wait for the 4G in June/July if you want to go down that route.
If you need one now, have a look at the HTC Desire.
Wow. Thank you all.
The sad thing is that I actually use a phone, as a phone, rather little, but would be looking for something that combined my current phone AND PDA AND ipod set up :)
No, you don't :P You want an HTC Magic* :D
Unless you particularly want handwriting recognition that is; I've yet to find a decent Android application for it.
Otherwise; for calls, email, calendaring, e-reading, and pretty much everything else I use mine for, it's spot on. It's not even *too* bad for web browsing, although the 320x480 screen does hold it back slightly there...
* disclaimer: this poster may be extremely biased by their own choice of smartphone!
HTC Legend looks quite nice if your budget doesn't quite stretch to a Desire.
As someone who uses their phone AS a phone, I'd say no. I personally can't get on with touch screens, and the current trend towards them drives me mad. I phone, I text. I can hammer out a text with T9 quicker than my friends can on an I-phone, and lets not forget the wonder that is ear sweat!
My I-pod does my MP3 duties, my phone does phone duties. The biggest benefit of keeping stuff separate is that if you flatten the battery on one, it doesn't impact the other.
and I agree with Jiff.
I suggest you get an iPoD Touch instead.. and keep your phone AS a phone.
Sair wanted an iphone but now she uses her ipod touch a lot, and it drains power with games, video, music, surfing etc.. she is glad to have a PHONE as a PHONE...
but get an iPod touch.. even a small capacity one.. it's a revelation :)
May I throw into the pot A BlackBerry, I have an 8520 and its a great device, alright it has no 3G but that doesnt bother me (if you need 3G get one of the 9 series curves IIRC) as a media player its not too shabby with a 8gig mini sd cardin in
argh this is so sensible, we havent yet got to the point where we can integrate everything well enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zak33
if you listen to an hour of music a day then fine, but you cant replace a 20 hour battery life mp3 player with a phone that may push two if you are lucky.
As someone who does own an iPhone, these guys are quite right.
I get around the battery thing by making sure that I have a charger at work, as well as at home. Whenever I go to stay at friends' houses etc, i get a bit panicky if there is no ipod charger close to hand...
And you know.. i cant really blame Apple or the iphone itself. Taken in isolation the battery is good, but its literally that you end up using just so much.
I have reached A Decision.
And it is this: My official upgrade time is in one month's time. The 4g MIGHT be out by then. I shall use the month as a boiling off period, and reconsider in a month.
This is quite sensible for me.
I find it highly unlikely that the 4G will be out then. They iPhone has so far all been released during summer. And given that the 3GS has been relatively well received, I don't think Apple will be in a hurry to get a new iPhone out earlier than usual.
No! Get a Google Nexus instead :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Shooty*
most networks limit the crap out of 3G, 4G will just be used as a big advertisement feature so i would bother basing decisions on that.
I would also avoid the iphone at all costs; Its seriously outdated and limited in comparison to the competition.
Get yourself a decent android phone and never look back!
I initially didn't want the iPhone that much and got one to test and return. Then pretty much couldn't put it down. I agree with some of the earlier posters in that having a 'phone' separate is a better idea.
The amount of times push notifications or text messages or phonecalls get in my way of gaming and enjoying music, add to that the fact that I need a docking station/charger everywhere I go (seriously, I have like 4 in total at various places).
Get a phone with a good camera and buy a nice iPod touch :D
what he says...Quote:
Originally Posted by leepen@scan
however... you can buy a mains USB charger adpator from China for under a quid.. so dont buy expensive stuff. Just make sure you take your cable with you everywhere.
To reiterate though.. the iPod Touch is amazing. Sair's is a 2nd generation refurb model with a software update from Apple and it's very slim.. slimmer than an iPhone I'd say..... and playing Broken Sword on it is amazing.
Yup, IF you go for an iSomething, get a retractable USB charger from Poundland and maybe even a main charger for under £2.79 from 7dayshop.
I got my iPhone for the price of a Touch mostly to mess about, but it's going to be hard to go back now. I went from low/mid-end normal mobile phones (those early Nokia/Siemen) to 'proper' smartphones, only to revert back and settling for upper end mobile phones before the iPhone.
It may not be the most powerful smartphone around, but I've found at least one application that lack better alternative even on a PC, so it's going to take the developer of that application porting it on other platforms for me to consider a change. For me, it only needs better Japanese handwriting input.
OK, have been looking at the HTC Legend.
wow.
And free! Result!
...
What's the catch?
Stupid question, but, like the iphone, I presume if the plan includes data, then it's capable of mobile internet browsing? (my current mobile is SO 1980s).
Correct. That data can be for anything internet related: downloading apps, email, general web, streaming music, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shooty*
@Funkstar: I think it was you mentioned that you were going to check out the screens of the various phones right? What was your verdict in the end (performance and value)?
his judgement was seriously impaired, after getting his hands on that much technology they got all hot and sweaty and several of the screens were damaged :)
That was the plan, never did it though.Quote:
Originally Posted by TooNice
Not seen any of the large slate like handsets other than the iPhone in person yet.
changed my mind again: HTC DESIRE this time.
And I can get a £25 talkplan for £30!
(no typo. That amused me)
And a "free" phone?
Which really means you pay £5 a month for the phone and the rest on the talk plan.... which also subsidises the phone.
Oh don't you love the economics and financing of mobile phones.
I'm a recent convert to the iphone having previously used smartphones such as HTC tytnII. 3Gs is infinitely better in all respects. To be honest cant see how the next generation iphone can improve the current version (camera maybe?). Depends what aspect is the most important thing to you. I would say go for an iphone 3Gs
I really regretted that I have bought an iphone....I wanted to go with an android based phone but for some reason I could not get a contract with the companies selling them, so I opted for an iphone.
it's a shame that I have many months left until I can escape form the apple prison, which is literally annoys me so much I would like to kill this device with a hammer or something like that :(
next time I will be more patient...advice: make sure you investigate properly of the limitations and behaviour of any platform you jump into...and ignore the fanboys :)
(and here i'm not talking about the missing flash...i don't care about that...)
so what ARE you missing? What's it doing wrong?Quote:
Originally Posted by ehhhhhhh
Having to use iTunes is the biggest single reason for staying away from anything Apple.
I have an iPod Classic (for use with my car stereo) and don't update it often simply because iTunes is so horrible.
\I concur....Quote:
Originally Posted by Funkstar
but I meant what else.. taking for granted that iTunes bites huge donkey di<k ... what is wrong with the device itself?
The fact it requires iTunes to do to many things......Quote:
Originally Posted by Zak33
Its crippled as part of their lock-in with iTunes and the money spent there.
But it works beautifully with Amarok on a Linux system!Quote:
Originally Posted by Funkstar
Nothing would work correctly on Windows, and I see Linux as an even bigger pain in the neck than iTunes :)Quote:
Originally Posted by peterb
A bit ironic given that there are people who do not have Apple products who opt for iTune as they preferred music player. *Shrug* [I am used to Foobar, but I am not sure what's so wrong with iTune]
I do understand that I made the mistake of buying, and nobody forced me to do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zak33
I understand that some devices and platforms might be perfect for one person but totally awkward for an other. So I don't want to blame Apple for this, I just want to point out that nothing is perfect for everyone...
so here are some things what I don't like about my purchase:
-awkward internet surfing experience: I have used some android based devices (even G1, milestone, etc) and browsing on the internet is just way more convenient for me on android....
it's so frustrating that whenever I can, I use my girlfriend's phone to check out sites, search for information (for example: out on a trip, before going to bed, etc..) Safari is slower than the competition, often not responding, etc....(and they don't let anyone release a browser for their platform)
-I'm forced to use itunes, it would be great for updates but I can't freely manage my music.
(my biggest headache with this just recently: I had a dedicated desktop PC what I used for my multimedia needs, but for a few months I will not be able to access it, so I have some music on my phone, and I cannot transfer them to my laptop or to the other desktop (I have spent MANY hours investigating, and there's one solution what I will not do: JAILBREAK!)....The music have have not been downloaded illegally...I bought many CDs what I have ripped and used for many years on my portable players, but the CDs are "just" 1700kilometers away from me for an other couple of months. Epic fail....it's a matter of drag and drop or copy on other devices)
- I am disappointed in the overhyped appstore, I would not say that it is any better than the google's market in terms of useful applications.
- I often have a bug, which I am still investigating and is very annoying as this is my business phone: when I'm on a call and I receive an other one and put the previous one on hold or terminate it, I usually cannot hear the new person, but they hear me...I'm still waiting for apple's support to give a feedback on this.
- I'm disappointed in the instant messaging capabilities (i'm mainly using skype and gtalk (I ended up paying for beejive, but even the built-in gtalk on android offer just much better value) I would be happy on tips on a decent IM app by the way....
I don't really want to spam this thread further more with my whining, this device caused me lots of wasted hours in finding solutions, and many times I found myself crashing into a "brickwall" :)
ps: what I like: it's obviously better than a normal phone which cannot do anything but making calls and texting...
I have a few thoughts on iTunes, however i think that it warrants a new thread, rather than highjacking this one.