Read more.Recent report suggests that buyers prioritize battery life and ease of use.
Read more.Recent report suggests that buyers prioritize battery life and ease of use.
Thats soo true, contract prices and lengths are getting quite expensive now. For two adults in a household you are talking around £60 per month just for two modern phones on contract.
I have the HTC desire HD which is a brilliant phone in many ways but does fall short on the simply things from a phone, such as battery life and simplicity. For all of Androids cleverness , it is not simply to use. I many people at work who have recently got a android hand set and they all comment on how easy the old Nokia were compared to modern hand sets.
Personally my priority is not to be locked into a long contract.
I like smartphones, and would pay £2-300 up front, and the rest of the cost rolled into a 12 month airtime contract, but those contracts have basically disappeared. Instead they are all for a free phone and a lengthy tie in, which I don't want. In those 2 years the phone will become obsolete, and the network might become rubbish. (As Orange have over the past few years).
Instead over recent years, I have been buying SIM free smartphones, at a rather higher up-front cost than I would prefer, and then using a 30 day rolling contract. This does give me maximum flexibility, but the networks have effectively lost out, as they could have had me as a long term customer if they had offered the sort of contract I want.
That's only because you chose to buy expensive high end smartphones. If the SIM free cost of the phone is similar to a mid range laptop, then it will be expensive however you pay for it. If you chose to lock yourself into a 2 year contract, then the instalments to pay for the phone will add up.
Complaining that the repayments on a fancy modern smartphone are too expensive, is like complaining that the repayments on a Mercedes limousine are too expensive when you could have brought a Volkswagen Golf.
MadduckUK (24-03-2011)
The report is from "Strategy Analytics User Experience Practice" - no wonder Ease of Use is up there.
I would rather there is no phone locking by telecommunications companies so that it is an even playing field.
Tbh I think all smartphones have lost a lot of the usability we used to see in the old Nokias, I'm talking about 6 years ago mind, back then you'd get good battery life too.
The iPhone commited many an abomination in user interaction, but was prased for it. I suppose compared to WM5 it was better but it was no better than most nokia's in functionality other than out of the box web browsing.
The Metro UI team have some of the best ideas right now, but how do people know how to use it at first, if your not a gadgety type you will never know half the things you can easily and simply do. Just the other day there was a thread about how to download a zune pass track and this is a geek site.....
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I think mobile phone buyers want battery life, ease of use, performance. What carrier's offer are complicated phone plans made deliberately so, to confuse and mislead customers. It's distasteful. I've heard that the Australian government is making some attempt at forcing carriers to be clearer in their fee structures, but I will wait and see if this pans out.
Currently I'm on a pretty good plan with TPG, I can cancel anytime and it's only costing me $14.95 a month for ~$330 worth of calls and 1gb of data. The catch is any number beginning with 13 costs me extra (so it's expensive to call services such as power/telco's etc (at least i don't need to call those very often). I've heard that the other Australian telco's have recently updated their own plans to be competitive so there may now be better deals. I bought my phone out right online, so I got a good deal there too. Motorola Defy running Android. Android is pretty awesome, and can integrate with Windows PC's better than WinPhone7 does. No Itunes or Zune for me
I have to agree that for me its decent battery life and what it can do for me while I am on the road
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