Which smartphone to get ? Need advice urgently !

[Cornholio]

Right guys, 18 months ago i signed up for a HTC touch pro contract, ALWAYS had problems with it until one day it gave up all hope, HTC refused to fix it and wanted £300 to repair it or £12 to send it back to me still broken, i argued the toss and got it back for free so i could enjoy raging on it for the months of agony it put me through, needless to say it ended up in a 1000 pieces but man..it felt good.

Now considering my last phone purchased was so long ago..18 months, and im now using the mrs SE C510 basic phone i am abosultely clueless as to which handset to get.

Now..ive always had a thing for phsyical keyboards on phone, whether it be your traditional mobile phone, or a full qwerty. Ive not used a proper touch screen phone ie with no physical keyboard as my HTC touch pro had the proper keyboard i used that instead..granted it failed completley twice and was still never fixed properly, always required a hard reset.

How are the fully fledged touch screen phones to use ?


My requirements arent alot really so il list them up below :

Access to facebook, preferbly through an app so i can keep up to date with my friends/family.

Youtube app so i can play random sh1te when im bored.

Email would be appreciated as i have a gmail account, push isnt needed.

MMS as i still do use this.

Ide like to be able to take nice photo's when needed, obviously it wont be a primary camera as i have my DSLR for that, but when im out on the bike ide like to be able to take a few half decent snaps.

I dont want to be waiting for things to happen, the htc touch pro was a slow machine.

Integrated GPS receiver, majority have this now though..right ?

What i dont want.......IPhone, i want something with a physical battery that can be removed and i can carry a spare with me, i will be using it as a satnav in my car aswel as my bike so when on the bike i would like to have a spare battery just incase, although i will eventually wire up a 12v socket especially for my trip to france.

What ive looked at breifly.

Nokia N97 (old phone now though, do i really want to be signing up to a 18-24month contract on an older phone?)

Nokia N97 Mini

Motorolla Milestone

And..

HTC HD2, although i swore ide never have another HTC this just looks nice, and considering it has a 1ghz cpu as opposed to the 528mhz in my Touch Pro i imagine it will work faster ? + The keyboard cant exactly fail as it doesnt have one !

Cheers in advance guys, i hope you can help !

P.S : I need to order in the next 3 days, as my contract finishes then !!!!!!!!!!!

[donkiddik]

Have you looked at the HTC Hero, cracking phone and has all the facilities you need.

[Cornholio]

Is it better than the HD2 ?

[Stringent]

The camera on the Hero is its downfall. No flash, hence unless you have superb lighting (i.e. outdoors, summer) then the pictures are going to be bad.

You could look at the N900, you would need a 3rd party prog to handle MMS though, buts I think its free (fmms its called). If you go for the N97 get the Mini, Nokia gave it larger memory on the C drive than the original N97.

But have a play at a local phone store with the mentioned phones and see what you think.

Or you could just order the Nexus One and go down to a SIM only contract deal.

[unreal]

I really had a dislike for HTC phones after what began as a promising experience for both my SPV C500 and Orange M5000 (both HTC rebrands, or whatever you call em) but my annoyance really came from Windows Mobile.

I only just recently got a HTC Hero after having what I thought was the perfect phone for me (A Blackberry) and this thing is heaven - Android is really quite an incredible phone OS

I'd recommend the Hero - or if you can, the Nexus One - easily.

Although I agree with above, the camera is abysmal despite being upped to 5mp - HTC have never really put a decent camera on a phone before have they

[muppet_hat]

HTC Hero
N97 mini
E72

Wait for
HTC Desire!!!!

[jimborae]

Despite the Hero being a great phone there's no point getting it as being replaced by the Legend at the end of this month. The legend looks to be a truly great phone to replace the Hero.

Then of course there's the Google Nexus 1 which I'm currently using, plenty of reviews about this on the net. My impression - I like it a lot more now i'm running the HTC Desire rom on it.

Finally there's the HTC Desire which should be out next month, similar hardware to the next one but apparently will be cheaper and I think looks better. Runs Android 2.1 with HTC SenseUI on top and I love it. Has all the widgets you're looking for. Stay away from anything Symbian or WinMo they're yesterdays news.

http://android.modaco.com/

[arbitrabbit]

You could look at the N900, you would need a 3rd party prog to handle MMS though, buts I think its free (fmms its called).

Don't think that is the only issue with N900. If anyone is interested, go and read talk.maemo.org before buying the N900. Personally, I love the device but that is because that is the closes I have come to finding a pone which would be a laptop replacement (I can ssh and VNC to my home server, install any debian package and it has got a wonderful screen) but still it may not be for people who want to use it as a "phone"

[dennis25]

Nokia E72

HD2 is good but short battery life

[Spud1]

HTC HD2 - no question, its the best non-keyboard smartphone on the market at the moment.

Nokia are sadly out of the running completely these days, their OS is so slow/buggy/unreliable and replacing it is possible on some phones but a real pain to do.

The Nexus is a nice phone if you simply must have android, but the stock android UI fails in comparison to HTC sense...which leads to the HD2 as being the best option really imo. It has a snapdragon inside so yes it will be much faster than your TP (however on that point..I am still running a touch pro and mine is lightning fast - just have to replace the stock rom on it to get any sort of use out of the device..*all* the stock operator roms are painfully slow to use!)

I've yet to play with a better UI than HTC Sense 2.5 really, the only downside for most people is the lack of marketplace applications that are available for WM based platforms at the moment, but I guess that depends on how much you use your phone as a phone, and how much as a portable computer really. If its apps you want, go iPhone or Nexus. If its customisability and ease of use for "standard tasks" (calls/text/pictures/music/office work) then go HD2.

[jimborae]

Nokia are sadly out of the running completely these days, their OS is so slow/buggy/unreliable and replacing it is possible on some phones but a real pain to do.

The Nexus is a nice phone if you simply must have android, but the stock android UI fails in comparison to HTC sense...which leads to the HD2 as being the best option really imo. It has a snapdragon inside so yes it will be much faster than your TP (however on that point..I am still running a touch pro and mine is lightning fast - just have to replace the stock rom on it to get any sort of use out of the device..*all* the stock operator roms are painfully slow to use!)

Exactly... so have the best of both worlds.......A Nexus One running a Desire rom! Currently running Alpha 14 & its great. Or wait a little while & get the Desire when it's released.