Mobile Phone thread - please include links to good deals

[EvilBoris]

You have to be a special kind of fanboy to buy a Sony smartphone

[QualityChimp]

I'd be interested to see what you think of the Z3 and all the gubbins for controlling games.

Bit disappointed that my Z1 Compact can't move apps to the SD card so the internal memory got a bit full and it suggested moving photos and videos to the card.

It ages to do it, then moved them to a folder called LOST.DIR with no file suffixes.

No software could read it and eventually the card corrupted and had to be formatted.

I've lost family and holiday photos from the last two months. Plus that photo with Bill Murray, so nobody will believe me!

[VR46]

You have to be a special kind of fanboy to buy a Sony smartphone

And how many iPhones have you had?
Good to see site staff setting a great mature example again.

[teddymeow]

You have to be a special kind of fanboy to buy a Sony smartphone

I seem to recall you said that before.

[EvilBoris]

I seem to recall you said that before.

I know, it was in reference to that :P

[teddymeow]

Haha!!

[hudson]

Anyone know where I can get a good phone host and charger for my car? My phone's a Nexus 5.

[charlesr]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0088U4YAG/ref=cfb_ai_prodpg

Not sure if you wanted an all-in-one, but with apple devices needing their own daft USB protocols, it's worth getting one that does both apple usb and normal usb.

[Brad]

Apple devices don't have their own protocols for charging do they? I thought they just need a specific amount of amps and they tell you about it if they don't get it. i have a 2.1a / 1.0a combo in car charger and the 2.1a socket will charge my nexus andmy daughter's iphone no problemo.

[charlesr]

Hmm, ok, I just read up on it and allegedly iPads will charge on low amp outputs even when they are telling you it's "Not Charging". It just takes a long time. I assumed the warning meant it doesn't charge at all (thus believing it was a specific protocol). What it should really say is "Weak Charging" or something.

[charlesr]

No, did some more digging and Apple have their own way of detecting USB specs and on most universal chargers, even if 2+ amps, an iPad will often drop to a much lower voltage, which is why 3rd party ports are now labelled A and NA (Apple and Non-Apple). Nexus also do this if the cable is not to their own specification - for example if I use my 2amp nexus7 charger with a different cable than the one that came with it, the charge rate drops to 0.5A.

[hudson]

Thanks Charles, that looks good. Glowing reviews for sure.

[EvilBoris]

The charging is dealt with via the phones' charging circuit, it's up to the hardware whether it chooses to draw more or less.

All apple devices can accept either the standard USB pc socket 0.5a or a 1.0a from its default charger or 2.1a from an iPad charger.
The apple products will draw the max amount upto 2.1a from any powered USB.

The non-apple sockets that some devices have are actually 0.5a outputs as some phones (such as my old blackberry) dont have charging circuits that can deal with anything more than 0.5a

That is certainly the case for Apple.

The only exception to this is 3rd party cables, where the phone picks up on the lack of official cabling and displays a message on screen, the phone itself could well dip to only 0.5a in this case as Apple have had to pick up the cost of cheap Chinese chargers and cables causing fires etc.

[charlesr]

Yeah, I've had no end of issues with usb cables. Even ones marked as 22AWG. None of them will charge my Nexus 7 at full speed (the Asus charger is 2A). It used to charge really fast with teh original cable, but I lost that and none of the others I have work, so I get 0.4A max I tried some cheapy (?6) ones off ebay that were 22AWG but no joy. Seems the only way to get an official cable is to buy the charger again Seems such a waste. Web is full of people with same issue, with some of them getting lucky with some cables.

[Shozuki]

Where's the best place to buy handsets offline these days? Note 4's out next week and I want one!