Mobile Phone thread - please include links to good deals

[Friction]

Personally I really hope it is September or sooner for the iPhone 5 as I'm out of contract that month and would love to get one of those as an upgrade to my 3gs! Could always wait, but I'll have had this one for 2 years then and I do enjoy getting a new phone!

[fishbowlhead]

WP7 doesn't have copy and paste or multitasking yet. I'd liek to see how that's implemented before jumping in!

just went and played with an iphone and a desire HD. The DHD is massive! Also, not as slick or responsive as the iphone.

I don't care abuot customising at all. I know this because my ZTE blade is pretty bare and has a plain black wallpaper lol.

The iPhone has won I think. Just need to decide black or white or wait til iPhone 5. Wish I could know for sure when the next iPhone will be out so I knew whether to wait or not.

Copy & paste yes, implemented the same as iphone. No multitasking, music and fm radio work in the background all the time, but theres no widgets that constantly update like the sense stuff from android. Email is pushed though if the data connection is always on.

[Mr Ono]

Just ordered a Samsung Galaxy S 2.

Not due for an ugrade from my lovely HTC Desire until next April but couldn't resist.

[Baseley09]

Does look like the best one out there at the minute, should you opt for android over iOS.

[Brad]

Copy & paste yes, implemented the same as iphone. No multitasking, music and fm radio work in the background all the time, but theres no widgets that constantly update like the sense stuff from android. Email is pushed though if the data connection is always on.

That info helped me just order a WP7 device. Had a play in a shop, seems pretty damn good. Will report back tomorrow once I get a chance to try it out.

[averybluemonkey]

I've been using a WP7 device since December and I'm really disappointed in it, I came off a N97 Mini and overall I far prefer my old Nokia. There's no doubt the fonts are nice and the transitions are smooth on WP7 but their wow factor soon wears off. The battery life is utterly appalling under real world use. If I fully charge it overnight it's rare for the phone to still be alive by the time I get home from work around 6:00. It's also got quite a few bugs, my favourite is the one where the alarm decides to randomly switch itself to silent and not wake me up on a semi-regular basis. On average I have to do at least two battery pulls per week. There's a great little bug where the phone just stops outputting any audio over both the speakers and headphones, requiring a power cycle. The Marketplace crashes sometimes, again requiring a power cycle to fix.

The web browser is very nice with tabbed browsing, but if you go back the page will start loading, hang a bit then at the final moment jump to where you were in the page. If you've moved it around in the meantime it then whizzes around the page leaving you in the wrong place. You get used to it eventually but definitely hurts the speediness of using the device. I've also had a lot of random hangs where it ignores user input for 5-8 seconds. And trying to enter text while a page is loading hangs it for ages. Reliability has got so much worse as time has gone on, after a few weeks use a lot of bugs started coming out of the woodwork.

The application layout is absolutely horrific, everything is just lumped into a single long list, very impractical once you get a few apps installed. The lack of decent live widgets, particularly on the Xbox Live front is particularly disappointing. And you're limited to a maximum of 8 tiles visible at once which again is slow and poor. The Xbox Live games selection is pretty woeful with a library dominated by a glut of shallow, simplistic titles, hardly the gaming platform it should be compared to pretty much any other phone ecosystem.

Oh and then there's the godawful Zune integration. Everything is tied to this. You can't even create playlists on your device, you have to create them on your PC then sync them across which is an absolute joke meaning you can't pick what music you want to listen to without pre-planning it while at home. You also can't download apps to your PC and install them that way, not a problem except that the phone refuses to let you download anything over 20MB over the air. Of course the error code doesn't explain this to you and just says you can download the software over the PC, but it's lieing. Anything over 20MB, regardless of your data allowance requires a wi-fi connection, again utterly ridiculous.

Barring the nice font and reasonable graphic design the platform has little going for it at all.

[charlesr]

Duncan, thanks for the nokia 5800 tip. It's great. Got a 2nd hand one off ebay for pennies.
The battery lasts for 4 days including plenty of GPS and Wifi. It also came with a mega battery with a daft big battery cover which lasted for 8 days.

I also found an app for it called "folderplayer" that just lets you browse to a folder and play whatever is in it, including FLAC files, so no need for me to have more than one music format lying around.

Also, I was out on my mountain bike playing with the sports-tracker software and because the screen is resistive, I could still use it with my gloves on. Winner!

[fishbowlhead]

Had my optimus7 for about a week now and im pretty happy with it, battery isnt as good as my defy which lasted 2 days, down to 1.5 days on the optimus7. Haven't experienced any of the bugs that averyblue has, barring the touch response on webpages stopping for a millisecond requireing me to re-place my finger on the screen and re-scroll, not really a biggie though and only does it on web pages.

My favourite touch has to be the standardised camera button on the side that unlocks it even when the screen lock is on, requiring only 2 seconds from pocket to camera open. Im a propper little happy snapper so this touch is great for me

Overall though im quite happy with the whole thing, keyboard is very will implemented second only to iphone. Camera takes some surprisingly decent shots outdoors (crap in bad light though). Browser is more than fast enough. Email client is very good. Calendar is nice and clear. Whats best is how dam smooth everything is, the whole UI is always slick and quick at all times, coming from 3 years of android its a breath of fresh air. Personally i quite like zune as well, both on the player on the phone and the software on pc, though i can tell how others would detest it, for me its quite nice to use. Zune shouldn't be a big deal though for anyone thats had an iphone, all syncs the same and updates through zune.

One advantage with the mac sync utility is that it will detect any new songs on your wp7 device and automatically add them to itunes on your mac too, so you can keep identical libraries on your mac and pc buying from different sources and it all syncs up nicely. Thought this was a nice touch personally and takes a lot of hassle out of music syncing.



Not that it doesn't have its downsides though, no sat nav out the box, the only option is orange navigation which is decidedly average (either free with your orange plan or ?5 per month which is a rip off) this is coming this year though thanks to the nokia deal. Calendar can only sync with one calendar, bing is not ideal and the maps isn't as good as google but at the end of the day its always found the info ive needed off the web and maps has always located me accurately and found the places ive wanted so cant complain at all really (plus bing maps is getting a big update later this year with turn by turn navigation in the mango update).



Its all early days though but i see a promising future for the OS, microsoft seems to of pulled its finger out for once.

[Brad]

eXpansys cocked up. Order cancelled. Stuff it, I'll get an iPhone. At least I know that's a fundamentally sound device, plus I use macs so it kinda makes sense. Expect an ipod touch and a ZTE blade for sale by the end of the day

[fishbowlhead]

eXpansys cocked up. Order cancelled. Stuff it, I'll get an iPhone. At least I know that's a fundamentally sound device, plus I use macs so it kinda makes sense. Expect an ipod touch and a ZTE blade for sale by the end of the day

You wont be disappointed with an iphone4, its a great all round device and you cant go wrong with it really.

[Number45]

If you're going iPhone I'd wait. September is looking like the next version, so you can either get that or get the 4 nice and cheap.

[Brad]

Too late!

This is an utter delight. Iphone 3->4 was quite a leap. I'm expecting 4->5 to be more subtle e.g. thinner. The only thing they could do that would make me wish I'd waited would be to give it a 4" screen. I reckon. We'll see. I went with the metrosexual white version

[EvilBoris]

Well given they only just launched the White version, I don't think you'll re a new iPhone that looks any different. I reckon it'll be the IPhone 4.5 , same as current iPhone 4 but with the dual core and gpu shennanigans of the iPad 2

[Dogg Thang]

Yep, my guess is with EvilBoris. I suspect, given the leap to iPhone 4, I'd say the next one will be a minor update. I'm well tempted to get one of the white iPhones myself. I've been holding off for the next model since they launched the phone. The only thing holding me back is the scarcity of the 32GB one over here with my carriers.

[laruso]

im able to upgrade next week, have a 3GS on O2 at present. thinking about getting an iphone 4 as i cant wait til september! Ive seen the deals on 3 Network which seem crazy compared to what O2 currently offer. Has anyone got an iphone on 3? if so what is the network like - have they really improved from how patchy they used to be?