Mobile Phone thread - please include links to good deals

[fishbowlhead]

My Nokia 5800 has GPS, 3G, Wifi and lasts for 7 days if I just use it to make a couple of voice calls and texts a day. It does flash and twitter and fakebook and IRC and sports tracking and multitasking and has super loud speakers and can be dropped on to concrete without caring. All your phones must suck badly.

I've got a double size battery that will last double that if need be.

Didn't someone hack multi touch onto it as well to make it act like a capacitive screen? Its the phone that keeps on giving.

So many new handsets to choose from at the moment. Iphone5, new nexus 4, WP8. Choice overload

[bash]

Multi tasking? Its a peice of pi$$ on Android. In fact theres a dedicated button for it on versions 4.0+ so not sure what point you're trying to make. Symbian became a peice of sh1t which is why Nokia ditched it, it was ugly slow and un responsive and out of touch (pardon the pun) with the touchscreen revolution that Apple forced upon the world.

Anyway, apologies I fear I may be responsible for bring thread into a fanboy flame war when its correct intention is to share mobile phone and carrier deals!!!

[Duncan James Waugh]

Multi tasking? Its a peice of pi$$ on Android. In fact theres a dedicated button for it on versions 4.0+ so not sure what point you're trying to make.

There is limited multi-tasking only, with the OS regularly killing background applications to free up resources due to a lack of optimisation. That's why when you use that button you'll find many apps have actually been killed and restarted .

Symbian became a peice of sh1t which is why Nokia ditched it,

If that's what you want to think fine, but that wasn't what happened in reality at all, not even close. Quite the opposite in fact.

it was ugly slow and un responsive

Live widgets before anyone else, UI elements, such as album selection that run at twice the frame rate of the iPhone, native 720p output, even the old 5800 rendered much of it's UI in higher resolutions than the early iPhones.

and out of touch (pardon the pun) with the touchscreen revolution that Apple forced upon the world.

The first Symbian phone in 2002 was a touchscreen. The S80/90 line ran for a number of years with touch screens. UIQ and (I believe) some MOAP(S) were touch screen based and had very healthy sales.

[bash]

Dude, symbian was horrible to use back then. Almost everyone ditched Nokia because they were making symbian based phones which were irritating. Having widgets, album selections and running stuff at high resolution mean jack when its slow as fook. Are you saying that Symbian was too good and that was why Nokia ditched it? Sorry, I'm not buying. Also I know Android is far from perfect but they've grown in popularity for a reason, it quickly became easy to use each year and the handsets using it have got slimmer, faster and built around a simple eco system.

Also, Im aware symbian had touchscreen many moons ago. I;m not stating Apple invented the tech but they sure as hell got joe public to adopt it a lot quicker than Nokia/Symbian ever could.

Maybe I'm cussing Nokia more than the Symbian OS, afterall Windows mobile wasnt a major leap back then when they switched although its catching up fast now.

[charlesr]

I'd rather have 1 day powered Android than a 3 day symbian handset

7 day
When I was skiing, I'd just leave the tracker on all day. Friends with iPhones could only get a morning's worth before their batteries caved.
Obviously when using the phone to do things manually, I'll take an Android or iphone please. But battery life for things that it just sits there doing like tracking make it the best option. It's also the best option when you want to use it with gloves on (i.e. while mountain biking and running in the winter) because it has a rubbish old resistive screen which needs you to press it. But hey, stylus drawing app for the kids.

[fishbowlhead]

7 day

Kinda puts the power consumption into perspective a bit when almost all new phone will only last half a day of intensive constant use. But resistive screens, blah

[kryss]

Where are phones going to go from here? Surely there's nothing left to invent, apart from faster connections. Maybe a thermometer and barometer to turn them all into the worlds most accurate weather prediction system.

Nexus 4 has a barometer...

[charlesr]

Battery life improvements would be very nice but it's hardly an innovation. I'm trying to think of things they can't do now at all (thus the thermometer comment). They can already do media (vids pics music).

Portable projector (when plugged in) for when you want to draw your graffiti in advance and then just colour it in on the wall? Laser hologram keyboards? Maybe a helicopter attachment for filming at gigs so you don't have to hold your arms in the air for an hour (follows you around while avoiding 10000 other helicopters).

[charlesr]

Nexus 4 has a barometer...

Didn't believe you to start with. But I see it's for grabbing GPS lock quicker by providing altitude. But why? My phone gets lock in about 3 seconds (as long as I have mobile phone reception).

[fishbowlhead]

Battery life improvements would be very nice but it's hardly an innovation. I'm trying to think of things they can't do now at all (thus the thermometer comment). They can already do media (vids pics music).

Portable projector (when plugged in) for when you want to draw your graffiti in advance and then just colour it in on the wall? Laser hologram keyboards? Maybe a helicopter attachment for filming at gigs so you don't have to hold your arms in the air for an hour (follows you around while avoiding 10000 other helicopters).

Theres already an samsung android phone with a built in pico projector.

[wakka]

Didn't believe you to start with. But I see it's for grabbing GPS lock quicker by providing altitude. But why? My phone gets lock in about 3 seconds (as long as I have mobile phone reception).

Because three seconds is TOO LONG.

Nokia 5800? It doesn't even run Angry Birds Space. NO SALE.

[charlesr]

Heheh. That's ok, I have Angry Birds on my Openpeak Joggler in the kitchen (or so I'm lead to believe).

How does that GPS lock thing work though? When I have mobile reception, it locks straight away. If I don't it can take 60+ seconds at times. This is "assisted GPS" isn't it? How does that work?

[Duncan James Waugh]

How does that GPS lock thing work though? When I have mobile reception, it locks straight away. If I don't it can take 60+ seconds at times. This is "assisted GPS" isn't it? How does that work?

It sends a small data packet which identifies the network cell you are currently connected to. This immediately narrows down your geographical location to a limited area and makes the process of triangulation a lot quicker as a result.

[Duncan James Waugh]

Dude, symbian was horrible to use back then.

Like I said you clearly haven't used anything since the N8. You are also comparing devices which had much slower clock speeds and less RAM than their competition.

Almost everyone ditched Nokia because they were making symbian based phones which were irritating.

You clearly have no idea of the sales figures if you are making that claim. I'm so sick and tired of people thinking their own little microcosm is representative of the world market.

Having widgets, album selections and running stuff at high resolution mean jack when its slow as fook.

I also mentioned frame rate. You do understand that frame rate is linked to responsiveness yes? Symbian^3 + album selection runs at 60fps, while Apple's ran at 30fps. That means it's responding to user input twice as often per second. Widgets are important because I can access a wealth of live information from my home screen without touching a button, operations which would each take several sequences of button presses on an iPhone.

Are you saying that Symbian was too good and that was why Nokia ditched it? Sorry, I'm not buying.

I am saying that Symbian was in the best shape it had ever been in, in every metric, and that the decision to move to Windows Phone and ditch Symbian (and Meego) was not based on the sales figures, customer feedback or quality concerns but something else entirely.

Also, Im aware symbian had touchscreen many moons ago. I;m not stating Apple invented the tech but they sure as hell got joe public to adopt it a lot quicker than Nokia/Symbian ever could.

There's a large number of reasons why Apple managed it, most of them are underhanded and immoral. Business isn't won by having the best product, it's won by being more ruthless than the competition, something Apple are very good at.

afterall Windows mobile wasnt a major leap back then when they switched although its catching up fast now

Interesting to note that despite pulling almost all advertising from Symbian, and Elop leaking his memo to further his own agenda, killing almost all Symbian feature development 2 years ago, launching a huge Windows Phone advertising campaign, refusing to sell Symbian phones in many markets and releasing only 1 new Symbian handset in the last year - Symbian is still outselling Windows Phone .

I never should have posted in here to be honest, I promised myself I'd stop posting when I shut down my main account. But there were a few places of useful information that I read and stupidly I thought this thread safe from pathetic Symbian bashing by people who clearly don't know as much about the industry and sales figures as they think they do. But I'm done now, clearly facts don't matter, so there's no point anymore.

[Nu-Eclipse]

There's a large number of reasons why Apple managed it, most of them are underhanded and immoral. Business isn't won by having the best product, it's won by being more ruthless than the competition, something Apple are very good at.

So I've got this straight, Nokia/Symbian had superior products to the original iPhone pre-2007, but couldn't push them out to mass market because Apple played the evil empire card?

Dude, you really will need to explain that in further detail because you're coming across as really bitter, like a lot of so-called "Apple-Haters", for want of a better phrase.

Pre-original iPhone, smartphones were generally mediocre at best. The whole industry was complacent about design and quality, and I don't just single Nokia out in that. Motorola, Siemens and Sony Ericsson were pushing out a lot of average, bug-ridden and poorly-designed devices too. I say that as somebody who was consistenly using such devices for a decade, between '98 & '08.