Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello!

I would like to upgrade my phone to a smartphone. These are my choices:

http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/upgrade-Phone

I am such a ball-breakingly loyal orange customer that I can get the majority of these for free or very cheap. The problem I have is that I know piss all about smartphones. I've never had one.

Assuming I want something with Android, that handles emails and web very nicely, which is best? I'm less bothered about aps and games but if something is also good at handling them too that would be a non-essential bonus. All replies eagerly consumed.

If you don't mind the size of the thing, the HTC Desire HD. If you do mind, then choose the HTC Desire S.

Cheers Hmm, I'll check on the sizes. I do want something very web-functional so maybe bigger is better. Both of those are offered at an upgrade price of £50. Is that good?

The Moto Defy is worth a look too. Has better battery life than my old HTC Desire, and I've dropped it several times and it is unscathed. Doesn't feel as luxurious as the Desire though, and it is a bit chunky.

The 'S' is "better", whatever that means.

People are raving about the Samsung Galaxy SII. It's big though, especially if you're coming from non-smart phone. However don't go for a small smart phone like my brother did. He went for the HTC Wildfire, it's not that much smaller than my iPhone or HTC Desire but the screen is horrible and it's slow. You soon get used the size of a proper smart phone.

I went from an iPhone to an HTC HD7 (same sized screen as the Desire HD) and it was ridiculously big at first (as in I had trouble holding it in one hand). Now the iPhone screen seems too piddly and small when I go back to it.

That's a point - the Win7 software is pretty good - I don't know much about them, though.

Intensive chin-rubbing is occuring here. The SII and Defy aren't available yet, so I'd have to wait for those. Desire HD sounds nice, but hmmmm.

I'd also have to do something about my contract, because my current one utterly rapes me for data usage. I'm right in thinking that these things can connect to local wireless internet for free?

Really must pay more attention to technology generally.

I've never used an Android phone, so comparisons are difficult. It does most of the stuff iPhones do, but some better and others worse. The calendar integration is excellent, and is Xbox Live. The web browser could be improved, but I think it's based on IE7 at the moment (it will be based on IE9 in the Mango Update).

More and more apps are being released all the time, as well.

Yes.

The Mango update looks interesting and genuinely innovative, so I'm quite impressed with what they're doing. And I still absolutely love the UI style of the Windows Phone 7 Series Phone Seven Windows phones, so were I to ever ditch the iPhone I'd likely go there first instead of Android.

My wife got an Xperia X10 mini pro, and it's... um.... OK. It's an alright phone I guess, but it isn't all that 'smart' and the browsing is shit. She wishes she'd got something 'full sized'

okay, that time again, I am looking at getting maybe a smart phone, that isn't a fecking shite nokia. thechoices appear to be Sony Eriksson Experia Neo or HTC Desire S. They appear to be pretty much the same thing, but SE has a better camera. Strangely also, the DS seems to have better battery life despite having a smaller mAh battery. Which implies significant internal efficenies on the DS cf the neo.
As they are so similar, and run android 2.3, does this mean everything which can run on one will run on the other?]
Why is the neo only using mp3 (see below) for ring tones, this implies a difference to me.


http://www.esato.com/phones/compare.php ... 787&cp=792

My girlfriend has just got the Desire S. It looks pretty nice and from what I gather they are all much of a muchness these days either basic, intermediate or high end, just depends on which one you like the look of. Battery life seems ok on the Desire S, better than my Desire, but I've had it a year and tend to do more on it than her.

Although they're both running Android 2.3, manufacturers like to put their own crap over the top (Sense on the HTC and, er, not sure, on the SE), so they'll both have different phone apps which might account for difference in ringtone support. In general though, everything 3rd party you wanted to put on it, would run on both, or neither of those.

Edit - It's also worth noting that the Desire S has a front facing camera, despite what those specs you linked to say, so you might want to take them with a pinch of salt.

Anyone use the network Talkmobile? Or know anything about them?
They are a carphone warehouse spinout and use vodafone network, does that mean the signal is the same as vf's?

Yep.

Does anyone on here use a windows 7 phone? I have one but don't really know what its capable of other than the usual things like facebook twitter and xbox live games?

Right now? Pretty much the usual stuff. I'd say whether you'd like one is a question of whether you like the interesting things they've done with the UI. If you're a heavy user of apps on whatever platform you have now, you'll likely find there are quite a few missing on WP7.

There's a fairly major update due September, codenamed Mango, likely to be released as 7.5, that looks like something that might help the platform live up to its promise.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/27/wind ... iew-video/

I have an HTC HD7 running Windows 7, as does Myoptika on here.