Looking for a new phone

iviv · 14 Dec 2010 at 19:49

I currently have a Sharp GX17. Its basic, but the battery can last a week if it just idles. It was an impulse buy when I realised that my old phone (Nokia 3310 I think) wouldn't work in the USA so I needed to buy one, went into vodafone and bought the cheapest one that would work over there. And its done me well since then, but I've been curious as to the more advanced phones, and with christmas coming I thought I would look into it some more.

Now, I don't use my phone as a phone much. I'm currently on pay as you go with Vodafone, and my family have a deal where I get free calls between family members, so on the whole I top up about £20 a year, thats how little I use it, so a contract is no good at all for me. Meaning most of the interesting phones are way out of reach.

Are there any decent cheap-ish andriod phones? I'd like to have one to play about with, but since I'm PAYG there's not going to be any sort of data plan for that, could I use my wireless network at home for web browsing and so on? Or at least to use MSN/AIM on if that's possible.

Toaster · 15 Dec 2010 at 01:33

Yes as far as I know all android phones have build in wifi. Just make sure you turn off mobile data in the settings to avoid accidental background usage. I've heard good things about the Orange San Francisco, for around £100 on PAYG.

iviv · 15 Dec 2010 at 14:00

I just went into carphone warehouse to look around on, and was pointed to the Samsung Galaxy Europa for £75. Seems like a pretty decent phone running Andriod 2.1

I'm guessing with phones you can't simply update to the newest version, at least not with the cheaper ones? I'm looking around at some reviews, but I don't really know too much about them. As andriod 2.3 seems to have been just released, I'm assuming that there's not going to be any budget phones that run it, what about 2.2? One of those features is:
# Added an option to disable data access over mobile network

Which is what I want? Does this mean that I couldn't do that on 2.1?

sarge78 · 15 Dec 2010 at 15:11

You can disable the mobile data connection in 2.1.

MikeHunt79 · 15 Dec 2010 at 17:59

Take a look at the iPod touch also, they have wifi and can can any of the iPhone apps so there is loads of software available or them.

The only problem is that it's not a phone, so you won't be able to make calls from it...

iviv · 15 Dec 2010 at 18:55

MikeHunt79 said:
Take a look at the iPod touch also, they have wifi and can can any of the iPhone apps so there is loads of software available or them. The only problem is that it's not a phone, so you won't be able to make calls from it...

Thanks for the reply, and while I wouldn't be totally opposed to the iPod touch (I carry around my ancient ipod nano 2Gb anyway, so I could carry on using my old phone), I'm not sure on the price. £190 on the apple store, which is more than twice that of the phone I'm currently lookint at, and it would mean installing iTunes :x
Thanks for the suggestion though, it certainly wasn't something I'd been considering, and if it was cheaper I would deffinately consider it. What's the higher education discount like on them? It says I need to be on the uni network to see HE discounts

Macky · 15 Dec 2010 at 19:03

LG Optimus One is another relatively cheap Android phone. Running 2.2 also.

MikeHunt79 · 15 Dec 2010 at 19:54

iviv said:
Thanks for the reply, and while I wouldn't be totally opposed to the iPod touch (I carry around my ancient ipod nano 2Gb anyway, so I could carry on using my old phone), I'm not sure on the price. £190 on the apple store, which is more than twice that of the phone I'm currently lookint at, and it would mean installing iTunes :x
Thanks for the suggestion though, it certainly wasn't something I'd been considering, and if it was cheaper I would deffinately consider it. What's the higher education discount like on them? It says I need to be on the uni network to see HE discounts

The 4th gen one does seem to be rather more expensive, I think amazon may still sell the 3rd gen one for around £100ish, which is a little easier on the pocket.

I managed to pick up a 2nd gen 2nd hand for around £50, and it's quite an inexpensive was to be able to run iPhone apps.

As for HE discount, I have no idea I'm afraid, I'm sure there's a thread on it no the Apple section however.

iviv · 15 Dec 2010 at 21:18

Macky said:
LG Optimus One is another relatively cheap Android phone. Running 2.2 also.

Hmm, looks pretty good, though gets compared a lot to the Orange San Franciso, though I'm guessing that's exclusive to Orange, while I'm sticking with Vodafone. Also, it was mentioned in the review that it can't handle the iPlayer because it doesn't support flash 10.1 is this going to be true with regards to all the other andriod 2.1 phones as well?

MikeHunt79 said:
The 4th gen one does seem to be rather more expensive, I think amazon may still sell the 3rd gen one for around £100ish, which is a little easier on the pocket.

I managed to pick up a 2nd gen 2nd hand for around £50, and it's quite an inexpensive was to be able to run iPhone apps.

As for HE discount, I have no idea I'm afraid, I'm sure there's a thread on it no the Apple section however.

Hmm, what're the differences between the 3rd and 4th gen? The biggest thing I can see is that the 3rd gen only came with 32 and 64Gb versions?

Macky · 15 Dec 2010 at 21:22

San Fran is unlockable for free! Been said many times in the phone forum.

iviv · 15 Dec 2010 at 21:49

Fair enough, this is the first time I've been here XD

MikeHunt79 · 15 Dec 2010 at 22:06

iviv said:
Hmm, what're the differences between the 3rd and 4th gen? The biggest thing I can see is that the 3rd gen only came with 32 and 64Gb versions?

The 4th has the extra high res retina display which is 640x960, impressive for such a small thing.

The 4th gen has a few other small improvements, such as a camera, but I don't think it's worth playing double the price for it however.

I'm not sure if there's an 8gb 3rd gen, maybe they only did an 8gb 2nd gen, but I think that the 2nd and 3rd gen are pretty similar really...

iviv · 16 Dec 2010 at 16:05

I don't mean to stir up a huge row, but are there many differences between iOS4 and andriod 2.2/2.3?

After doing some research, I'd really want an android 2.2 phone at least for the flash support, which the Orange San Francisco and the Opitmus One simply can't handle? What would be the cheapest flash-capable 2.2 handset that isn't awful?

Part of me is leaking towards the iPod simply for the ease of it and slightly larger app store. I would keep my current phone (Which has fantastic battery life) and also go from 2Gb to 8Gb on my iPod, which would be nice as well. The only downside there would be iTunes, but I guess I could cope with that in the grand scheme of things.

Macky · 16 Dec 2010 at 18:14

iviv said:
I don't mean to stir up a huge row, but are there many differences between iOS4 and andriod 2.2/2.3?

After doing some research, I'd really want an android 2.2 phone at least for the flash support, which the Orange San Francisco and the Opitmus One simply can't handle? What would be the cheapest flash-capable 2.2 handset that isn't awful?

Part of me is leaking towards the iPod simply for the ease of it and slightly larger app store. I would keep my current phone (Which has fantastic battery life) and also go from 2Gb to 8Gb on my iPod, which would be nice as well. The only downside there would be iTunes, but I guess I could cope with that in the grand scheme of things.

iOS is undeniably smoother and more polished but it lacks certain features such as downloading better version of stock apps. E.G a better video player which can support a lot more codecs. How are you supposed to play your extensive XviD .avi collection (ok exclusive to me

) without re-encoding on an iPhone? Where as on Android there are a few options such as Rock player.

MikeHunt79 · 17 Dec 2010 at 20:20

iviv said:
I don't mean to stir up a huge row, but are there many differences between iOS4 and andriod 2.2/2.3?

After doing some research, I'd really want an android 2.2 phone at least for the flash support, which the Orange San Francisco and the Opitmus One simply can't handle? What would be the cheapest flash-capable 2.2 handset that isn't awful?

Part of me is leaking towards the iPod simply for the ease of it and slightly larger app store. I would keep my current phone (Which has fantastic battery life) and also go from 2Gb to 8Gb on my iPod, which would be nice as well. The only downside there would be iTunes, but I guess I could cope with that in the grand scheme of things.

I agree itunes is pretty poor, on Windows machines at least... it's not so bad for OSX users.

As for android vs ios, if you really want flash support then android is the way to go.

However, android won't be featuring audio apps like this one anytime soon:

due to the audio latency on android being rubbish right now (100ms). If you only want to play games then there's not much in it, there is a larger range for ios devices... Of you like to fiddle with things endlessly and configure every last little thing then Android allows you to choose more things, no matter how trivial they may seem...

Macky said:
iOS is undeniably smoother and more polished but it lacks certain features such as downloading better version of stock apps. E.G a better video player which can support a lot more codecs. How are you supposed to play your extensive XviD .avi collection (ok exclusive to me ) without re-encoding on an iPhone? Where as on Android there are a few options such as Rock player.

VLC is now in the app store, so I can play XviD .avi's find on my ipod...

Macky · 17 Dec 2010 at 23:35

Yeah I got told about VLC today haha. Good news for Apple fans I guess. Is it all software based video decoding though?

Brim · 17 Dec 2010 at 23:39

Pretty sure that VLC doesn't work on the previous generation ipod touch 8gb.

MikeHunt79 · 17 Dec 2010 at 23:43

Macky said:
Yeah I got told about VLC today haha. Good news for Apple fans I guess. Is it all software based video decoding though?

I have absolutely no idea, it seems to work with Xvid files and playback is smooth.

As with any video playback, it does seem to flatten your battery pretty fast.

Macky · 17 Dec 2010 at 23:43

Brim said:
Pretty sure that VLC doesn't work on the previous generation ipod touch 8gb.

I believe 3GS or 4 only. Phone wise anyway.

iviv · 18 Dec 2010 at 23:00

Thanks for the continued posting I'm really in two minds now. iOS has an app for watching youtube and iPlayer videos, right? As those are the main flash things I would want to be able to do. I'm not sure how much of an issue flash would be for me besides those two uses.

Also, I use MSN and AIM a fair ammount, I assume there are apps for these two programs for both OSs? I would be gaming a fair ammount on it, and for that reason I'm slightly leaning towards the iPod for the larger app store, though I also disagree with Apple's seemingly random pulling of apps when they feel like it.
Bah D: