Please help me decide between these phones

Merlin5

Merlin5

Merlin5

Soldato
Joined
17 Aug 2009
Posts
18,611
Location
Finchley, London
I think I've made my mind up but need a nudge in the right direction. I'm with T-Mobile and my upgrade has been due since november. But I'm only now bothering to go ahead and actually change my phone. There's so many good phones out I'm spoilt for choice.

Right so, my shortlist:

Samsung Galaxy S II - £10 This seems to be the phone of choice and probably the one I'm going to get. T-Mobile are texting me when they get stock of it which should be around tuesday. I'd rather buy through them (the 150 T-Mobile upgrade service) instead of a T-Mobile shop because I get a 7 day cooling off period.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 - Free

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 (real keyboard is appealing) - Free

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc - Free

Samsung Omnia 7 (I'm used to windows phones) - Free

HTC Desire HD - Free


Is the Galaxy S II the clear winner? I've never used android so my concerns are, can I use tomtom navigator software on it like I do with my windows 6.1 phone, can I transfer mpegs, mp3s, normal windows stuff to android, and does it have copy n paste function as standard on android phones?

According to the salesman in my local T-Mobile shop, the Samsung Galaxy S (the original) has the best battery life out of the ones I selected, so I assume the S II will be as good. He also said the Omnia 7 is not good, he had many returns of it. That phone was my choice a while back.

What do you say then, Galaxy S II or something else?
 
hello mate :)

yes, i think its a clear winner

im also going to get that phone and im moving from a blackberry so also a little worried that i will go on with android , but im sure it will be fine
 
Paul11 said:
hello mate :)

yes, i think its a clear winner

im also going to get that phone and im moving from a blackberry so also a little worried that i will go on with android , but im sure it will be fine
Click to expand...

Paul, your blackberry has a real keyboard, right? I have a question about phone qwerty keyboards. Do you feel you'll be able to type as quick and precisely with fingers on a virtual keyboard as you probably do with the real qwerty keyboard on your blackberry? I ask because I'm used to a stylus on my phone, and rarely use the virtual keyboard with fingers since it seems small and clumsy. So I'm wondering if I'm going to miss the stylus or not, or if I'm going to need a real keyboard, or if I'm going to get used to fingers on a virtual keyboard. The Xperia X10 with it's real keyboard has a smaller screen and probably is not generally as good a phone as the Galaxy?
 
well, its the one thing that has kept me on the blackberry for so long (plus that its great for email)

i had a play on someone elses SGSii and tried texting and it was much better than i thought it would be and it gives a little vibrate when you hit a key, so im sure ill adapt to it quite well

regarding the stylus, i cant answer that for you only to say that it would be much nicer to get rid of the stylus and just use your finger and with the phone being able to be turned landscape, the keys become much bigger
 
Paul11 said:
well, its the one thing that has kept me on the blackberry for so long (plus that its great for email)

i had a play on someone elses SGSii and tried texting and it was much better than i thought it would be and it gives a little vibrate when you hit a key, so im sure ill adapt to it quite well

regarding the stylus, i cant answer that for you only to say that it would be much nicer to get rid of the stylus and just use your finger and with the phone being able to be turned landscape, the keys become much bigger
Click to expand...

Well you've had a play around with the samsung and seem quite happy considering you're used to a real keyboard, so that sounds good enough for me!
Unless anyone else suggests a better phone, then I'm getting all excited now for next week when hopefully I'll have the S II in my hands. :)

Btw, slightly off topic. I'm logged into my T-Mobile account, and the top priced phones on my upgrade page are a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play for £50 and a Motorola Atrix with HD Multimedia Dock for £120. I won't be buying them, but they look interesting I must say.


alle said:
...Try swype instead of predictive. Much faster and more accurate.
Click to expand...

I'll try that, thanks.
 
Galaxy S 2 without a doubt.

Plus you can rotate your mobile into landscape mode and the android keyboard will rotate as well giving you a bigger touch screen keyboard just like below:

snap20101221_192536_thumb.png


And it is much easier typing quickly and accurately that way than in portrait mode, however portrait mode is perfectly fine as well, especially with swype.

The galaxy S 2 works great out of the box and the UI is pretty good as it is, however if you don't like it, you can simply install one of the many great launchers on the market (either launcher pro or go launcher ex etc.) and have many more features and the choice of how you want your homescreens to look, either minimal, messy etc. whatever way you want :p

Plus personally I think the google navigation system is the best out of all the ones available on android and yes you can simply transfer all your songs etc. over to your mobile by either USB cable, wirelessly using a file manager like estrong file explorer or a FTP like swiftp etc. and yes to the copy and paste, I think with samsungs touchwiz UI, they have improved it over the stock way, which apparently is much better now.
 
Nexus18 said:
Galaxy S 2 without a doubt.

Plus you can rotate your mobile into landscape mode and the android keyboard will rotate as well giving you a bigger touch screen keyboard just like below:

snap20101221_192536_thumb.png


And it is much easier typing quickly and accurately that way than in portrait mode, however portrait mode is perfectly fine as well, especially with swype.

The galaxy S 2 works great out of the box and the UI is pretty good as it is, however if you don't like it, you can simply install one of the many great launchers on the market (either launcher pro or go launcher ex etc.) and have many more features and the choice of how you want your homescreens to look, either minimal, messy etc. whatever way you want :p

Plus personally I think the google navigation system is the best out of all the ones available on android and yes you can simply transfer all your songs etc. over to your mobile by either USB cable, wirelessly using a file manager like estrong file explorer or a FTP like swiftp etc. and yes to the copy and paste, I think with samsungs touchwiz UI, they have improved it over the stock way, which apparently is much better now.
Click to expand...

Now stop that, you're just getting me drooling :D

Seriously though, that's great info, thanks for answering all my questions. My phone does have a gyroscopic sensor and I installed a program which turns the phone between portrait and landscape, but the samsung is bigger with a better looking keyboard from your photo, so it should be much easier to use.

As far as homescreen, I turned off touch flo on mine. Touch flo looks nicer, but for me, I can see my appointments and messages more clearly with the basic windows 6.1 interface. I'm hoping I can customise a homescreen on the galaxy in a similar way. Like this

htcdiamondw.jpg


From what you said, it should be possible.
 
There's a whole load of other things that the GS 2 does amazing at, superb camera, 1080P recording, great audio quality, fast and super smooth, amazing battery life for a smartphone, very fast GPS lock, able to play MKV HD films smoothly, able to handle flash on websites very well etc. etc.

:p

No problem :)

Yup a 4.3" 480x800 SAMOLED+ screen will make it a pleasure to type on.

The keyboard being used in that picture of mine is the official gingerbread keyboard, which personally I think is the best one out of the many top keyboards, however people love swype, which is excellent in portrait mode as you only need one hand and it is quicker, and also the HTC_IME keyboard is very popular as well.

2.3 Keyboard:

http://www.appbrain.com/app/keyboard-from-android-2-3/com.moo.android.inputmethod.latin.free

As for the homescreens, yup, you will be able to customize it to pretty much anything you like and something similar to how your current mobile is set up, however with android you can make great looking homescreens, but still be very functional at the same time and with GS 2, you won't be slowed down at all by having widgets or even a live wallpaper (although battery life will be less with live wallpapers and widgets constantly syncing etc.)

Have a look through this thread especially the last 10 pages as they are more up to date with better looking widgets etc. and most of the last 10 pages are full of peoples GS 2 now :p:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18137383

At the minute this is the best homescreen launcher IMO:

http://www.appbrain.com/app/go-launcher-ex/com.gau.go.launcherex

Although you might like launcher pro plus due to the widgets for the calendar and SMS (it costs £2.16 for the plus version, which includes the widgets):

http://www.appbrain.com/app/launcherpro-plus-unlocker/com.fede.launcherproplusunlocker

However if you prefer go launcher you can install other apps (widgets, which will be just as good or better than the LP ones) like this:

http://www.appbrain.com/app/smooth-calendar/se.catharsis.android.calendar

http://www.appbrain.com/app/pure-calendar-widget-(agenda)/org.koxx.pure_calendar

And there are messaging widgets on the market as well.
 
Brilliant. Thanks Nexus! :) One more question if I may. Do you know what tomtom sat nav software is compatible with this phone? Navigator or some other version of tomtom? On mine is Navigator 7, but I'm not sure I'll be able to install it to android. How good is the built in satnav software that comes with it?
 
TomTom is not available - CoPilot is available on the market. Google maps is perfect but you need a data connection if you stray off the preloaded route.
 
Hmm, that sounds good then. I guess that must be based on google maps. Thing is, I've been using the Austin Powers voice with tomtom for years and I only want his voice, because it's a happy voice while driving. :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom