QWERTY sliders - what's due other than Milestone 3 ?

Ksanti · 17 Jul 2011 at 19:08

Dr House said:
BB Torch 2 is due soon. A candy bar shape slider will be much nicer then a side slide

Umm... The Torch, at least in my experience, was top heavy, unwieldy and sub-par. The keyboard is smaller than even the normal blackberrys and had to be flatter than usual to accommodate the slider...

About 50% of my friends who had them reported regular crashes, freezes and forced battery pulls and I've had the same experience with my 9700. It's a once bitten scenario for me with RIM at the moment, and they'd need to put out something really compelling and price competitive for me to want to go back to them once my current contract is over.

Super Tigers · 17 Jul 2011 at 19:26

sarge78 said:
Robbo wipes his arse with a hundred pound notes, maybe he's getting the butler to try one out?

Yeah, web browsing is a miles better with a 4 inch+ screen, a real shame as webOS is sooo damn good.
The Pre 2 is such a fun phone to use and it's true, the card gesture/multitasking UI really is better iOS/Android/WP7! Get it on compelling hardware HP!

Sarge, can you confirm if flash 10.1 actually works within the browser? Can you watch iplayer with it.

Cheers

Rob

Skeeter · 17 Jul 2011 at 21:33

Do what I did.

Keep your Milestone, end your contract, get a GiffGafF PAYG Sim and live on £10 goody bags hoping that some manufacturer realises not everyone wants iPhone clones before your Milestone dies.

Hxc · 17 Jul 2011 at 21:35

Skeeter said:
Do what I did.

Keep your Milestone, end your contract, get a GiffGafF PAYG Sim and live on £10 goody bags hoping that some manufacturer realises not everyone wants iPhone clones before your Milestone dies.

Milestone is reaaally beginning to drag now. It desperately needs more RAM.

sarge78 · 17 Jul 2011 at 22:39

Super Tigers said:
Sarge, can you confirm if flash 10.1 actually works within the browser? Can you watch iplayer with it.

Cheers

Rob

Performance is hit and miss. Decent quality videos (500kbps+) can lag, low quality (~400kbps) is fine though, esp with the lower res screen. 10.3 on Android is much smoother with similar hardware so hopefully any updates will improve optimisation (Flash 11 should bring full GPU acceleration)

The general implementation is the best yet imo, click on the flash box and it locks any touch input to the flash content (with a X button to return to web page inputs) Great for games and other stuff but no full screen ability (how Android handles the web page/flash multiple input problem)

Unfortunately there's no BBC iPlayer access, you can't view the Android mobile/desktop page in the browser (it just says mobile type not supported etc)
This is one of the major bummers about a new/unpopular OS... a different web browser with the ability to change user agent would do the trick but none exists, maybe there's another way?

sarge78 · 17 Jul 2011 at 22:45

The Droid 3 looks great btw, I'm sure you chaps will be able to buy a GSM import on ebay from a reputable company (like the Atrix etc)

MoodyB · 17 Jul 2011 at 23:03

Hxc said:
Milestone is reaaally beginning to drag now

The CyanogenMod v7 port for the Milestone is worth a look, if you haven't tried it already.

A noticeable improvement over 2.2.1 imho. Makes it smoother to use in day to day use ( running LauncherPro Plus here instead of ADW )

Although I expect it eats more ram that 2.2.1, which as you said is already limited.

MoodyB · 17 Jul 2011 at 23:13

sarge78 said:
The Droid 3 looks great btw, I'm sure you chaps will be able to buy a GSM import on ebay from a reputable company (like the Atrix etc)

Having bought Thumb Keyboard the other day, I think I'll get by without the hw keyboard.

Took a bit of getting used to, but happy enough with it as it means I now have a bigger choice of phones to choose from when upgrading.

Skeeter · 17 Jul 2011 at 23:23

MoodyB said:
The CyanogenMod v7 port for the Milestone is worth a look, if you haven't tried it already.

A noticeable improvement over 2.2.1 imho. Makes it smoother to use in day to day use ( running LauncherPro Plus here instead of ADW )

Although I expect it eats more ram that 2.2.1, which as you said is already limited.

Didn't think you could get cyanogen on the Milestone. Ill take a look at this.

MoodyB · 18 Jul 2011 at 00:43

I wasn't aware of it until a few weeks ago myself. There's a few others as well.

shadowcreaper · 19 Jul 2011 at 17:40

just to add i been told the palm pre 2 has a very tiny keyboard which is only suited to kids or asian men. :eek:

MoodyB · 19 Jul 2011 at 21:48

Right, I've narrowed it down to 3 choices so far since I'm going qwerty-less now :

HTC Sensation

LG Optimus 2X

Motorola Atrix

Tried the Atrix today and quite liked it. Screen was pretty good & bright, although nowhere near AMOLED levels. Worst issue though is MotoBlur. What were they thinking ?
And tbh overall the UI wasn't quite as smooth as I would have thought, although using LPP instead should help that side of things I would have thought.

The 2X appears to have a very nice screen and is well built, but again the UI is a matter of taste & most reviews seem to find the software to be a bit buggy compared to other handsets. The 512mb of ram might become an issue in the future as well.

As for the Sensation, I'm drawn to it because of the larger screen compared to the other 2 phones, but having seen one running I felt it looked a little bit dull / lacked contrast, and a few online reviews seem to confirm this.

And if anyone's wondering why the Galaxy S 2 is missing, well it's only because I can get cash back on the above 3 phones, which will help pay off my existing T-Mobile contract.

Robbo · 19 Jul 2011 at 21:51

Sensation out of those three.

I'm pretty sure you could find the Galaxy S II with cash back though, where are you looking?

MoodyB · 19 Jul 2011 at 22:02

Really, the Sensation ? I'd feel the need to clean the screen every time I turned it on to try and make it brighter

Then again, it is brighter than my current Milestone screen, but not by much.

I've been going with BuyMobilePhones.net, as they appear to have the best deals atm.

Going for an 18 month / £30 p/m contract. Plus their cash back is just that. No redemption required, just going into your bank within 90days iirc.

Robbo · 19 Jul 2011 at 22:10

Or you could just turn the brightness up? It's a very bright screen, maybe the one you saw had a problem.

MoodyB · 19 Jul 2011 at 22:23

The brightness was at 100%, although as you say it could have been faulty.

And sorry, I should edit my earlier post & change 'brightness' to 'contrast'. It was more that, or the lack of it, that bothered me with the Sensation rather than the overall brightness.

The same washed-out feeling you get when a tv / monitors brightness is too high.

I'll check to see if BuyMobilePhones allow you to test a phone sim-free for 7days. If they do then at least I can return the phone if I don't take to it.

shaffaaf27 · 20 Jul 2011 at 01:23

I would wait for the pre3 personally.

MoodyB · 22 Jul 2011 at 19:56

Sensation arrived this morning. Have had a play around with it & have decided to keep it.

Screen is only around 25% brighter than my Milestone v1, which I'm not that happy about tbh, but the bigger screen and better colour rendering make up for this.

I will say that I hate Sense though. Far, far too overdone on the design / flair front for my tastes. I couldn't get LauncherPro installed quick enough.

Hopefully, some good 3rd party skins will appear over time, along with a solid root method to allow removal of the bloatware from the phone.

Either that or a CyanogenMod v7 rom + MattedBlues theme would keep me happy.

Robbo · 22 Jul 2011 at 20:05

If you hate Sense, a Galaxy S II would suit you down to the ground to be honest. Don't keep the Sensation if you don't like it.

There are other options!

MoodyB · 22 Jul 2011 at 20:30

Robbo said:
Don't keep the Sensation if you don't like it.

I have to now as I've activated the sim card

I did play around with it, installing apps, etc... for a few hours before sticking in the sim so I'm happy enough with it. Nothing's perfect.

And I wanted a bigger screen / more ram for browsing & gaming on so it does the job much better than my Milestone in that regard.

There are other options!

I know there is, but I hate the look & styling of TouchWiz as well, so that ruled the GS2 out ( apart from the cash back )

Which only really left me with the Sensation or Atrix as I felt that the 512mb of system ram on the LG phones would probably be pushing it.

Ideally I probably should have waited on the Xperia Duo, but I'm off down south for a few weeks soon & will be pc-less, so I needed to upgrade my phone to save my sanity

Once HTC officially unlock it ( so Chainfire3d works properly ) & custom roms appear I'll forgive about the niggles with it tbh. It's more than fast enough & the screen is just about the right size imho.

And going back to the reason I started this thread. Due to the larger screen being much easier to touchtype on, I haven't missed the hardware keyboard one bit