It's upgrade time!

RossG · 21 Jul 2008 at 14:36

Right, my contract with O2 is up and it's time to ring them and demand a new handset. However, I have really lost touch with the mobile phone market and I'm not 100% sure what is out there.
I'll be coming from a Samsung D900,which while not a bad phone, was a bit short on the feature front. This time around I am going for essentially a smartphone. I have a few criteria that I have to fill though:

Must be sold by O2
Must have a large memory (2GB+)
Must have good mp3 player software
Must be satnav capable, and would prefer if it was free and I didn't have to pay for the usage on top of my monthly bill (if this is possible). I don't mind buying software for it though.
Must have a big screen
Must be MSN messenger capable
Must have 802.11 wifi
Good quality camera
Customisable ringtones AND text message alerts (couldn't do it on the Samsung, drove me mad)
Reliable/doesn't crash all the time
Decent battery life would be nice
The smaller the better, but if it's a bit of a brick and can satisfy the above well then I'll consider it.
NO touch screen phones, unless they come with a stylus and are amazing

From a brief look round, it seems the N95 8GB would be the one to go for and it seems to get good reviews, but I am unsure as to how reliable it is and how complex the interface is. That and as I mentioned previously, I don't know what else is about and what rivals it.

I'd search the forums a bit more thoroughly but I don't have a lot of time to do so over the next few days so if you can reply in here it would be great

atpbx · 21 Jul 2008 at 15:31

Orbit 2, E90, n92, N82.

Izi · 21 Jul 2008 at 16:52

iPhone?

Only thing it is let down on is camera which is 2.0mp.

Or

Samsung Tocco?

RossG · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:14

Nah not those, not a fan of touch screen.

Scientific · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:26

I think the majority of the people here would say the N95 8GB including myself, hasnt let me down once, battery runs well, wifi is brilliant and having used the GPS over the weekend it has become even better. The camera is also brilliant and you have 8gb of storage too.

RossG · 21 Jul 2008 at 17:56

What GPS did you use?

Scientific · 21 Jul 2008 at 18:12

Used the internal one with the Nokia Maps, I do have a bluetooth GPS which I can use with TomTom but that kind of defeats the object of having built in GPS. The phone found a satelite within 1 minute and got me to my destination no problems, it would have the odd delay but nothing major, just good to know that it works should I need it in an emergency.

RossG · 21 Jul 2008 at 18:27

Do you have to pay on top of your bill as you use it though?

Scientific · 21 Jul 2008 at 20:59

No not at all, you have 2 options, one is the standard GPS which uses no data or voice, the second is the A-GPS which you can use if you are finding getting a GPS signal hard, this does use some data but again you dont have to use it.

You get an option everytime you start up to use the A-GPS or not.

The Nokia maps you do have to pay if you want Voice assisted turn-by-turn guidance, but they have loads of options, 24hour service, upto 1 years service (roughly around £60).

Good thing is if you only use it in emergencies you dont have to buy the year service.