Recommended smartphones for reasonable cost?

onekeano

Hi, I will probably succumb to one of these phones soon as I keep being referred to as a dinosaur by my adult kids because of my old Nokia 6310 which has served me well for many years.

A buddy of mine was showing me a Samsung he picked up with Meteor for €100 on a €25 per month contract - seemed the biz with loads of gadgets such as voice activation / sat nav etc etc and loads of other apps.

My son, an avid iphone guru dismissed the Samsung as "rubbish" so I was looking to get some advice as to what would be recommended ie. HTC / LG / Samsung or whatever.

I would not be a power user - have been on €25 per month contract with Meteor for years now and probably never breach that so would like to keep the same and get a phone for €100-150.

Any advice would be much appreciated as I am completely bamboozled at this stage.

Roy

Kensington

HTC Desire S maybe?
Decent camera, HD video recording, FM radio, wifi, bluetooth etc.
€139.99 on a €30 per month 12-month contract: free meteor calls and texts, 200 mins + 200 texts to other networks plus 1GB of data.
If you sign up for 18-months, it's €25 per month for the same allowances.

osnola ibax

^^^^ Can't go wrong there, one of the best phones currently on the market if not the best. Blow the iPhone out of the water.

I'm using original desire - awesome

PogMoThoin

I'm afraid your son is completely wrong on this one, it does everything that iphone does and lots more that it can't do. An iphone is locked down, Apple dictate exactly what you can and can't do with it with an iron first and make you use that POS software itunes to sync your media

Venom

Kensington wrote: »

HTC Desire S maybe?
Decent camera, HD video recording, FM radio, wifi, bluetooth etc.
€139.99 on a €30 per month 12-month contract: free meteor calls and texts, 200 mins + 200 texts to other networks plus 1GB of data.
If you sign up for 18-months, it's €25 per month for the same allowances.

This.

Awesome phone for the money and will blow your kids iRubbish toy away

osnola ibax

OP, without ever using it, I'd be wary of the HTC wildfire. Not sure the processing power is there.

Meteor still doing the original desire aswell which may be cheaper. Desire s has more punch though.

I've just ordered the xperia arc which doesn't have as much punch as the desire s but looks very nice. I'm prepared to be frustrated with it though and I don't think its a good starting point for a new android user as it may, according to various forums, not be the most stable. Ill reserve judgement on it though.

Plan on doing a review and desire comparison when I get it though if you would like to see that.

srsly78

I got a htc wildfire for my mum and she loves it. Yes it has a slower processor and a smaller screen than premium models, but it does the job!

srsly78

I got a htc wildfire for my mum and she loves it. Yes it has a slower processor and a smaller screen than premium models, but it does the job! At first she found touchscreen difficult (came from a nokia), but that didn't last long. Gradually she uses more and more features on it, lately she has discovered she can read her mail and listen to fm radio

onekeano

This information is brilliant so thanks for the feedback - especially to Kensington for the initial recommendation. I think young Roy will be getting a size 12 boot for all that loose talk about the iphones.

A couple of questions.... a) I don't see the Desire S on the Meteor website just the Desire.... do I have to go to a store for this? And b) I'm a bit paranoid about the allowances on some of these plans ie. download allocations. I won't be downloading as such (ie. music / movies) but am wondering how likely I am to blow download allocations if I open things like spreadsheet attachments or if I was using a sat nav or downloading a couple of podcasts a month?

Any further help would be much appreciaited.

Roy

osnola ibax

Do you have wifi at home, if so there is no need to eat into your data allowance using wifi.

1 gb per month is perfectly adequate for general browsing, syncing email, facebook, downloading spreadsheets, the odd pod cast etc. and you'll particularly have no worries if you also have a wifi connection at home. Youtube and other video sites will eat into it quickly but again if you have wifi just use that for youtube videos.

Heres a link for the Desire S on meteor.

https://phones.meteor.ie/phones/htc_desire_s/#what-you-get-tab

Also have a look at carphonewarehouse, there is a better chance the phone will be unbranded and unlocked, just in case you want to go down the dark road of rooting. Thats another days work and you dont have to worry about it but you never know in the future.

bd250110

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I'm afraid your son is completely wrong on this one, it does everything that iphone does and lots more that it can't do. An iphone is locked down, Apple dictate exactly what you can and can't do with it with an iron first and make you use that POS software itunes to sync your media

What more can it do? Being "locked down" is not all bad. No POS apps doing their own thing, ruining battery life, stealing personal datamand making the phone laggy.
iTunes is not all bad, it makes keeping everything in one place, rather than having to deal with lots of apps.

People on here talk like Android is amazing and iOS is rubbish. That is not the case, just iOS is nit to your personal taste. I find iOS incredibly stable, with great battery life, unparalleled apps and media options.

FYI: the other half has a wildfire. It is a very slow, laggy handset, with a horrible screen. If you can stretch to something better, I would.

srsly78

Wildfire is not slow and laggy, it's a perfectly good phone. It's actually comparable to the iphone 3gs hardware wise.

onekeano

Hi Osnola, yes I have wifi at home so it looks like that wont be an issue given the minimal downloads that I would likely have?

Roy

osnola ivax wrote: »

Do you have wifi at home, if so there is no need to eat into your data allowance using wifi.

1 gb per month is perfectly adequate for general browsing, syncing email, facebook, downloading spreadsheets, the odd pod cast etc. and you'll particularly have no worries if you also have a wifi connection at home. Youtube and other video sites will eat into it quickly but again if you have wifi just use that for youtube videos.

Heres a link for the Desire S on meteor.

https://phones.meteor.ie/phones/htc_desire_s/#what-you-get-tab

Also have a look at carphonewarehouse, there is a better chance the phone will be unbranded and unlocked, just in case you want to go down the dark road of rooting. Thats another days work and you dont have to worry about it but you never know in the future.

osnola ibax

onekeano wrote: »

Hi Osnola, yes I have wifi at home so it looks like that wont be an issue given the minimal downloads that I would likely have?

Roy

Nope, no issue at all. If you are worried, (no need to be), you can download an app from the market called 3g watchdog. This will put a small widget on your homescreen that tells you exactly what your current 3g data usage is. It can then warn you if you are approaching your limit.

If that's the case, android allows you to completely turn off mobile data, without affecting calls / texts, and simply use wifi for data. 1 gb should be more than enough though.

bd250110

srsly78 wrote: »

Wildfire is not slow and laggy, it's a perfectly good phone. It's actually comparable to the iphone 3gs hardware wise.

Possibly hardware wise, but the experience couldn't be more different. The OH finds the wildfire slower than even the iPhone 3G, which he had before - and lost. Websites load slowly, sense really slows the whole phone down. Prhaps with a custom ROM the phone would be totally different.
DesireS seems to be on offer at a really good price, I don't think the wildfire would be much cheaper, anyway. Not worth any saving IMHO.

Skerries

the screen on the wildfire is terrible, it looks like something from about 6-7 years ago compared to the amoled screens
i would seriously consider taking a look at the Desire S
it's a lot cheaper to run than an iPhone, i'm not knocking the iPhone but why would you pay more for something thats very similar
be prepared to charging your phone every day, thats the case with all the new smartphones but there are apps to help you make the battery last longer so just ask us when you finally decide and we can help

PogMoThoin

bd250110 wrote: »

What more can it do? Being "locked down" is not all bad. No POS apps doing their own thing, ruining battery life, stealing personal datamand making the phone laggy.

Well flash in the browser for a start, Steve Jobs makes it out that its not a big deal, but it is, 75% of todays internet is flash.

Wifi tethering and hotspot, iOS not got these without Jailbreak.

Customisation, This is where android wins hands down, If you don't like the keyboard you can just download another. You can make the phone look and feel they way you want. Not possible with iOS.

I've lots of apps, they're not stealing any data and any that do get my location I agree to allow them. My phone isn't laggy as long as I control what widgets I run and I'm happy with battery life.

bd250110 wrote: »

iTunes is not all bad, it makes keeping everything in one place, rather than having to deal with lots of apps.

Try sync your music with out iTunes, try sync .wma files and see how good iTunes is, it supports very few formats. Itunes is terrible on a Windows pc, its slow and pre-historic, one of the worst POS softwares I've ever tried. No drag and drop to make playlists, thats just dumb. It even installs bloatware (Safari and Quicktime) in its updates if you've not got your eyes open to stop it.

osnola ibax

Very bizarre phenomenon that people defend their phones so vociferously. Guess everyone likes to back a winner

Mark200

I have a Desire S. I definitely recommend it.

bd250110

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Well flash in the browser for a start, Steve Jobs makes it out that its not a big deal, but it is, 75% of todays internet is flash.

Wifi tethering and hotspot, iOS not got these without Jailbreak.

Customisation, This is where android wins hands down, If you don't like the keyboard you can just download another. You can make the phone look and feel they way you want. Not possible with iOS.

Try again. I'm afraid things have moved on. It's a bit sickening to see people going on about being able to do "much more" with their Droids. There is very little one can do that the other can't. I run both iOS and android. They are more similar than they are different.

there are browsers in the app store that use a remote server to convert flash into HTML5, so there are options for getting flash based websites to display.

WiFi tethering is enabled in iOS 4.2. As with android, some carriers charge for this feature.

Customisation, I guess it depends. Without rooting you are limited to rearranging widgets and icons, not that different to a nonjailbroken iPhone.

PogMoThoin

With Android you get a choice, a choice of phones in future, from many manufacturers, not tied to a single manufacturer like Apple

jos28

Just curious as to why no-one has recommended a Samsung Galaxy to the op. I am also looking for a new phone with similar spec to onkeano and was wondering how the Galaxy S compares to the HTC Desire.

PogMoThoin

I have a Galaxy S, its a great phone the stock Samsung software is terrible, earlier versions of which lag badly. Make sure the first thing you do with it is update it to the latest version available. You have to install custom software on it to really make it shine, then its an amazing phone.

And unlike what was said earlier in the thread You can get rid of the Samsung software by simply installing Launcher Pro, it doesn't need rooting or installing custom software

onekeano

While it was my buudys Samsung that caught my eye recently but I think I am swung more to the the HTC Desite thanks especially to Osnola :-)

I'll be checking our carphone warehouse as well (as advised) but think the HTC looks the biz and hopefully it'll sicken Roy junior with his iPhone

Roy

Kensington

onekeano wrote: »

While it was my buudys Samsung that caught my eye recently but I think I am swung more to the the HTC Desite thanks especially to Osnola :-)

I'll be checking our carphone warehouse as well (as advised) but think the HTC looks the biz and hopefully it'll sicken Roy junior with his iPhone

Roy

The HTC handsets are fantastic. I used to have a HTC Hero and I've had a fiddle around with a HTC Desire HD recently. Both great phones although the Hero began to show it's lack of horsepower with Android 2.1. The Desire S is very tempting against my own iPhone 4 I have to say - the camera on it looks fantastic, both for stills and the HD video.

Believe me, it will certainly cause junior to be ever so slightly jealous, even if he won't admit it

onekeano

Kensington wrote: »

Believe me, it will certainly cause junior to be ever so slightly jealous, even if he won't admit it

LOL Ken!!!! but you are right - he's like a chip off the old block :-) he'll NEVER admit it..............

Roy

onekeano

....

osnola ibax

The MAJOR disadvantage and I can't emphasize this enough, with iphone is iTunes. It is a horrible piece of absolute bloat ware. Think about it, its COMPLETELY unnecessary. Everything you put on your iPhone has to go through it, for heaven sake, you can't even carry around an excel file on it unless its bloody jailbroken. When I was in college I had to carry around a USB stick for essays when I had a 16 gig flash drive in my other pocket that could not even take never mind support any of the files on my PC.

It takes up valuable real estate also on the PC. You can't download a file directly to the handset unless its through iTunes unlike android which will download any file supported or not. It may not be as slick as iPhone but noone can say it doesn't do a HELL of a lot more, they are the facts.

bd250110

I use a mac, so I don't think I appreciate how iTunes works on a PC! I find it useful myself, I can keep all my media accessible in one place, stream throughout the house, etc. I have herd awful things about iTunes on the PC though, so fair enough.

I agree that the iPhone should be capable of simply dragging and dropping. I don't fully understand WHY apple has disabled this option, the classic iPods have this feature, drag and drop any file, compatable, or not. I know it's not always ideal, but the workaround is to use some sort of cloud storage. I find myself doing this more and more, especially for uni essays. I can access and modify the documents anywhere, on a friends PC, at uni, etc but mainly because I never again have to worry "oh s**t, which version is this?"

Good to know the galaxy does not need rooting to get rid of the bloatware. I'm seriously considering the SGSII, which has an unlocked boot loader. Does this mean that installing LauncherPro will be a relatively easy task?

PogMoThoin

bd250110 wrote: »

Good to know the galaxy does not need rooting to get rid of the bloatware. I'm seriously considering the SGSII, which has an unlocked boot loader. Does this mean that installing LauncherPro will be a relatively easy task?

Just install it from the market, you'll get asked which launcher to use as default when you click home
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fede.launcher
You don't get rid of the Samsung Touchwiz software, you just add another better launcher.

Nonoperational

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Well flash in the browser for a start, Steve Jobs makes it out that its not a big deal, but it is, 75% of todays internet is flash.

Complete rubbish.

Wifi tethering and hotspot, iOS not got these without Jailbreak.

100% untrue.

Customisation, This is where android wins hands down, If you don't like the keyboard you can just download another. You can make the phone look and feel they way you want. Not possible with iOS.

I've lots of apps, they're not stealing any data and any that do get my location I agree to allow them. My phone isn't laggy as long as I control what widgets I run and I'm happy with battery life.



Try sync your music with out iTunes, try sync .wma files and see how good iTunes is, it supports very few formats. Itunes is terrible on a Windows pc, its slow and pre-historic, one of the worst POS softwares I've ever tried. No drag and drop to make playlists, thats just dumb. It even installs bloatware (Safari and Quicktime) in its updates if you've not got your eyes open to stop it.

You'd want to educate yourself a bit before you post posts advising people.