Cheapie Smartphone; Galaxy Mini vs X8

cson

Any opinions on this greatly appreciated; need a stop gap smartphone for a couple of months and these are the two within my price range - which one is better?

I don't use the games, only download the odd app and mainly use it for Google Maps, Facebook/Twitter and a bit of surfing [here, rte etc].

TBi

X8. Much better built and better screen than Galaxy mini.

chrislad

Mini. X8 is nice but old, only Android 2.1. Mini is 2.2 plus is much more reliable in my experience.

ED E

X10 is just to small for me, found it really annoying, but I do have reasonably large hands.

paulgalway

2 kids have the mini - stay away from it. they have lots of problems with them.

evolutionqy7

paulgalway wrote: »

2 kids have the mini - stay away from it. they have lots of problems with them.

Wouldn't have anything to do with downloading lots of crappy apps from the store would it? In most cases that's the culprit. My gf lil brother has absolutely no problems with his.

Personally I've seen a lot more trouble some X8's come back.

Screen and Speaker is hell of a lot nicer on the X8. But as some one pointed out it has a smaller screen which is hard to text on and it quite an old phone with outdated software.

Getting the Mini and installing a 3rd party Launcher for smoother operation might be the nicest thing to do.

A lot of the new ones Mini's come with Android 2.3 already so you wont be behind the new features offered by OS.

paulgalway

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

Wouldn't have anything to do with downloading lots of crappy apps from the store would it?

No, don't believe apps are the problem.

Contacts list disappears on both phones, powering off, bad battery.

Some of their cousins also have the same phone and nearly all don't like it.

evolutionqy7

paulgalway wrote: »

No, don't believe apps are the problem.

Contacts list disappears on both phones, powering off, bad battery.

Some of their cousins also have the same phone and nearly all don't like it.

Fair enough. But in most cases the only time i seen those phones behaving badly was when lots of apps like "free music" and free ad based apps messing up the phone to the point of crashing and freezing.

Its a budget phone. Cant expect it to behave like a high end phone, even though as I said if you just use legit paid for apps from you shouldnt have a problem.

Are they all updated to Android 2.3? Could try updating to the new version of software over WiFi. Worst case they could do a factory reset and it would fix it all probably.

chrislad

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

Fair enough. But in most cases the only time i seen those phones behaving badly was when lots of apps like "free music" and free ad based apps messing up the phone to the point of crashing and freezing.

Its a budget phone. Cant expect it to behave like a high end phone, even though as I said if you just use legit paid for apps from you shouldnt have a problem.

Are they all updated to Android 2.3? Could try updating to the new version of software over WiFi. Worst case they could do a factory reset and it would fix it all probably.

I'd agree. I tell people to install just the basics - Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp etc and not to venture outside the Top 20 games and Top 50 apps, plus not to go over 10 apps at a time. It's a 99e phone. You can't expect it to perform the same as a Galaxy S or S 2.

Vote 4 Pedro

I just got a Samsung Mini last week on three,
I have to say its great on all the feature for so little money
but it is my first android phone, so i have no other experience than this
but i'm happy for now and just looked at it as a "toe in the water"
type of thing, may well update it in a few months but for now i'm very happy with it.

BostonB

Experia Mini is much better than both and not much for expensive at 99. The only issues seems to overheating when gaming. But if your not a gamer its probably not going to be an issue.