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I need a new phone. Anyone know about phones?
LTK:
--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 13 Aug 2012, 08:23 ---It's relatively new, and therefore not as many apps may be available yet. I can't tell for sure (ask your vendor or in related forums for more opinions). My own work was on the physical layer only. The former coworkers are unanimous that it is a much easier platform for programming apps than Symbian ever was. Meaning that more apps are coming.
Of course, there may be something else. May simply be the marketing :-)
--- End quote ---
That certainly is a possibility, but it's not much of a concern to myself at the moment, so I'll probably stick with Android for now.
Okay, I have some gripes. Why the hell does Tele2 make you pay more for a phone if you're buying a subscription for fewer minutes? You pay about €40 more for the device itself if you get the 100-minute bundle instead of the 150-minute one. That's stupid.
Also, what's up with the marketing pitch for the Galaxy S3? 'Designed for humans'? Who else are you going to design it for, walruses? Good lord, this marketing is inane.
Aimless:
How tight is your budget?
If you want to go off the reservation, ZTE probably makes some of the best (aka only) value Android phones. HTC's older Desire phones are also fairly well supported by the dev community. If you're feeling summat crazy the Nokia N9 is one of the most attractive and well-designed smartphones ever and can even run android (more or less :o). It's even better than the Lumias. If you're feeling particularly oriental then maybe the Meizu MX is something for you?
The Nexus phones are fairly good bets if you just want fairly hassle-free upgradability.
What kind of a phone-user would you like to be?
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: LTK on 13 Aug 2012, 14:22 ---Why the hell does Tele2 make you pay more for a phone if you're buying a subscription for fewer minutes? You pay about €40 more for the device itself if you get the 100-minute bundle instead of the 150-minute one. That's stupid.
--- End quote ---
It's natural. They want a certain amount of money for the device; you want to pay less. They give you the choice of paying more up front and cheaper monthly costs (which get you less minutes as well), or paying less up front if you pay for more minutes (on which their profit is made, and part of which is ploughed back into the device). Basically they want to get a certain minimum amount of money from you over the length of an average contract, regardless of whether you think you're paying more or less!
Lines:
--- Quote from: LTK on 13 Aug 2012, 08:09 ---So far the Nexus is looking like an attractive option, and the device by itself is also under the €400 mark, which seems quite reasonable. Then the trick becomes to find a reasonable subscription to go with it. I suppose it's not a great idea to buy the phone and carrier sub seperately, is it?
--- End quote ---
I am in a contract right now with a provider, so I bought my phone separate from the carrier. And once my contract is up, I'll find another provider (my data coverage suckssss). My boyfriend also just bought the phone on his own and is using a prepaid sim. Honestly I know nothing about overseas cell phone carriers/plans, but if it's similar to what we have here, it shouldn't be an issue. If you find a provider that has a deal where you can get it cheaper than what Google offers, I don't see why you shouldn't do it.
Whichever way you decide to go, I think it's a great phone. I haven't had any issues with the OS, it's fast, it's got a large screen, and the battery life is pretty good.
LTK:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 13 Aug 2012, 14:53 ---It's natural. They want a certain amount of money for the device; you want to pay less. They give you the choice of paying more up front and cheaper monthly costs (which get you less minutes as well), or paying less up front if you pay for more minutes (on which their profit is made, and part of which is ploughed back into the device). Basically they want to get a certain minimum amount of money from you over the length of an average contract, regardless of whether you think you're paying more or less!
--- End quote ---
I see the sense in that, but then I would imagine that the cost of a cheap bundle and an expensive device versus an expensive bundle and a free device evens out when the contract ends. I'm calculating the cumulative prices of 24 months of subscription plus the cost of the device. I think that's the easiest way to compare them; that way, you have a hard figure of how much it is ultimately going to set you back.
The added price for the device on the 100-minute bundle is €280. The 150-minute bundle, which costs 33% more, has an added price of €143: a difference of €137. Then I would expect that over the course of the two-year contract, the 150-minute bundle ends up costing you about €137 more, but that's not the case. It costs you €97 more. There's the €40 figure I mentioned. Does that mean they simply value large up-front payments over smaller periodical ones?
--- Quote from: Aimless on 13 Aug 2012, 14:53 ---How tight is your budget?
If you want to go off the reservation, ZTE probably makes some of the best (aka only) value Android phones. HTC's older Desire phones are also fairly well supported by the dev community. If you're feeling summat crazy the Nokia N9 is one of the most attractive and well-designed smartphones ever and can even run android (more or less :o). It's even better than the Lumias. If you're feeling particularly oriental then maybe the Meizu MX is something for you?
The Nexus phones are fairly good bets if you just want fairly hassle-free upgradability.
What kind of a phone-user would you like to be?
--- End quote ---
Some say that I have more money than I know what to do with. Maybe. I think I try to keep it that way. The math says that at these subscription prices, I'd be matching my current expenses on phone bills when the cost of the device separately is subtracted. That cost is less than €400, which is quite acceptable, so I don't necessarily need anything cheaper.
One of the reasons I'm gravitating towards the Nexus is that (from what I gather from these comments) it'll keep me up to date for a while, and won't need replacing any time soon. I like to make my purchases last. I don't consider myself a power user, but I certainly like to tinker with them toys a bit, and adapt them to my liking.
That Meizu MX looks hella slick, but there's only one person selling it in the entire country. That person is in Friesland and selling it for €600 on ebay. I'd go for it if I absolutely wanted a top-of-the-line, one-of-a-kind product, but I'm not going to put down that much money and then still pay carrier costs. Thanks for letting me know about it, though. This is nice to show to my friends, some of them are really into this stuff. (If you're wondering why I'm not just asking them for advice: I already know what they would recommend: What they got, or the upgraded version of what they got.)
--- Quote from: Linds on 13 Aug 2012, 16:02 ---I am in a contract right now with a provider, so I bought my phone separate from the carrier. And once my contract is up, I'll find another provider (my data coverage suckssss). My boyfriend also just bought the phone on his own and is using a prepaid sim. Honestly I know nothing about overseas cell phone carriers/plans, but if it's similar to what we have here, it shouldn't be an issue. If you find a provider that has a deal where you can get it cheaper than what Google offers, I don't see why you shouldn't do it.
Whichever way you decide to go, I think it's a great phone. I haven't had any issues with the OS, it's fast, it's got a large screen, and the battery life is pretty good.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the info. Until yesterday I also had no idea how these plans worked, but I see that there are plenty of options for sim-only carriers. The downside is that buying them seperately is always going to cost me more money than a contract deal. The two-year contract is at least as expensive as the device itself.
However, there is one contract available that offers a usual sim-only price with the device for half off. It's the same cumulative price as the contracts that offer the device for free or very cheaply, and offers roughly double the bandwidth and number of minutes. The €184 price tag for the phone doesn't look too attractive, but combined with the low monthly rate it costs just under €600 cumulatively over two years, which is great. I think I'm going for that one.
God, I sound like a spambot, don't I? There's a certain enjoyment to be gotten from bargain hunting, I guess.
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