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[LTK]

My five-year-old Sony Ericsson brick needs a replacement - even though it still performs the function of a phone, my inner Scrooge grumbles - and this of course brings up the question of which to buy. Do any of you have some smartphone savviness?

My main question is, among the Android phones, are there any lesser known brands I should look into or should I just stick with what's popular: Samsung and HTC phones and the like? Any and all insight much appreciated.

[ackblom12]

I've personally got a HTC One S and I find it utterly wonderful. The catch with it is that it has went the way of an enclosed hardware system and has no SD Card slot nor access to the battery. There are still ports of CyanogenMod available for it, though I haven't rooted yet because I only recently got it, but it's something to keep in mind.

But basically yeah, stick with the more well known brands.

[Lines]

I recently got a Galaxy Nexus and the bonus to it is it's an unlocked phone when ordered directly through Google and will therefore work with any carrier. It's $350, but when compared to a comprable unlocked iPhone, it's half the price. I haven't tinkered around with mods or anything, but my boyfriend has and he's been having fun with it.

Also it comes with an autoupdate for Jellybean! So hey, it'll be on top of things. My old phone was stuck on Donut (it was 1.5 years old, it was stupid), so I was really happy to have the latest version...

I would stick with the larger brands. I had a no-name, carrier brand phone and for the most part I hated that phone. It was a smart phone, but all I could do was call, text, and get emails. Most apps didn't want to work on it because it couldn't handle an OS update.

[ackblom12]

Oh yes, The Nexus is a brilliant phone, made even better that it's guaranteed to get OS updates because it's not Carrier controlled.

[Akima]

I don't know what is available in the Netherlands, or how pricing works out for different brands, but Huawei is worth considering. In Australia I'd say you get maybe 80% of an iPhone's function for 20% of the price, but then iPhones are expensive here (800-1000AUD depending on model). You can buy a Huawei Ideos X1, and get a very functional Android 2.2 smartphone for 99AUD! The screen is a bit crappy, and the camera is nothing special, but it all works. Spend a bit more and the Ascend G300 is a lot nicer but still only costs around 170AUD.

Statement of interest: I own a Huawei phone, and my cousin works for the company.

[timmymyrs]

I haven't read the other posts, so dunno if they mention LG Optimus yet.
If you're in the US, I recommend going with Virgin Mobile. The Optimus isn't the BEST phone, but it'll get you thru the next few years just fine.
(Anything outside of the US, I'm pretty unaware of. I do know the Galaxy III S came out worldwide a few weeks back.)
Good luck.

[pwhodges]

Leaving aside the Google/Apple politics, my observation has been that every person I've seen who's been in a position to make a real comparison, in actual use, of Android and iOS phones or tablets has ended up choosing the iPhone or iPad (and Blackberry is nowhere - well, my sister-in-law has one, but that doesn't count because she's a lawyer).

[ackblom12]

Eh, at this point with them, there's very little difference other than rooting capability (which is more of a power user thing) and the app store. To be fair, I consider both of these very big differences, but with the advancement of Android since ICS came out, it's more and more like the near non existent differences between good Mac OS and Windows releases.

[pwhodges]

Curiously, although Microsoft provides far better long-term support for Windows than Apple does for MacOS (try getting security updates for an eleven-year-old Mac OS!); in phones it's the other way about, with iOS getting more consistent support than Android, from what I've seen (though this may be the individual OEMs' responsibility in this case rather than Google's).

[ackblom12]

It is done by mixture of carrier and manufacturer, which kind of leads to a bit of a clusterfuck with some phones. It's why Google finally started selling the Nexus on their own. Doesn't matter which carrier you use it with, they can update it with all of the newest OS releases up to the furthest point they feel comfortable, whether that's market or hardware based I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it's going to follow the same general path of once your phone is 3 gens old your phone will stop getting OS updates.

The main difference being that if you're a power user, Google not being able to update your OS isn't quite as much of an issue because of community OS roms.

[Skewbrow]

When I next upgrade, I will likely go with Nokia Lumia. It is running Windows as opposed to Symbian, so won't be painful to use. Currently I have an N96, which is inevitably getting old.

Disclaimer: I worked part time for Nokia R&D in 06-08. I stopped working there because A) they closed their site in my hometown, B) students voted me into a permanent position at the university. But I don't own any of their stock (might be a good time to buy, though).

[LTK]

I don't know what is available in the Netherlands, or how pricing works out for different brands, but Huawei is worth considering. In Australia I'd say you get maybe 80% of an iPhone's function for 20% of the price, but then iPhones are expensive here (800-1000AUD depending on model). You can buy a Huawei Ideos X1, and get a very functional Android 2.2 smartphone for 99AUD! The screen is a bit crappy, and the camera is nothing special, but it all works. Spend a bit more and the Ascend G300 is a lot nicer but still only costs around 170AUD.

Statement of interest: I own a Huawei phone, and my cousin works for the company.

Now that's rather interesting. Unfortunately, every listing for the Ideos model says it's no longer available. All that remain are the Ascend and honor models, which are €400 and €235 respectively - not really less than comparable models of other brands.

Leaving aside the Google/Apple politics, my observation has been that every person I've seen who's been in a position to make a real comparison, in actual use, of Android and iOS phones or tablets has ended up choosing the iPhone or iPad (and Blackberry is nowhere - well, my sister-in-law has one, but that doesn't count because she's a lawyer).

That's nice to know, but I actually do care about Google/Apple politics. Mostly because I prefer an open platform, and Apple is coming frighteningly close to assuming complete control of their devices.

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?

When I next upgrade, I will likely go with Nokia Lumia. It is running Windows as opposed to Symbian, so won't be painful to use. Currently I have an N96, which is inevitably getting old.

Disclaimer: I worked part time for Nokia R&D in 06-08. I stopped working there because A) they closed their site in my hometown, B) students voted me into a permanent position at the university. But I don't own any of their stock (might be a good time to buy, though).

I actually haven't heard any good things about the Windows phone OS. It's very unpopular, that much is obvious. I wonder why?

[Skewbrow]

I actually haven't heard any good things about the Windows phone OS. It's very unpopular, that much is obvious. I wonder why?

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

[idontunderstand]

I know very little of the topic but I'm really happy with my iPhone 4s.

[nobo]

That shows exactly how little you know about the topic.

BTW. I also love my iPhone4S and know very little about Android phones.

[LTK]

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

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 ). 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]

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.

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]

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?

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]

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!

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?

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 ). 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?

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.)

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.

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.

[Omega Entity]

I have an LG Optimus S that I bought off my coworker for $10, so I'd have a smartphone for my job. It does what I need it to, even if I do lament the screen size somewhat.

[LTK]

Samsung Galaxy Nexus acquired, combined with a plan that offers way, way more bandwidth/minutes than I'll ever need, but at a price that roughly equals what other providers are charging for inferior packages. I could have gotten a cheaper plan from the same provider, but that didn't include internet. So it was either no internet, in order to save €3 a month, or 500MB plus an optional 275MB if I never ever called or texted anyone. The choice was obvious.

The phone is quite nice. Overall, pretty easy to use, although at some points I expected it to be faster. I guess I shouldn't expect quad-core performance from a dual-core phone. It arrived unrooted, but that was easily done. I'd prefer to have more options regarding the UI and such. The Android version on my e-reader was much better in that regard. For one, I'd like the option to disable some of the animations to make it snappier. Home screen customization would also be nice. Are there any custom ROMs I should be looking into for that?

Also, I don't exactly get how the window browsing button on the lower right corner is useful. There are plenty of applications that I'd much rather close once I leave them, but they're often left clogging up the program list when I browse home. I don't think using the Back button always gets rid of them either. Am I going to have to remove these from the list one by one, every time?

[Aimless]

Check out the developer options section in your settings for animation/transition options! I think CM offers options for adjusting animations/transitions on phones, but I also think those options may be available on stock ICS.

Custom launchers such as ADW Launcher or GO Launcher may be worth looking into. If you really want alternatives--for better performance and customisability--then aftermarket ROMs such as CyanogenMod are a good place to start

[LTK]

So that's where they put it! Thanks, that helps. Though the animation for the application drawer remains unchanged, and that's the one that's being a bit jerky. Home screen transitions are a bit slow as well.

I'm going to give CyanogenMod a try. Maybe Miui as well, since I saw a friend use it.

Also, I assume you mean CyanogenMod by CM and Ice Cream Sandwich by ICM?

[ackblom12]

CM is CyanogenMod and ICS is Ice Cream Sandwich.

Do you have ICS (4.0) or Jelly Bean (4.1)?

[LTK]

ICS. Apparently it's upgradable, but I have no idea how to do that.

[ackblom12]

There may be an operation under the phone information section of the phone menus. If it has a section called About or the like, it should have a software update check option.

Sent from my HTC VLE_U using Tapatalk 2

[LTK]

You're right, the option is there, but it tells me it's already up-to-date. The current version is 4.0.4, so it's probably just not released in Europe yet. ARGLBARGLE

Regarding custom ROMs: If I download and install a ROM based on ICS, will it still work properly when the stock Android version is updated to Jelly Bean, and vice-versa? Does it replace the OS wholesale?

[ackblom12]

It'll replace the OS entirely, yes. If you'd like to go back to stock it's fairly easy to install the stock backup and update though.

Sent from my HTC VLE_U using Tapatalk 2

[LTK]

Okay, this is weird. The model of this phone is GT-i9250, as it says on the box, codename maguro 16GB, as it says on the fastboot screen. Then why does the 'About phone' menu say the build number is IMM76K, a number only used for the Verizon model? Can the build number change when I rooted the phone?

Edit: Apparently the answer is 'yes', because I downloaded and flashed the appropriate factory ROM using the Galaxy Nexus Toolkit, and that worked to change the build to IMM76I with no discernable difference to the phone's function. My next step was to try to boot into recovery mode in order to install the factory ROM of Jelly Bean. Previously, attempting to boot into recovery mode only displayed the 'Google' startup screen twice before booting normally. After flashing, recovery mode only displayed a background image with no text to go with it. After a while that went away and it boots normally again, only this time it offers to upgrade to Jelly Bean all by itself. Sweet!