OSY Discussion Forum

Nokia N97
Samsung i8910
HTC HD2
Sony Xperia

Got one of the above?
Like it?
Hate it?
Know someone who has one?
Want one?

GIVE INFO!

iPhones need not apply.

Why no Google Nexus One?

Why no SmamPhone?

It also would be interesting to know what you are looking for in a phone.

Nope. Nothing but Blackberry over here.

A few of my guys use iPhones. I still don't see the draw. They're lucky to get throught the day on one charge. Many Smart phones are even worse. I'm sure not all of them, but many.

I'm with Mord and say Blackberry. Or as Riso suggested, Google Nexus One (or any Android phones for that matter).

Nokia N97 has sliding parts and those don't as a rule have a long life span. Anything that has moving parts you have to move frequently every day means a greater chance of failure. General rule of mechanical devices: the greater the number of moving parts, the greater the chance of failure. The N97 has one to many.

FOr the Samsung and HTC HD check out GSMarena (great website for cell phone reviews which you may consider checking out):
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8910_o ... ew-380.php
http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_hd2-review-418.php

Sony, like Nokia, has missed the boat this generation, and the xperia is another sliding phone which again violates the rule of keeping mechanical parts down to a minimum in portable devices people use every day.

If the phone will be used with work stuff, am gonna say Blackberry since it just seems to be the phone for the corporate individual. If its not for heavy use of work, you can't go wrong with HTC or Samsung. My friends that have the Google Nexus One don't have too many complaints, but most of the people I know that own the Nexus One are electrical engineers or geeks by trade, so their opinions I don't consider as the average user opinion.

That's a tad disingenuous there considering that except for one model, all Blackberry phones have a physical keyboard and a smaller screen. Blackberry's one full touch sensitive screen has no better battery life then any other full touch sensitive screen smartphones. I'm not a heavy phone user, I maybe talk like a total of 2-3 hours on my iPhone a month (i see most of my friends face to face and only people I really call are my sisters over seas) and use the phone mostly for sms and some games, but otherwise I can have my phone on for 2-3 days before I re-charge. On the other hand, my friends who are heavy users, like your guys, have to keep a second charger at work. I think that's tragic in so many ways and would be extremely annoyed if I was a heavy phone user. Thank god I'm not.

Not available Down Under.


Hooking up a SmamPhone to Virgin Mobile would end the world. I like having a steady supply of Virgins.

There's a Blackberry I'd love - the Storm - but I'm having a fit trying to find one that is unlocked.
HTC Desire - also sexy. Got to play with a Desire and a HD2 on the weekend, and drool city.
Tried a Samsung i8910 and thought the damned thing had a electrical fault and was trying to electrocute me! Are they supposed to ZAP back that much?

Things I want:
-Wi-Fi (Obvious, but bears stating)
-Camera that is good!
-Video capability a plus, not not a deal breaker.
-Microphone that has good quality. No %$%^ing feedback. (My camera has a dying mic, and it's making me grrrargh)
-Apps are ... eh.
-I want to be able to sync with Outlook and Excel. (Work primarily) The fewer the hoops, the angrier I am not.
-Same goes for music. I want to put my mp3s on the damned thing, not jump through 5 hoops and 10 nightmares for it.
-GPSr - Ability to run routing software. (I get lost when I forget that N is now S and everything is bassackwards) Also will be used for geocaching.
-If there exists a stock/price tracking app, that will sway things a LOT. My work goes portable, and as things are now - I either have to go pen and paper for stock tracking, or bring a laptop. We used LemonCode at arecent event I had a booth at, which was ok. I want a tiny version of that now, or a btter one. I've enough stock to lug around without adding a laptop or a few bits of easy to lose paper to the mix.
-Around 500$ AUD. Roughly 200US I think that is. (GRRRR)
-No keyboard. I want one big screen. Stylus = eh whatever. I have nails that work very nicely.
-Not fond of proprietary OSes. Android/WinMobile preferred. (This vexes me because I do like the i8910)

gsmarena - PERFECT thanks!

You don't want a Blackberry Storm. Srsly. At leat wait until the next hardware refresh. There are way too many issues with the first gen hardware. I live in a town of under 90 000 people and I know personally three people who have had their phones replaced at least twice due to hardware problems (one of them works for me, and he's had it replaced three times). Don't do that to yourself.

Except for the part about wanting one big screen, what you describe is a Blackberry Bold 9700. That's probably what i'm getting next month when I get my anniversary credit.


OW - my iPhones comments includes our lone Storm user. But, I think my point still stands. When you need to get some serious use out of a phone, all these full screen touch units are still toys.

I never knew this until recently - but did you guys know that touch screens like on an iPhone don't actually work below a certain temperature? I play rugby with a guy who's entire company just went to iPhones - and the fucking things are useless on job sites 6 months of the year.

Good to know!

I'll check those out.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Yeah, its the screen technology. All those big fancy multi-touch screens have that issue. My iPhone screen doesn't work properly if it's really cold. But if i leave it in my pocket, and use it after I take it out it works fine. I made a few phone calls new years and it was -9, and i was standing out side smoking a cig, freezing my ass off. Not sure how it cold it gets up in the great white north. I wouldn't use multi-touch screens up in harsh weather conditions anyway. If you got gloves on, its better to use phones with tactile buttons.

Apparently under the screen of a Storm is a SINGLE button. This is what provides the "click" when you press the screen (this is what they advertised as their competitive advantage over the iPhone - tactile feedback). Unfortunately that button is a single point of failure for the entire screen. Which, for the storm makes for TWO single points of failure in series - one is the screen, the other is this magic button underneath.

Also, with phones that are touch screen only - crack or break the screen and you've got a useless unit. Crack or break the screen on a typical smart phone phone or Blackberry and at least you can still send and receive calls.

You do realize this is not exclusive to the iPhone, right? If you get any smart phone with a big multi-touch screen, you're gonna have that problem too as well. It's the nature of the technology behind the screen and not a failure of the product. Like you don't drive a car on water, and you don't drive a boat on land.

This makes me laugh. My friend was kinda like this. In a drunken state he tried to prove his old Nokia with big buttons and small screen was indestructible, and then proceeded to prove this by hitting his phone on the table. No damage the first time and he was proud of it (he was really drunk), and then he does it again and ends up cracking the entire screen and he goes, 'fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!' I laugh my ass off then take a photo, and say to him (I was drunk too), 'what in the fuck were you trying to prove? It's a god damn mother fucking phone. If you break it, it's a broken mother fucking phone!' And then we all laugh and get another round of beers. Then his brother (same year as me in high school way back then) a few weeks later buys him a Google Nexus phone - he was at the bar too right next to him.

Yeah okay, you can answer the phone with the non physical keyboard phones and a broken screen, but how quick you gonna try and replace that phone at the same time? I get what you're saying, but it means nothing in the grand scheme of things. And for blackberry users that are mostly corporate users and almost religiously use their Blackberry for emailing (grrrrrrr!!!!!!!*) a broken screen for them has more of a spiritual effect on them because of the nature of how a blackberry is used.


*I say 'grrrr!!!!' because I tend to have clients that check design work on their blackberry screens, and they call me and tell me they can't read the text. WHAT THE FUCK!? I get why they call the phone Crackberry. Don't look at A2/1 posters and tell me you can't read the fucking text on a tiny as fucking screen. Look at it on a proper screen, or print it out and tell me what you think. I swear, crack makes you dumb.

Anyway thanks for reminding me about the photo I took. Maybe I'll post it up here. Gosh I love drunken moments.

Well, for one, a car accident or any situation where you've been hurt, and maybe the phone in your pocket has been damaged and not destroyed. A contrived situation maybe, but if someone were keeping numbers I'd bet hard money on the people without full screen phones being able to call help.

When I was a kid I broke the screen on my phone. Used it for a month while I wrestled with my credit card company to replace it (it was one of those gold cards that promise product replacement within three months - I held them to it but it was a pain in the ass).

Also, your buddy may have broken his Nokia, but I bet he still could have made a booty call with it.

So, it's situational, but I think kinda valid.

Oh I totally get what you mean. It just that you made me think of my friend on his birthday and being all kinds of drunk and his totally random antics which included that phone incident. Just having a good laugh and sharing the silliness with you.

Yeah, but did your buddy make a booty call with that broken phone? I GOTTA KNOW

I think his gf was out town, and plus he was pretty wasted by the end of the night so I doubt even if he did get some booty things would be working down there.

I had a Blackberry Storm v2 and recently switched back to a dumb phone. It was terrible. The touch screen would stop working right after a week requiring me to pull the battery to restart the device each time. On top of that, the Blackberry platform is a freaking mess. If you want ever decently browse the web from a phone - stay the hell away from Blackberries. The built in browser is 100% garbage and the alternatives available for it all pipe the traffic through a third party server (i.e. Opera Mini and Bolt) so I didn't find that setup appropriate for my use.

Can't speak for anything else though as that was my first smartphone. I really enjoy the LG dumbphone with the QWERTY keyboard I downgraded to though. Sometimes keeping things simple is the way to go.

I hear the Palm Pre with the WebOS is pretty good, and already has multitasking and shit.

Although it has some build issues.

I guess now that HP owns them that will get better.

75% of Blackberry users don't actually care about the browser though. They care about fast push mail, and reliable PIM sync of Email, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Tasks. What little time I spend in the browser I'm checking weather or maybe reading news or something.

You know that even though iPhones and Google Androids use ActiveSync, they don't sync Notes and Tasks? That's nearly a deal breaker for me, since I use Outlook Tasks for my personal work flows. There's an app for it, but it's silly that I need to pay money for that feature.

I've always been curious about that on the PC side of things. On the mac side tasks and notes sync with the mail app. I assumed a similar structure was in place with Windows and OE. I guess not.

It's actually "Live Mail", or something now. Very similar to OE.

Now that AYB is beginning to use his iBook, he's starting to appreciate a lot of things about it. Keep in mind, AYB has never been one of those "this OR that" guys. He likes Windows and the Macintosh. For instance, on the classical sax boards, some people will proclaim the supremecy of the French school of playing and deride the Rascher school, as if one really has to pick. Why not enjoy each for their differences?

I'm partial to HTC phones myself, but I haven't played with the HD2 yet. Through work, I'm still using a Fuze.

N97 is DEFINITELY off the list now - got some feedback through another source, and NONE of it was kind.

In other news sailors still swear like sailors.

Down to the i8910 and the HD2. Price may make me get the i8910. The tactile response of the HD2 is much nicer though.