Planetarion Forums - Gee golly, well if it isn't a mobile phone thread!

Tomkat · 13 Sep 2005, 19:12

I've been on Pay-As-You-Go for a while now, because I didn't trust myself with a contract.

Now I'm earning (and have my first "proof of address" in the form of a bank statement), I'm looking at getting a contract phone.

I don't know what to get though.

The Sony Ericsson W800i looks quite nifty - I don't have an mp3 player and would like one, so if my phone can double as one (holds 150 songs or so, right?) then that'd be cool. What's the battery life like though? Does it run down quite fast if I'm listening to music on it?

If I don't go with that one, I don't know which others are worth looking at.

My main specific is that it isn't a flip-open-type one (I don't know, they just annoy me). - I don't mind ones that kind of "slide" out though.
Also, that it is slim - I can't stand phones that are visible in your pocket when walking around.

Apart from those (and I'd like a camera), I don't really know what else I want.

Any advice?

Leshy · 13 Sep 2005, 19:13

Orange SPV C550.

Appocomaster · 13 Sep 2005, 19:15

I go with boring nokias, as they tend to be slightly harder to break.

Phang · 13 Sep 2005, 19:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leshy

Orange SPV C550.

Request: A short (100-150 words) explanation of what makes the C550 better than the w800 for the non-business user, in the event that it is.

Tomkat · 13 Sep 2005, 19:26

What Phang said.

The Samsung E350 looks quite nice too...
Anyone able to give me advice on it?

Leshy · 13 Sep 2005, 19:55

As I have no W800i, I can't really compare the two. There are probably plenty of sites out there that do offer a more detailed look at both phones and are more informative than anything I could come up with.

All I know is that the C550 is ace because it has extra music buttons, came for free on my contract with a free 512Mb MiniSD card, looks and feels great, has a 1.3MP camera, a 240x320 resolution screen, and since it runs on Windows Mobile 2003, it's very easy to synch it with your PC and install additional software on it.

I wouldn't even be able to tell whether the C550 is actually better than the W800i, I guess this is mostly down to personal preference anyway. I merely pointed it out as you were inquiring about what other phones in a similar category you might want to have a look at

cubass2 · 13 Sep 2005, 23:28

I have an o2 XDA IIi

http://www.my-xda.com/xda2i.html

It's great as a PDA, long battery life and there's loads of software about for it. The phone software is kind of kack but I'm sure I could upgrade that if I spent a little time researching it.

It has a mediocre camera and all the usual phone cheese but get this. It has built in wi-fi and using gsplayer or VLC I can stream entire divx/xvid/ogm/mkv/quicktime/realmedia/blah/blah moveis across my wireless network to watch full screen on it.

It runs Windows Mobile 2003 and sports a proper HTML browser among many other things including MSN and everything you'd expect to follow in the same sentence as MSN.

I run an IRC client and an FTP client on it at the moment that both work over GPRS and I recently invested in a GPS reciever and didn't steal TomTom from E-mule. I also have a guitar tuner installed and a THEREMIN as well as Griff (Griff is a fully fucntional music production suite that runs on the Pocket PC platform, sequencer, synths and drum machines etc etc)

It plays flash files and therefore games and without a word of a lie I recently installed and played Quake 1 and 2 although 2 did run like a bag of pants

Oh and I've got a 1gig SD card in it stuffed full of tunes and with a small adaptor you can use standard 3.5mm decent quality headphones with it (I use sennheiser earbuds) so it's a great tool for listening to audio or watching full movies on the move also.

The point is it's a phone but it's so much more impressive than your average next-gen mobile with yet another line-up of pointless gimmickry and shiny sales toss. If you want your phone to do multimedia properly, get an O2XDAIIi, seriously, it's a computer, and it's a phone.

They're not even that expensive anymore if you go with an O2 contract

It's a phone

Blastoderm · 14 Sep 2005, 11:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomkat

I've been on Pay-As-You-Go for a while now, because I didn't trust myself with a contract.

Now I'm earning (and have my first "proof of address" in the form of a bank statement), I'm looking at getting a contract phone.

I don't know what to get though.

The Sony Ericsson W800i looks quite nifty - I don't have an mp3 player and would like one, so if my phone can double as one (holds 150 songs or so, right?) then that'd be cool. What's the battery life like though? Does it run down quite fast if I'm listening to music on it?

If I don't go with that one, I don't know which others are worth looking at.

My main specific is that it isn't a flip-open-type one (I don't know, they just annoy me). - I don't mind ones that kind of "slide" out though.
Also, that it is slim - I can't stand phones that are visible in your pocket when walking around.

Apart from those (and I'd like a camera), I don't really know what else I want.

Any advice?

Tom, I've got the w800i. It is top-notch. Read my reviews about it here.

If you are in no rush, you can wait till the 24th of September. Come down to the Meet and you can play about with the phone.

P.S. If you went to any Phones4u, you can get a contract with One Proof. Just a credit/debit card (not Solo/Electron) and have £60 in it (don't worry, they won't take it out of your account).

(Subject to a normal credit check as well)

Blastoderm · 14 Sep 2005, 12:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomkat

What Phang said.

The Samsung E350 looks quite nice too...
Anyone able to give me advice on it?

Well it's a small phone so it won't stand out in you pocket.

Good thing about it:

It's small
Light
Good battery life
1,000 phone book entries (note, that's when stored in phone's memory)
(Apparently) stores more than 100 SMS

Bad thing:

Shit ringtones
The sliding feature will eventually wear out and you'll get 'grinding' noises when you slide it up/down
NOT a Mega-Pixel camera (0.5 mega-pixel I think)
NON-Expandable memory (30mb internal and that's it, gee what can you store with that)

Personally, I wouldn't go for it. Samsung seems to be releasing handests aimed to attract women (women love their small handsets so that it fits perfectly in their handbags) and Oriental people (they always love their small stuff).

Tomkat · 14 Sep 2005, 14:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blastoderm

Bad thing:

Shit ringtones
The sliding feature will eventually wear out and you'll get 'grinding' noises when you slide it up/down
NOT a Mega-Pixel camera (0.5 mega-pixel I think)
NON-Expandable memory (30mb internal and that's it, gee what can you store with that)

Personally, I wouldn't go for it. Samsung seems to be releasing handests aimed to attract women (women love their small handsets so that it fits perfectly in their handbags) and Oriental people (they always love their small stuff).

Oh yeah, some things I hadn't thought of.

-I don't really care about ringtones - I don't use them anyway, I use the vibrate function.
-I hadn't thought about the sliding function - how long will it last? I only intend to have this phone until I upgrade (which could be a year or so, I guess)
-I don't understand megapixels - is that a very bad thing? My current phone isn't a camera phone

The SMS thing is good though - my current phone stores 150 or so I think (it keeps all of my Sent messages automatically, which is unbelievably handy after a drunk night and worrying if you texted people you shouldn't).

What about the Nokia 8800? It looks quite snazzy, but I havent seen anyone with one.

PS thanks Blasto

Rids · 14 Sep 2005, 14:25

I've got a K750i, and recently just grabbed a W800i.

To be honest these are the only phones that would get my solid recommendation at the moment.

Blastoderm · 14 Sep 2005, 15:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomkat

Oh yeah, some things I hadn't thought of.

-I don't really care about ringtones - I don't use them anyway, I use the vibrate function.
-I hadn't thought about the sliding function - how long will it last? I only intend to have this phone until I upgrade (which could be a year or so, I guess)
-I don't understand megapixels - is that a very bad thing? My current phone isn't a camera phone

The SMS thing is good though - my current phone stores 150 or so I think (it keeps all of my Sent messages automatically, which is unbelievably handy after a drunk night and worrying if you texted people you shouldn't).

What about the Nokia 8800? It looks quite snazzy, but I havent seen anyone with one.

PS thanks Blasto

Well, I understand you're after something with an mp3 feature. You get yourself a w800i and you get 512mb external memory as standard in your phone package. Now you can store around 80 - 150 songs.

The sliding function will last around 6-9 months (sometimes less... well on the Samsung D500 anyway) if you keep playing too much with the sliding function. If you were to get a Nokia 8800 and you damage the sliding function, expect your wallet to be hurt so badly.. just to repair it.

Mega-pixel means how good a picture quality is. Most digital cameras nowadays are on 4-5 mega-pixel (which is quite good) compared to my very first one which is 2 mega-pixel (I bought a 7.2 mega-pixel camera last week, looks really crisp).
Here's a medium sized photo I took from my w800i. And here's a large one.

With regards to the Nokia 8800, it's just a phone that's similar to the Samsung in terms of specification although the battery life is shit (hence why you have two batteries in the box) and it's non-expandable memory. The phone just oozes class. The reason why you don't see them around much it's because:

a) the country's oversubscribed for that phone, the Finnish didn't make many of it
b) it costs £200 on the highest tariff... which is £75 a month for 1000 minutes any network, any time.

I can always try to bring one for you to see if you want. I look after the stock at my workplace you see.

P.S. That was my swedish date from work and no guesses which stadium I was at.... respectively.

Tomkat · 14 Sep 2005, 17:14

Oh, screw the cost of the 8800 then. I wasn't that into it, I just thought it looked kind of cool. It looks a bit pretentious now that I've had a better look at it.

I'm between the E350 and the W800i.

I'll probably go have a look at some shops this weekend and see what they look like properly, then get a contract online.

Oh - not sure if you'll know Blasto, but can you put another SIM card into a 3 phone? I remember that you didn't used to be able to (you couldn't unlock them to put another SIM in, unlike Orange/o2/Vodaphone).
I'm curious, because when I'm in Jersey my phone usually counts as roaming, so I use my Jersey pay-as-you-go SIM card in it instead. If I can't use it with a 3 phone, that rules out their tariffs.

Blastoderm · 14 Sep 2005, 18:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomkat

Oh - not sure if you'll know Blasto, but can you put another SIM card into a 3 phone? I remember that you didn't used to be able to (you couldn't unlock them to put another SIM in, unlike Orange/o2/Vodaphone).
I'm curious, because when I'm in Jersey my phone usually counts as roaming, so I use my Jersey pay-as-you-go SIM card in it instead. If I can't use it with a 3 phone, that rules out their tariffs.

No you can't put another sim card into a 3 phone.

But you can unlock them from as little as £5 in independant, local retailers.

EDIT: Whatever you do, don't go to a Phones4u shop. Go to Carphone Warehouse. At least they won't be pushy.

pablissimo · 14 Sep 2005, 20:29

I just started with my new C550 after finally having had my number ported; I'll cut to the chase, don't get one.

The user experience isn't awful, but has so many little niggling flaws it demonstrates MS's relatively new entry to the phone market. For instance:

There's no easily reachable alarm/count-down function, you'll want to download a piece of software to do that
There's no obvious notion of how much battery life you have left save for the fairly coarse-grained battery icon at the top of the screen, you'll want to download a piece of software for that too
Want to know how much GPRS data allowance you've left? Yeah, tough. Download...
The screen is really quite difficult to read in daylight conditions
Want to change the earpiece volume mid-call, for instance if you're in a pub? No chance
The camera has no light/flash, and performs poorly in low-light conditions
Video framerate is poor, as is the refresh rate of the camera application
Predictive text input can be cumbersome, especially if you ever want to punctuate your texts (or write an ellipsis, dammit)
The phone will frequently pause mid-operation making you press the same button again to see if you'd just not hit it properly, resulting in your ending up in some other place than you wanted

I'm sure I'll think of more the more I use the phone. My friend got a k750i the same day I got my C550, and I have to say it's a much more polished and refined product. It's nippy, the camera's good, the UI is more intuitive.

Tomkat · 15 Sep 2005, 07:50

Ok - I'm now looking at the Samsungs (D500, D400 and E350 really - what is the main difference?)

Also - what's Virgin Mobile like? They have some good deals on the Samsung phone, but I have no experience with them.

JammyJim · 15 Sep 2005, 10:39

Im not sure id advise you to go samsung. Everyone ive spoken too has had a problem with them falling apart at some stage.
My old one ended up being selotaped together with a camera that didnt work and would just bleach the screen white if i tried to use it (Requiring a 'remove battery' reboot) etc etc.
(this was for the e700) - im not the only person who had these issues.

It just seemed to fall apart faster than you could say '**** me its fallen apart rodney'

Why not go for something useful like a blackberry or one of those Nokias which open up into a little keyboard thing.

Minty · 15 Sep 2005, 10:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phang

Request: A short (100-150 words) explanation of what makes the C550 better than the w800 for the non-business user, in the event that it is.

He loves that phone as much as he loves Opera!

He took photos of it against his old one!

Edit: The Samsung D500 is pretty good - thst is what I have now.

Although this phone is the best I've ever had until it was stolen

PSH · 15 Sep 2005, 11:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by JammyJim

Nokias which open up into a little keyboard thing.

I have had the Nokia 6820 for the last 18 months, it served me well but it is very dated, the camera is poor compared to what you can get these days, there is no MP3 player and the only time i ever used the keyboard was to show people what it's like.

I recently upgraded to the Nokia 6230i on Vodafone, i get 500 text and 200 any network minutes (they only charge you for the first 3 minutes of evening calls) for £35 ( i think you can get it for £25 online). The phone is a major improvement, the screen is much larger and clearer, it has a 1.3 mega pixel camera/video camera, you can view streaming video and the battery has a standbytime of 300 hrs. The design of the phone is very basic/bland but it feels great and is easy to use.

Leshy · 15 Sep 2005, 13:03

I disagree with pabs on a few things, but it is quite possible that having had an SPV for a good while and little experience with other phones, I can't make a proper comparison. There are one or two things I'd like to reply to, though:

Quote:

Originally Posted by pablissimo

[*]There's no obvious notion of how much battery life you have left save for the fairly coarse-grained battery icon at the top of the screen, you'll want to download a piece of software for that too

There's two places with a more detailed view of how much battery life you have left.

Battery Management (or whatever) in the Options menu has a much larger bar, and in the menu of the Task Control application in the Accessories folder, there's a numerical indicator of the battery life you've got left. I will agree that both aren't one-click access away, but then I've gotten used to where all the functions are, so I know that pressing 404 in the menu gets me to battery control, et cetera.

Quote:

[*]Want to know how much GPRS data allowance you've left? Yeah, tough. Download...

Actually, I also noticed this and am somewhat annoyed by it. My old SPV did have a preset bookmark which gave you a small page detailing your GPRS usage, but this one doesn't. I'll have to look it up again.

Quote:

[*]Want to change the earpiece volume mid-call, for instance if you're in a pub? No chance

The earpiece has a manual volume control, and the volume button at the side should work, if I'm not mistaken.

At any rate, I will agree that Windows Mobile isn't as much aimed at fancy and pretty stuff. Having seen several other mobile OS'es, they do tend to be prettier and look more slick. However, I personally don't find Windows Mobile to be counterintuitive or too hard to operate, so I'm pretty happy with it. It all comes down to preference I guess

pablissimo · 15 Sep 2005, 14:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leshy

The earpiece has a manual volume control, and the volume button at the side should work, if I'm not mistaken.

The side volume controls don't seem to work mid-call though I might have been ****ing something up, I'll have to have another test next time I get a call.

JammyJim · 15 Sep 2005, 15:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by PSH

I have had the Nokia 6820 for the last 18 months, it served me well but it is very dated, the camera is poor compared to what you can get these days, there is no MP3 player and the only time i ever used the keyboard was to show people what it's like.

I recently upgraded to the Nokia 6230i on Vodafone, i get 500 text and 200 any network minutes (they only charge you for the first 3 minutes of evening calls) for £35 ( i think you can get it for £25 online). The phone is a major improvement, the screen is much larger and clearer, it has a 1.3 mega pixel camera/video camera, you can view streaming video and the battery has a standbytime of 300 hrs. The design of the phone is very basic/bland but it feels great and is easy to use.

I changed to the Nokia 6230i recently too. It hooks up with my car which is the only reason i got it otherwise i wouldve invested some more money in a blackberry or big ass nokia thing with the keypad

Deepflow · 15 Sep 2005, 15:18

I also have the 6230i, im not sure HOW good it is as it is my first colour let alone camera phone; But i like it a lot

Tomkat · 15 Sep 2005, 16:52

I don't like those phones with keyboards on - I don't have fat fingers or anything, but I'd feel like I had when smashing away trying to type

Tomkat · 15 Sep 2005, 22:12

I've decide on a phone tariff and phone now...

I didn't realise insurance was so expensive though - I thought it was £2-£3 a month. It's about £6 a month!

Is there any way of getting around it? Like insuring it separately or something? Bunging it on my house insurance?

G.K Zhukov · 15 Sep 2005, 22:20

I feel "very old" now, couse I have a mobile phone without camera, not to mention that it doesnt have mp3 player.

Blastoderm · 15 Sep 2005, 23:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomkat

I've decide on a phone tariff and phone now...

I didn't realise insurance was so expensive though - I thought it was £2-£3 a month. It's about £6 a month!

Is there any way of getting around it? Like insuring it separately or something? Bunging it on my house insurance?

If you're buying it online, there's no chance to get out of insurance. Only after the 1st month or something.

Like I said, you're better off purchasing the phone physically. At least you can refuse insurance.

P.S. What phone is it btw?

Deepflow · 15 Sep 2005, 23:38

insurance is unbelievably useful though, both for legal and illegal reasons.