Thinking about a Smartphone - hardware and 'contract' advice please!

[ColinJ]

Orange/T-Mobile/EE are rubbish for signal in and around my village and this area in general but O2 seem to be really strong.

Make sure you check for a strong 3G O2 signal. I get a good 2G signal for texts/voice but no 3G for data.

 

[coffeejo]

Make sure you check for a strong 3G O2 signal. I get a good 2G signal for texts/voice but no 3G for data.

That's not so great, despite lots of masts - but nothing is down here. Wifi at home and out and about looks sufficient.

Have somehow ended up with a few Galaxy S2s on my fleabay watchlist.

 

[ColinJ]

I liked the idea of a tiny smartphone and discovered that Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray is one of the cheapest such phones on eBay. I picked up mine for about £70. The S2 was on my shortlist as was the Galaxy Ace 2.

 

[coffeejo]

I liked the idea of a tiny smartphone and discovered that Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray is one of the cheapest such phones on eBay. I picked up mine for about £70. The S2 was on my shortlist as was the Galaxy Ace 2.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

One of my favourite phones was a Sony Ericsson - got it in 2006, I think.

How do you rate the Xperia Ray?

 

[Night Train]

I don't know about the Ray but the Xperia Arc is a pain in the proverbial saddle.

I was a fan of Sony Ericsson for the Walkman aspect but the Arc is fairly rubbish at sound reproduction. I still use my older Walkman phones to listen to whereas the Arc is plugged into the car stereo.
Current loving my old Sony Ericsson C902, though I still have the K800i and W995 as spares.

My Orange contract is costing some £40+ pm and I will be leaving Orange in August when my contract is due for renewal. I think Arch's phone contract would be fine for me but she is on Vodaphone and the signal is a bit hit and miss in my house. I don't know about O2 though. I will need to check.
I'll just unlock my current phone to use until it dies I think, mainly because I am now used to it.

I would like to tether too but I can use a dongle if I can't. Not so keen on Smartphone browsing when I have a laptop as it is awkward and the screen is too small for human fingers.

 

[ColinJ]

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

One of my favourite phones was a Sony Ericsson - got it in 2006, I think.

How do you rate the Xperia Ray?

I really like it!

It is small but the screen is very clear so I can usually use it without having to wear my glasses.

I usually use a stylus because the small touchscreen can be fiddly without. I bought a nice stylus on eBay for £1.75 which parks in the earphone socket when not used.

I got a fliptop fake leather cover for the phone for £3 to protect it when it is in my pocket with keys, coins etc. Even with the cover added, the phone isn't much bigger than my old dumb phone and I sometimes forget that it is in my pocket.

The speaker on the phone is loud enough for what I want to use it for which is as an alarm. I have a set of standard alarms set up which I enable and disable as necessary.

Call sound quality is acceptable. Not perfect but my hearing isn't great and I don't have a problem with it.

The screen is bright enough to use outdoors except in very bright sunlight, when I have to shade it to see what I am doing.

I bought a 32 GB memory card from eBay for about £18. That would hold a lot of apps, photos, videos and music.

The Ray is great on mobile-friendly websites. Sites that do not adapt to mobiles properly end up with ridiculously small text though I use the Opera mobile browser which can often reflow text to improve the experience of viewing such sites.

The camera is capable of taking pretty good pictures and videos but the default camera uses too much compression. I bought a camera app which gives control over that and other camera function - Camera FV-5. (NB it uses a lot of battery power so shut it down after use!)

I put a sound recorder app on so I can use the phone for recording memos.

I've put a few puzzle games on the phone. TBH - the screen is a tad small for that kind of thing, but it is usable. I prefer to play games on my Galaxy Tab.

It has an old version of Android but that doesn't bother me. It does mean that I can't use Eurosport Player on it, but I use the Tab for that.

If you want a very useful but tiny smartphone, put it on your shortlist. If ease of use and maximum power are more important, buy something bigger.

TechRadar review.

 

[ColinJ]

... Or make NT an offer for his Arc!

 

[coffeejo]

Had a read of TechRadar (was reading it when you posted ) and I think I prefer the Galaxy. Trying to talk myself out of the S3

 

[phil_hg_uk]

Had a read of TechRadar (was reading it when you posted ) and I think I prefer the Galaxy. Trying to talk myself out of the S3

I have the S3 it's a nice phone.

 

[ColinJ]

Had a read of TechRadar (was reading it when you posted ) and I think I prefer the Galaxy. Trying to talk myself out of the S3

I thought it was S2s that you were looking at!

If you are suffering from pre-buy upgraditis, you might as well go straight to the new S4!

I have the S3 it's a nice phone.

I think so too. I probably would have bought one if I'd had the money, but I do like the compactness of my Ray.

In terms of big phones - I also like the look of the Xperia Z and the HTC One.

 

[Nebulous]

I've posted before about cashback deals from mobiles.co.uk. You need to be organised and willing to work at them though to make sure you claim all the cashbacks at the right time. Look at this for instance. A pretty much top model smartphone for £13.75 a month with 750mb of data, 600 minutes of calls and unlimited texts. If you go through Quidco you'll also get £50 cashback from them. If you want to go cheaper by moving down to a lower range phone you can get this. Look at the O2 one about 12 down. 500 meg 300 minutes unlimited texts for £8.87, still available with £50 cashback. A bit of a faff and not for everybody, but I'm currently running 4 contracts for less than many people pay for 1.

 

[Arch]

Hi jo!

In the end I got an HTC, um... well, one of them. <checks box> Desire C, which cost £145 quid. I got it sim-free, and then changed my Vodafone PAYG sim to a contract, for about £10 a month.

I get more texts than I need, far more minutes than I need, and 250MB. In the last week, I've used about 87MB apparently, but I have watched a couple of YouTube vids, and I left it connected for a whole morning by mistake, don't know how much that uses. Normally, I turn the mobile internet on only for when I actually want to use it. I don't think I've been near the limit since I had it. The only time I've paid extra was when I've sent picture messages, which cost 30p. I don't do it often anyway.

The phone is fine. Typing is a bit fiddly sometimes, but that's the price of not having a huge phone. I've worked out how to do most of the things I need to without resorting to the online manual. I bought a case for it for £2 off EBay, which seems to be protecting it well.

I use it to listen to music on the way to and from work each day, and on the train over to Manchester. Battery life isn't bad, I get a couple of days out of it, but it usually gets topped up whenever I plug it into the laptop to download photos etc anyway. I haven't used it for tethering yet, I just use my mobile broadband dongle.

I do still use the laptop, it's so much easier to type and read forums. But it's great to be able to catch up at lunchtime at work, or look up the sort of random facts we end up wondering about...

 

[coffeejo]

I thought it was S2s that you were looking at!

If you are suffering from pre-buy upgraditis, you might as well go straight to the new S4!

la la la

 

[MrJamie]

I switched from a £35 per month Orange contract for one of the sim only plans £10pm down from £15, 300mins, free texts, 500mb data and it keeps your 'magic numbers' from your contract, which means I get something like 6 numbers I can phone as much as I like for free too. Orange PAYG works out expensive, with a smartphone you kinda need dolphin for the free data (and the texts) but then at something like 25p a minute the calls are pricey.

Smart phones were a big step forward, but IMHO there's much less difference between the older and newer ones to the average user. I've known a few people upgrade recently who have been really underwhelmed that their new phone was essentially the same as the old one. They're also a fair bit more delicate about being dropped or getting wet, mine stays in a sandwich bag on rainy rides.

 

[ianrauk]

Got my first smart phone last month. A Samsung Galaxy Ace. Through Virgin Mobile. Hated this smart phone at first, like CJo, I just like a normal phone, but am slowly getting used to using it. Good for accessing the forums on the go and found it very useful when I had to find a train station & train time/connection when I was out and about.
Cost me £10 a month for 500mb, 500texts, 100minutes to land lines and 1000minutes to other Virgin phone users (Mrs Ian has one too so that is very handy). It's usually £20 a month but as I am with Virgin for TV/Internet etc I get a loyalty bonus,