Advice on "Smart" phones and Android in particular

[Privateer]

I'm currently living in the Dark Ages as I have a Nokia 6230i, which is good on battery life and is "Ronseal" i.e. It Does Exactly What It Says ...".

I'd like to move into the 21st Century and get a Smart phone however I don't want an iPhone as to me it's just a converted iPod sold by a company that doesn't let you change the SIM nor the battery. I don't want a Blackberry as my wife has one and it just justn't feel right in my hands.

What else is there out there?

I've seen the Android HTC Desire which looks good. Does anybody have one?

What's it like to use a phone daily that has no physical keyboard except the onscreen one?

Any other thoughts and suggestions?

Is Android the best operating system to go for now?

Is the HTC Desire the best Android phone available?

Thanks,
_________________
Robert.
iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 14.0.1: iOS CamerAlert v2.0.7
TomTom GO Mobile iOS 2.3.1; TomTom (UK & ROI and Europe) iOS apps v1.29
Garmin Camper 770 LMT-D

[253]

Hi Privateer,

Have had the desire for about 6 months now - can't fault it.
before I start though, it can be 'customised' to the Nth degree, and has 7 'Home screens' you can flick between.

Bought it sim free from Play - so not the cheapest option probably, and have a Vodafone 1 month rolling contract sim.
Using the 3G and Wifi a lot does run the battery down and have about 35% leftat the end of the day, so it does need recharging nightly.
I have got around this by buying an extra cable and plug it into the PC at work to charge up.

Using the keyboard is not a problem, there is a little scheme you run through and you type in a sentence so it gets used to how you 'type'. I've got broadish fingers and it works fine.
Also you can download an App that allows you to speak what you want, and it does it - sort of anyway.
Also an App called gesture search, you just use your finger like a pen and write 1 or 2 letters and it searches the entire phone and gives you a list of numbers, photos, callendar entries whatever with those 2/3 letters in them.

A smaller version of the desire is the Wildfire, smaler screen size.
All the major carriers offer it free on a mostly 1 year contract.

Thers is so much to say, I'm still tweaking my phone and doing new things with it.

One thing that may be an issue - not happened for me yet though.

Most of the Apps stil load onto the phones memory and not the SD card. They are being updated by the App owners slowly to load onto the SD card.
There have been 1/2 reports where people with more than 35/40 Apps have been getting the 'low memory' warning.
I've been able to move about 30% of my 60 odd Apps onto the SD card - can't remember the size of card I have now, but I did buy a largish one 16 I think instead of the one in the phone.

Cheers, Bob
_________________
Triumph Tbird 1700. And now a Bonnie T100.

[Privateer]

Hi Bob,

Many (belated) thanks for your reply.

I got an HTC Desire (non HD version) towards the end of October 2010. I've had it for 1½ months and really like it. The lack of a physical keyboard is not a problem as I've found that the intelligent predictive text helps me to write quite quickly. I fitted both a screen protector and a gel case as soon as I had it and would definitely recommend the use of them.

I bought the HTC Desire outright and I'm using it on an O2 "simplicity 10" contract for 12 months, with mobile data bolt on. This gives me 300 minutes to any network, unlimited texts, and 500Mb UK Data for £15.20 per month.

I really like the fact that you can export your contacts from MS Outlook to your GMail account and sync them with your phone. The only trouble is that you have contacts in order of first name instead of last name. I've found that if I edit the .csv file exported from Outlook and swap the First Name and Last Name headings then you can get the list in Last Name order.

The only other problem is that there is no easy way to simply back up everything all at once.

As has been already mentioned recently on the forum, Lutz is currently developing an Android version of CamerAlert. However I don't know when it will be ready for general beta testing.

Regards,
_________________
Robert.
iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 14.0.1: iOS CamerAlert v2.0.7
TomTom GO Mobile iOS 2.3.1; TomTom (UK & ROI and Europe) iOS apps v1.29
Garmin Camper 770 LMT-D

[mikealder]

Robert, You might want to take a look at This which might be of interest - Mike

[jolly47roger]

There are some very cheap Android devices around - I bought an Orange San Francisco for £109 on pay-as-you-go (but then put in my pay monthly sim card) For map-based GPS work (not turn-by-turn) Trekbuddy and Orux work quite well but there are many others, too.

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