Which should I pick up as my first smart phone?

[maroonandwhite]

How did you convince them on this? Im sick of gingerbread and really want the intuition phablet. Gingerbread on a phone built for ics sucks. What was your argument and did you have to pay for the razr.

haha I saw that you had a bionic and thought you might be asking that. I just complained of the Wifi/3g/4g dropping issues as well as the phone randomly shutting down or locking up after a period of inactivity. They will try to make out like it is a remote issue but trust me; it has been well documented with them on these issues. I just didn't take no for an answer. They would not swap me over to an iPhone (which is what I asked for in the beginning) but did offer basically any of the comparable Droid phone, HTC's, etc.

Just let them know that you know all of this troubleshooting and swapping sim cards and all that will not fix the issues.

[Jesse]

Verizon hates smart customers. when we went and got my wifes iphone they kept trying to push thier phone covers, screen guards and blutooth devices on us. we kept saying no thanks, then the supervisor came over and said they will give us 20 % off . I finally got tired of hearing it and told them I can get all of that stuff cheaper online than if they offered it at 70% off.

They seemed to get annoyed and didnt say much after that. Very pushy people trying to take any dollar they can get.

[vontar]

Im still on unlimited also. But it wont be long before they force us into 4g coverage and make us go to the 2,4 ,8 gb plans.

I kept my Verizon unlimited when i upgraded my phones and changed to 4g. In my area is it mostly 3g anyways.

I did buy them about a week before the change (and I knew that change was coming). I understand now down the road if I want to upgrade phones I can get a discount on the phone and changed to a rate plan or pay full price for the phone and keep my unlimited. I will cross that bridge then. I might have to go to spirit truly unlimited as they advertise when that happens.

[S&WForty]

Just a warning for those with Verizon unlimited data. My dad had such a plan. Hus smart phone died out of warranty. He reactivated an old flip phone. 21 days later, he bought a new smart phone. Verizon had turned his data off without him requesting it. As you can guess, when data was added back, they refused to give him the unlimited plan.

Had he been a tightwad and called to turn off data temporarily, I could accept it a little better, but they they turned it off so they could pull this stunt.

They also told him had he gotten a new.smart phone activated in 14 days, he would have kept the unlimited plan.

That's probably hidden in the fine print somewhere. ;(

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Sam1]

Verzions new family plans include hotspot.

Verizon can shut you down if your not paying for the hotspot option and manage to use it.

Actually the FCC stated that Verizon can not regulate how you use your data.

<edit> here's some info on the case

http://www.zdnet.com...ing-7000001916/

Edited October 6, 2012 by Sam1

[Guest Oaklands]

I am not a fan of Apple and have the razr maxx. Great battery life, rootedand running a real smooth custom ROM. Couldn't be happier. I can get 2 days between charges most of the time. If I wasn't on Verizon then I would go with the Samsung Galaxy S3 in a heartbeat. I am not an average user and tweak with my phone quite a bit.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, my wife just wants to Facebook and text. I face her my razr and customized it for her. She loves it. You can't beat the antennas on a Motorola phone. People do seem to like the reception on the G3 so far. Seems Samsung did a good job with this phone.

Bottom line for me is I like my independence with Android and would not be tied to ITunes.

Sent from my AT100 using Tapatalk 2

Edited October 6, 2012 by Oaklands

[Guest db99wj]

Wife had an iPhone 3g 8gig. Only problem with hers was the memory. It wouldn't update some apps, like our CoPilot GPS app due to memory. My iPhone 3GS 16g, has no problems and I have a ton of crap that I don't need on it. No problem other than battery life and that's not that big of a deal due to my home charger, my computer charger and my car charger. She left hers at McAlisters a week or two ago and by the time we got back it was gone, one of their employees stole it. We are both eligilbe for the upgrade, she got the 4s for $100. I got the phone, put it on the computer, set it up with the new OS, synced, and it was back to where she was with the old phone, including the wallpaper. It just works.

I'm upgrading once I start my job and I am going with the 5. I'll be getting a Lifeproof waterproof case for it. I drop them from time to time, I strap them on while running and riding mountain bikes. The waterproof thing is cool and necessary at times. I have an Otterbox for mine and it has paid for itself many many times!

As others have mentioned, they just work.

Edited October 7, 2012 by db99wj

[Il Duce]

I must be the only person who doesnt mind iTunes

Always trust people who like big butts because they cannot lie.

[williamsburg]

Android.

More options.

Also most are faster than the iPhone. At least with most Androids you can upgrade memory with a microSD. iPhone you can't.

Almost every app on iPhone is available on Android. There are apps that even match or out do Apple's Siri.

Check the HTC series or the Galaxy series.

Side by side Android out does iPhone. But it depends on your needs really.

[Lumber_Jack]

I must be the only person who doesnt mind iTunes

That makes 2 of us.

Also those touting a long battery life, my iPhone 4 will last 8-10 hrs with moderate use, Tapatalk, twitter, email.

Now using maps and location services can shorten it, but phone only use, it could easily last several days.

Plus one bonus, Android may have more apps, but what percentage of those work and are safe? apple has standards and approval for apps, if you don't make the cut, you don't build an app.

[jonlisha]

DO NOT sell your soul to apple, they put out overpriced under powered products, everything Apple puts out can be outdone by Microsoft, Motorola or samsung at half the price or less.

The Iphone 5s new software will allow a signal to be sent out that will disable your mic and camera so you cannot take videos or pictures, apple is working with the US government on this new feature, this is not a lie.

U.S. Patent No. 8,254,902, otherwise known as "Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device," was granted in late-August, and would allow phone policies to be set to "chang[e] one or more functional or operational aspects of a wireless device [...] upon the occurrence of a certain event."

What that means in real-terms is "preventing wireless devices from communicating with other wireless devices (such as in academic settings)," and for, "forcing certain electronic devices to enter "sleep mode" when entering a sensitive area."

Look it up if you don't believe me, Apple is a bad company who are against the 1st, do not support them.

[mikegideon]

DO NOT sell your soul to apple, they put out overpriced under powered products, everything Apple puts out can be outdone by Microsoft, Motorola or samsung at half the price or less.

The Iphone 5s new software will allow a signal to be sent out that will disable your mic and camera so you cannot take videos or pictures, apple is working with the US government on this new feature, this is not a lie.

U.S. Patent No. 8,254,902, otherwise known as "Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device," was granted in late-August, and would allow phone policies to be set to "chang[e] one or more functional or operational aspects of a wireless device [...] upon the occurrence of a certain event."

What that means in real-terms is "preventing wireless devices from communicating with other wireless devices (such as in academic settings)," and for, "forcing certain electronic devices to enter "sleep mode" when entering a sensitive area."

Look it up if you don't believe me, Apple is a bad company who are against the 1st, do not support them.

Wow! That's a patent. Means nothing. I really should have bought stock in Reynolds Aluminum before they let the general public have access to the Internet

[williamsburg]

looking at this little comparrison looks like the newest iphone is still lagging.

iphone has(compared to current and's):

smaller screen size

slower processor

limited memory (cannot expand w/ micro sd card)

no nfc

oh i forgot iphone does have siri

but android has skyvi and google now and others

http://www.wirefly.com/iphone-vs-android/

[mikegideon]

The Droid probably does have more features. A feature list doesn't help when you're trying to figure out which one works better. In my situation, I've had both. Since most of my phone usage is work related, a lot of the bells and whistles don't matter, especially if the core functions cause problems. i've been using a Droid for a couple of years. They definately work. I'm just going back to the iPhone, because they work a little better for what I do.

[Chucktshoes]

Folks get as wrapped up in defending their phone purchases as they do their gun purchases. LOL. This thread is heading quickly for a rendezvous with Godwin's Law.

[mikegideon]

Folks get as wrapped up in defending their phone purchases as they do their gun purchases. LOL. This thread is heading quickly for a rendezvous with Godwin's Law.

Sure they do.

[C.lunn]

The Droid probably does have more features. A feature list doesn't help when you're trying to figure out which one works better. In my situation, I've had both. Since most of my phone usage is work related, a lot of the bells and whistles don't matter, especially if the core functions cause problems. i've been using a Droid for a couple of years. They definately work. I'm just going back to the iPhone, because they work a little better for what I do.

I've had three androids in 2 years. I've had more problems out of them then I did with my 2g iPhone. I went back to a iPhone two weeks ago and like mike said they may have more features but the iPhone just runs smoother.

[robin48]

Love my SGS3. Rooted running AOKP. Fast and sure.

Wish I was in my truck

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Folks get as wrapped up in defending their phone purchases as they do their gun purchases. LOL. This thread is heading quickly for a rendezvous with Godwin's Law.

Godwin was worse than Hitler.

All the fault of this thread, I looked over the Sprint collection again last week and they had added a motorola photon Q (4.3" screen android, dual-core 1 GHz processor, slide keyboard, wifi hotspot feature) that looked worth the gamble to replace the ancient Palm 750WX WinMobile gadget. So far so good.

Was kinda busy and haven't got it completely set up as of yet. If it was a "first smartphone" there wouldn't be any setup much to do, but getting it in shape to replace the winmobile phone has been kinda hair-tearing. Picked up the new phone upgrade at Best Buy and the fella actually seemed competent. I'd expected to have to migrate my contacts, tasks, calendar myself but he thought he could do it with a cute little dedicated hardware box about the size of a laptop he had. Unfortunately I hadn't brought the special usb cable for the old phone and he didn't have one to fit, and he couldn't figure out how to do it wireless, which I don't blame him for, it is a pretty old phone, kinda obscure nowadays. But its interesting that if I'd had the foresight to bring my cable along to Best Buy, he might could have saved me some studying..

So finally today I got most of the old data moved over to gmail. Haven't tried the wifi hotspot feature yet. Main motivations for the hotspot feature are emergency backup use for the day or two per year when the landline internet goes down, and for occasionally connecting a laptop or pad while "out and about" but I rarely go "out and about" so it isn't a daily need.

I set up the location services to ONLY use GPS, not google's wifi hotspot sniffing or cellphone tower triangulation, and the compass and GPS receiver seems real good. My old Garmin Legend shirt-pocket-size hiking GPS from years ago, is accurate but a little slow acquiring satellites,. The old Garmin can't pickup the satellites unless it is placed somewhere near a window of a vehicle so it could "see out". Ferinstance it would lose signal sitting on the passenger seat in the truck. But I didn't have any good way to mount the new phone near the dash or side window, and it was tracking fast and accurate sitting on the front seat. Most of that era of Garmins, though made for hiking, would lose satellite under tree cover, so if you were deep in the woods you could only check location when you could find an open spot in the woods and the GPS could see the sky. Haven't toted the phone under tree cover yet to see how it does. Maybe the phone can acquire GPS satellites under some tree cover as well, dunno.

Still figuring on the best place to put the phone in the Wrangler for non-distracting good visibility. Well I think I have the ideal location but might have to build a suitable mount. The left windshield post is about as wide as the phone, and is obviously an incurable "blind spot" so mounting the phone above the dash on that post wouldn't obscure anything that ain't already obscured, and would be easy to glance at without distracting the driving.

Another thing had been thinking about for a year or so, since I got the (wifi only) motorola xoom android pad-- It is big and bright, and will knock yer eyes out running GPS mapping. I'd like to build a solid mount in the vicinity of that left window door post that will hold either the phone or the Xoom. Running the Xoom tethered to the phone wifi hotspot feature would run mapping so big bright and clear that even somebody half-blind like me could see good without taking the eye off the road. I figure one basic mounting bracket and two holders, that will fit the bracket, one phone-sized and one pad-sized.

So the last couple of months after I got hit by a drive-by malware internet surfing on the PC I use for programming, been mostly using the android Xoom for surfing. It works pretty good and if it gets a malware (maybe less likely than a PC) it will be easy to wipe and start over. Not have to install a bunch of work software. I first got a cute little logitech bluetooth keyboard for the Xoom pad. The Xoom is in a case that will fold out and stand it up like a laptop. So if I want to internet browse or listen to internet radio away from the desk, just carry the pad. At the desk, use the bluetooth keyboard which makes it easier to compose insanely long forum rants.

Had got one of those $8 rubber-tipped stylus, which is easier to hit small buttuns on the screen than with the fat fingers. Programming for so many years, I'd often get sore shoulder and elbow from operating a mouse so many hours every day, and not using the mouse so much helps relieve ergonomic stress. The Android system when used with a keyboard, has some pretty neat keyboard navigation features so you can move around internet windows without having to click on the screen so much, so operating kinda "spreads the load", navigating some via keyboard, some via tap/swipe with fingers, and some tap/swipe with the little rubber stylus. But sometimes nothing is quite as good as a mouse, so recently got a logitech bluetooth mouse that works great along with the Xoom and the tiny bluetooth keyboard. You can mouse with one hand and then when convenient tap/swipe with the other and the system accepts multiple input modes pretty well, though one could over-run its responsiveness if one tried. Its just a pretty flexible situation that you can carry the pad alone around, or also use the keyboard and/or mouse when convenient. More flexible than a laptop, except for the tiny "reversible touch tablet" laptops that can fold the keyboard back behind the laptop when desirable.

So anyway, got to wondering, won't have time to fiddle with it but maybe somebody knows-- The Motorola Xoom and also the little Photon Q have about the same CPU speed and RAM and such.They both have HDMI outputs but I haven't connected them to experiment. Have mainly read about people using the HDMI outputs to watch movies on their TV, but on the Android phones and pads, does the HDMI just work like an external monitor hookup? Just saying, given a potent little phone, if it will drive a 23" computer monitor 1920 X 1080 (1080P), then somebody would plop their phone on the desk, hook it up to big monitor, drive it with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and have "real close" to a desktop computer capability, in something they can also stick in their shirt pocket and walk out the door with. Interesting.

[Dolomite_supafly]

I will say this about my initial Verizon experience. My fault I went to a reseller and not an actual Verizon store.

We had miserable service with AT&T at our home. We decided to have friends come out so we could see which service gave the most bars. Verizon was the winner so we dumped AT&T, paying in all over $600 just to switch to Verizon, not including the cost of the phones. I bought a brand new iPhone 4 and my wife got a free phone. We also begged a free phone for our son and added him.

We get home and we have 3-4 bars but no service. My son's phone was the worst so we got him another phone and saw no improvement. We would get stopped calls or have no dial tone several times a day. The only way to correct it was to turn the device off for about 5 minutes. Then it would work for a few hours. Again, we had 3-4 bars the entire time.

We spent hours on the phone with Verizon as they did their trouble shooting. The best they could come up with was a hardware problem on the tower itself. They said give it a week to see if it improved. After a couple of weeks I called back because it hadn't improved.

Verizon said they would void my contract because there was an issue they could not resolve. They said they would send out a cell booster but in the interim I was going to cancel.

I called the store where I had bought the iPhone to let them know I was canceling service. He responded with he wanted my iPhone back. I told him I paid for it and it was mine. He said that didn't matter and that if I cancelled the contract the phone was his as well as the money I had spent. So I called Verizon and they said the phone belonged to me and not him or his store. So I called back telling him what Verizon had said and he told me he would give me $200 for a phone I paid a lot more for. I told him no and he said he was going to report the phone stolen to Verizon and have it disabled so it would no longer work if I didn't sell him the phone for $200. He sent this as text messages. I contacted Verizon again and they made sure I was the only one who could report the phone stolen.

The cell booster came in and the service worked great unless I was outside. That went on for a few months then miraculously the phones were working perfectly without the booster. I suspect whatever hardware problem they had got fixed.

I am very happy with Verizon's coverage area but their limited minutes suck. I will always have an iPhone of some sort. I wish Walmart offered one with their straight talk plan.

Dolomite

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Hi Dolomite

Thats great you got (eventual) satisfaction with verizon. Wish there were "scientifically objective" mass-studies to determine carriers delivering best service vs price vs coverage. Maybe there is such an information source somewhere but might be difficult because company X may have good coverage in some towns/neighborhoods wheras Y might be better in other burgs?

Surely the companies only abuse a certain percentage of customers? Therefore, simply reading individual online customer horror stories, tis difficult to know if company X treats 20 percent of customers bad versus company Y treats 30 percent of customers like crap, or whatever? Over 15 years I only had one bad customer service issue with sprint, some years back. Got mad and decided to switch carriers. Spent a couple of days reading internet customer complaints about all the carriers. At that time it appeared that all the companies occasionally treat customers like crap, and all the companies have bad coverage some places, and my experience with Sprint had been no worse and perhaps a little better than the competition. It was just as easy to find irate customers saying, "Never do business with AT&T they suck" compared to other irate customers ranting, "Never do business with Verizon they suck", or TMobile, Sprint, etc. Maybe today things have changed from that conclusion from several years ago, dunno. Sprint service is good the places i go anyway.

Lots of folks on this thread have good things to say about verizon which is encouraging. I don't travel much but over the last 15 years with Sprint, hardly any place I went needed to roam off the Sprint network in order to make a call. Though of course its a sure bet there have got to be plenty of places where sprint coverage sucks worse than anybody else. Maybe at your house my phone would be dead in the water unless I turn on roaming mode. In addition to the tower distribution, I get the impression reading customer complaints that some of the modern crop of fancy phones might have suck radios that don't hardly work unless you are directly under a tower?

Volume/audio fidelity in some recent models might be substandard? Lots of customers recite the same mantra- "my old phone was loud and worked out in the boonies but this new shiny smart phone has tinny sound and you can barely hear it and it drops calls all the time". There are so many reports in that mold, either it represents a percentage of customers who got "almost defective" phones below spec for the model, or maybe manufacturers are paying more attention to "toy box" features and not paying enough attention to the radio, cutting corners on the radio circuitry to meet price/size/feature requirements?

Perhaps most customers are urban who hardly go past city limits, so that skimping on the radio makes sense to some companies in order to shoehorn-in more gameboy features at the price point? My old Treo has a rubber ducky antenna and works most anywhere. Was waiting to find a replacement with other desirable features, that few folks complain about a weak radio or bad audio. So far the new motorola photon Q seems to have a good radio. Inside my house, with the old phone I'd typically get only 1 or 2 bars, but the phone always worked 100% voice and data. The new photon was barely showing 1 bar last night in the house but voice and data were working great. Today, right now at the exact same location at the home office desk, the photon shows 3 bars signal. Go figger. Weather affecting the coverage, or night-vs-day, or what?

Tis similarly difficult to evaluate OS stability of the phones. I bought that motorola xoom pad out of the first shipping crop, curious to evaluate android in pad format and see if it looked worth learning how to program on android. Early nerd reviews, a slight majority reported the xoom rock solid while a slight minority reported it hopelessly flakey, with many nerds blaming the instability on the android OS. I got the xoom on saturday and fiddled with it all day and sunday morning. It would run like gang-busters about an hour then it would crash horribly and require reboot or even reset. Took it back to best buy and luckily didn't get a know-it-all punk geek from the squad. Told him, "This ain't ignorant customer syndrome. Something is intermittent wrong with this unit but you will have to test several hours in order to verify. Don't sell it to somebody else, send it back." So he took my advice and swapped me another xoom with no back-talk. Hopefully he also sent it back rather than pushing it off on somebody else.

The second unit has been rock-solid for near 2 years. That first unit could have easily been blamed on the android OS rather than bad hardware, because the symptoms were not a lot worse than the day-to-day routine instability of Mac OS 9 or early versions of Win98. Just saying, the hardware bugs were mimic-ing previous instances of other companies' buggy system software of yesteryear, so it would be easy for a "software guy" to blame it on the android OS. Perhaps a lot of folks blame android OS when they try buggy-designed phones or "partially broken" units like my first xoom. Making no claim that android OS approaches perfection, but seems generally workable.

[S&WForty]

Lester - commenting on your last paragraph, I think you are onto something. IMO, Apple wins again with rock solid hardware to go with their proven OS.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Guest Smitty]

I finally received my first smart phone. I decided to go with the Nokia Lumia 920 running Windows Phone 8! I did a lot of research, asked around, and messed around with many phones in the stores, and I had to give the windows phone a try. the Nokia is bulit pretty solid, and the OS is pretty cool. The number of apps are obviously lacking compared to android and apple, but that will change with time.