Smartphone advice needed

[no2lurch]

Thought I'd ask in here for this one...

My phone contract is up for renewal in a few weeks and I'm lookin at getting a smartphone. Problem is I don't much about them, nor which are good or bad.

The ones I'm looking at are Samsung Galaxy Ace, Samsung Galaxy S II, Nokia Lumia 800, Sony Experia S and a couple of HTC phones (not sure which).

Do any of you guys use these? If so, what are your thoughts. Any other phones worth considering?

Thanks in advance.

[midsdaz]

I got a iPhone 4 and it does everything I want and more apps for everything ie auto trader eBay all sorts and is wat I use to get on this forum battery life isn't the best last me a day if I use it loads so ent to bad got sat nav theres load on it Dunn if that will help

[rwb]

I have a galaxy S II and am very happy with it.

If this is your first smartphone then think about whether you want physical keys. The on-screen keyboard can be fiddley and of course you can't feel where the keys are which makes it difficult to use one-handed.

The iPhone has a higher resolution screen, but the S II has a bigger screen, and for me this makes it easier to use because the on-screen buttons are bigger.

[omega]

I have a galaxy S II and am very happy with it.

If this is your first smartphone then think about whether you want physical keys. The on-screen keyboard can be fiddley and of course you can't feel where the keys are which makes it difficult to use one-handed.

The iPhone has a higher resolution screen, but the S II has a bigger screen, and for me this makes it easier to use because the on-screen buttons are bigger.

what he says
my s2 is great and it has a better camera than the i phone.

[grasmere59]

I recently upgraded to a Nokia 3410,i can make calls and send txt's and even recieve calls and txt's aswell

[StevieboyTD]

The next wave of phones is due out soon (Galaxy S3, etc) so it's worth holding off for a little bit or you'll be playing with old toys when you could have shiny stuff if you're patient.

[highlander]

My current phone is an HTC Sensation and it is superb. It runs Google Android OS, which is very easy to use, and HTC's "Sense" overlay for Android makes it really good looking too.

The touch screen is responsive and allows for accurate tapping/typing, and it is a fairly high resolution too so you get a really crisp display (albeit not quite as sharp as the Samsung OLED screens are on their smart phones). The dual-core processor is fast so apps run nice and smoothly. It has a built-in 4G modem so when the 4G network begins to be deployed you'll have super-fast mobile broadband. It has a built-in GPS with Google Maps Navigation so you don't need a TomTom any more. It can connect to a WiFi hotspot so you don't run up a mobile data usage bill (saves on battery life too if you leave WiFi switched on while you're at home, if you have a WiFi router at home). And it can act as a portable WiFi hotspot so if you are in a hotel room somewhere (and there's no free WiFi in the hotel) and have a laptop or iPad, you can get your phone on the 3G/4G network and get your laptop to connect to your phone's built-in WiFi hotspot.

Its built-in BlueTooth means you can have hands-free conversations or wirelessly stream digital audio at high quality - this is really good for me because my Sony HU in my car supports both hands-free and streaming audio, so I can play my music from my phone while I'm driving. It also has a built-in standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can use it to replace any touch-screen iPod while you're walking out and about too (you can upgrade the storage card to 32 GB I believe, but the default 8 GB microSD card is enough storage for most of my most-listened-to tracks).

Being an Android device, it's compatible with all the apps on Google's app store (now called "Google Play", irritatingly; it used to be called "Market") - while Apple's app store may have more apps, Google's app store has a higher proportion of free apps. Most of the great iPhone apps are also developed for Android, and those that aren't ported directly by the developers have been "cloned" by 3rd parties. "Angry Birds" was ported to Android by the original developers, and the Android version is free (but supported by adverts, which is a little annoying), and "Fruit Ninja" was also ported by the original developers.

All the major social networks are natively supported (Facebook, Twitter, etc etc) and there are official apps for Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, etc.

As mentioned, there's a whole raft of new phones about to come on to the market, so maybe the Sensation isn't going to be the latest-and-greatest for long, but I love it to bits; it does everything I want it to do and so much more.

[no2lurch]

one of the major things to take into consideration for me is cost. i am currently on a 10 quid tarrif and get unlimited txts each month. for a similar tarrir is looking at nearly 30 quid. a big jump when money is tight.

[leestudd30]

To be honest, you won't get any of those for £10 a month unfortunately. If you don't mind paying £30-35 there are like whats already been said some good new ones coming out in the next month or so. A couple of new Sony ones, Xperia S and Sola, the HTC One range, also a pretty cool looking from Panasonic called the Eluga. You can probably get something like the HTC Wildfire S for £10-15 a month which is a great little android phone. Me personally Android all the way, most of the best apps are free anyway and obviously there is lot more choice depending on what you want to use it for.

[trem1]

My sons got the Galaxy Ace and ive got the Galaxy s (not the newer one) the Ace is a little bit chunkier, although not by much and the screens a tad smaller, both use the same operating system so are pretty much identical to use.
Swype is good once you get used to it but if you want to use them/it as an alarm clock you need to leave them switched on overnight. There is no way ive found that you can switch it of and it 'wakes itself' to activate the alarm, battery life isnt that good either but other than that theyre both excellent phones with excellent camera's etc

[leestudd30]

Going with Trem1 the Ace is a great cheap Android phone which you should be able to get for around £15-18 a month, looks quite like an iPhone if you like that sort of thing!

[no2lurch]

thanks for all your help and advice - i've gone with a sony ericsson xperia arc s