Really the question is what Android phone should my wife get. We’ve got the Verizon network and she’s been wanting a new, more high powered phone. Basically the conversation went like this:
Her: I think maybe I want to get that Droid phone they keep advertising on T.V. Me: OK, but I think that there’s actually a bunch of different Android phones, the Droid being one of them. Are you sure that’s the one you want? Her: I don’t know. Which one is better? Me: Beats me. I’ll post on straightdope
I realize the answer probably depends on what she wants her phone to do, but I’m not even sure what questions to ask. I basically don’t know jack about smartphones. I do know she uses her current (dumb) phone to take a lot of pictures and send text messages, so it has to at least be good at that in addition to whatever cool smartness you get.
If the answer is “Phone X is superior to all others”, then great, but if it’s something like “Phone X is better at A, but phone Y is better at B” that’s useful too.
Are you on a budget? The HTC Tattoo is one of the more affordable budget phone around, but lacking in memory and the CPU, plus a less than stellar camera.
Yeah, after owning a Tattoo for a few months I have to say; do NOt get a HTC Tattoo. It is slow, has a not so great touch screen, keeps losing settings for what scene (wallpaper, clock and icons, basically) is selected, and the camera is, as already mentioned, not great.
Yeah, I’d also advise against the HTC Tattoo. If you are on a budget though there are quite a few android devices out there, but the consensus on the net seems to be to go for a HTC Wildfire.
But if you’ve got more money to burn I’d recommend the HTC Desire which is (according to techradar.com anyways) the best phone in the world. Also another upside is that it’s already getting the latest iteration of android (2.2). However, I’m not sure if it’s available in the U.S although the HTC Incredibleis basically the same handset with funkier packaging.
Another contender is the Samsung Galaxy S, which is out on all U.S carriers albeit with different names for each carrier (The Verizon one is called the Fascinate). I’m not totally sold on this one but that’s just personal preference methinks. It’s also had a lot of glowing reviews from many tech sites.
If you want to get more information I recommend going to the android forums to get more first hand experience with each phone.
I’ve been happy to tote around the cheapest mobile phone possible for years now. I was psyched when I bought my very first phone with a camera! this year. My biggest stumbling block has always been the outrageous price of a reasonable talk/data plan, but it’s probably time to suck it up and find room in the budget.
Yeah, me as well mate. I decided to wait till the iPhone 4 has been out for at least a couple of months before I decide what to get but now when I’ve finally made my decision the Galaxy S comes out and then rumours of theDesire HD has now stopped me in my tracks yet again.
I mean if I get the Desire I only have about 500 mb of internal storage so I have to stump up an extra $100 or so to get a 16 GB memory card, but then again HTC have the best add-on UI (sense) and are pretty good with updates (at least when compared to Samsung) and have said that the Desire will get gingerbread (android 3.0). But even though the UI on the Galaxy S (touchwiz) isn’t as polished as Sense UI to be fair it has better hardware specs, the processor might have the same clock speed but it actually processes faster than the HTC one as well as having much better graphics *and *16 GB internal storage. So the Samsung looks better on paper and what with the ability to flash customized ROMs onto Android phones it looks as though in real life UI won’t really matter. But it doesn’t look as great in your hand as a Desire coz it looks like a KIRF iPhone 3GS.
Aaaarrrghhh!!!
But then again I look at how fantastic the Desire is and say: ‘sod it I’m getting it now!’ But if I buy now, then when the Desire HD (or whatever it’s gonna be called) comes out then I’m gonna get some serious phone envy. If the rumours are to be trusted the Desire HD is gonna get a super sexy aluminium unibody, a 4,3 inch screen and an 8 mega pixel camera. And that’s not gonna be it’s biggest selling point, because however good the Desire is with Froyo it’s probably going to be a tad sluggish on Gingerbread, so when Desire owners look at Desire HDs zipping along with Android 3.0 it’s going to absolutely kill us!
Figure out if you have any network preferences first - whether you like and want to stay with whomever you have now, whether you hate them and want to do something new, and the differences in plans between the major networks. Once you decide that, it narrows down the phone lineups pretty significantly. The other big debate often ends up being a physical keyboard: do you not care if you have one, want one, need one, or only think you need one but don’t really need one?
For Verizon, the big new phone is the Droid X, and I think the Droid 2 is still supposed to be coming out sometime very soon. The X is more focused on media with a bigger screen, the 2 has a keyboard, they’re both pretty top of the line for right now though.
Agreed with the posters above me, it would be helpful to know whether you’re picking the phone first and going with its carrier, or the carrier first.
At any rate, with Android phones, you’re also buying the manufacturer’s UI layer, generally either HTC Sense or Motoblur. I would encourage you guys to go to the store and play around with the demos and see which one you prefer.
Phones with the Android OS will be able to do the same thing. The big difference is how well it does it. One thing you’ll want to look at is processor size. The bigger the processor the better the phone will run. The HTC Desire has the 1 ghz Snapdragon processor, while the Samsung Galaxy S has the 1 ghz Hummingbird processor. If you’re into multitasking you’ll want the larger processor. If you’re only going to use the phone for calls, texting, e-mail and occasional web browsing you could probably go with a smaller processor.
One thing to keep in mind is that Android sucks batteries dry due to the amount of data they use. A larger processor will help drain the battery even faster.
The only real difference between the HTC Incredible and the HTC Desire is the camera. The Incredible has an 8 megapixel camera while the Desire has a 5 megapixel camera. Otherwise they are the same phone.
I recently made this decision: it came down to the HTC Incredible and the Droid X. You can’t go wrong either way – the advantages of the Droid X are the larger screen and the longer battery life. The Incredible has a better user interface and because it’s smaller is a bit more portable.
My wife and I were in the same situation two weeks ago. She bought the HTC Droid Incredible because the Motorola Droid X was too big for her to hold comfortably. I bought the Motorola Droid X because it was SO BIG!!!
We’re both happy with our purchases, although slightly distressed because their user interfaces are just different enough that I can’t tell her how to do something by looking at my phone and telling her what buttons to push because she always has to push a slightly different sequence of buttons.
Thanks for the answers, everyone. To answer a couple questions that came up: We’re planning to stick with Verizon. I don’t think we’re on a super-tight budget but I’d like the expense to be worth it. That is, if the top-of-the-line phone is $100 more than the cheaper phone (or whatever the difference is), then it’d sure be nice to know just what that $100 buys me.
