Chosing a Smart Phone

[Tony M]

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[CARMandP]

I personally have a Droid X phone. I have Verizon as my carrier and love this phone. It does everything that I need. Not sure about the hype for the Iphone.

[DewayneP]

I have a Droid X from Verizon too. I love it. It does everything I need, plus it's a great phone (great call quality).

[xrac]

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[Alex]

So...choosing a smart phone can be tough, because yes...there are allot of choices! When you choose your next smart phone, unless you buy off contract your next phone, you are deciding for the next 2 years, because you'll be locked in...in most cases.

 

Smartphones are really about the operating system and the hardware. It looks like allot of choices, but in actuallity, it's only 4 major operating systems..

 

Android (All your Motorola Droids, LG Revolution, HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung n Nexus, etc..)

iOS (iPhone only)

BlackBerry (All your BlackBerry devices)

Windows 7 (Nokia, HTC, and whoever else has started to pick it up..)

 

Android has now trumped iOS with 40% of the US market share, only because it's 1 iphone vs a bunch of various Android handsets on the market. Also has a huge ecosystem of apps and features. Android 4.0 is the latest/most appealing version, and available on the Samsung Nexus and most phones in January like the Droid Razr.

 

iPhone, well...it's the iPhone. It's got 28% of the US market share. It's on iOS 5 and has a neat little feature called Siri for a personal assistant. Huge ecosystem of apps, and easy to use. Great hardware.

 

BlackBerry is falling hard, yet they are trying to keep up...The Operating sytem is less appealing with less features, plus plagued with recent outages, unless they overhaul their OS, they're in for some more trouble.

 

Windows 7 is really just starting, growing slowly. More and more apps and is said to be very easy to use. It's based on a tile system for activity. I think it will grow more with windows 8 on both mobile and pcs.

 

There are some other operating systems like webOS (Palm, HP), Meebo..etc. I currently use a Palm Pre 2 which is webOS, and that's because I love the operating system, but it's a dying phone with discontinued hardware. I'm hoping it gets revived, otherwise I will need to make some choices myself here...

 

 

The other big factor to look at is 4G/LTE and how fast it's growing. If you are going to be with a phone for the next 2 years, do you want 4G? It's growing fast, especialy Verizon.

 

In summary...

 

1. Choose an operating system that you like most.

2. If Android, choose good hardware (Nexus or RAZR, etc). The iPhone has one choice and it's very good already.

3. If you want 4G, at this time it's mostly Android phones only. Some carriers have Windows 7 4G.

4. Read online reviews.

[DUFRESNES]

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[DUFRESNES]

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[Chris_NC]

  On 12/1/2011 at 2:31 PM, DUFRESNES said:

It seems to me, if you have had a I phone, you probably want to stay with it. If you have had a droid, you will want the new Razr. I can't wait until January to get mine. I love the droid but the new razr has so much more and it built much better. Check it out..

 

 

I actually drooled a little over that phone.

[TheTrustedMechanic]

  On 12/1/2011 at 2:31 PM, DUFRESNES said:

It seems to me, if you have had a I phone, you probably want to stay with it. If you have had a droid, you will want the new Razr. I can't wait until January to get mine. I love the droid but the new razr has so much more and it built much better. Check it out..

 

I almost ordered that phone for myself. But the non-replaceable battery killed it for me. That and three reviews I read said they dropped it from about couch height onto a soft (carpeted) floor and the Gorilla glass screen shattered. Anyway I've had my Nokia E71 (NOT AT&T's E71x) for about four years. I don't change phones every two years because I really don't care about the "latest and greatest". The Droid Razr had great reviews, but like all 4G LTE phones had terrible reviews regarding battery life. So if the battery dies after 6-8 hours, how long will it last. If after 16 months the battery takes a dive and has to be replaced you have to send it in, be without it for 2 or 4 or 14 days while the battery is replaced. With most normal phones you can just pop the back off and replace the battery yourself, no sweat and only minutes of downtime, not days or weeks. But I did almost order Motorola Droid Razr.

 

The phone I did chose is not really important as it was a personal choice. Since I'm changing from AT&T to Verizon I did have to buy a new phone ans can't just keep going with my trusty old friend the E71 so I did some research and ordered the HTC Rezound. I really don't care about the Beats music but someone else may like it really well. I refuse to consider anything Crapple so the overhyped iphony was out of the question.

 

I found reliable reviews at Cnet.com, Retrevo.com and TestFreaks. There was another but I can't remember where it was now. I also read user reviews and look at the low ratings reviews and look for patterns, like the Gorilla glass breakage from three people with similar conditions. I expect most 1 star and 5 start reviews to be a lot of puffery so I try to look for patters, repeated complaints or other things that especially resonate with me. Otherwise you will always have some idiot who really hates one minor-to-you characteristic and will rate the otherwise great product a 1 and make it look terrible when it was really a minor issue.