Help me choose a smartphone!

cardgame

cardgame

Obsessively Opposed to the Typical
Joined
Apr 1, 2009
Messages
15,106
Location
Misery
Hey all, going away to college in a month or so and looking to upgrade to a smartphone to help me out. The choices are restricted to U.S. Cellular's lineup, so if you want to suggest something, there's your list.

I've narrowed it down to two Android phones (without looking at Blackberry; feel free to convince me of my erroneous ways): the HTC One V and the Galaxy Samsung S-II.

They are both $130, but with a bit of a difference of technical specs.

The SII boasts the following impressive hardware:

AndroidTM 2.3 (Gingerbread)
4.52" Super AMOLED Plus Touchscreen (480 x 800)
1.2 GHz Dual Core Processor
8 MP Camera with LED Flash
Wi-Fi Capable
3G Capable
2 MP Front-facing Camera
Full HTML Browser with Adobe Flash support
16GB of Internal Memory

but lacks the modern OS of the HTC One V:

AndroidTM 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with HTC SenseTM
3.7" WVGA Super LCD2
Touchscreen (480 x 800)
1 GHz QualcommTM Snapdragon S2 Processor
5 MP Camera with Back-illuminated Sensor and f/2.0 Aperture 28mm Lens
Camera also features advanced low light capture, continuous shooting functionality, panorama mode and High Dynamic Range (HDR)
Full HTML Browser with Adobe Flash support
Wi-Fi Capable
4 GB, 512 RAM, microSDTM expandable to 32 GB and 25GB Dropbox* - free for 2 years

Additional considerations: the HTC One also features Beats Audio; along with the free Dropbox storage, they're enticing features. (Does that work through the sound card or the speakers? If the latter, not as enticing - pretty much all phone speakers suck in my experience, regardless of how advanced it may be. If I can still experience it through headphones, definitely a plus.)


I don't plan on playing many games or surfing too much - ideal plan for my budget is 2GB. Therefore the extra hardware of the S-II isn't that big of a deal to me - I'm mostly interested in the advanced 8MP camera and 1080p video recording. A big concern is battery life - the SII has a pretty bad rep for that, while the HTC One has had reviews claiming quite long battery life, lasts all day, etc.
 
Android 2.3 is really awful compared to 4.0, don't even consider it.

The Nexus series is generally the only Android phones I'll recommend, but it doesn't work with US Cellular, whose list of supported phones looks to be pretty dismal.

If I had to get a phone with US Cellular, I'd probably make my decision based on which phone is easiest to root and install cyanogenmod on, which after checking the cyanogenmod wiki looks to be none of them.
 
Cyanogenmod is compatible with the Galaxy SII, and Samsung phones are generally very easy for a noob to root and install custom ROMs on.

Having said that, you shouldn't bother getting a phone that doesn't have Android 4.0 on it, being as it was released nearly a year ago.

You'll need to try out the cameras of each phone in the shop to compare them yourself.

All phone batteries last pretty much as long as each other. You'll easily get a day out of your phone, and you'll need to charge it every day. No phone lasts longer than a day.
 
Update: sprung some extra for the SIII, amazing phone. Thread closed.
 
I'm pretty happy with ICS and Touchwiz, never really enticed by cyanogenmod...
 
Zelig said:
Android 2.3 is really awful compared to 4.0, don't even consider it.
Click to expand...
Samsung already distributed update to the latest Android version (some carriers may delay the upgrade).
The upgrade can be done OTA at any time.

Zelig said:
The Nexus series is generally the only Android phones I'll recommend, but it doesn't work with US Cellular, whose list of supported phones looks to be pretty dismal.
Click to expand...
The main issue I have with Nexus is that it is a Google phone.
This means you are constrained to use only and exclusively Google services.
For example to import your contacts list you must upload all your contacts to gMail and then synch them on your phone.
Picasa is automatically enabled in your photo gallery, etc. etc.
If you are already a heavy users of those services then you'll be happy.
If not... well... it will be frustrating.

Due to my work I get to use a large number pf phones and my conclusion so far is that Samsung Galaxy 2 is perfectly suited for all uses with one of the best hardware and the best screen available on phones.

At the time being I could think to change it only with a Samsung Galaxy 3 that is simply amazing, but bigger than the SG2

Zelig said:
If I had to get a phone with US Cellular, I'd probably make my decision based on which phone is easiest to root and install cyanogenmod on, which after checking the cyanogenmod wiki looks to be none of them.
Click to expand...
This is not something I would suggest to all users... I would reserve for those who can really take the best out of it.
 
The Galaxy S2 on US Cellular has not been updated from 2.3 - it's not the same phone as the GSM version. Even the versions that have been updated are only just getting the update recently, far too long after the release of ICS to be acceptable.

I'm not really sure what you mean about Google services, you can pretty easily use non-Google services as well on an AOSP device as you can on any other ROM variant, just run through the settings and enable/disable what you want, then grab some apps to make up the difference.

I don't generally recommend Cyanogenmod to users, since I recommend Nexus devices which don't really need it. ;)


edit: Also, I dunno, how familiar you are with US mobile service, but it's different from the typical European country - essentially every carrier uses different network bands, so by and large phones aren't compatible between carriers (notable exception being the iphone which is compatible between at&t and Verizon, and pentaband HSPA phones, which are compatible between at&t and t-mobile), and the vast majority of consumers sign multi-year contracts for carrier-locked phones.
 
Zelig said:
The Galaxy S2 on US Cellular has not been updated from 2.3 - it's not the same phone as the GSM version. Even the versions that have been updated are only just getting the update recently, far too long after the release of ICS to be acceptable.
Click to expand...
I was forgetting the OP was not from a free market country :)
In the free world we already got the latest update for all androids.


Zelig said:
I'm not really sure what you mean about Google services,
Click to expand...
When I used the (samsung galaxy) Nexus I noticed immediately 2 issues:

a. the google search bar could be not removed from the main screen: it was staying there to waste space.
To remove it I had to uninstall the application itself (ok for me, but more difficoult for average user)... and surprise the space formerly used by the search bar could be not occupied by any other widget or icon!

b. You could not use standard software to migrate your contacts from an old (Samsung or Nokia) to the phone, but you had to upload to gmail and synch.
naturally there are other ways but they entice a much more complex import procedure, but again not for the average user.

then there were others... but the first feeling was to be as constrained as with an Apple product.

Zelig said:
you can pretty easily use non-Google services as well on an AOSP device as you can on any other ROM variant, just run through the settings and enable/disable what you want, then grab some apps to make up the difference.
Click to expand...
Yes and no... as in the example of the search bar, you can disable it but the phone remain somehow "polluted".
Similar for Picasa synch... I disabled but then I got some photos from picasa polluting my phone photo library.


Zelig said:
I don't generally recommend Cyanogenmod to users, since I recommend Nexus devices which don't really need it. ;)
Click to expand...
yes... depends which Nexus we are talking about: GsmArena lists 10 handsets with the name nexus :)


Zelig said:
edit: Also, I dunno, how familiar you are with US mobile service, but it's different from the typical European country - essentially every carrier uses different network bands, so by and large phones aren't compatible between carriers (notable exception being the iphone which is compatible between at&t and Verizon, and pentaband HSPA phones, which are compatible between at&t and t-mobile), and the vast majority of consumers sign multi-year contracts for carrier-locked phones.
Click to expand...
yes, my work made me familiar with such unfortunate condition of the USA market.
 
That's... interesting, wolfigor. The S3 lets you customize all of its widgets and doesn't have any issues removing any of the stock widgets.
 
cardgame said:
That's... interesting, wolfigor. The S3 lets you customize all of its widgets and doesn't have any issues removing any of the stock widgets.
Click to expand...
Yes, the screen is all yours! :)
As far as I know only google was blocking areas of the screen for its widgets without any possibility to remove them.

In terms of pre-installed apps you still have a number of (relatively useless) google apps pre-installed.
However they live in the apps menu and you can exile them to a sub-folder far fro your eyes. :)
 
Zelig said:
Android 2.3 is really awful compared to 4.0, don't even consider it.

The Nexus series is generally the only Android phones I'll recommend, but it doesn't work with US Cellular, whose list of supported phones looks to be pretty dismal.

If I had to get a phone with US Cellular, I'd probably make my decision based on which phone is easiest to root and install cyanogenmod on, which after checking the cyanogenmod wiki looks to be none of them.
Click to expand...

What's so special about 4.0? I have the original Droid running 2.x
 
civ_king said:
What's so special about 4.0? I have the original Droid running 2.x
Click to expand...
It's a MASSIVE improvement over 2.3, I can't even begin to describe. Whereas 2.3 feels sluggish and a bit second-class, 4.0 is incredibly polished and delightful to use. Have a go on a Samsung Galaxy SIII in a phone shop and compare with the 2.3 phones.
 
Mise said:
Have a go on a Samsung Galaxy SIII in a phone shop and compare with the 2.3 phones.
Click to expand...
Samsung Galaxy SIII has an hardware that most of the other phones using Android 2.3 can only dream about.
Good part of that wonderful experience is due to the quad core processor + GPU mounted by the GS3 (there are very few other handsets, if any, mounting a Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9)
 
Yeah, but that won't make a difference on the UI. My first gen Tegra 2 phone running 4.0 is pretty much as polished as the SIII running 4.0 when it comes to interacting with the UI. The powerful SoC in the SIII is great for intensive tasks like games, multitasking, soft-decoding video, etc, but you won't see any difference just playing with it in the shop.
 
Zelig said:
Hopefully you're still happy with it in a year when Samsung still hasn't updated and Google is up to 5.5.
Click to expand...

It seems that no carriers update the operating systems after release, or at least not after a month out. I have a Galaxy S I and it's still running Android 2.1. I'm happy with it, but I'm no power user.

The phone itself, however, seems to be on it's last legs.
 
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