Finally joining the 21st century. Advice needed.

[lionofgod]

So, I think it's finally time for me to give in, toss the antique old cellphone that thinks that "alarm clock" is a fancy app, and get a real smartphone. I've crossed the wishing-I-had-the-internet-in-my-pocket-twice-a-week-for-a-month threshold, and it's not as though I don't spend that much per month on coffee

Comments

[jadia]

Criteria which you haven't mentioned but which I find important:

* It's actually small enough to carry around and keep in my pocket.
* You can't use a touchscreen with gloves while standing in the freezing boston wind in the winter. :( (Granted, I think all smartphones have this problem, but it was an unexpected disad.)
* If you call people while in the car, voice-dialing is useful.
* How long can the phone hold a charge while using it? I got used to charging once every day or 1.5 days, but any shorter I'd be annoyed.
* I never use the wifi, except when traveling somewhere where I can't use cell signal (ie, foreign travel where I don't want to bring a netbook).
* My phone works fine inside the buildings where I spend my time...

I have Sprint and the Palm Pre, but wouldn't recommend it for you (no real app store, also was just bought out by HP I think who is going to stop developing phones.) I have been pretty happy with it though - it's a great smartphone for me.

[nakor]

Gosh. WiFi is so much faster, I've considered turning off cellular data.

Voice dialing is awesome. It would be better if it had Majel Barrett's voice.

A frozen hot dog works as a fine stylus on most capacitive touch screens.

[jadia]

Right, a frozen hot dog, I carry one in my pocket all the time. :p

[lakmiseiru]

Regarding gloves - I've been able to successfully use capacitive touchscreens with very thin gloves or through my pants pocket. If frequent use through gloves is a problem, you might try thin gloves to see if that helps. Not that it's an easy fix, but it *is* possible.

[nakor]

You'll be in a walled garden either way. Android is open to the carriers, not to you. The carriers then each build their own walled garden

[cfox]

Hmm, I'm paying ~$70/month for just me on the cheapest plan on the cheapest android phone Sprint had for me (an HTC Hero - a pressured decision when my Palm Centro failed).

I found the transition rough (I needed to get the hang of "oh, crippled by bugs? look for a free app in the marketplace to work around") but I'm not convinced I could've done better overall. I'm uninterested in sysadmining my phone.

I use SMS heavily, and voice very lightly, since I am nearly incomprehensible over a compressed voice connection.

[ratatosk]

Highly neglected but important feature: voice quality.

This is one reason I'm wary of getting a smart phone -- I want a phone that is still adequate as a phone.

[nakor]

The iPhone has good voice quality with the wired headset, okay BlueTooth quality, and barely acceptable earpiece quality. The 4 may be better---I don't use it enough to tell.

[seborn]

I recently got a Motorola Droid. The new Droids may have fixed these problems, but I have two beefs about it:

1) As ratatosk says, voice quality. The voice quality is better than my old phone, which I had for eight years and had deteriorated so badly that I usually had conversations on speaker phone because that was the only way I could make anything out. Is it significantly better? Not really.

2) The phone can hold a charge for a few days, given my usage. However, it has this weird bug where sometimes it will be half-full and insist that it has barely any charge and you need to plug it in right this second. It may be a problem with my phone in particular, but I don't know, and it's kind of annoying.