I need a new mobile but in the back of my mind was to buy a simple £150 laptop for websurfing etc rather than using my big desktop all the time.
Do you think there is any justification in spending more and getting a big phone like the Samsung Galaxy S II instead of something small and simple?
I’m thinking of getting a galaxy S (first version) anyway…
Someone help justify this for me 😉

Do it, i run a htc sensation and after installing dolphin browser on it i cant remember the last time i turned my desktop on!!

I’ve got a HP laptop and just got a cheap smartphone. Despite my Bro-in-law (iphone) saying I’d barely use the laptop once I got a smartphone, I disagree. I can’t be arsed with the little smartphone ‘virtual’ keyboard. So, I keep up to date with the smartphone, but still post and do internet stuff (shopping/banking etc) on the laptop.

50% agreeing so far, sounds good enough to me. out of curiosity, what phone did you get B.A.Nana?

Depends how good the keyboard is, and how adept you are at using it. Once I got my iPhone the laptop became virtually redundant, because I was using the phone at work, sitting in the coffee shop, in the pub…
The laptop needed to be plugged into the mains to get any meaningful use out of it, and an external h/drive because its 80Gb drive was inadequate for all the stuff I have. I now have a Mac Mini connected to my TV, which is much quicker to access, but I still use the phone as my primary computer; I’m upstairs in bed at the mo’, and I’ve just been on eBay after a high capacity external powerpack for it, which would otherwise mean having to go back downstairs and sit in a cold room, or wait until tomorrow. Maybe it’s just me, but something I can carry in my pocket’s preferable to something that weighs several pounds and needs a bag to carry.

I continue to use my lap top at home to keep connected daily. But when at work and out and about my Motorola Defy running Motoblur is excellent. My view is I ‘need’ both. Cheers.

Screen size can be a pain on smart phones especially with menus etc. I still use a netbook.

If you could connect your smartphone to the tv screen and wireless keyboard then that would be different!

If you buy a £150 netbook for general web browsing then it will be so much slower then a PC or a normal laptop than it’s better to up the budget to a normal laptop. If I would have to use my OH’s netbook only then I prefer to use my Defy or her iPhone as they are both quicker. However a lot of the time I’ll prefer to use my laptop. 13.3″ screen and 5-6hrs battery life so quite good for portability. Would not want to constantly look at a 3.7″ screen.

Have you thought about getting a tablet instead? It would make sense rather then having a slow netbook, a PC and a smartphone. My brother was saying Tesco is reducing numbers of lines of electronic stock so they were selling Galaxy Tabs for £150. Also Dell Streak 7’s were going cheap. I think Motorola XOOM is cheap in the US now as well.

I had a play on a Galaxy S2 and on a normal Galaxy, on a Desire and Desire S and I have a Defy now. I’m not an advanced user and for me apart from the screen size, there was not much difference in terms of performance. People will show you some benchmarks results etc etc but for a normal user it really does not make much difference. My Defy works as smooth as my brothers Desire S and it cost 120 quid second hand compared to 200 for his HTC. Galaxy S is now pretty cheap as well, going for £150-ish or less if you look on Gumtree etc. I’ll probably get a tablet eventually as I think it would work fine, a normal smartphone (not the newest/bestest £400 do it all model), tablet for general web browsing and a PC/Laptop for everything else.

I used to have a desktop for home use and a laptop for travel.

I now have a laptop for home use and a netbook for travel.

I’ve just got a smartphone, but it is no substitute for a proper computer.

if u could connect your smartphone to the tv screen and wireless keyboard then that would be !different

My motorola atrix does that 🙂

sounds like you need a tablet !

have a laptop for home which we sometimes hook up to the tv

and a smartphone for being out and about and other things. I’m typing this as I have a dump !

smartphone only would be crap for watching vids online too

If you buy a £150 netbook for general web browsing then it will be so much slower then a PC or a normal laptop

For web browsing? 😯

For example, my OH’s netbook has an Atom processor and 2GB ram, when I was using it to browse STW forum flash was killing the processor. Watching youtube on fullscreen (or even in the browser) at anything other then 2 lowest settings is like a slideshow as well. Anything that uses flash or needs better graphics to watch better picture quality videos will be a struggle for the Atom. Even bottom of the range laptops will have dual core processors and better graphics that will handle all that stuff much better. Cheap netbooks will come with low capacity battery as well, 2-3hrs max on a charge. You’ll have to pay extra for the bigger battery and in reality the 10hrs claimed runtime (like on my mums Samsung NC10) is only 5-7hrs max.

With so many good tablets out now I would prefer a tablet over a netbook any time. But I would still keep a normal laptop/PC.

B.A. (and others who don’t like their phone keyboard)
this is great !

I wouldn’t use a phone instead of a laptop – I do use the phone for browsing but only when the lappie’s not available.

You could check out the Motorola Atrix, as Rocketdog says you can connect stuff to it – they make a very thin laptop thing that you put the phone on and it turns into a quite capable browser, still running android though so no Windows bloatware.

The phone has a dual core 1GHz cpu so it’s pretty snappy. £200-£250 though so it depends if you already have the phone or not I suppose.

scaredypants – i’ve read a lot about that in the reviews of samsungs – is it really that good? i don’t understand how it can turn the input (the swiping finger) into something usable. sounds far too clever to work properly.

I realise its not going to be usable as a proper computer but for reading forums, laughing at reddit, searching ebay etc i can’t see a phone being that bad.

mieszko – thanks for the mini review up there, the galaxy, galaxy s2 and the defy were 3 out of 4 on my short list. interesting you went for the defy, reviews told me it was slow and had a bad camera. what are the photos like? (the choice of phone could knock out my need for a basic point and shoot camera too you see)

I’ve had a htc desire and can’t remember the last time I used my laptop. Some stuff is actually easier on the phone. Ebay, paypal and photobucket as examples of things I use a lot

I went for the Defy as I really like new Motorola Android phones. It has 800mhz processor so a Desire/Galaxy S with a 1ghz processor will be quicker but tbh I can’t see much between them. Pinch to zoom, multitouch screen, gorilla glass display, all very nice features. There is a newer Defy (Defy +) out with a 1ghz processor and Android 2.3 it should work as good as the Samsung or HTC offerings.
Pics are really good, apparently some are cameras are HD video capable after a software mod. 5MP camera, LED flash, pics are very good and much better imho then from my oh’s 3GS. Pictures take from 1.5-2.5MB.


Here are some pictures I took with the Defy when I was selling my old XT720 (don’t buy that Milestone XT720 as it was shit). So the quality is pretty good.
Can’t complain about the phone being slow. However if you get one then don’t upgrade to Android 2.2 as first of all Swype will stop working and I think the 2.1 was working much better on it. The Defy+ has Android 2.3 from the start. There are some unofficial updates for the original Defy as the phone is quite popular, I think you can get Cyanogen 7 or whatever it’s called but I’m a regular user so have no idea how to root the phone and put that on it.

Summing up. If you want rugged, waterproof and shockproof phone with scratch resistant screen (Gorilla glass) then get the Defy. I’m happy with mine, just regret updating to Android 2.2 as imho 2.1 worked better on it. Upside is you’ll get a good condition one second hand for around £100-120. Samsung Galaxy will be a bit faster and with the Desire might have more unofficial updates/mods from the likes of XDA Developers forum etc but they still cost around £150+ second hand. Motorola is well made, has a very nice screen and I’m sticking to it for longer as it does everything I want from a phone.

If you want to spend more then the Motorola Atrix can be found pretty cheap at the moment as well. It has all the new stuff, dual core processor etc, basically just like Galaxy S2 or HTC Sensation but I’ve seen boxed examples go for £180-200 on Gumtree, which is £80-100 less then for the other two. And because Google bought Motorola mobiles division updates might come out more often then before.

thanks for that sp I’ll give it a look.

Dirtbiker I’ve got an Orange Monte Carlo, it’s as cheap as you can get in big screen smartphones. Mine cost £77 with quidco cash back (offers finished) and I get a monthly discount off my Orange broadband/home phone. I expect it would be a bit clunky for someone downgrading from a latest £500 smartphone, but I’m coming at it from a 10yr old Nokia, so it’s superb AFAIC. You can’t unlock it yet, so had to go with Orange network, but Orange will unlock it after 3 months, so then I’ll maybe go giffgaff. You can get rid of all the Orange branding and bloatware tho.

I got it just as much for all the other stuff, GPS/sat nav, maps, mp3 musicplayer, radio, diary, alarm clock etc. And, I didn’t want to get left behind with the technology, this was a very cheap way of getting into it, without being tied for 2 years.
As far as the keyboard, I had similar issues with texting on the old phones,just too noodley, so maybe it’s just me. I definitely would have given up trying to write all this on the phone. 🙂 Great for surfing tho and contrary to what I said above, good for shopping and the like, where you just need to push buttons rather than type loads of sh1t, like this.

As an aside,

I’d avoid the original Galaxy and the Galaxy S. Both have had more than their fair share of problems.

mieszko,
there’s something wrong with your other half’s samsung n10. i run a n110, which is same internals, slightly different pad, keyboard and display i believe.
i run win7 with 2gb of ram very successfully. slight lag when running multiple applications, but when browsing no problems at all.

i use a desire but would have to be particularly interested to post on here using it. the touch-screen keyboards are pretty good, but they’re still one finger jobs because of their size, so you’re ability to type ( unless using a swype type app, which i’v never tried ) is still limited.

i have an atom based ‘desktop’ at home, an i5 laptop at work with a large screen, which is pretty fruity, but is heavy, and the afore-mentioned samsung. the netbook goes out on jobs with me. i’d have to be away for over a week before i thought about taking the laptop.

what molegrips said.

I’ve got an atrix and use the hd media connector thing to my tv….the lapdock is meant to be mint but I haven’t invested because I have a laptop and there is now need for me to

. Both have had more than their fair share of problems.

Galaxy S user here, no probs, great phone 🙂 What was wrong with yours ?

I really like the idea of the Atrix, but for the price of the laptop dock, you could get an ok laptop.

I do like the idea of using it with a bluetooth keyboard/mouse and an external screen.

Yeah but it’s not an OK laptop, it’s a very fast android laptop. So it’ll be far quicker to work with, no Windows bloat etc. Of course the trade-off is software capability. It’s apparently pretty good – you can work with all your phone contacts and appointments and stuff immediately, also all your android apps if you want.

I’m not going for it, mind – a bit of a niche application but the OP sounds like he might be a good candidate.