Im likely to be in the market for a new handset when my contract expires in a couple of months. Currently have a SE C905
I was looking at getting a SE Satio, but its had a shedload of problems and is a bit clunky, so im not sure i want one.
Toying with getting an iPhone, but have a few things im not keen on, bluetooth, tied to using iTunes, cruddy camera and the whole iPhone evangelism thing.
Can anyone suggest some decent alternatives?
couple of pre-requisites
1) Decent camera (8Mp)
2) Touch screen
3) Decent UI

What does the great cultural melting pot of STW suggest / recommend?

Wot no STW opinion?

8mp camera is severely limiting your choice. 5mp is OK for 99% of needs and opens the market up a lot.

I didn't go for an iPhone because:
1) too big
2) too fragile
3) rubbish camera
4) rubbish battery life

Ended up with a Nokia E72. Not touchscreen but full querty. Best phone I've ever had. Wife has also just got one. She moved from 10 years with SE – took about 2 weeks to get used to the Symbian UI but now loves it

I'm by no means an expert on these things but the Nokia 5800 I have seems pretty good. Pics aren't exactly SLR quality, but seem good enough if lighting is ok. Has been dropped a few times & come through ok, battery also pretty good but best plugged in if used as a Sat-nav.

Then again, it could be the phone equivalent of an Austin Allegro for how much I know about phones. 🙂

Ok, 5Mp camera, what options can you suggest now?

Im still considering the Satio, but its reliability needs to have improved by the time i commit to one. From what i can gather the patches seem to be helping, but there's a way to go yet….

HTC do a lot of nice phones. The HTC HD2 is the latest windows 6.5 one. Getting a lot of good reviews. I've got the older version of it and like it a lot. Takes a good picture and is easy to use with the touchscreen.

I just got an HTC Hero running Android, and I love it. Sat Nav, GPS, WI-Fi, It's a computer as well as a 'phone.

A

go for an iphone…if nothing else it'll give you loads of subject matter for the forum! 😆

Wait and get a Nexus; the new google phone…

Possibly looking at the SE Xperia X10 when it comes out. Assuming SE don't make a pigs ear of their latest new phone. Their recent track record isn't good though.

Isn't the Google phone just a sim free HTC?

It's made by HTC, but with a faster processor than the Hero…. It will be good.

I love my iphone I'm afraid. I'm not a mac fan at all btw. Never had a phone that I've found so useful

Camera is crap but thats the only downside. Its brilliant for so many other things that make that one disadvantage negligable.

Just getting mine unlocked so I can use it with local sim cards when abroad for stints. Just been without it for 3 months and really missed it.

Why do people love their iphones so much, because they just work, really well.

My brother absolutley hates them but the day is looming when he gets one because of the functionality they have over other phones.

Another phone to consider is the blackberry curve, I got on really well with mine and did buy one but it went back inside the trial period because it was going to be really expensive to set up the push email, an extra 40 quid a month. The iphone was ready and waiting to link to the exchange server, no fuss

sorry probably not what you want to hear but its just my experience

All opinions welcome. There seems to be little out there that works as well as an iPhone.

Nexus One of course. Just replaced my iphone with one – it's roughly 1 million times better 😉

Hmm the info i can find on the Xperia X10 looks VERY good….

The Motorola Milestone looks pretty good, too.

Hmm, motorola. Never been a big fan, ui completely lacking in logic normally.

hold on for two weeks and if the n97's next update is the silver bullet (as the n95's 3rd one was) then it's gonna be worth going for, if not then god help me!

One with a 'free' thing like a TV/xbox/PS3 etc? Had an iphone, too delicate and my ability at dropping them when leathered is second to none, screens break easily (when they are in your back pocket and you sort of starsky and hutch it into the car)

I truly can't believe someone actually thinks the Nexus 1 is “a million times better" than an iPhone. That's just so far wide of the mark it's not true. How is it better? Oh, it can multitask. Gosh! Is that it? How much memory has it got? 4Gb onboard with a card slot that will take up to 32Gb. Fine, you've just shelled out a load of dosh for your swanky new phone, now you've got to spend another £100 on a 32Gb SDHC card to take it a bit over the iphone's capacity. The next iPhone, in six months time will be 64Gb. D'you think you can match that with a Nexus? Not a hope in hell, SDXC cards are only just coming on the market, there are few, if any devices that can use them, and a 48Gb will cost you around $450, and a 64Gb around $650. That's a heck of a lot more than the phone. How many apps can it take? Well, my iPhone has around eight screens full, total capacity about 1.75Gb, and two of those are big satnav apps, one the whole SW of England OS mapping. How much space does the Nexus have for apps? 199Mb. The Nexus is like a WinTel computer in that Google just supply an OS into someone elses' machine. There's no guarantee that an app designed to work on another Android phone will work on your Nexus. It doesn't have to, nobody is overseeing compatability, it's caveat emptor. The iPhone is a totally integrated ecology where the apps are tightly controlled to make sure they do work. The only people who don't like that are obsessive hackers who just feel they have the right to get into an OS and grep around to their hearts content. Everyone else, on the other hand, just want a device that works and doesn't need a fifty page manual written in Geek to understand how to do the simplest fracking thing! There's a bloody good reason why the iPhone doesn't need a manual when you buy it; it was created by engineers who are also designers, not engineers who wish they were designers. Huuuge difference.

What he ^ said.
I've got a w995 and it's well tough. Actually does everything an iphone will, nothing like as good as my missis iphone to use though. However the way I treat phones means an Iphone would last about a month for me

CountZero – Member
There's a bloody good reason why the iPhone doesn't need a manual when you buy it;

Yes, you can't do very much with it 😉

p.s. what's so great about all that space you keep going on about? I only have about 1Mb of stuff on my phone, and am unlikely to add much more.
p.p.s. Android is perfectly capable of storing apps on the sd card rather than on internal memory, so there's plenty of space (and android apps are only generally about 10% of the size of iphone ones anyway, due to the much cleaner sdk.

Hmm, motorola. Never been a big fan, ui completely lacking in logic normally.

that was very true in the past but isn't for the Milestone / Droid

Countzero, your post / rant is kinda what puts me off owning an iPhone, the evangelistic attitude to the iPhone. You pretty much say anything else is the work of the devil!
glenh's comment about the amount of available memory is spot on. I really think its OTT. My C905 has about 3Gb which is plenty for my needs. I dont intend to use my phone like an iPod, therefore storage capacity is less of an issue.

satio meant to have SW issues sorted?

I've had a few new phones lately and currently own a HTC HD2, choosing a phone also depends on you, before this HTC i had a HTC magic running on android, and that was a superb phone and before that a Blackberry Storm 2 and a Nokia N96.

The HD2 is a windows phone also superb but to get the most out of it you need to be a little computer savvy, the upgrades and support for this phone on the XDA forums is amazing, the tweaks etc you can do to it are seriously impressive..

The Iphone is without doubt the easiest phone to use has prob the best UI of any phone currently available, but people like myself don't like apple's attitude and the way they do things, they are also upsetting a lot of developers and a lot of these developers are jumping ship and joining the android market as google seem to have a much more open relaxed attitude reguards apps etc…

So if you want a phone that does most of what you want you won't go far wrong with an Iphone, if you want a phone that with a few fairly easy tweaks will blow the Iphone away then the HTC HD2 is awesome…

Other wise what sits in between both these is the new Google Nexus phone, easier to use than the windows phone and lots of apps etc…

Supposedly the Satio is sorted, but I think the damage to peoples confidence has been done. Im a big SE fan. On my 5th SE phone now and the latest phone (C905) has been replaced 3 times in a year.
I'd like a satio, but i'd want to be confident that it's not going be crap before signing up for one for 2 years!

Also to mention i was really dissapointed with the windows marketplace it really does suck, but take a look around and there are literally 10's thousands of apps out there for windows phones they just haven't stuck them all in the same place…

And ditto what someone else above said i think the satio is nearly sorted now, with the latest updates…