Currently have a Desire S, contract is up and as the GPS chipset has failed I want to replace it.

Looked at the latest crop of high end phones and they are all HUUUUGE, really don’t want anything bigger that the desire s.

iPhone 5 is a possible, but it is ££££’s and I’d prefer not to pay that much.

Priorities are battery life, BBC iplayer (so no windows), gmail. Most of the phones I’ve looked at which are the right size get crap reviews, so after real life suggestions….

motorola razr i

I had exactly the same dilemma in September. Really liked my desire s. I’m now on a HTC one s. A bigger phone but you’ll be amazed at how quickly you get used to it.

Nexus 4, shirley.

iPlayer is being developed for Windows Phone 8 – but without the download option you get on iPhone.

I don’t find TCO of iPhones bad at all – buy when they come out, still get good money for them (even at the recyclers) 18+ months later. The Android / WP equivalents all seem to be showing wear or have knackered buttons and even if they’re perfect you get offered about 38p for them.

Go to a phone shop and play with all the devices in your price range. You’ll quickly get a feel for which one is best suited.

I’m starting shopping for new phones well in advance of my upgrade. This was my thread.

I’d discounted iPhones, due to being a hater, but also the fact that we don’t have any other apple kit and I’m suspicious of stuff like iTunes after seeing how it stuffed up other people’s PCs. But should I consider it over stuff like the Experia Z, Razr or Lumina 920? The physical device did not impress at all.

I think I posted exactly the same thread as I changed my Desire S for ultimately a Samsung S3 mini.

I would have gone for a Razr i as recommended on one of my threads but couldn’t get one through work.

The S3 mini is a good size but I wouldn’t really recommend it as it’s a bit slow.

I’ve just got the new HTC one. Fantastic sound through headphones and the speakers, very sharp screen and decent camera (miles better than my Iphone4).
The only thing I miss is the home button that you can click and it is fairly big.

S4 is out that’s worth a look, a little bit bigger and more powerful than the HTC but a lot less premium-feeling. Have a google I guess?

HTC will never get another penny from this household.

They produced a smartphone that my wife was suckered into buying that had a tiny amount of memory, then they bundled some games and software with it that you can’t remove.

You will play our games, you will enjoy them. PLAY THE GAMES! PLAY OUR GAMES! Our games are more important than any app you might want to use.

**** off HTC.

Sounds like an ID Ten T error to me molgrips.

OP – You probably need to give us a budget to get a useful recommendation, unless money is no object?

The S3 mini is more of a similar size to your current phone?

S3 mini is an option, wasn’t too keen on the physical design. Liked the look of the LG optimus L5 II, but that’s seemingly not really available in the UK? That razr i looked OK, but no FM radio which I use, so would like to have.

Budget isn’t really an issue, but why pay ££££’s for iPhone 5 when an android phone at half the price will do the saem job?

I changed from the Desire at the start of the year and I also didn’t want a massive handset.

I weighed up the S3 mini, but it’s specs are no better than the S2 (and worse in some cases) so I got one of those dead cheap instead. It’s a nice step up from the Desire but it’s not cutting edge. Having said that though, I upgraded to the latest version of Android last week (was on 4.0.4, now on 4.1.2) and the new version is much much smoother.

Sounds like an ID Ten T error to me molgrips

A what now?

Still on my old HTC Desire. I could have upgraded in March 2012 but didn’t want to move onto a higher tariff and still haven’t found anything that really makes me go “I want it. Now.”

If I can get a decent deal on the HTC One, I may be tempted.

Molgrips, which HTC handset gave you grief?

HTC Chacha. She liked it because it was the only Android with a keyboard. However with something like 140Mb of internal memory, it’s next to useless. What galls is that there’s lots of stuff on there you can’t remove.

We should have rooted it, but it still doesn’t have a lot of memory even then. Rooting and custom ROMs aren’t all that well developed it seems. We may do it when it’s no longer her main phone, and unlock it for foreign travel purposes.

The annoing thing was the company attitute that would lead them to do stupid stuff like that. I’m sure newer phones are better but we just didn’t want to reward such behaviour with repeat business!

Hmmm…. 140Mb is next to useless.

The internal storage on my Desire was an issue until I rooted it. Not a problem now, although performance has suffered very slightly since.

I really liked my Desire S FWIW and would have happily had another HTC if there had been one with the features I wanted.

Having a similar crisis deciding on a smartphone here.

I don’t really want something as big as an S3 but I’m struggling to get past how good a deal
This Samsung S3 is.

Also recently bought the S3 MINI for the Mrs and she’s very happy with that.

A what now?

Yeah. I’ve just had this conundrum. I was gonna get a HTC One S a while back, but dithered and all the cheap deals disappeared & now the phone isn’t easily available on good deals.

The One S for me was a good compromise between performance & size.

I wanted to replace my HTC Desire with something that was perhaps a little bigger, but with a decent spec in terms of speed, memory, screen resolution etc.
There doesn’t seem to be ‘small’ high end phones though. The manufacturer’s seem to think that if you want a small phone, you must want a cheap phone.

I ended up getting an Xperia T on Three for £18/month from buymobilephones.net – and am pretty pleased with it so far. There are a few annoyances with it, but nothing major.
All the reviews reckon the battery life is cak, but it seems OK for my ‘normal’ use and I normally have it charging in the car or can plug it into a monitor at my desk while at work. It did eat the battery to start with, but I found loads of apps that were constantly updating & syncing, so just changed all their settings and that improved it massively.
The screen is very good (although the reviewsa are correct about contrast falling off when not viewed head on), the camera is great and all the other bits seem pretty good too.
I bought some NFC tags for it, so I can alter the phone set-up at work, in the car, when I go to sleep etc. but I haven’t really fiddled about with that yet….

Ah.. I see.. well.. me and most of the googlesphere then.. HTC put undeletable games on the Chacha.

Ah.. I see.. well.. me and most of the googlesphere then.. HTC put undeletable games on the Chacha.

Most manufacturers/networks do this, particularly on their budget ranges. Presumably they get paid to include things, much like Dell used to do on PCs.