Not for playing music, for listening to other people.

Current phone is awful LG Viewty and I’ve suffered it for 18 months on contract. I’m now after a non-contract phone that just does calls and texts. No crappy camera, no video or mp3. Just a nice clear earpiece and a decent mic so that others can hear me. Decent battery would be nice too.

Remember in T3 and Stuff mags they sometimes have “bog standard” phones in there but can’t remember any makes or models.

Woman I work with lost her mobi and came in today with a PAYG Samsung she got from Tescos. Looked pretty nifty, can’t comment on call quality, but it only cost her fifteen quid! Worth a punt, if you don’t like it, wait til the ten quids worth of calls provided run out and give it away and buy another. You’re only down a fiver…

Samsung M110 Tough Phone. Calls and texts. Really loud and clear ear piece, very loud speaker. Very very tough. Gadget show drove over it with a tractor and it was fine. Battery lasts about 6 or 7 days between charges and it has a useful torch. Love it.

with some phones there is a code that you can enter on the keypad to improve the sounds quality
it is set at a lower quality to prolong battery life

My Nokia 6500 Slide seems good, much better than the Samsung Omnia that I also have.

my old Nokia 6300 was great at doing most things. Except being a telephone.

it was (a) too short for my huuuuge heed and (b) the microphone was rubbish. So if I wanted to hear who was on the other end, they couldn’t hear me, and vice versa.

I’ve now got a T-Mobile G1 – it seems pretty good at being a phone, and even does internet quite well. Only downer is the camera has no zoom or nighttime facility. But if I wanted a camera with zoom or flash, I wouldn’t have bought a telephone…

my k850i sounds great

esp the james brown-the boss ring tone 🙂

not an iPhone – the making and receiving calls on it is about the worst bit.

Is there really so much difference to phone reception? Is it anything to do with networks? My missus has two phones, an LG Viewty and a Nokia N95 8GB. Both unlocked and seem absolutely fine on any network, I can’t notice any difference. My own now rather old Sony Ericsson W580i also sounds fine, never had any reception problems….plus it’s a great music player so a bit scared to change it coz it works so well.