Your Top Mobile Phone Recommendation [reviews]

[SubZero]

It's that time again; it occurs once ever 3yrs for me but it's here.

Time to get a new mobile.

I've been following the market for some time now, and noticed how easily it is to get totally lost in it with so many decent looking phones around.

My top contenders (for my price band)
- iPhone 8GB
- Nokia N95 8GB
- Blackberry Pearl 8120

Having never owned any of these my comments are primarily based on my research and hearsay from owners.

iPhone
Pro
- Top MP3 playback quality
- Very nice looking menu system and handset
- innovative technologies
- Permenantly tied into GoogleMail
- Access to Wireless Hotspots for free
- New software coming soon
- Can hook it up to computers, car stereos etc

Con
- Handset fee + 18month contract is a killer (£899 total)
- Software apparently crashes alot
- Touch-screen-only controls can be fiddly to work (big fingers, little buttons)
- Camera functions can apparently be very restrictive (no zoom, no flash)

Nokia N95 8GB
Pro
- Cheaper than the iPhone (no handset cost and £5 less per month)
- nearly same functionality
- Micro-SD Card upgradability
- Nice looking handset (etc)
- A-GPS functionality
- MP3 playback

Con
- Apparently very easy to damage and break
- Battery life leaves alot to be desired.


Blackberry Pearl 8120
Pro
- It's a Blackberry
- Automatic Email checking
- Most functional Web Browser out of the lot
- SD Card upgradability
- GPS functionality
- MP3 playback
- Robust
- £5 cheaper than iPhone per month; no handset cost

Con
- Still resembles a brick
- Battery life deteriorates fast during mediocre-intense use


It's your turn for reviews and recommendations - please avoid horrendous phones, to keep the list to the best.

[Mr.Popo]

Kyocera KX414
Pros
- Below fifty bucks
- You can chuck it against a wall as many times as you want and it'll work perfectly (I've had mind for six or seven years)
- It's got Tetris

Cons
- It doesn't have all that shit you really didn't need anyway (internet, MP3 player, everything that for some reason justifies paying 600 bucks to call your friends)

[Lomax]

No idea. I'm always totally clueless and buy the most horrible crap when it comes to phones.

[Moe]

I have the N-95, let me clear up two misconceptions:

a) not easy to break. I've dropped it several times, sat on it, banged it against walls and it survived without a scratch.

b) it's not just A-GPS, it actually has a SIRF-III series GPS chip in there, so it'll work even without a cell phone signal. It can use A-GPS in parallel for faster localization though.

It also has a radio receiver which is nice, and some lifeblog shit if you're into taking pictures and immediately uploading them to someplace. It runs a version of the Symbian OS which means that there are a bunch of tools for it, including an IRC client so you never have to miss those precious #homeworld moments again.

[The5thElephant]

Go with the N95 or iPhone.

A couple points about the iPhone. The SDK is coming out so lots of nice apps soon, and it can do any email, not just gMail. Also I have yet to see any iPhone freeze, and my friend says his has never frozen despite unlocking it and adding 3rd party apps.

But it IS expensive.

[Stripe7]

I have an iPhone, I use the AT&T Edge service and I Jailbroke it not to change service providers but because I wanted the mobile terminal apps. With it jailbroken it does everything I need.

1. Mobile Terminal, allows me to ssh to work computers and do work from my mobile phone. Allows me to run unix commands on the iPhone.
2. I have installed a light web server on my iPhone so I can use the Safari Browser to read the 100 or so eBooks I have.
3. Movies and music it does natively. I have my favorite movies and MP3's of my Enya CD's on it.
4. Calendering and contact sync's with my Yahoo stuff.
5. I can install IRC and AIM chat clients, do not see the need to idle in #Homeworld from my iPhone tho.
6. It does a bit more email than just gMail.
7. I have 3 games installed on it, tetris, chess and klondike.
8. Two web apps I use, moviefone and TrafficGauge.

It is a very flexible system, with the beta-SDK out and SDL-MAME libraries being ported it will not be long before DosBox is ported over as well. Currently the NES emulator has been ported over and a PSP emulator as well. Neither of which is of interest to me, but DosBox is as it means another platform I can play X-COM on! oh scummVM has also been ported over as well, you can buy and play some really old games as well with that.

[Paladin]

I heartily recommend the T-Mobile Wing

I got one for myself for Christmas. It does everything an Iphone can do (And more), has a full qwerty keyboard, internet, IM, email, wifi, bluetooth, plays mp3s and videos, etc, etc.

I got it for $70 (And the offer I got is probably still running, although the price fluctuates slightly), with a mere 1 year contract, with a standard priced phone plan, and a mere $20 a month extra for unlimited Internet (Meaning completely unlimited data transfers).

The only drawback I can possibly think of is that I don't know if the special offer I got is available in Europe. It's still cheaper than an iPhone even at list price though.

[Harmanoff]

I can only add that the one person i know that is the biggest gadget freak i've ever met and also a true radio technician/geek in heart and soul(ie actually knows shit) have a T-mobile wing. That he is happy with it is pretty much the only stamp of approval i'd need.. if i was a gadget freak that is but i am more of a buy as little as possible person.

The same person is switching to iPhone this summer when he can buy it in the states however. I know a couple of people here that have cracked the phone which means you can use it in Sweden despite it still not having been unlocked for a provider here. Everyone speaks highly of it. But, as already stated, it is expensive. And sexy.

[Slash]

Have you looked at the N82 and the Sony Erricsson K850? Both are in roughly the same price range as the N95 and the iPhone.

The N82 is basically the N95 with more or less functionality and battery life when compared to the N95. The K850 has an amazing battery life but its not a smart-phone, but is a great all around phone that will keep satisfied. Both are 5 megapixal camera phones and perform great at producing great quality photos.

Read both phone's review on that site or even other phones, as this site gives excellent reviews of them.

[motiv-8]

You should take a look at the AT&T 8525 PDA as an alternative to the iPhone. It can do everything the other can but costs less and is not as much of a pain in the ass. As a college student with a relatively insignificant amount of things to track at once I don't use many of its features, but I imagine for a busy suit-type it would be a god-send. The sliding key-board is freaking sweet for writing e-mails and texts.

EDIT: Just noticed that Paladin's recommendation, the T-Mobile Wing, is essentially the same phone.

[snrjefe]

I have a BlackBerry Curve 8130 and it's pretty good, though with a 2-year old video would be nice opposed to just stills.

I prefer the trackball to a touch screen as the iPhone gives me grief with the touchscreen keyboard for the reasons you mentioned, and stylus based touch screenw always end up getting miscalibrated.

While it the Blackberry is a bit brickish, I haven't found battery drain to be too bad unless I am using Bluetooth with less than half signal strength.

The fact that I can view most MS Office and .pdf files is also quite handy for work.

If it weren't primarily for work use, I probably wouldn't have opted for the BlackBerry, but I'm not disappointed.

This post made from my BB...

[Paladin]

Oh, I should mention, my Wing's battery lasts an entire week on standby with the occasional email and so on.

[snrjefe]

That's impressive Paladin. How big is the battery itself? It seems that the Wing is a bit heavier than the BlackBerry, so I'm guessing the extra 2 ounces is mostly battery if you get that kind of standby life.

[DougyM]

Sony Ericson W910i

Pros:

Got all the little fad stuff that the cool kids die for, camera, internet, movies, plays music, radio blah blah blah.

Completely free when i got mine, plus i got a £100 certificate for accessories when i handed in my old phone.

Cons:

Without the deal(s) when i got mine its expensive as hell.

[Paladin]

That's impressive Paladin. How big is the battery itself? It seems that the Wing is a bit heavier than the BlackBerry, so I'm guessing the extra 2 ounces is mostly battery if you get that kind of standby life.

The battery isn't big. The whole unit and it's battery are smaller than the last generation (The MDA). The battery is simply more dense.

And yeah, one week I disconnected it from it's charger, went to class, had a phone conversation with my dad while at school, and then used it to SMS my boyfriend a few times during the week.

When my class rolled around again the next week, I realized it hadn't been connected to the charger all week...

It still had 5% battery left. I was shocked hehe.

Now, it won't last that long if you have bluetooth enabled and it's paired to a headset... but still.

I have seen people complain that the Wing is heavy/big, but honestly, it's way smaller than the first few generations of blackberries, and it's definitely smaller than my old nokia 9290 (But then again, what isn't?).

It fits in my pocket. I wouldn't want it any smaller, I'd lose it.

[the_sidewinder]

I have Moto Q. Personally, I love the phone. What I hate is the service provider, perhaps this is a topic for another thread, but reviews of the contracts and service providers with the phones would be good, as some people may chane their oppinion on a phone by how the service provider locks it down, charges exuberantly for it etc

[Moe]

Anything that has the name "t-mobile" on it should be nuked from orbit, preferably along with whoever runs that shithole of a company. If you're looking for customer support, stay the hell away from them.

[Verrin]

That's funny Moe, T-mobile was ranked highest in customer care. If they're bad, I can only worry about how much worse the rest must be.

[Moe]

This ranking is contrary to my experiences and the experiences of everyone I know who has had to deal with them.

[Lrkr]

Moe I suppose you still A-GPS quite frequently with your nokia to have a faster location fix; how does that work for you cost wise at the end of the month? once it's connected; does it frequently lose signal; forcing you to spend again 50 cents to reconnect ?

Found a second hand T-Mobile MDA for 175 Euro.... any reason why I shouldn't go for that one ? except forthe customer carethat we seem to have contradictory opinions over ^^

[Moe]

In the US under an extremely shitty AT&T plan that's not really a plan but rather a card you charge with some money it costs 7 cents to get an A-GPS fix. My guess is that a real cell phone plan will be even cheaper. It doesn't lose the signal that often, although tall buildings all around you may impair the quality, and tunnels of course fuck it up. I've never experienced more than 1 disconnect, however I have never used it for more than 30 minutes at a time so far. You can disable the A-GPS by the way and use just the regular GPS, although the TTFF may be in the range of minutes.

It can also use WLAN (not sure how that works as I've never seen that in action) and can connect via Bluetooth to an external GPS device.

[Paladin]

I've had phones from AT&T, Cingular, Verizon, and T-Mobile. T-Mobile's service has been great. They haven't tried to gouge me with any sudden changes, haven't lied, haven't given me shit like all the other mobile companies I've been with have.

When I bought my new phone I simply called up, and it was done with no hassle at all. The phone was added to my current plan as a new line with a 1 year contract, leaving me free to cancel my old out of contract line. They did not give me the slightest hassle on any of it, even though I was getting the special deal on the phone price.

The other companies have been horrible.

I definitely say T-Mobile is the best company I've had to deal with in terms of customer service. The others will generally lie cheat and steal to gouge you.

The downside is that T-Mobile doesn't have 3G service in the US yet. But they're supposedly getting the infrastructure in place to launch it this year.

[Question]

What i would like to see is some sort of mobile phone series catered for military servicemen who cannot bring in cameraphones into army camps. The market is flooded with cameraphones and low end phones that only have basic functions. Something stylish, possibly with mp3 playback, radio, etc would be great.

[Zir]

I don't understand it. I never thought I'd take on a facet of my dad's personality but here it is, I don't get why people worship phones and want so much from them. The iPhone is the exception as was the iPod to most gadgets, it's actually fresh and functional in such a big way that it's all you need to think about in future, so get that or drop the image anxiousness and get something that works for you functionally and economically.

I say phones are for phoning people, if that's not the case, what are they now, and why are phones the one gadget that's expected to cover 784 different roles?

[SubZero]

I don't like to think of the functions performed by mobiles these days making other hardware redundant, more like it giving you a backup or spare.

[Question]

I dont need phones full of features either.

MP3? I have a great player already.

Radio? Dont listen to radios myself, but i can see why people would want the feature.

Camera is cool for the fooling around factor. Im not a camera person myself, but occasionally i would love to snap pics for the occassion and such.

A good interface, space to store messages/contacts/etc would be great.

Thats more or less what most people will probably use. I see all my friends buying these expensive 3.5G phones and never using their features.

[Paladin]

I say phones are for phoning people, if that's not the case, what are they now, and why are phones the one gadget that's expected to cover 784 different roles?

I rarely rarely use my phone as a phone. That said, I do need to have a phone at all times in case of emergency, etc. Since I HAVE to carry a phone, doesn't it just make sense to have that thing I HAVE to carry, which will ALWAYS be on my person, do all the other things I might need? I mean, since I'm always going to be carrying it, why would I want to carry a separate mp3 player and PDA and so on?

[Zir]

That's fair enough, but it's not technically a phone anymore. It's an all-purpose multitool!

[Sir Plasma]

I'm looking to buy a phone, and all these high-end QWERTY monoliths and touchscreens make me uneasy. I want, like Capa said, a nice-looking phone that isn't too pricey.

[Paladin]

Well, if you like carrying 5 different things around...

[Sir Plasma]

-mp3, a nice little Creative Zen 4GB, the size of a credit card;
-wallet, full of precious monies;
-housekey;
-phone.

that's four things, only two of which might conceivably be combined. Come on now, I need some help here.

[Paladin]

mp3 player
PDA
Phone
Camera

Additionally, nothing else lets me stay in contact with my friends via IM when I'm dragged away from my computer against my will

[The Collector]

I've got my Treo 650 working as phone & PDA. Put it together from two parts phones off of eBay. I also shoehorned it into the MP3 player role. It's not the best MP3 player on the planet, but if it becomes a big enough problem for me I'll buy a MP3 player. Until then, it serves me well as a cheap MP3 player without the hassle of carrying a cheap MP3 player around.

[Moe]

<The iPhone is the exception as was the iPod to most gadgets, it's actually fresh and functional in such a big way that it's all you need to think about in future, so get that or drop the image anxiousness and get something that works for you functionally and economically.

I did get something that works for me, and it wasn't the iPhone. A lot of people carry a PDA. I don't want to carry around two devices, which is why I got a phone that performs the same functions as a PDA and a MP3 player. Basically it's phone, PDA and iPod (which is an mp3 player) rolled into one device. I don't see what's wrong with that?

[Mac_Bug]

Nothing Moe, except the battery life.

[Paladin]

Heh, considering my phone does all that, and lasts a week on standby (Or 16 hours playing mp3s through my stereo bluetooth headset), I don't think that's too much of an issue Mac.

[Moe]

What kind of battery life do you get with an iPhone, MAc?

[Paladin]

Oh, and my absolute favorite bit of technological overkill:

When I leave my computer running, with Winamp Remote on, I can listen to any mp3 on my computer's enormous hard drive from anywhere I can get a data connection (Which is basically anywhere).

Granted, I can only stream at about 128kbps, due to the fact that it's EDGE speed and not 3G, but hell... My 3200 song library goes with me everywhere. Can't complain about that

[SubZero]

Whats the playback quality like on the N95 Moe?

[Moe]

It's actually pretty decent. I'm using the stock earphones mind you, which obviously aren't top-of-the-line, but the mp3s sound clear and crisp. The base could use a little love, but I'd rather have them sounding a little too flat than having an overbearing base drown everything else out.

The CPU is pretty fast, compared to other smartphones it takes less time to boot and to launch applications. It's supposedly pretty decent for gaming, but I have yet to try that.

It has a bunch of weird features which I haven't used yet, like a barcode scanner (wtf). Oh and it has a built-in radio receiver, so you can listen to radio stations.

The camera is pretty sweet for a cell phone cam, with 5 megapixels it takes decent pictures and videos. It has a little slider that closes an iris to protect it from scratches while the phone is in your pocket, and the lens is made by Zeiss which is always good. There's a secondary camera on the front side so you can have a video conversation if you're so inclined.

The whole phone has this well thought-out feeling. I've had other smartphones previously, like the Motorola A1000, and that one was just crap. With the N95 it feels like someone actually thought about how to integrate all the features and make them useful and accessible. For example if you slide the camera iris lens shutter thingie open the phone switches to camera mode, when you close the thing it switches back. If you're listening to mp3s and you get a call the phone pauses the playback, switches to phone mode and waits for you to answer the call. Once you're done it remains in phone mode with the playback paused in case you want to call someone else, and all it takes to resume playback is clicking the little mp3 icon that has now appeared on the main display. These are little things of course, but they make using it more fun and I really enjoy them.

[SubZero]

Well, i'm sold on the N95 (8GB). It's cheaper than the iPhone and I reckon looks smarter (although maybe not as solid, but meh).

I'll hopefully pick one up this week, so thanks to all for their insights. Feel free to keep the thread active for new phones and reviews by all means.

[p0seidon]

Meh nokia.

I'd rather have a real pocketPC, oh wait I do.
Own a HTC Touch Dual.

[Mac_Bug]

What's this nonsense with you ppl talking about video calls and streaming music to your phone? When I got my phone I got charged 5 cents per goddamn webpage just to find the right song to download since they supposedly offered it to me for 'free'. Canuck land is so ridiculously behind on cellphone technology the typical phones being offered have little more than 2 hours of talk time. I do see lawyers coming out of elevators with their blackberry pearls, but then I'm pretty sure they pay 100 bucks a month for it.

[bottenbreker]

i own a HTC s710. it's an "older" model. but it has a nice feature. it has a keyboard attached to it. so, i like it cause i type a lot of stuff on my HTC. it's not that expensive either was 349 euro's about 3 months ago. Unfortunately it has only 64 MB of intern memory so you have to buy a memory card (which costs 25 euro's out here). so, there are probably better phones out there.

[Afoxi]

Sorry for the late entry.


This is my current phone of choice. It's an upgrade over the nokia 7610 that i used to use, and it's actually decent, although the Symbian OS is still slow... And you have to download a 3rd party software for automatic keypad lock. And there's no timer/stopwatch. =\

Otherwise, I'm actually pretty damn happy with it. Runs off a 2GB MiniSD Card.