[farmergiles65]

Yep it's another "what phone" thread, but its necessary for me as I've little information until this weekend when I get a chance to visit phone shops as to what types of phones are out there and which would suit my needs.

Currently I'm only on a £10 tariff for a C510 SE phone. It used to be fine, but I find myself going over the minutes/texts limit now and again and the camera even on this is fairly lackluster which has put me off taking pictures, not to mention the sheer cost of sending picture messages these days.

A lot of my friends have hopped on the smartphone bandwagon, usually either the IPhone 3GS or the N900, niether of them likeing the others phone! :P So I figured if I can justify paying £35-£40 a month on a tariff, I'll find an excuse to make it worthwhile. Question is, which phone?

Because I still have ages in this current contract, I have to buy it out, so I'm looking at cashback offers on places like Mobiles.co.uk which seem good for £40 tariffs, but they are very restrictive and don't include tariffs which have the £5 mobile internet unlimited pack built it (Vodafone for instance, I mean 500MB a month, give me a break, that's nothing). It's quite a lot of money to buy the contract out, but some cashback offers to meet the cost plus I use Quidco.

My needs are in no particular order:

(1) Camera - doesn't have to be fantastic professional captures, but I'd like to avoid unnecessary blurring and bad focus, particularly in low light conditions. I find the C510 underperforms for me. So the camera needs to be reasonably good as I know a few people I'd like to send pictures to (probably via email as MMS messaging is bloody expensive).

(2) Organiser Functions - I've tried keeping a pocket diary to sort out my life/birthdays etc, but it's failing as I can never be bothered to write in it! Give me a pricey phone though with good organiser functions and I will though. I don't need things like Microsoft Office etc, but comprehensive calendar/diary/task functions are a paramount must, including any useful apps that might go with them.

(3) Mobile Internet - I'm stuck with crappy broadband at home and most phones could beat my landline speed, so with unlimited internet, being able to download stuff a dam sight quicker to a decent sized memory drive would be a godsend.

(4) Games - I don't care about games at all, I got a PC for that.

(5) Texting - my main form of communication so funky text functions, including possibly picture messaging unless there's an easier way of sending pictures even to technologically illiterate parents and an easy to use button system or QWERTY keyboard would be a plus - I've tried keyboards and I do find them difficult to use, but with practice who knows.

(6) Calls - An easy to manage contacts list with links to Facebook would be nice though I don't usually call much, again something that will change depending on the tariff cost.

(7) Apps - I hear of Apps being used for smartphones ALL the time, but most seem completely unnecessary. If I use apps, I want them to be useful and easy to use.

(8) Music - I do like my music so I'd like a half decent music player on the phone for use when travelling or at work lunch break or even an alternative to the cheap pocket one I use at the gym. I don't own an Ipod.

I've looked into some phones already, namely the Iphone 3GS, which I'm not too fond of, the N900, which looks great, but seems a bit tricky on the user-friendlyness test being a geeks phone and the keyboard isn't the easiest to use either, and future phones like the Xperia X10, which does look really nice, but no review exists yet. I've heard of the HTC phones but know nothing about the company, nor which HTC phones are regarded highly or are even recent, there's so many of them!

There may be the possibilty that these needs can be met without a smartphone, but if I'm going to spend lots on a tariff, I'd like a phone that can last the test of time.

[TylerDurden]

The Nokia 5800 pretty much ticks all those boxes, T-Mobile have it on contract from £15 pm

[farmergiles65]

My only issue with cheap tariffs, is that to buy out my contract will cost me £130 (2 year contract that I've only being in for 7 months. Now some cash back offers do £100-£250 in which anywhere in that box will suffice as I'm likely to get another £50-£90 from Quidco depending on where I get the phone from (likely £50 as thats mobiles.co.uk's cashback and they are the ones who offer the decent cashbacks in the first place).

Now the cheaper the tariff, the less the potential cashback, in fact I think they're almost non-existant at that level.

EDIT - I stand corrected, there are good cashback offers, though it says out of stock. Is this Nokia 5800 a recent phone as it looks a bit outdated for a smartphone.

[TylerDurden]

Originally Posted by farmergiles65

mobiles.co.uk's cashback and they are the ones who offer the decent cashbacks in the first place).

I'm not sure I'd trust mobiles.co.uk with a cashback deal at the moment, have you read the mobile phone forum on money saving expert ?

Originally Posted by farmergiles65

Is this Nokia 5800 a recent phone as it looks a bit outdated for a smartphone.

By no means is it an iphone lets say, however its costs a fraction of the cost of an iphone, plus you can use it as a sat nav and its built for playing music and podcasts, big thread on it here Its a great phone for the money

[RobM]

The 5800 is a very good low-end smartphone. But given the fact your budget well exceeds this, you could do much better.

The trouble is though, there are a few really good devices about to hit the market, but they wont be in shops for a short while yet. Things like the HTC Desire and Legend and the Sony Ericsson X10.

Another thing to consider is smartphones generally don't have very good cameras. Not terrible in some cases, but not great. You may still be disappointed here.

Everything else though is easily met by most recent smartphones.

If you can't wait for the next lot of devices to hit the market, look at the HTC Hero, HTC HD2, Google Nexus One (only available online), Motorola Milestone, Palm Pre and seriously don't discount the iPhone until you've spent some time with one.

Otherwise spend some time reading through the forum sections here and see what catches your eye.

[farmergiles65]

The Iphone does have a hefty cost though, and some niggling issues which might bug me. But I'll see what my work colleagues one is like.

I checked out the HTC HD2 review online - not bad, but still probably not for the one for me. Can't remember if it was that HTC or something else that had a Windows Mobile OS, which seems to complicate normal phone tasks unnecessarily. So far Android and Apple seem to have the most "user-friendly" interfaces, hence I'm eager to see what the X10 is capable of. The Nokia 5800 seems to be out of stock on every site, but even so, I've seen a lot of dodgy problems arise with Symbian OS's in the past.

[RobM]

The HD2 is an awesome bit of tech', but it's very much a Windows device and every now and again it does something utterly stupid that will spoil the experience. It also takes a lot of tinkering, patches, hotfixes, cab's etc to get it the way you want. For some this is the attraction though and once done, there aren't many more powerful devices. Love-Hate phone though

Android is the middle ground between this and the iPhone. Out of the box it's easy, quick and simple to use and master but you still have the powerful customisation options to make it your own.

[syko67]

500mb is a fair usage limit...I've been donloading plenty of apps and games onto my satio and hrs of web browsing and not got close to the limit...I've been assured that if I were to go over it would be looked at and as long as I've not been using my phone to download huge files (movies for instance) nothing would happen...so although 500mb doesnt seem a lot, you'll have to go some to get clobbered for it.

[farmergiles65]

Well with the previews I've seen of the HTC Desire and the Xperia X10 I'm certainly going to wait and see what they are like as both of them look fantastic to me. However the uber camera on the X10 and their previous decent music phones makes me want the X10 to be really good, please don't screw it up SE!

I went a weird comparision site where it had a bunch of current smartphones and you put in your preferences and it rated each phone with a score. It was a nice idea, but when it reckoned that a Nokia N97 mini and Nokia 5800 was better for me than a HTC Hero or a Nokia N900 I was a bit concerned. Doesn't have the future stuff on there yet.