The Cell Phone / Mobile Phone Thread

Just got another reason to consider not to pay the vastly inflated price that the BBC want me to pay for the privilege of watching their television output or listening to their radio programmes - the completely borked Iplayer Windows Phone 8 update that removed support for their radio stations completely.

Android and Iphone users will not suffer such a fate when their devices get the update.

Yet another example of the BBC's mobile output being biased against Windows Phone users - and there's a long list of stuff that backs that up.

I recently got a phone with the ability to take pictures.

Yeah, I know, I know, I should get with the times and whatnot.

Ugh.

It's time for me to upgrade from a crappy "Tracfone" to an actual phone, so I can actually receive calls and make them, text, and do things with and from my phone.

I've spent 4-5 years in a technological gutter, proudly separating myself from the stereotype of kids who spend more time on their phones than they do reading, exercising, or even watching TV. No more of that! Need, phone, now!

Any recommendations for a decent phone/plan.

I had an old clamshell phone for six or seven years until it developed charging issues, but by then I'd had some time to get used to an iPod Touch which is basically an iPhone without phone, GPS, or internet outside of a wifi network, so it's training wheels or a gateway drug.

I have Verizon, and I get some huge number of talk minutes I barely scratch the surface of and 4 GB of data (which I rarely use a quarter of, but I'm on wifi a lot and don't stream on my phone much) for around $78 a month. I'd have a texting allowance for $10 more, but I use Google Voice to receive texts via my data connection for free, so whatever SMS I actually use my Verizon number for I just pay a la carte.

iPhones are good for people who don't want a lot of setup. Your phone does what it does and you can't adjust it much besides what apps Apple allows in the store, which keeps things simple. Also most of the most popular apps are developed for Apple first or exclusively.

Android is a bit more customizable, but that comes at the price of confronting you with a lot of options. Samsung models have a custom skin that makes it a bit simpler and more like iOS, but less so after Apple successfully sued them over it. Some apps you may want aren't available.

Windows Phone... integrates well with a Windows 8 desktop? I don't know why people would want a Windows Phone.

One of them has a fuckawesome camera, and...

...Fuck.

edited 30th Jul '14 2:48:47 PM by Boxen

Because it's different, has integration with certain protocols used in certain business situations and relevant to me can be used with certain financial terminals with ease.

On a personal side, because it's not Android nor iOs and can be had cheaply in places like Pakistan and India.

Well, that too.

"Not Android nor iOS" means "hardly any community support or apps" to me.

That situation is getting better.

Slowly, slowly getting better, but still. As long as you consider Google to not exist.

I mean, I think it should have more apps. I think that in the state of the market now an app that wants to be big should launch on iOS and Android simultaneously (or one within a month after the other), and then invest initial profits into Windows.

I have a Windows 8 phone, a Nokia Lumia 520 to be exact. I would recommend that or the slightly newer 525, if you can get hold of it, rather than paying any more money on a 630 or higher. You get a physical camera button on the 520 and 525, and this has been removed on the 630 for cost reasons, rather than as Microsoft said because you don't need it due to the Windows Phone 8.1 "upgrade".

There's plenty of decent paid and free apps on the windows phone store, and since the 8.1 upgrade does include the facility to install apps to the micro sd card, there's lots of space to put on them. Once that upgrade goes live on the 520 and 525, which should be soon TM.

It is now legal to unlock your phone from the carrier you got it from in the US. Seems kind of petty for the first legislative action taken according to direct petition from the People, but baby steps.

So, my contract is coming to an end, and I'll most certainly renew, switching to a newer, possibly bigger model of a Sony smartphone.

Quick thing I've posted in the Quick Questions thread because I can't seem to find a full answer for it on the internet, but...

I have some cloths for sunglasses which are basically alcohol and water, and some others with a mild cleaning agent in them.

Can they be used on a mobile phone's screen or should I use something else?

Yes they can, I think.

You can use those!

Moto G!

It's cheap, it's fast, it has Android 4.4.4 Kit Kat and it just all round awesome. Only downside is that 16 GB of space is kinda small, but I don't need that much space.

Has it got a micro SD slot, or has the removal of that counted as a "feature"?

No, it does not. It is kinda like the iPhone in that respect - all apps and data (music, pictures, etc) goes in the sane 16 (well, 13) GB of space. It hasn't become an issue yet, and Google gave me free 50 GB space on Google Drive to apparently compensate, but speeds here are too slow to actually take great advantage of it.

/It depends on the version - the 4G version does have a MicroSD slot, others don't.

Incidentally, thank you both Deme and Hopey - turns out that my alcohol wipes are fine, but most others aren't.

edited 6th Aug '14 5:58:42 AM by RatherRandomRachel

My Lumia 520 has anorexically small storage - only 8gb - but I can chuck a 64Gb Micro SD card in the slot if I could afford one and really wanted to carry a lot of films around with me. And if Vodafone got off its fat backside and rolled out the Lumia Cyan upgrade to us peasants running with the 520, and since it's the most popular Lumia phone by far, judging by the sales figures, there's a lot of us peasants about, I could install lots of programs to that too. Right now, of course, Vodafone has its new customers running its new shiny 630 and 635 phones and those already have Cyan on them.

Where's my tumbril, my torch, my natty chapeau, my pitchfork and my guillotine? Some aristos need a hair cut with the big razor.

@Longcoat "So, my contract is coming to an end, and I'll most certainly renew, switching to a newer, possibly bigger model of a Sony smartphone"

Xperia Z Ultra is €250 now and it's either the world's biggest smartphone or one of the world's smallest tablets. Might want to avoid the Kitkat upgrade though unless you favour turning off location services because there's a battery draining bug in the Kitkat rom.

@ Tam. Have you got the Dev Preview yet? I'm running it on my 920 while I wait for Nokia to roll it out to me. For some reason Vodafone and O2 versions got Cyan before me, even though mine is the carrier-free model. Wut.

I finally got the Cyan upgrade last week, but not from Vodafone - I had to go hunting on my own. It took hours for everything to go live but it did go off without a hitch. Now I have three gigs of memory free on my Lumia, which is unheard of, and I don't really notice any real slow down when I am using apps which are on my Micro SD card. That said, some apps that ran on Black do not work on Cyan, like my Cineworld one, which I relied on to book cinema tickets from them.

The battery does seem to drain quicker, but that could be perception rather than reality.

The headphone to cassette adapter I've been using to play from my phone to my car stereo seems to have died, so I thought it was time to get something better. I really wanted a Bluetooth cassette adapter, but my budget was $25 and they still run $40.

So I decided to take a chance on an FM transmitter. I didn't like the idea of trusting an analog signal to get there wirelessly, but it's actually got pretty good quality over the distance it needs to go in the car.