The Cell Phone / Mobile Phone Thread

Jellybean 4.3 @ 1.4GHz vs. Kit Kat 4.4.4 @ 1.6GHz (Samsung Galaxy S3 - Exynos 4412 Quad)

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edited 25th Dec '14 12:08:53 AM by entropy13

I'd say get the new Moto X. Guaranteed update to 5.0 once all the Nexus bugs are ironed out, awesome Google Now with voice activation, great phone in general. Screen isn't that big, but I'm not a fan of bigger=better, really.

OK, I think I can revise my requirements; my budget is now ~£140.

Huzzah!

I won a competition and now I am the proud owner of a 2014 Nokia Microsoft Lumia 830, running Windows 8.1 GDR 1 Denim. It has a deliciously huge 5" 720p screen, and a micro-SD card slot! What a perfect phone for me. This means I can give my Nokia Lumia 920 to my little brother.

No need to cross Nokia out, as it is still a Nokia and not a Microsoft Lumia. Thus far the only Microsoft Lumia released is the 535.

It was a joke, don't worry.

Lumia 530 vs 630: Is the 630 worth the extra £10?

Yes, because the 630 has a little better battery life and also has more on-board storage - other than that though, no.

OK, I think I'm getting a handle on how much Carphone Warehouse drives their prices up.

• Carphone Warehouse:
  • Lumia 530: £89.99
  • Lumia 630: £99.99
• Tesco Phone store:
  • Lumia 630: £79.99

...As far as I can tell they're charging £20 for a choice of colours. Nice try, but Microsoft sells the coloured shells for £12.99. Only problem is that I can't do click and collect because the Tesco Express in the village is so new it's not even on the website yet.

edited 1st Jan '15 4:12:51 AM by Deadbeatloser22

The Black Lumias are usually okay anyway - so unless you really did want a new colour, not much point in bothering.

Yeah, it's just the delivery issue. CP offer free next day delivery. Tesco don't, and if I order now there's no guarantee it'll arrive before I go back.

Of course the obvious solution is to wait and do the order after I've gone back to halls.

I'm waiting on Microsoft or the networks getting off their arse and releasing this:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/mobile/phone/lumia535/

in the UK.

What it lacks in dedicated camera buttons over my 520, it gains in having two 5.0 megapixel cameras, with flash on the main one.

So, I now own an iPhone 5 due to my mother upgrading to an iPhone 6. What do I need to keep an eye out for? Asides from the entire "you now own a phone" thing.

OK, since it turns out that the Tesco in the village does exist on the "select a store to collect from" list, just not the store locator, I've ordered the 630 from them.

Are you truly comfortable with the iOS environment? If not, you could most likely buy a brand new high end Android phone by selling a used iPhone 5. lol

Yes, although I've been stuck on iOS 6 for a while due to my iPod Touch being too geriatric to update to the latest versions of iOS.

Turns out my Moto G is surprisingly resilient.

I was reading stuff on my phone, and it lost charge. After being off for about two seconds or so, it slipped through my hands and fell into a bucket of water - completely submerged.

I pulled it out immediately, removed the battery cover, wiped it off and kept it under the fan to dry. One hour later, it was on, charging, and working perfectly, and I'm actually typing on it now.

That's good going. I had a hiccup with my Lumia 520 back when I first got it - I left it face down and managed to spill whisky on the surface it was lying on, with the obvious results. To get it working I had to take it to bits, (literally - down to the motherboard being taken out of the case) dry it out over a period of time and then rebuild it.

Still works to this day, and all that shows on the phone is where I was an idiot and forgot which screws went where, which is why it doesn't have any on it all. You seem to have been more lucky than me.

I guess. It seems if your phone has to be submerged in a liquid, water is your best bet. Anything else (cola, alcohol, cooking oil) and you're generally pretty much screwed and have to take your phone apart.

Although ethyl spirit evaporates pretty fast, beer is not pure spirit, and the other stuff can fuck up the innards of a phone pretty bad.

OK, so I picked up my new phone today.

Now I just need to wait for the Denim update that's due sometime this quarter.

Or do what I do, and enrol in the "Developer" programme, and you can get the OS part (not the firmware, that's Denim and will come OTA) of the update.

First, sign up for the basic developer account at here (literally: sign-in with your Microsoft account).

Then, secondly, install the Preview for Developers app, check "download preview updates", and watch your phone beat the carriers at their dumbass games.

Then sign up for a

Well the Denim update for the 630 was *supposed* to come out before Christmas.

Well, join that there preview programme, and you will not have to worry about anything Denim-related.

So, I've had the Motorola Moto X (second generation) and the moto360 smartwatch for about a week and a half now, and on the whole my experience has been pretty good!

The leather that they opted to use on both devices is really comfortable, but I'm still tempted to get a case for the phone because I'm incredibly paranoid and need the peace of mind even though I've heard it's fairly resilient.

I'm stuck with AT&T, so I'm still on KitKat on the phone (Verizon customers already have Lollipop), but the watch has Lollipop and both work like a dream. The phone's inner specs are on par with each of the phone's rivals, and Android's at a stage of maturity where the only real benefit iOS has is a larger app selection— everything here from the game performance to the overall user experience is as polished as the hardware it runs on. The only gripe I have thus far is the performance of the front camera; it has a strange bug that makes it lag about a half-second behind the goings-on around it, which can be the death knell for a good selfie, but Moto's made it clear that it's a software issue that they're going to fix down the road, and the stutter's nowhere to be found while recording video from it, so I'm positive that it should be an easy fix. Other than that, I can recommend it handily, especially if you're on a carrier that has Lollipop on it already.

As for the watch, it's undeniably the best Android Wear watch on the market at the moment, though that may be faint praise given that the OS hasn't reached the same maturity that the original version of Android has. My own personal needs are satisfied by it almost completely; it's not waterproof, which can be troublesome at times, but giving it the same treatment one would a standard luxury watch is a good way to think about how to wear it. Thus far, I'd recommend it, but with the disclaimer that it is still a work in progress on both Motorola and Google's ends.

So yeah. Gotta love that Moto, hello.

re: Windows Phone: I had a 520 running Cyan for about seven months because my previous phone, a Samsung Galaxy S4, got nabbed somehow.

I won't go into full review mode, but for a $50 USD prepaid phone it was significantly less terrible than it could have been; however, coming from (and back to) Android, it made me feel like there was a bit of a dearth of things to install, which was a shame given that Windows Phone itself is actually a fairly well-built operating system.

I don't think I'd go WP again unless it became a necessity, but the experience made me respect it a lot more.