please empty your brain below

For me the iPhone remains the king of the smartphones; but don't just take my word for it, Which? magazine rates it higher than its competitors including the most recent Androids.

My wife recently got a 4S for £29 up front and £30 a month. I know that seems like a lot compared to an old PAYG, I was a £5 a month man myself before. But you really are paying for a tiny, powerful computer which can also make calls rather than just an expensive phone.

I would not get hung up (pardon then pun) about changing company; switching a number is free and very little hassle.

Whatever you get I highly recommend a good camera. I now have an iPhone 4S and the camera on it is superb quality. Obviously it lack certain things like an optical zoom, but for most everyday purposes it is perfect.

My recommendation? You know those pesky marketing eMails you get? Keep an eye out for the ones that say "please please have our phone" and say "yes". I know it will be difficult, but enlightened self interest should help. Never had one yet that's obliged me to do anything for it, and it has kept me in phones over the years (actually there was one, and I said "no" to that one). The current one, a Samsung Galaxy Wave II I would not advise anyone to pay money for although it is pretty sleek and has a decent camera. My phone calls and data usage is about £10 a month on contract.

i would recommend the Sony Ericsson Z470xi, because it lets you blog whilst underground on tube trains.

On the one hand, the iPhone is the easiest to use without fuss and has a good camera for a smartphone. (your crap Samsung rubbish will still take better pictures though) On the other, it's £30/mo. minimum for 2 years.

In the mid-range, it's possible to get an HTC One S for a little over £20/mo. Slightly faster than the iPhone, almost as good camera, *extremely* thin which is good if you keep it in your pocket, and HTC's Android skin is probably the easiest to use of the lot. I feel the top-end droids (One X and Galaxy S3) are too big and too expensive unless you're totally in thrall to Android.

At the bottom, there's Orange's San Francisco II. (Vodafone has a better cheap droid in the Huawei G300, but it's not better enough to switch carriers when you're reluctant to do so) Capable enough, it's roughly the same spec as 2 years ago's HTC Desire but without the memory shortage. £100 for PAYG or free on any contract.

All these phones will only go 2 days with a bit of luck or total lack of use. Oddly enough, charging doesn't really become an issue when it's part of the daily routine.

I can't recommend Blackberry. I use one, and I love it. But it's purely for work. It would drive me batty to use it as a personal phone.

As for Orange, one downside is that you need to top up £10 a month on PAYG just to get a measly 100MB of data. If you were to pay up front for a phone (say, off Ebay or at Carphone Warehouse) GiffGaff gives you *unlimited* data for £10 a month.

Not recommending anything - my relationship to phones is much the same as yours. I sort of needed a new one, though, and told my friends. One of them had upgraded to an iPhone and gave me his old Nokia N95. More than good enough for me.

Two months after reluctantly retiring my N95 after four and a half years' service, I still miss it like hell.

My only advice - go to a big phone superstore and hold as many different ones in your hand as you can.

If you just want a replacement for your current phone, I know where you can get a brand new version of something pretty much like you've got... I have it in mind for when mine (of similar vintage and same make as yours) goes to phone heaven.

Why make your life any more compliciated than it has to be?

Buy the phone SIM free from Amazon & choose a PAYG provider. Contracts are almost always more expensive in the low run - you just need the initial capital to buy your phone up front.

I like the iOS operating system, but once you start buying apps on there, you've essentially tied yourself into buying Apple in the future for a long, long time. You'd need to buy all those apps again if you ever moved to Android/Windows...

My phone usage is very like yours DG. I swapped to a Smartphone a few months ago when bus Countdown info became available. I bought a discounted HTC Incredible S from Carphone Warehouse as it was on offer. It's an Android touchscreen phone and works well enough. The model has been replaced many times over such is the pace of development.

The price of the I-Phone and many other models is mad if you're on PAYG and I couldn't justify a contract phone. I'm not that pleased with power consumption but I love having web and app based access to travel information and one or two other things.

I'm not on Twitter or Facebook so that's irrelevant despite the apps being preloaded. I've only downloaded a few apps with the London Travel app providing for my travel needs. My PAYG costs have gone up but not hugely.

It doesn't matter what phone you get. Blogging from the field will be an awful experience either way.

Sometimes I miss the simplicity of my old phone. And I certainly miss the battery life.

I wonder if this post will attract a marketing firm. Would advise you to say yes to them all and try them out, you can always discard any you don't like.

What is a mobile phone?

I guess the thing that I couldn't quite gather from your post today is what you want your new phone to do. Will you still phone almost nobody? Will you only send 4 texts a month? Do you want to enter the world of Angry Bird gaming or is this technology basically only going to be used to ensure someone can reach you in an emergency?

I stuck with the latter answer up until 2010, and only changed to the iPhone because I wanted the Angry Bird tech. If you are still happy in the emergency only world, then you can buy a basc brick online as pay as you go.

I am a near-refusenik who sits all day by a phone attached by thin cable to a perfectly good phone network run over the internet. If I go out I like to be free and don't want phone calls disurbing my day but ...

if you can get a good deal for internet access it means you can check bus times (http://m.countdown.tfl.gov.uk) and train times (http://wap.nationalrail.co.uk) for free and is a real boon.

My grandchildren bought me an iPhone, and I'm absolutely over the moon with it. I could not imagine living with out a smart phone any more, the possibilities are just about endless.

Not always Marc. Once I decided what phone I wanted it worked out cheaper with a contract - £120 spread over two years whereas the cheapest I could buy it outright was £178. And I got more texts and minutes than with my previous SIM only deal.

From what I know about you, DG, I would say that the more you spend, the more you would be delighted and use the extra features.

However - I would not bother with a cheap smartphone. I would either get a good feature phone or a good smartphone. The cheap ones tend to be just that - cheap - and you will find them more frustrating than satisfying.

Most of what you want to do, you'll be able to do via the mobile browser on a modern feature phone - blogging, flickring etc.

But smartphones do open up a whole new world of possibilities, and they really are a computer in your pocket.

Just some other thoughts - GiffGaff are good, but I understand if you don't want to change, Android or iPhone, ignore Blackberry and Win Mob for now (both are being revamped in 6 months), HTC/Samsung/Apple - all much of a muchness, forget about the camera - nothing will ever beat a standalone camera.

If you're looking for a decent smartphone, then I would recommend the iPhone. However, I've heard some excellent things about Android too.

Personally, I'd put it down to cost and what you want your phone to do. If all you're interested in is the ability to make calls and send texts, then it's clearly not worth tying yourself into an expensive two-year contract. If, however, you want all the bells and whistles, the contract option is a lot more viable if you can afford the monthly payments.

I'm going to guess that you'll want access to your blog and perhaps the ability to tweet and occasionally post to Flickr on the go, and this can be achieved by an entry-level smartphone with a reasonable data allowance (although you may want to stick with a separate camera to get decent pictures).

Buying mobile phones can be a bit of a minefield, so good luck.

I'm with Andrew Bowden (above) on this one. When my old phone died my contract company could only supply a smartphone (at the same rate more or less as the existing contract). As a phone it does everything the old one did before it broke (callers could hear me but I couldn't hear them). However, I miss the battery life, and cannot get many of the apps to do what they are supposed to reliably - not unless I'm at home or at work, when I can access the Internet using bigger and better computer user interfaces.

At the moment my phone tells me it's 12:37 pm on the 1st July 1980, and I've no idea why it's doing this or how to stop it.

Oh, and I meant to say - Like you, I left my phone on the charger when went to work yesterday.
The short battery life of the fancy phones means you're much more likely to do this.

Any talk of technology always leaves me confused, though I do feel I've learnt a little more about the social habits of DG and some of his regular commenters. I'm particularly impressed that DG has managed not to lose his phone for 5 years; as someone who loses his phones every few months I still use a bottom of the range Nokia which is cheap and does everything I need it to. I have access to the internet at work and at home so have resisted the smart phone revolution and don't feel I've missed out so maybe that's the way forward for DG as well.

Thanks you Whiff for making me feel less of an exception. One of the best phones I've bought - to have as a spare/to use on foreign networks while I'm abroad - was an utterly basic Nokia 1616, which typically costs under £20, new.
(I actually got a 2nd hand one, which had been unlocked, so mine was even cheaper.)
It has a radio and a torch, and the battery life is a heck of a lot longer than a week.
I'd rather use my own camera than have a phone with a so-so one. It suits me that the 1616 doesn't have one. However, you don't have to go too far up the Nokia range to get one with a 5mp camera, for example the X2.

I'm like a few others on here in that I have a Nokia something or other that makes phone calls, has a basic camera and the battery lasts a week and that does me fine. My only problem is that the numbers and letters are starting to rub off of the keys. If I get a new one I would probably look at getting one with a proper qwerty keyboard. It would be a lot easier for the few texts I send and it wouldn't take me about five minutes to type a couple of lines like it does now.

Iphone every day of the week!

Go for the iPhone! The blackberry and androids are too technical and hard to use

I would agree with Chz above.
When my Nokia died a year or so ago, I wasn't sure what to go for (would I miss a keypad? battery life?) and so 'trialled' a cheapish Orange San Francisco (Android). This was great and now I have a HTC Desire S (Android).
The iPhone 4S has a good camera, but is very expensive (£30 for two years is £720). It is better for the 'less-technical' and those who don't mind being constrained by Apple's walled garden (and I say this as an iPad owner).


Buy the cheapest phone with the cheapest plan you can live with. Based on your described use, you barely need a phone.

Take the money you'll save from not buying an "all you can eat" plan, and buy an iPod touch. The only thing you'll be missing is the ability to tweet 24/7 - you'll need to be near WiFi, but that's not difficult in London.

I switched from a Blackberry to an iPhone about eight months ago, and wish I'd done it sooner. The camera works very well and the photo apps make it a joy to use. I especially love the Photosyth app which takes panoramic photos. See more here:

http://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=Jawsh&content=Synths

Also, the iPhoto app for the iPhone will tie directly into your Flickr account. It's worth every penny in my book.

iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone

Cxx

No good asking me! I was nodding in agreement with you for the first half of the post!
Mine's a pre-2006 flip phone that makes calls and texts! It costs me about £18 a year and 99.9% of the time it's either not with me, or dead!

Snap, DG! I too have had the same phone since 2007 and am practically paralysed by the amount of choice on offer now, making it really difficult to make that leap to an up-to-date smart phone.

My current model has apps of some sort and mobile web, an ok camera, a great MP3 player plus is a good size for my little hands, so I've not really had the impetus to upgrade (not least as I'm not into all this social networking). I tried out a HTC and a Galaxy but they are an unwieldy size for me.

My colleagues recommended that I try BillMonitor to find out which tariff would suit me based on my current usage before deciding on the make/model. I am tending towards an android phone and need to ensure that it is compatible with the tablet that I'd like to buy, so that's another layer of complexity to think about.

So I am going to read through all these recommendations very carefully indeed and will be following your decision-making process with interest DG.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/cheap-iphone

I went with Tesco about 18 months ago, having survived for years with an old-tech only-in-emergencies basic Nokia. Paid the upfront fee of around £300 and after 12 months at £25 switched to a cheaper tariff. The original tariff was all inclusive, but despite an addiction to streamed radio and heavy surfing I've never got close to the limits on the new one (500/5000/1GB) (roaming is another story; shudder). Lots of wifi these days.

I love my iPhone :)

If you've sold your soul to the Goog already then any Android will serve you well, Samsung do very good value ones. On the other hand if you want a delightful gadget that isn't primarily about voice calling then iPhone is the one. And O2 (in general) is the best for London smartphone capacity over 3G and WiFi - naturally ;-)

Blimey.
That's all really helpful, thanks.
And simultaneously fantastically complex.
And, erm, still desperately inconclusive :)

My daughter took out a contract last year with T Mobile, for £5 a month she got a touch screen phone which she sold on ebay for £50, 100 mins and unlimited texts and internet. Pay as you go might be just as good if you don't use it much.

Carphone warehouse sells brand new phones for a fiver. For £15 you get a flip one with internets and everything.

Z470xi is the only way to go - I hear they only have a select few in stock though.

I am not alone! I'm with the low-users, the non-users. My 2nd-hand Nokia 6100 does calls and texts, the battery lasts a week too - the phone does more but I ain't interested. I know how the buses and trains run in London as a former road, tube and rail (and air) inmate, so 99% of Apps don't offer much. Cash PAYG maybe £30 a year tops, and my landline is great to call family/mates on hands-free in the comfort of my own home, feet up and tea a-brewin'! Take the simplest replacement and if it doesn't meet the brave new world, then go big-time.

I use my moblie phone as just that - a mobile phone. If I need to make a call I can make a call without having to find a phone box, and if somebody needs to phone me they can. Very convenient and that's about it.Full stop.

I bought my current phone in June 2003. It makes and takes calls. It receives and can send texts. Admittedly the web enabled service hasn't worked for a while (so no checking test scores any more) but other than that it's fine.

Can I recommend billmonitor.com? You give it access to your online bills and it calculates your average usage of things like texts and calls. Or you can just enter the numbers yourself. It then searches a huge number of UK contracts and recommends the one that suits you best. You can specify a particular network or rule some out, and you can specify if you want a particular handset to go with it.

I've just upgraded after quite a long time. I used to use hand-me-downs from friends, and that's fine if you don't want to be up to date and you have the right kind of friends, but I now want a smartphone. I decided to buy the phone SIM only. Two advantages: I can buy an older phone for a lower price and I'm not tied to a particular provider. The downside is that you have to pay for the phone up front. Since I haven't really used mobile internet before my plans is to get a rolling 30 day contract, wait a few months till my usage has stabilised and then use billmonitor to work out which contract to go for.











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