These newfangled mobiles that do the internet - clue me in.

So, my current mobile contract is about to expire. I'm on a very cheap (sub £20 a month) contract - but don't use the internet at all. However, while I wasn't looking, people seem to be getting phones where you can access the internet.

I phones seem quite smart. What are my other options? what's the difference between an iphone and a blackberry?

am i right in thinking a phone won't be able to handle all websites and web functions?

I can't really afford to pay much if anything for the phone itself, and wouldn't want to pay more than £30 - £35 a month, for which i'd want more or less unlimited browsing, but wouldn't need many minutes or texts. Is that realistic?

iPhone 3GS will cost you : http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/paymonth.html

Great phone imo though. You've seen and welcome to play with mine.

an 8gb one would do me, though, i reckon.

anyway - so what's the difference between an iphone and a blackberry and other internet phones?

bump for day people

That's the old one. You'd want the 3GS.. honest!

So, I'm not even allowed to see what you fucking sell anymore then??

Sorry to go off topic, But if this starts to become popular with shopping sites as well as iplayer stuff etc, etc, I'm going to start getting well fucked off.

<as you were>

if your in france orange hold the licensee for iphones so go through their site.

if your somewhere else ummm...


dave

I'm focusing more on the camera for my next phone, but it does have a good web browser too - Samsung Pixon 12. Dial-a-Phone have it for £30pm on Orange (proper £30 too, not blooming redemptions) with 600 minutes and unlimited texts and internet. That's way more texts and minutes than I need, but it's the only way to get free internet and that particular phone. I do like the iphone, but there are tons of other phones out there now with the same size screen, a fast web browser and wifi connection and qwerty keyboards if you like.

Here's a Nokia internet phone too, for example.

That's what you get for living in foreign parts.

spangles - I can use the net on my blackberry but it's painfully slow. I can't access facebook (too much bandwidth) but I can get onto urban and my mail. I only use it if I'm really bored though because it's so slow. I think the new fangled stuff like kandakid's got are probably much better but £££

Not the point.

Blackberry users are marginally less insufferable than iphone users.

And their batteries last longer.

iPhone is probably the best gadget I've ever bought. I don't need to carry multiple things around anymore (Phone/MP3/Laptop).

Battery life isn't great.

I've just upgraded to an HTC touch which means I have a spare smartphone although it's orange - can be unlocked. You're more than welcome if does the job for you.
*goes off to hunt*

Not saying I'm recommending it but I access the internet from a samsung G600 or something on a t-mobile contract. The contract was £15 a month and I pay £7.50 a month on top for, I believe, unlimited access.

Reading is fine. typing is a pain so I don't much from the phone.

htc magic does the job for me



nice big screen, a load of android apps, urban looks good on it, twitter too, facebook is ok, web search is pretty good, easy to use, touch screen, camera is ok, but you can download camera apps as well if you want more bells and whistles like

Does the camera on the Palm Pre have a flash?

what matters to me: getting on urban and facebook, maybe blogger - as smoothly and as much like i would at home as possible. I take about one photo every three months and never take video. I don't use an mp3 player either, but i suppose i might. I used to. i dunno about apps - that's a whole new world to me.

what is the benefit og having more gb? other than storage - will it make it go faster?

so i should look at the htc hero, the palm pre, the iphone and the nokia e71.

apart from battery life, what am i looking for? what makes a phone like this 'good' or 'bad'. Editor - why is the palm pre your favourite?


edit - oh - and if i pay £100 i can get the iphone 8gb on an 18 mth contract for £30. How do the others compare in price for initial outlay?

If you wanted to be fairly cheap, you could get a fairly bog standard phone, put a 3uk pay as you go sim in, and pay for their 5 quid a month unlimited* internet deal, and use opera mini to surf from your phone.

I use opera mini on my 3 year old 6233 to access the internet, and whilst I seem to be developing a freakishly muscular thumb, it does the job adequately. My other half uses a k800 with opera mini also.



*note 'unlimited' clearly is a different word to that in the dictionary when used by mobile networkds and is actually 2 gig

The iPhone 3GS (16 & 32GB) have a much better battery life than the old 3G (8GB) model. The 3GS also has a built-in compass which makes various new applications possible that simply can't be done on the old 3G which doesn't have a compass.

is the difference worth an extra fiver a month and a 24mth contract, though?

Useful thread spanglechick - I need a new phone at some point and my requirements are pretty much identical to yours.

In my opinion, yes. It depends whether you want to be able to use the phone to show you not just where you are on the map but which direction you're facing. If you want to do things like satellite navigation and augmented reality (overlaying a live camera view with information labels and other graphics).

The 3GS is faster, too.

Difference between the 3G and 3GS is quite large imo.

I've read reviews which say that the Pre's keyboard is impossibly fiddly and overall is far too slow. How do you find it?

That's clearly a benefit over the iPhone but there are backup power supplies you can get for them if you really need it. It shouldn't be a deal breaker.

i think vodafone are offering the HTC magic at about £25 a month for new customers, probably an 18 month contract, phone comes free