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

spanglechick said:
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?
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Quite a few "regular" phones have decent internet access now. I'd say the main thing to look for is the size of the screen - obviously the more you can see at one time the better. If you want to be inputting stuff as well as just browsing and reading, then you need to think about whether you want a "full" keyboard, or, if you are only occasionally going to be typing stuff in then a regular phone keypad might be fine - just type like you would writing a text.

The iPhone web browser is nice because it's intuitive and smooth. The downside is that the iPhone is horrendously expensive (whether this is disguised in monthly contract payments or upfront) and also the browser is rather slow.

If you get a Nokia (or various other phones - check) you can install a web browser called Opera Mini. This is free, and because of the way it compresses the data, means that web pages load way faster than on an iPhone or on any other regular web browser.

I've heard good things said about this:

http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-5530-xpressmusic

Nice big touch screen and web browsing with Opera Mini installed will be near enough as good as you can get (once the newest version of Opera Mini is released which will be quite soon, the web experience will be better than on the iPhone). This phone is quite reasonably priced.


Edit:

Actually, that Nokia 5530 that I recommended - the downside of that is that it has no 3g connectivity so the net might be a bit slower than I suggest. You could consider the next one up which is the 5800 which does have 3g access.
 
untethered said:
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?
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Most reviews have generally been fairly positive about the keyboard, although there's obviously going to be a bit of compromise in something so small. Here's a bloke going full throttle on his Pre:

It takes a little getting used to, but I find it absolutely fine - and I much prefer not having a virtual keyboard obscure half the screen when I'm typing. It is a matter of personal taste though. I can't bear typing on virtual keyboards.
untethered said:
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.
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It's a lot easier to slam a few batteries in your bag rather than mess about with (more expensive) bulkier back up units that need cables and whatever. Not a deal breaker for sure, but it's very handy being able to swap batteries.
 
You can also get higher capacity batteries, but in the Pre's case the larger of these aren't compatible with the touchstone charging system.
 
editor said:
My G1 has a compass and more augmented reality apps than you can shake a stick at and, to be honest, most have little more than novelty value.
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It's early days for AR. More general mapping/wayfinding applications are more useful right now and a compass really helps with those.

Do any of these phones record the camera's location and bearing in photo metadata? Now that would be very useful, even though invisible to most users.
 
teuchter said:
The iPhone web browser is nice because it's intuitive and smooth. The downside is that the iPhone is horrendously expensive (whether this is disguised in monthly contract payments or upfront) and also the browser is rather slow.
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Have you used a 3GS?
 
untethered said:
Do any of these phones record the camera's location and bearing in photo metadata? Now that would be very useful, even though invisible to most users.
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Have you a actually used a phone with a compass in? You're better off with a £5 compass from the local camping store and using Google Maps and the location services on your phone.

Don't get me wrong: there's a lot of interesting things coming out of location aware services, but wandering around with your phone in the air staring at your augmented reality, GPS-powered video screen ain't one of them, IMO. It kills the battery dead and turns you into a muggers' magnet (although it does work for certain limited applications, like at a festival or something - but even then you can do without the compass bit).

Oh, and the Palm, like most smartphones, will record location metadata when you take pics, either with GPS (if turned on) or 'best guess' via triangulation. Not sure how you could work out 'bearing' if you've stropped to take a pic, but there are loads of battery-sucking 'tracking' apps available on various platforms.,

One thing to the OP: if you're plugged into Facebook and IM, the Palm Pre and new HTC phones do a really smart thing where they integrate all your contacts and messaging into one unified window.

 
I'd go for the iPhone 3G or 3GS or a Palm Pre. Nothing else matches them, I don't think. Android phones are ok, but are a little behind in my extremely humble opinion.
 
editor said:
Yes. It's also the fastest camera I have ever, ever used on a mobile. Quality isn't too bad, all things considered either.

Hang on, I'll post up an example taken in low light.


Most phones would still be focusing after the train had sped by - my G1 would never have caught the scene.

A flash is pretty much essential if you're buying a phone to use as a camera too.
Click to expand...

Thank you - fast is good. And the lack of a flash is one of the things that puts me off the iPhone 3gs
 
editor said:
Have you a actually used a phone with a compass in? You're better off with a £5 compass from the local camping store and using Google Maps and the location services on your phone.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've got an iPhone 3GS. It works fine for me for the occasional fix. I don't wander round with it all day.

editor said:
Oh, and the Palm, like most smartphones, will record location metadata when you take pics, either with GPS (if turned on) or 'best guess' via triangulation.
Click to expand...

I'm aware that most location-aware phones (including iPhone) record the lat/long in the metadata. I wondered about the bearing.

editor said:
Not sure how you could work out 'bearing' if you've stropped to take a pic
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That's what the compass tells you. The direction in which the phone is facing. If this were recorded in the metadata along with the lat/long it would enable all kinds of useful apps that aren't currently possible.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time if it isn't being done already.
 
Incidentally, cell tower and GPS location is done by trilateration rather than triangulation. You don't know the angles between the phone and the satellites/cell towers, but you do know the locations of the towers/satellites and the signal strengths (and hence, approximate distances) between the phone and them.
 
untethered said:
That's what the compass tells you. The direction in which the phone is facing. If this were recorded in the metadata along with the lat/long it would enable all kinds of useful apps that aren't currently possible.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time if it isn't being done already.
Click to expand...
Until smartphone battery performance triples - at least - none of the augmented reality apps are going to have much use past novelty value for regular users.

The Android platform is leading the way with augmented reality - Lord knows I've downloaded enough - and after the initial 'wow' factor wears off, disappointment inevitably sets in.

I don't use any of them (although I use standard location-aware apps that don't involve me flapping around using video occasionally).

techcter: I *hated* Opera Mini when I tried it.
 
editor said:
The Android platform is leading the way with augmented reality - Lord knows I've downloaded enough - and after the initial 'wow' factor wears off, disappointment inevitably sets in.
Click to expand...

That's because Apple rather bizarrely banned developers from building any apps that processed live video streams, even though the hardware and OS are quite capable of doing it as we've latterly discovered.

As I've already said, I think the most useful applications of the compass are in orienting the user rather than AR at present. AR will probably be much more useful when we get goggles and as you say, better overall device performance and battery life.
 
teuchter said:
Why? Which version was that?

You should have a look at the version 5 which is currently a beta. Apart from a few bugs which I'm sure will be sorted in the final version it's superb.
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It was whatever version was released on Android a while ago. I just didn't like the way it works.

I'm on Pre now and don't need tabs as the phone can run multiple browser windows, which is fucking ace - I can just flick between urban, BBC and other sites.

untethered said:
As I've already said, I think the most useful applications of the compass are in orienting the user rather than AR at present.
Click to expand...
Something a £5 compass will do faster, more accurately and without draining the battery.
 
teuchter said:
Compared to Opera Mini 5, it's not smoother.

Can the iPhone browser support multiple tabs yet?
Click to expand...

It sure can. Up to 8. Opera Mini stops at 3, I recall.

And come on, it's a lot smoother and nicer. Major thing I've noticed is that Opera mini gives up when it loses connection. You have to press refresh when you get signal again. With iPhone browser it just picks up where it left off when it lost signal.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an iPhone fanboi, but I do feel it's unsurpassed in the browser stakes.
 
teuchter said:
Can the iPhone browser support multiple tabs yet?
Click to expand...

You can have up to eight (I think) Safari pages open in the app and switch between them using a separate view. It's more like Alt-Tab on a PC than genuine tabs, but it takes up no screen space in the main view.
 
editor said:
It was whatever version was released on Android a while ago. I just didn't like the way it works.

I'm on Pre now and don't need tabs as the phone can run multiple browser windows, which is fucking ace - I can just flick between urban, BBC and other sites.
.
Click to expand...

That's what I mean by tabs... that's what you can do on OM5 as well.
 
editor said:
Something a £5 compass will do faster, more accurately and without draining the battery.
Click to expand...

It makes one wonder why enterprising retailers don't offer an iPhone and economy compass bundle.

They could also throw in a diary for the forthcoming year, a notebook, a digital camera, an MP3 player and a netbook.

Then all you'd need the phone for would be calls and texts. The battery would last forever.
 
ChrisFilter said:
It sure can. Up to 8. Opera Mini stops at 3, I recall.
Click to expand...

Just tried and I've got 12 open at the moment.

And come on, it's a lot smoother and nicer. Major thing I've noticed is that Opera mini gives up when it loses connection. You have to press refresh when you get signal again. With iPhone browser it just picks up where it left off when it lost signal.
Click to expand...

Yeah that is sometimes slightly irritating
Don't get me wrong, I'm not an iPhone fanboi, but I do feel it's unsurpassed in the browser stakes.
Click to expand...

It's a nice browser but I think that once the full version of OM5 is out, it can't claim to be the best any more.

And certainly not enough to justify the price.

That's before we even start getting into the whole multitasking business...
 
editor said:
The Pre browser is every bit as good as the iPhones, which is no surprise considering it's basically the same thing.
Same for Android too.Except it's far more elegantly done on the Pre OS.
Click to expand...

The Pre looks very nice. In 18 months when I start a new contract, I might look at the Pre 2 or whatever it'll be called.
 
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