The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Shitty British Mobile Phone thread. Whats actually good?
Lave II
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I hate mobile phones.
Hate them.
My current one is a Samsung tiny clamshell thing. But it's giving up the ghost after 18 months or so. As such I need another shitty phone. I'm 100% sticking with O2 and a pay and go sim, because it means I spend <£10 a month. But would unlock a phone if need be.
So can anyone recommend good mobile phones? I'm looking to spend only £60 (maybe £80 if it gives blowjobs), and would like it to be small and sturdy. Clamshells or sliding ones are nice. Also O2 gives me £20 off a phone so I've more breathing space on their P&G handsets.
I've almost no understanding of phones whatsoever, having spent years with a Nokia 3210. So who make good phones? I hear Sony's thumb pads break, and Nokia aren't that reliable anymore.
Also I will not be wanting to play games on it (I carry a gba micro for that), and I don't need to be able to sit on the back of a bus using it a tiny shitty boombox as though the 90's never happened either (I have an MP3 player). A camera would be nice though.
Also the moon on a stick, please.
tl;dr - mobile phones hay?
Hate them.
My current one is a Samsung tiny clamshell thing. But it's giving up the ghost after 18 months or so. As such I need another shitty phone. I'm 100% sticking with O2 and a pay and go sim, because it means I spend <£10 a month. But would unlock a phone if need be.
So can anyone recommend good mobile phones? I'm looking to spend only £60 (maybe £80 if it gives blowjobs), and would like it to be small and sturdy. Clamshells or sliding ones are nice. Also O2 gives me £20 off a phone so I've more breathing space on their P&G handsets.
I've almost no understanding of phones whatsoever, having spent years with a Nokia 3210. So who make good phones? I hear Sony's thumb pads break, and Nokia aren't that reliable anymore.
Also I will not be wanting to play games on it (I carry a gba micro for that), and I don't need to be able to sit on the back of a bus using it a tiny shitty boombox as though the 90's never happened either (I have an MP3 player). A camera would be nice though.
Also the moon on a stick, please.
tl;dr - mobile phones hay?
Lave II on
0
Posts
Ignore the popularity of it, for what you need, it is a decent phone.
just get the simplest model that you can
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Companies seem to have this obsession with making things thinner without making them small in dimension (Probably because of the screen size they're trying to get in there, but JEEZ, not all of us need 48" fucking widescreens on our phones).
Lave: Anything by Samsung is decent, generally. They make nice phones.
Slap a "pay as you go" SIM card in there and you're set for many years to come.
asically, but whatever SE your budget will stretch to, and as long as it isn't a W series you can't go wrong (the W series is their WalkMan phione,a nd I'm guessign you already have an mp3 player).
Also, take your old phone into an actual O2 shop and you can get like 15quid off a new phone if it's with O2.
Avoid Motorola like the fucking plague. Shitty interfaces, combined with awful dated design. Anyone that says otherwise is talking shite.
Edit: The 3310 is really heavy compared to any phone in the last three years and is huge too. Why saddle yourself with something so dated?
I generally go into a phone shop, say what my price range is, and ask for the prettiest one in that range. I know that all phones are full of convergence shite that I do not want.
"No, I do not care that it has support for 'dynamic Surround 3D itunes audio', or if it comes with 'Fifty Cent tonez' or if I can play 'Sims - mobile edition' on it. Just give me a nice phone that works well as a phone dammit"
V3 pretty much suits my needs, it uses miniUSB to charge to, which is a simple but significant useful feature.
I'll have a look about for some phone only deals if you like?
Edit: V3 on 02, £69.99 with £10 airtime
or L6, £49.99 with £10 credit
"See you at 9pm? The Local?"
"OK"
Are great for me.
But the 3310 is just too large for me. I carry around a wallet, phone, keys and with space a gba micro and/or ipod nano. So smalller the better.
A samsung sounds good - and I like the idea of a phone that can take a 1024*768 decent photo say - which can be bluetoothed to my iBook. For those random things you come across when you don't have your actual camera.
Oh and a ring tone - thats actually the sound of a fucking phone ringing!
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
My only quibble with it is that the interface is freaking horrible in usability terms, but I only need it to make phone calls and text.
I get about two weeks of battery life from a one-hour charge, it's light, and it's small (and by small I don't mean thin. I mean it fits in a pocket easily and isn't unconmfortable. I don't get this trend for making freakishly large phones that are very thin (like the RAZR). Whee, nested parentheses). Plus I've dropped it down flights of concrete stairs on more than one occasion, and the battery cover didn't even budge.
https://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/Sony_Ericsson/Z310i
Edit: My texts are generally "2100@WFront? Bx" or "steam now"
Also I would make it law that products can only be numbered in order. So that the:
Was actually called the Sony Ericsson 9. Being their 9th phone released and so on.
That phones damn ugly - but looks like it does all I need.
I've just spent a few minutes googling for Samsung D** or E** phones and now I want to put a bullet in my head. The websites look like fucking myspace pages.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
This phone gets my stamp of approval.
However I'm a bit pissed off with being on Virgin pay as you go. It's not bad, my girlfriend and another friend are on virgin, so cheap text messages, but I get raped in the ass for everything else. Anyone know of a good service that I wont get humped with call prices? I'd also love not to bother with bundles, don't want the hassle.
Second rule of Teacher Club: You DO NOT touch the kids.
The prettiest phone on the market is the SE z520i, but it's a bit old now and only has a 1.3mp camera. This Z310i is the model below it but more recent.
*Off the top of my head the first digit is essentially how good it is - higher is better, but I could be wrong.
Sorry I don't have anything worthwhile to say, the thread just caught my interest.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I've had great luck with LG's, dunno what your options there are over in England. Samsungs are alright, reliable, but they seem to always be one step behind on tech, for their price.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
In my mind the 3210 is the only phone that most people need. It's minimal and simply the best all round call making/text message receiving device ever made.
I had the most bizarre experiance when me and my girlfriend went into a phone shop last year (Phones4U I think) and started talking about getting a new phone (our old phones were physically breaking down at this point). The conversation went like this:
Salesman: What phone do you currently have?
Girlfriend: Oh, an old Nokia 3210.
Salesman: A what?
Girlfriend: *puzzled* A 3210
Salesman: Never heard of it.
Girlfriend: What?
Me: What?
Girlfriend: The 3210, you know the phone absolutely everyone had *pulls phone out*
Salesman: Never seen it before
Girlfriend: Are you taking the piss?
It was a slightly surreal experiance, how the fuck can you work in a phone shop and not have heard of the single most popular mobile phone ever? "What console do you currently have?", "A playstation", "Never heard of it!"
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I got my Dad a 6070 for Christmas and he seemed to get to grips with it pretty damn quick. Easy on the pockets as well.
£59.99 on Argos.
I don't understand how people are suggesting the 3310. Have I gone back in time 5 years?
It's because some people on here, despite this being a technology forum as well as a games forum, have some kind of prejudice against these "techno jiggawotsits" that we're all using nowadays, and prefer something that a granddad can use.
Interface, battery, design, stability, features, price*, quality, style, weight, size, compatibility. There is no legitmate reason to be using this phone unless you live on an island without a phone mast and need a sturdy pocketwatch.
*For the cost of buying a second-hand one on eBay including postage yoiu could get a crap PAYG from any shop in England.
What I look for in a phone, honestly, is openness. I want to be able to do what I want with my phone, without being blocked. The original series of V3 was great for that. I used to simply use the motorolla software to make my own mp3s and backgrounds, so that they were unique and meaningful, rather than having to pay for whatever cingular wanted to sell me.
I briefly had a V3m, when I first switched to Sprint, and I HATED it, because fetures were locked down, and you had to do things through sprint's store, etc.
I have a Treo700wx now, and I love it, because the PPC OS is open enough for my tastes. I do what I want with my phone, and that's good enough for me.
Edit: and for the record, I've had a LOT of phones. I tend to upgrade every year or so, simply because there is always a new feature that I want (color screens, polyphonic/real music ringtones, qwerty keyboards, and clamshell design have all been reasons I upgraded, in no particular order)
Actually, I bought a crap PAYG from Orange recently and it's far, far worse a phone than a 3310. Holds a grand total of 20 texts. I'd exchange it for the good ol' brick any day.
If only there were some website which sold imported phones from China. Or a Chinese website which sold phones internationally.
Giving more consideration to price and resilience in the face of approaching gravel than to looking pretty or being easy on dainty fingers, I can't think of anything wrong with the 3310 (and models of its age or likeness) for casual use (£10-£15p/a on a Pay As You Go tariff).
You can also totally customise the user interface if you use theme creator I created my own, well.. I tweaked one of the current ones to my own personal preferences and got rid of all the branding crap that companies like Orange put on your phone.
EDIT: Here's a pic of what it looks like for the main bit. (the theme in question is my current one I setup, the background photo is of Sydney bridge on New Years eve 2004.. I took it when I was on holiday in Australia... off again for a third time next year.. woot!)
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
It's just the price difference between a reasonable PAYG and an old brick is negligible when you consider that this is a device you carry 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and one that can and may save your life on occasion. I spend more time picking a new phone than I would an organ donor.
Based on what the O2 shop on my way to work is selling I've narrowed it down to the following.
1) Samsung X820 £60
+ 2MP camera
+ Thin
- Big
EDIT: No iSync. Doh.
2) Samsung E250 £50
+ takes micro sd cards (and I have a gig one unused)
+ slidey
- vga camera (640*480)
3) Sony(lol) Ericson K750i £60
+ iSync
+ 2MP camera
- Thumb stick will proabably break
Anyone got experience with any of these? Grim, hows the Thumb stick lasted?
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
No complaints so far, I have heard of issues where some gunk or something will get into the thumbstick.
I've had mine for roughly a year so far and not had any of those issues, i'm not a heavy mobile user so I guess that might be a cause.
BTW, the theme creator software is for LOADS of Sony Ericsson phones, not just the K750i.
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I have not seen a phone with an interface as straightforwardly usable as the Nokia 3210 an 5110 series phones. Modern phones have even the most basic of options buried under a dozen sub menus with a half dozen different buttons to press at any time, where one false step takes you back to the root menu. And Always bloody, useless icons. Give me text, tell me what the option actually is, I don't want to fucking guess what a pair of running cartoon legs means.
And why do these modern mobiles always have a non-fucking-remappable incredibly sensitive Internet button? You're struggling through the menus as it is and bam! you're connecting to the Internet because you looked at the button the wrong way.
The new Nokia 1100 and 1110 are the clear spiritual succesors of the 3210, it's just a shame I find the keypads totally hideous otherwise I'd have got one.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
What did you find wrong with th keypad? i really liked it, easy to use. and believe it or not, the torch actually came in handy a hell of a lot.
Kinda regretting it now
The Nokia 1100 is the one with the membrane key pad isn't it? I, fairly irrationally I know, found it `unpleasant' to the touch although I know peolpe who, like you, think the keypad is great. It was hate at first touch for me and I haven't got over that first contact.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Does that include the X ones? 'cos thats a shame.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Well, I'm talking specifically about the clamshells in the D series. But maybe I'm just crap at getting them to do stuff! Still, even typing in numbers is a bit of a chore.
I have the K800i now, and while it's a better phone overall, I'm kind of pissed about the lack of a flashlight (it does have a real flash for taking photos).