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Buying a new cell phone
Zombies Tossed My Salad!
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, I dropped my razr a few weeks ago and cracked the front screen. It's been acting up and being generally annoying as of late so I think it's time to trade up.
What I was thinking of getting is either the new chocolate, or the EnV. Any one have any experence with either of these and can tell me if they are good choices or not?
What I was thinking of getting is either the new chocolate, or the EnV. Any one have any experence with either of these and can tell me if they are good choices or not?
Zombies Tossed My Salad! on
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It was also made fairly clear to me that good general advice was to avoid LG and Motorola (at least the RAZRs and KRZRs), and stick to Sony Ericsson and Nokia, so take that as you will.
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
My experience with LG has been good, and a few people I know have the enV and they really like it.
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If you can switch providers, I'd recommend checking out the Sprint SERO plans and phones. And if it's available in your area, T-Mobile is awesome.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Otherwise, I like the phone. I get a strong signal all the time. Just do some research before you buy.
I love it like a child
Instead of Up/Down/Left/Right buttons, it has a tiny little trackball
Stuck in a 2 year contract = ZERO customer service.
But is it worth the freakin' 400 dollars I would end up spending on it?
I love the 3.2 MP camera, it's how I take all my pictures.
EDIT: spoilered for bigness, but here's a (slightly altered quality by the upload site) picture of 2/3 of my birdies for example's sake:
EDIT: Sorry, didn't read that you couldn't go with a Sony Ericsson. My bad. Pic remains for "HAHA my phone is better" factor.
Sony phones work great, are built like tanks, and have the best UI I've ever seen in a phone. $400 is a lot, but the phone will last you.
Buy one without a SIM in it and put the Verizon SIM in.
I have 2-3 friends who really enjoy the EnV. I bought the claimshell of the chocolate and I enjoy it. It just dosent have any of the features that it is supposed to offer.
Edit: and in addition to what I said in the first paragraph, dont follow anyones advice on "omg awesome UI" Becuase verizon replaces it. You also cannot use "unlocked" phones on verizon, no sim capatibility. Verizon is very backwards, theve become the AOL of phone service
OK. That's just bizarre. How do you take your handset with you when you switch network?
EDIT: nm, read post above.
big companies like sprint in verizon have the policy that you buy their phone and their phone only when you get with them, and when you go somewhere else, you have to buy a new phone again for their network because verizon and sprint arent able to go on another network.
Edit: im fairly biased here, I used to work for radio shack right before they stooped carring verizon, and they carried sprint. Im only using verizon now becuase there the best coverage you can get in the state so far, but like I said, its like having AOL, and you can only use AOL's browser, it sucks big time.
I have a Motorola KRZR, and I ended up putting Alltel's firmware on it, which unlocks all of the bluetooth functionality and also gets rid of the awful Verizon UI. It was a long process, but I eventually got all of my data and everything working with it.
I just got a replacement KRZR yesterday, so I'm probably going to reflash it in the next couple of days. They apparently have a new firmware out from a phone carrier called Telus, which apparently adds support for JAVA, so I'll probably try that out this time.
If you feel up to the task and your phone is able, I highly recommend flashing to another carrier's firmware. After having the Alltell/Motorola UI, it's almost impossible for me to use Verizon's now.
bluetooth means you use a headset/headphones, thats it.
moving files on/off cards that go into your phone is overcomplex, due to them wanting you to spend money to send pictures through their service per message.
custom ringtones are non existant. verizon wants you to buy their ringtones (theres a workaround with some phones, you can send a 30 second clip of a song as a text message, and the phone will alow you to set as a ring tone)
The UI is redone to fit verizon. the main menu will have 2 gigantic red bars on it to remind you that you have a verizon phone. same with the load and exit screens (which are generally thrown on top of whatever there already is, so it causes longer times there, not a huge issue, but it gets annoying.
Any apps that came with the phone, are removed except the cookie cutter verizon apps. things like a simple music player are hidden in the depths of the phone so you have to use a bulky and shitty verizon player
Edit: I know nothing of AT&T, so verizon could be lesser of two evils. the only horrible thing I hear about AT&T is the 20 lb 200 page bills you get for data usage. (it outlines like every little piece of usage. This came up mainly with the Iphone if i remember)
The only thing I don't like is that it adds "This message was delivered via blackberry by t-mobile" or something like that at the end of every email you send with it, and it always makes me feel spoiled, or affluent and jerky "haha I have a blackberry" or something so I don't send out too many emails with it >.> .
These are generally accurate about Verizon. Their UI sucks, it's just so god damn slow and ugly. Bluetooth I never cared much about, but I know they disable OBEX or whatever it is.
I had a RAZR when they first came out for Verizon, thankfully so did everyone else so it was widely hacked. I was able to put ringtones and wallpapers on it with no problem. I think I was even able to re-enable OBEX because of a firmware screwup by Verizon.
My friend that has the enV has the data cable, and maybe uses Bitpim to transfer songs and stuff to the phone. I have a Q and we were able to send each other songs through bluetooth. So I guess it also depends on the phone you get. The smartphones are slightly less gimped than the regular phones since they run WM5 (and WM6 now).
For a good place to check how customizable a phone is, check out www.howardforums.com
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There's still going to be variance depending on the exact phone as well. My version of a phone AT&T offers was a bit more of a pain to set up a ringtone for than previous iterations of the hardware for example due to a change in how big of a file size was allowed.
As for Verizon, as others have mentioned it is possible to hack it to get around the issues many have mentioned though obviously others, like no SIM cards, are another matter. I've also heard that they don't mess around with smartphones either and just leave them be.
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You can call people underwater.
I don't know why you would need to do that, but you have to admit, it's pretty cool.
And supposedly it is very hard to break, so you wont run into that problem quite as fast as you would with a razr.
skate, halo 3
Does the iphone work as a pda, keeping appointments and stuff, or would it be better to stick to a Windows-based HTC phone or something?
I think you'd be much better off with an HTC phone or something along those lines, rather than an iPhone.
Of course I have no experience with an iPhone, only things that I've read. But I do have experience with a WM5 smartphone (Motorola Q), and while it may not be the best smartphone I still like it (mostly), and I'm looking to get the new HTC that's coming to Verizon in October hopefully.
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Is it the HTC Kaiser?
I'm looking forward to the AT&T 8925, aka HTC Kaiser: http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/07/18/atandt-to-get-kaiser-as-8925/. This will be my first Smartphone/PDA purchase ever, but it comes highly recommended from apparently the Internets and more importantly, my friend who has an earlier version of the phone. It's actually supposed to come out any day now.
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Buy some useless stuff at my Cafepress site!
I upgraded my phone to a chocolate just a month ago, and am pretty happy with it. The music capabilities are robust, but it doesn't read id3 tags correctly. When you open an album, all the songs are mixed up. Reception is above average, and often better than my last Motorola phone that had an antenna. The battery life is shorter than my last phone, but it lasts close to a week if I'm not using it constantly, which I guess is also above average.
I've heard pretty good things about the new Razr, and also LG's Razr-clone with the brushed steel look is supposed to be pretty good. Verizon gimps a lot of the features, so I wouldn't expect the world from any bluetooth phone from them.
My gf has a Nokia N95, which she got to replace her PDA. She seems pretty happy with it, since it basically means that instead of carrying phone+ipod+PDA+(sometimes)laptop, she can just carry her phone.
It is very hard to break. My friend demonstrated it by dropping it onto a tile floor from 4 feet like it was no big deal. It also is waterproof up to ONE METER (which is basically worthless except for accidental plunges into the toilet/dog's waterdish). It also sinks like a rock, rather than floating, which makes its waterproof feature pretty pointless. It would be cool if it were something that you could rescue had it accidentally fallen off of a boat or something.
I have the HTC Excalibur (T Mobile Dash) and I love it. Windows Mobile is really nice for setting up appointments and reminders, and the ease of putting new ringtones on, taking off the images I capture, and general usage is excellent. Also, I canceled my internet package as t-mobile had lied and told us that a cheaper one would work (like they had to thousands of others in order to get them to sign up for the phone), and then disabled the ability for that package to work just to cause everyone to pay for their more expensive service (which thankfully is finally dropping to 20 bucks a month). The battery life without internet usage is very nice (4 days+ with light calling and texting), and the napster-to-go compatibility makes it awesome.
I just got an iPhone this weekend, and the PDA type stuff seems to work pretty well. You can sync it up with Outlook or iCal and get all your appointments on there. The email works amazingly as well. And I hear you can view word, excel, and pdfs (not sure if you can edit them) that are attached to emails, but I haven't tried that.
My big concern at first was if I'd be able to get used to the touch-screen keyboard, but I got used to it after about 15-20 minutes, and now I'm loving it.
It's my first Apple product and I gotta say, I'm seriously impressed. I love this thing.