I've decided to buy myself a smartphone. Mostly so I can have a camera, MP3 player and sat-nav on me, along with web browsing, email and 'apps' (which is what you young people call programs, I believe); basically a glorified PDA. Phone calls & texting will be secondary by & large.
My choices have boiled down to the iPhone 4, or the HTC Desire. For the best tarrifs (and the same memory), the difference between the two over a year is about £150 (Apple > HTC, obviously). My main question is, is the iPhone worth the extra?
Whilst this is true, in-car chargers are cheap for most phones with a standard mini-USB socket - such as the HTC Desire.
Wifey has a Desire and I have to say if I didn't have my N900, I'd probably get one myself (Or the DesireZ as it has a keyboard which I use a lot on my N900)
If you want sat-nav like TomTom, then I'd suggest a TomTom (or whatever).
Smartphones can do it (and some even have TomTom etc available) but will eat batteries and are never quite as good IME.
If you just want a "where the hell am I" satnav then fine
In my opinion, yes. But then I'm typing this on a Macbook, and my other machine is an iMac. I sold my soul to steve years ago. Saying that, I know two people who were android users and have given up and moved to the iphone. It's classic apple, if it does what you want it'll probably do it very well. If you want to do something that Steve doesn't want then you are stuffed. If you are not an Apple Mac user then I can't speak from experience, but I believe it's not a major issue any more (itunes used to be pretty grim on windows - and you will need to use itunes).
I also find it amusing that our hardcore Microsoft techie at work has given up with Windows mobile and now has an iphone (actually his second, he had the Â3G, and now has the 4 :-)) Windows Mobile 7 is looking a lot better though...
The one big thing that catches users out (we see this over and over again) it the battery life with smartphones. Basically, it's crap. There are no good ones, it's either crap, or really crap.
You will be charging it daily if you are using it much at all. Use it for intensive stuff like satnav and you'll be charging it during the day as well... doesn't bother me but annoys people who are used to charging their phones once a week :)
I've got a Nokia N79 and while it's not a 'proper' smart phone (small, no touch screen) it will do email, web browsing and satnav (the latter only free if hacked) and it's true that a day using the satnav will flatten the battery. But if you use it just as a phone for calls and texts and leave everything else off it will last a week.
In my experience yes, but then I like Apple products anyway so I'm biased (or sensible). The iPhone is so straightforward that I sometimes am gobsmacked by how easy and natural it is to use.
At the moment I read books on it (Stanza/Kindle) the screen is as wide as a newspaper column so just right for fast reading and the display really is sharp at 300dpi.
I have an SSH/VNC client to administer "stuff" and I can connect using the built in VPN to administer remote servers. Cool.
Today my wife wanted me to check a quote. I asked her to photograph it and send it to me as a message. She isn't technical at all, she snapped it on her iPhone, sent it to mine, I could read even the fine print on the contract.
I'm getting some remote cameras to watch the owls in the barn and for general surveillance. The recorder comes with an iPhone app for remote monitoring.
I can watch TV on the iPhone when I'm in bed, using eyeTV on the Mac to stream live video.
All the social media apps are better than using the websites.
I got TomTom western Europe and use it in the car with a cradle and a phone socket charger - no battery drain problems and the navigation is as good as a dedicated device. It even has the option to pay for high quality traffic info. I only got this because the wife stole my Garmin.
Think carefully about costs. I did the calculations and it was cheaper to buy an unlocked iPhone from Apple and use a Three SIM than it was to use any of the price plans and "cheap" iPhones from other suppliers. Three have a deal with a SIM for £15 a month with 1GB of data/300 minutes of calls. I had a 400 minute plan previously and never used them all so 300 is no hardship.
Also having an unlocked phone means that I can get a local SIM whenever I travel abroad and save a packet compared to data roaming.
Unless you want to use google streetview :-) Very un-apple like bit of UI there IMO
Yeah, The iphone4 display is amazing. Not sure if anyone else has caught up with it yet. Also, the camera in the iphone4 is pretty impressive in places that camera phones are normally crap. Low light especially.
What ssh client do you use? I've yet to find one I really like :-/
Caught up? It is no better than the one on my phone as far as dot pitch goes and mine is two years old. Don't let apple con you into thinking they did something new.
I find its cr@p, a cheap camera will do far better.
The cameras on most phones are pretty poor in comparison with even a bottom of the range camera. But the advantage of one on your phone is you are likely to have the phone with you most times.
And it's very useful if you like to be able to post pictures direct to Facebook, Twitter or whatever (which can be fun, if essentially pointless).
I had to check... I'm using Zinger-Soft iSSH-SSH/VNC client. The VNC isn't great - very slow but the SSH part does what I expect - i.e. not much but it doesn't get in the way. Option of transparent keyboard over a terminal window or small terminal window and keyboard in portrait mode. Good enough for me to restart server or to run package/update managers and with VPN to do it more or less from anywhere that I happen to be. The aim of retiring to the sun while still earning dosh is getting closer.
I find it more convenient to carry a USB charging lead than a spare battery. Phones are not designed with frequent battery changes in mind, some of the latching mechanisms for the battery cover are pretty flimsy.
Android battery life depends largely on what you have running in the background - if you have GPS and wifi enabled all the time then battery life is poor, if you just turn them on when you need them then battery life is probably the same as any other sort of phone.
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