Posted on 04/22/2014 11:50:24 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
For smartphone fans around the world, things really started to get interesting over the past couple of months. First, Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S5 flagship smartphone in late February, revealing a smartphone that was quite impressive and touted a number of great new features, but failed to live up to the hype stirred up by dozens of rumors. Then, HTC unveiled its own flagship phone, the HTC One (M8), and launched it the very same day.
(Excerpt) Read more at bgr.com ...
Look for Lenovo to bust into the North American cell phone market by years end. In China and Europe they are the market leader. As far as is it a good phone, I don’t know. They are Android platform right now and perhaps they will support Windows Phone in the future.
I like a cellphone that keeps the “cruft” of added software and user interface to a minimum but still has excellent “smartphone” functionality. That’s why I am a big fan of the Google Nexus 5, which is manufactured by LG. You can get an “unlocked” version for only US$399 for the 32 GB version.
I don’t like being tied up with the charger, battery swap and back to business.
I used to carry around a couple of spare batteries for my HTC Thunderbolt, but it was a pain in the butt to remove the case (I always use a hard shell protector case for my phones), pry open the back and swap out the battery. With the external battery I don’t even have to turn off the phone.
Really? When the iPhone first came out wasn’t battery replacement not available?
Of course, the HTC Thunderbolt has remarkably crappy battery life, so it may not be an issue with a phone that does not go dead every 12 hours or so.
BFL
I’m happy with the ZTE Valet ($50 on Amazon), with Tracfone service, around $7/month.
Almost everyone in my trailer park has one.
It voids the warranty if you do it yourself, but it is doable if you are comfortable working with tiny screw drivers.
bttt
Some people hate the plastics backs on a Samsung phone, I think they are great, pop right off and on, I can swap out a battery faster than I can find it in my bag.
I find that, if you put a phone with back speakers onto a hard surface, the surface would bounce back the sound in a magnified way. I could hear my calls from a few feet away.
How is the USB connector on your Thunderbolt? I had a Sensation and the little bar in the female side of the connector was made of plastic, I had to send it in twice to be fixed. I was going to make sure the my new HTC phone had a better quality connector but they dropped the removable battery and micro SD card from their new phones so I ended up with Samsung.
The original HTC one, when it came out last year, had “hard” capacitive buttons for “back” and “home”, which were non-standard and not very compatible with Google’s current Android design. I see the One M8 has now gone to the same kind of “soft” buttons that my Nexus 5 has. HTC’s last iteration of its “Sense” was pretty ugly, too, at least IMO. Very nicely made device, though, with decent battery life (no expandable memory or replaceable batter, though). It looks like the UI may have been improved, too, although I still prefer vanilla Android.
What can I say about the Galaxy S4/S5? Good hardware, although not as good looking or as nice feeling as the One - but expandable. Samsung’s TouchWiz interface is still ugly, but getting better. Not much of a change over the S4, IMO.
Me? I think the best Android phone in the world is the Google Nexus 5 that I got late last year. Oh, it’s not as nice looking as the One, and doesn’t have the beautiful OLED screen of the S5. Maybe not quite as fast, and a little harder on the battery, too. But I got it for CDN$399 for a 32 GB model - no contract. Great value for the money - pretty close to top of the line performance for less than 2/3 of the money.
iFixit.com is dedicated to repairing/replacing all the things that Apple says you must not do yourself. Replaced the lovely Mrs Prov1322's iPhone battery a few years ago with iFixit.com parts...easy as pie and still rolling today...
Until we replace it with the HTC One (M8) in the coming days and that iPhone becomes an iPod.
I bought 2 Samsung Galaxy S4 for T-Mobile at Amazon. $385 and $425. I signed up for their $30 plane which is 5gb data at 4g and unlimited 3g afterward. 100 minutes. Need minutes? Use Skype! It costs $30 a year with their 15% discount or you can pay $2.99 a month. Phone calls use 1 to 3mb a minute. You easily has 1,000+ minutes.
T-Mobiles next plan for unlimited minutes is $70
With T-Mobile I have connected at 39mb which is more then double my cable speed. No wonder they only give you 5gb as I would cancel and just tether the phone for internet.
I was paying $189 for 2 Droid X with just 3g thru Verizon!! The other person is now paying their $30 and I mine. I saved $159!!! a MONTH! x 12 months!! Buying a new car some day soon with that money : )
The Samsung Galaxy S4 works great. I do not need to charge it much. It lasts all day and night. Phone calls are clear and the videos I have can all play at once as thumbnails...!
The 13mega pixel camera takes great photos that look great on my 42” tv. I can use wifi and press a button and it shows up on the tv. Same for videos. The sound is real good as you cup your hand over the speaker. I think it was a design consideration as you create an amplifier of sorts.
There are some issues people are having with the newest OS called Kit-Kat but if you clear the browser cache, turn on and off mobile data and wifi and close down running programs thru the Home button and restart the phone you may fix the problem. Easier to do is a factory reset. Google will back up all your apps, contacts etc or you can have Samsung do it.
Worse case is you see if Best Buy or maybe T-Mobile will revert the OS to an earlier one then you update again.
I think the issue is updates not meshing with the previous install of the OS.
I can tell you what a "dumb phone" is. I have a Samsung TracFone. No contract. Not many features, but it costs me about $8 a month to use. All the calling and texting I want, and takes simple pictures. It cost me about $25 a few years ago. I like dumb and simple. My wife just upgraded hers to a smarter Samsung TracFone, cost $30, and transferred her accumulated minutes. Hers has a touchscreen and lots of features, but still is costing $8 a month to use. Dumb for the most part means saving money and not getting distracted.
What’s a “smart phone”?
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Something your kids use to watch porn on ... you can make phone calls on it but that is a secondary function which many of them perform very poorly.
Poor english...
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