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View Full Version : Decent easy cellphone for g/f?


chucker
2005-11-20, 02:30
December is coming up, which means three events for gifts in my case (my g/f's b-day, our annual anniversary and, of course, Christmas). I have been pondering various options, one of which is getting her a cell. Now, granted, I don't even have one myself, but then again I also don't currently have a job so I pretty much spend all day at home. Ergo, little use at this point. She, on the other hand, will hopefully have a job again soon, and a cellphone would certainly be helpful in that case (yes, I realize some workplaces give out cellphones anyway, but then she can always give it to me :p ).

Anyways. I'm just wondering what kind of good options there are. She doesnt' need a camera; we have an excellent digicam that we just bought a while ago. She doesn't need to play music either; I have an iPod mini that she could take with her. Syncing contacts and calendars would be nice, although she currently doesn't manage those digitally, but I could probably coax her into changing that.

So, as you can see, her needs would probably be fairly basic. What's much more important is: a great user interface, easy syncing (Bluetooth? her computer doesn't have it but it would be cheap enough to add; for the time being, USB would be okay, I suppose) and, of course, phone functionality that works well in our area. I believe the major carrier here in Montréal is Telus.

Her computer runs Windows XP (ugh), by the way.

Pointers to a good comparison site would be okay, too, but if anyone has recommendations, even better. Thanks!

Gargoyle
2005-11-20, 04:37
Dunno if you can get it over there, but I have seen adverts in the UK for a pink RAZR. http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/commerce/servlet/gben-server-PageServer?ARTICLE=MAIN.UK.INTERNET.STATIC.CPWOFFE RS.MOTV3PINK&bbcam=adwds&bbkid=pink+razr&x

Very Girly

chucker
2005-11-20, 13:11
Dunno if you can get it over there, but I have seen adverts in the UK for a pink RAZR. http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/commerce/servlet/gben-server-PageServer?ARTICLE=MAIN.UK.INTERNET.STATIC.CPWOFFE RS.MOTV3PINK&bbcam=adwds&bbkid=pink+razr&x

Very Girly

:lol: nice, but actually, I think she would prefer green. ;)

Hmm, so is Motorola a decent brand? Most of my peers in Germany seem to love Sony Ericsson. Now, granted, I'm a little peeved with Sony for MemoryStick, their "Network Walkman" disaster and of course the DRM, but when it comes to cellphones, who knows. Their T610 is what a lot of people seem to use (not sure if that variant actually works over here in North Europe, heck, I don't even know what kind of network Telus is on).

The Motorola marketing page tells me about things like 4x zoom and MPEG-4 video playback :err: , but on the plus side, the "quad-band antenna" seems to indicate that this phone would actually work with many networks? I like the illuminated keypad, and the picture caller ID feature sounds nice (does that sync with your computer's Address Book?).

Speaking of which, how does syncing work on Windows anyways? Let's say she were to use Windows Address Book (tied to Outlook Express, which she does use, yes, yes, I know, but at least she occasionally uses Firefox for browsing these days :D ) -- how would she go about syncing? Would she have to install ActiveSync or something like that?

Bryson
2005-11-20, 13:52
No, Motorola phones have a really, really terrible OS - not at all easy to use. Yes, the RAZR is pretty to look at, but it's OS still sucks.

Nokias have a great OS but are teh ugly right now.

Sonys are supposed to be good phones, but I don't like the way they look.

I'd say that Samsung is the current way forward. I have a D500 which is great, and my Girlfriends has a E330 which is a good looker and also easy to use.

So, I'd say, look at Samsung. Do check about Bluetooth, though, as not all Samsungs have it.

Luca
2005-11-20, 14:15
Sony sucks. Moto sucks. That is all.

chucker
2005-11-20, 19:22
Neither the D500 nor the E330 seem available on the Canadian site, and of the cellphones offered, hardly any (none of those offered for Telus or Rogers) seems to mention Bluetooth at all. :err:

Are cellphone makers really having such a hard time making Bluetooth a standard feature? You'd think that it's most important. :|

Luca
2005-11-20, 19:36
Are cellphone makers really having such a hard time making Bluetooth a standard feature?
Yes.

In general, companies that make cell phones suck nearly as hard as the companies that sell mobile phone service. Both of those, in turn, suck just a little harder than the company that makes the majority of computer software people use, which in turn sucks just a little harder than the company that makes the computer hardware most people use.

So yes, they really ARE having a hard time making Bluetooth a standard feature. Dell, Microsoft, Motorola, Sony, Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, et. al., are all having a hard time because their suckiness is getting in the way.

chucker
2005-11-20, 20:37
Telus only appears to offer one phone (Motorola 710 I think it was) with Bluetooth. Rogers offers six, five of which are Motorola. The other is a way too expensive SE.

I'm also told that syncing contacts will only work with Outlook, not with Outlook Express, and not Thunderbird. Yewouch.

Dorian Gray
2005-11-20, 21:43
Come on, would you want a cellphone for your Christmas present?! Number one rule for buying presents: don't get something the person needs! Especially if the person is your girlfriend! :) Also, anything that can be bought in a shop is probably not a good present, in my opinion.

If you insist on getting a phone, you'll have to decide based on what you know about her tastes. For example, I find Samsung and Motorola design to be shapeless (D500, I'm looking at you) and unrefined. I think the RAZR is particularly crude, but it's loved by geeks everywhere. I have yet to come across a good-looking flip-phone, but girls tend to like them more than guys.

Nokias are still my favourites for a lot of reasons. Like Apple computers, Nokias are full of features that become important to you only once you've used them and realised, "yes, that's a good idea!". They are also designed with confident, classy lines and identifiable family traits, a quality only shared with Sony-Ericsson phones. Interestingly, Ericsson phones always looked crap before the partnership with Sony, so being Scandinavian doesn't guarantee good design. Sony is clearly responsible for the injection of flair into their product line-up. Today's Sony-Ericsson phones, with their distinctive concave surfaces (also on some Sony laptop and CD Walkman products), are very attractive and my only real reason for ruling them out is because Sony is an arrogant company that I couldn't possibly bring myself to support.

I've used phones by Ericsson, Siemens, Philips, Panasonic, LG, Sagem, Motorola, Samsung and Sony-Ericsson, and frankly most of them sucked. The stupidity of the user interface of Sagem/Panasonic/Motorola/LG phones has to be experienced to be believed: it's hard to believe any of these companies ever gave a prototype to real people to test before production. Some of the Philips phones can be quite handsome, but they're underpowered and tend to have a couple of blindingly obvious design mistakes. Incredibly, some phones don't charge as quickly as the battery goes flat during a call, so if you're on the phone and your battery goes low, even if you get to a charger you can't continue the call!

My current phone is a 15-month-old Nokia 7610. Why have I kept it so long? Because it's damn near perfect! It looks great, the Symbian OS is a dream, I can effortlessly multitask between five open apps, keep it running for days with no slow-down, enjoy one-handed operation (with the curious exception of copy-paste operations), and battery life is good. I'll probably upgrade when Nokia comes out with a phone with a hard disk AND a Carl Zeiss lens AND a 3 MP camera. Until then, nothing on the market is much better than the 7610 and 99% of the shit out there looks a lot worse. I mean, surely you're having a laugh? (http://direct.motorola.com/eng/phoneSelect.asp?country=GBR&language=ENG&web_page_name=SUPPORT&productid=) I could have sworn I hadn't seen an external antenna on a phone since 1999, but I must be blind, it's making a comeback! :lol:

Luca
2005-11-20, 22:03
The main problem with Nokia is that they must hire usability experts to tell them how best to make a phone user-friendly, and then they do the opposite of whatever they tell them. Look at the keypad on this thing!

http://www.handy-discount.de/nokia/7610.jpg

When is Nokia going to just stop with the retarded keypad designs? At least they're not using circular dialing anymore, but honestly, they could be doing much better.

Oh, and I use a freaking Kyocera K404. It's only about the cheapest mobile phone ever and it cost me exactly $0. Oh well, it's cheap but it's good enough for me. I don't see why people have to spend hundreds of dollars on a cell phone... as far as I'm concerned, the phone providers screw you enough without your having to buy an expensive phone as well!

chucker
2005-11-20, 22:27
Come on, would you want a cellphone for your Christmas present?!

Yes, I'm a geek, so there.

Number one rule for buying presents: don't get something the person needs! Especially if the person is your girlfriend! :) Also, anything that can be bought in a shop is probably not a good present, in my opinion.

Well, take into account that, as I have pointed out, both her birthday and our anniversary happen to be in the same month. That leaves enough space for romantic stuff. Not that I'm any good at that.

If you insist on getting a phone, you'll have to decide based on what you know about her tastes. For example, I find Samsung and Motorola design to be shapeless (D500, I'm looking at you) and unrefined. I think the RAZR is particularly crude, but it's loved by geeks everywhere. I have yet to come across a good-looking flip-phone, but girls tend to like them more than guys.

torifile
2005-11-20, 22:35
Dorian, you haven't seen the Treo, then? It's got an antenna. I shudder to think what call quality would be WITHOUT one. :no:

billybobsky
2005-11-21, 00:22
Check amazon.com... they often have greats deals on cell phones for new contractual agreements. Like the razr... which i happen to have and like a lot...

HezMah19
2005-11-21, 00:57
Sony Ericsson makes good phones IMO.
I have a SE Z1010 (3G Video Phone) which I received as a chrissie present last year, and love it. Its my second SE but definitely not the last.

320 Hours standby time, 160 hours talk time, Bluetooth sync, really nice screen, supports outlook express and has quite abit of Windows software, and I've never had any problems with it and my Mac.
Its kinda old though, but still an excellent phone.

Review Linky (http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/coolgear/mobiles/0,39023387,39157103,00.htm)
Official SE Z1010 Site (Australia) (http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=au&lc=en&ver=4000&template=pp1_loader&php=php1_10048&zone=pp&lm=pp1&pid=10048)

SonOfSylvanus
2005-11-21, 04:07
Nokia = teh simplest to use. Seriously.

I've given up two arguably better looking phones over the past few years (a Sony-Ericsson and a Samsung) to return to the unmitigated simplicity and intuitiveness of my trusty Nokia 6100.

Mikester
2005-11-21, 05:02
Nokias I've used are slow as well.

*Joe*
2005-11-21, 09:16
I don't know if it avalible over there, but have you considered the Motorola PEBL?? It is tres gorgeous!
Otherwise, the RAZR, or the Samsung D500 are good choices.
In response to the criticisms about the moto interface, I think it is a matter of taste, I personally prefer the moto interface to the Nokia, or Sony Erricson (which IMO is the worst).

omem
2005-11-21, 09:57
I also need a new cell phone urgently and these days it's really hard to chose one because either it's ugly or too expensive. I own a Motorola V525 and I hate it so much right now. I hate it because it's slow; I must use a headphone to listen what people say becayse the built-in speaker is dead; I can't stand the obligation of opening a phone when I have to use it anymore. I want a "normal" phone. Every Nokia is ugly right now, I don't get it. did they fire every designer in there? (Ok except for those uber-expensive ones)

My girlfriend bought a Sharp GX17. It looks really cute but now we're seing why it was so cheap. The sound quality is awful. When she calls me I can hear my voice plus a bit of sound distortion, also it can only hold like 20 images. Really small memory. Do not buy this phone.

The phone Luca shoed up there regarding the strange keyboard is actually the most good looking Nokia phone, in my opinion. Yes I agree the keyboard is weird and not ergonomical but I wouldn't care really. Looks great and I'm sure I'd get used to it.

My advice to anyone buying phones is to not buy these phones you must open. It becomes a pain in the ass having to open it everytime.

Bottom line, I don't want to buy a Motorola because the only decent one is the V3 but it's not the kind of phone I want anymore, and I don't buy any Nokia because they all look ugly now (at least the ones I can afford).
The other brands such as Sony-Ericsson, Sharp, etc, I don't even consider.

Bryson
2005-11-21, 10:45
Looks like it'll have to be a Vertu (http://www.vertu.com/), then.... ;)

Got some spare cash lying around? They list at £3000 or $5500....


Stupid thing is, they're just souped-up Nokias really. Why can't Nokia bring some of the lessons back to their real range, aside form the 8800 which is a lemon in many ways...

sunrain
2005-11-21, 10:57
I have a RAZR that I like a lot. It's very slim and easy to carry around. The ringtones are nice and loud and it has the best speakerphone I've ever heard. Battery life is good and I can charge it off of the USB port on my powerbook.

I don't find the Motorola OS to be any more obtuse than my Sony-Ericsson OS (T610) was. :confused: YMMV.

Dorian Gray
2005-11-21, 14:24
Luca, the funny thing is that the 7610 keypad takes literally two minutes to get used to. Even when I hand my phone to someone else, they don't have a problem. And it's a thing of beauty! :) The circular keypad was also a great retro idea, but it didn't suit the high-end smart phone they put it on. People buy Symbian smart phones because they want computer-like usability, so a good keypad is essential. It's fine to put a fancy keypad on a fashion phone though.

Judging by a lot of people's comments here and elsewhere, it looks like Nokia (and perhaps SE?) have pushed their designs a bit far for the mainstream. This is a problem for Nokia: they're the world's biggest phone maker so they have to appeal to the mainstream, but their brand image was built on innovative design. The two rarely coincide. Nokia is a such a great company: innovative, environmentally responsible, very ethically concerned, socially responsible, one of the biggest proponents of open-source, etc. They're doing very well in the high-end phone market at the moment, but Samsung and particularly Motorola (of late) seem to be winning sales in the mid-range. I hope Nokia doesn't decide to betray its core values to compete in that most fickle of markets.