Want to buy my first smartphone - any advice?

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Hi,
I need a new phone and want to try out a smartphone now after having used pretty oldschool ones so far.

I read several reviews on amazon, and this makes me pretty unconfident, sice every brand seems to have software issues or too weak batteries, etc...

Maybe there's some forumer out there who loves his smartphone and simply can recommend it ^^?

Things that are important for me:

- robust
- not too expensive (maybe up to 300 €)
- reasonable battery runtime
- quality over quantity
- no apple, please

 

I'm a bit of a smartphone junky so I can try to help, however I only stick to the cutting egde of new devices so I'm not sure how much help I can be on budget phones.

The San Francisco (or ZTE Blade, the name changes depending on country) sounds like it might be a good option for you. You can pick it up for about 100 Euro or just over and it's a very, very good entry level smartphone. From there (once you get the bug) you can move up the tree.

The problem is, at 300 Euro budget limit you're kind of stuck between 2 price brackets. You can't afford the HTC Sensation or the Samsung Galaxy S2 which are the best 2 phones on the market right now, but retail at over 400 Euro, but have way too much money for a low-level smartphone.

Phones like the Galaxy 1, HTC HD2, Nexus, HTC Desire HD, are very good options too but are all a bit 'last year', yet retail around 150-200 Euro. If you don't mind going for a slightly older device you might consider these.

At the very top end, there are only really 2 options (the SGS2 or HTC Sensation) but down from that, it's a bit of a minefield of semi-decent, OK and downright awful devices.

Personally, if you want a good smartphone with good functionality, I'd get the ZTE Blade/San Francisco or Desire HD. Either that or up your budget a bit, if you want to go for one of the big boys.

I'm not sure what you'd consider good battery life, but don't expect any smartphone with a halfway decent display and screen size to have a particularly stellar battery life. Depending on how much (and how) you use it, you can expect pretty much any smartphone to last anywhere from 1-5 days, no more than that. Like, I'm constantly caning my phone with 3G and Wifi connections/browsing, video streaming, emulating PSX games and all sorts of stuff, and it lasts about 2 days usually. However if it's constantly on standby with maybe the odd text or phone call I can stretch 5 or more days of out it. Like I've just been away in Portugal for 10 days I only needed to charge it once.

I'd also stay away from any device that uses Windows Mobile 7, but I guess you don't need me to tell you that.

 

Thanks, Barmy, I heard about the Desire, will check out the ZTE.

 

Ugh, the ZTE. Ugh.

I prefer the Samsung Galaxy Mini over the Blade. Or the HTC Wildfire S.

But overall, I'd recommend the HTC Desire Z. It's a bit aged, but full QWERTY keyboard (an actual keyboard too) is well worth it.

One thing me and Barmy can agree on: If you don't want Apple, you probably want an Android phone.

 

A bit of thread necromancy, but I just wanted to say that I finally got my phone at last ^^.

I got a Sony Ericcson Active (the one that claims to be waterproof), because I wanted a solid phone that wouldn't break at the first few instances I let it slip out of my hand (I fear my clumsyness ).

Owning it now for approx. 4 months I'm very pleased with it. I charge it every 4th day, so that concern of battery runtime isn't a too big problem.