My basic smartphone requirements (should be simple... apparently not)

[Guest daveeeeeed]

Hi all,

I used to be a fairly regular poster (or at least lurker) on modaco a couple of years ago.

Until about 14 months ago I had an SPV C500, which served me perfectly and was undoubtedly the best smartphone i've ever owned.

Once it finally fell to bits I stupidly replaced it with a Nokia N70, which was appalling and fell short in so many ways (bad build quality, rubbish PIM, crap screen, slow and unintuitive OS).

I rapidly got fed up and blew £450 on an ipaq HW6915 in the summer , which despite being WM5 came with its own set of problems - slow, big & heavy, bad battery life, odd shaped screen, etc; GPS was the killer app, though the processor barely has enough power to cope with TomTom.

Needless to say, I'm now well out of the loop with the latest smartphone developments. I'd really appreciate some help matching up UK-available devices with my wishlist (fairly basic I assume).

I need my next phone to:

- be in a candybar form factor

- have a good battery life

- be WM5

- ideally 3G

- decent camera (2 or 3mp)

- decent resolution screen

- small-ish (pocketable)

- have mini SD card expansion

- powerful enough to handle TomTom Navigator 6 and a bt gps receiver

I'm out of contract with a network at the moment and therefore not tied to any range. cost not a consideration at this stage.

Thanks in advance, sorry for the long post.

David

[Guest jimbouk]

Cant help with a current candy bar phone, but if you could stand another ppc, have a look at the Hermes (Orange SPV M3100). It does pretty much everything you want - except micro sd - and the qwerty keyboard helps make it usable for users who prefer phones to ppc.

[Guest Samsonite]

Hi all,

I used to be a fairly regular poster (or at least lurker) on modaco a couple of years ago.

Until about 14 months ago I had an SPV C500, which served me perfectly and was undoubtedly the best smartphone i've ever owned.

Once it finally fell to bits I stupidly replaced it with a Nokia N70, which was appalling and fell short in so many ways (bad build quality, rubbish PIM, crap screen, slow and unintuitive OS).

I rapidly got fed up and blew £450 on an ipaq HW6915 in the summer , which despite being WM5 came with its own set of problems - slow, big & heavy, bad battery life, odd shaped screen, etc; GPS was the killer app, though the processor barely has enough power to cope with TomTom.

Needless to say, I'm now well out of the loop with the latest smartphone developments. I'd really appreciate some help matching up UK-available devices with my wishlist (fairly basic I assume).

I need my next phone to:

- be in a candybar form factor

- have a good battery life

- be WM5

- ideally 3G

- decent camera (2 or 3mp)

- decent resolution screen

- small-ish (pocketable)

- have mini SD card expansion

- powerful enough to handle TomTom Navigator 6 and a bt gps receiver

I'm out of contract with a network at the moment and therefore not tied to any range. cost not a consideration at this stage.

Thanks in advance, sorry for the long post.

David

you're in a very big boat with alot of others right now i think...

The only current 3G Smartphone is the MTeoR in its various guises (Breeze is the generic i think) but it seems to be blighted by a couple of rookie bugs - Battery life being one. I don't have one cos of the various conversations here so cant comment first hand.

The one i AM waiting for is the Graphite from o2. Its not out yet but the UK o2 website are touting it about but, afaik, there isnt any concrete costs as yet.

its a 3G, WM5 phone - and seems to have all the boxes ticked including WiFi and a half decent processor. If the early indications are good with regard battery and 3G operation (i think some devices have 2g to 3g crossover issues) then its gonna be my next weapon to bore the snot out of my mates/wife/colleagues with.

Beyond that, its a bit of a desert out there if a touchscreen aint your thang. I've had my S100 for 18 months now and it is rock solid, runs CO-Pilot and syncs to the exchamge server at work a treat. I'm not gonna sacrifice any operational aspects for a new toy and i fancy a change to being hunched over a wee little screen with a dainty little penthing in hand sending a few texts...

dont worry about the long post and a Happy New Year to ya!

[Guest daveeeeeed]

Thanks for that Samsonite & Jimbouk - really helpful.

The o2 graphite certainly looks interesting and the most ready match to what I'm looking for (looks like a funky device too).

A quick trawl of the blogosphere and the web suggests that there is a load of uncertainty about a uk release date, however January has been suggested - do you know any more?

I may get shouted off the page for asking this, but does anyone have any views on the Nokia N73? Its a Symbian device I know, but I'm attracted by the hi-res screen and the 3.2mp cam - though it does fall short on other requirements of mine, such as lack of micro sd. I probably should know better than to consider another Nokia, given the disastrous hunk of plastic that was the N70.

Cheers

[Guest Blakey]

I'm also after a new phone at some stage after having lost my Orange m600 on a drunken night out. Oops.

I have resorted to my old and trusty mpx220 (which is still a quality phone) but would like to replace it with a smartphone I think. I'm certainly interested in a nice 3G version as I have WebNWalk which is not getting used enough anymore.

Seems like there are lots of us in this boat at the moment...

[Guest mutleyboy]

if camera is important to you as it seems it may be, then forget any of the windows devices, be it smartphone or ppc, none of them have decent cameras

[Guest roscoe141]

I'm in exactly the same boat as you mate. See my post:

http://www.modaco.com/New-Smartphone-t245430.html

I've been waiting a while and am still using my C500 in the hope there's a slim and pocketable smartphone to be released with a good camera with around 3mp. Here's hoping... :)