Which phone OS are you using?

[UtwigMU]

Reason for asking this is, I got Nokia E52 a few days ago (my 4 year old 6120 classic was nicked and prefer not to spend more than 100 EUR on a phone since it can get destroyed, nicked or lost)


Why Nokia E52:
- I'm using mostly Nokias since 2000
- They generally have best reception and are best as phones
- I can type faster on keyboard with T9 than on a touchscreen (played with numerous iPhones, Samsungs and HTCs) - one SMS heavy girlfriend taught me T9 long time ago
- costs half of iPhone 3Gs and has:
same CPU speed, same memory, better battery power, 32% less weight and 56% less volume, more megapixels, flash, video call support, better 3G speed (important for tethering). It does have half screen resolution
- can tether laptop via bluetooth even without installing any software on laptop, just configure dialup in control panel
- can just connect to laptop with bluetooth or USB and use it as mass storage device
- can swap MICROSD card (up to 16GB)
- normal SIM size - when you go abroad and get a prepaid card to use locally, you generally get normal SIM size. Also your old backup phone uses normal SIM
- can multitask
- compatible with my existing backups in Ovi suite
- can sync to Exchange, Skype, Facebook, surf internet with Opera, watch youtube, use GPS and maps
- WiFi

[LvR]

Like you I have been a firm believer in the quality of Nokia .............. also ran a E52 till about 2 years ago when after 3 years I thought I should update - got a E72 then and was quite happy with that except for miserable reception and dropped calls when in my office (also had it with the previous E52) - chased the service provider around and eventually gave it up as a bad job blaming them for my miseries

Then- about a month ago I got a sweet deal on a Samsung i9000, and wouldn't you believe all my reception hassles in my office disappeared with the change in phone.

Cant say if its the OS or the actual hw that is making mobile life much better, but you are not taking this thing out of my hands - not for a Nokia ever again.

Battery life etc is directly comparable to the Nokias I owned given my own usage patterns.

[VJ]

I got an Android phone (Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro) a year ago. Before I used a Windows Mobile 6.0 (HTC Hermes) and Symbian S60 (Nokia 6260).

The x10 mini pro has a small keyboard, but unfortunately, lowest row is shifted one key compared to my HTC, which causes me to make a number of mistakes in typing. I went with Android as it seems quite mainstream, has a lot of software and is cheaper than the iPhone.
Things I dislike about the Android:
- Synchronisation with Outlook is not straight forward (there are tools to do it though)
- Different Android versions have different features, and my phone is stuck at Android 2.1, e.g. preventing me from installing apps on the SD card (and no fully functional/trustworthy cyanogen mod).
- It misses some customizations and forces you in its logic (contacts ordered by "first name, last name", ...).

Despite these dislikes, I went for another Android phone this year when I could choose one with my new subscription (I need two phones: Belgian number, Polish number). This is the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman. The reason is that I could run more or less the same software on them, and the synchronisation between them and my other data is the same (no new problems or incompatibilities). And this was the cheapest Android phone for my subscription: for one symbolic zloty.
It has a later Android version, and as such exhibits some different behaviour (which constitutes an improvement, but still feels like these things should have been in Android from the start: those shortcomings were already noticable in older smartphones).

Given the time when I bought the S60 phone, I still feel it was the most mature phone I ever had: I got it in 2004, and it had things like copy/paste, many applications - including a huge amount of third party ones, and was very intuitive to use. The Android system is much more modern, but feels a bit messy at times. Before getting my first one, I would have guessed that they would have taken a look at the older Windows Mobile, and would not have made the same mistakes. But the Windows Mobile allowed for e.g. far more tweaking in the standard OS than Android does - it was just not very user friendly. So IMO, Android is ok, but they are now just maturing to the point where I initially thought they were.

In the end, it is just a phone: if you find one that suits your purpose, you have chosen the best option.

[Dr Mordrid]

iOS 5 on iPhone and iPad 2.

I use few minutes and most all 'net use is home wifi or wifi hotspot (tons around here), so the $29 AT&T seniors plan + a limited data plan is good enough.

[Umfriend]

Blackberry OS 7 on my Bold 9900. Hade a 9000 before and a Nokio N72 or somesuch prio to that. The BB stuff easily outperformed that Nokia in all respects (incl, sound quality, signal quality etc.). I love the physical keyboard.

Also have a Playbook, now with OS 2. Very happy with it all although, for a 7" tablet, it is a bit heavy.

[dZeus]

I bought a second-hand Sony Ericsson Vivaz (Symbian S60v5) about 1.5 years ago, and I've been very disappointed with it. Why?

*Symbian S60v5 by non-Nokia manufacturer equals: no native SIP stack (for voip) nor ipsec (for VPN)
*probably a faulty memory module causes frequent crashes when downloading through WIFI. second hand = difficult to no warranty
*GPS reception is abysmal. In a car it only works if you place it directly under the front wind screen. When driving under trees or in a city the reception often drops completely
*The (resistive) touch screen on the Vivaz is abysmal. I could enter texts/data into my old Nokia with normal numpad at multiples the speed of the Vivaz.
*Standby battery life is abysmal. 2 days max with GPS, WIFI and bluetooth disabled, and no use of GSM/UMTS data connections.
*No camera flash

The good things:
*Reasonable resolution screen (640x360)
*not too bulky design (3.2" screen). I've seen those Galaxy SII and they are way too big to use comfortably
*IPSEC VPN and VOIP possible through 3rd party applications (e.g. Skype, Fring)
*8MP camera with autofocus that works in video mode
It makes me never bring my regular camera anywhere any more, since it's good enough for most uses. In video mode it has autofocus and makes clear and detailed 720p recordings but the rolling shutter is extremely annoying. There's no camera flash in the Vivaz unfortunately, so poor low-light

If I had to buy a new phone today, for me the following features would be important
*native SIP, native ipsec VPN, 8MP camera with reasonable lens, flash on camera, a physical numpad, small (definitely not bigger than an iPhone 4), flash memory slot that can act as mass storage device, GPS with decent reception, decent standby battery life (5+ days), WLAN, syncML, medium resolution screen or better (> 640x360), triband or quadband UMTS/HSDPA
*Phone OS? As long as it is Android 4.x, iOS, Symbian or Windows Phone 7 it's probably fine

I'm especially troubled by the development of phones shipping with no physical numpad. Based on my experiences I fear that it'll be a degredation in usability as I cannot type as fast on a touchscreen.

[Umfriend]

No clue what a SIP or IPSEC is but a BB seems to fit the other requirements. The keyboard on the bolds are really really great as long as you have somewhat leaner nimbles fingers.

I think I could do 5+ days standby but in practice it gets to two days max with calls/games/mail etc. Would do better if I turned Wifi and Bluetooth off.

[dZeus]

No clue what a SIP or IPSEC is but a BB seems to fit the other requirements. The keyboard on the bolds are really really great as long as you have somewhat leaner nimbles fingers.

I think I could do 5+ days standby but in practice it gets to two days max with calls/games/mail etc. Would do better if I turned Wifi and Bluetooth off.

Blackberry devices look nice, but with one major problem.

I want to use my own server for mail/calendar/address book/etc, without needing to go through Blackberry's internet infrastructure.

[Jammrock]

I actually have Android and Windows Phone 7.5. I got the droid before I joined Microsoft, the WP7 afterward.

Though my wife has the WP7 device and I take the Android to work. My wife was playing with the WP7 on the way home from buying it and declared, "I'm keeping this one."

[Jammrock]

No clue what a SIP or IPSEC is but a BB seems to fit the other requirements.

SIP is the most common voice over IP protocol. Think Skype.

IPSec is short for IP Security. It provides data integrity and data encryption services for network/Internet traffic.

[Brian Ellis]

My main mobile phone is a fake Blackberry (cost €39 from China) and I haven't a clue what OS is used (no RIM's, anyway). All I know is that it has many more features than I need (mostly used as a phone and SMSs) and rarely use (except for WiFi, which is quite useful). I don't subscribe to G3 or G4 (too expensive for abysmally slow data rate). I have used its 2 cameras, FM radio, TV Rx, e-mailing, stopwatch, alarm, MP3 features, not even tried the rest but very rarely. It has 2 browsers, one in the OS and the other Opera, believe it or not). Anyway, it works like a charm for what I need and cost me less than the cheapest locally available phone. The only problem is that people think I'm a plutocrat with a real Blackberry!

My old prehistoric Nokia (I think 13 or 14 years!!) is now permanently installed as a hands-free in the car and still goes strong.

The two have SIMs on the same number, and I can switch between them from either.

[cjolley]

I switched from AT&T to Verizon a few months ago and picked up a Motorola Droid X2 to replace my old, not smart Sony Ericsson 580i.

In the fist place, here in OKC the Verizon coverage turns out to be WAY better than AT&Ts.
All the people who work here that are on AT&T have connection problems, my 580i dropped calls all the time. We never have calls dropped on Verizon.
Mind you this is at the exact center of a city of one million people.
So, carrier seems to be at least as important as phone for the call functionality.

As for Android, well I am very happy with it. Lots of useful, and non-useful , apps.
It seems more functional than my wife's iPhone4. Which I now think of as a "girlie phone". (Sorry Doc)

This phone is large, but I could do with an even larger one. The print is kind of small when I remote terminal to our database servers.
Something in between this phone and a tablet. Possibly the Galaxy Note?
Anyway, my contract isn't up for 3 1/2 years, who knows what will be out then.

I have sure heard nice things about Windows Phone.

PS, I do basically zero texting, so keyboard is not an issue.

PPS, I finally settled on the Dolphin browser after giving all the majors a good try. Best combination of the inevitable compromises.

PPPS, Best reason ever to root your android: AdFree (by BigTinCan) Sort of a system-wide AdBlock Plus that uses the phone's hosts file to block ads for the whole phone. Including in-app ads!

[UtwigMU]

I don't know what the advantage of blackberry for email is. Any Symbian, iOS, Windows or Android you just point to your exchange server's address, enter username, password and domain, maybe install root certificate if self signed and you're good.

On blackberry you either need to use RIM's or provider's push email (this costs extra money) or put some PITA service on your exchange server. At one workplace we had a geeky sysadmin who had a crush on coworker who had a Blackberry. He tried installing the blackberry stuff on our exchange, so she would read email on her phone. Despite him being very competent and loving her very much he couldn't do it.

Here most typical blackberry user is a teenage girl on a bus who texts and facebooks all the time, so she buys either a blackberry or E72 (full size keyboard). Typical CEO uses iPhone or Samsung Galaxy or some other large touchscren.

[Umfriend]

We (a small company of 4) use, I think, BES. There is one requirement that I have for mail: Whatever I send from my mobile I need to have as sent on the server/outlook as well. This is non-negotionable. BB does the trick. I wonder whether you have that with other solutions.

If he couldn't do it then perhaps he was not competent for that specific task :d

[Jammrock]

[blatant company pimpage]

If you use Microsoft Exchange as your backend mail server you can do this with all the major platforms (WP/WM, Android, iPhone) through the built-in exchange connector. Your inbox, and folders created under inbox, are kept on a storage backend which you can access from your phone, the web or Outlook. Whatever you do in one spot is done on all of them.

For a company of 4 it probably doesn't make sense to have your own exchange server, but there are a lot of hosted Exchange solutions. Office 365 is Microsoft's hosted Exchange, which is $5/user/month for Exchange only and $6/user/month if you want Office online, shared online (cloud) storage, and all sorts of fancy extras.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/what-is-office365.aspx#fbid=uTB5O-GfoA-

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/compare-plans.aspx#fbid=uTB5O-GfoA-

[/blatant company pimpage]