Dudes. I broke my phone.

[zourtney]

Darn you loose cargo pockets. Darn you.

Tonight, my phone slipped out of my pocket and got crushed in the car door. The screen is mostly kaput. The board seems fine, as I was able to back it up. But the bottom 3/4 of the screen is utterly unusable. It's a shame too, because I actually liked my phone. Yeah, Windows Phone is pretty much the 3rd-world of smartphone OSes¹, but I liked it.

So...I'll probably wait a few months to see what schnazz the fall phone mill churns out. Any suggestions? I've been a little...out of it the past few months. But it does seem like good stuff should be coming in 2-3 months. I can use my iPhone Ancient for a while.

My brother, Kyle, is going to let me play with his Atrix loaded up with ICS. Maybe Android could grow on me². If so, I'm considering the Galaxy Nexus as it's "vanilla Android". And the price is almost stomachable at $350, off contract. But it's already "old"...

I'm also considering the upcoming, unannounced-but-the-cat's-already-out-of-the-bag iPhone. Guaranteed to be Apple and boring. That's a strength and a weakness.

Then there's the Window 8 Phones.....um, Windows Phone 8s, eehrm, Windows Phone 8 phones. Nearly disqualified on awkward naming, these things could still be interesting. But still, they're unannounced, not likely available before Christmas. And sadly, WP8 is still guaranteed to remain comparatively feature-light. I hate to facilitate its death (since I like WP), but....yeah.

All that to say...suggestions?


¹ ...well, as in a generation or two behind the times. Not like sectarian armies of machete wielding evil. That's vile. And hopefully the mere thought won't disturb my night's sleep.
² I'm quite tired of Verizon's robobadass schtick. Please, no more of this. Ever. Also, the "Android makes me awesome" thing churns my lunch. But mostly Verizon.

[Cody]

Oh man I heard about that. It sucks. I obviously have no advice to give you about phones, sadly.

[Nick]

Dude,  that sucks. It's nice that you still got the IOS at your disposal. Windows mobile 6 was a bit of an excuse for a phone. Buggy with no real support. With the success of the two major app stores, I think any new ones will be seen as ripe new frontier.  So having a nice staple of applications should be no problem with whatever you chose.

Personally I like the android for its seeming openness. But (in whatever iteration I have at least ) it is lacking is some rather basic functionality. Bluetooth music controls are rarely handled properly (they get passed to a non-running app rather then the one that is open) and the major (and only sanely made) podcasting app is buggy as anything Microsoft ever released. But the core of android is pleasant to use.

If windows phone 8 (or just phone (the previous version)) is anything like the zune os it should be pleasant. Apple had it right when they wove the music/podcast app right into the OS and allowed it to be seamlessly used just like the rest of the system. I think windows phone is the same way with the zune portions of the system. And I liked the music and podcast features of my old brown zune brick. I would still be using it if a dog didn't ingest parts of it. My ipod always just worked a little bit better then the zune did, but newer zunes than what I had probably closed that gap.

So, yeah. I guess what I am saying is that they all work. Apple is the mark by witch the other are measured. But they all offer something that is just their own. So go with the interface that you like the best. Androids widgets, apples icons or whatever Microsoft is calling those squares and rectangles. Everything else is just garnish.

[zourtney]

Yeah, choices, choices.

After (almost) a week with Android, I can say that there are some thing I really like (putting the Grand Canyon on my pixels, useful weather widgets...for hurricanes  , etc) But there are some genuinely annoying things (crashing browsers, missed gestures, buggy keyboards, etc).

The nicest thing, however, is that there's actually an app store. Like, with apps actually in it. It's handy and stuff. Windows Phone is dead in the water until/unless they have this. Even if it's 6 times prettier. Such a catch 22.

It is kinda nice to be forced to use it as my primary mobile OS for a while, though. For experiences' sake, if nothing else. There are lots of things to experiment with...and with that comes lots of opportunity for buggy software.

It seems I've come to regard my phone (whatever OS) a lot like I do my primary car -- it needs to work. Properly. Now. Weekends clamping 4wd engager baffle-thingies and late nights unscrewing stuff are great fun. I wouldn't give it up for the world. But come Monday, it's gotta do its job.

So, maybe I need a "project phone" (I want a project vehicle, too, but that's a story for another thread)

Anyway, early September is sounding like a hot brew of moderately interesting phone announcements. And I like not buying stuff, so I'm definitely going to be holding onto this phone for a few months. And avoiding webpages with position: fixed.

I apologize for the excessive use of the words "stuff" and "things" in this post. Yeah. And stuff.

[zourtney]

So, now that many of the cats are out of their respective bags, does anyone have phone suggestions? I hear rumblings about some Nexus stuff, but it's not sure I care.

As of today, I'm waffling between the (unreleased) Lumia and the (presently unobtainable) new iPhone.

But the longer I wait, the less I'll know  

[Nick]

I like the new galaxy s3. It is huge and has top notch hardware specs.

Iphone is overrated and the new doc connector is different. But it's the measuring stick for a reason.

Yeah I got nothing. I can't decide if I want to get a tablet or not. And then, what size of one?

[zourtney]

I've played with a few 7"-ish ones and like the size. I guess it depends on how you think you'll use it. 7" seems really great for reading or ultra-portable...ness. But for bed browsing, it sounds a bit small. 10"-ish seems better for that. Until you drop it on your face..!

[Nick]

I like the 10 ish one for viewability but they are awkward to hold. The 7 inches are easy to handle and are probably more them big enough for netflix watching.  The 9 inches are a nice compromise but there are few of them and cost the same as the 10 inch ones. So yeah.  That's that.  Or I could get a 5 inch phone and call it compromised.

[zourtney]

What do you want it to run?

     `__'                 ______  ______                       /                            ===
    / * *\                |     | |    |                   //== ==\\                     //    \\
|| |    | ||             |_____| |____|                 //       _//                          //
|| |____| ||             ______  ______                ||       |_                           ||
     || ||                |     | |    |                  \\       \\                         ||
                          |_____| |____|                    \\_____//                         **


Wow is it time for bed.

[Nick]

IOS costs too much,  windows 8 is not out on anything yet and I haven't seen a phone 7 tablet so that leaves android. The nexus 7 looks nice from a number of points. But it has no hdmi or sd card. Then there are 20 other options with varying options. But the nexus is the cheapest for the features (mostly the cpu. No 2G ram tablets yet but I am sure on is around the corner. )

[zourtney]

I have a Nexus 7 sitting on my desk, actually. I was actually searching for that HDMI port today...the non-existent one, yes (kind of a surprise / downer).

We also have this itty-bitty 3"x3" computer running Android (like Raspberry Pi + beef). With ports galore. But that's mostly irrelevant to the subjects at hand.

Anyway, the 7 inchers are nice, but don't quite feel like desktop/laptop replacements for web browsing. Biggest gripe: way too much browser chrome in landscape. But don't let that stop you

[Nick]

My main use would be reading away from a desk, hulu/netflix in the hammock and podcasts/book listening. The huge battery life compared to my phone while still fitting in my pocket is a bit of an allure. I think the 10in ones are just too big to take far from a coffee table regardless of how many kids I have seen awkwardly hunched over an iPad in the grocery store stumbling into things.

The kindle HD 8.9 is an interesting (but yet unseen) size.

To get all the features that I think I want I would have to pay $400. If I forgo the SD card and hdmi then I can get the (rather nice looking, actually) nexus for a seemingly reasonable price.

All in all it just seems like a good time to wait. Let them come out with something around the price of the nexus to compete. Or I could just be mistaken about how much an HDMI port would be handy. I do still have a laptop after all. I know I am not mistaken about the SD card option, that was just greedy to force people to buy the 16gb model, as it would cost next to nothing to add one (I guarantee the hardware is there, there is just no reader attached to it. It's part of the CPU.)

[Frioevie]

The links 920 is my choice!!!

Sent from my {amazing windows phone} using Board Express

[Nick]

The what?

[zourtney]

This morning, I tried viewing a few "news" links on the Nexus 7. The Google News page was formatted pretty nicely. One news article was formatted great -- text content to the edges, images centered, etc. Then there was ABC's site...forcing a 3-column layout in portrait, giving me about 4 words per line and equal prominence to stupid sidebar ads. It was distracting, at best.

Reading well-formatted text on a 7" device is no doubt fantastic. If you want to read books, I'd definitely prefer it over 10-ish inchers.


(this reminds me, Randomland needs a serious CSS overhaul!)