Buying a new phone

[fuzzy70]

In the next week I will be buying a new phone to finally replace my ageing HTC Wildfire which has given me solid service for the last 2-3 years 

I have the choice of any phone currently on the market & will stick with the Android platform due to quite a few app purchases plus the ability to develop/play around with GLB on it. An iPhone 5 did cross my mind briefly but cannot warrant or justify buying a Mac along with the Apple dev fee etc for developing plus like I said I have the required apps for my needs purchased from the play store.

After browsing online & popping into a shop to look at devices I have narrowed it down to 3 phones, An HTC One, Galaxy S4 & Xperia Z. Out of the 3 the Sony & HTC felt more solid/robust in the hand compared to the S4 which felt cheap & flimsy in some ways, no doubt it is a high quality plastic that is very durable but I'm just going on 1st impressions. I did like the quality of the display along with the hardware buttons on the S4 though which took my mind away from the feel a bit.

So my question is this. I would appreciate any comments from anyone on the above 3 phones as to what they are like to use on a day to day basis, for example any annoying quirks or anything they do which makes you think "I'm glad I got this one because ...". Obviously I could only mess around with each one briefly in the shop & all 3 are more than powerful enough for my needs.

BTW I am not interested in how the camera part performs as I have a digital SLR & no matter how much manufactures claim 13 MP etc etc a tiny little lens on a phone cannot compete with a real camera 

Cheers

Lee

[erico]

Tough call, Fuzzy70. Last gen phones.

I know a bit about the samsung.
It feels like a cheap phone in hand that is true, even the note II feels cheap (And I don´t quite the design).

But at the same time, when you hold it, your brain immediately recognizes as ´you are handling cheap fragile stuff' and you instinctively pay more attention grasping it.
An iphone feels 300% more solid in hand and feels it could stand any falls.

Any modern phone falling from whatever height will most likely crash to death, so there is an advantage on the crappy samsung style.

The second point is the screen. There is something completely alien on samsung´s tech. The colors are alive and pretty but much false. Take a blend grey brown straight from photoshop and it will look like incandescent orange on it. So testing android stuff on android with such screens is a bit essential if you want it to look good on those devices. I can´t say much about the other 2 on how it distorts images.

All phones seems nice to me, it would be better for the galaxy if it had a wacom stylus, but that is not really essential either.

[fuzzy70]

Thanks Erico for that info .

The Sony is interesting in that it's dust proof & can still work for 30 mins under water (up to 1 meter deep I think I read) so gaming in the bath lol.

Lee

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

[erico]

...
The Sony is interesting in that it's dust proof & can still work for 30 mins under water (up to 1 meter deep I think I read) so gaming in the bath lol.
...

Now that is an interesting asset

[fuzzy70]

Found this Sony video from my network provider showing the Xperia Z underwater

Lee

[erico]

invalid link

[fuzzy70]

My bad, I posted the full url. All sorted now 

Lee

[erico]

Pretty nice! Tempting resistive features that could come handy, like beach resistant too.

[fuzzy70]

If water/dust resistant features interests you there is the Experia Z Ultra which has a 6.4 screen (phablet type device like the Galaxy note II) & even better water resistance, & a galaxy S4 ACTIVE although neither are available as yet in the UK & not sure about other countries.

Lee

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

[spacefractal]

The taskbar on Xperia Z is not placed on the bottom in this one, but on the side. So even its have fullHD Specs, you will lose some pixels (around 128 pixels). Here im thinks its excellent to test around those annoyring sidebars. Also Greedy Mouse ran very smooth on the Xperia Z with no sign of pixels. Im do not known the other phones. My friend have that Sony one. Its run glbasic apps great.

[fuzzy70]

Thanks for the info Spacefractal   

The taskbar did hide when playing video & music player but I didn't get a chance in the shop to play a game on it to see what happened.

Out of the 3 phones the Xperia has the slightly slower spec with regards to CPU/Chipset etc but to be honest it's not something you would notice unless you was running some very hungry 3D game. On all of them every app etc fired up practically instant & was a joy having been so used to my ageing 500odd mhz single core Wildfire with a few hundred MB ram 

As phone contracts in this country (the UK) all tend to be 2 year ones I cannot get the thought out of my head with regards to the durability of the Galaxy S4 & how well it would fair for that duration. The construction & feel of both the HTC One & Xperia felt vastly superior in my hand & while my thoughts on the build of the S4 may be unwarranted, I can honestly say that I wouldn't feel comfortable owning that knowing it had to last 2 years so the S4 is not in the race for me anymore.

Lee

[spacefractal]

taskbars is not removed in glbasic apps, because its added in a newer Android version than glbasic supports by defaults. So its depend on app and sdk they have used and you need some java code to remove them (if device support it).

Also Im have only seen and try my both apps with Xperia Z once, so im cant talk about the both other phones at all.

[fuzzy70]

By the time I get to develop anything for android we will probably be on GLBasic 12 or 13 

The loss of pixels on a screen res of full 1920x1080 HD doesn't bother me from the point of losing some screen estate to draw on, but concern's me a little with regards to accidentally pressing the back or home button while playing a game etc. Until that time a bit more thought into the on-screen game controls would be the route I would take but there would probably be a fix to remove them by the time I have something.

Lee

[fuzzy70]

After an extended play with an HTC One & Xperia Z in the shop today I have decided on the Xperia & will be collecting it tomorrow.

Personally the Sony felt better for me & It's running a pretty much stock version of Android unlike the Sense modification of the HTC (something I disabled on my wildfire when I modded it) which is not a bad thing in my mind.

I'm not sure if the phone will come with the latest version of Android as depends on when it was manufactured but it is available as an free update.

I have already copied over my music & such to a memory card so just my apps to install from the play store & a 500mb download of my diabetic apps data lol

Lee


Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

[spacefractal]

 

I'm was close to water damage my ipad3 too in a bag. Power button hang and was annoying (its had its own live) But seen its works again. Phew...

Today I'm brought a nice used htc wild fire s, so can testing with android 2.3 again.close to that one you have. My game did look so excellent on that phone. There was some 4096 texture loading issue, but guess I'm fixed that for next release.