My Verizon 2 year plan is up on April 21st. I’m too poor for an iPhone and generally please with Verizon coverage and service, so I’m renewing. That means its time for a new phone. Before I get into the phones I’m considering, let me give you my cell phone history.
I started with the Samsung SCH-a670. Its a lower end smaller phone. The size was tolerable and its a decent phone. Almost right away I started hacking it and seeing what else I could get out of it. It hung around for almost a year before I craved for something more.
My second (and current) phone is a Samsung SCH-a970. It’s bigger and heavier than the 670, but it sports a 2 megapixel camera. That was the main reason I bought it. At the time I didn’t have a digital camera and used the phone instead, with less than stellar results. It also has a pretty big ‘wow’ factor when you go to snap a picture. The main gripe I have with the phone is the sound quality. I can barely understand people when I’m talking to them. I don’t know for sure if its the sound quality or the reception or a combination of the two, but I don’t like it. It could also be my shitty hearing but most people sound like they’re underwater. After you get over the wow factor the phone also gets bulky. The battery life is good, 4 days in standby after you disable EVDO.
Now that I’ve carried around a brick for about a year and I’ve seen everyone with their sleek thin phones, I want one. Right away, I started looking at the slimmer phones. My top 4 are (in no order) Motorola KRZR, LG 8600, Samsung u740, and Samsung u540. The u540 is brand new so it has basically replaced the u740 in my mind. So that brings me down to three.
I’m a little weary of the Samsung u540 because of the Samsung I currently have. I doubt that Samsung has spent their real money on improving the actual phone performance and instead are trying to make smaller more feature-packed phones. The u540 is about the same size a the 8600 and gives about the same battery life.
Right now I’m leaning toward the 8600 for a few reasons. 1) Bitpim supports the crap out of the phone. Literally, Bitpim makes brown stuff ooze out because it reads so much info from the phone. 2) My previous Samsung sound quality. 3) 8600 looks sexier. 4) Bitpim works via bluetooth on my Mac with the 8600. 5) Did I mention the sexyness?
Of course either way, I’m going to hack these phones as much as possible. If you have any experience with any of the 4 phone listed above, leave a comment or e-mail me.
5 Comments
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 9:50 am
One other thing I didn’t tell you yet about the 8600. With no charging it went from Saturday morning to Sunday evening and still had all bars on the battery meter. And that’s with EVDO turned on. I didn’t make any calls but either way two days of standby with EVDO and still enough juice to qualify for four bars out of four is pretty good. And sound quality has been the exact same as all my other LG phones, which I’ve always been happy with.
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
…and as I just discovered the front screen (the small one you can see when it’s closed) is rather useful, since they use the three touch-sensitive buttons well. At first I thought they were only for music (the symbols are all play control stuff) but it turns out that they also act as context-sensitive softbuttons. For example, Josh and I have been exchanging text messages during work regarding the Red Sox being up 11-1 in the bottom of the fourth, and when I get a new message I can use the touch buttons on the front to view and then dismiss the message without ever having to open the phone. Very cool.
Oh and don’t worry about them getting pressed by accident all day. You have to unlock them by hitting one of the side buttons, which activates them with a 1 or 2 second timeout. They are a very well-done little touch that really adds a lot of polish to the phone.
Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 10:39 am
If you are after sleeky phone, check out the new sony ericson w880i or something like dat. v groovy. they are thinner than anything! no kidding. even thinner than the moto L6. if u’r after good phones-sonyericson do well both on camera-calls-music. samsung are more like general stuff. where as some nokias are esp fast at net browsing. if u’r after rapid online streaming, try NEXT G network from Telstra. XO
Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 10:42 am
by the way moto KRZR is no good, at least in my opinion.
chrz.
http://betonbetts.wordpress.com
Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
It’s a nice looking phone and all, but it’s Sony. I’ve stopped buying Sony products. They hate their customers.