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Dear all,

My mobile is at death's door. I need a new one, and last time I asked a young, trendy person they seemed to indicate that a smart phone was the thing now. I'm still running a four year old Samsung G600 with a distinctly dodgy "1" key and a mic that has an on / off relationship with working. Basically, any smart phone I may choose will be barely distinguishable from a Star Trek tricorder to me. Can anyone please offer some advice on which one to go for?

I need the network to be O2 so I get decent coverage at my place of work.

I want to use the phone for (mainly):

• Phone calls (I'm a traditionalist)
• Texting
• Emailing (I use Hotmail)
• Web (TFA, natch)

Handy tools like SatNav / GPS capability will be a big plus too.

A decent camera would be nice, but is not a must have.

I'm no gamer, nor do I listen to much music outside my house or car. I am also an abstainer from Facebook, Twitter, etc. because I'm old and sad.


I'm not too great with touch screens due to my fingers having all the delicacy and dexterity of my avatar's arm appendages. A touch screen that can provide nice big buttons that even a clumsy dolt such as myself can use is a must, I'd say.

I've been told by a couple of people that the Windows OS on new Nokia phones is pretty top notch, and I like the look of the Lumia 800 and the forthcoming Lumia 900. Does anyone here have any experience / opinions of these phones?

Alternatively, can anyone recommend another smart phone I really should check out please?

Thanks in advance!

I would ask other people to let you have a play on their phones. Don't listen to some tosser telling you how his quintuple-band HTC Megatron Nexus 111!!0ne phone is the dogs because it can locate the souls of dead people and GPS them into a local google map sway you. Bastards like these will always play down the negative aspects of their phone, like the poor battery life, or that the screen loses responsiveness over time etc. Also, apps perhaps aren't overly important. As you say, e-mail, text and being able to check out TF Archive are the killer apps really.

I played with a fair few peoples smartphones this way, and my favourite was the Blackberry, because it worked so elegantly, and its OS did everything smoothly & without hiccups, the fonts were so crisp and the way you could scroll around the screen seemed so much smarter than a touchscreen.

So yeah, have a play, ask them what annoys them about their phones and maybe that'll help you make a reasonable decision, very important if you're considering taking out a two year contract! Good luck :-)

Rack 'n Ruin wrote: I am also an abstainer from Facebook, Twitter, etc. because I'm old and sad.

Brother, we are not old and sad. We are smart and have dignity! We have the awareness to realize people don't care what we thought of Inception after our third viewing, and that the people who really need to know where we're having lunch are the people we would actually speak to in person. Hold your head up high, dear Hotmailer, and take pride in analog communication!

As for phone advice, my cellphone is not a smart phone. In fact, it's decidedly stupid, and I like it that way. It does what I tell it to instead of trying to suggest that it knows better than I what I might be trying to do. I pay by the minute and it winds up costing me less than $10 a month.

I've been very happy with my last couple of Samsung's (currently a Galaxy fit), nice and simple with no fuss or bother so I'll likely be ungrading to whatever the current cool version is when it's time to trade up next month. I've little interest in an I Phone as the only thing duller than someone who goes on constantly about how brilliant they are is someone who goes on constantly about how evil they are.

I am with Auntie Slag. My only real problem with Smartphones is the price of plans, but that is dependent on your provider.

I'd love to help, but my plan is with AT&T, which I don't believe offer the exact same plans in the UK as the USA. I just got a smartphone two weeks ago, and I like it so far! Get one and we'll explore this brave new world together.

My problem with them is I have big fingers, so good big chunky keys are the way for me like on a touch tone phone. But all the new phones come with qwerty keypads as standard now, world must be full of elves and nimble pianists.

I'm quite happy with my Galaxy S. It's an older phone now, which means it might well be cheap (I've not looked into this though).