It was a hard choice this year. My last phone was windows mobile, and I kind of enjoyed it. I liked the versatility of the platform, and the small form factor of the smartphone. It had a severe drawback however, in the batterylife. I could barely get through a day on one charge, with light usage. Also, the limited size of the main memory meant I could only run a few extra applications. It had 4 gigabytes of extra space, but the phone was not able to use that effectively.
At the time of choosing I was very interested in getting a Windows Phone 7 device. But when they started releasing information about the phones, they turned out to be unimaginative slabs. Adjusting my view to the Android devices, I quickly discovered that particular area suffered from the same design deficiencies.
Being quite dissapointed, I stalled my choice a few weeks, until Joost recommended a Sony Vivaz. It wasn't a very good phone, but at least it had nice looking HD video capability! It was also the only phone that looked a bit different and was small enough for my liking.
After the customary month of angry phonecalls to the Vodafone "service"-desk, I finally took delivery of my new phone, sent it back, and got one that didn't crash a week later.
Since I've enjoyed it very much. It's one of few smart phones that is able to hold a battery charge for a week. It's also very fussy about making internet connections, which I like. The images are pretty good, and I'm even able to make out vague shapes in the videos.
The downside of the phone is that it's a Symbian device. In a world that's moving to Android that kind of sucks. Especially since Sony announced they won't be releasing updates for Symbian anymore, and noone makes applications for the platform; all developers switched to iOS or Android.
It's a nice phone, but it's an end-of-cycle product. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Either get an Android device, or a low end phone and a proper camera.
– Hayo
Page last updated Friday, February 4th 2011
Discussion
Maarten 21 Feb 2011 I'm having the same dilemma's, so thanks but now what ???
Maybe I will wait for the release of the HTC Salsa, which is not too big, has a normal battery life, some nice Facebook integration issues, newest Android 2.3 but camera probably sucks.
Maarten 21 Feb 2011 not Facebook issues, I meant features obviously.
Hayo 21 Feb 2011 Features, issues.. is there a difference on facebook? :p I think the main part is getting a phone that has enough power for supporting a decent version of android. HTC's are nice if you want android, but they're notorious for crappy camera. You might consider an experia x10 for the camera+android.
The salsa has a fairly low screen resolution and slow processor by the way, so make sure you see it working and try the touch screen before you decide :)
owen 21 Mar 2011 lol, issues and fb are all the same. You should explain why windowsphone7 is a slab but I kinda suspected it would be even without having ever used it. What so hard in making phones these days? I think they spend all their time trying to come up with new nouns to use as names.
YOU NEED TO FIX THIS KEYBOARD NAVIGATION THING WHEN IT AM TYPING!
If I have the choice between a 486 MSDOS computer and a new 1ghz smart phone I would would choose the 486. because at least I could draw pretty lines on it with pascal. I'm still undecided.