Which of these mobile phones should I get?

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PARANOiA

Veteran
As my contract comes up for renewal, I've been offered a "free" phone... free meaning lock into another contract.

Anyway, which of these do you recommend?

sony ericson k750i
sony ericson k600i
nokia 6280
nokia 6101
samsung z140
motorola v3
nokia 6020
nokia 6230i

The sales guy recommended the 6280, or the K750i. I've never owned a S-E phone, but I've heard ace things about the v3, too.

Let me know :]
 
Just got a K750i as a present. It comes with 2 3D java games preinstalled. No AA, looks like point sampling. Maybe it's being done on the cpu. Around 10-15 fps on the sega tennis game. Maybe i should dust off my java prowess ;-)

It's got halitosis (blue teeth). The UI is nice, but im coming from a vintage sagem...
POP3/IMAP client (untested).
The camera's got Autofocus, which is slow, but apparently uncommon for a phone camera. Low light photos are not good, too much noise for my taste. I guess the CCD is not too sensitive.
 
Something almost completely unrelated... the Nokia 6280 claims to have a 262,144 colour screen. Now it's been a while since I've needed binary skills, but:
8-bit colour: 2^8 = 256
16-bit colour: 2^16 = 65536
24-bit colour: 2^24 = 16.7m

This phone seems to be 18-bit colour? 2^18=262,144

I think 24-bit relates to 3 8-bit channels per colour. So what's the extra two bits doing?
 
PARANOiA said:
This phone seems to be 18-bit colour? 2^18=262,144
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Yes. 18 bit color. Somewhat of a pain in the ass to deal with, but not too bad.
I think 24-bit relates to 3 8-bit channels per colour. So what's the extra two bits doing?
Click to expand...
What do you mean? What extra 2 bits?
 
Aren't cheap-assed low-millisecond-response desktop LCDs also 18-bit (ie. 6-bits-per-component)?

I can't really see why a phone would need full 24-bit colour, when was the last (or first even) time someone ran PhotoShop on a mobile. The first priority should be higher resolution IMO (which seems to be where the Nokia N80 is going).
 
Karoshi said:
Just got a K750i as a present. It comes with 2 3D java games preinstalled. No AA, looks like point sampling. Maybe it's being done on the cpu. Around 10-15 fps on the sega tennis game. Maybe i should dust off my java prowess ;-)

It's got halitosis (blue teeth). The UI is nice, but im coming from a vintage sagem...
POP3/IMAP client (untested).
The camera's got Autofocus, which is slow, but apparently uncommon for a phone camera. Low light photos are not good, too much noise for my taste. I guess the CCD is not too sensitive.
Click to expand...
Yeah the low light handling is a bit poor. But it has got a light on it. You can even set it to flash S.O.S.! :)
 
i would say K750i
it has a memorycard slot
it has a 2mpix camera
and most important, its not a nokia :)
 
What's wrong with the Nokia???
While I ask that, I must say I own a S-E phone, and I think my next one will be a S-E too.
 
PARANOiA said:
The sales guy recommended the 6280, or the K750i.
Click to expand...
Clearly the best two options. I'd say it's a tossup overall, and neither of them have glaring weaknesses.

The 6280 is vastly superior when it comes to wireless tech (3G, EDGE, BT 2.0) while the K750i has a better radio. The 6280 has VGA video while the K750i has better still pictures and AF.
 
If you get the V3, be sure to get the latest SW for it, changed quite a few things and corrected a few bugs. I'm quite happy with mine now. To me, looks matter as well and the V3 is definitely the sexiest one in your list.

S-E's UI sucks IMHO, although the phones are good. Nokia are very good, but they're all bulky and look awful.
 
_xxx_ said:
If you get the V3, be sure to get the latest SW for it, changed quite a few things and corrected a few bugs. I'm quite happy with mine now. To me, looks matter as well and the V3 is definitely the sexiest one in your list.

S-E's UI sucks IMHO, although the phones are good. Nokia are very good, but they're all bulky and look awful.
Click to expand...

Hmm...what was your last S-E? The UI of my previous (T610) one was definitely not top notch, but the K750 which I have now is a huge improvement. sensible customisations now possible, vastly improved calls list and phone book, responsiveness ok, good media player handling.
only gripe I have is that I haven't found a way to disable automatic switch to camera mode when the lens cover is opened, which happens sometimes when I carry it in my pant pocket.

The problem I have with nokia is the build quality of their mainstream parts. (6230i and lower). While the higher end parts have great quality (including my last company phone - 6630), a lot of the smaller ones seem to suffer from 'cheap plastic syndrome' (cover getting loose etc...).
And they really need a new design team. :)
 
Talking about phones, a 4mpx camera isnt that far off now.

Anyone want to guesstimate when one with a storage of at least 10gb will be out?
 
I've got the N6280, I think it's great. Reception is excellent, much better than my old T610, the camera is vastly better. To say it's got 2Mpix is a complete lie though; 1600 rez is no better/sharper than 1280, so I take pics in that mode and save a lot on storage. As already mentioned there's no AF, and it can't focus clearly any closer than ~25cm. That's a bit of a bummer unfortunately. Daylight sensitivity is pretty good unless there's a lot of contrast in the image, but low-light performance is crap; when lighting gets dull (such as dusk) you can get banding in the image, and when it's dark there's blue and red color speckles galore. LED light is VERY bright, it makes a noticeable difference up to about 2m away, and perhaps more. Unfortunately there is no option for it to come on automatically. It's generally not enough to remove the speckles though, and activating night-time mode just makes it even worse. You'll get a speckly AND washed-out image... :-?

Bluetooth transfers are fairly quick, no slower than USB transfers it feels like, so the storage speed is probably more limited by flash access speed than wireless transfers. Media player is a bit cumbersome, it won't look on the memory card by default for songs to play, you have to tell it yourself where you stored the stuff even though there's a premade folder for music on the card.

Just don't drop it on the floor though; the sliding design is likely to pop apart if you do, and like humpty dumpty you might not get it back together yourself again... :p Also, don't leave the phone plugged in thru USB for a long time without the charger connected as well; that'll eat the battery like crazy.

On the whole, a great phone IMO with everything you need. Pretty much zero flash built-in, but 2GB storage slot is plenty. Images at 1280 generally get no larger than ~950K, and typically considerably less, so it'd take ages to fill a memcard of that size. Even the default one (64MB) can hold at least 150 shots and probably a lot more. Too small for music tho, but flash is cheap today. Just run out and buy a bigger card.
 
I personally like the way S-E's Phonebook is stored as opposed to Motorola's "one-number per contact record" approach. At least with any S-E phone I've seen since my T300, the phonebook allows me to keep several numbers as well as notes and email addresses for every contact.
 
I really loved my k750, Although I can't say much about the other phones. The camera was amazing, almost as good as my dedicated 2MP digi cam, but yeah as alrdy mentioned night shots are horrible. Auto focus and macro mode which is defiantly nice. if your going to use it for mp3 playback flash it to the w800 firmware (mine was) many many improvements. Although keep in mind that the stock k750 mp3 playback functionality is by no means bad. I currently have a samsung d600 and I defiantly prefer the k750 to it (only thing the samsung has on the sony is the higher res screen).
 
Snyder said:
Hmm...what was your last S-E? The UI of my previous (T610) one was definitely not top notch
Click to expand...

Yup, had the 610 as well. I hated it with passion (and sold it just a few weeks after I got it).
 
Guden Oden said:
On the whole, a great phone IMO with everything you need. Pretty much zero flash built-in, but 2GB storage slot is plenty. Images at 1280 generally get no larger than ~950K, and typically considerably less, so it'd take ages to fill a memcard of that size. Even the default one (64MB) can hold at least 150 shots and probably a lot more. Too small for music tho, but flash is cheap today. Just run out and buy a bigger card.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up all. I actually opted for the 6280, and after 24 hours I'm pleasantly surprised. It's super fast and responsive. The camera is actually quite terrible (me having a 3.2mp Canon was expecting something at least reasonably comparable with smaller resolutions), but I'm not overly bothered. I managed to track pick up 60mb of .jar games, too. I was impressed at the selection - coming off a Smartphone, there's much more software out there today.

The memory thing is a concern for me - my other phone is a SD card, of which I have 256mb. My camera is 1gb of CF. Now I'm jumping format again, sigh. Might just pick up 512mb for photos and apps.

Another question for you all.... I used to love Pocket Streets for Smartphone (map program). Maps are available to download from MS's website. Is it legal if I made a J2ME application which read their maps, or is this closed-source reverse engineering?

I'd suggest the former... otherwise, all those free .PDF reader/writers would also be illegal. Thoughts?
 
ShootMyMonkey said:
I personally like the way S-E's Phonebook is stored as opposed to Motorola's "one-number per contact record" approach. At least with any S-E phone I've seen since my T300, the phonebook allows me to keep several numbers as well as notes and email addresses for every contact.
Click to expand...
Yes, that and you can sync it with for example Outlook and keep the different phone numbers and addresses in right places on your PC too.
 
The camera is actually quite terrible (me having a 3.2mp Canon was expecting something at least reasonably comparable with smaller resolutions), but I'm not overly bothered.
Click to expand...
Yeah, most camera phones are not exactly carrying top-notch optics nor do they have the best filters to demosaic from the CCD array (often times resorting to simple bilinear). There are exceptions, but those are also disgustingly expensive. The only reason people might say that the best photos are taken from camera phones is simply due to the fact that unlike a normal digital camera, you tend to carry your phone with you all the time.
 
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