Less than 200euro cool phone?

TheKnowledge

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a phone with plenty of gadgets for less than 200

It has to have the following; camera, bluetooth

I'm tempted to get a touchscreen but feel it could get annoying when i'm in a rush. I have a traditional shape style but want something different.

I'm on meteor prepay.

Any suggestions? I was lookin at sim free ones online but i'd be cautious they wouldnt work after forking out for it.

I'd appreciate any advice.

Cheers

Davy

What you think of the W595?


You could get a N95 from adverts or online for roughly the €200 mark which has plenty of gadgets.


Or if you wanted to spring a bit more cash for the 5800 which is a hugely popular touch screen phone at the moment.

TheKnowledge

Davy wrote: »

What you think of the W595?


You could get a N95 from adverts or online for roughly the €200 mark which has plenty of gadgets.


Or if you wanted to spring a bit more cash for the 5800 which is a hugely popular touch screen phone at the moment.

I was looking at the W595 alright but I have a sony ericsson already and the W595 has been around a while now.
I'm kinda drawn to the LG Cookie or Viewty but I'm warey cos they are so cheap for a touch screen. PLus I'm a man and the Viewty is a bit feminine with that pointer thing that hangs off it.

fcleere

lg cookie is a pain in the ar$e!!
i have one and im tryin to get rid

Davy

Well the Viewty has the best spec out of all of them. It was quite a popular phone too.

I wouldn't be restricting myself to a meteor phone, their is nothing wrong with getting a sim free instore or online somewhere if you would prefer it.

TheKnowledge

fcleere wrote: »

lg cookie is a pain in the ar$e!!
i have one and im tryin to get rid

Whats so bad about it?

fcleere

i just find the user interface bad,battery only lasts a day and phone is prone to freezing.

Loomis

TheKnowledge wrote: »

I was looking at the W595 alright but I have a sony ericsson already and the W595 has been around a while now.
I'm kinda drawn to the LG Cookie or Viewty but I'm warey cos they are so cheap for a touch screen. PLus I'm a man and the Viewty is a bit feminine with that pointer thing that hangs off it.

It's called a stylus. And you don't have to have it attached to the phone. I don't use it. Don't see how it would make it feminine though They're pretty much essential for PDA's etc and I don't see many people looking feminine using them.

TheKnowledge

Mr. Anderson wrote: »

It's called a stylus. And you don't have to have it attached to the phone. I don't use it. Don't see how it would make it feminine though They're pretty much essential for PDA's etc and I don't see many people looking feminine using them.

I was just looking at videos of it on youtube and it looks good!

Would you recommend it?

B00MSTICK

I'll probably take the plunge and get the new version of this with WiFi and WM6, once I get a price that is...

It might end up being muck but I'll let you know if you're interested.

B00MSTICK

Price is coming in at $218 + 21% VAT that customs will charge me so around €190 all in.

Very good company to deal with, have been chatting on MSN this morning.

Hopefully the product quality matches the customer service!

dohouch

How about a Nokia N82, a bit old now, but Nokia U.K. were selling them a few weeks ago for £200, SIM free. I have one now for 15 months and can't of anything that it can't do.

Loomis

TheKnowledge wrote: »

I was just looking at videos of it on youtube and it looks good!

Would you recommend it?

Probably not, actually.

The touch screen does take some getting used to when typing texts etc because you don't have that feedback of an old-fashioned button-click. There is a feature you can turn on that gives a small vibrate to indicate you have pressed the button correctly. But I turned that off immediately as I'd imagine it would kill your battery. Which isn't very good anyway. You have a choice of creating messages using the number pad, a full qwerty keyboard in landscape or you can use the stylus to write on screen and its converted using handwriting recognition software.

The battery seems very temperamental. It seems good at times and terrible at others. I think it's a feature of touch-screens in general though as I know other people who have Samsung, Blackberry and iPhone touch screens and they all find the battery quite poor.

For features the phone is great. The camera is 5mp which makes my actual digital camera of 4mp obsolete. It has a video recorder too which can capture in slow motion but the quality is poor if the area isn't well lit. Mp3 player and picture viewer are all quite good and easy to use.

I don't use the WAP or email on it because I'm pay as you go and going online normally costs an arm and a leg. You can't set it up to your gmail account as it doesn't support SSL so its virtually useless for me as a mail client. I probably wouldn't use it if it worked though to be honest.

I have an iPod touch and can say the slickness of its interface is miles better than the Viewty. The Viewty is unresponsive at times and the scrolling feature in particular is quite poor; sluggish and often opens an item instead of scrolling down a menu which was your intention. The screen has frozen on me about half a dozen times and I've no idea what causes it. It leaves the screen unresponsive to touch but you can use a scroll wheel at the back of the phone or the call/end buttons to open menu's on screen. Leaves you having to turn the phone off and on again to use it properly.

It's fine for what I use to be honest. I text a lot so its fine, the camera is very handy and the screen is nice at 3 inches. Makes the phone a tad bulky though.

TinCool

dohouch wrote: »

How about a Nokia N82, a bit old now, but Nokia U.K. were selling them a few weeks ago for £200, SIM free. I have one now for 15 months and can't of anything that it can't do.

I have the N82 also. It is a feature rich phone but it has numerous downsides.

1. The build quality is crap. The back plate is made from rather flimsy plastic and mine squeeks every time I press a button.
2. The centre button (although works fine) feels and looks like it could fall off at any moment. You can quite easily see in to the phones innards under the button. I'm sure it would be doomed if it got wet.
3. The OS is quite sluggish at times.
4. It does lock up on rare occasions but not so much to annoy you.
5. The battery life is quite poor if you use the phone a lot. I have a charger in work and always have it charging.

If you can live with these, it is quite a nice phone. I'm going to be replacing mine soon with a HTC Magic. I was playing around with one in a Vodafone shop over the weekend. Excellent little phone.

TheKnowledge

I'm starting to think phone companies just dont make good all round phones anymore! Its like you have to settle for a compromise no matter what

NewApproach

Why do you have to limit yourself to €200 if you've €100k to blow on a car

TheKnowledge

NewApproach wrote: »

Why do you have to limit yourself to €200 if you've €100k to blow on a car

I dont think thats any of your business.