Samsung Galaxy or Nokia C7/N8

athtrasna

Due an upgrade on my phone and like my gadgets. Am on Meteor. As usual the staff in the Meteor shop near me are less than helpful. CPW suggested these 3 phones, Galaxy for €99 and the other two for €149 - and I'd get €80 for my old handset Nokia 5800.

Are any of these handsets worth considering or should I hang on a few months and see what else comes out.

shadowninty

If you mean Galaxy S, its better if you are prepared to mod it
The N8 has some cool HW features (which you may never use, cept the camera), but an awful OS, which you will have to use every day
The C7 is the same as the N8, but w/out the massive camera advantage and the HDMI-out (only 720P anyway)

Dan_Solo

shadowninty wrote: »

The N8 has some cool HW features (which you may never use, cept the camera), but an awful OS, which you will have to use every day

About a billion people use that OS every day without too much difficulty.

hurleronditch

My girlfriend bought the c7 today, wouldnt connect to internet, rang o2 very helpful and sorted it out quickly. Then the phone froze, and now will not turn back on. no more than 2 hours out of the box. Having read online this is a widespread problem with these two nokia models, with the finger being pointed at cheap production process and materials. I have nothing against Nokia, i was a disciple for manys a long year, just an iphone follower now. We will be back to CW as soon as it opens to hopefully switch to a Galaxy S if we can under the appropriate cooling off period etc. To say the two of us are disgusted is an understatement. I just hope some clause or other allows her to switch as i the thought of spending good money on a phone and having to send it off for repair 24hours later is sickening. Sorry if i had threadcrashed but i just felt given what we have spent the last 3 hours doing it was a tale worth sharing before you part with any of your hard earned corn

athtrasna

That's useful to know. I hadn't had a Nokia for years til this last one. Best thing about it is Ovi Maps

shadowninty

Dan_Solo wrote: »

About a billion people use that OS every day without too much difficulty.

link?

Dan_Solo

shadowninty

Dan_Solo wrote: »

There are not 3 Billion smartphone users (on this planet)

Dan_Solo

Like most people, I find nitpicking pedantry entertaining. Great correction dude.

Dan_Solo

hurleronditch wrote: »

Having read online this is a widespread problem with these two nokia models

Where did you read this?

hurleronditch

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Where did you read this?

Well just searching turned up plenty of articles, threads on the nokia official forums, this seems pretty comprehensive too here.

i havent done anything overly scientific, i just know i have a phone in my house that was bought 8 hours ago, and now does not work, with symptoms common to seemingly many others around the world. im no smartphone expert but i know this is not a good ad for their product

Dan_Solo

I'm always wary when someone tells me they Googled something and there was lots of matches as if this is "evidence" though. Phones that are probably selling by the hundreds of thousands per month will generate quite a few webpages with even a very low percentage failure rate.
Unfortunately it's not as if Nokia are going to advertise the failure rate...

ronkmonster

hurleronditch wrote: »

My girlfriend bought the c7 today, wouldnt connect to internet, rang o2 very helpful and sorted it out quickly. Then the phone froze, and now will not turn back on. no more than 2 hours out of the box. Having read online this is a widespread problem with these two nokia models, with the finger being pointed at cheap production process and materials. I have nothing against Nokia, i was a disciple for manys a long year, just an iphone follower now. We will be back to CW as soon as it opens to hopefully switch to a Galaxy S if we can under the appropriate cooling off period etc. To say the two of us are disgusted is an understatement. I just hope some clause or other allows her to switch as i the thought of spending good money on a phone and having to send it off for repair 24hours later is sickening. Sorry if i had threadcrashed but i just felt given what we have spent the last 3 hours doing it was a tale worth sharing before you part with any of your hard earned corn

Make sure you update the Galaxy S to version 2.2.1 if you do get it. It was very slow before this update (it starts off ok, but gradually got worse).

shadowninty

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I'm always wary when someone tells me they Googled something and there was lots of matches as if this is "evidence" though. Phones that are probably selling by the hundreds of thousands per month will generate quite a few webpages with even a very low percentage failure rate.
Unfortunately it's not as if Nokia are going to advertise the failure rate...

failure rate might SEEM like 1 in 3 or so but that is more due to the fact that you don't have as many people saying their phone has no HW issues while those who do will usually moan on forums (understandably)

athtrasna

Galaxy S looks like the favourite on here...not having had a Samsung before..is it difficult to work with? In the past I have had some Motorolas, Sony Erricsson, and then the Nokia 5800 lately

shadowninty

athtrasna wrote: »

Galaxy S looks like the favourite on here...not having had a Samsung before..is it difficult to work with? In the past I have had some Motorolas, Sony Erricsson, and then the Nokia 5800 lately

Android is much simpler to use than Symbain (Nokia 5800), but when you buy it, do update it to 2.2.1 (Google it)

Dan_Solo

The Galaxy S and N8/C7 certainly do both seem like the standard at this grade of phone for those who don't like the fruit company's walled garden so much.
If I ever get sick of my N97 mini I'll certainly have to have a long hard think about this...
BTW, I think it's a bit weird how many people say they hated the N97 so are now getting a... phone with no keyboard? Doesn't seem like the same deal at all!

KrisW

DO NOT get the Galaxy S. Find out how much a HTC Desire is, and then decide between that and the Nokias.

Everyone I know with a Galaxy S (six people, but it's everyone from that 6) has had the phone get slower and slower and slower as they've used it. The fault is a bad design decision by Samsung, which they haven't bothered to fix, despite the phone being on-market for over a year.

Yes, there are hacks to undo their boneheadedness, but you then lose your warranty.

(As for the stories of N8/C7 power failures, that article was written by Eldar Murtazin, a guy with a serious grudge against Nokia, following a failed business tie-up). Any phone that doesn't work should go straight back to where you bought it, for replacement, and don't take any bull from the store staff. One from a sample of one doesn't mean that 100% of all phones will be faulty, though.

athtrasna

Thought it was weird that they weren't pushing the HTC alright. Does the Desire have the same crappy resolution issues that the Wildfire does? A friend has the Wildfire and I couldn't believe how crap the screen res was.

Meteor on Twitter were recommending the Omnia but the guy in the shop was dead against it.

Dan_Solo

KrisW wrote: »

(As for the stories of N8/C7 power failures, that article was written by Eldar Murtazin, a guy with a serious grudge against Nokia, following a failed business tie-up).

There's so much of that crap on the web. "reviews" written by Apple fanboys are the absolute worst... "it does everything better than the iPhone but isn't as good as the iPhone" :rolleyes:

shadowninty

athtrasna wrote: »

Thought it was weird that they weren't pushing the HTC alright. Does the Desire have the same crappy resolution issues that the Wildfire does? A friend has the Wildfire and I couldn't believe how crap the screen res was.

Desire has 800x480 Res while Wildfire has 320x240
massive difference!

Meteor on Twitter were recommending the Omnia but the guy in the shop was dead against it.

and you'd listen to them.. why?

athtrasna

Good point! Decided not to rush into it..will sort later in the week. Desire now in the running...more research to do

superfish

check out the link in the thread ive just started good comparison on galaxy vs desire http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056164436

shadowninty

I'd take Galaxy S over the Desire anyday - only as Galaxy S has enough dev support to fix Samsungs lacks

pah

Dan_Solo wrote: »

The Galaxy S and N8/C7 certainly do both seem like the standard at this grade of phone for those who don't like the fruit company's walled garden so much.
If I ever get sick of my N97 mini I'll certainly have to have a long hard think about this...
BTW, I think it's a bit weird how many people say they hated the N97 so are now getting a... phone with no keyboard? Doesn't seem like the same deal at all!

Got rid of my N97 for an iphone4 last Sept, best phone move I ever made tbh.

I used an iphone and a HTC Desire properly for a couple of hours & I realised how they were leagues ahead of the nokia. The Symbian S60 OS is clunky, slow and well out of date, the range of Apps is pitiful in comparison to Appstore or Android Market. the capacitave touchscreen of the iphone is superior to the resistive screen on the N97.

It wasn't until I changed over that I realised how bad the Nokia was. It had a lot of good features, qwerty keyboard, FM transmitter 5MP camera massive storage but the UI of IOS just beat it hands down. I could never go back to a nokia running symbian now - what is Nokias plan for its smartphone OS?

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

KrisW

shadowninty wrote: »

I'd take Galaxy S over the Desire anyday - only as Galaxy S has enough dev support to fix Samsungs lacks

I know what your saying, but should you really need the services of independent, unpaid hackers just to make your phone work correctly? What happens when these guys get jobs that prevent them from making these images?

The Desire works adequetly well out of the box, and doesn't need hacks to keep going. Modding phones puts you in a very small minority of users.

Imagine you don't have access to re-flashing tools, and don't know what a kernel is. Now, which model will you choose?

I could never go back to a nokia running symbian now - what is Nokias plan for its smartphone OS?

The new Symbian^3 models (C7,C6-01 and N8) are leagues ahead of the old N97 - there really is no comparison.

srsly78

Are they discontinuing Symbian or not? What about this Meego thing? Don't buy Nokia you are wasting your time. Now they want to hook up with Microsoft as well

KrisW

Why not wait until Friday, and see what they actually announce, and then make a decision?

My opinion, which has as much weight as yours (i.e., none):
- "OVI" brand canned, successful services re-branded as Nokia, unsuccessful ones replaced by offerings from market leaders.
- Phone range thinned. C/E/N series merged, fewer tiers. Low-end farmed out.
- Resources provided to fully support Qt on WindowsPhone 7 in exchange for better enterprise/Exchange support from MS.
- No Android, No WP7. Platforms will remain Qt on Symbian and Qt on MeeGo
- Deals with Google for better service integration hooks (similar to how Apple pay for access to YouTube video streams without flash and ads).
- Lots of heads rolling in senior management; company restructured; many redundancies, especially in the services department (Ovi).

bd250110

It's certainly going to be interesting.

If nokia can get somewhere between Android and iOS, they might be able to do something. But they need to have a functioning, vibrant and large app store/Market/shop/suite from day one. Qt/Meego can't deliver that,yet, nor can WP7 to the same extend as Android.

Nokia may be able to breathe new life into WP7, with killer enterprise functions, powered by Microsoft. Maybe together MS and Nokia can move into BB territory, Meego could be used to compete against feature phones, building apps and follwers that way.

35x

I'm also due upgrade now - (vodaphone billpay with IFA discount) - thinking of going Samsung Galaxy S - any good offers going at present? Are same deals in Vodaphone stores and in CW'hse stores?

Dan_Solo

Nokia should write an SDK that compiles Android source to S^3. App store solved.:)

shadowninty

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Nokia should write an SDK that compiles Android source to S^3. App store solved.:)

someone doesnt understand programming languages and/or OS differences
there is a project for MeeGo tho, probably never see it for Symbain

Dan_Solo

shadowninty wrote: »

someone doesnt understand programming languages and/or OS differences
there is a project for MeeGo tho, probably never see it for Symbain

Yeah, I know about Qt etc, but if Nokia at least made porting as easy as possible a few devs might make an effort and do a Symbian port of their apps.
Couldn't hurt, and Nokia have about 100,000 programmers doing next to nothing it seems so why not?:D

KrisW

The architectural differences between Android and the other platforms are too great to allow a simple port between Android and other platforms. Android is Java only, everyone else is either C/C++ only, or allows C/C++ code to be run.

This is the reason why a Qt port to Android is unfeasible too: to do this, you'd have to first re-write large parts of Qt in Java to interface with the Android OS, but this would then either require that any Qt/Android application is also written in Java, and thus incompatible with other Qt platforms, or be written in C/C++ (with a truly horrendous JNI bridge in between), which Android does not allow.

Of the other phone platforms, iPhone would be the easiest to port Qt onto (there's already a MacOS Qt implmentation), followed by WinPhone 7.

Besides, if you were going to write such a conversion tool (and assume for a moment this is possible), why go after Android at all? For less effort, you could target iPhone developers, and iPhone applications are much higher quality in general, and there are far more of them.

shadowninty

Lots of Android apps use C++
they are in APKs but its worked quite well (cept for games like Angry Birds- fixed in 2.3)
Opera Mobile for Android is made entirely in C++, with resources in APK

There is a QT project for Android, but not enough interest as most devs seem to like Darvik, but QT Lighthouse is progressing well
Probably will be incorporated into Android source one day, hopefully by that time ROM chips will be bigger!

delonglad

Do not get the Galaxy S, the S stands for slow.. I thought this phone was great when i first opened the box and had a great first few days. Then boom completely laggy and freezing every 5 mins. I only had a handful of the essential apps installed.

So 2.2 comes out and I spend hours of my life trying to connect with Samsung Kies to update. This is a well documented stupid problem with Samsung. Finally I update it and the lags are gone its flying again, a few weeks later and its back to shocking bad. Sometimes it can't even handle a phone call. The Swype gets worse with the new upgrade too.

The gps does not work at all either only when it wants too which is never.

I was in the vodafone shop the other day and honestly i saw your man trying to push the phone on a customer, saying how great it was, wanted to fire the phone t him.

Look into a HTC instead of the Samsung.

Frustrated Samsung user.

shadowninty

meh mod it

KrisW

Meh, that's not really an acceptable answer.

If I paid for a phone, I'd expect it to work without me having to dick around with the software. As far as I, or Joe Soap in the street is concerned, we've bought an expensive phone, and now it doesn't work. End of story. So what if Android is "the awesome" - that phone may as well have gold-plated unicorns running around inside it for all the good it does: if you can't open the email client without it hanging, it's still not worth a damn.

Now, personally I could fix this kind of crap, but I'd rather not have to. I certainly wouldn't want to be fixing the bloody phones of everyone I knew just because Samsung can't do proper QA.

There is a QT project for Android, but not enough interest as most devs seem to like Darvik, but QT Lighthouse is progressing well
Probably will be incorporated into Android source one day, hopefully by that time ROM chips will be bigger!

Didn't realise there was much C++ dev on Android - It's definitely discouraged - either that or most Android flagwavers just don't know any C++.

Compiled down, the Qt libs occupy about 14 MBytes.. hardly the end of the world these days.

superfish

what a load of bull the galaxy s out shines most high end phones including the iphone and desire and if you buy one as of today you will find no modding whatsoever is needed and it comes with froyo 2.2. as for being slow quite the opposite its a faster processor than the htc desire the galaxy s is by far one of the best if not the best smart phone available. the following link is a comparison of the spec you will see that the galaxy s has everything the htc does and more.

http://www.carphonewarehouse.ie/aspx/ProductComparison.aspx

my personal opinion is that people who bought the phone when they first came out will have suffered with all the glitches in the world and its given the phone a bad name but if you buy one as of today you will find they are far from slow since they were manufacturer upgraded. I have used all three phones, as all three are in my household at present and I can confirm the galaxy s is the best

thegame

i also had lag issues then i applied the lag fix..the issues are now sorted.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=784691

ronkmonster

I have no lag fixes installed with 2.2.1 on galaxy s and it's not slow anymore.

KrisW

what a load of bull the galaxy s out shines most high end phones including the iphone and desire and if you buy one as of today you will find no modding whatsoever is needed and it comes with froyo 2.2. as for being slow quite the opposite its a faster processor than the htc desire the galaxy s is by far one of the best if not the best smart phone available. the following link is a comparison of the spec you will see that the galaxy s has everything the htc does and more.

Glad you like yours.

However, I know only six people with this phone. All bought in the last two months. All experienced extreme slowdown with normal business use. Six from six.

Specsheets are no substitute for proper software QA and customer support. I'd always advise someone to avoid Samsung.

ronkmonster

KrisW wrote: »

Glad you like yours.

However, I know only six people with this phone. All bought in the last two months. All experienced extreme slowdown with normal business use. Six from six.

Specsheets are no substitute for proper software QA and customer support. I'd always advise someone to avoid Samsung.

How many of them have upgraded to 2.2.1? Even 2.2 was slow for me. it was only when it got the latest version was it noticeably better.

KrisW

The problem has nothing to do with Android, it's Samsung's choice of filesystem that causes it. Until you apply the fix thegame linked to, your phone will get slower with time.

ronkmonster

I've have the latest version installed for 3 weeks+ now and no slowdown. previous versions would all be lagging after a week.
Everything in the new release was faster in general and has stayed that way

athtrasna

I still haven't jumped and bought a phone...Went back for the Galaxy S in Feb and it had gone from €99 to €149 in CPW, popped in again last night to see if March had any offers and it was €189!

Now waiting, the Nexus S is due on Meteor in April...or maybe waiting for the Galaxy S II...wish I'd taken an 18 month contract now instead of 12 while I'm deciding what to do. I never remember buying a phone being this stressful before!