Smartphones a-go-go

[Crazed Rabbit]

I got a smartphone through Virgin Mobile and it's $25/month for 300 mins, unlimited texting, web, and data. It's awesome; even cheaper than my old basic sprint plan.

CR

[Husar]

I had an iPhone, and it was awesome.

If you just want to use Skype via WLAN then CBR is spot on, the iPod touch costs what? 200 or 250$? No real phone/data capabilities beyond the WLAN but otherwise it's pretty much the same as the iPhone 4.

Never touched an Android phone, they're the geek do it yourself things for the linux fanatics, from what I read in news and comments the updates can be slow though, meaning there isn't just one Android but all the different Android phones use a slightly adjusted custom version and some manufacturers are slow to update theirs to a new kernel, some phones won't get a new update etc.

I'm not sure about these berries but possible that they're variants or versions of Bada OD from Samsung. Apparently it's a nice idea but also a bit niche, so lacks Apps, haven't read a lot about it though.

Windows phone 7 for some reason started out similar to iOS, lacking a few features that are now standard.
Seems a bit backwards at this point, may become a lot better later, apparently MS wants to give a phone to this guy who jailbreaks iPhones and hacked the PS3, supposedly to figure out how to allow homebrews without doing away with copy protection or something. Not sure what to make of it.

[Furunculus]

i have an n900 and i love it, but it is not cutting edge any more.

this is the era of the dual core smartphone with powerful OpenGL ES2.0 gpu's, which is what the apps and games will target as a baseline in the near future.

whatever you do do not get an old android smartphone with an Arm11 core sporting an OpenGL ES 1.1 gpu.

my ideal smartphone:
3.7" to 4.3" screen
840x480 to 960x640 res
Samsung hummingbird (!GHz Arm A8 + SGX540) to Tegra 2 (dual Arm A9 + nvidia)
Android 2.3 / Meego / Ios
512MB mem to 1GB mem

don't go below those lower end (feature-phone with a touch-screen), but feel free to try and exceed upper end (depending on how long you are willing to wait).

[Vladimir]

Real Men Use Android

[Husar]

Real Men Use Android

Duh, that's because they can pay 20 elite programmers to make custom apps for them and change the whole OS around to suit them.
Normal men don't have the money for that anyway.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I find android to be strait forward - not like running a linux OS. You can, I think, get real deep into how it works with various apps but it runs easily right out of the box.

CR