Looking for Smartphone and Plan

R

Rizel

New member
Hello, I have no idea if this is the correct subforum so hopefully you guys can help me out.

My girlfriend is looking for a Smartphone and plan for the phone. We haven't settled on a phone or carrier, but I've been leaning towards suggesting an Iphone with Fido or Telus.

She basically wants a phone where she can access:

weather info;
a calender/reminder;
gmail account;
facebook account;
instant messaging through Yahoo messenger;
gps or google maps
and
text friends in the U.S. and Canada.

The reason I am leaning towards suggesting the iphone is because she tried out the following phones: blackberry bold; samsung omnia II; new palm pre; and the iphone. Of these she preferred the iphone. She thought it was just more responsive and user friendly.

She wanted to try the touch pro II, but we could not find one anywhere, all the telus stores here in ottawa are out of stock, and stores like FS and BB won't allow us to test drive it.

So, thats why she has pretty much settled her sights on the iphone.

I guess my question is, if she wants to be able to perform the activities listed above, will the iphone let her? And, what carrier and plan would be most useful for her?

She doesn't plan to surf the web or stream video all that much, just check email and stay in touch with friends with facebook, gmail, google maps; ym; and text; and weather info. Would another phone be able to do this?

Anyways, sorry for the rambling. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
 
Let me help steer you in the right direction.

It depends on how much she needs to use the messenger. All the other functions are reasonable, but iPhone does a poor job of providing IM connectivity. You can get it via apps you have to install from the App Store. A blackberry, I'm sure the Pre would though I haven't used it myself, or an android device all provide solid IM connectivity that works really well.

So what I mean by how much she needs to use it is whether she want buddies to be able to IM anytime she has the phone (as a replacement for them texting her, emailing her, etc). This is how I use IM, it is my primary contact method allowing my contacts to message me right from the PC. Because of limitations of the operating system memory, the iPhone is not able to keep IM signed in when the screen is not up on the IM program. So the third party developers have designed a method called proxy-signin which will keep your login signed in, and make your iPhone aware of messages as they happen, along with your buddy's status, etc. It sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is, but it is prone to issues where the behavior you get is unexpected. It takes some setup like telling it whether to mark you as away when you aren't in the IM app, how long to wait before logging you out of the screen name, and whether you want it to "push" notifications to you so you know you got an IM in somewhat real time even if the app was closed (this feature is new to iPhone 3.0).

As an iPhone user since it first launched, I have noticed these IM solutions can run into issues such as frozen sign-ins, buddies thinking you are on when you aren't any more, etc. Or duplicated messages, delayed messages. The 3rd party developer's IM server can go down or have an issue with latency. Particularly, with the best clients available I've found that it just takes forever to get connected back and synced with my buddy list when I leave the app and come back. Essentially the middle man between you and your IM communication is a really shoddy substitute for what most people are used to with IM as a communication tool. I believe the best client has always been BeeJive, however a good alternative was recently released called Trillian (which is a name I trust more because I have always used trillian on PC as a multi-service IM connection point). I've also done a quick search through some reviews and found that Yahoo offers their own IM program which is well-reviewed as working well to push notification and keep up.
 
Thanks for the info mrweasl. That is kind of what I suspected from reading online reviews, but it was all over my head. I think I understand it better now.

If she installs a third party app to access her YM, would her time in IM be considered web browsing? and deducted from the bandwidth included in the data plan?

Also, I've noticed that certain carriers in canada allow you to install the ym app onto supported phones, but then require you to subscribe to a 5 or 10 dollar addon. Otherwise its PPU regardless of your data plan or messaging plan. You basically need an "IM" plan which seems bogus. Could you comment on that?

What I'm trying to avoid is her having to get 5 different add ons just to use the phone.
 
With iPhone, they have kind of designed it such that for many users you don't have another choice besides 5 different addon apps or carrier packages.

I wish I could comment on your plan and setup options but I am in the US and haven't researched it.

Obviously the very simplest solution is to give up on IM and just give in to using SMS. It seems to me that the only reason Apple hasn't designed their phone to handle IM elegantly is that they feel all you should want/need is SMS & email. They've just ignored IM for almost 3 years and it baffles me. It took 2 years to even gain the notification option that you absolutely need to get IMs in real time while the phone is idle.
 
Thanks very much mrweasl. I'll mention this to my girlfiend. We'll see where we go from there. Its a shame because she would love a phone that allowed her to use YM hassle free.

Just as a hypothetical, if that was your only reason for buying a phone (to use Instant Messaging apps like Yahoo Messenger), what phone would you buy?

I've noticed that the droid is popular in the states, but as far as I know the new motorola droid and htc eris aren't availalbe in Canada. So, if you took out the iphone and those two phones from consideration, what phone would you recommend?

Again, thanks mrweasl for all the info.
 
I am personally a fan of android. For a phone you really want to IM with seriously, I have two recommendations.

Either the original first android device, HTC dream- features touch screen, a really roomy slide out keyboard, and trackball:
http://www.rogers.com/web/link/wire...e=normal&productId_Detailed=DREAMWHTR&N=52+11

Or else a blackberry with your preferred keyboard configuration.


Blackberry has really cool features for keeping email organized, but if its gmail then you can't go wrong with the g phone. Also, if you can get a google voice invite, then you can do free SMS to anyone. It's handled flawlessly on android, I use it and do not have to pay for text addon (this is the real ultimate advantage of IM in general). I hear that blackberry clients are good for it also but don't know first hand. I recommend blackberry as an alternative because I used it for IM before anything else, using the BeeJive program.
 
I would suggest the HTC Hero if you haven't looked at it yet. I believe it has everything you're looking for it and has an awesome interface that you could customize. The on screen keybaord is really responsive (more so then the iphone I'd say) and easy to type on.
Other then that the Touch Pro 2 would be a good idea. When I was looking for phones I was allowed to see how one works and it's nice. The keyboard is really big and easy to type on. The Pre seems like a good phone. I've seem many reviews on it and it would probably do what you want and more but I found the keyboard to be a little cramped and hard to type on.

I'd give you more advice if I could but I haven't had too much experience with these phones so I can't say too much.
 
Thanks Daer and mrweasl for all the info.

This weekend, my girlfriend and I went out to see the Touch Pro 2 and Iphone 3GS.

We finally were able to test out the Touch Pro 2. Well my girlfriend tried it out for a bit, and kept putting it down while talking to the salesman. It looked as though she just couldn't wait to put it down. I think she found it a little intimidating.

Well, when she tried the Iphone, it was the opposite. She just wouldn't put it down. She found it far less intimidating and just plain fun to use. Well the decision for her wasn't very hard. She decided to go with the Iphone. We got her a voice and data plan with Telus, their plan seemed to be the easiest to understand. I was surprised by how expensive the plans are for smart phones here in Canada. You don't get much for 65 bucks a month. She got 1gb of data, 200 anytime minutes (ugh only 200!), unlimited evenings and weekends, and unlimited texts to north american wireless numbers.

The last part sealed the deal. She has many friends in the U.S. and most carriers in Canada charge a PPU extra for texts to the US or require an add-on. So, in all she is really happy with the phone. She loves it and it actually suits most of her needs.

She does use the messenger app, and the browser, but mostly when at home on our wireless network. Its fast and performs well on my wireless network, but I'm not sure what kind of performance she would get on the cell network. I'm not even sure what Telus' network is like.

Well, again, thanks for all the input.
 
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