Holiday Smartphone Buyer's Guide
by Vivek Gowri on December 4, 2010 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Guides
- Holiday 2010
- Mobile
Sprint
When Sprint launched the EVO 4G in June, they had a runaway success on their hands, so naturally, it makes sense to start there in our Sprint holiday picks. I bought an EVO on launch day, after standing in the cold and rainy weather that Seattle passes off as early summer (when in fact, it bears no resemblance to the word summer at all). It was totally worth it. When I wrote up my first impressions bit, the word “beast” came up more than once, and for good reason - it was a monster device, not just in a physically imposing sense, but also just for the number of technologies it housed. It was the first mainstream American WiMAX smartphone and by far the most impressive Sprint device in years, making it a worthy choice if you’re in the market for a high-end slate.
If you want a physical keyboard, Sprint’s other 4G phone, the Samsung Epic 4G, is what you should be looking at. It’s almost as big as the EVO and has the same problems with battery life, but it’s faster due to the Hummingbird SoC inside. It’s the only Galaxy S device with a hardware keyboard and WiMAX, so its a definite step up from the Fascinate, Captivate, and Vibrant. Unfortunately, like all of the other Galaxy S devices, it doesn’t have the greatest build quality in the world, but the extra performance makes up for that. At $249.99, it’s $50 more than the other high end devices, but over a two-year contract with data, that’s roughly 1.8% total additional cost. If the hardware keyboard is important to you, that’s definitely worth it.
On the lower end, Sprint has a motley collection of weird smartphones, with the Samsung Intercept and Transform, Sanyo’s Zio, the old school HTC Hero, the non-WiFi Palm Pixi that we all know and, well, not love, but still. Again though, we find ourselves turning to LG’s new Optimus One (the Optimus S on Sprint). Even with a slower processor, it’s a great deal with Froyo and a pretty solid feature set. And it’s free on contract. This is a free Android phone that doesn’t suck! Easy choice for a low end phone. Did I mention that it’s free?
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DigitalFreak - Saturday, December 4, 2010 - link
Forgot to mention that there is also a dock coming, with HDMI out, USB and an Ethernet port.VivekGowri - Saturday, December 4, 2010 - link
You can still sideload apps, so it's not a huge deal. You can seriously just go download the .apk from the internet, toss it onto the SD card and install off there. The problem with that is that some of the apps don't work too well - I couldn't get Angry Birds to run properly for some reason.Just IMO here - the stock software is NOT okay. It's basically ruining the device, for me at least. It's such a slow UI....I can deal with UI skins that don't lag down the system, like on the Galaxy Tab or the HTC Sense stuff, but man, this thing is slow - I've got dual A9's and it feels slower than the freaking ARM11 phones.
XDA is awesome, I've been looking at their section for the G-Tablet recently. I'll probably have a performance preview up within the next couple of days, but the full review is going to have to wait until after the Galaxy Tab review, so I'll probably look into TNT Lite.
The G-Tablet really does look like the hackers dream, but I've got a question, am I the only one that thinks it has a pretty woeful screen (especially next to the iPad)?
strikeback03 - Monday, December 6, 2010 - link
Haven't seen one in person, but based on the preview hands-on over at androidcentral I have to agree, horrid viewing angles on the screen and lag that could be measured in multiple seconds in interacting with the OS. And apparently it was even more unusable with the first shipping software revision, IIRC there have already been updates.jonup - Saturday, December 4, 2010 - link
Guys, while I understand the noise around the flagships of the major phone manufacturers/brands is there a chance that we will see reviews/recommendations for some smaller, lighter and more elegant phones? I just picked up X3-02 and so far I am loving it. (I wish I didn't have to work 60+ hours and getting ready for some finals :( ) I paid for it more than some of your higher end offerings just because I don't want to hoe all the extra weight. Maybe you can review even some Vertu phones!?That said I understand it is a niche market and most people on the street would not care because they have not been bombarded with countless commercials everyday, but for those of us that care about looks, texture and quality of materials, we still want to get a feature rich device as much as the physical dimensions allow for. It will be nice to know how they stack up against the big phones.
p.s. I also prefer Longines to Breitling ;)
DanNeely - Sunday, December 5, 2010 - link
They're less fashionable, but feature phones still make up roughly half the phones sold, so a reasonable case could be made to cover some of the higher end models.G-Man - Saturday, December 4, 2010 - link
"It’d be completely disingenuous if we had a myopic, USA-centric world view, and we’re actively working on getting a more international spread of devices whenever possible that’s of interest to everyone."You have no idea how awesome Anandtech is for realising this (no sarcasm). So many other sites forget this. Thank you.
Hrel - Saturday, December 4, 2010 - link
You guys REALLY need to start getting some Archos hardware in shop to test out.AuDioFreaK39 - Saturday, December 4, 2010 - link
Excellent article Vivek and Brian! I just spotted one apparent issue with a technical specification. On the very last page regarding tablets, the BlackBerry Playbook was announced to feature a 7-inch 1024x600 screen, not a 10-inch screen. Hopefully this can be corrected, thanks in advance.VivekGowri - Sunday, December 5, 2010 - link
Riiiiiight. My bad, thanks for catching that!Galcobar - Saturday, December 4, 2010 - link
Actually, the PlayBook is a 16:9, 7" screen, device itself is 5.1" x 7.6" x 0.4" (130mm x 194mm x 10mm).