Smartphone decisions

LongLensPhotography

LongLensPhotography

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I am slightly unsure which path to take. Currently I am on Samsung Galaxy Nexus which works fine, except the battery is starting to give up, and I want 4G. It will now run out on Google Maps even while charging on USB adapter from car 12V port. That's a dealbreaker.

The plan was to wait for Nexus 6 and get that (it has to be sub £300 or preferably far less and stock android; nothing else will be considered no matter what).

I could get chinese battery from amazon for the samsung for £7 and hope it doesn't blow up in the next few months, or I could buy Moto G 4G version from Tesco. It is a fine phone (played with 3G version a while back) but I am very concerned about only 8GB memory. Low memory was the root cause of terrible experience with HTC Desire despite the SD card expansion. The old Nexus has 16GB and around 10 are used.

So cheap battery or Moto G for me?
 
Is a genuine battery too extortionate?
 
Nod said:
Is a genuine battery too extortionate?
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Can't even find one... 2012 model probably means everything is discontinued :LOL: I probably wouldn't want to spend over £20 in any case.
 
Something you might check is your cars USB adapter my iphone would not keep charged when I used it as sat nav I discovered that not all adapters are equal the usb would not deliver enough power paid a fiver bought better USB adapter and made sure used origin apple lead job done works all day if needed
 
border_all said:
Something you might check is your cars USB adapter my iphone would not keep charged when I used it as sat nav I discovered that not all adapters are equal the usb would not deliver enough power paid a fiver bought better USB adapter and made sure used origin apple lead job done works all day if needed
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It used to work Ok earlier. 1000 mA on this one - that should suffice?
 
border_all said:
Something you might check is your cars USB adapter my iphone would not keep charged when I used it as sat nav I discovered that not all adapters are equal the usb would not deliver enough power paid a fiver bought better USB adapter and made sure used origin apple lead job done works all day if needed
Click to expand...
definitely this. if the phone is using more juice than the charger can provide something is very wrong there.
 
Do ex-pro make a battery for your phone? I recently bought a new one for my s3 as that had gone pretty much the same. My contract is up for renewal now but I'm considering not bothering and sticking with it and just going onto a rolling 30 day sim plan until a phone comes out that really grabs my attention although I'll probably keep this phone until it goes kaput. It'll also save me £20 a month which is a bonus.
 
Ok after some routing around it seems the moto g lte has a micro SD slot so would that not solve your memory concerns?
 
stupar said:
Ok after some routing around it seems the moto g lte has a micro SD slot so would that not solve your memory concerns?
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I don't know, but in HTC desire that just prolonged my suffering until the day I bought the Nexus. Maybe HTC was just an awful handset, or maybe too little app space simply means too little space. That would see me loose backup satnav app, a few others and still getting cache full problems... not sure.
 
Htc desire was limited to 160mb of onboard memory! Thats a far cry from 8gb minimum today.
If it helps i have an LG G2 with 16gb memory and no micro SD slot. With all my apps, photos etc and co-pilot sat nav i am still hovering around 10gb free storage.
If you get the the moto g lte then at least you have the ability to push stuff to the micro SD
 
ST4 said:
iPhone 5s. There is no finer phone that money can buy...
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This I would say is on the verge of spamming. You know exactly how much I hate iOS and anything related to it.
 
The latest versions of Android do not officially support SD cards. You can use an SD card as extra storage for music or photos, but not for running apps on. If you need extra memory for apps then you need get a phone with sufficient built in to start with.

In your first post you say it runs out when charging from the car whilst using google maps. The problem with google maps is that it has to download the map as they are not stored in the software. So when you are using google maps your phone is both communicating with the GPS and constantly downloading data. I think this makes the phone work hard and burns more battery. Have you tried using a satnav app like Co-pilot or Nave Free? These take up a more storage on your phone because they keep the maps on your phone, but they work even where there is no phone signal and they shouldn't use so much power. I use co-pilot on my Galaxy Note 3 and also on my HTC One and they always charge up whilst driving. If you buy Co-pilot it will be transferable to you new phone if you buy one so nothing would be lost.
 
Idlefrog said:
The latest versions of Android do not officially support SD cards. You can use an SD card as extra storage for music or photos, but not for running apps on. If you need extra memory for apps then you need get a phone with sufficient built in to start with.

In your first post you say it runs out when charging from the car whilst using google maps. The problem with google maps is that it has to download the map as they are not stored in the software. So when you are using google maps your phone is both communicating with the GPS and constantly downloading data. I think this makes the phone work hard and burns more battery. Have you tried using a satnav app like Co-pilot or Nave Free? These take up a more storage on your phone because they keep the maps on your phone, but they work even where there is no phone signal and they shouldn't use so much power. I use co-pilot on my Galaxy Note 3 and also on my HTC One and they always charge up whilst driving. If you buy Co-pilot it will be transferable to you new phone if you buy one so nothing would be lost.
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G maps download everything initially then it is just GPS and agps which is still very energy intensive. I used to use copilot but honestly g maps is now head and shoulders above and the main reason to buy android.
 
Google maps is available for iPhone and iPad too, so not a great reason for picking Android. I do prefer android phones at the moment though.
 
Idlefrog said:
Google maps is available for iPhone and iPad too, so not a great reason for picking Android. I do prefer android phones at the moment though.
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i believe it is only a crippled version without the satnav functionality for ios. Anyway I hate every single thing about iOS sanboxing, lack of customisation and any reasonable access to the file system. Too many red lines. I can't wait to replace iPad with something more civilised.
 
daugirdas said:
i believe it is only a crippled version without the satnav functionality for ios. Anyway I hate every single thing about iOS sanboxing, lack of customisation and any reasonable access to the file system. Too many red lines. I can't wait to replace iPad with something more civilised.
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Statements like this always make me laugh.

I must have missed all those amazing multitouch phones and tablets before the iPhone and iPad came out.
 
My LG G2 works out the box, is easy to use, has 4g blah blah.
Its an amazing phone made by an amazing company :LOL:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
inkiboo said:
Statements like this always make me laugh.

I must have missed all those amazing multitouch phones and tablets before the iPhone and iPad came out.
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I have clearly stated not to touch iOS in the opening post - now the devil is out and you can laugh :)

I consider smartphones mini computers with call functionality, not brick phones that could also perform a few features like alarm clock. I hate iOS more than I hate windows. Period. Android, Linux and OS X all the way.
 
ST4 said:
There is no finer phone than an iPhone 5s. Works out the box easy to use, 4g blah blah amazing phones made by an amazing company.
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How does it happen that my 2 year old Nexus has a larger screen than your iphone? I guess it is more pocket friendly and that makes it 2-3x more expensive.
 
daugirdas said:
How does it happen that my 2 year old Nexus has a larger screen than your iphone? I guess it is more pocket friendly and that makes it 2-3x more expensive.
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the iPhone 5s is the optimal size of screen for touch, seeing things and for not taking up masses of room. Its lovely and light and just let the OS take care of things for you.

There is no finer phone on sale ;) until iPhone 6 comes out.
 
ST4 said:
the iPhone 5s is the optimal size of screen for touch, seeing things and for not taking up masses of room. Its lovely and light and just let the OS take care of things for you.

There is no finer phone on sale ;) until iPhone 6 comes out.
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finer as in smaller? :p I really want to pull some marketing videos from Samsung right now. There we go:
 
Sorry, but after using various incantations of Android including the latest HTC One M8, the iPhone screen is too small for me and I love the freedom Android gives you with apps and installs.
Give me a swipe keypad and a larger screen and I'd probably change to the new iPhone 6 however!
 
ST4 said:
Great things happen in small packages. The screens massive on an iPhone 5s. Its an amazing phone made even more amazing by iOS7. Try one. You'll love it :D
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As it stands I can have a greater phone and still have £350 to burn in diesel vs basic iphone :p
 
Like shooting fish in a barrel, eh?

FWIW the original nexus would drain the battery when on charge if using GPS when they were new if the charger was only a 1000ma variety, as I remember commenting with a friend who had one. And the issue with the HTC Desire was only having 512Mb system memory, of which >300Mb was reserved for the OS.

My next phone will probably be a winphone, if Nokia can produce a small enough mid-range handset. For me, 4.3" is optimal in a phone screen and my Motorola RAZRi is just about perfect.
 
ST4 said:
Great things happen in small packages. The screens massive on an iPhone 5s. Its an amazing phone made even more amazing by iOS7. Try one. You'll love it :D
Click to expand...

If the screen was massive, why are Apple supposedly in development of a 5-6" Handset? Didn't they mock large screens and tell us that we didn't need anything so ridiculous. As it stands, I've had the 4, 4S and 5, and the 5 was such a monumentally small change it was ridiculous, these were all work phones as I have kept to the Nexus line for my personal phone.

Anyway, this has gone complete off-topic as OP has stated they prefer the way of the droid.

Op, have you considered a Nexus 5? There are some stores selling them cheaper than Google and I would rate them exceptionally highly, especially running Android L as the battery-life is now insane! If Nexus 5 is off-the-table, then Moto G would be the next option :D
 
Neilc28 said:
If the screen was massive, why are Apple supposedly in development of a 5-6" Handset? Didn't they mock large screens and tell us that we didn't need anything so ridiculous. As it stands, I've had the 4, 4S and 5, and the 5 was such a monumentally small change it was ridiculous, these were all work phones as I have kept to the Nexus line for my personal phone.

Anyway, this has gone complete off-topic as OP has stated they prefer the way of the droid.

Op, have you considered a Nexus 5? There are some stores selling them cheaper than Google and I would rate them exceptionally highly, especially running Android L as the battery-life is now insane! If Nexus 5 is off-the-table, then Moto G would be the next option :D
Click to expand...

I have indeed considered N5 earlier but decided to wait for the 6 as there was no urgency. With around 2 months left in the cycle it wouldn't be the most logical decision to buy N5 now?
 
Depends on what the 6 brings to the table, I don't want anything larger, I can't see that there's going to be anything substantially faster and the screen is fantastic as it is. I don't want a fingerprint scanner, or any of the Galaxy S4/S5 features so I really can't think what they would do.

The notifications and always-listening features of the Moto X would be tempting though!
 
daugirdas said:
I have clearly stated not to touch iOS in the opening post - now the devil is out and you can laugh :)

I consider smartphones mini computers with call functionality, not brick phones that could also perform a few features like alarm clock. I hate iOS more than I hate windows. Period. Android, Linux and OS X all the way.
Click to expand...

I'd love to know where you feel iOS is holding you back. As for hating Windows, if you think for one second the Internet would be as ubiquitous as it is WITHOUT Windows then you are very much misguided.

Enjoy getting angry for no justifiable reason and I'll just carry on using my phone.
 
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