which smartphone?
 

Time to get with the times I guess... I've always wanted a phone to just be a phone - I've had a tablet for years (Nokia 770, 800, B&N Color Nook w/ Android on it, etc).

But it is time...

HTC Aria w/ Android 2.2 vs iPhone 3gs

Thoughts? Either of 'em would be $50 when I renew my AT&T contract ...

I know your pain. All I wanted was a phone that was a phone. Then my dad upgraded his iPhone to a newer model and he gave me his old iPhone. I started playing with it as just a mini computer with wi-fi only and no phone plan. I took a hit of the iPhone magic dust and became an addict. I was on just a month to month plan so I plugged it into my computer and activated it on my own.

Now I have a iPhone4 and I go days at a time without making a phone call just like before, but I use my iPhone many times a day and a computer and gadget. I find a new use for it all the time. It is a very handy tool & toy. And I don't have a single game on it. I can track the international space station and know when it will be visible when it goes over my area, I can watch color weather radar and be alerted when a storm is in my area. I can check the results of the F1 race or ALMS races, find a business and see a picture of the building before I head out, and the list goes on. Just the other day we had a hail storm at our house. I shot this with my iPhone and with just a few button pushes I uploaded this.

YouTube - ‪Hail storm‬‏

I've had an Aria for about nine months. I originally went to it because I wanted a phone that would fit in my pocket, which it does nicely.

The phone functions fairly well, with a couple of drawbacks.

1. It is under powered. If you try to use Google navigation while driving, it just thrashes. It will tell you to turn five to ten seconds after you are through the intersection.
2. The camera sucks
3. There is no flash for the camera (see above, The camera sucks)
4. For email with the stock firmware, it works fine for my Google apps accounts but it has one very annoying trait for my work Exchange account. When an email comes in, it gives you a notification every minute until you read the email . In the firmware that comes on the phone, there is no way of changing that setting.
5. Also for Exchange with the stock firmware, if I am at home attached to WiFi then leave the house without manually shutting down the WiFi, ActiveSync will not work. It just gets connection errors until you disable WiFi. Very annoying.

To try to address some of the issues above I tried HTC Aria | CyanogenMod on the phone. It addressed some of the basic issues. But, I think I will start looking for something else. Even though I am not a big Apple fan, I have been considering an iPhone4.

BTW, I am on a Premier plan with AT&T from my IBM days. I can get an iPhone 3GS for $19. But, I'm thinking an iPhone 4 (or possibly 5) may be the way to go.

I've had CM7 on my Nook Color for a while ... like it.

Decided to with the iphone 3gs.

1) No Aria in the store to fondle
2) Already have the 'droid side covered for everything but phone calls via the NC
3) Apple has a thing about "just working".

So far, its pretty OK for me, and I've only found one little annoyance - the contact list sorts alphabetically by last name but numbers come after so I can't use "0 wife" and "0 home" as my first two contacts. Dunno if this is 'cause Apple "broke" it or all the other contact lists in my past phones have used the same "broken" model of numeric then alpha sorting based on the first name field.

Only time I've been a mac fanboy was back in the mid/late '80s but I'm not afraid of 'em, use 'em on occasion at work, and recommend them to the technically incompetent who ask me about a computer recommendation as I clean viruses and such off their machine for the Nth time. Of course, the one mac I have here at the house runs Debian (old G3 350 - works good!) and the last two times I used one at work I booted with an Ubuntu disk first.

Got an iPhone 4 last week - so far, I am impressed. The OS is very intuitive, and the overall design is pretty slick. Lots of apps - but the trick is to determine which ones are worth getting. (Out of the 400,000 apps, I'd say 300,000 are garbage.)

-Z-man.

I just splurged and paid $99 for a refurb 4G with 16gig of memory - and sold my 3 year old iphone 2G for $70 on craigslist, (which I had paid $49 for as a refurb!).
Also - the refurbs off the ATT site look brand new and come with full warranty.

Loved my Aria. Only problem was the size, when you need to type an email. It is simply too small.

A friend had suggested a Samsung Captiva before I bought. My wife has that phone and she loves it. I now have an HTC Inspire. Clearly the best "phone" I have owned.

Radio Shack has a deal Android HTC EVO 4G, $29.99 with 2 year contract.
I just ordered a pair on line as none are left in the stores.
HTC EVO 4G

Just pick something in a color you like.

Whatever we recommend today will be obsolete before tomorrow.

True, but it is hard to beat $30 for a phone that I know is currently a very good phone and generally, even with the upgrade deals, still sell for $100+...