Smart phone / OS / plans

[roymond]

The stars are about to align to suggest a whole new solution set. I need a good smart phone with a great music player. Who can sell me on Android, and what service is great everywhere in north America?

Strong opinions only.

[Manhattan Glutton]

what service is great everywhere in north America?

Verizon (CDMA network) is generally considered to have the best coverage. In some areas, AT&T (GSM network) may be a strong candidate as well. Personally, I prefer GSM providers so that my phone works outside the country. Can't say much about the others providers - I don't really know anyone who uses them.

[Caravan Ray]

Mobile telephones will never catch on.

Do you seriously believe people will want to carry telephones all the time?!?!?

That is crazy talk

[Generic]

Mobile telephones will never catch on.

Do you seriously believe people will want to carry telephones all the time?!?!?

That is crazy talk

I heard they give you cancer.

[roymond]

what service is great everywhere in north America?

Verizon (CDMA network) is generally considered to have the best coverage. In some areas, AT&T (GSM network) may be a strong candidate as well. Personally, I prefer GSM providers so that my phone works outside the country. Can't say much about the others providers - I don't really know anyone who uses them.

Yeah, I am familiar with the technology aspect, but that's like comparing CPU speed. The real interest is: does it work? I am sick of AT&T. I have an iPhone 3GS and while the line is due for another upgrade, I'm very curious about Android.

So if you:
- have a good smart phone
- get good service
- use your smart phone for lots of surfing and apps
- love the music player

then let me know. Because the iPhone is good, I use it for lots of things and now with Spotify the music player aspect is even better. But the service sucks. I could simply go to Verizon, but thought I'd see what else people rave about.

[Billy's Little Trip]

I was with Sprint. Had them for years. I moved, and could not get a signal in my house. I need to use it in my house/office because my biz phone forwards to it. I went to go with Verizon, but ended up with AT&T because their fam plan is better. I got the Galaxy-S droid. So far so good. But I never go more that 20 miles from my house, lol. I do love the features with this phone. It's FAST and easy to use.

[anti-m]

I cannot claim that T-mobile's service is great, but I am wildly pro-android.

Hold out for the next Goog phone -- the rumored "Nexus Unicorn" that is supposed to be coming out in the next little bit here.

(I think it's actually going to be called "The Nexus Prime," but hey.)

[Lunkhead]

I'm not an expert, but it seems to me like the Google Nexus phones offer the best Android user experience, followed by the "with Google" branded phones. Anything else and you really don't know what you're getting. I would be particularly wary of getting an Android phone from Verizon that is not labelled "with Google". Erin got the LG Revolution recently, and while the hardware specs sounded really great, Verizon hamstrung it with all sorts of horrible BS. (Bing is the default search for example.) Nexus phones are going to get the OS updates first, too. If you don't want a Nexus phone then a "with Google" phone that doesn't have any manufacturer UI layer (e.g. HTC Sense, Samsung TouchWiz, Motorola Motoblur) such as the G2/G2X will provide a fairly plain vanilla unadulterated Android experience.

[Manhattan Glutton]

With regards to droid vs iOS, it seems the difference is whether you want a fully capable PC that allows tinkering or not. If you're happy with the 3GS, but not happy with AT&T, I would lean toward going for the iPhone 5 due out in September.

[Lunkhead]

Personally I have an Android "with Google" phone (a T-Mobile G2) and an iPod touch, which I think is a pretty good setup. You've got an iPad so you you'll still have a good iOS device for GarageBand etc.

The default music player on Android isn't that great, but there are third party players. Amazon's MP3 Store app now includes a pretty decent music player that can play both locally stored music as well as music on your Amazon Cloud Drive.

[roymond]

With regards to droid vs iOS, it seems the difference is whether you want a fully capable PC that allows tinkering or not. If you're happy with the 3GS, but not happy with AT&T, I would lean toward going for the iPhone 5 due out in September.

A "fully capable PC" is a subjective thing. I wouldn't call an Android phone one of those. And I suppose you mean wait for the iPhone 5 and switch to Verizon? That is certainly the plan if I don't also switch to Android.

The default music player on Android isn't that great, but there are third party players. Amazon's MP3 Store app now includes a pretty decent music player that can play both locally stored music as well as music on your Amazon Cloud Drive.

With fewer unlimited data plans, I don't think I'll be relying on the cloud drives much. I love Spotify and their wireless sync to phones. Though the UI still sucks, I can easily load up any of my own song files for the road, while streaming on a PC at my desk or at home. Really enjoying it, actually. I don't understand why music isn't a top priority for device makers other than Apple, but then again Blackberry was the only tolerable UI for a long time even to simply enter contacts.

Sprint still offers unlimited data...just not cheap. That's the only thing about AT&T, currently my plan has unlimited data...until I upgrade my phone.

The timing sucks, though, because I have to get phones for my kids by September. So it's not going to be AT&T, the iPhone 5 won't be out yet, and Sprint's coverage is in question (from previous experience and others'). I try not to hold grudges too long in the wireless world, so I would reconsider T-Mobile (now owned by AT&T, so what's the point?) and Verizon, both of which gave me insanely frustrating support in the past (Verizon outright lied to me and sold a data plan for Mexico when THEY DIDN"T OFFER DATA IN MEXICO at the time! So I was working in Mexico for two weeks without email on my Blackberry, at which time I switched to T-Mobile...there should be laws. I don't know which ones, but just more laws. Any laws.).

...humph...

[anti-m]

W/R/T picking a non-dud Android, a good rule of thumb -- if the hackers support it, it's probably OK hardware wise:

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices

(Cyanogen mod is also an option if you end up with a company that has crippled the phone's OS with BS)

EDIT: Lunkhead is completely correct that the Google phones tend to be the first to get updates, least likely to have firmware baloney.

Cartoonmonkey and I use this dandy little program for our music needs -- It's a way to stream your desktop music collection to our mobile devices:

http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

I also use Winamp and, of course, Pandora.

[Manhattan Glutton]

both of which gave me insanely frustrating support in the past

That *is* the one thing about AT&T - they inherited Cingular's spectacular support, which has treated me very well although I feel like AT&T has slowly been eroding it. When they messed up, they pretty much retroactively gave me free data in Australia.

[Billy's Little Trip]

As a new AT&T customer, they've been more than helpful thus far. Their family plan was the best for the price. Everyone's plans "look" like they compare apples for apples, but it's the details that change everything. I basically got more for less compared to Verizon after all was said and done.

[HeuristicsInc]

i have the original droid with android. i love it! but the phone is getting flakier. it's old now. but i intend to stay with android now that i have switched. also, verizon. we're in the process of moving so i have to see what coverage is like at the new house.

[fluffy]

I love android because the application and data model are designed such that everything can work with everything else. Apps aren't these stupid monolithic chunks of code that live in their own world, they send and receive messages from each other and apps don't have to be programmed specifically to support each other to support each other. It's telling that all the best parts of the Android UI have been copiously imitated by iOS 5 (of course all the best parts of the iOS UI have been copiously emulated by Android as well so it's only fair), and while versions 2.2 and earlier were a bit rough, 2.3 and later are very slick, enjoyable, and have a wonderful consistency to them that I've never seen in any other platform, period, thanks to some very well-designed common widgets and so on.

Android is also much more open than iOS; anyone can write an app for it without spending any money and using whatever one of the major OSes they like (and if you're willing to hack a bit yourself, you can even use unsupported OSes without too much effort), and if you don't want to use the Android Market, you can use any one of the other app stores out there as well (Amazon, GetJAR, or even just provide a bare .apk on your site with a paypal link if you're so inclined), although the Android Market is definitely the best distribution option, occasional Google screwiness aside.

For the nerds in the crowd, it's perfectly okay to install command shells and scripting languages and so on; Android even has a supported infrastructure for doing that, and they even provide full bindings so that you can write fully-functional Android apps in JavaScript or Perl or whatever. There's also AppInventor which is designed to make it easy for non-programmers to build apps by piecing components together. There's also an active project for porting Processing to it.

It's also an OS that doesn't mandate that you use it in the way that the designers wanted you to. There are dozens of very good alternate launcher interfaces (I use Zeam Launcher, myself), and everything is replaceable if you want, including the dialer and address book and everything else. There are plenty of alternate keyboards for it, including various experimental layouts and even one for limited-mobility access.

The one bad thing about it is that the default music player really sucks. The beta version of the Google Music Player is much better, although it still doesn't have a "pick a random album and play it all the way through" option, which is why I still use an iPod for my music listening. (Although it's not as if the iPhone or iPod Touch have that option either, but you can pave over it with smart playlists. But on Android you can do the exact same trick with Salling MediaSync, so really both of those phones are in the same boat.) Oh, and on the plus side, there's nothing special about the system music player; Pandora, Spotify, Last.FM, and all the others have all the same access to the playback/media controls and background playback of network data and so on as the system player.

As far as network goes, I'm still putting up with T-Mobile because their rate plan for my level of usage is WAY cheaper than the others. Also their San Francisco coverage is quite good, although they can be pretty spotty in other cities. Frankly I used to be very impassioned about how much better T-Mobile was as a company than the others (especially AT&T, which I have direct experience of the suckiness of), but lately they've gotten to be pretty bad too. I'm likely to just switch to Sprint or Verizon at some point, even though I love the flexibility of a GSM provider.

Your device selection depends greatly on the network and what you want in your device. If I were to upgrade on T-Mobile I'd probably go with the G2x, but if I switch to Verizon, there's a whole bunch of amazing devices to choose from. Sprint users love the HTC Evo 3D, too, even without the 3D gimmick. New ones are coming out every week so it's not worth trying to plan ahead.

[roymond]

Fluffy, once again your reserved responses are much appreciated. Very insightful.

I visited Verizon and Sprint today. Sprint's unlimited data plans are fucking awesome! I like to use a lot of data without thinking about it, and thanks to my grandfathered AT&T contract it's unlimited. But with Sprint you can also be a hotspot as well for $20. I figure with a 4G device this is pretty happening. They'll also give me almost $200 to switch from AT&T.

Can you really be on a voice call and surf the net/send and receive texts, etc. simultaneously on CDMA networks? I like that about AT&T and hear contradicting claims.

[Manhattan Glutton]

Re: 4g

Roy, I'm sure you're aware of this, but 4G is a buzzword that means a different thing to each provider, and the only thing in common is "faster than 3G, probably".

one random source found on the google

[fluffy]

Can you really be on a voice call and surf the net/send and receive texts, etc. simultaneously on CDMA networks? I like that about AT&T and hear contradicting claims.

I'm surprised that's still not a standard part of CDMA, or data in general really. I'm finding the same conflicting reports, that Verizon is adding that specifically for their iPhone and implying that it requires specific device support. That just boggles the mind, considering data phones have been widely available for over 10 years now. I'm pretty sure that the original T-Mobile Sidekick supported simultaneous talk and data, although I could be misremembering. Honestly it's not a feature I've ever really needed, since I hardly ever use the phone as a phone to begin with, and when I do it's something I'm keeping brief and my full attention on. Since all the data I'm likely to need during a conversation is already on my phone anyway it's never come up, really.

[roymond]

Re: 4g

Roy, I'm sure you're aware of this, but 4G is a buzzword that means a different thing to each provider, and the only thing in common is "faster than 3G, probably".

one random source found on the google

Yes, it's limping along. This report is like many others I've read, not up to the claimed speeds but faster than 3G and growing. It's a grass is greener over there situation. But the lsat 6 months has been terrible and worse on AT&T. Have to read Sprint's fine print on the 3G limits when 4G isn't active, so thanks for the reminder.

[ujnhunter]

Sprint still offers unlimited data...just not cheap. That's the only thing about AT&T, currently my plan has unlimited data...until I upgrade my phone.

I do not believe that is the case... I've spoken to two of my friends who are both district managers for AT&T and they said that my Unlimited Data will still be "grandfathered" in once I upgrade my phone. I too was worried about the new contract/upgrade. I'd talk to the store manager in your area to make sure, but from what I've been told... (here in CT at least) you should be fine.

[HeuristicsInc]

Can you really be on a voice call and surf the net/send and receive texts, etc. simultaneously on CDMA networks? I like that about AT&T and hear contradicting claims.

you can on the verizon droid, but i'm not entirely sure that answer is relevant to your question.
-bill