Keeping your phone clean, HOW?

[Amp David]

Going to get myself a new phone this week, not sure which one yet, but a smartphone definitely.

My biggest concern is keeping it free from scratches and all the dust etc. Now my trusty Nokia 6300 looks like its been sandblasted its that battered.

How do others keep their nice new iPhones and the like clean and new looking

 

[Sintra]

Got an i phone which has a screen protector and i bought a heavy duty rubber cover of ebay which does the job.

 

[Octopus]

Take a look at the latest Nokia smart phones - they have a clever seemingly scratch resistant "cover" - a mate of mine works for Nokia has shown them to me recently. If you do compare these products, one has macro on the camera and the other doesn't!

 

[cagedanimal2010]

leave it in the van!

 

[telectrix]

buy a cover/case for it= only a few quid, and keep in a zipped pocket

 

[gutterball]

We've Got Technology Covered // OtterBox.com bit expensive but worth the money.

 

[pennywise]

Have two phones a going out phone and site phone just switch sims

 

[Amp David]

Anyone have a HTC phone? What are they like?

 

[SirKit Breaker]

I am a bit of a phone dinosaur. My phone is for making phone calls. I have a posh all singing and dancing thing that i rarely use, but my day to day phone is a nokia (cant remember the model) it has a rubber case is about 7 years old, the battery last ages, it has been dropped from well over 100ft onto concrete, and has had more baths in plaster tubs than i can remember, when it gets crapped up i take it out of the shell, blow all the crap out, wash the shell under the tap, shove it all back together again, and it works no problem.
Its only downside, no bluetooth for the hands free kit in the van.
the posh one is HD, internet, telly, music, camera etc etc, but with my eyes all these features are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Cheers..........Howard

Cheers...........Howard

 

[accordfire]

Anyone have a HTC phone? What are they like?

I have a Desire, as well as a Bold 9700. I put them both in full cases - the BB came with one, which does the job nicely, and I bought a full case - like a miniature camera case form PC World for all of about £8 - it has a velcro flap over, so the phone is secure, and a zip pocket, so I can carry my dinner money too (really, I put business card in there) - and it does the job a treat. It's a "Golla" case.

As for the Desire, Android stuff is competent, but not really business oriented yet. The issues I have generally revolve around:

Keyboard on screen (though this will cure with training it)
Email - while it deals with multiple accounts, inc POP, and not just Google, you wait until you get 30 emails in one hit, then try marking them all read - only way to do it is to go through them one after the other. The BB can mark 'em all read in one menu option.
Battery life - you'll have the same with the iPhone - don't leave home without a charger, switch off WiFi, GPS, and Blutetooth when not using, or watch your battery die after an hour's worth of calls.

The MAJOR issue I have (with both Desire and 9700) is that neither of them can sync with 64 bit Outlook natively for now - Blackberry are saying 2011, and who knows with Android. There is a third party app that can do it, but at $129 (£86) - I'm not rushing out to buy a copy, as I feel the phone should do it out the box, as not to be able to sync with Outlook in any flavour in this day and age is unforgivable, IMO.

I don't also see why I should risk my (considerable) data by removing the 64 bit version of Outlook, which in turn means every other office app, just because they can't be bothered to sort out their connectors. End of the day, they knew as well as everyone else that MS were releasing 64 bit versions of operating systems which are on almost all new laptops, pcs, etc., and that the majority of peeps would, in turn, put the 64 bit versions of Office on those machines. Just bloody lazy!

On the plus side, for the first time, I can google properly on site without a laptop, and read the results, it's fast on the net generally, call quality is good, and if you use a Google account for email etc., it will do everything seamlessly - email, docs, calendar, contacts, etc.

There's some great time wasters in the Market - Alchemy has to be one of my all time favourites - and I have a brilliant little app on there that does many electrical calcs on the fly, such as Ohms Law, battery life, LED voltages, resistor bridges, capacitance, and more - free, too. The camera is also far better on the Desire, than the wimpy effort on the BB.

 

[nickblake]

Well one of the best ways to keep your phone clean is to stick it in a condom works a treat , me im a man got a mans phone the JCB tough phone seams ok it makes and recieves calls and texts but in general a good phone been dropped loads of times

 

[mayfair]

At the moment I also have a new phone and trying to keep it good. Phone is put in one of pouches in my tool bag and bluetoothed to my earpiece ................yep i look like a pratt from star trek but my phone is still in one piece. anyone looked at JCB phone?

 

[Guest123]

What about the new Blackberry Torch.....

Any opinions????

 

[accordfire]

What about the new Blackberry Torch.....

Any opinions????

Less battery life than the ones with just buttons, bigger screen to break.

On the plus, it's got BB6 for its operating system, better camera, more space, and Blackberry reliability.

Not sure if it can do 64 bit Outlook (a bug bear I may have mentioned!)......

I looked at it, but still think I'm going the iPhone route......over the BB I have, and keep the Desire for personal.

 

[mogga]

thers a cover in carphonewarehouse uses some teckky stuff that was on dragons den looks like plastercine till you hit it n its like concrete also used for laptop cases ect
theres a new JCB phone and samsung i think Phones4U had these appeared on gadget show "tested to distruction" series

 

[Amp David]

Less battery life than the ones with just buttons, bigger screen to break.

On the plus, it's got BB6 for its operating system, better camera, more space, and Blackberry reliability.

Not sure if it can do 64 bit Outlook (a bug bear I may have mentioned!)......

I looked at it, but still think I'm going the iPhone route......over the BB I have, and keep the Desire for personal.

Is the 64 bit outlook bit a way to link to a normal outlook account? Please forgive my ignorence lol

 

[Guest123]

Less battery life than the ones with just buttons, bigger screen to break.

On the plus, it's got BB6 for its operating system, better camera, more space, and Blackberry reliability.

Not sure if it can do 64 bit Outlook (a bug bear I may have mentioned!)......

I looked at it, but still think I'm going the iPhone route......over the BB I have, and keep the Desire for personal.

I been waiting for my ip4 for months now and keep getting fobbed off. I looked at the torch and quite liked it as it has a proper keyapad to use if you need to, over the ip4.

Just dont know what to go for.....e-mail & web browsing are top priorities really, and being able to phone people obviously.

 

[Amp David]

emails an web, for the forum obviously, is all i'm in need of. Have read that many reviews and all say batteries are the main issue, not just the BB but most smart phones

 

[accordfire]

Is the 64 bit outlook bit a way to link to a normal outlook account? Please forgive my ignorence lol

Essentially, yes.

Most "smartphones" now offer synchronisation with Outlook directly.......assuming you have the 32 bit version. Their "desktop" software will let you connect the phone to the computer, and will map the phone's contacts, diary, tasks and so forth to the corresponding folders you use in Outlook.

Essentially, the idea is you update one or the other, and the change is reflected on the other, after syncing it.

For me that's great - I get my email on phone and laptop anyway, but the time saved in putting contacts into both phone and PC is a killer. So to just do one or other,, is great.

However, lately, a lot of computers with Windows 7 take the 64 bit version of Office off the install disk, as 7 is (mostly) a 64 bit OS.

It seems that neither Android, or Blackberry have got to grips with this fact yet, and still only offer support, or connectivity to the 32 bit versions of Office.

You *can* roll back your Office and go with the 32 bit versions for now, but it's messy, and a a good few hours wasted in uninstalling office, and hoping everything works once you have the 32 bit version back on.

And typically, 32 bit versions of Office will not co-exist with 64 bit versions, so to roll back Outlook, you have to do the whole Office suite.

The only other way to snyc outlook and a phone is through MS Exchange on a server. Expensive.

ISTR there is a way of doing it through a Google account for Android phones, but to me, that's a bit like stripping away layers of security, and trusting Google to ALL my info, instead of just most of it.

 

[accordfire]

I been waiting for my ip4 for months now and keep getting fobbed off. I looked at the torch and quite liked it as it has a proper keyapad to use if you need to, over the ip4.

Just dont know what to go for.....e-mail & web browsing are top priorities really, and being able to phone people obviously.

Found the easiest way to get an IP4 is to go to CarphoneWebwhore. They seem to have 'em in stock centrally most of the time. Black, 32Gb anyway.

As far as use goes, yes, battery life on most, the Bold 9700 I have will do a day of calls, emails, and a bit of browsing easily. The Desire (Android) doing the same, a couple of hours, but it is a capacitive touch screen, large too, and heavy on resources for all the bot on whistles - like bluetooth, GPS, WiFi and so on, so as with the IP4 switch 'em off when not using.

The HTC has natty little widgets like switches, which I have set up on one of the available seven screens you can slide to - so it's simply a case of flicking the virtual switch to turn these things on or off for me. I've found it isn't good to do that in the middle of a call though.......especially not the Bluetooth you're using to conduct the call.........

Web browsing on the Android is every bit as good (possibly better) than the IP4 - and you can pinch, zoom and all the rest of it with no problems, as well as auto turn the screen to landscape or portrait.

One of the key reasons I wanted the IP4 was to replace my iPod too in the car - for some reason, c.5500 tunes just don't fit on the Android, and keep the battery sane.

 

[andekoch]

perhaps not the right thread to post into but what data allowance do you guys have on your contracts and how much data are you using. I am thinking of a 500MB data plan but not sure what that relates to in terms of emails and web browsing. I realise that downloading or streaming will kell the allowance so lets ignor that.
Am going to go iphone route (to replace my older blackberry) later this year, only gripe is the contact categorisation and searching/ filtering on the IP4 does not seem as good as I want it (circa 800 contacts so I dont remember the names or often the company just broadly what they do eg electrician, developer, plasterer etc).

 

[accordfire]

perhaps not the right thread to post into but what data allowance do you guys have on your contracts and how much data are you using. I am thinking of a 500MB data plan but not sure what that relates to in terms of emails and web browsing. I realise that downloading or streaming will kell the allowance so lets ignor that.
Am going to go iphone route (to replace my older blackberry) later this year, only gripe is the contact categorisation and searching/ filtering on the IP4 does not seem as good as I want it (circa 800 contacts so I dont remember the names or often the company just broadly what they do eg electrician, developer, plasterer etc).

If you're going the IP4 route - it uses significantly more data than a BB will. that said, a 500MB contract should allow you plenty if just for email and the odd web page, making use of WiFi at home or hotspots where you can.

I have to say - if you're looking at the IP$, it's worth checking Tesco Mobile out just now too.

THey are offering an all you can eat minutes and texts, plus 1GB of data on a 12 month contract, 32Gb IP4, for £99 down and £45 a month - damn sure that's the way I'm going.

FWIW Tesco runs on the o2 network.

 

[pennywise]

Think I will have a look at that currently paying £50 inc phone insurance for 1200 anytime minutes, unlimited txt, landline calls and 1GB of download per month on a 18month contract with vodafone

 

[andekoch]

that looks very good bill. I will have a look now. I was looking at orange before but O2 should be ok as well. 12 mths is good as well.

 

[accordfire]

Here's the link guys....meant to include it originally:

Product Page

 

[BluSparx]

i currently have the HTC Desire HD with 1000mins/1gb data/3000 texts from Virgin for 35 per month (runs on tmobile network) however the data i'm using approx 450mb a month on it that is plus my wifi at home too, so much easier to just get on the net when out and about now

 

[andekoch]

just spoken to tesco and voicemail is not included in the minutes also you need to, apparantly, keep going into voicemail to resave messages if you want to keep them, they did not say how often but gave me the impression it was every day or 2. sounds like a con to me esp at 10p per min to access voicemail.

also had a look at a few other contracts and compared on a like for like spreadsheet. interestingly a better deal is to buy the phone from apple, at £615 and then take a sim only contract from tesco at £20 per month. carphone warehouse orange 18month contracts are also better value. I will look into business contracts later on and post my findings here, if I do it in the next few days.