Just curious. Is it trying to find a plan / carrier that doesn't **** you over? Or if you usually stick with your carrier, is it trying to find a phone w/ the features/specs/etc. you want on your carrier and not being able to find good info or effectively compare, etc? Is it trying to find information about a phone you're already interested in but not being able to do it (see my own example below :argh:)? Do you usually buy online or buy in a carrier store or retail store?

For me -- I've been looking for a smartphone lately and I haven't had the opportunity to go to carrier stores to actually try them out so I try to find videos of them online and read people's opinions BUT EVERY ****ING THREAD I GO TO IS AN ENDLESS WALL OF FANBOY ARGUING AND HATE between apple fanboys evo fanboys droid fanboys android fanboys blhwalrhiojweijfoiewahgwa so there's basically no constructive anecdotal information available ever.

Post what pisses you off about the cell phone buying process and how you wish it could be better and / or stories about past buying experiences.

Like if there was a site w/ a huge repository of first-person POV use of smartphones and constructive non retarded anecdotal testimony that would be awesome for me but alas

Oh and just for the record I'm considering the Droid X, iPhone 4, or Samsung Galaxy S variant (I'm on ATT right now but not on a contract so I could go to any carrier). I entreat you guys not to turn this into a flamewar about iPhone or Android or whatever.

I didnt get one of those fanacy phones when I bought my most recent one, but choosing a carrier is not based totaly on what phone you want in Australia, as the fancy smart phones rarely if ever have a contract with only one carrier (wouldnt suprise me if doing so has been deemed anti competitive by the ACCC), so for me, it was just finding a phone on a cheap plan (as I hardly ever use it, so and expensive plan would be a waste of money for me) with optus (which is the company I already had a phone plan with, just changed it from a prepaid mobile plan to a contract based plan when I got my new phone).

Step 1: Run far away from AT&T.
Step 2: Find out which has better coverage in your area: Verizon or Sprint. If both are good, get Sprint, they are /cheaper/.
Step 3: If Sprint, get the EVO, or if you have to, the Samsung Galaxy S (but why when you can get an EVO?). If Verizon, get the Droid X.

Matty I'm not looking for help buying a phone I just want to know other people's experiences (i.e. discussion not advice)

I pretty much know what i'm doing to do and how I'm going to make my decision

Thanks for the insight tho

Well in that case, no, I had no issues. I usually look for actual reviews from places like Engadget.

You do know 'droid' and 'android' are the same thing right?

Anyways... I guess my answer to the topic question is mail in rebates. They p**s me off. However, the thing that annoys me the most doesn't have to deal with when you are actually getting a new phone. It's more that you have to wait so freakin long (anywhere from 1 to 2 years) before you can upgrade with any specials. Mainly because I am a cheapskate and won't pay full price for a phone upgrade.

For me, it's having to pay money for the stupid thing in the first place, and avoiding paying extra for stuff I don't need or want: internet connectivity, music playing ability, video playing, games, applications, gadgets gizmos and doodads other than the basic phone calls and text messages. A camera is useful on occasion.

The old phone dying.

O2 PAYG, bam.

You do know that 'droid' and 'android' are NOT the same thing, right?

One is a phone (the Motorola Droid), the other is an operating system (Android from Google).

"new every 2" upgrades. I don't want to wait another freakin year to get an android phone

Sprint does every year. :smug:

Yeah what matty said

Droid is the phone (now a brand for a series of phones) and Android is Google's OS

My appologies... It must have been a bit confused since the first three were phones and I wasn't paying attention. 'I stand corrected'

Check to see if your employer has a corporate discount. This is usually somewhere between 10 and 25 percent on monthly rates (everything but the cost of hardware), and they only check proof of employment once and never again. Aside from the huge discount, customer service is WAY BETTER. I have a single point of contact for the Sprint discount I got through UTC, I know his name and direct line.

I really hate when you goto a store to see the phone you want to buy, and all the demo phones are fake hollow plastic pieces of junk. What is the ****ing point in manufacturing plastic lookalikes? For size reference??

That is important though. My biggest gripe with the droid, and I assume X is that it is hard to get out if my pocket...

Well, stop wearing skinny jeans, you fruit

I have always had a dislike for phones, to be honest, and having spent a couple of years in Customer Support, don't much enjoy using any kind of phones whatsoever (other than for listening to music).

the Moto Droid does run the Android Operating system though, so dont feel so bad. personally, i think jsut calling it the Droid was a bad move. it confuses people when i tell people i have an android phone. they think i have the droid when i dont.

oh and AOEJedi: then you're in a franchise store/mall kiosk/radio shack. go to an actual corporate store, and you'll be able to play with all the phones you want!

Hands down, the process of upgrading phones is the worst part of any process. To start, if I want to upgrade my phone I first have to wait two years of paying a fairly high bill (at least to get the full discounted price of the phone). Then you have to go find a good phone, which can be difficult from time to time, but Android has saved me.


Then there's the "upgrade fee." I really don't get why the carriers have this awful fee. As if paying the activation fee at the start of the account, then paying monthly fees for 2 years wasn't enough of my money, but now (several years into an account, and MANY renewals) you also expect me to pay you guys for allowing me to upgrade my phone?

To put an example, if someone is having financial troubles and their current phone dies. THey can get an upgrade, but have to get a free phone, because they can't afford any others. Then they're slapped with an upgrade fee they also can't afford. It's enough to make someone want to cancel their account, for sure. You're basically saying "here, let me pay you to allow me to sign a contract and continue paying you for 2 years..

I get it, the phones are discounted. But aren't the cancellation fees meant to cover that if you cancel before the contract is up? And if the contract IS up, shouldn't you have paid enough to make up the cost?

Sorry, that just really pises me off.

The actual corporate stores around me even have fake plastic phones. Sure, not all of them, but some for sure.

I wish! Telstra has exclusivity on the HTC Desire, but then it's not a permanent thing. But I Desired it badly, so now I'm with Telstra

<-- Same number, with Verizon, for the past 10 years.

Though, it's been like 20 phones I've gone through.

I got a new number, mostly because there was some people I didn't want bugging me any more.

Let's see if it works...

Who is your carrier? I have Sprint, and I'm pretty sure there's no upgrade fee. Maybe CM knows more but it should go like this: every year, you are eligible for a discounted upgrade. This is where you buy a new phone and get massive rebates on it. For example, I can buy an HTC Evo and pay $200 for it instead of say, $550 or whatever it is. In exchange for this deal I renew my contract for another two years. I can also upgrade at any time but I have to pay full price for the phone. It seems pretty fair to me.

Buying it and finding out it ****ing sucks..


*cough*Envy Touch*cough*



I'm gonna start researching **** before i buy it

Going and buying the cheaper option of the expensive phones only to find out thats its near End of Life...

Reading up on phones, gathering as much information as you can, only to find out that most of the reviews have some sort of oversight or simply weren't reviewed in situations useful to consumers.

I bought a Rogue (overpriced, and then 2 months later the Reality comes out :suicide:) because I wanted something better than a generic flip phone, but not so much as a Droid and its variations (**** you 3G $30 Verizon gaaaah). I upgraded to the phone after reading everything online about it I could (include Elite Warrior *****ing about how the Envy Touch sucks, which I was thinking about getting). I got the phone, I like it, and after a few months I prefer it to my old generic Motorola (which still beats the **** out of basically every other flip phone I've seen). Except for the fact that the battery indicator is ****ed up (in that, the first half of the battery takes a day to drain, and the last half takes about an hour and a half) and the reception ability of the phone is ****ing terrible. That alone made me almost switch back to my original phone, and had it not been for the fact that the Rogue was such a huge cost, I probably would have.

Ok, so I got the new iPhone.

What pisses me off is all the media OMG IT DOESN'T WORK APPLE FAIL.

When (a) the signal problem isn't that big a deal and (b) they've shifted squillions of units already and (c) people are like OMG GLASS BREAKS and I'm like YES... AND?

Anywaaaay.

*whistles*

SOMEbody's shrill!

*haggles/huggles*

how is the CONTENT CREATION on it btw

Dunno, it's a phone

Pretty much behaves like the last one, but with a decent camera, better battery life, a bloody nice screen and a slightly thinner chassis.

Like I said the most annoying process in deciding between my choices so far has been to wade through all the fanboy crapfest especially since the antenna issue popped up -__-

Gonna get an HTC hero sometime soon.

How did you come to decide on an HTC Hero? Just curious.

You on o2, cause a few things have been coming backwards and forwards between me and a few Mac blogging site, it seems this thing with the signal only really seems to be affecting people in the USA and on AT&T and most people are having no problems at all, of course there are the few who think they have got it, but out of 5 of us today, on totally different networks, could get this signal thing to happen. Now apparently its something to do with the 3G/GSM band that AT&T are using to get a signal to the phone? Would make sense I spose, but would it also be the amount of new phone compatible devices a cell tower has to try and feed and it just cant cope, I have no Idea about mobile phone tech so wouldn't mind anyone chipping in.

Also love new iPhone 4, the picture is just stunning, watch a movie on it, and its just WOW. Pretty much the same iPhone but just lots of really really nice tweaks.

I switched to Vodafone - slightly better deal, slightly more data, 32GB phone in stock, and better 3G coverage at my office.

I've read it's getting tweaked with a 4.01 update on Monday. My only gripe is giving up visual voicemail (which I didn't know was going to happen).

Telus has it for 0 with a 3 year term, and it was recommended by some random internet guy so there.

As a reply to the original question, I think it boils down to price, features and battery longevity. I had my eyes on HTC Desire until I realized it costs like 500 € (~617 USD) here and apparently you have to load it daily or something if you use it actively.

With my current crappy phone I use the net daily but I've disabled pictures and it's really rudimentary anyhow so I'm able to keep my phone bill low (around ~7 € per month) whereas if I wanted to use it with a phone like that I'd have to get unlimited data transfer and pay like 20 € a month! Sacre bleu!

Then again money isn't really a problem for me (at the moment, hooray for employment!) so those would be somewhat small losses...

So actually I guess it's mostly about the battery lifetime. Oh, and I never trust myself with handling things like that so if I actually break the damn 500 e phone I'd probably have to pay the whole thing again.

Oh to have a Nokia 3310 again.

A. Yes it is, if you ever use your left hand.
B. It's an iPhone, it could be a black brick and it'd still sell millions.
C. Because the way Steve Jobs talked you'd think it'd stop a bullet and keep working. When in reality, it's not any stronger than the glass used on other devices.

Anymore, the iPhone doesn't even sell on specs. It sells on its app market and usability. The app market is losing ground quickly to Android (as more and more developers get pushed out by Apple's ridiculous rules), and Android makes leaps and bounds in usability every version. I expect by the time we see 2.3/2.4 or whatever comes after Froyo, we'll start seeing an Android OS that is just as easy to use as the iPhone itself, runs better, isn't locked down like crazy, has tons of choice, and doesn't cost a premium on a horrible network here in the USA.