Carl, Obviously you're a UK resident talking about VAT rising to 20%... so if you want to tinker and that is more important than having the absolute latest hardware I'd suggest looking at Vodafone and the Nexus One - Vodafone are still doing Android phones free on some monthly contracts and I'm much more impressed with the network performance than I ever was with O2.
If you want a phone that is not locked to a network, does not have tethering/portable hotspot disabled, and gets the latest Android updates first, the Nexus One is all of these things without having to root the phone. Vodafone have not 'skinned' the phone or locked it down, you get vanilla Android. As far as developer support goes, from a software standpoint your main port of call will be developer.android.com plus the large swathe of community web sites that have appeared. I guess I'm lucky in that the only phone I ever had to contact the manufacturer about was my iPhone which got replaced three times! If you just want a handset you can order a Nexus One through the android market site http://market.android.com/publish. You'll need to pay $25 (£16) to join but you can then get a phone for $529 (£337) plus VAT (£59, which you pay later) and a shipping fee. I'm not sure what Vodafone are charging for it on PAYG and of course there is always eBay. I can also recommend the Desire - although I don't have one I know a few people who do, and as smartphones go they certainly seem to do the business. Cheers, Phil. On Sep 30, 1:38 pm, Carl Jokl <[email protected]> wrote: > I am looking at buying an Android phone. If I am patient I will wait > and get one for Christmas otherwise I may crack and get one sooner. > > I wonder if there are any recommendations. > > It is a pain that the main manufacturers are fond of calling the same > phone a different name depending where in the world you are. This can > make it confusing as to which phones are being referred to and whether > a given model of phone is even available. > > I was looking a bit at the Motorola Milestone 2. (I think this one is > the Droid 2 or Droid X elsewhere but may be wrong). > > The specs looked pretty decent but then I read an online article > slating it for running very hot and having poor battery life. > > I think I have vauge recollections of one of the podcasts or > discussions mentioned that there may be dual core phones available by > the end of the year. I don't know if I recall wrong or this is not > true. It might be worth holding out for. > > I have a target window to buy a phone sometime between now and the 4th > of January when VAT (sales tax) is increased to 20%. > > I have been fairly happy with my (non-android) HTC phone but find HTC > is very poor on customer services and developer resources compared to > a company like Motorola. I am tempted to make my next phone something > other than a HTC phone in response to HTC never ever responding to any > customer service question I have ever sent them. > > I don't really "Need" a new phone but I have no Android device to > tinker with as yet. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
