Looking to buy an Android phone

[squarebear]

I would like to buy an Android phone for part of a project I am doing. Can anyone recommend a fairly cheap but reliable model please.

Do you have one yourself? Would you recommend it?

[EcclesCake]

I had an HTC but found the antenna to be rather weak and didn't get a particularly good signal as a result.

Swapped to an LG which has a mind of it's own; randomly switches to silent mode and the clock loses time.

I will be watching this thread with interest.....

[squarebear]

To be honest, I am just looking to run an application on it which connects to the internet and am not too bothered about making phone calls, texting, playing mp3s,games.

It's more for developing an app for it.

[mk1975]

then you can get sony ericson experia.im using one, its ok for internet and browsing, but when texting letters are so close to each other that you end up typing completely gibberish sentences!!also if you dont need to take pictures its ok, because the camera is rubbish!! good luck, x

[ChuckFickens]

Do you have any requirement for it to be running (or capable of running) any particular version of Android?... also would it require flash to work on it?

I have one of these, which is pretty full featured for the price (it was wifi and a capacitative screen which is a must IMO but not a sure fire feature on a lower end phone)

http://www.samsung.co...ndroid/GT-I5500YKAXEU

[ChuckFickens]

Or even, it HAS wifi and a capacitative screen.... I don't think the screens changed type since I've had it (although installing the Asian version of android 2.3 on it by mistake stopped the screen from working :))

[daffy654]

I love my HTC Desire S, the only drawback is the very short battery life. I have to keep the WiFi switched off.

[daffy654]

Oops, just realised you said cheap phone.

[squarebear]

Thanks Chuck and Daffy. Yes Flash would be nice but not 100% necessary. I notice on the specs Chuck it says no wifi. Did you have to pay extra for that? Is it expensive to run the internet off it? The last phone I got was the size of a brick and so my knowledge is zero of these things. Can you access the internet without the wi-fi option?

The HTC is a little out of the price range I have for my project.

[squarebear]

Thanks also mk1975. I'll take a look at that one too.

[squarebear]

Android is an operating system for a phone. Similar to how Windows is an operating system for a PC.

[ChuckFickens]

That must be an error on samsungs site, it very definitely does have wifi
http://www.gsmarena.c...msung_i5500b-3371.php

I get 500MB a month free data allowance and then after that it's a maximum of £1 a day for data, I've never gone over the 500MB though (although I don't use it much for internet as such)... Though, obviously things like that are dependent on the SIM that's in the phone, not the phone itself.

Yes you can access the internet without using the wifi, how fast the connection would be is dependent on what signal you have in whatever location you are in, but it does support 3g, so as long as you have a 3g signal you can get uptp 7.2Mb/s

If you want flash then you are limited to phones with a 1Ghz or faster CPU, it won't run on anything less than that.

[Hammer]

I had an HTC magic for 2 years, just got rid of it on ebay and replaced it with an HTC Desire S. Nice phone, never had any trouble, though quite underpowered by today’s standards and it won’t run flash. You should be able to pick one up on ebay for about £30 or £40. If you’re a bit of a techy nerd like me then you can install a custom version of android which may give you more flexibility when developing & testing. I would recommend www.cyanogenmod.com and think about getting one of the supported models on there.

[erin-x]

I love my Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. I got it as a replacment phone and it's excellent.

[ailsa1]

Huawei U8800

[squarebear]

In the end, I got a Samsung Galaxy Y. It is ideal for what I need to test and is certainly a lot more "street cred" than my old brick :-)

Thanks again for all your help.