Android phones

[Micha]

On 23/02/11 12:53, David Suna wrote:
> Hopefully this is not to off topic. My daughter is interested in getting a new
> phone (specifically a touch phone). We have narrowed down the choice to Samsung
> Galaxy S, Samsung Wave S8500, and LG Optimus One.
>
>
> 1. Does anyone have recommendations for or against any of these models (or a
> particular other phone they would recommend)?
>
> 2. The Galaxy phone has a significantly lower SAR rating than the others. The
> information I have found online has been rather unclear whether this is
> something significant that would recommend this phone over the others. Can
> anyone point me to reliable definitive information about this?
>
> 3. If I were to purchase one of these (unlocked) phones online and have it
> brought to Israel how easy is it to add Hebrew support?
>
>
> Thanks for any help.
>


I have the nexus one, a friend has the galaxy S. Also ran into the new google 
phone (I think it's called the samsung nexus S).

My two problems with the galaxy S are
1. I'm missing the search button which I use quite a lot and some sort of track 
ball (mechanical or digital) which I use quite a lot as well (I like it for the 
menus, but it can be hard to reach exact place in the text as well as it doesn't 
have the zoom function like in the iPhone, although I prefer the ball to the 
iphone).
2. It's a tad too big for me. I like the size of the nexus one better (it's a 
3.8" screen I thing instead of 4" which allows for a slightly smaller phone). 
But that is a matter of taste

Other than that it's a nice phone

The little I saw of the nexus S, I like it better, although I've been told that 
it doesn't have video calls despite having a front camera. It also doesn't have 
the trackball feature (like you get with blackberry phones). It does have the 
missing search button though.

As for hebrew, don't know if things changed. I had to root the phone (actually 
it came rooted as I got it off ebay) and install a patch. Easy if you know what 
you are doing, finding the patch is not easy, installing it for the first time 
can be a little scary. It has some hebrew menus but not all of them, although I 
stick with the english menus so can't tell you how far. I also use the 
cyanogenmod which is an aftermarker firmware so I don't know how things are with 
the official version.

The galaxy S I saw was from Orange and fully in hebrew. Don't know how much of 
that is available freely and if you need to root your phone to install that.

One thing that you need to check in terms of where to buy is the issue with 
internet packages. I think that all phone companies in Israel make you buy a 
data plan for around 70+ nis. At least if you buy the phone through them you 
also get a gps package.

One last thing about importing the phone. You need to watch what country it's 
intended for. I believe that all these phones are quad band by now so can be 
used in any country for 2G. For 3G there are several bands and they are not 
compatible. I don't know of any phone that covers all of them and I think that 
even in Israel there is no complete overlap, so the phone may work in 3G with 
some of the operators but not all of them if you are not careful.

Alos, I use the phone without a data plan, which quite limits GPS options. 
Google maps seems to work in Israel at the moment, but requires data connection 
for the maps. iGo is fully on board (no data) but there is no official Isreali 
offering, there is a hack going around to allow it to run on android, but it's 
not easy to find and install. waze is also free and the maps seem to have good 
coverage but requires data for routing (route planning seems to happen online, 
only the maps are on board) and the interface is not wonderful to say the least, 
there is also mapquest which is free and it seems to have Israeli maps, not sure 
if it's not just waze under a different name and english interface.

And finally, if you plan to root the phone, some versions are easier to unlock 
than others. As far as I know the ericsson xperia is easy to root but hard to 
unlock to other operators for example. If you are not planning to root, you may 
want to look at which android version each phone comes with.

Hope that that helps and doesn't complicate things any farther.