Android phones

[thekumquat]

Cos you lot are bound to know more than me... I have a HTC Desire Z which is beginning to be a bit ropey and can't run some stuff I want. And the lack of battery life is a Problem - as in if I charge it all night, surf the net for half an hour on the way to work, then I can't use it on the way home in case I need to make a call

Comments

[babysimon]

Fairly unordered thoughts as on the train: Android, and HTC's customization of it, have changed enough that it won't hugely benefit you to get an HTC. But the shock of a newer android is likely to be much less than the shock of moving to it in the first place. I have an HTC one x which is the same size as the one, and when I first got it I thought it was way too big. A day later I thought it was the right size, and I still do. Samsung have swappable batteries an memory cards, but no one's battery life is much to write home about. I would pick an HTC over Samsung if I valued metal solidity over plasticyness and swappable bits, and vice versa if vice versa.

[valkyriekaren]

I am also interested in the outcome of this as my HTC Desire is getting a bit rubbish (crap battery life, not enough memory)

[lovingboth]

Cheap way...

Battery life: get a new (genuine) battery.

Memory space: get a new ROM. XDA-Developers is the place to look - my original Desire is now running someone's adaptation of the 'Paranoid Android' build of 4.2. Combined with a neat hack that puts much, much more on the microSD card, I have more memory than I know what to do with. It's also improved the battery life (some ROMs deliberately set out to use less power). The only things I can't do anything about are the CPU and screen, but given that the Desire was a high spec device when it came out, it is still 'good enough'.

Expensive way...

Get a new phone, but make very sure that people at XDA-Developers can root it and enough people there have it for someone to port new ROMs to it.

[lovingboth]

Medium way...

Get a good 7" tablet for the programs / reading stuff for which it will be better than any phone, and tether it to the Desire when it needs internet. Second-hand Nexus 7s are much cheaper now the new model is out, or there's the Nook HD or Tesco's thing.

[kingginger]

May or may not be too late, but the new Google phone (Nexus 5) is due in about 2 weeks.

Although it all depends if you are buying the phone outright vs getting it on a contract.