i5700 update

Being a bit skint, and having my contract up for renewal, I had the option of a G2 at £25/24months, or this, at £20/18months - I went for the Samsung; I'm too fecking pissed off with my 6650d to wait for the Bravo [AKA unbranded Nexus One] and can't justify the £600 for a near obselete phone. £360 is Ok though. And besides, when it comes to the next renewal, I reckon that all Android phones [and smartphones in general] will be rolling with 1ghz CPUs so I thought I'd introduce myself to the Smartphone world again, my last experience being XDAs. Which I hated with a passion I normally reserve for child rapists.

Overall impressions after a day of fiddling are quite good actually - I can see where Mr Oliver is coming from with regards to the *slight* tardiness - it's not as quick as the videos of the Nexus One for example, but from my fiddlings with Heros and Magics, it's not really much worse - it's perfectly servicable in that respect. The camera *is* slow as hell, but I have an SLR if I want to take pictures - I've never been one for cameraphones.

The capacitive screen is a real boon - once you get used to using it. I kept on trying to use a fingernail/edge of a rizla packet/etc to get more precision, then realising that doesn't work. it's really a case of getting used to working out where the corners/pads of your fingers and thumbs fall more than anything else, then it all starts to come together.

The biggest problem I've had so far was getting contacts to sync, which was more my fault for not being up on how Google arranges contacts more than anything else, although I was a bit miffed to know that I can't get my SMS messages to transfer over. Don't bother linking migration tools like sms2cvs and Sprite, they don't work for SMS from 6650 --> i5700. No major loss though.

Twidroid, facebook, gmail integration et al is very nice and works well, notifications are sane and rationally done, and there seems to be little in the way of interface bloat [regardless of what you think of the tehcnical backend] - it's just all very slick. Not iPhone smooth, but then it can run more than one third party app at a time, eh?

Next step is to get Android 2.1 and the lightweight pack on there - I've only had it ten hours and already I'm wanting to kick it up a notch.

So, my own little quick and dirty Android/i5700 verdict? It's quick enough, slick enough, and works nicely - I'm struggling to think of a better, 'semi-budget' contract android phone.

Mr Raith suggest playing with one in a T-mobile store - I can see where Mr Oliver is coming from with his comments about speed and whatnot, and while he isn't wrong [there are faster, better responding android phones out there] I think perhaps as a hardware reviewer, he may be looking at it from a different light than someone who is pissed off with their clunky bar/flip phone, is at the end of their contract and wants to try a touchscreen for not *too* much money - it's definitely worth a serious look, and better than the other cheapo Android handsets. Especially at £20/month for 300 mins, unlimited texts and free interwebs - the wifi mitigates any fair usage policies anyway.

Hope that helps :-)

Steven R

[PS: I have nothing to do with T-Mob/Samsung et al. I'm just me, dribbling drunken ramblings...]