iPhone 4 vs Galaxy SIII Mini vs Bear Pro vs HTC One Mini

I'd stay away from the "Bear", that looks like an HTC Ripoff and a lawsuit waiting to happen. My money would be on the Galaxy S3 Mini or HTC One Mini depending on your personal preferences.

 

Bear Pro?
Was the Couger XL not available? ..... I kid I kid

 

Stay away from Touchwiz, and don't buy a device with AOSP that isn't supported by Google.

Both the HTC One Mini and Sony Xperia L would be nice choices. I haven't used either, but I have used Touchwiz. And you don't want to use AOSP when it's probably built by someone who may or may not ship a good working build. Because it can have the greatest specs ever, but if the drivers are completely horrible, the phone is useless.

 

Can't go wrong with any of those options as they were all last year's flagship devices. I'm not overly familiar with the xperia T but I do own a One X and have played with the S3. The One X has average to good battery life out the box but if you root and install a custom kernel it goes from average to exceptional, plus there's a very strong development community so you can always have the latest and greatest software version if you so choose. The display is better than the S3, camera quality is about the same but there's no removable battery and it lacks sd card support. 16 gigs with about 12 usable is the most you'll have available to you.

 

Out of those three I'd probably go with the S3. Samsung has a better history of backing their phones and the S3 is still pretty solid.

 

You would lose the ability to have any warranty work done, they wouldn't provide updates, etc. I'd stay away from them and pick the One mini over the SIII mini as it is a year old already.

 

I'm not a big fan of TouchWiz either but the millions of people buying the Galaxy line of phones seem to have a different opinion from us.

I used the Google Edition ROM on my i9505 and it worked flawlessly other than the home button lag which is due to the recents needing a double press of the home button.

 

If you want something unlocked you could also look at something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Unlocked-Quad...8&qid=1373376959&sr=8-1&keywords=blu+life+one

1.2Ghz Quad Core
Removable battery and MicroSD if you're one with a hard on for those features.
4.7inch 720p IPS Display
1gb of RAM
Near stock android

$229 unlocked.

 

The Sony Xperia T is definitely a decent phone. However, first see if the poor viewing angles with the display is going to bother you (same issue as with the Xperia Z).

 

It's not really a knockoff phone. BLU is an American company based in Miami. If the T strikes your fancy though. More power to you.

 

Blu may be an American company but they design nothing. Like Micromax (a massive growth story in India) they go to the same factory in China, have the manufacturer slap on their badge, wallpaper etc and that is that.

 

As Peterg2 suggested, I'd worry more about the display quality.

Don't recall you saying where you live but is the Nexus 4 an option?

 

The Nexus 4 is very expensive where you are (irrespective of it being 8 or 16 GB). That works out to roughly US$520 which is way too high and locked? Really bad.

 

I can imagine. In North America every nexus 4 is unlocked, no matter whether bought through the play store or from a carrier. I assumed that was the case worldwide but I guessed that wherever you were, for some reason, the carrier was able to sell locked ones.

In any event, way too pricey. A pity you cannot go and play with these phones yourself. Of the companies you listed, how is the support for each of these phones there?

 

Do not buy an iPhone 4. Please, just don't. Unless you want to spend the whole time you own the thing shouting at it and throwing it against various walls when it takes 10 seconds to load the text app only to crash and reboot itself.

Personally I recommend the S3 Mini but I am partial to Samsung. They do have unlocked bootloaders though, like the Nexus 4, and since it's been around for a bit there should be some nice custom ROM development going on for it.

 

I know that feel bro, so glad to be getting rid of my iPhone 4 this month