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What decides your Purchase of a Phone??

Y

yellowperil

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 10, 2010
4
0
Been looking at a number of threads and a lot of these threads really say better UI, better specs, etc.

What I thought was 'what happened to functionality and buying a phone that does what you want'. So many phones out on the market really only give you half measures of what you would like to do and not give you the complete solution.

Video voice chat over wifi and 3G
Youtube support (Full)
Other general web apps (not cut down fixes with limited support)
Synchronization over the air
Synchronization connected to a pc
Editable UI
Accessibility capabilities (this is becoming more prevalent now)
Ease of use over functionality
Development environments available
Support of commonly used API's and technologies

I know this is a short list, and most threads here seems to not talk about the actual functionality of a device and what they can provide, for example Youtube is a good example of this as its limited support in the iPhone and not so limited support in other devices.

This is the question I pose to the forum:-
If people were really honest would the choice of buying a phone be more a choice of what the phone can do without having to accept half measures (like youtube) of what functionality the phone has over what the phone specs have.

Just a thought would a iPhone user jump to another manufacturer if the support for what he actually wanted to do was fully supported over having half apps that only do half the job (as with some iPhone apps).
 
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Im keeping an eye on WP7 as a possible replacement when my 3GS no longer satisfies me. The only thibg really keeping me with iPhone is iTunes and my investment in the app store. I base my purchases on the overall cost of an item, and swithing OS would me reinvesting in another app store, which could get expensive. Im hoping to upgrade aroind the next iPhone release, depending on my phones state by then, and will probably stick with the iPhone due to my investment so far.
 
Call me an old fogey, but I still think a phone's primary function is to send and receive phones.

Smart phones are like Swiss Army knife. You can have a lot of tols and gadgets, but none will function as well as a single task dedicated tool. You buy the Swiss Army knife because you wish the convenience of having all those tools in one package, knowing you are sacrificing some functionality of the tools.

As for the iPhone, it is a platform, an integration between device and OS. As with the Windows versus Mac OS argument, there are pros and cons to each smartphone. This is an evolving market. In 5 years, smart phones will do things you haven't thought of yet. There will also likely be more uniform capabilities as content providers continue to retool for mobile devices.

As for someone whose first phone HAD to be connected to a cord from the wall, I am continually amazed what phones can increasingly do.
 
My main "wish list" for a phone are as follows:

1) Make and receive phone calls and SMS (!)
2) Integrate well with Bluetooth Hands Free kits
3) Voice dialing in conjunction with 2)
4) Exchange ActiveSync
5) Cisco IPSec VPN connectivity
6) RDP Client
7) Access SharePoint documents
8) Ability to access and modify Office documents

Anything beyond that is a bonus but there aren't actually many phones that support that full list: for example, Android still doesn't support Cisco IPSec VPNs, and neither does WP7 (WP6.1 did though). The iPhone does support all those (obviously with the help of some 3rd party apps), which is why it's the best phone for me.
I have used phones that don't support the full list and whilst it wasn't a killer, it did make my day to day life more difficult than using a phone that supports all these
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

For me personally, what matters most is the in-hand experience. How is THIS phone to do the things I need/want to do? What is slick and easy? What is more of a PITA? Can I type out an email or text quickly or not? Does it seem intuitive as to what to do next?

What about personal "deal breakers"? Is the camera/video up to my standard? Can I do X,Y,Z that is critical to me? What work-arounds are there to the non-critical points that fall short?

Is it solidly built? How stable is it in total? What's the battery life like?

Basically, my experience is that the package in total matters more to me than individual features, assuming that there aren't any personal "deal breakers" to spoil it.

For example, if what I wanted was the best possible camera in a phone, I'd probably get a Nokia. If what I wanted was the best possible mobile flash experience, I'd probably get a Nexus-1. Media integration, then an iPhone. Is BBM a must-have? Well a BB it is then. If 4G networking was top of my list, then an Evo would be in my pocket.

As I said though, for me it's the in-hand total package, the sum of its parts, so to speak. Right now, that's an iP4. A year from now, we'll see then.
 
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yellowperil said:
What I thought was 'what happened to functionality and buying a phone that does what you want'.
Click to expand...


That's actually the reason I first switched to an iPhone, and haven't switched back even after trying other smartphones from time to time to see if I'll like them better.


There's a significant difference I've found between iOS and other smartphone platforms. Other smartphones - and this was true even before the iPhone came out - like to pack in lots of features so that the phone can do everything. The problem is, the phone ends up doing everything poorly.


On the other hand, the iPhone has never truly been cutting edge. It wasn't the first phone to have front facing cameras and claim to do videoconferencing, but when it did get that capability, it did it very well. Same with web browsing, with e-mail, with video sharing, with apps....

I'd rather my phone do the things it does well, rather than stick every feature the vendor THINKS I want, and do it badly.
 
yellowperil said:
Just a thought would a iPhone user jump to another manufacturer if the support for what he actually wanted to do was fully supported over having half apps that only do half the job (as with some iPhone apps).
Click to expand...

Maybe, but the iPhone does more of what I want than other phones. So I DO have the phone that supports what I want.
 
eawmp1 said:
Call me an old fogey, but I still think a phone's primary function is to send and receive phones.
Click to expand...


Ok. "You old fogey".

Better? ;)

For me, in order to buy a smart phone there were a few factors. Not just one.
I wanted it to look nice, have features that I could change. Applications I can add, remove, etc. Public access to the net (3G).
And NOT controlled by the cell provider. This was a big one for me. Every smart phone I've seen 100% controlled by the provider has been a major failure in my eyes.
 
I didn't know everything that I want(*) on my phone when I got it and I bet that I still don't know now. For instance I didn't know that I wanted to be able to press a button on my phone when I was out at night in a bar, have it listen to 30 seconds of the song that's playing on the sound sytem, and identify the song and save the details for me so that I can buy it later. Once I discovered that SoundHound and Shazam can do that I really like the fact that I have this capability in my phone. I'm sure that other really neat apps will be written, or are already out there that I haven't found yet, that I will find valuable to have on my phone.

That's why I went with the iPhone, because at the time it had by far the biggest and most active developer community (although admittedly maybe Android will catch up or even overtake it in the future).

- Julian

(*) Note that I said "want" and not "need". I accept that I don't need most of the app-related functionality on my phone but once I've bought the apps then it costs me nothing to carry them all around with me so I might as well have all this stuff loaded onto my phone, especially when folders stop it all cluttering up the home screen.
 
Reliability

I don't care so much for looks and features. People can have a prettier phone or all the whiz bang features I may not need. The most important is it is just works. So far, so good. I've went through alot of phones, and sometimes alot of them are buggy. Another good reason for me is battery life. I'm practical. I've collected gadgets all my life. The ones that make a lasting impression are the ones that serve me well.

I know the iPhone 4 isn't the most durable based on its design, but I'm fairly careful anyway and do have a case where I don't mind keeping it on. The low failure rate is more important to me than anything else. You don't want to be stuck with a lemon or expensive paperweight.
 
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