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I've finally decided to stop relying on the super cheapo dumbphone for my mobile phone needs, and get a real smart phone. I am a world traveler, so it needs to be compatible all over the world, or at least in Europe (all, from Russia to Iceland) and Anglo North America (USA & Canada). I think this means that it has to be "unlocked", which is important with some phones in the USA, as they tend to be "locked", which sounds incredibly ridiculous to me, but then again the USA corporations have far too much power over the consumer, so I can see how the smartphone market is as ridiculous as the Rx market. If it matters for Europe vs. USA, I'd prefer to have the compatibility with Europe, and I'll just continue using my dumbphone in the USA.
I want to be able to use it for minimal websites, most notably Uber & Lyft and Skype, perhaps Yahoo! Mail & Google Maps. I also want it to be able to take a photo and play audio/video (FLAC, MP3, MP4, FLV, etc.), with the standard audio out jack, and have a slot for a micro SDHC. As for other apps, I'd like to be able to view & scroll a PDF or DJVU file, and play chess.
I understand that it is better to have a real keyboard instead of a touchboard since I've heard that the latter typically doesn't work well, so I'd like to have that. So far, I have only owned mobile phones with keys, LOL, so I don't know how bad they are.
As for the operating system, I'm open, although *true* compatibility with Windows 10 would be helpful, although if I were limited to Windows 8, I'd rather not go Windows at all, as that is a horrid OS. At the very least I want to be able to move files between my Windows 10 notebook system and the smartphone. I guess Android is pretty much the open default of smartphones, but I've heard a lot of bad things about its security.
As for battery charging, it's been my unfortunate experience with mobile phones that they all seem to have a proprietary charge specs and it's difficult to find a replacement charging adapter; of course, this could be because I keep using a mobile phone for years, well past its commercial obsolesence.
As for the size, I'd like for it to be as large as possible (to make the video & PDF app resolution as high possible) that could still comfortable fit in a jeans front pocket. I have no idea how big this should be, although I guess I will play around with some cardboard to figure out what is the optimal size. I'd also like it to be a standard enough size that it will be easy to buy a case for it.
Aside from all this, I'd like to be as rugged as possible. Also important would be ease & cost of simple repair like changing the screen or battery (which seem to be the 2 things I have been mostly fixing with my notebooks), including being able to buy such replacement parts at a typical electronics store in a major city. Oh, and most importantly, not too expensive! If there is a good model that is a lot less expensive than another model that is easier to fix, well then simply buying a new cheap one would be preferable.
I've been looking around Amazon for smartphones, and I am totally lost as to what to look for, and completely overwhelmed by the amount of choice in the market. For some reason, the notebook & tablet market seems to much easier to discern - or at least I've been comfortable buying hardware that tends toward a good value, and generally have been pleased. For Wintel notebooks, there doesn't seem to be a very high price differential between the top of the line and the cheapest, once the specs have been normalized. However, it seems that this is not the case for smartphones as the price differential is much larger. I'd hate to pay too much for a phone simply because of FUD.
So I think I've covered everything. Any good website or newbs would be helpful as well.
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TL;DR.
swampwiz wrote: As for the operating system, I'm open, although *true* compatibility with Windows 10 would be helpful,
You lost me there. Are you saying you want a Windows phone?
I use a Google Nexus 5 (Android) phone for development and love it. I strongly recommend it, unless you want to go the iOS/Windows route.
/ravi
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Member 12733523 wrote: Apple is the phone of choice for Terrorists and Child Mosletors[^] You dont want that to be you, do you?
While I personally don't use Apple products, I think that this statement is ridiculous.
Going by your logic, I could deduce that terrorists and child molesters also wore pants. Would that mean you won't wear pants?
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If they were pants that were specifically designed to hide information from the public authorities working day and night to ensure another 9/11 never happens... If the pants manufacturer specifically denied the FBI the critical assistance they needed to solve a terror incident on United States soil... Then of course I and every other person who upholds the values that have made America great, would not buy them.
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Nurse! NURSE! He's out of bed again!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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To paraphrase something one of USA founders once supposedly said ...
"He who is willing to sacrifice privacy for (perceived) safety, deserves neither and will lose both"
modified 19-Nov-18 21:01pm.
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DNFTT
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Member 12733523 wrote: If you want a phone that has to install updates EVERY DAY,
then pick Android
WOW! That's funny. I have an android phone like 4 years... Didn't bothered me with updates at all... It still runs gingerbread with great success...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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It's ORT again...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I lack the ability to identify ORT... Sorry... 
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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In this case the "@" address is a BIG clue! 
Go: get yourself some more ![Java | [Coffee]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/coffee.gif)
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Member 12733523 wrote: If you want a phone that has to install updates EVERY DAY,
What an interesting thing to say, given a fact that lack of updates seems to be one of the biggest complaints people have with Android 
modified 19-Nov-18 21:01pm.
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Quote: compatibility with Windows 10 would be helpful
Why. There is only one kind of such phone - Windows Phone! So your choices are cut to 7% percent of the whole...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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That said, my Lumina 950 and my wife's Lumina 1520 are both just fine. I do generally need to restart the 950 (I think Windows Hello has issues) every few days or wifi gets funky. Despite that it's much more stable than any android I've owned.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli
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If you want a keyboard pone, then your only option is the BlackBerry Priv.
I do have a Samsung Galaxy S7 now and I'm extremely happy with it.
Having a SDCard is a must have to store pictures there and being able to recover deleted ones if some kind of problema happens (of course given you don't want to root your pone)...
If you want to sabe money then you should look for XIAOMI or any other chinese Brand, the oneplus is a great phone...
It all ends on the amount of money you want to spend.
if you are looking for a top tier phone then you should definitely look for the BB priv, S7, P9, OnePlus 3, Xiaomi Mi5, Apple...
if you are more on a Budget side, then you could go for a Huawei P9 Lite, Samsung galaxy A5...
You should definitely try to find a web page where bloggers speak of the different options out there. Some of them are not biased...
Good luck and enjoy your new phone...
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swampwiz wrote: it needs to be compatible all over the world
Mobile norms tend to differ in the world, so I do not think this is possible.
swampwiz wrote: it is better to have a real keyboard instead of a touchboard
Mmmh, no.
swampwiz wrote: to find a replacement charging adapte
Mmmh, no.
swampwiz wrote: I'd like for it to be as large as possible
Then go between 5 and 5,5"
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Just go to dx.com and mooch around.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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4G LTE is on the move all over Europe. Obviously, the speed varies a lot from one place to the other, and my country, Norway, is one of the front runners. Anyway, expect LTE to be The Dominating Technology in most of Europe a few years from now. 3G (with about a dozen variations) was just a warming up: Gradually the 3G frequency bands are taken over by LTE and the transmitters replaced.
Then comes the problem: Take a look at LTE frequency bands[^]: There is not a single LTE frequency band common to US and Europe. (One European band, 2600 MHz is used in Canada - but lots of areas in Europe are covered by other frequencies, not 2600 MHz. I guess the same applies to Canada.)
I don't think there is any LTE capable phone on the market that supports all 40+ frequency bands - they all come in different variants for the various regions of the world. Tourists are frequently warned: If you come across a really good offer in a different continent, chances are that when you come back home, only 3G will work - and 3G is yesterday's technology. When 4G was opened in Norway, a number of people tried to save money on buying 4G phones cheaper in the USA, and wasted their money: The phone could not be modified / upgraded.
(Maybe this is a matter of firmware only, but I am not so sure. E.g. handling lower frequencies, down to 450 MHz, might be costly in terms of antenna size etc, so a cheaper / more compact solution is selected in markets where 1900 is the lowest frequency used. Or, in markets where the highest frequency used is 1900, they choose cheaper solutions that cannot handle 3700. I have come across several electronic products having identical looks, and model designation, in Europe and the US, but when you open them, the electronics are significantly different. I would expect the same from a mobile phone.)
If you insist of using the same phone in Europe and in the US, you won't have many options, if any at all! If you want an LTE phone that works in Europe, you should probably buy it in Europe. You might find models in Asia handling most of the European LTE bands (look at the last table in the Wikipedia article), but don't expect it to work in North America.
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Member 7989122 wrote: Maybe this is a matter of firmware only, but I am not so sure. E.g. handling lower frequencies, down to 450 MHz, might be costly in terms of antenna size etc, so a cheaper / more compact solution is selected in markets where 1900 is the lowest frequency used. Or, in markets where the highest frequency used is 1900, they choose cheaper solutions that cannot handle 3700. I have come across several electronic products having identical looks, and model designation, in Europe and the US, but when you open them, the electronics are significantly different. I would expect the same from a mobile phone.)
It's not even just upper/lower range limits; there're limits to how many bands and signal modes you can pack into a single RF chip. In the US this is most visible in comparing otherwise identical ATT/TMobile phones with their VZW/Sprint equivalents; they'll use different RF chips that have overlapping but not identical band support. (Generally the latter will support legacy CDMA/EVDO 2/3g networks, while the former will eschew those in favor of a few more GSM bands.) The total number of bands that can be supported is going up (it used to be common to need 4 USA models, one per major carrier), but so are the total number being used. This is also being complicated by virtually every legacy band being used to carry LTE somewhere in the world (although which are switched over first is highly variable).
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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swampwiz wrote: As for battery charging, it's been my unfortunate experience with mobile phones that they all seem to have a proprietary charge specs and it's difficult to find a replacement charging adapter; of course, this could be because I keep using a mobile phone for years, well past its commercial obsolesence.
This is very much a case of your being woefully out of date. About a half dozen years ago the EU mandated the use of USB over proprietary chargers and cables for phones to limit waste production. Other than Apple, no one went the proprietary port to USB dongle route, and supporting multiple different plugs for the rest of the world wasn't worth it; so everything else charges over USB now. You've still got some complexity from USB-B vs USB-C microports (USB-C is the future though and virtually all high end phones launched this year are using it, it should trickle down to the rest of the market over the next year or two) and various incompatable fast charge options proliferated ahead of the USB Group coming up with their own high power charging options; but even there almost any USB device/charger pair will fall back onto lower power standard compliant options.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: About a half dozen years ago the EU mandated the use of USB over proprietary chargers and cables for phones to limit waste production. Other than Apple, no one went the proprietary port to USB dongle route, and supporting multiple different plugs for the rest of the world wasn't worth it; so everything else charges over USB now
Eeeh, well, sort of... My old Samsung has a charging cable with a USB A plug in one end and a proprietary one in the other. (The cable has no electronics, as far as I can see.) If I loose that cable, I have to order a new one from Samsung. If I run out of power while away from home, I cannot use any other USB charger.
The EU requirement was for the USB B Micro plug. Not the USB B mini. Not the original B or USB3 B (for obvious reasons). Not the USB3 B Micro. Those moving over to the C plug mess it all up - as if the USB plug people haven't done enough of that already!
And then, some manufacturers go for wireless charging, with another four competing standards.
The good thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from... Before I gave up SCSI, I had bought cables/adapters for eight different plugs, but I was told that there were fourteen available, if you count them all. USB isn't quite there yet, but I guess within a couple years it will overtake SCSI in number of plug alternatives.
There is this story about the electrician, the engineer and the IT guy arguing about whose trade was the oldest one. The electrician tapped on the Holy Book: God said 'Let there be light!, and there was light - imagine the cabling job required for that! The engineer went even further back: In the beginning everything was chaos, and God made order of the chaos - a truly impressive engineering project. Then the IT guy stood up: And who do you think was responsible for the chaos?
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You should consult a psychic.
Jeremy Falcon
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