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Which smart phone & MP3 player.
victor mel
Posts: 4,963 Forum Member
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Looking for a new smart phone with a good MP3 player. Any recommendations?
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victor mel
Posts: 4,963 victor mel
Posts: 4,963 victor mel
Posts: 4,963
Comments
Size?
Contract/PayG?
Other features?
£400
Any size
PAYG / sim free
Currently have HTC EVO 3D so better than this in terms of specs.
Sound on that is pretty good.
Major music services like Xbox Music, Spotify, Last.fm, Rdio are on there. Only has 16GB storage though.
I like the Nokia Lumia 920 which has 32GB storage, comes with Nokia Music which is my favourite music service (and is free with the handset) and Nokia Music+ is only £4 a month. Lumia 920 is £450 on Three.
Some of the cheaper Lumias have card slots in case you want more storage. (Generally supporting cards upto 64GB I think).
iPhone is a classic option if your music is in iTunes or you are used to iPod.
Don't know much about the music side on Android except the major music services are on there too, many phones have an SD card slot. Not sure if there are any visually appealing apps to play your own music though. Both iPhone and windows Phone have music management software (iTunes and Windows Phone 8 app respectively) Android manufacturers make their own apps like Kies but AFAIK they aren't great.
Well, how much music do you have? That will answer whether you need a card slot or not.
After that, question is which store do you prefer to buy your music from? (iTunes, Google Play or Xbox Music).
The third question is which interface do you prefer: iOS, Android or Windows?
Poweramp is the best music player for android due to the fact it has the best equaliser settings allowing you to calibrate the sound so it's just the way you want. I've used pretty much every other music app but poweramp always comes out on top.
So in your price range you can get the
Samsung Galaxy S3 for £350 with 16GB storage, then buy a 32GB memory card for £15 ish.
Or you can go for the HTC One X+ which is a bit higher than your budget (£420) but it comes with 64GB memory, it's a bit better spec than the S3 and has the beats audio gimmick when paired with poweramp works great.
If you want to stick with Sony go for the Sony Xperia T which you can get for £330. Spec wise it's not as good as the S3 or One X but it's good enough. Plus the sound, screen and camera are very very good. Plus there are a few sound gimmicks (like in the One X) which boost sound quality etc... and once again when paired with poweramp it's great.
Having used all phones, plus from various reviews i can say that the Xperia T with poweramp and the One X with poweramp are great. The Galaxy S3 isn't as good. But the Galaxy S3 does have better battery life and a removable battery at that. Plus it's not exactly bad.
Other phones to consider is iPhone 4s which has one of the best audio onboard and the Lumia 920/8X which has dolby/beats onboard but the Windows music app is pretty bad tbh and nowhere near as good as poweramp or even the iOS music app.
Yep, especially if you sell your HTC Evo to pay for the Xperia T.
The xperia t has a slightly better processor and battery
but a much better
screen quality (720p vs 540p)
better camera (5mp vs 13mp)
16GB onboard storage (compared to 1GB on the Evo) plus you have the option to expand by micro sd card up to 64GB.
HDMI out and NFC on the Xperia as well.
Sound quality is much better on the Xperia
DC-HSPA+ which means faster speeds on the internet.
Android Jellybean vs Ice cream sandwich
Yes the HTC One X+ and Galaxy S3 are a bit better spec wise but the price on the Xperia T is quite good as well.
Only thing i would say is that the Galaxy S3 has a removable battery and you can buy extended batteries etc... for it if you use your phone for long periods of time.
The T uses a Krait-based SoC whereas the Evo 3D uses an older Scorpion-based SoC. The chip in the T is significantly more powerful.
Get PowerAmp onboard and some Sennheiser 'phones and you're sorted.
It hasn't "dropped" in price. The Nexus 4 has always been £240 for the 8GB and £280 for the 16GB if you buy from Google Play.
The Nexus 4 was released at the tail end of 2012 and the expectation is that the next Nexus (if there is one) will come at the tail end of this year. The Nexus programme may get cancelled in favour of the "X-Phone" from Motorola and forthcoming phones from Motorola that are more heavily Google influenced.
I agree, it's not very likely we'll see a nexus 5 any time soon or a cheap Motorola phone either. Thats why i didn't recommend the Nexus 4, even though it's cheap it only has 16GB onboard storage and it's non expandable. Thats why all the phones i've posted have at least 16GB onboard minimum with the option of expanding it via Micro SD for future use.
Besides, the sound card in the nexus 4 isn't anything special.
Ah, you're right on the price - I blame a gadget induced haze when browsing last week - I was drooling over the Nexus 10 which was £329.
On the Nexus 5, though, it is rumoured Google may launch it at their I/O event in May. If true, I'm sure it'll not disappoint technically and will surely offer a 32GB option this time.
it'll be interesting to see what direction Google go in next - the Nexus range have all been good devices irrespective of which manufacturer they've teamed with.