Originally Posted by Jason100:
“I'm also looking for a new mobile phone. I've settled for an iphone but now i'm working out how much i want to pay. I generally want to use it for e-mail and internet and texting, I need a new phone anyway because it looks like my battery could permanently die any day now.”
Have you tried typing on a touchscreen keyboard like the iPhone's? Some people like it, a lot of people find hardware qwerty keyboards still preferable. If email and texting with basic internet is your priority I would say either go for a smartphone with a hardware keyboard e.g. HTC 7 Pro or go for a blackberry. There's a new blackberry with a big screen.
Originally Posted by GoodBuddy:
“Calls, texts and basic internet is a must. I use gmail so a simple way to allow me to read my emails. When I check my emails on my Blackberry (via wifi) it's a pain having to go in via gmail.com and enter in my email and user name each time.”
Aha! You've been misusing your blackberry. Blackberries can be very powerful for email but you haven't been using the blackberry email service, you've been logging on via the web browser. This is NOT the way to do it.
At your price point there are two real options: Blackberry or HTC Wildfire on Android. I recommend for you personally, stick with the blackberry.
Get the blackberry internet and email add-on. Then you can set up your gmail properly to work with the blackberry service. The emails will come to your phone just like texts do i.e. automatically. Also, because it's blackberry they will be encrypted until they reach you so it's more secure than other platforms. You can set your phone to receive them as soon as GMail itself receives them or on a slower frequency of checking.
To both of you: any smartphone platform now provides easy access to setting up GMail on your phones whether it's iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 or Blackberry.