It always does! LOL

I agree the Lumia would be an excellent phone to get – I had the Lumia 800 and it was fantastically easy to use and there are more than enough apps and games for it now.

Thanks guys. Will try and persuade my parents to get a lumia otherwise I could always try them with a few android qwerty smartphones.

If the really want a qwerty keyboard then they could look at something like the Desire Z but I would avoid the slider type phones if you can.

Take them into a phone shop with working devices (O" is usually good) and let them try a Lumia out and see if they would be happy with the on-screen keyboard - the WP7 one is quite nice.

My mother in law went from an ancient B&W screen Nokia to an iPhone 4. She's adjusted perfectly to the fact that rather than charging once a week, she now needs to plug in overnight. She doesn't see it as an inconvenience, just something that's part of her routine now. The bonus for her is that she's now got the internet and email with her wherever she goes.

I probably will be experiencing that shift this week when I get my 1st Smartphone.

Whilst it is obvious they will use more energy if you use everything on it in the same way that a 2G phone guzzles energy with bluetooth on, if you disabled these features so that it was acting as - well a mobile phone then the energy use would be lower surely?

For me I plan to only use the internet capability at home using my wireless router (not very often as I have my PC and laptop) and would only use 3G and wireless internet when I have no access to my PC - most likely when I am on holiday. The rest of the time - i.e during the working day, it would be sat in my pocket in case someone wanted to phone me in an emergency or send a text. Not exactly power hungry activities.

I would expect to recharge it if I have no access to a PC on a daily basis, but the rest of the time I would be disappointed if I did not get a couple of days out of it which is far less than the multitude of standby hours that manufacturers promise.

I've not read all the posts in this thread. But what i recommend is taking your folks to a shop and let them play with a couple of smartphones for themselves!

They will tell you what they like.

Get the shop to show them how to read email, surf the web, make a phone call and read text messages. That is ALL they want i'm sure!!!!!!!!

I thought that when i got my first smartphone too

Dream on