Help me getting started with Android! (on a budget)

[freak180]

Okay I tried Paranoid Android rom, CM10 and AOKP stood out to me the most because it offers the most features than any other rom. You can really customize the phone. It would take me a lot of time to mention each and every feature is. Battery life is great too. Normal use I can keep the phone from charging for about 23 hours.

[Richteralan]

Xperia Active

http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_active-3998.php

[Glassed Silver]

Xperia Active

http://www.gsmarena....active-3998.php

Not really a sensible choice considering my requirements I posted in the first post.

Any other things you'd suggest keeping my wishes in mind? :)

Glassed Silver:mac

[Ambroos]

I just got my Xperia T (won it) and am selling my Xperia S. It's got a small dent in the plastic in the upper left corner, screen is perfect, back has some glossy spots from friction. 6 months old, easy to ship from Belgium, will probably be around ?200 (new: ?330 on Amazon.de). It's above your budget but then again it's a pretty good device (good dualcore, 1GB RAM, stable CM10 and AOKP, 32GB internal memory, ...) and better than anything new for that price. Completely unlocked and you can unlock the bootloader of course. I can even pre-install any custom ROM you want :p

But if that is too much I'd try looking into a second hand 2011 Xperia. The Arc (or Arc S, they are physically the same) and Neo are both nice (had both). Perhaps a Galaxy Nexus if you can find them used for a price low enough. Aside that there aren't all that many options. Good Androids generally start at ?200ish (new).

(PS: all prices mentioned are off-contract, of course)

[Glassed Silver]

I just got my Xperia T (won it) and am selling my Xperia S. It's got a small dent in the plastic in the upper left corner, screen is perfect, back has some glossy spots from friction. 6 months old, easy to ship from Belgium, will probably be around ?200 (new: ?330 on Amazon.de). It's above your budget but then again it's a pretty good device (good dualcore, 1GB RAM, stable CM10 and AOKP, 32GB internal memory, ...) and better than anything new for that price. Completely unlocked and you can unlock the bootloader of course. I can even pre-install any custom ROM you want :p

But if that is too much I'd try looking into a second hand 2011 Xperia. The Arc (or Arc S, they are physically the same) and Neo are both nice (had both). Perhaps a Galaxy Nexus if you can find them used for a price low enough. Aside that there aren't all that many options. Good Androids generally start at ?200ish (new).

(PS: all prices mentioned are off-contract, of course)

Thanks for the cool offer, although I'll have to pass on that, because 150? was already stretching it.

It's basically - for any practical use - just to phone my best friend and playing around.

200? is too much for a "toy" (don't get me wrong here, please) for me right now. :)

But again: thanks a lot, I appreciate your offer a lot and wish I was on a 200? budget, I'd gladly accept.

Glassed Silver:mac

[Richteralan]

Didn't realize you want a 4" Android for 150Euro.

Good luck with your hunt!

[Glassed Silver]

Didn't realize you want a 4" Android for 150Euro.

Good luck with your hunt!

Well, maybe 3.5 or 3.8 will do, too, but I didn't like a few more things about it.

I did dig though, that it's dust and waterproof.

I have a waterproof case for my iPhone 4 so I know how awesome it is to not have to worry about that and to be able to take pics and videos where ever you are. (Y)

Glassed Silver:mac

[thartist]

Simple; go to CM site and choose among the most modern of the officially supported devices. That definitely gives you a warranty.

[dnast]

I'm using an original Galaxy S (AT&T Captivate) for the time being with CM 10 and it's been a surprisingly good experience so far.

Scrolling is smooth and app-switching is pretty quick, too. Of course there is some lag right after booting and when installing an app in the background, but other than that I'm happy with the performance.

My schedule has been a bit different during the recent holiday so I can't say how good the battery life is, but it's nothing like what I've seen with the original EVO and EVO 4G, for instance. I did a couple of hours of action gaming and still had 50-60% of battery life left which isn't bad considering I started at about 90% and didn't turn off WiFi or adjust brightness or anything during that time. I have friends whose Androids were nearly dead after working a regular shift and only using the phones during breaks.

To be fair, the Galaxy SII and S3 are noticeably faster phones especially when it comes to running games and apps do load more quickly, but I honestly can't complain about the general UX of this phone with CM 10 installed (don't even bother with stock!)

I plan on getting a Nexus 4 after holiday shopping is done, but I have to say that I'd be pretty content with this phone if it wasn't an AT&T phone on T-Mobile (meaning I can't get 3g data speeds). This will definitely become my toy after the Nexus 4 lands at my doorstep.

[The Evil Overlord]

lol looks like everyone else beat me to it, try an older flagship or other high end device, low end androids aren't the best I think some of the older (gets ready to duck) LG's aren't too bad, quite cheap as handset only, tho you might need to stretch a little, the HTC's and Samsung's more so, but they do dominate the market at the moment, Sony might be a contender, but at that price I think it might be a used phone...

[Glassed Silver]

lol looks like everyone else beat me to it, try an older flagship or other high end device, low end androids aren't the best I think some of the older (gets ready to duck) LG's aren't too bad, quite cheap as handset only, tho you might need to stretch a little, the HTC's and Samsung's more so, but they do dominate the market at the moment, Sony might be a contender, but at that price I think it might be a used phone...

Yepp, old flagship seems like the way to go indeed.

I'm perfectly fine with used, because this device will be all tinker and otherwise call-only.

No need for the fanciness of unused. ^^

Glassed Silver:ios

[Ambroos]

The nice thing about Sony's is that they're extremely simple to flash, even from OSX. It's basically just moving a zip to the SD card for ROM's, and a single terminal command to flash kernels. If you get an Arc (S) there are a heap of ROM's available too.

[Glassed Silver]

The nice thing about Sony's is that they're extremely simple to flash, even from OSX. It's basically just moving a zip to the SD card for ROM's, and a single terminal command to flash kernels. If you get an Arc (S) there are a heap of ROM's available too.

Don't really give a damn whether it's easy or a challenge.

I say bring on your challenge, I shall do it. (Y) :p

But it's a nice thing, sure. Not a deciding factor though :)

I just checked and saw that the S2 is selling for 200? and seeing how I'll buy my device past Christmas and with the S4 getting closer, maybe I'll be able to catch a good deal on it and have it for somewhere closer to my budget. (Y)

Basically, I'm really "trying" to make it a Samsung, because I really like their good phones (some of their older pseudo-smartphones are just terrible). :p

Glassed Silver:mac

[Noir Angel]

If custom ROMs are your wish I would avoid HTC phones, particularly older ones. Due to HTC's notoriously poor release cycles support for them tends to either take ages or die pretty quickly. Although if all you want to do is have a play with Android have you considered a whole different class of device in the Nexus 7? Very powerful hardware and I believe it's in your price range

[ichi]

An used Nexus S should be pretty cheap now, considering that there are two newer Nexus phones out already.

It's not the fastest phone around (single core, 512MB) but it's still smooth on JB.

[Glassed Silver]

If custom ROMs are your wish I would avoid HTC phones, particularly older ones. Due to HTC's notoriously poor release cycles support for them tends to either take ages or die pretty quickly. Although if all you want to do is have a play with Android have you considered a whole different class of device in the Nexus 7? Very powerful hardware and I believe it's in your price range

I want a phone actually. :/

And no, it's 200?, that's new however, might sell for a little less when buying it used.

It's a fun idea, but I don't think I'd enjoy it as much as a phone, especially as this would be highly redundant seeing how I'll get an iPad next year anyways.

An used Nexus S should be pretty cheap now, considering that there are two newer Nexus phones out already.

It's not the fastest phone around (single core, 512MB) but it's still smooth on JB.

Yeah, I thought about the Nexus S, too...

A close contender from the little I dug into its specs so far.

I guess I'll wait and see what kinds of offers there will be on ebay past Christmas and go from there.

Maybe I'll get some unexpected money from a job or something and I'll go with a Galaxy S3 mini even haha.

Glassed Silver:mac

[AJerman]

Nexus S is what I'd suggest to fit everything you're asking. However, I do put that phone just SLIGHTLY before Android phones got really good. The 800x480 screen, 1 GHz CPU and 512 MB of RAM are all just slightly below what I'd recommend. The plus is that you can upgrade it to Jellybean, so it wouldn't be TOO bad, but if you can find a dual core with 1 GB of RAM, you'll really get to see what Android is like. But I'd definitely say aim for a Jellybean device, ICS at a bare minimum. If you could pick up a used Galaxy Nexus in your price range (not sure what prices are like over there), then that would definitely be a good bet. That would give you HD, dual core, 1gb ram, and 4.2.

[neo158]

You could try looking for a used HTC Desire S, I just upgraded a friends one to ICS today.

[techbeck]

First of all forget about cyanogenmod ROMs

Use AOKP roms ;)

Yea, saw that the Samsung Vibrant now has AOKP support. I still have my old Vibrant and its running ICS now flawlessly and is now my MP3 player. Going to update it to AOKP JB soon.