I love having discussions within this community. There is some rich knowledge and wisdom here and it is awesome.
So here is my latest dilemma that I would like your thoughts on.
I am getting married next week, and I would love for my wife to have a smartphone, but which one should I get her?
Let me just put you in the picture. You see, I love my smartphone. Having a smartphone has changed my life.
I use a lot of web apps such as Google Calender, Google Docs, Evernote, Dropbox, Spotify, the list goes on. I think having a smartphone will help us to stay “synced up”, to be using the same apps so that we can have collaborative lists, send calender invitations to each other etc.
I know that it all sounds very “businessy”, but I don’t care! People generally are not organized enough, and if you find a system that works for you then you should just go with it. It’s not as if my fiancee is completely new to all of this, she is a keen user of Google Apps, and I feel that this would just help to keep us organized and we start married life together.
So, I want you guys to help me, advise me on what you think that I should get her.
Some background info & requirements:
- I have an Android HTC Desire.
- It must have a good sized internal storage, that is one thing that has really bugged me about the desire (that is until I installed a custom ROM ;)).
- It must be able to sync with GMail and Google Calendar.
- It must not be a phone with a Windows OS. I’m prejudiced.
- My spouse in not geeky, so no custom ROMs or anything.
So guys, come on, give me your expertise, what should I get her?
Mickey says
Based on the desire for Gmail support, you almost certainly should go with Android. iOS handles it fairly well, but you lose the conversations, starring, archiving and all of the things that make Gmail so great. Using Gmail on an iPhone/iPad is painful when compared to the Android alternatives.
With that out of the way, we’ve narrowed it down to about 500 phones. 🙂 Since you’re using a Desire, I assume you’re on T-Mobile? The network you’re on will obviously affect which phones you can choose from.
The next move would be size/keyboard. Would she be better off with a large phone (Droid X, Evo), a smaller phone (Desire-ish), or one with a keyboard (Droid 2)?
FYI, I have a Droid X and love it. My wife has an iPhone and loves it (Yahoo email).
James Brooks says
I like your thinking. I agree that Android could well be a good fit. Good questions about the size, I hadn’t really considered that.
Your Droid X, whats the internal storage like?
Mickey says
Droid X has 8 GB of internal storage, plus an sd cart slot. The Droid X2 is due out soon, so that’s one to consider. However, it doesn’t have 4G support or a front-facing camera, which is a bit odd at this point in time.
The front-facing camera wouldn’t necessarily matter to her, but the 4G could be useful. In the case of my wife, she volunteers at the elementary school a lot and has no service, but 4G seems to seep in there much better.
With that in mind, and if price isn’t an issue, the Droid Charge ($299) looks pretty sweet.
James Brooks says
Hrmm…I don’t think the UK has a 4G network yet anyway!
Mickey says
Also, regarding size: My wife had an X for a while and hated it because it was “too big”, whereas I love it because it’s so big.
James Brooks says
Yeh…This is an interesting consideration…
Matthew says
Um…iPhone4? 😛
James Brooks says
Hrm…if I decided to go for iPhone I think I would hold out for the 5…I reckon it’s dropping in the fall…
Lee says
You are definitely moving in the right direction. I agree an Android would best meet your needs. If you are with T-mobile that will chop that list of 500 down to about SIX. most important considerations should include: processor speed, screen size and resolution, and does she need a physical keyboard. And avoid handsets with old OS on them. OS updates don’t seem to be a high priority for them. Get at least version 2.2.
James Brooks says
Thanks for the advice Lee!
Jeremy says
(Former Andriod user, current iPhone user)
I have enjoyed both operating systems a lot. I switched to the iPhone in February when it came to Verizon. Android can do so much, but iPhone does less easier. That’s why I prefer it. I like my phone to just work and the iPhone does that for me. My wife will be getting one soon as well. I wouldn’t think of giving her Android because she will enjoy the iPhone much more and will find it less intimidating.
James Brooks says
True, I guess the Android is a lot geekier! And having had an iPhone myself in the past, you are right in saying that it just “works” and is likely to keep working throughout the duration of the contract. I guess the Google features of the Android are the only other important consideration.
Chad says
With the newly reported security flaw that affects 99.7% of Android users and slow Android updates, I would think twice about going with Android.
I’ve used Droid X and HTC Droid Incredible extensively. I would never by the Droid X again. I would probably try another HTC if I hadn’t gone out and purchased an iPhone 4 in February. I can honestly say that the experience on the iPhone 4 has been delightful.
James Brooks says
Thanks Chad, it’s good to hear that you are getting on well with the iPhone. It’s definitely a contender.
Because Android is a more “flexible” platform, how did you find it being a bit more restricted in what you could customize when you switched to iPhone.
Chad says
I really didn’t find myself customizing much of anything outside of using Tasker (and that was mostly tinkering around). I do miss some of the widgets and more customizable alerting. I would consider those complaints pretty minor overall though.
James Brooks says
Fair enough, thanks for the info!
Eric J says
i purchased a Droid X my wife got an iPhone 4, as she is less techy (but still geeky enough for me) she loves her iPhone and “how it just works.” The way i see it is that Android has way better google integration and way better navigation but iPhone has better app’s and a smoother experience, by smoother experience i mean little UI lag or delays.
Graham says
Totally agree with you on your observation of iOS. For those “less techy” people in our lives it is, in some ways, the ‘perfect’ phone.
James Brooks says
Yeh. I think that a phone that “Just works” is a good shout. Though, I have had very little bother with my HTC Desire generally, especially for light use…
James Brooks says
Also I guess the iPhone is the “cool” phone to have. She would like that for sure!
Justin Girdler says
Dude, James, there’s only one answer here given the timing, and that’s the HTC Sensation (http://www.htc.com/www/product/sensation/overview.html) dropping this June. It’s going to 1-up the no. 1 smart phone out there (the Nexus S). And if you really loved your financeé I’d say you’re kinda obligated to get her one these… just sayin’ 🙂 And congratulations man, marriage is the bomb!
James Brooks says
Justin, that does look very nice indeed. My question though, is WHY OH WHY only 1gb of internal storage. Grr!
Thanks for the congrats! Am super excited 🙂
Justin Girdler says
I haven’t had a problem as almost every app out there can move over to SD now. …okay, ONCE in a while it can annoy me, but I then remind myself that I can tether, create hotspots for wifi, and do lots of stuff my iPhone4 didn’t/wouldn’t. Just tryin’ to keep your decision in more limbo! 😛
James Brooks says
Maybe I just use a lot of “needy” apps! And of course, the hotspot feature is DEEP!
Mark says
I sit here with my own HTC desire on my lap while wifey plays with her spangly new HTC Desire S, Yup she’s gone up a level on me!
Justin Girdler says
Takes a secure man to do that Mark, I commend you.
James Brooks says
Damn, I never thought about that. It fairly likely that she will get a more awesome phone than me. DANG.
Mark says
Its a humbling experience
James Brooks says
Haha! I imagine so!
Joanna says
Can’t you just add a micro-SD card to the HTC desire phones, solving the storage capacity problem?
Mickey says
In theory, yes, but not all apps support that. They need to be built specifically to be allowed to load on the sd card. It’s less of an issue than it used to be (larger internal memory, plus more apps allow sd), but still a problem for some phones.
James Brooks says
Yeh thats right Mickey. The other problem is that even when the app has been designed to be stored on SD on the official Android platform, not ALL of the actual content is stored on the SD, some of the data is still installed on the phone.
Thats why in the end I went with a custom ROM on my Android, because it got to the point where I could only have about 5 apps installed on my HTC Desire before it ran out of internal storage.
Now that I have a custom ROM it stores ALL of the app on the SD card (even for apps that aren’t built to be stored on there). It runs perfectly (in fact, smoother than the official OS) and I can store all of my apps on there.
Yay for me, but a design FAIL for most Android phones. Bigger internal storage would just solve this.
Joanna says
Hmm. Didn’t realise that was a problem before I brought a HTC desire last week….
James Brooks says
Eep! Well you might be ok, depending on your app usage and choices. But if not then I can talk you through getting setup with a custom ROM, no problems.
Joanna says
Thanks. Hopefully I should be okay. I will probably keep carrying my ipod touch with me so non internet dependant apps can stay on that which will save space and battery life on my phone.
James Brooks says
Nice!
wvpv says
I’d find a mobile phone kiosk in the mall and let her try several working Android phones to see which one she likes the best.
Does she like your phone?
James Brooks says
That’s a good call. I never asked the question.
To be honest though, any smartphone will be an upgrade from hers. Currently she runs an LG Cookie, and it’s clunky (OS wise) to say the least! Plus the touchscreen is like one of those ones that you need a stylus for! EEP!
Graham says
My fiancee has an iPhone 3GS and I have an HTC Thunderbolt. I love that she has a smart phone for all the reasons you listed. I also don’t care if it sounds “businessy”. In this day and age, it’s just plain practical. Allyson and I share Google calendars and we both love Evernote and of course take full advantage of having our emails on our phones.
Sidenote: we’ve created a wedding planning blog (http://brenna.co) where we’re blogging the wedding planning process. We have even created an email address ([email protected]) that we are using for all the vendors and stuff for our wedding, brenna.co runs Google Apps of course. 😉
As I said, Allyson has an iPhone 3GS. The one major thing that I don’t like about iOS (being a heavy Google App user) is that shared Google Calendars do not all appear in the default iOS Calendar app. I didn’t want to make Allyson download a 3rd party Calendar app for her phone just so she could see my calendar, so I just added my Google account on her phone and made sure it only sync’d my calendar.
Being an Android user yourself, you are no doubt aware that shared Google Calendars appear in the same colors and without the need to add the account as they do on the web. As a couple… one of your biggest collaborative pieces is of course your calendar. If you’re both heavy Google Apps users, I would stick with Android for now.
If am curious to see if the next version of iOS will sync shared Google Calendars better. I might switch if it does. I would honestly love the battery life of an iPhone.
Mickey says
I’m not sure what you mean. My wife has an iPhone, and our five shared calendars all sync to the default calendar app without a problem. Granted, it’s much easier to set up on Android, but it should work just fine on iOS.
Graham says
Do you both have regular @gmail.com emails? I have custom domain Google Apps accounts and while they are supposed to be the exact same thing as a Gmail Google Account now, I think there are still some minor issues. Perhaps what I described above is one of those.
I don’t use my Gmail email address for anything but website and newsletter signups these days. Over the years it got so cluttered with subscriptions I figured it was just easier to create a custom address with some of my domains. I’ve been more careful about my usage of my domain email address now and still only use my gmail one for things I think I might get spammed from. 😉
James Brooks says
I’d be interested to find out if that is a Google Apps issue, as we both just use standard GMail. Mickey you say that everything syncs up fine? Can you color code the different calendars?
Mickey says
Graham — Good question about Google Apps. Not sure how those are handled in the iPhone calendar.
James — Exactly. It all syncs fine, and they’re color coded. However, I don’t know if you can adjust the colors or not, as they’re not automatically the same colors you use on the Google Calendar site.
James Brooks says
That’s not the end of the world. Thanks for that Mickey, it’s valuable information.
James Brooks says
Graham, will you marry me instead? (Jokes!)
But seriously…Nice work! Sounds like you have got things tight and synced up pretty nicely!
When is the big day?
PS – the wedding blog looks AMAZING! Great job on that!
Graham says
Haha. Thanks man! We’ve got a countdown on the blog so I remember the day 😉 October 29th, 2012. (Allyson has one more year of grad school that she wants to finish up first)
Graham says
Doh… I meant Oct. 20th, 2012. The “0” and the “9” are next to each other
James Brooks says
Haha! FAIL. I hope that SHE didn’t see that! 😉
Best of luck with everything bro! How exciting! I know the anticipation, we also had a long engagement.
Chris Ames says
I want my wife to love technology, not hate technology. That means keep things simple, current, and easy. So while I am an Android user (HTC Incredible)… I advise my wife to get an iPhone.
James Brooks says
Word. That sounds like pretty solid advice to me! But…I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I bought an iPhone 4 on an 18month+ contract and the 5 came out soon. That’s my main concern with the iPhone!
Eep!
Justin Girdler says
Solid advice. My wife also rocks an iPhone, and she’d be ticked if I moved her to a new Android platform …which I may anyhow when the HTC Sensation comes out! (we’ll see how that goes over)
James Brooks says
Haha! Ouch!
nick says
you should drop your prejudice of windows phone 7 and get one for your wife. It does all the things you want and i’d be willing to bet that your wife would like the interface much better than android.
James Brooks says
Nooooooooooooooo!
BenJPickett says
I’m going to say let her pick the apps and the phone. If you try and push her into using something that she just can’t grasp because her mind will work differently than yours does, she won’t use it and your plan fails. There’s a lot of good phones out there and a lot of great apps. But not all phones and not all apps are created equal and because of this you may need to adapt something else.
For example my wife has an X, she loves it. She uses email, calendar and that’s about it. Dropbox does very little for her since she also has her laptop all the time. Evernote is the most convoluted thing in the world and it encourages her to stay unorganized, so she avoids it. She is techy, not to the level that I am but far beyond an average consumer. As for me, I have a 6 year old dumb phone with the original battery. It works great for me because I can go days without having to plug it in and she has to charge hers every other night at best. If I had a smart phone right now I would work 24/7, she despises how much time I can spend working right now as it is. So the ability for me to not be connected all the time is a great advantage for our relationship. If I kept a calendar for my personal life, nothing would get done as I’m a very spur of the moment person. I need to keep my work meetings and appointments straight. Want to know what I’m doing tomorrow after work? Ask me then.
My recommendation, do not change anything for the first month. After that first month take the 5 Languages of Love test to help figure out your communication styles and what each of you responds to. Build off of how each of you work naturally instead of trying to shoe horn into something that’s going to hold one of you back. Be prepared to change a lot yourself. My wife doesn’t work off of documents, she works off of talking. Emails and looking at my calendar don’t do anything for her, she wants to hear my voice.
By the way, Congratulations!
James Brooks says
Hey Ben!
Thank you so much for the detailed response. Super appreciated. A lot of wisdom on there that I will take on board! 🙂
We actually did the “love languages” test in our marriage prep class…was super interesting, really enjoyed that.
Please don’t think that I’m trying to force anything on her, she is very up for having a smart phone and using it to help organize herself.
When you say simply let her pick the phone, that is so wise, and that is definitely what I should do. Some of the other guys also said the same thing and I think that is exactly what I need to do! At the end of the day she needs to have something that she loves and feels completely comfortable with!
Ben, again, thanks very much for your contribution, that’s really awesome! 🙂
BenJPickett says
You are welcome. My big problem is I find something that works for me and I would spend countless amounts of time and tons of effort trying to teach 1 thing to my wife instead of giving her 3 or 4 good options so she could pick something that worked for her. And then at that point I’d only have to figure out how to get the 2 different apps to share the same data. Often times much easier and always less frustrating.
James Brooks says
For sure bro 🙂