Hello everyone
I’ve decided that it is finally time for me to acquire a Smartphone, but since I don’t know anything about them I decided that I need some advice first.
All I really know about my needs is that it must be able to take some punishment.

... Then don't get a smartphone?

By "take some punishment" what do you mean? Are you an idiot who's going to forget about it and put it through the wash? Are you one of the people who's hands are made of bacon grease that threw a WiiMote through your TV?

I can vouch for the resilience of a Note. I've dropped that baby on a tile floor and NOTHING except a bit of plastic bezel popping out of place that snapped back in perfectly. Similar stories from people with S2s and S3s - Samsung appears to have a good design at the moment for "not breaking when looked at hard" like the iPhone 4 and some recent HTCs.

If you want a fully ruggedised smartphone then there are some options, but you'd look like a wanker using one if you aren't on a fucking construction site or at a logging camp or mine.

---

What is Project Zohar?

I suppose you could get a Motorola DEFY if you want a rugged, waterproof android phone.

Otherwise, I will attest to the ability of the Samsung S2 (better if you get a silicone casing for it) to resist falls from reasonable heights.

Also, mine survived having ramen soup spilled over it, and a friend's survived beer(!), after an appropriate drying off period. So take that as you will.

---

I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character

Get the Galaxy S3, but only if you have LTE coverage where you live and work. Otherwise a plain ol' 3G phone of any particular persuasion will suffice for your needs.

---

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, III vi.

Thanks for the advice thus far.
By it being able to take some punishment I mean that it must be able to survive being dropped a few times and life in general in my front pocket.
The reason that I mentioned that is because I’ve heard of the iPhone’s amazing ability to break by being looked at the wrong way.

As far as LTE coverage is concerned, it is present in most of the places where I am going to need it.

To talk a bit more about usage, I know that I am going to use it to surf the web, listen to music, and occasionally for a bit of navigating. On top of that I’ll probably find more uses for it after I’ve found out more about what I can actually do with one.

Well durability often comes down to what protective case you have on it. If you choose a more common phone you are going to have more options in that regard.

Then get the Galaxy S3. All other phones feel like sad children's toys compared to it, and LTE is fast as fuck.

---

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, III vi.

Given that every phone appears to be going LTE, getting an only 3g phone seems rather silly unless you just like being two or more generations behind everyone else.

Isn't that the MO for Apple since Iphone 4 came out?

The only company with anything resembling decent LTE coverage is Verizon. ATT's LTE coverage is spotty right now, but their HSPA+ (what they call 4G) coverage is solid. Sprint's LTE coverage barely exists, and WiMax is a joke and should be ignored. In two years, when he's ready for a new phone, the landscape will be different: Verizon will have almost complete LTE coverage, ATT's LTE coverage will be good, and Sprint's will be passable.

---

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, III vi.

Instead of signing on with a major carrier and being stuck with bandwidth limits, high monthly costs, and possibly rising fees, try getting a used phone and then signing up with a somewhat or completely third-party service that uses one of the major networks. Verizon has something like that, forgot what it's called. I have a used Galaxy S2 and I signed up with simple mobile which is a third-party company that rents t-mobile's network. I get unlimited calls, texts, and data for flat 40 US dollars a month.

I only use 3G because my area doesn't have 4G yet.

This isn't a reason not to get a 4G device because they can all do 3G anyway.

I have a Galaxy Nexus and I love it. You can buy one new from Google without a contract for $350 and get a cheap prepaid wireless plan. I pay $30/month for a T-Mobile plan that has unlimited text, 5 GB of HSPA+ data (yes 5 GB, not a typo), unlimited 3G data, and 100 minutes of talk. I can make and receive calls over WiFi with my Google Voice number so I don't worry about the 100 minutes of talk. Plus, it's a Nexus phone so you automatically get upgraded to the latest versions of Android.

The cheapest contract I could get from Verizon for the same phone was $90/month, so I definitely saved money by buying it unlocked. If you want to buy one, I suggest waiting for Google to announce the next Nexus phone (coming very soon) because the price will probably drop.

The Galaxy Nexus is also rather durable, in my experience. I dropped it almost six feet onto concrete and all I have to show for it is some scuffing on the bottom corner.

OK, so the general recommendation is getting either the Galaxy S3 or the Galaxy Nexus.
I’ll start looking through the various offers for those phones then, and thanks everyone for your advice, it is much appreciated.

Galaxy Nexus is due for a refresh in a month or so; it's well-priced now but a bit old.

Nokia Lumia 920

What about concerns about ecosystem, maturity, build quality, etc? I'd switch to a Win8 phone if there were any that didn't suck.

I've had a Windows Phone since launch. My biggest issue is still the maturity of the app marketplace, but it is improving every day, and if I really want an iOS app I have my iPad. I adore the Metro design aesthetic. So much cleaner and more pleasurable to navigate than iOS or iOStoo, I mean Android. The social network integration is something Apple is just starting to work on with iOS-6, and Windows Phone has had it since day one.

The Lumia 920 is looking to have the best camera of any smartphone out there, the best maps (Nokia is well regarded as a world leader in streetmapping) It's just a shame it's only going to be on AT&T, otherwise I'd grab one when my contract is up this year.

It's a great follow up to the 900, which even Siri thought was the world's best smartphone. Add to that a cool inductive charging system (your charger cable will never get funky or worn out, just place it on the base and it'll charge itself without any wires), and color choices beyond white and black. I just think it's the funner, better phone.

EDIT: As for build quality, I've never seen an iPhone that didn't have scratches or cracks all over the glass back, and Windows phones don't have to be held in an awkward fashion to make calls. Apple products tend to focus more on form and less on function. Too much focus on clean lines rather than day to day usefulness. I had to buy little easels for my ipod touch so I could watch videos without holding it. What did HTC put on my HD7: a kickstand that is built into the phone and lets me stand it up on a surface, or use it as a handgrip so I can type one handed.

Nokia's WP lineup is very good. The ecosystem is mediocre at best and the platform is in the midst of transition to WinNT (WP8) which is causing a lot of problems.


The camera looks pretty fantastic - f/2.0 lens with optical image stabilization! It's a decided leap up over anything else (including the iPhone 5, which has the best camera right now).


Er, you haven't had to hold an iPhone in an 'awkward fashion' in years (early versions of the iPhone 4 HSPA had (free) bumpers and all other versions fixed or never had the problem). The notion that it's just 'form and not function' is wrong-headed: Apple pays very tight attention to usability (as does Microsoft with WP).

Fair enough, still a pretty big boner on their part at the time. I just don't see it in the hardware design of the iPhone though. It's a brick, very clean lines, but a glass back? That's like covering a phone in contact explosive and saying, "Well just don't drop it and you'll be fine." They finally dropped it with the iPhone 5, but now the anodized aluminum is having scratch issues. A nice high impact plastic or carbon fiber if they wanted to be very fancy, would have been the smarter choice.

And just now, in their sixth itteration are they realizing they've made the most uncomfortable headphones possible. Then there's the form based choice to have the sound come out a tiny speaker right next to the dock connector. Means you can't hear anything if it's dropped into an upright charger. Did Steve Jobs hate speaker grilles that much? I have full stero on my HD7, above and below the screen, and had they painted them black instead of left them unpainted you'd never notice them.

And finally the sheer criminality of not having an end user replaceable battery. Just flat out design arrogance. Ending is better than mending, indeed.

It was a fairly surprising mistake: Apple has an extensive RF testing facility precisely to test those sort of things. I suppose they assumed people would hold it a different way and it slipped their minds that hands might bridge two antennas.


Apple doesn't want to be "fancy". They like minimalist modernism in their design and with minimal weight. Their present unibody construction pretty much demands use of aluminum - which has the tradeoff of anodizing scratches, as you note. Glass was an interesting and good-looking choice that, unfortunately, did not stand up to every day use.

That's not say other materials are no good, but I can't see Apple using them. Nokia's use of colored polycarbonate is quite striking, for example.


They probably figure that if you're going to put it in a dock you'll use proper speakers (alarm dock, line-out, bluetooth, airplay, whatever).


No, that's a design tradeoff. A non-user-replaceable battery has greater capacity and lighter weight than one that needs the structure for user handling (both battery and receiving connector). On their laptops, Apple got something like a 40% increase in available volume on the same case (early unibody MacBook Pro vs. later versions). And you can get Apple to swap the battery, anyways!

I put my Motorola Atrix through hell and I am loath to upgrade it. It has never given me a single problem. It still does everything I want it to as well.

I'm not talking I dropped my phone on the carpet a few times either, I'm talking flying out of my cut during fights kinda hell. Getting whiskey, beer and other things spilled on it.

Before that, I had a Sony that held up great until the glue on the key pad came off, but I don't think that says anything about the current Sony phones as they are completely different animals now.

Hav, you should do phone reviews. 'I give the Lumia 920 one knock-down, drag-out fight out of five, and even then the screen was broken. Not a phone for a night on the town'. I'd read them.