So, Christmas has snuck up on you and you find yourself heading out to the stores this weekend for one of the most popular electronic gifts of recent years: the smart phone. Cell phones have been a perennial favorite Christmas gift, but with so many good phones that are now “free” with contract, what makes for a good gift cell phone? If you aren't planning on giving the cellular service too, the best choices are the phone upgrades that, for a bit more than the free phones, will prove far more enjoyable for your recipient. We have two such phones that will be sure to please almost anyone.
In our general smartphone guide, we laid out the basic smartphone situation and then looked at Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Apple’s iOS. In this piece we move on to a sampling of Android phones available this holiday season. Whether you are looking to give someone an Android handset for Christmas, or are thinking about picking one up for yourself, these contenders cover a good deal of the Android landscape this season, ranging from the impressively affordable AT&T Impulse 4G to Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S II.
Trying to pick out a smartphone for someone for Christmas is a difficult task. There are now dozens of potential contenders, priced from free to hundreds of dollars. How can you pick out one that will delight your recipient and serve him or her well for years to come? OFB Labs has thoroughly tested ten of the most recent smartphone offerings from AT&T, Sprint and Verizon to help you sort out which are best for your gift giving this year – or for picking up as a gift to yourself with some Christmas money.
Verizon is on a bold streak. After launching the “There’s a Map for that” campaign squarely targeting what many would call Apple and AT&T’s key weakness – network reliability – the airwaves have now been covered by “iDon’t” ads that compare what the iPhone doesn’t do with what ”Droid does.” So, what does the Droid do and does it do it well? When the device launches tomorrow, do you want to be in line to buy one?
A year ago, page after page of ink was spilled by prophets of doom fretting about the iPhone and how it would surely not be as good as this or that other phone. It doesn’t have a keyboard! It can’t do voice over IP calls for really cheap international calling! It isn’t open enough to allow Quake to be installed on it! Oh, the humanity! A year later, were the critics right?