Mobile phones

[Steve1960]

I feel compelled to buy a mobile phone of some description. I have not owned a mobile phone for probably 10 years. The motivation is banking related, all the banks I use send one time passwords to my phone and using the company phone number is probably not a good idea long term.

My current company mobile is a Samsung Galaxy S2. I have used it to make and receive telephone calls, receive and very occasionally send text messages. My wife downloaded Viber for me which has been useful. Terms like 'Smart Phone' and Android Applications' generally float over my head.

I rarely ever use it for email as the small touch keypad infuriates me as I often type the wrong letters and don't notice until finishing a sentence. I rarely ever use the camera. I have a high end point and shoot digital camera which takes way better photographs and video than my wife's Samsung S3 does particularly in lower light with no flash.

However, I am strangely drawn to the technology like a Magpie to a sparkling necklace! I have been looking at the new Samsung Note 3. I do not need the phone to be particularly small in fact bigger would be better for me (particularly if the keypad is correspondingly bigger).

I don't like Apple products (with the exception of MAC computers). I was given an iPad 2 as a gift, now exclusively used by my daughter. I don't actually like the larger Tab's in general they seem to be neither a computer nor a usable size phone.

Given the right platform and product I would like to do email, word documents, spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations, read books, watch movies and video clips in addition to it being a phone.

I would appreciate suggestions and advice even if its just 'you are a dinosaur get yourself an abacus and stop bothering us'

[nakatago]

Wait for this: http://www.ubuntu.com/phone. It will let you dock the phone and get full PC functionality but no hardware vendor has step up yet.

That said, the tricky part is you wanting to do Word and Powerpoint. There are Android apps that supposedly can edit those but I'm not sure on how well they support MS' formats.

One way around that is to use Google Docs (now called Drive) where your files are all in Google's cloud. Microsoft's supposed to have MSOffice in the cloud as well but it's a separate product called Office365 (not sure about the compatibility with MSOffice). It has an Android app as well but not sure of how well it will let you edit your documents (NB: it's on iPhone as well but you said you don't like Apple products). It most probably is on Windows Phone as well but that platform doesn't have much apps.

EDIT: too lazy to rewrite: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/mobile/

[ScoobyDoes]

I have a Windows 8 Phone and it does all the email and document editing I need.

Since it's a Nokia the camera works great, even in low light.

The 1020 is launched here soon with a 41MP camera but, honestly, even the 8MP on my 920 can be really sharp with the right settings.

The slight downside at the moment is there is a limited amount of apps. Don't get me wrong, I have just about all I need but with HSBC, DBS and UOB all bringing out mobile apps OBLY for iOS and Android at the moment, there are quite a few useful ones I still need to wait for.

I got a Sony Tablet as a bank gift and honestly, I've not found a reason for using it yet between having a 'Smartphone' and laptop.