Poll: What kind of cell phone do you have?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599107

by ctingom • 17 years ago

10 48 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

larrykubin• 17 years ago

I have a prepaid from T-Mobile. A hundred bucks gets you 1,000 minutes that expire after 1 year. While the iPhone and Android are awesome, I don't really talk on the phone very much (was averaging 76 minutes a month) and would rather avoid monthly fees. I guess I'm cheap. I do have an iPod touch, which gets me many of the benefits of having an iPhone, but without the monthly fee. Most of the places I hang out have wifi and I save content for offline reading w/ Instapaper for bus trips.

mark-t• 17 years ago

Me too, but I use more like 20 minutes per month. (Seriously, who needs a phone? That's what the internet is for.) The great part is that I can buy $10 worth of minutes at the end of the year, and all my minutes last another year. So, after four years or so, I will have paid maybe $160 including the phone. You can't come close to that kind of deal with any other provider.

pmikal• 17 years ago

What? No Windows Mobile? There are more WinMo phones out there than any other smart phone.

_cbsz• 17 years ago

Would be nice to distinguish "smartphone" from "plain phone". I think this is a fairly unambiguous notion. Also, I already voted for "Other"; I think you're going to need a new poll.

axod• 17 years ago

I doubt amongst hackers.

markerdmann3• 17 years ago

The Nokia E71 is a dreamboat. I'm using it mainly for browsing, email, maps w/ gps, and ssh, but the call quality is amazing. Whereas in the past I would have to repeat myself at least once in every conversation, with the E71 I can rely on the fact that the person I'm talking to will hear what I'm saying.

Also, chicks dig it (when you're a programmer, you have to snatch those points wherever you can ;-).

iigs• 17 years ago

I got my wife a white E71. It's pretty rad: integration with my home asterisk server is neat. :)

Have you had any issues with the browser crashing? Ours tends to get confused when you go forward/back and occasionally I can find a reproduceable crash on certain web pages.

markerdmann3• 17 years ago

It's been stable so far, but I'm also using Opera Mini a lot.

statictype• 17 years ago

Its a good phone. The keyboard is great and the browser's pretty good too. The only two issues I have is that the Music Player is junk. It has a lot of features, but the implementation is poor. It's slow and prone to library corruptions and crashes.

And the camera is crap. I honestly think the 3.2MP rating on it is a printing error.

markerdmann3• 17 years ago

I completely agree with you about the camera, but so far I haven't noticed any slowness. The speed is actually what sold me on the E71 over the iPhone and G1, which both seemed too laggy.

samstokes• 17 years ago

Another E71 fan here. I don't like the Nokia Music Player either - I use Symbian OggPlay (which despite its name can play most audio formats) from http://symbianoggplay.sourceforge.net/.

I wonder how many of those "other" responses (the most popular choice as I write this!) are E71 owners.

abstractbill• 17 years ago

Blackberry. I would probably have an iphone, but there's absolutely no AT&T signal in our (San Francisco) apartment.

mshafrir2• 17 years ago

Blackberry Curve

JimmyL• 17 years ago

Nokia 63XX - a few hundred bucks unlocked off TigerDirect. Best non-smartphone I've ever had.

nx• 17 years ago

Nokia 1100.

mshafrir2• 17 years ago

http://www.slashgear.com/32k-nokia-1100-bought-for-online-ba...

csomar2• 17 years ago

i had one 5 years ago, they have good batteries, good for calling!

pavlov• 17 years ago

Btw, the Nokia 1100 is the best selling consumer electronics device ever -- they sold over 200 million units of this single model in 2003-2007.

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

You may want to consider a new poll, as you're missing a bunch of options. This is like asking people "What do hackers drive, Toyota, Renault, or other?"

nostrademons• 17 years ago

What, didn't you know that all real hackers drive Priuses? (Prii?) ;-)

gwc• 17 years ago

Toyota uses Prius as the plural of Prius, though apparently whatever you want to use is fine with them:

http://www.greenhybrid.com/wiki/index.php/Interview_with_Ed_...

bemmu• 17 years ago

iPhone, until I made the mistake of putting it in the same pocket with my keys.

ihartley• 17 years ago

Mine has lived in the same pocket as my keys for well over a year and has no scratches. Do you have unusually sharp keys or something?

huhtenberg• 17 years ago

Samsung Ultra 5.9. It is unbelievable how thin this thing is, and it can make phone calls :-)

pkaler• 17 years ago

Blackberry, Nokia & Windows Mobile should probably be added to this poll since they do have more market share than the iPhone depending on the part of the world. Although I do have an iPhone myself.

rms• 17 years ago

Samsung a900. It tethers and has the Gmail app/Opera Mini. I am stuck on Sprint because I have the best cell phone plan out of anyone reading this and I have seen no reason to upgrade phones. I am waiting for the Palm Pre.

gherlein• 17 years ago

Blackberry Bold

JacobAldridge• 17 years ago

I made the decision many years ago that I wasn't going to be able to keep up with all technology, and that mobile / cell phones was going to be an area I ignored.

I need a phone that makes phone calls and sms - anything else is superflous to my needs.

Boy, did I not see Smart phones coming! Why didn't I choose 'newspapers' as my 'safe to ignore' technology?

DTrejo• 17 years ago

Really bad phone, only good for calling.

imp• 17 years ago

Just some cheap clamshell phone.

jerf• 17 years ago

The crappiest phone I can get that is still a flip-top. When I want to actually do something, I use my laptop. I'm all laptop now.

I've seen iPhones and such of course, but for the most part they are still a gimmick to me. The only thing I've seen people use them for that I actually go "hey, that's neat" is whipping it out and lunch and using Wikipedia, which remains something I can live without.

I plan to change my mind when I can have an iComputer that travels in my pocket by day with a cut-down mobile interface, but when I place it in my laptop chassis suddenly acquires a full keyboard and screen. This is many years off, so by the time that happens the iComputer will be more powerful than what I'm using now.

This seems to put me in a geek minority. I freely acknowledge the right of other people to have other priorities, but in general, sinking that much money into a cell phone and expensive data plan seems to be a waste if you look at how most people use it. (There are some exceptions I can think of who really do use their iPhone quite a lot, but they are the exceptions.) I'd rather sink the cash into a laptop.

I've had Palm Pilots and other pocket computers, and while I know that's not the same, I ended up with the same problem, so I stopped using them. For the money, they really aren't that cost-effective for most people. If you're an exception, you know who you are.

ori_b• 17 years ago

I was working at RIM last summer as a co-op student, and I had a free blackberry. At the end of the summer, I returned it and went back to my old plain flip-phone which does nothing but phonecalls and text messages.

The only thing I find I miss about the blackberry is the ability to look things up online while I'm on the road. Something that certainly isn't worth hundreds of dollars per year difference.

sjs382• 17 years ago

I use the cheap/free one provided by my carrier (some Audiovox junk) but I make TONS of use of SMS and Twitter-based apps. Might explain my obsession with SMS and Twitter-based apps, I guess. :)

kapitti• 17 years ago

Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and a Treo - we do a lot of mobile development.

bmunro• 17 years ago

Some cheap Nokia, it doesn't even have a product number on it.

Cost A$29, makes phone calls and sends sms.

paulgb• 17 years ago

Cheap LG here. $15 new, no contract.

csomar2• 17 years ago

Other, I have Nokia and they are quite popular here

godDLL• 17 years ago

I have an iPhone for a portable palmtop computing thingey. The cellphone function if deliberately turned off.

I had four different cellphones in the last four years. All of them started misbehaving two months into usage, I used to always forget them at places, or forget to take the phone with me, or to charge it. None of them were any good for making or taking calls, gave me a headache, and all of them eventually ended up in pieces after being thrown into a wall.

1) AIM: "Check your mail."

2) Gmail: "Turn on your phone."

3) On the phone: "Get online, will ya? I need you now."

4) Phone goes into wall. With a fair amount of force.

Don't have a phone anymore, and not planning on having one ever. That tech don't work out for me.

chops• 17 years ago

I've sported a Palm Treo for the past 3 years. First it was the Treo 700p, and now a Treo 755p. I used to develop palm-based apps about 6-7 years ago, and enjoyed it. I always liked the simplicity of the palm interface, and while it's fully dated now, it's holding me over until the Pre comes out.

I tried a WinMo phone with a slide-out keyboard about two years ago and found it fully awful, and switched back to my 700p (to wait until the 755 was released).

I was one of the many who was assuming Palm was going to fail before it released it's new OS. I'm so excited for the Pre.

This survey is missing a huge option: Blackberry.

stanleydrew• 17 years ago

I got an Android G1 from a Googler friend after Google dumped them on all its employees as a Christmas bonus and tons of people wanted to unload. No contract, unlocked phone, so I could have gone with ATT if I didn't hate them so so much. The best part is that I can go pretty much anywhere in the world and just pop in a sim card and it works (already tested in South Africa).

khandekars• 17 years ago

Fly DS400, the nice thing is that it can hold two SIM cards.

sherl0ck• 17 years ago

still has my old siemens M55. that thing is really hard to break though :)

furyg3• 17 years ago

Nokia 1600:

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1600-pictures-1188.php

It has more features than I'd like.

p47• 17 years ago

All android phones for now. Samsung I700, G1 and still waiting for G2 :/.

G1 is my fav.

nailer• 17 years ago

iPhone now but wife has Android and I'm intending to switch.

I move between countries for extended periods (the US, UK, Australia) and Apple has absolutely raped me for updates and activation. I'm a paid customer, I shouldn't need to crack my phone to use it.

christofd• 17 years ago

Where's Blackberry on this list??? Blackberry Pearl for me. Black. Slim. Browser/ Camera/ Music/ Video.

I'd probably add an iPod Touch long term as well, for the things a Blackberry doesn't do that well (until Blackberry finally gets a decent Browser app).

barredo• 17 years ago

Nokia N81!

dctoedt• 17 years ago

Blackberry 8700c purchased three years ago, still going strong.

Poll: What kind of cell phone do you have?

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