Mobile Purchases You Regret?

[jacktesterson]

I've never kept a phone longer than 6 months so its hard to tell

Nexus 4 will be my first exception - This is at least a 2 year keeper.

I've literally had 25 smartphones over the last 3 years and am constantly teased at work about it, but I think the best Smartphone I've owned (Besides the Nexus 4) was the HTC One X using the S4 Dual Core.
It still has the best screen out there in my opinion, had a very capable camera especially when software modded, and superb build quality. It's battery life was also top notch. The only thing that slightly held it back for some was 16GB of storage, but for me that's fine. (My nexus 4 is 16gb)

I really enjoyed the Note N7000 International Version. It was an all around excellent phone, just like the new Note II (Which I haven't owned yet and probably won't just because of my promise to keep the Nexus 4) The only negative on the original note was the AMOLED screen. This is just a personal preference, but I will take a Super LCD or IPS LCD screen anyday over Samsungs AMOLED screens.

I love everything about my Nexus 4, and with all the new color mods available, the IPS screen is top notch now. The only thing I would call a Negative about it is the Camera... man does Samsung and especially HTC have LG beat in the camera department. Even the 13MP version on the Optimus G sucks compared to the One X camera in my opinion.


The worst smartphone I ever bought? - The Iphone 4. It was was my first and only Iphone. iPhones are just not for me.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Thanks for the heads up. I need to break it down and see what is eating all the space I guess.

I had a similar problem with my jailbroken iPad 1. It seemed like I was missing a lot of space. I have a suspicion that some of those jailbroken apps just don't free up space like they should, even when removed. After I reset the iPad and reinstall most of the same apps without the jailbreak, I had significantly more space available.

I haven't bothered trying to jailbreak my iPad 3 or 4... which is fortunate since I'm not sure I could if I wanted (think last weekend an untethered iPad 4 jailbreak did come out that works as long as you installed the updates via iTunes and not OTA).

 

[Zaap]

4th gen iPod Touch, just because it had terrible battery life compared to the 3rd gen. Apple's priority on making everything thinner for leprechauns at the expense of battery life really showed on that one. It'd barely last a full day of normal use, whereas my 3rd gen still lasts several days at least. Ended up giving it away to my sister-in-law.

Other than that, a $6 no-name brand MP3 player. My wife needed something for audiobooks on while she works out without the bulk of an iPod or her iPhone, so I thought I'd get clever with a cheap-o. It didn't need stellar audio quality or features or anything; I figured even the cheapest knock off could do the most basic job of merely playing MP3 files. Of course it couldn't- sound sucked so bad it was unlistenable and it even managed to skip.

I know, I know, I should have known, but it was only $6 straight down a toilet. Ended up getting her a $30 Sansa Clip which works perfectly.

Other than those, happy with all our mobile purchases.

 

[poofyhairguy]

iOS 6.1 does have an untethered jailbreak (both my devices are running it). But, if it is primarily relegated for your wife's use, and she's happy enough, then leave it be and upgrade down the road as planned.

At the least, check out an app in the Cydia store called iCleaner if you're not already aware of it. It's like the iOS equivalent to windows disk cleanup.

Thank you for the great advice. This is why I love this forum.

 

[lopri]

Windows Mobile. Don't remember the versions but I bought into it twice (one Samsung and one Motorola? Not sure) and each time I was disillusioned.

 

[Sheep]

Windows Mobile. Don't remember the versions but I bought into it twice (one Samsung and one Motorola? Not sure) and each time I was disillusioned.

Never owned one but I still shudder at the incredible "WTF were they thinking?" decision to arrange apps in a hexagonal pattern instead of a square grid. Now THAT'S innovation!

 

[bearxor]

Never owned one but I still shudder at the incredible "WTF were they thinking?" decision to arrange apps in a hexagonal pattern instead of a square grid. Now THAT'S innovation!

That's basically some of the reason I left. I have the. A year after the iPhone was introduced and it was clear they had no interest in competing at all.

 

[KeithTalent]

No real smartphone purchases I regret; each Blackberry iteration I purchased I loved until it was time for a new one and I now absolutely love my upgrade to the Galaxy SIIX.

For non-smartphone gadgets, my 60GB Toshiba Gigabeat S was a huge waste of almost $500. Support was essentially non-existent from day one and while the device itself was nice enough, it broke down after not too long and Toshiba did not care in the slightest.

On a positive note I just found my old Zune and damn, I still love that device. I wish I still had use for a portable MP3 player because I love that thing.

KT

 

[foghorn67]

Worst. My VZW Moto Q. What a horrible phone. Hardware wasn't bad. Decent speakers, keyboard, etc. But good lord, the most horrible battery life of all time. It makes my LTE Galaxy Nexus look like a fuel sipper.

Best. OG Droid. Pure Google Experience, solid hardware, took a beating and still worked like a champ. Loved the resolution for the day, it was honestly more of an impact to me than Apple's 1st Retina device.

 

[ImDonly1]

Windows Mobile. Don't remember the versions but I bought into it twice (one Samsung and one Motorola? Not sure) and each time I was disillusioned.

At the time it was an OK phone, but compared to today's phones WM5/6 phones are awful (and no surprise smartphones weren't really popular then and as developed). Thankfully, WP8 is nothing like that and pretty good.

I had a TouchPro2, don't regret the purchase. I don't have any regretful mobile purchases. I always heavily research whatever I am buying.

 

[lopri]

I mean, each time the promise was the same. Seamless integration with desktop Windows.


My ass.

But I agree that Windows Phone 8 *looks* much better than Windows Mobile of the past.

 

[LtMikePowelll]

Worst - TMobile G2x

No update beyond Gingerbread, laggy, many cases of failures despite replacement from Tmobile.

Best - TMobile Note II and Galaxy Nexus

Note II: Fast, battery is awesome, big (easier to txt since my thumb is huge), multi-view, S-pen.

Galaxy Nexus: Stock Android, pentaband GSM world phone.

 

[shortylickens]

My very first. The motorola C333. Turned me off cell phones.

Later I got a Nokia and thought "dear god this is so awesome why doesnt everyone have these?"
Stuck with Nokias for a little while. Eventually went prepaid with Boost and got a really loud Motorola, I think it was the i415. Sucked as a phone but the loudspeaker would kill a grown man.

I've gone through a ton of phones over the years, done reviews on many of them here at Anandtech. Overall Nokias tend to be the most reliable with the best transcievers, their only problem is lack of features relative to everyone else. At least since the iPhone.
Before that they had features other companies took forever to get. Like mp3 playback, mp3 ringtones (which some phones still wont do), customizable menus and color schemes, and shit like that.

Motorolas have been overall the most disappointing over the years. They'll release one decent phone and then milk it to death and then a line of crap phones with a similar style, hoping you wont know the difference. After the Droid they had about 10 more similar devices all of which were meh in some way. Atrix was nice but had issues, Atrix 2 was nice but had different issues. Looks like things have changed since Google bought them and took over design. I think the RAZR had similar problems but I never owned one (one good phone, a slew of cheap knockoffs).

 

[shortylickens]

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/zoom.php?p=103&g=3

Mine was dark blue, but it had removable faceplates.
Only redeeming feature was the cool blue backlit screen, while others were still using a green sidelight. Nobody had color screens yet.

 

[gorcorps]

Worst:
Iconia a500 - it was simply too slow and clunky to be of much real use to me. Should have waited until android tablets got better.

Nook Color - got because I wanted a built in back light, and the idea of rooting it sounded nice. In practice it's too heavy to use as just a reader, and it's use as a tablet was hugely over exaggerated. Now that I have the nexus 7 I should sell it but I probably won't get enough to be worth it.

 

[MrX8503]

Worst: HTC EVO
The 30 fps cap along with a laggy OS made for a shit experience. That and battery life being horrible.

Best: iPhone 4
At the time, pretty groundbreaking design along with a quick OS.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Worst - Nook Color. As much as I liked it at first the performance was lacking and Gingerbread really didn't make a good tablet os.

Nook Color - got because I wanted a built in back light, and the idea of rooting it sounded nice. In practice it's too heavy to use as just a reader, and it's use as a tablet was hugely over exaggerated. Now that I have the nexus 7 I should sell it but I probably won't get enough to be worth it.

So two of yall think the Nook Color was a big mistake.

I guess I see it differently because I felt the Nook Color was a great introduction to Android for me. How useless it was by default forced you to ROM, and how open it was otherwise (and pretty fail-safe) allowed me to grow quickly in my Android competency when I was otherwise 100% iOS. It facilitated my switch to Android completely, and got me excited about mobile devices in a way my iPhones never could.

Nowadays I feel I still use the Nook Color fairly often because its screen is so nice, mostly as a portable media player and ironically enough as a book reader. I also feel with Opera Mobile it is a decent enough web browser- better than my Prime in some cases with its crappy wifi and IO performance.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

So two of yall think the Nook Color was a big mistake.

I guess I see it differently because I felt the Nook Color was a great introduction to Android for me. How useless it was by default forced you to ROM, and how open it was otherwise (and pretty fail-safe) allowed me to grow quickly in my Android competency when I was otherwise 100% iOS. It facilitated my switch to Android completely, and got me excited about mobile devices in a way my iPhones never could.

Nowadays I feel I still use the Nook Color fairly often because its screen is so nice, mostly as a portable media player and ironically enough as a book reader. I also feel with Opera Mobile it is a decent enough web browser- better than my Prime in some cases with its crappy wifi and IO performance.

My problem was I already had a Samsung Captivate which was basically unbrickable so modding the Nook Color wasn't much of of a novelty for me. Plus the OMAP 3 sOC just didn't have the horsepower to handle a 1024x600 screen, Opera Mobile was the only browser I considered usable on it with CM7 and even then it delivered much worse performance than the Touchwiz Froyo browser on my Captivate.

I haven't used my Nook at all since I got my Xyboard 8.2, the Xyboard is lighter, faster, has a better screen, and now that it's on ICS delivers a much more stable experience than the Nook ever did.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Signing with Sprint. Worst provider ever.

 

[poofyhairguy]

My problem was I already had a Samsung Captivate which was basically unbrickable so modding the Nook Color wasn't much of of a novelty for me. Plus the OMAP 3 sOC just didn't have the horsepower to handle a 1024x600 screen, Opera Mobile was the only browser I considered usable on it with CM7 and even then it delivered much worse performance than the Touchwiz Froyo browser on my Captivate.

Yeah, you are right about the SOC. I never bothered with ICS or whatever on there because I know that GPU can't handle actually being used.

 

[Sheep]

So two of yall think the Nook Color was a big mistake.

I guess I see it differently because I felt the Nook Color was a great introduction to Android for me. How useless it was by default forced you to ROM, and how open it was otherwise (and pretty fail-safe) allowed me to grow quickly in my Android competency when I was otherwise 100% iOS. It facilitated my switch to Android completely, and got me excited about mobile devices in a way my iPhones never could.

This is where I stand too. I tried a bunch of ROMs on the Nook and learned a lot about rooting/flashing processes. Sure the device is subpar by today's standards. Unless I'm misremembering, the Nook Color was the ONLY Android-capable device in its price class that didn't completely suck balls (e.g., cheap Chinese resistive screen junk); other 7" tablets from reputable manufacturers cost more and weren't nearly as hackable as the Nook. It was a competent machine for basic tasks like web, email and e-reader and even many games of the era.

 

[TuxDave]

Worst: The closest I have to a mobile-related bad purchase was the Dell Mini 9v. Netbooks made me adopt the "never buy first gen anything" rule.

I've only owned the iPhone 3G/3GS/4S and I'm very happy with all of them (and thank god I did a quick Craigslist sell + early upgrade from a 3G to 3GS. I played waaaay too many games on the 3GS)

 

[lord_emperor]

Every non-mainstream phone I've ever gotten for "free". My cheap flip-phones, Sony "touch" screen slide phones.

Bought a used iPhone 4 (no brand loyalty it was a good deal) and am so happy in comparison.

 

[swanysto]

Original Samsung Epic was a huge regret.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

probably the fact that I switched to a Nexus S and then an SGS2 in 9 months and then sent the SGS2 back for repair for 6 weeks, only to finally get it back in June 2012. And then 5 months later switch to a Nexus 4?

I do like the SGS2 as a spare phone, but somehow I think I would've survived with the Nexus S. It's just that the SGS2 was such a hit and so well received that I *had* to jump onboard.

In retrospect the development for Exynos was so terrible that the phone doesn't run well on CyanogenMod.