Help choosing a smartphone

When I changed my car last May I bought one with a pile of buttons on the steering wheel, I then replaced the radio for a DAB unit with Bluetooth so any radio adjusting or call receiving can be done without letting go of the steering wheel.

Martin P.

Gary,

Many thanks for that.

Regards Tom

My phone becomes part of the car interface but I still find it very distracting to make or receive a call although hands free is perfectly legal. The nice thing about riding a motorcycle is that distractions are minimised, nobody is talking to you, no radio or music, no phone just 100% focus on riding. The great pleasure of motorcycling is that you and the machine work as one, feedback from the road the weather the machine are much more direct than being sat in a car insulated from the outside world.

Mike

Just been through this myself. I've seperated the problem into two parts - the phone and the service contract. Three are charging me £12 a month for 12GB of data + unlimited text and calls. So stopped using the house phone for outbound calls. See how much you spend on outbound calls to get the overall cost difference. I 've had the phone for a couple months or so and no matter how hard I use the phone, I haven't managed to use 5GB in a month, so 12GB is equivalent to "unlimited" in my case!

Next problem is then the phone itself. Samsung are fantastic phones, my wife has had them for along time. However, the latest Samsung is £750!!! Not happening. We now have three different Motorola phones in the family and all are good. They are built by Lenovo who have a good reputation. Two of the three were bought as special offers from Carphone Warehouse, service is great and they are easy to deal with. The third was bought from an online outfit offering the phone Moto X4 as the sharpest price, but rapidly turned into a nightmare which took weeks to sort out.

Reading your post, sounds like the X4 (with its 3 cameras and all metal case) is too big and heavy - albeit fantastic value for money. Take a look at a Motorola G5Plus, still big but lighter and it will give you a starting point. It's the right sort of processor and memory capacity to provide at least say 3 years usage before obsolence kills it.

https://www.carphonewarehouse.com/motorola/moto-g5-plus.html#!colour=grey&capacity=32GB&dealType=sf

Whatever phone you go for, do check/challenge the processor as this will determine longevity and the satisfaction you get from using it. Just like driving an underpowered car is a constant source of frustration.

Not having had my own smartphone before, I've been amazed at the huge volume of free and useful applications in the playstore.

Steve

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I agree 100%, Mike ... The legislation is nonsensical. ... Driving is Driving

There's an advert on TV [ FIAT, I think ] promoting an Apple iOS interface, to allow ypu to use the car's display for any of your Apps.

The mind boggles.

MichaelG.

I felt sorry for the poor *** on a scooter doing about 15mph through a blizzard and 2" of snow last night - bet he felt in contact with the weather

Neil

The trouble starts if you need to stop for a pee, cold weather shrinkage can make life difficult

Mike

I rode through about 40 winters and only started to take the car after a splat on black ice which hurt a bit made me think that what you shrug off in your 20s takes a bit longer in your 50s. I remember going to the 21st Dragon Rally in Snowdonia and camping in the snow, must have been mad.

Mike