Smartphone folderol

[rebeccmeister]

I'm a bit terrified of what might happen if I bring this up, but it's going to happen sooner or later, so I'd best buck up and get over it, I suppose.

I'm smartphone shopping.

My main goal is to consolidate multiple gadgets into one thing (see: previous entry and "unitaskers"). For instance: I've been reasonably satisfied with my Canon Powershot A620, but I keep dropping it*. Ideally, I'd wind up with a smartphone with a non-obnoxious camera that provides some degree of manual control, reasonable image quality, and adequate macro photos.

Another thing, though, is that I still feel strongly about open-source software, so scrottie got me looking at the current main Firefox option, the ZTE Open C. I explicitly do not want to be syncing my computer to a phone, and I don't like what's happened with Apple and its "App Store" nonsense and Google and its Googly-eyed junk.

Anyway, blargh. I will probably be stuck in "decision paralysis" for a while longer yet. Or perhaps I will go back to drawing more pictures of things, and writing more letters, casting off the electronics entirely.


*This is kind of a critical thing, actually. I drop my phone on a regular basis. I drop the camera less frequently, but I still drop it. Shortly after our house was burgled, sytharin gave me a small point-and-shoot digital camera to replace the Canon PowerShot A80 that had broken and then gotten burgled (take that, stupid burglars! Seriously, they stole multiple broken electronics. Joke was on them, for being my electronics recyclers). A week later, I dropped it and it died. The PowerShot A620 is battered, but has survived a lot of dropping trauma. My current cell-o-phone also survives the droppings very well indeed. Also, I hate fussing with specialized battery systems - the PowerShot uses rechargeable AA's.

Comments

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

Ideally, I'd wind up with a smartphone with a non-obnoxious camera that provides some degree of manual control, reasonable image quality, and adequate macro photos.

Both Nokia and Samsung make cameraphones. Those are likely to be your best bets for control and image quality. I know little more about them, since I have a couple of iFoos and Way Too Much camera stuff.

You might be able to find shock-reducing cases for cameraphones that will make them less sensitive to being dropped. The basic problem for anything camera-like is that the fancier the optics, the more stuff in them can get busted (knocked out of alignment) by impact.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

So here comes my technological ignorance - with either option, I'd basically be running Android, which means I'm leashed to stuff that passes through Google?

Android's source code is released by Google under open source licenses, although most Android devices ultimately ship with a combination of open source and proprietary software.

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

Yup, they're both Android phones. I don't think there's any need to interact with Google beyond buying it, though. I'd also be surprised if nobody has a large distribution that replaces all the proprietary code with open sores code.

[ivy]

Unless you go Blackphone, yes. But I don't know much about their hardware capabilities/dropping resistance. (I am buying one, though.)

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Hmm, fancy! I suppose that, no matter what I wind up doing, I'm going to wind up using somebody else's software, which means it will be useful in some regards and sucky in other regards. The model of paying directly for something has much to recommend it, though, over getting something "free" but with data-snooping strings attached.

FWIW...

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

Nokia's Lumia 1020 has an impressively large sensor and a huge number of pixels (41Mpix). I mention it because its camera is pure "digital zoom", that is, it simply crops out smaller and smaller hunks of the image to give the impression of a zooming out. That means the optical train has only one moving part (the focusing lens) and so should be relatively resistant to being dropped.

Digital zoom usually gives awful results, but because this camera has so many pixels, it should work reasonably well. Even a 2x "digital zoom" still leaves a ~10Mpix image. By comparison, my current "serious" camera has 16Mpix, and I managed perfectly well with a 12Mpix DSLR for some years.

[evaleastaristev.livejournal.com]

Whatever phone you go with, pay the extra for a really good case. I've dropped my current phone (Galaxy S3) more times than I care to count, and it would be broken to pieces by now without the beefy case I've got it wrapped in.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Duly noted! I know I already drop a lot of things expensively, so this is definitely on the list.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I love it that they stole broken phones.
If someone ever breaks in here, the first two laptops they'll see are both complete basket cases, with laundry lists of problems.