You want stock android or something that can be rooted to run a custom rom similar to stock android like cyanogenmod. A lot of the carrier and manufacturer customizations suck ass. Android at its core is a great OS, but it can turn into a mess when it gets loaded down with crapware.
something with an oem overlay might do bfun some good. he's so behind the times that he even thinks the blackberry is the best thing in the world. a no brainer suggestion to him would be the gsm galaxy nexus from the google play store for rock bottom $350, but he's on verizon.
LOL "gsm". Pervs. What about hardware? And I'm not Carrier specific but it will probably be Virgin or Tmobile.
Price generally determines the hardware like how chi said in one word. The processors are a long ass explanation but if you buy a flagship phone from any manufacturer now, it'll be a beast. Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (Krait) -> Samsung Galaxy S III (North America), HTC One X or One S (US) The international version of the HTC One X uses nvidia's Tegra 3 which the krait performs closely to, even in gpu performance. The international version of the Galaxy S III uses samsung's own soc which is the exynos 4412, and it uses mali gpu which demolishes all of the competition. That's basically it for the current soc's. The new cortex a15 processors and qualcomm's upgraded snapdragon s4 should be out later this year and you can expect them to have a decent boost in performance, especially in the gpu department. Truthfully though, if you don't play games, you may not even see a difference. I watched a side by side video of the international galaxy s II next to the galaxy s III. The reviewer did day to day tasks, even ran gta3, and there was no noticeable difference. Motorola tends to use TI's omap processors. For displays, you have LCD and OLED screens. I, myself, am an amoled guy. I really really like pure blacks. But it is said that the HTC One X has the best looking display out in the market now (by reviewers). It's a 1280x720 LCD display. If you get a phone, get one with at least 1GB of ram. Storage-wise, this is all up to you. But do realize that not all android phones have micro-sd slots. Generally , the rule of thumb with android devices with the advertised internal strorage is to subtract 2GB from it. 2GB of the storage is reserved for the system and apps. So a device saying that it has 16GB of internal storage will have ~14GB available for you to do as you please. A smartphone camera is a smartphone camera. That is all. Not all android phones have removable batteries. As far as your carriers, T-Mobile is a gsm carrier, so you can bring your own device if you wanted to. Just keep in mind that you'd want a pentaband phone if you're getting a non-tmobile branded device to make use of their hspa+ network. For Virgin Mobile, they're an mvno so they use Sprint's towers and you can't bring your own device (you have to use a virgin mobile phone). Sprint's 3G is as slow as armadeadn trying to learn PC stuff. They recently just acquired the right to use Sprint's wimax network so that gives you some decent speed, assuming you're in a wimax coverage area. It's a very small footprint so you'll have to find out. There's only two phones currently that use wimax on virgin mobile.. the LG Optimus Elite and the HTC Evo V (rebadged HTC EVO 3D). I would consider the Optimus Elite as low end and the EVO V as mid/low end.
Is this for you or your wife? Or someone ELSE? If it's your wife, you should just get an iPhone now. Didn't you have some antics with an android tablet a while back and ended up buying an iPad anyway? If it's for you, what the HELL is going on? You've only just got that blackberry thing. If it's for someone else then e-mail me their CV and a short cover letter.
Android is a poor choice for people who aren't tech savvy. Most women are retards when it comes to technology. Also, I think women are drawn to the fashion accessory nature of Apple products. They market their stuff very similar to makeup or high-end handbags. My wife was curious about the Galaxy S3, and I pretty much told her that she's too dumb for Android. Android is geared more towards smart manly men who want something that's a tool instead of a toy. iPhone is for hipsters, dumbasses, and girls. LOL.
If it's for the wife then the Samsung Galaxy SIII should do the trick. Pretty much top of the line specs wise plus it's all smooth and curvy, like woman like. The touchwiz UI is pretty easy to use.
@chi: that sounds like an expensive gamble to me. I'd always recommend an iPhone if you can afford it and the lack of nerd custom options isn't a problem.
wtf, you made me type all of that for no reason? if she wants an iphone, get her an iphone. no need to push her into something she didn't really want in the first place. and since she wants an iphone, tmobile will be out of the the picture. and i hope you realize you will be paying for the iphone in full on virgin mobile. it's $550 for the iphone 4 8GB and $650 for the iphone 4s 16GB. no 4G wimax with that one. http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp?tab=tab2
Yes, but we all know you're almost as tech nooby as armadeadn. An iphone is the simplest option but the ability to have an animated dandelion on one's homescreen is not to be sniffed at. @bfun As long as your wife isn't over 60, senile or monsly, she should have no problems using an SIII. I know a 4 year old who is able to use the old SII and find and play her favourite video. Repeatedly. All the time. Every day... It's this, by the way. http://youtu.be/BA7fdSkp8ds This exact video... Awesome dubbing.
Anything but an iPhone won't end well. Normal people don't give a flying fuck about Android, it's a fact. A SENSIBLE FACT AS WELL.
I never noticed that they kept the original korean in the Honey song JYP's singing in the beginning rather than dubbing that too... But yes, I know a bunch of girls who use android phones just fine and none are really tech savvy. They may not be able to figure out things like replacing the launcher, changing the tts voice, etc, but that's some more obscure stuff anyways that other os's don't even have the ability to do.
Google just announced 400 million android devices activated and they're now at 1 million activations daily.
I don't think you can draw a direct correlation between the number of Android devices and Android's actual popularity with customers. Customer satisfaction ratings should be higher if it were.
Aren't Android phones very popular with the networks too? I often see lots of cheap deals that include some sort of Android monstrosity. I think price is what attracts people rather than anything else.