Help and advice for buying Android Phone.

[Retrovate]

Greetings all.

I am in the market for a new android Phone. What I need help with is some sort of website that does side by side comparisons allowing me to select Phone A then Phone B and do side by side comparisons of those 2 phones. I have done a little bit of googling around but cannot seem to find any that allow me to pick the phones.

Second of all, I am not sure about this whole unlocked business. I.e I will be running this phone as pay as you go and I am currently with 02 (United Kingdom) and have between 200-400 pounds to spend on the phone. What I am wondering is, if I buy an unlocked phone can I simply pop my SIM card in and it will work or is there something I am missing?

Any help advice on what phone to get would be nice, I will be using it mostly for development of apps, taking photos, using the wifi on it, watching videos etc.

Thanks in advance
James

 

[Cyber Warrior]

Not sure about your carrier but my phone doesn't use a sim card. You could always buy a global phone if you travel a lot. Try your carriers website, they should have an option for side by side comparisons.

 

[Retrovate]

I will look into global phone, I wont buy from my carriers website since they have a very limited selection.

Thanks!

 

[jdbower]

If you're in the UK you probably won't need to worry about a world phone, all of your phones are GSM and should work just about anywhere. As for a comparison tool, you can try this (and please play with the settings to see additional phones, a good choice that's missing is the Motorola Milestone):
Google Phone Gallery

An "unlocked" phone generally means you buy it and put your O2 SIM in and it will work just fine, but feel free to ask for confirmation since some people get a bit confused around smart phones with "unlocked" vs. "rooted" vs. "jailbroken" vs. whatever other terms are out there.

You may also want to check with O2 if this is your first smartphone, a lot of pay-as-you-go plans can have high data rates or not include data at all.