Buying a New Android Phone Soon

[aGENT]

Most of the time I'm in Vancouver. But I've been to Surrey/Burnaby/Coquitlam and my phone still worked fine.

Most of the issues I've heard with them is if you get out of down town and head out to the less densely populated areas of the burbs, the valley etc. If that's not a concern for you (or Jester) than by all means...

[The Bookie]

I've been using Virgin for approx. 4 years now, no real complaints. Coverage is as good, sometimes better than the other carriers especially if you're ever up in Northern BC. Customer service is hit or miss I'd say - actually the service itself is pretty good, they're usually helpful and easy to talk to, fairly laidback. But sometimes I've wound up on hold for a half hour or so trying to get through to a rep. I advise against calling in the late afternoon/evening.

I like that it's really easy to change my plan with them - maybe it's that easy with all the carriers nowadays, but I remember it being a huge pain with Fido back around 2005. I changed it with Virgin a couple of times in the past year, just trying to experiment and get my bills down, each time it was as painless as logging in on their site and going through the steps, then after my next bill I'd be on the new plan. Got my bill down by an average of 20$/month now.

[etsen3]

I have the S3, great phone, I'm sure you can find lots about it.

Must have apps: Most of my most used apps are social media (FB, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.) Other than that I would highly recommend Shazam (if you haven't heard of it already). I also use theScore Mobile for sports updates, and Bleacher Report TeamStream notifies you about news from your favourite teams. Also if you're into fitness I highly recommend MyFitnessPal.

[aGENT]

Just got an email from Telus the S4 is on for $49 this weekend only FWIW.

[Pouria]

Nexus is where its at. My Nexus 4 already has the 4.4 KitKat update which is a major update. Got the transparent bars, Google Launcher Experience, cloud print, new dialler (with local search functionality), new Google now with new voice activation (just say OK Google and say your command) etc. This is way better than iPhone. You can get the new Nexus 5 or the Moto X which are both google phones that will get the fastest updates. Moto X is unique due to its customization and the fact that it has a chip with voice activation where you can just say a command even if the phone is in sleep mode/screen is turned off.

[Jester13]

You may want to re-read the Wireless Code (http://www.crtc.gc.c...nfo_sht/t13.htm) as it specifically states it applies to new contracts starting December 2 and contracts that are amended or extended after that date. If you have a current contract with time still remaining (and haven't amended or extended it after December 2), it doesn't allow you to just get out of the contract without cancellation fees.

Even still, with new or amended/extended contracts there are still early cancellation fees that are applicable but are now related to the subsidy you received when getting your phone. That decreases through your contract until it reaches $0 at the end of the term. If you didn't get a subsidized phone then there may be an early cancellation fee still, but it's setup differently.

But on the subject of Android phones, I'm very happy with my HTC One. I'm a tech guy, but haven't every really felt the need to root my phones, so if you aren't comfortable doing it yourself or willing to pay someone else to there's probably not much of a reason to really bother. The HTC One and the Nexus 5 have the same battery size, so if you aren't expecting to be a really heavy user you'll be fine for just charging while you sleep.

I love the Google swype keyboard that's already been mentioned (and there are other options for keyboards too). It's not something everyone thinks about being able to upgrade and I recommend trying it since you can also just type normally on it. I use OneNote for memos, lists, etc., but everything else is mainly just whatever is important to you.

I had a feeling that I was misinterpreting the new rules. I feel like I read somewhere that it would apply to plans, even the three year ones, already signed into, but I am def wrong. It only means that three year plans will be non-existent, as providers would kind of be silly to offer their three year plan/deals while allowing people to get out without penalty.

I'm still probably going to cancel my Bell plan, even though I only have six more months until it's done. The amount of money I can save with our two cells by switching to Virgin makes up for the six month cost.

[Butters Stoch]

The complaints about battery life in reviews scared me too but after a week of using it, I'm actually ok with it. I've gotten about 11-12 hours/day on average with moderate-heavy usage (3.5hours screen on time, GPS, lots of browsing) and on days with average usage (2 hours screen on, texts here and there, little bit of browsing) easily over 15 hours. My only complaints are the slow focus on the camera and the speaker volume/quality isn't that great but I'm starting to think I got a defective one speaker because others have said that it's great. For rooting, there should be tons of videos on youtube that'll show you step by step.

[TheHitman]

I hope you update the OP with a bunch of good apps

[Denguin]

Don't have an Android, so not quite sure how it works... But does anyone have a use for some Google Play credit?

[elvis15]

I had a feeling that I was misinterpreting the new rules. I feel like I read somewhere that it would apply to plans, even the three year ones, already signed into, but I am def wrong. It only means that three year plans will be non-existent, as providers would kind of be silly to offer their three year plan/deals while allowing people to get out without penalty.

I'm still probably going to cancel my Bell plan, even though I only have six more months until it's done. The amount of money I can save with our two cells by switching to Virgin makes up for the six month cost.

It's possible you save more by switching early still, so if you've weighed that in then good enough.

[ovechkinisgod]

For android phones, in terms of hardware I would go with the LG G2 over the Nexus 5 any day. Processor is just as quick, better camera, better screen, better battery. The only thing it loses to the Nexus 5 over is software. Currently no kitkat update, but that's something that will come out eventually

[Pouria]

For android phones, in terms of hardware I would go with the LG G2 over the Nexus 5 any day. Processor is just as quick, better camera, better screen, better battery. The only thing it loses to the Nexus 5 over is software. Currently no kitkat update, but that's something that will come out eventually

LG is the worst when it comes to software updates and their quality or reliability has always been shady (although am not sure about the quality of the new phones they are churning out). I would go with Moto X, but the camera really sucks on it. Although I have heard about LG G2 being one of the best android phones out there but the software updates really make you hesitant to buy one.

[Pouria]

Don't have an Android, so not quite sure how it works... But does anyone have a use for some Google Play credit?

• 
  10 things you (and maybe Google!) didn't know Google Wallet can do
  
  Tags: Contactless / NFC, Mobile/Digital Wallet, Restaurants, Retail, Trends / Statistics September 11, 2012 - Einar Rosenberg
  

On a normal business day I probably have a meeting or call with at least half a dozen companies, and the first thing they think of when I mention NFC is mobile payments. More specifically, they always correlate Google Wallet with NFC. Recently, I was in a meeting and an executive interrupted me midsentence and said, "NFC is Google Wallet and the Google Wallet is useless. Name me three things about the Google Wallet that are innovative or useful."

Even though I think mobile payments is less than 1 percent of what NFC can do, Google did something right with the recent update of the Google Wallet: it opened up a lot of usability and capability improvements. That meant I was able to name 23 things for that executive – and I don’t even work for Google!

Considering I have lived and breathed mobile payments and NFC for over a decade, and create this type of stuff for companies, it wasn’t that hard for me to come up with them either. I’m wired to see challenges as opportunities for new solutions, and that executive challenged me. So here are just 10 of the concepts and capabilities I came up with. First, I'll start with things that Google may not even realize its Google Wallet can do today.

(In case you're wondering, I actually built rough prototypes of each of these examples. They're more than concepts; they're real. And the prototypes only took about three hours to build.)

Google Wallet can buy you tickets from a movie poster, and Fandango doesn’t even realize they can do it, today.

Since the beginning of NFC, the scenario of buying a ticket to a movie by tapping a movie poster has been used as a prime example of the technology's potential. As yet I haven’t seen any huge commercial deployments, but the funny thing is Fandango can do it tomorrow. I went to Fandango’s mobile website and selected the option to buy a ticket for a specific movie and time. Fandango, of course, accepts Google Wallet. So I took the URL for the movie and time and wrote it onto an NFC tag using Samsung TecTiles. It was that easy.

Surprisingly, I bet Fandango, Regal Cinema and Google have yet to implement what took about 30 seconds. With very little time (and a tiny budget) there could be an NFC-enabled Fandango mobile app.

Google Wallet can work in most Square retailers, using an iPad, today.

This one was a bit fun, since it uses an iPad from Google's good friends at Apple, and makes them get along – well, kind of. Using Google Wallet's in-app payment functionality, I made the app recognize what’s called "intent." That just means that if the phone reads a specific NFC app, it will launch it. I put that tag on a Square card reader. Acting as a "merchant," I was able to access a sample Google Merchant Account via a browser on an iPad. With a little creative web service to make everything play nice, I was all set.

At that point I was able to create a charge for a hypothetical customer, who then then could tap an NFC-enabled phone running Google Wallet to the NFC tag right on the Square card reader. The phone then showed up a payment request, and it used Google Wallet to pay. The merchant account showed via the web that the transaction was completed.

Congrats to Apple and Google for finally getting along.

Google Wallet can let you shop in the aisles of Walmart or Target, and have it shipped instantly to your home, today.

Another use case I’ve heard for years is taking an NFC phone to a store, tapping a tag on a product or shelf, and buying the product either to take out of the store or ship to an address. This isn’t a new thing. At a conference in Germany nearly a decade ago I spoke about this use case. It's called VISO, or virtual in-store ordering.

I tried this out in both Target and Walmart and it wasn’t hard to do. Google Wallet isn’t available at either store, but Paypal is available in their online store. It wouldn’t be hard for Google Wallet to be added in that mix. To do it, I simply found the product I wanted, got to the checkout screen, took that URL and wrote it to an NFC tag using NXP’s TagWriter. I was then able to tap my Samsung Galaxy SIII to the tag, and since the site had my info and address, I was able to order the item and pay for it with a tap and two clicks. They have everything to do it today in both Walmart and Target and the tags with appropriate URLs could be deployed immediately.

Google Wallet can let you pay someone, from your phone to their phone with a tap, today.

Person-to-person payments have been talked about for a long time. I’ve even seen offerings from Paypal and Intuit. Recently, Robin Dua from Google Wallet had mentioned this was one aspect that was coming to Google Wallet. The thing is, if you want to do it today it’s already there. Using Google Beam, all I had to do was have two phones with NFC share a URL. I had one phone open a Google Wallet payment link then tap the other phone; the link was shared. The second phone then used Google Wallet to pay. It wasn’t too complicated and used functions that are all available today.

Google Wallet can let you pay at the table in a Restaurant, today.

One of my favorite examples of NFC that people always talk about is paying at the table via NFC. For this concept I also used Google Wallet's in-app billing and an Apple laptop. (I figured I should throw Apple into this scenario just in case we find out later this week that it's the only company on the planet not doing NFC.)

With the basic app and some functionality from my own company Narian (nothing complicated) I put an NFC tag on a check presenter, the leather portfolio you get at restaurants with your bill. On the Mac I had a simple site using Google Wallet and a dash of web service "magic." (Again, nothing complicated.) On the phone I used the app to define which table and selected Google Wallet to process the payment. I put in an amount to bill on the site, linked it to the hypothetical table in my hypothetical restaurant, and with a tap of the phone on the NFC-tagged check presenter I paid for my hypothetical meal.

It would take about two to four weeks to create a fully commercial-ready version to use in a real restaurant.

Android phones can work via NFC with Starbuck’s current mobile payments, if they wanted to, today.

This use case isn’t specific to Google Wallet, but I thought it was interesting to try it out. Starbucks has had mobile payments for nearly two years. Its app uses 2D barcode readers from Honeywell, and a very nice mobile payments app created by my friends at mFoundry.

So how did I NFC-enable the Starbucks mobile payment app? It turns out that this particular barcode reader has a great many ways to connect to a point-of-sale, including things like USB, keyboard wedge, etc. I took a comparable barcode reader, and an NFC reader, and plugged them into a USB splitter. I then used a very simple program to convert a 2D barcode into NFC. The information sent to the POS was the exact same. The POS didn’t know the difference since the NFC phone was transmitting the same data as the barcode. My total cost? About $50 and 20 minutes of my time.

The use cases above required some time and effort to make them work, but here are some things that Google Wallet already does (that Google really should be telling people about!)

Two taps of your phone and you’re done.

I’m still surprised as to how many people don’t know this when using Google Wallet. You don’t have to go find the Google Wallet icon in your phone to use it. We have dozens of apps on our phones. Those precious seconds to go find an app make people less likely to use Google Wallet. But NFC gives you the ability to recognize which app to use, in what I like to call "the double tap process." That way, when you get to the POS, you just turn on your phone screen and tap it to the POS terminal. The phone recognizes that you will be using Google Wallet and pops up the pin screen. Then you simply tap again and pay.

Personalization

Another thing I’m surprised Google doesn’t mention is how the wallet can be easily personalized. People know the cards in their wallet based on a name, logo or color. We don’t sit there and read the credit card number each time we pull it out of our wallets. I have a few cards in my Google Wallet. One is specific for personal and the other is for business. My real world business card is light blue. My real world personal card is bright red. So that I don’t mix up which card I use, I named my business card and made it blue. I also named my personal card and made it Red. Most people don’t realize they can name their cards and make them the color they want to more easily visualize which card they want to use.

This might sound like a tiny thing, but personalization is key to our lives today, especially with technology. How often do you see a phone with a distinct wall paper or cover or ringtone? People like to make things look and feel like it's their own. The wallet is no different and even small capabilities like personalizing a wallet should be promoted better by Google – and probably expanded further. If I can make my wallet look and work like I want it to, and do it easily, then it creates a higher value to me.

Smarter feedback makes mobile payments better (though you do have to get off your duff and help)

The other day I went to a gas station and tried using the Google Wallet. Unfortunately, the terminal was broken. I had to swipe my card instead of tapping my phone. I’ve seen numerous videos and articles of people experiencing the same thing and saying that the Google Wallet "doesn't work."

How about the option to be a part of the solution? When I finished my transaction, I went back to my Google Wallet, and after pressing settings, a pop up window for feedback came up. By using the feedback selection, I told Google that the specific terminal is broken. Google could then help make sure the terminal gets fixed instead of letting the problem linger.

Most people do nothing, and weeks or months could go by before anyone tells the retailer the terminal is broken. Google Wallet makes it easy to take two clicks worth of time to report a problem.

Digital receipts let you know right away if someone has stolen your credit card.

Digital receipts are another feature not limited to Google Wallet, since most major banks can automatically send you a digital receipt to your email or as a text message. But Google Wallet makes it easy to set up. It works like this: let's say I’m in New York in Central Park and some thief steals my credit card info and buys a TV in Chicago. In the old days, that thief could probably continue buying stuff and I’ wouldn’t know for 30 days until my credit card bill showed up. With Digital Receipts I’d know in seconds. And then I could call the card company.

The funny thing is, that exact scenario happened to me and I was able to stop the fraud in minutes.

Google Wallet today is in version 1.5 as I recall. With the new update, we now have dozens of new features, and hundreds of possible ways to use it. As it develops, we’ll see more and more ideas and capabilities for Google Wallet. It will require innovative entrepreneurs, and companies that better promote its capaabilities, to give us a great mobile payment experience and new ways to benefit from the possibilities that mobile payments offer.

In the coming weeks and months even more new mobile wallets are coming out. And these wallets have many of the same capabilities. Its time we realize that mobile payments via NFC can be jump-started today with little effort, and offer lots of possibilities.

[Butters Stoch]

^

Can you actually apply play store credits to that stuff? I thought that Google Wallet just charges your credit card.

[MoneypuckOverlord]

Note 3 was free on a 2 year contract yesterday apparently at Samsung store.

[NightHawkSniper]

A Sony Xperia was what I was going to go with, unfortunately Virgin doesn't offer any of the models better than the SP, which is a decent phone, only it has some downfalls like the screen quality outdoors.

Definitely going to check out that Veggie App ha!

And, Aladeen, Wind Mobile's deals are insane! For $38/month you can get unlimited pretty well everything! Too bad I live in Victoria:(

Thanks for the insight everyone!

I could've sworn when I was in Victoria that I had a Home signal from there as well.

[forever_hope]

iPhone fanboys stay away, you are not welcome in this thread!

Firstly, I might as well try to clarify with you all the new CRTC rules which are apparently starting this upcoming Monday, Dec. 2nd, I sure hope that what I have read is correct... it looks as though the three year contracts are no more and anyone can cancel without cancellation fees after two years, even if you are signed on for three years for the time being (which I currently am). I hope this truly is the case because I hate my phone and have been uber excited for a new contract/provider and phone.

As for my new phone... I have decided to go with the new Nexus 5. I'm a student and don't want to afford the ridiculous rates the other big providers are offering. With the plan that I want through Virgin I can only get the Nexus 5 and am not allowed to sign on with other high-end phones that I would've liked such as the HTC One or the Samsung. After doing some research, however, I am pretty excited about the new Nexus 5, even with certain areas where it lacks ie. the camera, it does not bother me because I have a pretty good Nikon dslr that I use for photography.

I am a little concerned about the battery life, though. Since I am going to have a much better phone than I ever have, I would quite like to get into using some cool apps and maybe play a golf game or two on it, but the battery power apparently sucks, so I'm a little concerned. I have never watched movies on a phone before, but I wouldn't mind the option of doing so while I'm on the bus to school without having to worry about it dying on me early in the day.

I noticed online people talking about rooting and kernels, but I am not that tech savvy and I have no idea how to do these things, but apparently something called Faux Kernel can improve the battery life exponentially by 'clocking' ?? One guy even mentioned a way to improve the camera app on the Nexus 5 so that it works much better too, but, again, "whaaaaaaat?" \_(o_O)_/

On to my questions:

1) Anyone know much about such things as 'rooting' or 'kernels' and how difficult it is to use/install into the phone? I don't need to get too crazy with it, I just want to improve the battery life, really, although I would be interested in customizing the phone a little more if it isn't too difficult.

2) Any 'must have' apps that you use for Android that you could mention and maybe talk about?

3) Anyone have the new Nexus 5 and could maybe offer some thoughts on what you think of it?

4) Anyone use Virgin Mobile as their provider? How is the service? (Virgin M appears to offer the best deals out there ie. evenings start an hour earlier, more minutes and data for cheaper, etc).

Thanks in advance for any help and insight!

I'm not too sure, but I believe the new rule for free cancellations after 2 years only applies to contracts signed after Dec 2, 2013.. but they are also planning to make it the case for all contracts by June 2015 so you could still benefit from this change if you signed a 3-year contract in the last 6 months or so. Can anyone confirm?

[lx Birdie xl]

I only signed a 2 year contract with bell for my Galaxy 4 a few months back.. There was no option for a 3 year.

[Jester13]

I could've sworn when I was in Victoria that I had a Home signal from there as well.

Crazy. When I was looking up Wind's network map it showed the major cities ie. Van, Cal, Edm, etc all got the great service where you don't have to pay extra, but anywhere else it looked as though one would have to pay extra to get service. Oh well.

So, I did get my new phone and plan for the Black Friday event with Virgin, I went with the Nexus 5... love it! Lightning quick, the battery life is actually quite good IMO (I am a moderate user), however, the default msging app "Hangouts" is lacking so far--I can't send or receive media txts with it, and apparently it is a problem with the app that Google hasn't fixed yet, even though it has been like this since its launch. An update is supposed to be coming out soon from what I hear that will fix it, along with some other things like the camera app. Thankfully the Google phones get any updates with android first and well before all others.

Pretty stoked, though, as my bill just went from $140+ tax with Bell to just over $80 after taxes with Virgin for two phones. Should save close to $900/yr. Yippie

[GPCanucksFan]

I heard the Moto X is pretty good, I'd like to see it for myself, maybe check it out, I've heard lots of good things about. I think only Rogers offers it right now though, so it might not be an option for you.