Off-Topic: Buying a phone

Sorry if there is a better place for this, and please move it if there is, but anyway:

I need to buy a new phone and I figure I might as well buy an android phone so I can start testing stuff. Problem is I’ve never bought a smart phone before, so: any suggestions? I’m specifically thinking “top-of-the-line”-ish in terms of graphics capabilities (whereas most articles on the internet take things other things into consideration that aren’t so important, like camera resolution, battery life, etc).

On a related note, is there a place in the forums for things only tangentially related to jMonkey? If so, where?

Dont underestimate battery life, some of the current phones barely last a day without a charger, at least for me this is unbearable.

Yeah, but I pretty much only use my phone for sending text messages, so I don’t really mind.

I guess what I really want to know is: What phones have people used/do people suggest for testing jMonkey games on?

In fact I should have titled it that, instead of the spam-looking title I actually used.

Playing games in general is the most battery intensive activity on a phone. So yeah good battery is something to look into.

As for the model to choose, all the Google Nexus series devices are good, ofc the most recent the most powerful, the better.
I’m planning on buying a nexus 4 once there are some available on the planet…

Samsung galaxy Note 2, or galaxy S3 are good devices too. HTC quad core device should be fine too, but be careful because someone recently reported issues on an HTC devices ( htc incredible 4g lte see this thread for more info http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/forum/topic/android-possible-not-working-on-new-quad-core-phones/ )

Of course there might be a lot that are valid choices, I would just recommend to not choose exotic brands just because of the low price.
If a device is pretty much wide spread there are better chances that any eventual issue would be fixed, on both Android and JME side.

I’m also planning to finally buy myself a smartphone (never had one). The Nexus 4 has the advantange of immediate updates (good for development), but it’s designed for the google cloud (8 GB, not extensible). There might come another version after some time (as in the case of the Nexus 7 3G). An alternative would be the LG Optimus G which is almost the same hardware as the Nexus 4 but with 32 GB (+ microSD) and LTE. Disadvantage is the bad update politics of LG. Both devices are not yet available in my region (Germany). So I’m thinking about buying a LG Optimus 4X HD. It’s cheaper and the Tegra 3 has proven to work with jME3rc2. Hard decision … waiting or buying … on the other hand … that attitude made me waiting for the next generation over and over again. :smiley:

Thanks all for the suggestions.

@nehon Yeah, issues like that I’m especially hoping to avoid.

@survivor I feel your pain. I need a phone now, but part of my brain says “But if I wait just a few months…”

Lucky for me I’m living in China, so I should be able to find just about anything here, and without the hassle of buying things with contracts and such.