About smartphones + Giveaway

If want simple stuff, yet smooth, if you are not into tinkering a lot with you device and are willing to pay a little extra get an iPhone. If my previous sentence is something you want, you will not be dissapointed.
Windows phone...meh. I have tried some and they only gave me frustration. You'd think that was because I was not used to the OS right? No. I am the "tech guy" in my group and some friends wanted help or tips about their windows phones, the had them more than a month each. They are VERY pretty though the nokia ones. I give you that. I like them a LOT.
Anyway, I would choose android every day. Get a used ( if you don't want to spent much ) S4 LTE edition or , if you don't mind the size, go for a used galaxy note 2 or galaxy note 3 Neo ( it's basically a note 2 with some newer stuff ) and get an extra battery from ebay for about 10 pounds.
Then once you get it, download these apps.
Themer. It will replace the crappy samsung touchwiz homescreen with one of your choosing from here clicky
exDialer and contats : It will replace the stock ones with something that looks the same ( and also has some skins ) but is extremelly faster.
That's all. You can't go wrong with any of these.
Cheers.

While I own two android tablets (with whom I'm pretty happy I've to say), I would recommend a Windows phone, I own a Nokia 820 and DAMN if it's sturdy.

First I've lost it while riding my Duc, it was in one of those minibag you put your phone in to avoid scratch et similar, but hell, I've dropped it at something like 90mph and it didn't even power off.

Another time it fell in a pool, took me 3-4 minutes to reach it and pull it out, it still work perfectly (except for the camera).

The OS is really really easy, you don't have all the freedom you get with Android, but, at least for me that's ok, I don't use my phone for much more than callsmsgamessurfing.

Galaxy S2 Plus was one of the phones I considered before going with the Lumia 720. I read on several reviews that the cheaper Android phones have slowdowns in the OS, which is the main reason for not choosing an Android phone. Maybe those slowdowns wouldn't have existed with CyanogenMod.

Yesterday I encountered a fairly common bug in WP8, which drained the battery from full charge to ~30% in about 5 hours. It's speculated that it's caused by some process remaining active when it's supposed to have been closed. Soft reset fixed that for me.

I would advise you to get a latest model, if you want a Galaxy, get S4 or wait for S5 to be released, that way it will survive longer in terms of app support, tech specs and all. Unless you like changing your phones regularly, which is not really my style.

I've been using iPhone 4S for 2 years now and I'm loving it, minus my weird battery problem. It's been acting weird for several months now, occasionally draining from 20% and more to 0% in a matter of seconds. Today it even drained from 43% directly to 1%. When you plug it in to charge it it gets to 43% again in a minute. It's super weird and I suppose the battery got misplaced a little or something like that or it's some software issue I can't figure out.

That said, I know a lot of people who use iPhone and don't have that problem, so it's my own issue I suppose. It's lame you can't count on the battery at all but I haven't had any other issues with the phone and I've exploited it like crazy all this time, especially when it was brand new.

Between those two i would personally choose the HTC because i had a better experience with windows phones than with android in the past.
HTC itself is a great phone manufacturer and the windows OS is making it pretty fast and stylish... :D

I have a SGS2 now for almost 2 years and I'm pretty happy with it.

the average drain on the battery is about 23% per day, with some gaming, some messaging, some e-book reading, some online surfing and some conversations - note that some games are really power hungry though and can completely drain the battery within 3 hours.
I'd say that's some solid battery life after almost 2 years!

I like most of the free stuff that the google play store and the Amazon app throw at me, not sure if there's something compareable for the HTC.

I don't really like the Samsung Kies Updater because it's hard to get it out of your Windows autorun, but I must admit that I never had problems with it.

So far I did not have to extend the memory, everything I need fits just fine on the phone (I delete finished e-books and finished games).

The camera quality is good - not compareable with a good stand-alone camera, but good for a phone.

You should totally go for a SGS2 or SGS2 Plus (S2 Plus isn't really better than S2, unless you totally need NFC).

I prefer Android :)Samsung Galaxy S2 Plus is better. I'm a Chinese

I didn't hear good things about Windows phones, If I were in your situation between these two I'd go with Samsung

If you're able to get standard Samsung Galaxy S2 without Plus it might be the better choice.

Why? Plus has NFC and a little faster clock on processor but also Samsung took half of memory standard edition had. In my opinion inside memory in smartphones is one of the most important things. If you're interested in playing games, you'll feel it (some games wont even install with app2sd if still you don't have enough memory at the beginning). Also S2 have the biggest support from the community.

Windows 8 is interesting project but I didn't had much contact with it. Android might be irritating sometimes but end to end it is very handy and will let you do many things with it. Specially if you'll take benefits from what community is doing on XDA Developers :).

Galaxy S2 of the two should be a no-brainer... I didn't have much chance to use Windows Phone system, but Android is currently (and for foreseeable future) much better choice because of community size, applications and such...
On the other hand, I really like Android, and if you plan to use your phone only for light internet browsing and music (as you said), Windows will probably be enough for your needs... But, be aware, I made a similar mistake few years ago... Android was young, I wanted Windows Mobile so I could program some apps for it, and ended up with Windows Mobile phone that pretty much sucked even month or two later, compared to new Android phones that got released really quickly...

TLDR; I recommend S2 Plus because of Android, but for your needs, it's pretty much the same... So you might choose for looks, price or brand loyalty...

Trust me, I used a Windows Phone before (Nokia Lumia 710) and it was pretty horrible. There were limited apps on the windows marketplace and the phone had this retarded social built-in thing which grabs all contacts from your facebook + email(s) and the worst part is you can't remove them easily (i.e. you'd gotta be some tech savvy guy to not see your FB friend list/e-mail contacts including those noreply@blabla.com every time you browse your contacts list to call someone).

I'm now using an LG G2 Pro (android system), which has been quite an amazing experience so far. It's very smooth, responsive and there are a multitude of apps to cater to any type of need you can name. Even if you're a simplistic user with less needs, an android system gives great flexibility in the way you want to customise your phone (i.e. even after a long time your phone won't be remotely obsolete as the marketplace is already flooded with all the apps you'll ever need)

So yea, I would go with S2 Plus

I would go with Android, but that's just me.
A few years back I won Nokia 5800 XM in a giveaway and I guess it was quite good for music and web-browsing. Now I have new Android phone (which I prefer over Symbian), but I must say that I did a factory reset on the Nokia and it still works fine (even though I installed a lot of "shit" on it - always wanted to find good games for it, but there was something about the phone that made 3D games really rare).
As far as I've seen iOS is usually really overpriced and I am not really a fan of Windows.

I use both iPhone and Android. They have their own strengths. iOS is simpler/easier, Android is more flexible. Backing iOS up on iTunes (on mac; iTunes on Windows is a nightmare) is the easiest method of backing up any smartphone on the planet. Android has yet to come up with something equivalent. But on Android you can use the ADB to completely back up the entire phone (from the command line). iTunes doesn't back up everything.

That Galaxy S2 is great btw.

I use an Android myself (granted a pretty old one) and a friend of mine has a Windows Phone 8 that I've played with a bit. It's definitely an intuitive OS, way better than the previous Windows Phone versions. I would have no troubles recommending the OS to you but you might want to check if any specific apps that you want or need are available on WP8 as it still has much fewer apps available for it than iOS and android.

I have used iOS and Android, while have tried my hands on WP8.
Android is undoubtedly the best, except that it's either stock or Samsung all the way. Why I say so is because it is the most flexible, pretty easy to use, and does not require you to fix problems every now and then.
iOS is second, mainly because it is easy to use and has enough apps for all your needs.
WP8 is third, because it is the hard to use kind, does not have enough apps yet and requires fixes every now and then.

Used to sell these myself and I think Samsung is completely overrated. Go with the Windows phone man. Would take a look at each of the OS stores though. See what apps you are gonna use and which ones you will not.

Hmmm... HTC 8x? And whats about newer wp phones? Like samsung ativ s. Its a good phone, looks like better galaxy s2 (imitated aluminium) and its very very fast. No lag, 1gb of ram is enough for wp and web browsing. It also have interop unlock, so you can make 3 rows on start screen and a lot of new functions ;) Thing about it ;)

I have a Galaxy S2, but not Plus. It's perfect for music, with the ability to listen from catalogs which saves you the hassle of tagging every mp3. It's also good for browsing, but the default browser has some minor issues (no exit button wtf). Of course it clogs up over half of its RAM with useless, piece-a-shit processes for apps you can't uninstall, but it doesn't take much time or effort to minimize their impact on performance. Battery life is satisfactory, right now it's at 46% and AVG says I can browse or play music for 4 and a half more hours, talk or watch videos for 2 hours and idle for 5 days but I never tested that. All in all it's solid, but has some retarded issues that won't bother you too much unless you're severely autistic and need everything in perfect order. I assume the S2 Plus is somewhat better, but then again I might be HORRIBLY WRONG.

I use Lenovo A820 android spartphone. The best of this smartphone is it's quad-core processor, and it's price (about 110€).

I bought it from AliExpress. Example link: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-Quad-Core-MTK6589-Phone-Lenovo-A820-Android-4-2-Dual-Sim-4-5-Inch-Screen/1284481434.html
:)

I have used the Samsung Galaxy S and it was a good phone, even in these days it still is. Personally I think that the Google Nexus phones are really good and you should consider getting them because they are super cheap for what they offer... I'm really happy with my Nexus 4 :-) If I'd have to chose from the two you gave I'd go for the Galaxy S2 simply because I can't live w/o Android :P

Nokia <3

Nokia <3