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[BigD145]

Several Chinese brands are available worldwide. I found Xiaomi's on the site you link to. Hardware is typically made in China or South Korea no matter the brand name and lots of sites ship worldwide.

Does WhatsApp work on your tablet? Is Pokemon Go really worth the cellular costs down the road? In the USA I can buy a brand new Pokemon 3DS game cartridge for the cost of one month of cellular. The 3DS costs about as much as a midline phone. Are you just wanting the newest fad or something else entirely?

The RAM question really breaks down to "how long will it take before an app gets patched and bloated and crashes immediately because you don't have enough RAM?" and "will the app be remotely usable if it can use less RAM but at some cost to frames or lost packets?" The second one is a pretty big issue in voice or video chat.

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-actual-difference-between-an-Android-phone-with-1GB-RAM-and-one-with-3GB-RAM

[Sappho]

Again, the data plan will be primarily for my many many conversations via video chat on whatsapp, not for pokemon. Pokemon will be an extra thing that i'll turn off when i'm not using it. I need the data plan to communicate with my deaf/hard of hearing friends and boyfriend. I just want to check whether pokemon will run on the phone. Pokemon is not the reason I want the phone or the data plan. The data plan is happening no matter what. My only question is whether the phone I buy will be able to run pokemon.

EDIT: I know more ram = can run more programs at once, but if I'm only going to be running whatsapp and sometimes pokemon, how much ram do I actually need? I won't be using browsers and such or playing other games. is 1 gb really not enough?

[BigD145]

So far I haven't found a clear answer to the simple question "how much ram can whatsapp eat up" in my search. Most comparison videos of 1gb vs 2gb when looking at apps are only covering how fast an app can load. Nothing about actual usage.

[Thief^]

I can tell you 1.5 GB is fine for Pokémon Go, as that's what my phone has (Samsung Galaxy A3 2016) and it runs beautifully.

[TheBiggerFish]

Acer's are bottom of the barrel but still okay-ish. That one has a pretty small battery. Xiaomi is pretty good if you find one that someone has made a custom strip down rom for like Cyanogenmod. Xiaomi stock tends to pop up ads within the OS itself. The hardware is good. Just make sure it has the cellular bands in your area. You want lots of RAM to prevent slowdowns. It looks like the Redmi 2 has a Cyanogenmod rom. It costs a bit more than the Acer.

http://gearburn.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-smartphones/

Pokemon pretty much has to have cellular. Not many cities have enough wifi to give you coverage at all times. So, is it worth the cellular prices every month? Personally I'd stick to console versions to play Pokemon.

I don't think Xiaomi is available here. I'm in the Czech Republic, remember. I have no interest in getting a really good phone. My primary use will be for text and video chatting with my deaf and hard of hearing friends and boyfriend. I will have to have a data plan for this. I'm not looking forward to paying for it, but it's necessary at this point. But if I'm going to buy a smartphone, I want it to be able to run Pokemon. Not because I love Pokemon and want to play it, but because it will motivate me to get out and exercise more, which is something I'm trying hard to do lately. I don't mind if it runs a little slowly. I'm not going to be running much on it. WhatsApp, Pokemon, and that's about it. I'll use my tablet for other stuff.

My boyfriend is pushing me to get a more expensive one instead solely because it has more RAM. This will be my first smartphone, so I'm not an expert, but is it really necessary to have 2GB? How bad will it really be if I only have 1 GB? The one with 2 GB is 1000 kc more expensive so I want to make sure it's worth it if I'm going to buy that. That is a considerable amount of money for me.

Here are the two different phones I've been looking at. Both are Acer. I don't know why that would be bad - my Acer computer is spectacular - but if there's some specific problem Acers have (aside from not being top of the line, which I'm not willing to pay for and don't need anyway), do let me know. I want to be informed.

Acer Liquid Black Zest 3G
[https://www.alza.cz/zest-acer-liquid-black-4g-d4334635.htm]Acer Liquid Black Zest 4G[/url]

Your phone only has 2 GB of RAM?!?!  THE HORROR, etc. etc.

Jests aside, if you're videochatting, more RAM is better.

[Sappho]

OK. Maybe I will just get the 2 GB one. It does sound like it would be relevant for video chatting, which is the key reason I want the phone.

My other option is to get an iPhone. I really hate Apple, but I have access to someone who sells iPhones to the deaf community for drastically reduced prices (probably cheaper than I could get an Android one). I was avoiding it out of a general aversion to Apple, but since I'll really only be using it for chat and one game, maybe it doesn't matter so much. I will ask him what price he'd give me on a new phone and if it's really cheap, maybe I'll just go with that. Put my prejudices aside and get the best cheapest phone I can get.

(By the way, I forgot to answer before - no, WhatsApp does not work on tablets. If it did, I would already have it and avoid buying a smartphone for a while longer. It requires a smartphone with a phone number. And without it my communications with deaf/HOH peoples is severely crippled. So the phone is really a necessity at this point.)

[TheBiggerFish]

I know there are such things as tablets that use the cellular network/have a phone number.  Not sure if that helps you at all.

[Aklyon]

I know there are such things as tablets that use the cellular network/have a phone number.  Not sure if that helps you at all.

My tablet can use mobile data, but only as a side effect of where we bought it from. It only uses it when we go off on trips long enough to carry a tablet around instead of a phone and a new3dsxl. It has no mic tho, so i can't call anyone with it.

[gimlet]

Are you sure it won't work with a Bluetooth microphone?  (some do, some don't apparently).   Also, it *might* have a headphone connector that allows use of a headphone with microphone - that'd be worth checking (heads up: there are 2 incompatible plug types for headsets w/microphones, there are adapters).

Also there is a way to "tether" some tablets to some mobile phones.  Or, there are cellular "wireless hotspot", it's basically a wireless router with its own built-in cell phone connection (no voice, although you can use voice apps on the tablet like Skype to make calls).    Can be expensive, and usually not worth it unless you need that capability a lot.   Although there are ones that can use prepaid cards, so if you need it for a few days at a time it's doable.   Even the monthly rates aren't insane, but I sure wouldn't watch videos over it, you blow through the data cap pretty quick.

[Sappho]

I literally can't even download WhatsApp onto my tablet. The Play store won't let me do it. "This app is incompatible with all your devices." My tablet is not able to have a phone number. It's gonna have to be a phone. And I looked into the guy who sells cheap iPhones and apparently that would still be more expensive than a cheap Acer Android phone, so Android wins again! For so many reasons!

[Gunner-Chan]

I kinda don't wanna make a whole new thread for this but I'm not sure it really fits the topic either... Oh well.

I've been thinking about setting up a windows XP Virtual machine on my laptop so I can play some older games that have occasional issues, since I'm on windows 8. But after grabbing a VHD from microsofts own windows xp mode installer I'm kinda left confused what's the best actual software to set this all up in, I haven't done this in so long I can't remember a thing about it...

What's good and not that difficult to grasp? I can't always focus down as much as I want to still so sometimes things like this are really hard for me.

[Aklyon]

VMs are computers too, it fits here.

[Thief^]

You shouldn't really have issues with any XP-era games on modern OSs, outside of copy protection (which likely wouldn't work in a VM with an emulated optical drive anyway), and most people consider it totally ethical to crack the copy-protection on a game you own.

[ancistrus]

Windows network diagnostics

Has this thing ever helped anyone?

[Arx]

Yes. Every now and then my WiFi card flips out and has to be reset, which I can either do manually it have Windows do for me.