Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello! I've moved up in the world and can now look down on you mere mortals from the dizzying heights of mental health nursing management! It's seriously as sexy as it sounds.

We desperately need to get new phones for the team. Can't get upgrades for the crappy burner style Nokias some of the team have as our budget is coming from a new source.

So, I need some recommendations for decent smartphones that work well, are easy to use and don't cost a fortune. It needs to be hardwearing as we won't be given money for upgrades regularly enough. I'll need to be able to justify the initial costs to someone who thinks our budget is hers because they're being paid to host admin and HR etc. Doesn't need to be the latest model at all, just one that's reliable and proven.

We'll be using NHS.net secure email which runs on a secure Microsoft office platform thingy, and I'm hoping I'll be able to get VPN soft tokens installed in some of them for accessing one of our work systems. We don't need fancy cameras or loads of apps. Most will be happy as long as they can get email, get online, and have maps for when they get lost.

If I can get the VPN softkey to work, it would be a big help for me to be able to access spreadsheet (still have my fingers crossed for a laptop or tablet, but that's a different battle). We also have plans to get apps developed for the people we see to use around their mental health and wellbeing and would need to be able to demonstrate those on our phones - so screen can't be too small.

I can't see us getting iPhones and in the industry I work in, people are still fascinated by old style Blackberrys. The last phone I got from work -a HTC desire - is so bad I can't bare to use it for anything other than calls and reading emails.

So, dear Beex hivemind, please recommend me do!

Galaxy Note 2? It's a phone and a mini tablet. So, handy for scrawling notes etc. Note 3s are still expensive but I'm guessing the Note 2 will be half the price .

If budget is a driver, and Android is an option, you could do a lot worse than the Moto G 2nd gen, which is about £150 without a contract. But we should talk about this in person really. There's a lot of angles. Like exactly what your requirements are in terms of app loadouts and centralised security/control, physical device size, etc etc.

Most phones have the same amount of angles.

The Moto G is not bad at all for a budget work phone, I have to admit. It's what I've just got.

Oh, and the Desire is appalling.

The windows phone is not too bad. I have the htc 8, battery life lasts for days.

I use it with a corporate key access websites and emails etc

We use iPhones at work which are A) expensive and B) have a number of drawbacks when it comes to business use. Unfortunately the directors love them so we can't go elsewhere.
If you use a lot of Microsoft servers and services then I'd definitely suggest looking at some of the Windows handsets - Nokia 735 for example - as they should work pretty smoothly and they are sensibly priced.

Yep. I used to have one and it was ace at the time, but this is going back a fair few years so I can't imagine it holding up today.

Are we talking about the Desire, Desire S or Desire 610 here?

The Des'Ree 'Life'

I'm talking about the C.

Surprised at what you say about iPhones. All our clinicians are obsessed with iPads and iPhones. Just whatever you get make sure you run it by IT and make sure you evaluate some before ordering dozens of them.

There's nothing I fear most than watching a ghost eat some toast?

Malc

It's a HTC Desire C. It's so awful!

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll have a look at what you've all suggested. I imagine we'll get them on a small business contract - it's 12 phones that we'll need initially. It may be possible for myself and the other manager to get a slightly better phone with more data allowance as so much of our work involves being always available via email, creating documents and using the main spreadsheets.

Richard, definitely need to spend more time talking with you about the whole going tech and health and wellbeing app side. The pointers you gave me already have given me plenty to think about. Had a good meeting yesterday and we're not the only team in the Collaborative that's aiming to go more tech which makes it a more attainable goal for us. One thing we realised is that only 1/3 of our client group are likely to have smartphones, but many more will have access to PCs (and if they don't, we know where they can get free access and training), so any apps we make would need to be available across all platforms and PCs too! We have to offer equal access to any resource we develop. We'll be tweaking content and trailing paper based packs in the next month.

There are iPhones and iPads, but they're only available to consultants and the most senior of managers in the Trust I last worked with. IT don't believe clinicians need anything more than something to make calls on. It's an uphill struggle. My new team sits outside the Trust with some access to parts of the infrastructure.

Who are the people who are putting together the apps and websites etc that you'll be using? Those are probably the people who should be interacting with IT to make sure you get the most suitable devices. You're their customer, and you're IT's customer!

We haven't got app developers on board yet. We'll have the devices before apps and websites. We're rolling out a new team, and a new service and a new way of working now. When the service I'm part of started last year, it was all ideas, and nothing practical. The clinicians had to design letterheads, templates and (terrible) systems as they went along. Now we've got myself and a few others who can devote real time to building in the proper systems.

We know we want all the things we're developing to have a tech element, and in theory, those who fund us have agreed. But we have 3 funding streams, so often can't wait for them to all sit down and finalise plans. If we wait, we sink. We have 2 years to prove we can work effectively in a very different way to traditional MH services. If we do well, we get to carry on.

Would you believe that I'm considered one of the 2 go to people for all things IT and tech in the team? We're soooo far behind the rest of the world! I find myself doing teaching sessions on how to use MS calendars.

That's a great position to be in. Getting the right people on board is going to be crucial. You should be able to get competent people who can do cross-platform development easily enough, but it'll certainly be easier to find iOS and Android developers. I pretty much agree that one of the older good-tier Android devices would be ideal. Also allows for mixing of phones and tablets much more freely.

Anybody had a gander at the Blackberry Passport yet?

Really like the square screen and the idea of the combined keyboard and swipe pad.

Went into a moby shop the other day and they had a big screen advertising it but no actual phone to look at - not even a fake display model.

I have a test one. It's...stupid.

I tried a 5" Android phone. All I did with it was play The Simpsons.

I bought myself an Iphone 4, but it nearly hit the wall so many times. Typing emails or anything of any importance was a nightmare on that thing. I did buy a sliding keyboard but it was heavy and a faff.

So me? I'm back on Blackberry. Both my lady and I have Q10s and as a communications device they are quite frankly flawless.

Typing is fast and easy thanks to the lovely keypad, and Blackberry Hub is quick and does what it's told. Browsing is painless too.

The only gripes? the screen is a bit small but hey, I wanted a phone, and the market is a bit crap but in all honesty I'm really reaching there. The last thing I wanted to end up doing was using it as a handheld game console.