Best smart phone?: Page 30 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Best smart phone?

Claudius

Unless you never buy extra bundles or go out of contract, getting a contract phone is more expensive than buying outright. Trust me, I've done enough pricing and portfolio management of phone contracts. The big advantage is convenience of not having to think about your phone spend. It also hurts the phone company in he process because they're typically giving you an interest free loan on a phone. :-)

Bold Tone

Mirth wrote:
Who are you with?

3 (£42 a month). Unlimited everything.
@Claude
I fall into the never off contract group and my mindset is there is never something for nothing so i know i have to pay.
I actually preferred a Vodafone yearly contract offer but baulked at some of the limits on top of the £60 a month.

Mirth

Google launch the new Pixel series of phones:

https://store.google.com/product/pixel_phone

They've gone and shit the bed with the prices.

dreamlord

Lol, Pixel XL costs 1050$ in Canada. Who the fuck needs a phone that costs that much in today's world? Even a mid range phone performs most tasks well nowadays. The fact is, hardware development has more or less stagnated/peaked when it comes to performance.

I'm gonna get myself a OnePlus 3 soon. Or maybe even one of the old Nexuses, if there are any good deals.

arsedocmd

Just got myself a samsung galaxy core prime for free.(costs 40 bucks otherwise) Can cehck emails, whatsapp, takes pics, texts, phone calls, mint and google play music along with internet. No lag in anything two months on, battery last a day on moderate use, two days on mild use easily. Also i can use it in one hand. Can't figure out what i'd need the fancy phones for.
Never going back to the stupid expensive smartphones.
Hopefully soon the next phone would be something non-smartphone after watching the WaPo articles on how they get the smartphone battery components from africa. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/

Rex

Im not going to lie; I like new, high end phones. However, I'd consider getting a 'lesser' phone if it had significantly better battery life. I'm talking about a phone you only need to charge something like every three days with, for me, normal use.

dreamlord

If you're not in North America, and don't mind non-stock Android, Xiaomi mid rangers will do that for you. Check out the Redmi Note 3 or the Redmi 3S.

I personally don't mind average battery life (should be good for a day, at least). Quick/fast charging and a power bank got me covered.

jones

Speaking of Xiaomi their new flagship came out today and was sold out in literally ten seconds. Not hard to see why:

And it's still far cheaper than Samsung or even Apple despite similar or better specs.

QuincyAbeyie

That is absolutely beautiful.

Clrnc

Those specs are insane. I love their speaker technology, they just pushed the smartphone boundaries.

Such a shame Mi Note2 is a Samsung Note7 copycat.

Mirth

I want.

FEBravo

I smashed my iPhone 5 and rather than repairing it am thinking of a new smartphone. I've only had 2 iphones so far but am considering going non-Apple. I hear the Galaxy S7 Edge is all the rage.

My question is, if I switch to an Android, how much of a learning curve is it, and are there any specific drawbacks (I don't really use iTunes for reasons I won't get into, but do use facetime and imessage), both in terms of transferring/syncing data over (contacts/photos etc). Has anyone here made the switch?

Are there any other smartphones in this high end band you would recommend? I'm traveling to the US in a couple of weeks and would benefit from buying it there as it's usually cheaper.

Thanks in advance!

Burnwinter

There is no learning curve, they're all so usable you can't really fuck up.

Get a Google brand phone, either a Pixel or a Nexus 6P IMO. The stock Android they carry is superior to the vendor-OEM versions.

I have no idea if there are any iPhone apps you would really miss. There are decent alternatives to those you've just mentioned.

FEBravo

Cheers Burn. Do you have any concerns about Google then literally having all the information on your use? Not that Apple is better, but for instance I use different browsers for my gmail and web searches or youtube to try and diversify a bit. Not sure it makes a huge difference in the end but makes me feel better.

jones

I wouldn't really recommend the Pixel, way too expensive for what it offers. Good thing about Android is you can easily switch to vanilla firmware if you want to get rid of your customized firmware regardless of what device you use.

You'd have to expand on what you're looking for in your phone, what do you use your phone for, battery usage etc. Either that or go into a local mobile store and see what brand looks and feels best to you, there isn't too much spec-wise between the flagship devices of most brands like Samsung, HTC, LG or any of the Chinese brands.

Burnwinter

FEBravo wrote:
Cheers Burn. Do you have any concerns about Google then literally having all the information on your use? Not that Apple is better, but for instance I use different browsers for my gmail and web searches or youtube to try and diversify a bit. Not sure it makes a huge difference in the end but makes me feel better.

Not really. I would assume that the NSA and the major tech companies either already have, or can purchase access to any information you put on line without relatively perfect encryption-based opsec (use of Tor, Signal or Wickr, etc), and that they probably do a good though imperfect job of linking usage across different accounts and services.

The rest is probably also vulnerable at times but the cost-benefit wouldn't be there, also there are ramifications around what they would be willing to say that they know, and how they know it …

Segway

Have an offer to buy a Sony Xperia XZ really cheap. Does anyone know if it's a decent phone? Don't really need the highest specs etc.

RocktheCasbah

I got one a couple of weeks ago Segway, I love it. But I have been a bit of a slave to Sony's Xperia range. My only problem with it was when I was setting it up and accidentally, unknowingly, triggered the "talkback" function on it. It took me ages to work out what I'd done and the phone kept vocalising every input I made- and not doing what I wanted it to. This made for a frustrating twenty minutes or so.

Since then, though, no problems. The camera is quality too.

Segway

Thanks mate! Edging really close to buying it now.

jones

Depends on how cheap it is. Similar to the Pixel (not at the same level ofc) overall it's not good enough for the price Sony asks for and compared to the competition, but if you get it really cheap it's a nice and good looking phone.

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