Budget is about £200 tops, ideally £150, looking at something with an OK camera, not too old, and a relatively small screen, my daughter doesn’t get on with the big screens. Needs good battery life as she’s on it all the time.
Currently looking at the Sony xperia L or the SP, but that’s not got as good a battery

Any other suggestions?
Ta

Motorola Moto G is worth a look, £160 for the 16Gb version. Pleased with mine – 4.5″ screen, battery life seems ok to me but I couldn’t tell you what the camera is like. Its not super small, but more compact than most.

S3 Mini for £150ish.

Got an SP and the battery is a bit weird … Sometimes/most of the time it’ll last ages, then at other times it drains stupidly quickly and as it does so the phone gets hot???

But l put up with that, it’s a good phone and the screen is excellent…. Think of getting a sony tv on the back of it??

Sounds like a Nexus 4 is what you seek. And you get a quid change.

Got an SP and the battery is a bit weird … Sometimes/most of the time it’ll last ages, then at other times it drains stupidly quickly and as it does so the phone gets hot???

It gets hot when the CPU is running hard, have you left a game or something open/paused? It’ll be some app or other, can’t help much more but if you do a bit or trial / error you should be able to work out which. Check the “battery use” page in settings for more info.

In my case it was Google location services – make sure you turn off the GPS and the “Allow Google…” setting if you’re having problems with the battery.

OP: Not sure if it’s even available in the UK, and no idea if you’re on Orange, but I got my teenage daughter an Orange Hiro for Christmas and she’s very happy with it. Seems fast enough, nice bright screen, etc. etc.

MotoG from Phones4u or tesco mobile – around 100-110 for the 8G version. Reviews all said best budget smartphone by a mile and stands up to pricier competition too.

We paid £89 for the 8GB Moto G from tesco direct (£10 off for new customers – you just need a new email address)
Then £2.04 from ebay for an unlock code.

Really amazing phone for the money.

The 16Gb would be £119 using the same method (when it comes back in stock).

at other times it drains stupidly quickly and as it does so the phone gets hot???

Are you running a task killer?

For £200 get the Quechua-5 from Decathlon.
Its built by Archos and is a 5 inch screen, it is also waterproof, dust proof and has a steel plate on the back to prevent bending… They market it as ‘mountain proof’, ideal for a teenager!
As a bonus it had a 3500 MaH battery which is unheard of in a phone that size, a battery like that is usually found in a tablet. It will be my next phone in the new year.

… but as others have already said, get the Moto-G, it’s the best conventional phone around in that price range.

Another vote for the Moto G.

I picked up a sim free 8gb one from phones4u for £130. So far I’m very impressed.

Moto G is amazing for the money.

Moto G is a great phone, and not just for the money. It’s just a great phone.

Deviant – I bought one of the Quechua phones this week

going up from my HTC, I’m very impressed so far

Warning, when you first take it out the box, its big!

However I’m finding that a blessing – much better for emails and bloody brilliant with map/gps, even OK for programmes and kindle – and its actually not a lot bigger than an iPhone or similar in a water resistant case

First day or so I was a bit worried about the battery life, not what I expected, then realised I had had GPS running all day – after installing the 2x battery life app which powers down things not in use, its currently reckoning that it will stay on standby for another 374 hours…

Voice is very clear

Its got some nice functions in the settings like a warning on monthly data use – since its unlocked I can get a cheap sim deal from any of the big companies

Only complaint so far is that the camera is not very good – however improved a lot after changing some of the settings, but still not brilliant.

overall, I’d say it’s *almost* the perfect phone to have in your camelbak – if the camera was a little better it would take the title

Another happy moto g user here,bought 16gb from tesco in store for £129 and did the £2 eBay unlock.
It’s just like my wife’s nexus 4 but a bit smaller.

Cheers for that ninfan.
Mrs Deviant manages to break most phones I give her.
Her boss gave her a new iPhone-5s as her work mobile, straight out of the box and setting it up she managed to drop it and shatter the screen!
I reckon the Quechua may be the phone for her.

Moto G 16gb owner here…. doubled up Tesco points and got it for peanuts.

Brillant phone for the money, (camera not the best but takes get static photos.) (plus kitkat update out soon too)

Battery life is excellent – 6 hours of Strava logging used 30% battery which was better than my old iphone.

Best phone on the market for the money.

AlexSimon / lexinoo – what ebay seller did you get the code from?
I’m picking up a moto G from Tesco’s tomorrow.
thanks

We used this one – code came back in an hour:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Motorola-Moto-G-Mobile-Phone-Unlock-Code-/111223239973?clk_rvr_id=563956536900

BTW – it’s a micro sim – we went into Orange and they gave us a new sim free because we were on a pay monthly contract

I’ve just got a Samsung S3 mini on a contract cashback deal.
£9/month for 300 mins, 500Gb for 24 months, so just over £200.

Phone seems good so far…

just get the moto G, you’ll not regret it.

AlexSimon – thanks that’s the guy i was looking at and thanks for the heads up on the micro sim, i’ve just ordered one from orange, although i may move top GifGaff.

Hope it works out for you tod456 – my wife is really happy with hers.

ir_bandito
Which provider did you go with for that deal?
Cheers

The Moto seems good, just picked up x2 16gb for my kids from Tesco.

We couldn’t order online (out of stock) but they were available in store in Sheffield yesterday.

bugger, so they have them in store? Been waiting for them to come in stock online for ages.

Worth checking your local store(s) but yes I was able to pick up yesterday.

Sim free Moto G 16GB is in stock at Tesco Direct for £149 – I ordered one this morning!

I should point out the ones I collected were contract phones (Tesco network) rather than SIM free…don’t know if it makes a difference.

Can anyone recomend me a screen protector for the Moto G?
In stock in portsmouth too.

Here’s hopeing the unlock code works!!

Moto G is great bought 1 for daughter at xmas, so impressed with it my wife ordered 1 as well.
Can confirm the guy’s codes on ebay, who charges £2.04 to unlock them worked perfectly.

Glad to see the Moto-G selling so well, it is a genius move by Google/Motorola to start bringing the cost of decent phones down…£500 for a smartphone now looks slightly ridiculous next to the £135 Moto-G.

marco – its an O2 contract from buymobiles.net.
Annoyingly, they were at £5.25/month when I started looking.

Can confirm the guy’s codes on ebay, who charges £2.04 to unlock them worked perfectly.

He’s dropped his price by 5p! – I was sickened when I saw that 🙂
Seller is smgreen1969

Re: Screen protectors. We haven’t bothered. That Gorilla glass seems pretty good: video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-wzY4v1a0c

Don’t bother with a screen protector – pointless these days for the vast majority of folks.

It’s waterproof too !!!!

Just wanted to follow up on the Quechua mountain phone

after my earlier comments on the camera, after continuing to play with is I realised that a lot of the problem was with the compression, so I dumped the OE camera software and installed Camera FV-5 instead, which will save pictures as PNG files – so its transformed it from bloody terrible camera to pretty actually acceptable for a phone camera, and with a 32 gig SD card, loads of room.

and the battery life is great 😀