Currently, I’ve narrowed it down to the Sony Z3, the HTC M9 or the HTC M8S.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

I have an older HTC One the moment, which is a great phone, other than the purple hue on the camera in low light.

My M8 is the best phone I’ve ever had, if I needed a new phone I’d be looking at M8/9.

last week I took delivery of a JiaYu S3 Advanced.

My Nexus 4s (there are 3 in the house) are starting to suffer from obsolescence/update issues so was on the look out for something.

Waiting on a Nexus 5.x so that Nexus 6 prices would drop was an option, but I cant se N6s coming down far from £370.

I did a load of research into chinese OEM units and this one seemed to be top of the pile.

And by god theyre right. It is astonishing for the money.

A 40,000 Antutu BM score. For £150.

40,000! It matches my bros Sony Z3 for performance. And that’s £500.

3Gb RAM. 16GB on board but a proper TF slot for +64Gb. Dual Sim.
Removable back and replaceable 3Ah battery. Ive just ordered a spare for £15. I took it to London for it’s first full day of abuse and (just) got a full day out of it including 2x 2hr train journeys thrashing it.

Band 20 LTE for Vodafone 4G.

Amazing screen.

The stock launcher is OK, but I prefer something a bit more googly, so installed the Google Now Launcher and it’s fine. I think the only 2x negs I have are that the capacitive touch buttons at the bootm only illuminate once you’ve touched them (which isnt a problem once youve learn where they are) and that there’s no “recent” apps button. But Ive installed an app to cover that omission.

It also has a v v handy bandwidth/DL icon in the sys bar that tells you your actual data transfer rate over GSM/LTE.

How about one of these? https://www.fairphone.com/phone/

I doubt either of those are available on O2

Sony Z3 on O2 is £37.50 pm for 24m, 1Gb data unlimited voice etc.
£20pm of that (£480) is for the handset. Implying airtime bundle is £17.50 pm

BUT

If you were to sign for SIM only for 12m, you can get the same bundle for £13.60 pm and buy your phone outright.

We’ve been SIM only for 9 years now. Wouldnt go back to contract handsets. Ive bought 3 phones in 9 years for far less than it would have cost in additional contract charges to “buy” them every 2yrs.

Mr Stoner, did you buy that from the JiaYu store?

O2 now offering fully transparent split billing on airtime and phone purchase costs, just signed up for iPhone 6s.

Pay off your phone, keep airtime only deal, or upgrade phone when you want and keep airtime / swap airtime or finish contract by paying off phone only.

iPhone 6s about £730, phone cost, for 64GB.

No I got from a UK reseller on ebay. He puts a western europe ROM on it with gogole play ready to go.

Just remember one other minor thing that may put people off, it’s effectively rooted so Barclays banking app wont run on it so I have to use the mobi. portal instead.

Some mates have suggested holding out for the Google Nexus 5: Does anyone know anything about this one?

Don’t think I’d be buying a Z3 when the Z5 just came out…. (also checkout the Z5 compact, or the premium if you can wait).

You mean the rumoured/leaked 5X? The nexus 5 already exists…

New Nexus 5X and Nexus 6 details leak with event just two weeks away

Whatever the new one is.

Yeah, they said about the Z5 as well.

Bump!

I was tempted by the Z3 after reviews and advice but ended up with the M4. Its quite a bit cheaper (£200) and it’s newer. The waterproofing doesn’t rely on little flaps over the charging socket which would’ve been a right pain. Performance seems very good. Best thing is the battery life which by smartphone standards is phenomenal. Easily lasts a couple of days of use and doesn’t go flat by itself so with light use the battery hardly drops at all. If you are tempted get the 16gb rather than the 8. It takes an sd card (64gb in mine) but you still want some internal space.

What’s the screen and camera like in the M4?

Slightly off topic. I had the purple hue on my HTC one camera. It is a well known problem (many threads about it in many places on internet). Contacted HTC and they arranged pick up, repair and sent it back in a week. All gratis.

So…… Send it back, get a nice case and a tempered glass screen protector. And there you have it, a new phone. Plus. I’ve yet to find anything that my phone won’t run or do yet.

HTC say 7-10 days: I can’t be without my phone for that long.

Just ordered a two+ as the one was such a worthy purchase. The one can now pass down to my wife and I’ll use the two. Slightly harder to get hold of at the moment though, still invite only.

Oops.

Stoner, that’s one hell of a lot of phone.

can be had here for just under £120 too.

I have a Z3, while it’s quick and does what I need, it feels slightly old compared to the ZTE blade V (VF smart ultra 6) does have a tendancy to hang a little, but has ANT+ which is useful.

I think youd have to be prepared for duty & VAT on buying from there. I bought from a UK importer. Ive asked if he can supply me a second one (for Mrs S) at a discount as a repeat buyer going direct and he said yes, but I havent asked for a price yet. He’s a nice enough guy in comms.

PS Second battery arrived today. Identical. £15. Bargin. Lives in my London rucksack as back up.

I have an M8s and I’m very pleased with it. However, as someone who was utterly flummoxed by Stoners first post, I suspect I may be in the largely ignorant and generally easily pleased demographic when it comes to these things.

Lg g4 on virgin mobile £20 month then £6 for airtime (250mins, unlimited text, 1gb data). Had mine for a few weeks, great phone. Has 32gb internal plus sd.

I like the look of the LG G4. It’s got to be on O2, though.

mikey75 do you have to buy the phone from O2? Its now to separate standing orders so why can’t you just keep the service part of the deal

I’m always amazed that people will borrow over £500 to buy and object that is so easy to loose or break

My wife has an M4 on contract it seems great in all respects. Her contract seemed to nearly give the phone away even I accepted that SIM only wasn’t the way to go. The Ultra Stamina battery mode was great when camping

Yes.

Another option for you, and one I’m considering, is an Elephone P6000 Pro. They’re available on ebay for around £100; the specs look decent, although I’m not particularly clued up on what’s hot in the smart phone world…

I’d have probably bought one of those phones Stoner mentioned above, but the size of them puts me off. Anyone know of anything decent with a 4.5 to 5″ screen?

Im after a new phone as well. Im clueless TBH. I want a large memory for songs and podcasts. So a Sony Xperia M4 Aqua could have a 64gb sim card that would hold my music and podcasts? I only need text and apps would be handy. Would I be still able to use Itunes? Any others I should look at?

Like the idea of waterproof as I use it on the bike

Yours completely out of his depth

I’ve looked at the M4 as well, but the deal breaker for me (or at least the thing I don’t like about it) is it doesn’t have a true high-definition screen. Plus it only has 8gb of internal storage so you could find it slowing down quite quickly as it fills up with apps etc.

Edit: Oh, and Otter Box don’t make cases for Sony phones which, for me anyway, is a negative.

I’ve just bought a phone with a 7 inch screen 😳
It really makes the internet come alive visible

Valuable input as ever Scaredy P. 😆

Picked up a M4 Aqua yesterday. So far, am impressed.

Small internal memory, yes, but takes a whacking great memory card, so not really an issue. So far…..

Battery life is stonking. Charged it fully from new yesterday, then left it on overnight and used it as hard as I could during today, watching rugby on it, calls, wifi, everything I could manage. Still had about 30% left at 1900 or so tonight. Impressed with that.

Screen is more than good enough. For a phone. If I want to watch something in high definition, I wouldn’t be watching it on a phone!

Haven’t tried the waterproofing yet, but that was a real seller for me. Wanted something I could just slip in a pocket when riding, and/or in general life!

There’s a 16gb version of the m4 which is plenty for apps for me. The sd card takes care of storage for maps, pics, music, etc. The screen is lower res but that’s where the price saving comes from its also pretty crisp and the colours are great. It’s definitely not a high end phone so if you want all the whistles and bells then you’ll need to look elsewhere (and pay more). To pawsy, yes stick a big sd card in and put all your music on that.

The M4 screen is really fine. I’m sat at a 24 inch hd monitor. Does 5 inch screen need the same number of pixels. I don’t hold it much closer

As i said above ultra stamina mode will let you call and text only for weeks

Water proof was deal breaker for my wife. Its her business phone. Her business involves upto 5 dog walks per day, so she sees alot of weather

Another vote for wait for the new nexus. It should be cheaper than most phones, will run faster as there’s no unnecessary apps and gets updates first. Google are gonna be announcing it on the 29th for release in October (hopefully), I’m hoping my Sony Z1 lasts long enough to wait it out.
If you don’t want to wait then go for the LG G4.

The one thing that puts me off the new Nexus is that it comes with the new USB-C charger, which means I’ll need to buy a new speaker/docking station.