MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
My horrid Harrier is malfunctioning left, right and centre and I'm only half way through the contract.
I may just be in the market for buying a new handset (sub £300) as the exit and replace charge was over £200 + a new contract so I'm tempted to get a handset see the contract out then go SIM only.
Needs to be Android
4G
Stuff all bloatware
Bluetooth
Don't do anything really clever with it, strava, internet surfing, music app, bit of you tube, quick pictures here and there and parking payment apps that sort of thing. Oh might make the odd phone call too.
Ideally I would buy on the high street (no weird eBay specials).
If anyone knows a mainstream dual SIM option that might be of interest.
Not available in high street shops as far as I know but I'm really impressed with my OnePlus 2.
https://oneplus.net/uk/oneplus-2
Moto G4 Play? No bloatware, decent sized sceen, fantastic battery life and super cheap.
Motorola Moto G4,I've got the dual sim 32gb version, pure android, no bloatware and due to upgrade to android 7 soon.
I'm on a Moto G3 so a bit more budget but the Moto G range get my vote
OnePlus 3 - get a second hand one off eBay for under £300
Another one+ user here. Very happy with it. Also the Huawei seems to be a good choice.
Moto Z Play looks good as well, although a bit over the OP budget. I'm still on a Nexus 5 but will need to change to something newer soon.
Samsung Galaxy S4 mini - 4G and unlocked. Just bought a brand new one for £120, does everything you need. There in ebay through registered shops. They are one of the smallest smart phones you can get.
MotoG here (v2, v3 and v4) for family and work team phones.
Great things, zero bloat, good enough at everything that is hard to justify spending more.
Very impressed by my oneplus3
I recently bought a Moto G4 Play for the Mrs. Works fine, no massive bloatware.
Loving my P9. The cameras are excellent! Not cheap though 🙁 Still, made me re-evaluate Huawei.
Thanks. Oneplus looks nice but it's niche OS puts me off I think in part due to the Harrier (non mainstream) experience which was initially good, rapidly transitioning to mediocrity then irritation followed by desire to turn it into electronic crumbs after its latest habit of locking itself mid text/web page/task over and over again.
Seen a Sony experia x 32gb on sale at £300 is that worth a look?
My wife has a moto g4, and it seems great for £150. I might get the + version if I can't wait the updated one coming soon.
Moto G4 is pretty good. I had a One Plus 1 before and that was better. The Cyanogen mod android is great.
The oneplus is is just a android skin, not much bloatware. The latest update made it even better
Another Oneplus vote here...still on a Oneplus One here with my son loving his Oneplus 3. Don't worry about 'niche OS', its a well designed/developed product.
http://www.three.co.uk/lenovo/p2?featuretab=Battery&memory=32&colour=Grey is being raved about as a serious contender to the Moto G4's crown as best bang for buck purchase, huge battery capacity.
Huawei P9 lite here, V happy
Huawei P9 Lite?
No fancy Leica dual cameras like the full P9 but only £199. Impressed with the battery life - can't kill it in a day even with lots of browsing, video, gps usage, calls and tunes.
Not stock Android, but the Huawei stuff is pretty much cosmetic. I'd prefer stock, but for less than £200 I can cope.
It [i]is[/i] dual sim, but at the expense of an SD card, which might leave it a little pushed for space. Never tried that, so can't really comment.
Thanks all. This place is great so long as we don't do politics. I can see consistent contenders in those posts, which is really handy.
reticent about the Huwaei phones after previous experience with a reskinned Android phone.
I always find with these things I can work the device fine but I find the choice of what to get makes my brain ache especially as I'm not fussed about keeping up on latest tech trends and the shop is never a good place to get a real world view on a specific model! 😀
The dual SIM thing is in case we get a bring your own device option for work at some point (currently have work and home mobiles). It's not confirmed yet as an option. Not a deal breaker.
I'm in this situation, my Samsung has died, gone sim only, currently on an iphone6, hate it, hate ios.
Want to buy a decent Android phone outright, not heard of oneplus, what's the low down?
Core I had a look at their website seems to be a very tech focussed option (looks really good to my untrained eye) but it's £400new for the 3t standalone.
Sony xperia i get 2 days unabashed usage out of it before it needs charging , if i turn all the shit off it goes a week without needing to be charged
Bear it in mind that the oneplus 3t is a very well priced top end phone. The 2t may be all you need
I'm on a Moto G3 so a bit more budget but the Moto G range get my vote
same here and really happy with it. If you use lots of apps you might want to get one in the moto range with bigger storage.
Needs to be Android
4G
Stuff all bloatware
Bluetooth
Moto G4 is £160ish, if you go for the G4 Plus it's still under £200.
Buy direct from the Motomaker site and you get to design it, they're all dual-sim. You can buy elsewhere, Amazon have stock usually but you have to watch you're getting dual-sim.
It's bog standard stock Android so no bloatware.
Samsung A3. Mid range price but looks more expensive. Also rare as a rare thing...half decent spec but relatively small.
Its about the same size as the first gen MotoG, and my Sony Z3 Compact.
Got it direct from Samsung (I got 5% or 10% off via my companies corporate discounts so worth checking), the upside is no bloatware apart from Samsungs own.
Moto G3 here. It's brilliant. Why you'd want to pay twice the price I don't know.
The G3 is pretty much waterproof too. Correct me if I'm wrong G4 owners but haven't they removed this winning feature on the latest versions now? Seems like a backwards step.
I picked my dad a Nexus 5X off Amazon for £250. The model is a year old now, but vanilla android and nice screen.
Wileyfox swift 2 plus?
I have an Experia Z2. Best phone I have had. My wife's is a Z3. She loves it. Both are still going strong after years.
reticent about the Huwaei phones after previous experience with a reskinned Android phone.
Guy at work as the Hauwai phone. It's really, really, nice, the replacement home screen works well.
Can I throw a slightly left-field option out there:
HTC 10
Has Nougat, can be had for cheap, if you're into your audio it's the best phone out there.
Bloatware is *almost* zero (a far cry from how HTC used to be), it's very slick and is indistinguishable from Vanilla Android.
Also the build quality is second to none.
Buy direct from HTC and if you drown/drop/smash your phone they'll give you one free replacement.
I have a moto 3 or 4g (can't remember which but pretty sure it's the 4) and I dropped it in the toilet on Saturday. Microphone and speakers packed in so I started looking for a new phone and my money would go on the Oneplus X but my budget is lower than yours so in yours shoes I'd get a Oneplus 2 or 3. Luckily after been off for a few hours mine started working fully again (which is definitely a plus for the moto!) so didn't anything new.
I'm happy enough with it but main gripes would be the build quality of the phone isn't great and it's a bit slow but for the price those are to be expected. Other gripe is no NFC which may or may not matter to you but I'd quite like android pay!
Oh, and the reason I got the moto over the oneplus X when I originally bought was that OxygenOS (the Oneplus android rom) was closed source and had a few bugs that no-one could do anything about. OxygenOS is now open source so the community can fix issues with it as well as OnePlus which helps to speed up fixes.
EDIT: Just seen that the oneplus x also does not have NFC.
kayak23 - Member
Moto G3 here. It's brilliant. Why you'd want to pay twice the price I don't know
+1
Just make sure it's the 16gb one
Moto G4 here. As someone else above said I'm baffled why anyone would pay significantly more than that for a phone. Got mine from John Lewis as they were the cheapest I could collect from at the time.
That said, a couple of things that slightly annoy me but might not bother you:
-No notification light
-No magnetometer, which for me means no Google Sky Map 🙁
Nexus 5X if you can find one. ALready on Android 7. Good everything, only downside is no SDCard slot.
Theres some UK sellers doing 32G ones for £245 on ebay.
slight hijack here, but is the Moto G4 plus worth the extra over the G4? About £30 extra on Amazon, dont really need fingerprint scanner but i think it has turbo charger and (on paper) slightly better camera?
Was in this situation a few months ago, eventually went for the g4+, choose this because of the better camera over the standard g4 (i use the phone camera when out and about on my bike) really impressed with it so far. Battery only lasts about a day but i often browse the web when 'at work' so guessing i could make it last longer. This was at the top limit of what i was wanting to pay for a phone, so far so good
Priorities for me are:
Notification light - really liked this on my previous Samsung phones, lack of it on iphone is one reason I don't like it.
Decent camera.
Physical/haptic back button.
The Moto phones look good but I don't think anything under £200 is going to get me all of the above, is it?
I have a Nexus 5X
Good: It's a nice phone. Good features, screen, size etc. I like the finger scanner for unlocking. You get the new software quickly and it doesn't have weird menus/colours etc - can't stand Samsungs for that
Bad: Battery life is dire. Runs out about dinner time. Has a USB-C port which while it charges quickly means you need special cables and noone else ever has one you can borrow.
My particular one has a bug where one day the battery meter stuck on 50%. Never changes. Tried everything including hard resetting the phone and doesn't fix it. With its awful battery life and no idea of how much juice its got you play a weird game of will it/won't it turn itself off
I did get one app that shows battery voltage on a widget. 4.3v = fully charged. 3.4v = shutdown imminent.
Drop me a line if you want to buy it. It's green and 32gb and has a wee dent in the plastic on the back.
