Hi, after an android phone that takes great pictures. Other wish-list aspects are good battery and ideally a microSD slot (256gb storage), not physically a huge phone. Not bothered by much else.

Happy to buy secondhand assuming it is only a couple of months old thinking of battery health, or pristine from musicmagpie or similar.

Am a Motorola fan but suspect the camera’s not the best.

Got utterly confused with conflicting online reviews … so any insights pls?

If camera is your thing, the new Pixel 6a is outstandingly good. There’s little argument about that online or elsewhere.

There’s no memory card though.

Retails at £399 BUT the Google store is offering trade-in, so it might well come in under budget if you’ve got a working phone to exchange.

Pixel 6a Trade-In

Search for a phone by the attributes must important to you. Don’t worry too much about the camera quality, no one is that interested in your pictures apart from yourself and future viewings will most likely be on another poorly calibrated phone screen?
I’ve had my mi10t lite for nearly 2 years and apart from the small 64gb off storage it’s a great phone.
Maybe a Poco f3 suits your requirements if you can get one for 200£? Might be too big tho?

I bought a brand new Samsung S20 5G FE last December for £300 from an ‘open box’ dealer on Ebay – camera is amazing & battery lasts nearly 3 days.

Redmi pro 10 has a great camera, battery lasts 2 days, has as card slot, but fails the massive test. You’ll get used to it within a week

If you go for a Pixel they back up to ‘the cloud’ so storage isn’t so critical

We went through this recently and I concluded that in this price range Pixel phones have the best cameras by so far that if the camera is your main concern it distorts your options. Basically:

If you can stretch the budget / wait for a deal (Black Friday might do £50 off) get a Pixel 6A.
If you can get a used 6A in budget in the meantime, get that. Prices are sticky though.
If you can’t, try and find a refurbished 4A 5G for £200.

I don’t think there’s anything between those two prices that’s a better camera option than the 4A 5G. I see others on the thread are making suggestions in that range, so I’d certainly also say listen to them too. We considered then ruled out, but haven’t experienced the phones they are suggesting.

Over a certain amount they charge though.
I have a pixel 6a and it is rather nice. That said last phone was a pixel 4a.

Hi, after an android phone that takes great pictures

Search for a phone by the attributes must important to you. Don’t worry too much about the camera quality, no one is that interested in your pictures apart from yourself

If only there were some way we could know what attributes were most important to the op, eh?

The camera on the Pixel 6a is very good btw.

I just went through similar search. I ended up buying a “used” Huawei P30 Pro from reboxed.co

Still rated as one of the best cameras in a phone (Leica optics). Has a huge battery life. 128K with 256K expandable memory. And it is the last Huawei to run android so full Google apps on board but no more android updates (which suits me as the latest version do not allow access to many of the folders on the phone). I paid £300 for their premium version and I cannot see a single physical mark on it anywhewre to suggest it may have been used. I guess it hasn’t ever been n anyones hands before.

My main interest is a phone with a telephoto lens option and that limits choices a lot.

Most phones take way too wide angle shots and something that looks great to your eyes, looks small and distant with a lot of wasted space from the phone. Sure you can crop but often the quality is poor even with super mega pixel cams.

Though as someone used to SLRs I’m expecting way too much from tiny camera sensors in phone, but lugging and SLR or even compact around is hassle these days when just want some nice shots on a walk or ride and minimal carry.

Can’t offer advice on the phone other than the pixel 6a is getting good reviews.

But I can offer advice about having a big memory card. Don’t. All it does is encourage photos to be stored on the card and nowhere else. Memory cards fail or corrupt if the phone has a moment. Smaller memory on the device and cloud storage works well – and not needing so much memory opens up loads more options.

My main interest is a phone with a telephoto lens option and that limits choices a lot

Rules out a Pixel 6a then, it’s got an additional wider angle lens but no telephoto.

I picked up a new Samsung s20 fe with a £200 discount for exchanging an old phone. The old phone didn’t have to work which was a bonus. So a new Samsung with a 2 year warranty for £300 seemed a good deal. Worth keeping an eye on hotukdeals.com for things like that.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>If you go for the Samsung, there was something about the Samsung own brand processor being a bit rubbish, the snapdragon ones are the ones to go for. </span>

Go for a Samsung S series, Pixel cameras are good, but so are Samsung’s and the addition of an optical outweighs some fancy extra image processing for me.

The S20FE/S21FE/S22 are all reasonably compact.

If you have a “perks at work” type employee scheme have a look at the Samsung link. They had a deal where by trading in an old phone the S20FE 5G came in at £130 or thereabouts!

I’m not massively up to date with latest phone tech but when I was looking I went with Huawei P30 pro because they had the best lenses for the price.

We went through this recently and I concluded that in this price range Pixel phones have the best cameras by so far that if the camera is your main concern it distorts your options.

Not the best camera but they probably have the best software, which makes them easier to get good results. The Huawei is a bit harder to work with in comparison. A complete novice can produce good shots with the Pixel in my experience. End result is what counts…