Phone just died, any good (non-Pixel) deals?

Just had a cracking ride over top of Whaley Bridge. Took pics, then brewing up at home found that my phone has huge crack that appeared after getting back. Glitchy messy screen (£130 replacement – cheapest).  There’s some top Pixel deals but I am done with Google. (Shame, nice useful phones otherwise).

Any good Black Friday phone deals on this weekend? Too many for my tired brain to search through.

An iPhone?

All android phones are ‘google’…

just got fed upwith my new pixel 6a usb cable falling out all the time so ordeed a samsung s24fe off tesco at ebay for 449 less 5% topcashback.

If you want good battery lifeand camera I couldnt find a better deal for the money(unless you want a contract too fromm EE}

Maybe I should live with it, or a samsung s20fe with 80% battery condition, but the s23fe at carphonewarehousse with earbuds at £400ish and $50 cashback doesnt have the battery power and i really dont want to get caught out in the mountains

just got fed upwith my new pixel 6a usb cable falling out all the time

Checked it for pocket fluff with a needle? Mine does that now and again.

Checked it for pocket fluff with a needle? Mine does that now and again.

It’s an issue with some USB-c hardware…is the cable a ‘branded’ one or a pound shop special? I used to get fluff problems too, but now I’ve got wireless charging on the pixel 7 so it’s not really an issue – I use one of these bungs in the port pretty much 24/7/365 to stop fluff…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B2JQSRYN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Nah, screen already had 2 deep cracks in it and the 3rd crack has killed it for good.  Already done the toothpick on USB-C port. I would normally replace, but this would be the third screen at 130 a shot!  Phone is charging fine, just an absolutely done in phone not worth repairing sadly. Cost me £80 a year ago.

Can’t do apple, only android.  Heard lots of nice things about S23+ and all that.

All android phones are ‘google’…

Is not a helpful suggestion. The OP was quite clear they didn’t want a Pixel. Not sure why it’s the phones fault they keep breaking screens, I’ve had no damage to my 8 after a year despite having no screen protector and dropping it down the back stairs at work a couple of times, just got a decent Spigen case and called it job done.

No phone will withstand whatever you’re doing to have broken 3 screens. Get a decent case, stop treating your phone like crap or buy a Fairphone 5 and it will cost less to fix.

Android = Google so if you are done with Google, the all seeing demi god, it’s iphone or Huawei.

USB C and pocket lint just seems to be an issue regardless of brand. You can buy little silicone plugs you can put in when not charging if your pockets are particularly fluffy.

I too kept breaking my Pixels, not sure why as I’ve had iPhones for work for years and treat them way way worse including dropping them on concrete yet they seem to last forever and have never broke a screen.

Something about Pixels and build quality just hasn’t quite clicked for them yet.

Bit of comment on the non-Pixel stance: great value practical phones but those G lads are really pushing AI on everything.  Tools that make people who are sad in photos have a beaming smile. Samsung less so. It’s all inevitable, but I would just a while longer away from that bollox thanks.

And yes I cannot look after any Tech.

Not sure what peple are doing to their phones but the only time I’ve ever broken a mobile phone is when I rode my bike into a canal and it died from water ingress. I think that was a Huawie p20 if I recal correctly.

Cost me £80 a year ago.

So it was already well used and old at that price

Samsung less so.

Really? Samsung are famous for cramming a load of useless bloatware onto ‘their take’ on android that you can’t remove.

Might have been mentioned up thread, but i have recently bought official refurbish phone from Samsung and Apple for mrsepic and epicjr. Much cheaper. Also, GiffGaff have lots of refurb handset deals that look pretty good value, but not sure of warranty support.

Is not a helpful suggestion. The OP was quite clear they didn’t want a Pixel.

No, the OP said they were “done with Google.” If you’re done with Google then either you’re into iDevice territory as Convert said or you’re hamstringing yourself.

It’s all inevitable, but I would just a while longer away from that bollox thanks.

You could just not use those features?

mrsepic and epicjr.

And for all this time I thought you were a photographer called Susan.

.

And for all this time I thought you were a photographer called Susan.

There’s a separate thread for that, and yes you’re not the only one….

But I live in Sussex and I ride an epic. Mrsepic is indeed a susie tho.

is the cable a ‘branded’ one or a pound shop special?

all my cables do it

I got a samsung last month but it acquired 2 chips on the glass without being dropped

and the only reason i got a pixel was cos my samsung S9 usb port was broken

My Pixel 4a is still going strong after 3.5 years in a Spigen case. I’ve been through a dozen screen protectors in that time.

This place has gone to the dogs. 11 hours in and nobody has blamed the OP for being too heavy handed with their phone

Giff gaff refurb or backmarket?

Both warrantied up, ive always had excelent phones from them

What’s the issue with Google?

So you want an iPhone then?

samsung s23fe with buds from carphonewarehouse- sell the buds  and get the cashback, maybe cost you £250 in the end

or look at Samsungs own refurbished phones, with a new battery

Timely – just had a mail to say my current contract is coming to an end so I toddled off to the three website and I can’t look past another Pixel as my current one has been brilliant and I’ll pass it onto mini-DBW0001 (wife’s contract is up next month so hers can go to mini-DBW0002).

Did briefly look at some Samsungs – S22 (I think?) worth a go?

Minority opinion,

My first Android phone was an original Samsung Galaxy back in 2010 (I just checked, I found my complaint letter to O2). It was complete gash. I’ve had other Samsung Androids through my hands on and off over the years, either work-supplied or belonging to friends/partners, and I’ve yet to find one which has caused me to revise that opinion. I genuinely don’t understand why they’re so popular.

By comparison, my current Pixel 7a is probably the best phone I’ve ever had. I cannot fault it.

Bit of comment on the non-Pixel stance: great value practical phones but those G lads are really pushing AI on everything. Tools that make people who are sad in photos have a beaming smile. Samsung less so. It’s all inevitable, but I would just a while longer away from that bollox thanks.

So you’re going from a brand you can just not use the tools if you don’t want them to one that turns them on by default? (see the AI moon controversy). I have them on my Pixel and just don’t use them. FWIW I don’t rate Samsung at all, every phone we’ve had died, catastrophically. As in just bricked itself for absolutely no reason. Pixel or Oneplus are better shouts IMO. At least if you don’t like the supplied OS you can reflash with Lineage.

@cougar2 didn’t read the title huh? Context is everything.

This place has gone to the dogs. 11 hours in and nobody has blamed the OP for being too heavy handed with their phone

Similar lack of reading comprehension.

No, the OP said they were “done with Google.” If you’re done with Google then either you’re into iDevice territory as Convert said or you’re hamstringing yourself.

I’m reading the OP as being done with phones made by Google, and not done with phones using Google software.

E.g. looking at Samsung, but not another Pixel.

I recently got a Samsung S24 Ultra from Amazon for £600 and something. RRP is £1200

It’s a grey import, but registered it with Samsung no problem when it arrived. Only issue being is that the ECG and BP function on my watch won’t work as the phone/watch have to be purchased in the same country for that particular feature to work. Brand new, sealed box – if you are tempted, Ill find you the link

The lad bought a Nothing phone over the weekend – it’s somewhat quirky – but a load cheaper than the Pixels that the rest of the family run…

If you’re prone to breaking screens then what about an HMD/Nokia that’s designed for the user to be able to repair?

I got a Nokia G42 just over a year ago and it’s been great, more or less the same purchase cost as similar spec phones and parts are easy to get. They claim that their newest phones are even easier to fix.

https://www.hmd.com/en_gb/self-repair

Edit: just checked and for my phone a screen is £50, a battery £28 and a charge port £23. All OEM and instructions and tools included.

Unpopular counter opinion:

The pixel (8 in my case) is a bit rubbish. In particular:

Despite being Google, and android being google, the UI is buggy as hell and crashes frequently.  Not bricking the phone, hold power to reset crashing, but enough that you need to lock it and unlock it again, or close an app.

The camera is crap.  It takes >1s to actually take a picture because it’s not taking a picture. I swear it’s taking a 1s video, analyzing it in google image search then churning out some over saturated, over sharpened, faux bokeh’d, AI generated crap that looks vaguely like the thing you were trying to photograph a bout a second after you wanted to photograph it.  Yes it does skin tones as a result, but you can actually see how hard it’s trying in the results, I took some photos of a black Labrador and despite being a year old, it gave her grey hairs where they should just have been glossy!

My old S10 on the other hand was excellent at just taking photos that immediately looked like the thing you were taking photos of.  Which is supposed to be the point.

The UI is just worse.  You have to scroll down the app icons, where Samsung does it by page so you memorize that HSBC is on page 3, 3rd icon down on the left, that’s fast enough to find I never bothered creating shortcuts. And the whole gesture thing they seem to share with Apple (I don’t care who did it first, it’s rubbish) is a PITA when any usefully protective case seems to block your finger tracking over the very edge of the screen so you cant swipe up from off the screen.  Out of the case it’s great, you can be video calling someone or watching a tutorial, swipe up and it minimizes them whilst you google something, in the case it’s just infuriating.

Samsung ditched physical buttons, but at least kept the virtual ones.

Apart from a few apps you’ll never open and can’t delete (and you can even drag their icons into a hidden folder if their existence offends you) Samsung are just better at making Android phones than Google themselves.

Minority opinion,

My first Android phone was an original Samsung Galaxy back in 2010 (I just checked, I found my complaint letter to O2). It was complete gash

I had a Samsung tablet some time in the dim and distant part and I’ve never forgiven them for Touchwiz. I expect they’ve improved or rebranded it but I don’t care, Samsung portables are dead to me.

The UI is just worse. You have to scroll down the app icons, where Samsung does it by page

You do? My apps are paged on my 6a. Were you swiping up from the bottom to get the full app list maybe?

Samsung ditched physical buttons, but at least kept the virtual ones

The virtual ones are still there on any flavour of android I’ve seen, though I think Google do have gestures enabled by default. It’s easily changed back, I’m not a fan of gestures either for the same reasons as you.

The camera is crap

Turn off top shot or turn on raw, or just use a 3rd party camera app if it’s that bad.

Samsung ditched physical buttons, but at least kept the virtual ones.

I hate gestures too, so:

Settings > display > navigation mode > 3 button navigation

never bothered creating shortcuts

Perhaps this would help. Instead of swiping up to get to the app drawer, you could swipe page right and have the app you want exactly how you want them, grouped in a folder or whatever. All you do is long hold on the app icon in the app list and it’ll then let you drag and drop a short cut to whichever page  and location of the homescreens you want

You do? My apps are paged on my 6a. Were you swiping up from the bottom to get the full app list maybe?

Yes, but that was sort of my point, in the Samsung version you don’t actually need to because the full list is paged.  You could find any commonly used app with your eyes closed, it didn’t need curating into pages.

It’s slightly less annoying than the constant changing of which 4 apps appear on the home screen.  Doing it manually I didn’t pick the 4 most common, it’s the 4 I’m most likely to want in a hurry with my hands full (banking whilst shopping,  strava and maps whilst riding a bike, etc).

There’s some good stuff too, the call answering assistant is great, IDing songs on the lock screen is nice, the live translations via pixel buds is magic.  But overall it just feels more like a competitor to cheap Chinese smartphones. But IMO the defining feature of a smartphone these days is the camera, and it’s just not great.  And the annoying stuff is just annoying. Like the opposite of “you can’t polish a …. but you can roll it in glitter”.  You can’t make a mid-range phone bad, but you can roll it in enough dirt to make it undesirable.

Next time round I’ll just get either whatever Samsung S…. is the cheaper outgoing model, or A… is it’s equivalent depending on the cashback deals.

Unpopular counter opinion:
…
The camera is crap.

The camera is an app. Install a different one. The camera on my Nokia was a hot mess, like “unusable” levels of bad, I installed… actually I think it was the Pixel camera app. Night and day better.

The UI is just worse. You have to scroll down the app icons, where Samsung does it by page so you memorize that HSBC is on page 3, 3rd icon down on the left, that’s fast enough to find I never bothered creating shortcuts.

The main apps list is in alphabetical order. You have a desktop you can organise with shortcuts however you like. About the only time I have to scroll through the full apps list is to get to my email or my bank app, both of which I deliberately didn’t want to make obvious on the front screen.

And the whole gesture thing

… is a setting you can disable.

Samsung ditched physical buttons, but at least kept the virtual ones.

… is a setting you can enable.

t’s slightly less annoying than the constant changing of which 4 apps appear on the home screen.

Huh?

Also huh?

t’s slightly less annoying than the constant changing of which 4 apps appear on the home screen.

Huh?

This is “suggestions on home screen” Basically places your 4 most commonly used apps in the 4 slots along the bottom..
Wait, you can turn it off.

long press on blank space on home screen > home settings > suggestions > suggestions on home screen

I’ve just upgraded from Pixel 6 to Pixel 8 Pro and I’m not experiencing any camera delay – unless I’m using the flash.

I’ve got a Samsung thing for work and a Sony experia 10 for personal use,the Sony is way better in every way,great camera long battery life and easy to use.

If we’re fretting about where apps live, just do the android thing and make it work the way you want it to.

Install the microsoft launcher and off you go. Set it up exactly as you want within that. No need to faff w Samsung’s UI.

Samsung Galaxy Ultra 22.  I think they have some ultras in their official refurb store. Never had any issues with reliability on any Galaxy, and we’ve had a fair few in different flavours

I’ve always used 3 buttons, until I had a iphone and got on fine with that. Then this year switched back to android and couldn’t believe how rubbish the gesture mode was. I persevered with it, partly thinking it must be me, now prefer it. There’s definitely a knack to operating it in a way that doesn’t interfere with apps like Instagram. A thin/non-existent case certainly helps.

First home screen, uncluttered with my five chosen shortcuts

Second screen with random, commonly used apps

Third with photo stuff at the top, fitness at the bottom

Fourth with music stuff and other streaming apps

Then I have a fifth with just three smart home apps. Anything else I find I’m occasionally using and searching for will get dumped there over time

Anything else I need I just swipe up and use the search bar, no need to scroll through them all

Mrs STR’s phone drives me insane. A load of screens with just random stuff dotted all over them