What Mobile Phone?

Currently Samsung A71, coming up to 4 years old. Previously a succession of Moto’s.

Requirements:

– moderate budget

– decent phone (last night’s Aurora pics were truly sh*t on this phone)

– reliable GPS (strava)

– minimal bloated preloaded software/Apps.

That’s it really. Budget … if on monthly contract, up to £25ish per month. But can buy outright if that’s a better way of doing it.

As this is clearly a question about current Android phones with a sensible budget I feel duty bound to suggest an iPhone 15 Pro Max Titanium.

Pixel 7a.

Samsung Galaxy S22 refurb. About £250 on fleabay.

I got a refurb S21 last year and it looked brand new and has been great value.

I was looking at a Google Pixel 8 direct from Google with the discount they were offering plus the extra on top of the trade in on my iphone 11 it would have cost about £300. Trouble is for me i’m so tied in to the Apple eco system I didn’t in the end.

If it’s a decent point and shoot camera you want Marques Brownlee did a test the other month and Google took the top three overall spots.

Pixel 7a.

This.  Depends on your definition of “moderate” budget of course.  I have one, my other half just bought one.

if on monthly contract, up to £25ish per month.

You can easily get a Pixel 8 with 300 Gb for less than that. A Pixel 8a (released next week) can be bad on contract for well under £20. If you go for an 8a and your phone is eligible for trade in you’ll apparently also be able to claim £150 back on top of the trade in value – sounds too good to be true so I’d want to look carefully at that if I was going for it myself! If that’s correct though it makes the 8a a very tempting prospect. Comes with 7 years of OS, “feature drop” and security updates.

If a good camera is priority then the Pixel phones are brilliant. I have a Xiaomi with a supposed 48mp quad camera etc. My other half has a Pixel 6a and every photo she takes is infinitely better than mine. I’ll be replacing mine with a pixel when the time comes.

If trade-in is something which you’re interested in, it’s worth looking around.  CEX is offering more for her old Huawai than Google was when she bought the 7a.  I don’t know if it’s still there but there used to be a tool on MSE.

Word of warning regarding Pixels – if you want to stream from it whatever you are connecting to MUST be Chromecast compatible, normal Miracast is not supported out the box and unless you want to be messing about with custom ROMs you’re stuck with it.

Even Apple haven’t pulled that move, most annoying thing about my 8. That aside they are good. 7a doesn’t have a curved screen so protectors work properly too. Another annoyance about the 8.

If trade-in is something which you’re interested in, it’s worth looking around.

Google were offering the 8a with trade in +£150 on eligible devices on their site last time I looked so that’s worth a look if you just want to buy outright. That’ll be off list though so the start point is £500. You can do better getting it on contract if you’re not locked in elsewhere. Anastasia assuming the 8a is the kind of thing you’re after of course!

Xiaomi

I recently replaced my trusty pixel 4a with a 7a. It takes decent photos of the aurora, battery life is fine except when Garmin connect is running. The extra size over the 4a took some getting used to but it’s ok now

The fingerprint sensor is the one thing that really annoys me. On the 4a it was on the back and just worked always. It’s on the front on the 7a and it’s quite temperamental.

Odd, I found the opposite.  The one of the front of the Pixel just works, the one on the back of my previous Nokia hardly ever did.  Maybe re-train it?

Same, front sensor works 99% of the time. But mine is an 8 with no screen protector, YMMV

I’ve no idea what it does, but setting up her 7a this morning I noticed a toggle setting for “screen protector”. Maybe affects the fingerprint sensitivity?

giff gaff and apple were both doing the iphone on interest free, could be worth a look, they tend to last forever and get all the software updates.

Do you have “perks at work” or one of the other employment discount schemes?

Samsung have some cracking deals at the moment.

A55 5g with 256gb storage and Bud FE for £328.

Samsung support for updates is now as good/better than Google & Apple.

You can pre order the pixel 8a and get £216 trade in for your Samsung A71 direct from the Google store.

So the pixel 8a would be £283 after trade in.