Looking at getting a new phone - help with my odd requirements?
Well, maybe they're not that odd, but I've not really been paying attention to what phone manufacturers are up to these days, so I need some help with what will work for me. I've previously had a huawei p10 lite (which I only sold after the news of them selling data to the Chinese government), Pixel 3a (i used that until it dying breath and then sold it for parts), and now I have a RealMe 8 5g, but I'm having charging issues with it. I might look at getting it fixed, but depending on the cost I might sell it on and buy something else.
MUST HAVES:
- Headphone jack. I'll die on this hill and I will get a phone with a headphone jack as long as they are available to me.
- good battery. It's the main reason I went for the RealMe 8, the battery has just been fantastic so far.
- No bloatware. I'm ruling out Samsung, and anything similar that is full of extra junk I can't get rid of. As close to pure android as possible is best.
IDEAL
- good for games. the heaviest duty game I play on my phone is TFT, and then I move around between various puzzle and idle games for when I'm travelling or on my lunch break, but I don't need it to be super powerful.
- wireless charging. Nearly put this as a must have, but I could definitely live without it.
- Not chinese made/owned. Also nearly put this as must have, but I don't want to limit myself massively.
- under £250 I very rarely spend even that much on a phone, but I'm open to treating myself a bit.
I don't care about the camera really. I'm a photography hobbyist and so if I want to take good photos for memories I'll just take a camera with me. If it's good then thats a bonus but its near the bottom of my list of things I think about.
What would there be out there for me? I've always liked the look of Sony phones but they're typically a lot of money, how do they fit in with my requirements? I've also been looking into the Fairphone but it really is out of my budget, and i don't know how it runs.
Thanks in advance for any help :)
I can't help you with not Chinese made or being cheap, but the Asus Zenfone has the rest of what you're looking for. Headphone jack, big battery, no bloatware (you can choose to use Asus' version for various things or set it to stock Android) aside from the dumb social media apps you can just uninstall, good for games and has wireless charging.
I have been loving my Asus Zenfone 10.
Asus is a Taiwanese brand so you're in the clear there. :)
Well thank you for helping my own ignorance!
Taiwan is the Republic of China
Sure, but I'm assuming OP is referring to it in a colloquial sense of not trusting companies such as Huawei or Xiaomi. Trust me, as a Taiwanese person I've spent all of my life explaining that Taiwan is an independent nation.
I’m mostly just joking around, I prefer a world where Taiwan is the one true China.
I don't wanna get into it too too much (since it's after work and I just wanna relax), but just wanted to point to this comment. Definitely more complicated than one China: https://tildes.net/~humanities.history/1apa/fun_fact_taiwan_claims_exclusive_sovereignty_over_mainland_china_and_mongolia_as_well_as_parts_of#comment-aogl
In the same way America, Canada, and Australia (not to mention innumerable countries and islands) are colonies of Britain and in no way their own entities.
Either that, or a poorly delivered joke.
It’s just a joke. Clearly I should stick to my day job.
Despite being a Taiwanese brand, Zenfones are manufactured in China (PRC).
I mean, most phones are. Unless OP wants like one of those Made in USA linux phones, he'll have to be OK with that.
Not necessarily. I recently bought a Sony phone that was made in Thailand, Samsung phones are mostly made in either Vietnam or Korea, Apple has moved some production to India and Google seems to be a mix of Vietnam and China, with plans to move to India as well.
A used zenfone 9 might get close on the price, though you lose the wireless charging. Still multi-day battery. The 8 unfortunately won't have that battery life due to the older chip
It's a really nice device, let down only by the really strange choice to continue with USB 2.0 for IO, and Asus' refusal to act with any integrity over the bootloader unlocking issue. For months, a year or more, they've been withholding the ability to unlock the bootloader of the Zenfone 8,9,10, and a handful of the ROG devices, while not providing any concrete information on whether or when unlocking might be possible again.
I wasn't aware. I haven't bothered rooting a phone in years, but I can see that being disappointing to someone who wants to.
I use a Sony Xperia 5 IV. It's made in Thailand, has a headphone jack and almost monthly security update (at worst quarterly if a new Android release is coming up). It has a toolless openable sim card tray where you can choose between 2 sims or 1 sim and a microSD (some regional variants only support 1 microsim 1 eSIM for dual sim). It has wireless charging and reverse wireless charging.
The cons is that Sony wouldn't say how long the software update is, presumably two years, and the price is a bit more than an iPhone 14 Pro Max. The camera comes with a dedicated two step shutter button, has a lot of tunables (incl. Manual mode) like a DSLR, and like a DSLR you're expected to postprocess your photo before getting anything usable. The auto mode tends to use low shutter speed unsuitable for handheld operation even with OIS.
I fully agree with this opinion. While I haven't bought one, I've been closeto and recommended my mom to get one because Sony has come pretty far. I my opinion:
Pros: - great screen.
-great camera. They make cameras for most other companies. It's pretty much them or Samsung
- headphone jacks !!!
- large batteries
- some still support dual Sims and memory cards
- size. They sometimes are too tall but they're all skinny. Some are the last of the small phones.
Cons: - be careful of the resolution. They were the first 4k phone displays but the high resolution killed battery power. I think they've ironed out problems with newer phones but it's something to consider.
But otherwise they are definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Problem with Sony's screen (at least mine) is it doesn't do dynamic refresh rate. And the 5 IV comes with the notorious Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. I could turn on 120Hz but it will overheat after like 30 minutes of continuous Firefox usage then it forcefully drop you to 60Hz. It could be due to my Devilcase too, but my previous phones doesn't overheat outside gaming.
I believe many other phones can run their display from 2FPS to 120FPS, but this phone will always lock to 120FPS.
The current Xperia line is solid, but they're significantly over the roughly £250 spend that OP is looking at making.
In one sense I agree with you that it's not close enough to fit OPs budget, even though OP suggested some flexibility on price, it's not close enough, but in another, sometimes there are sales or possibly used markets that these phones could hit a more achievable price point.
I think it's worthy of discussing especially because OP put a very significant restriction on the phone suggestions, the headphone jack, and a lot of the other options that meet the criteria mentioned in here are older phones. Like at some point all these older phones are security liabilities because they don't get updates anymore. I guess OP didn't mention security updates as a significant factor though. At the very least I think it's worth mentioning more expensive phones to a limited degree if those are the only new ones that still carry a headphone jack and will continue to have security updates for awhile in the off chance OP forgot to consider that as a factor.
I wasn't criticising the recommendation, just observing the cost of an Xperia in the context of the preferred cost.
I mean, I suggested a phone without a headphone jack after all.
I just picked up the Moto G Power 5G 6/256 (what a name) for my wife and myself and it's been pretty good so far. As close to vanilla Android as you can get, headphone jack, SD Card reader, minimal, easily uninstalled bloatware.
No clue if it has wireless charging and I don't play games, so can't help you there, but it's been a pretty solid phone in the month or two I owned it. I picked ours up for $235, but looks like they're down to $199 currently.
Battery life is acceptable. I charge my phone every night and I get through an entire day with plenty of charge leftover, but I also don't do much heavy lifting with my phone. Very rarely do I watch YouTube, I mostly surf the Internet and use it to play local music and podcasts.
Has Motorola improved their security update support lately? They used to only provide security updates for 2-3 years tops for their flagship models. Which is unfortunate because the Motorola android version is very nice and minimalist, and their phones are decently priced usually.
I'm definitely not the person to ask about that
No worries. Perhaps it's something for the topic starter to consider if they are concerned about security update support.
I have this phone and am not a huge fan. Mine constantly freezes, requiring me to put it into sleep mode and turn it back on. It does this with multiple apps including browsers, games, and food ordering apps. It's a constant issue even with me constantly restarting it, as in it can happen multiple times in a ten minute period. If not a total freeze, then lagging. I wouldn't expect to be gaming much on the phone either as even simple platformers like Dadish lag. Mine is only 1 year old. My husband has an older model from 3 years ago and his battery is shot and doesn't last the day any longer. Mine is still going kind of strong and can last a day and a half.
My phone is also constantly dropping the data connection, although my husband's does not have this issue. We are both in the same carrier and same plan as well. I can be standing right next to him with no data and he can have a great connection.
Positives of the phone include the price (cheap), the battery life for the first couple of years, and the ability to uninstall all the bloatware that came on it. Also we've both dropped our phones on concrete, asphalt, tile, etc and the screen is invincible and the case barely gets scratched. Basically, it's an okay cheap phone for people on a budget. You get what you pay for with it.
I've only had it a little over a month now, I think and no complaints yet. But I also bought the version with the extra RAM, these ones are also 2023 models, so I'm not sure if there were substantive changes between the 2022 model and this one I have.
Another vote for Motorola here. I have the same phone and have been buying all the previous models for the past 6-7 years. They are always pretty close to vanilla, and I love the fact that they have SD expansion slots.
https://m.gsmarena.com/search.php3
Best site for finding an adequate phone.
Pixel 4a. It's old, it's out of security updates. It's also $100 refurbished, was the last Pixel with a headphone jack, has a bevy of third-party roms + a pretty good default rom available, and the battery will last a day and a half.
No wireless charging.
Pixel 5a also has a headphone jack.
Yeah the 5a was the last. If the 6a had come with one, I would have bought it.
I'm using my 4a for as long as I can. I have similar wants for a phone as OP (I am not giving up my headphone jack), and there aren't many great options that don't have significant downsides (like price for Sony).
Whaaaat! I love my 4a and I'll stick with it as long as possible, but I was thinking that it might be time to upgrade next year. Guess I'll stick with refurbished ones.
I'd personally go with pixel 3. It's the best iteration of pixel that they've made
No it won't. It rarely lasts a day.
You can pick up a new Nokia X30 for around £250 these days. It's what I've been using for the last couple of weeks, and have no complaints so far. It's stock "Android One", so will be supported up to Android 15, according to everything I've read. Regular security updates too.
Only box it doesn't tick for you is the headphone jack, sadly. This is the first phone I've had without one, but I'm grudgingly adapting.
https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_us/nokia-xr-20 is probably your best bet. It's a little expensive, but it comes with the wireless charging. Nokia has cheaper phones without it, but they do have user replaceable batteries still. Nokia's Android is pretty clean, and it's based out of Finland.
I don't have anything significant against this suggestion, but I couldn't help but be annoyed by the marketing language on the page: "A phone designed for the long run" and only "security updates for up to 4 years." I'm still putting up with a crappy phone from 2017 and am grouchy that I'll soon need a new one. If only four years is the "long run," I'm in trouble!
That ship has sailed. Unless Google mandated it via their contracts, the manufacturers do the minimum they can get away with. And Google has only recently changed to 5 years I think? I remember Google saying the problem was the chip drivers or something. Basically because Arm is all the wild west, it's not like the PC where the Linux drivers are modular and can probe what hardware is available via standard agreed-upon hardware APIs, on Arm you have to hard-code the drivers to use or something. So each phone requires its own special snowflake version of Android, compatible only with that one device. Compare it to the PC where one Ubuntu version covers just about every PC out there. Anyway, because every phone requires its own special version, and manufacturers change everything all the time, they don't want to have to keep building all this software for all these "old" devices, so they cut it as short as they can. Another option would be to keep chip versions around longer so they could maybe use the same software across a few ranges of phones, but then people would complain that they're using old hardware in new phones. Also the chips themselves might not be made any more, as Qualcomm or whoever moves on to newer things. I vaguely remember the Linux kernel people talking about sorting out the mess by implementing software magic to load required drivers or something. And years ago Google spoke of adding abstraction layers between the kernel and Android layers, so old hardware would work with newer androids for longer. I guess like most of their endeavors it ended up getting canned.
I'm using a Xiaomi Mi A1 from 2017, my previous one was the previous model to your Moto G one that I had for a couple of years too. But around that time there were a lot of big improvements in the cheap-mid-range models so upgrading got you massive leaps in performance. Nowadays it's all tiny incremental updates, some stuff worse (no headphone jack, no fingerprint sensor on the back), some better (0.5mm more screen!). I need a new phone too, and I have no idea what to get. They're all crap! 😆 Like OP here, I don't care about the camera, but that's literally all the reviewers ever talk about, so this thread has been pretty interesting.
Thanks for explaining. At least now I understand what the problem is. Sounds pretty complicated and that you're right that the "ship has sailed." It's frustrating, because I'm in complete agreement with you--they're all crap! I just want a basic phone with good battery life that I can use until it dies. A bonus feature would let me connect it to my PC and do all of the customization from there, since I've always hated the simple interface of fingers and thumbs on a tiny touchscreen, but I don't need to go crazy. I appreciate threads like this one, too, since the research is so uninteresting to me.
Qualcomm are notorious for dropping hardware support of their mobile chipsets as soon as possible, and since they are the biggest player in the market the other manufacturers follow suite.
Each chipset requires a firmware blob to interface with Android, if the firmware isn't updated Android support gets progressively harder with each new release. It is possible for ongoing support without Qualcomm doing their side but very complex and expensive.
I think Fairphone has the best track record out there for ongoing compatibility work, I believe they have one model that is on its 7th year of support.
Yep, fairphone has pretty good track records on that front. It isn't perfect but they really try hard for a sustainable phone...
For the Fairphone 5 (which i got, works great but i'm not picky), they used a chip intended for industrial/internet-of-things application because that way they could get support for 8 years on that chip (and they hope to update for 10).
But I don't think the FP5 would fit what OP wants. It does't have an audio jack or wireless charging ( the excuse they give for removing those is bullshit, btw, as I said, not a perfect company , juste the least bad available)
I bought Nokia G22. It is really low end phone with a bit higher (than low) price tag. I bought it only because of the idea behind it - it is made to be home repairable, even though the things you can change are limited to battery, connector board and LCD assembly.
It has headphone jack, it has 5000mAh battery, but it also has old and not that powerful SoC (that means that even with big battery, it lasts somewhat average - if you needed you could do 3 days, but I charge it almost everyday). It is pure Android though. It has Booking.com and Netflix and some others preinstalled, but all can be fully removed. I love how clean it is.
It is Chinese made, Nokia is Chinese nowadays. EDIT: Not true! Sorry for pevious statement. More can be found here.
It has not that good of a camera and the second camera (2x zoom) is pure shit at 2Mpix. It can't record 60fps even in 720p (it can via the "slowdown" function of the camera, but not standard). I don't play many games, but it can run Bloons TD6 fine and I also played some San Andreas.
I don't believe it is the right phone for you, but still wanted to mention it for any future readers here.
EDIT: Spelling
Well, I think apology should be made here... I'm ignorant... Nokia phons are made by HMD Global, which is obviously Finnish company. My bad, sorry! I will edit previous comment.
I not sure if it is still the case, but when HMD Global started and took over the old Nokia brand they were based over the road from Nokia and staffed by pre-Microsoft Nokia staff.
I've been using their phones for a few years now, and typing this on one of their tablets. Decent hardware, regular updates.