Cell phone advice
My current phone is about 6 years old and has a lot of signal problems and I replaced the battery about 6 months ago and the new battery is even worse than the original one was and I think it's time to get a new phone.
Things I want in my phone:
- Android
- I would love to have a microSD card but that seems impossible
- if there's not microSD then I need min 512GB of internal storage and I would prefer 1TB if that's not like +1k to the cost
- Headphone jack
- If there's AI, then I can disable it
- Excellent battery life
- On the smaller end
Things I don't really care about:
- Camera quality (I'm a shitty photographer, the camera wont help)
Things that might be nice:
- Having a stylus but not at the cost of the phone being enormous. Reason I want this is because it gets cold in the winter in Chicago
I hope this phone lasts another 6 years and will be pissed if it lasts under 4 years; at that lifespan and amount of use I get out of it I'm pretty price-agnostic. I live in the USA but expect to travel to Europe a few times next year so it should do decently well when traveling. Network is T-Mobile.
This is not SUPER urgent right now so if your advice is "wait til January because the XYZ phone releasing then is probably better than anything available right now" I would be willing to do that. But my current phone is really not doing great.
Happy to answer any other followup questions if anyone has any!
Thanks!
I don't have a phone recommendation, but you can buy a mini stylus that'll work with any touch screen. It won't be part of the phone, but you could keep it on a keychain or find a case/phone pouch that'll hold it.
wait really?? why did i not know this?? brb looking into this right now
If you're like me, order a multi pack. They just wander off. I also like the pens that are styluses when not a pen. Like when they're "unclicked"? Idk if that makes sense.
do you have a product link? that does sound great
edit: jk, found one! Looking forward to losing these on a regular basis 😆
I'm really glad you were able to find one, because frankly, I would not have been able to describe them successfully to a search engine. I also think the last one I got was a swag giveaway from a different department on the campus I work at.
My solution to cold weather however, is often using the tip of my nose when my fingers are too cold for my touch screen gloves to work. If the tip of my nose is too cold, I should probably put my phone away
Touch screen gloves are so iffy. I managed to improve mine with more conductive thread, but they're still not precise enough to type with.
Voice to text is such a bad idea at a crowded bus stop.
The only flagship phones that have a microSD card slot and a headphone jack that I'm aware of are the Sony Xperia 1 series. I have a Sony Xperia 1 mk III (truly horrible naming scheme there Sony great job) and I absolutely love it. No stylus, but it has all of your other requirements. Headphone jack, micro SD card slot, it's great. The camera on my mk III is so so. If you take the time to fiddle with settings in Sony's pro camera app you can get a great picture out of it but the default settings are just okay.
The Xperia 1 mk VII is the most recent one and a cursory search says it'll work fine on European networks. As for how long it'll last you, I'm using a mk III from 2021 in 2025 and I reckon it'll last me even longer. Sorry to come across as a Sony shill, but I think it's a great phone.
There is also the samsung galaxy Xcover line. It even has a replaceable battery.
I haven't heard of the Xcover line before. Very interesting!
There is also Xiaomi Redmi Note 14S or alternatively Xiaomi Poco M6 Pro 4G.
Personally I`m quite ok with Xiaomi/POCO brand, ads are quite easy to disable in settings, quality for price is good, and performance is fine too. My last few phones are Xiaomi/POCO so... thats it.
I feel like Sony in general is pretty bad with naming schemes
I thought this phone doesn't work well in the USA? Otherwise I would have just gotten that one without making this post
I live in Canada and I have no problems with mine. I checked it out on kmovil and it looks like it works pretty well with 4G but does not have as much compatibility with 5G. People on Reddit say theirs works fine with T-Mobile but AT&T doesn't work as it's not on their approved devices list.
Reddit seems to have a lot of conflicting advice and random workarounds that people have tried, it's a bit concerning to me. If I hear from someone using this phone with tmobile in the USA I'd be willing to try, but as-is I'm a bit hesitant
Fair enough. If I was to get one from a place with a good return policy I'd be more willing to try it out and see if the network works. It's a shame Sony doesn't make a US version.
I'd definitely buy something like this from amazon so that returns are possible and easy, but my concern is more like, say I get the phone and it works, then in 4 months I'm slightly in the middle of nowhere and suddenly my service is gone because I chose a phone with poor coverage in the country I live in. That's the time when I most need my phone to work, and I'd be both temporarily screwed and also out a lot of money
Me and my wife both have phones from the Samsung Galaxy Xcover line. Headphone jack, micro-sd slot, and removable battery, at the cost of being a little bulky. I have a 6 pro and she has a 7. Other than the usual android/sony bloatware, no complaints.
Interesting! This might be what I want tbh
Still interested in suggestions but I'd put like 70% odds I'll end up getting this one.
Do you know the release cadence, e.g. if I buy one now am I getting a 2-year-old phone that's been sitting in a warehouse since 2023 and I should definitely wait a couple months, or is now a good time?
Have you done a couple of full charge/full discharge cycles? The phone has to learn the new battery's capacity, so you have to put it on the charger until it's full, and then use it until it actually dies. Do that a few times and it'll figure things out.
ah I was told letting it get down to like 10% was enough so I hadn't let it fully die. Is it too late now? The new battery has been in for a while now
The issue is the phone doesn't actually know what the new batteries real 10% is, so if you run it until it dies, it learns the full capacity - real 0% and real 100%. And no, it's not too late!
I always like fiddling with gsmarena's phone finder when it's time for a new one.
And then finding something unexpected on Amazon when checking prices.