I'm quite happy with my Huawei, even if it means the Chinks are spying on me.

I jumped ship from my old moto g to a pixel 3a because at the time there was a massive gulf in specs between that and the newer moto gs at the time.
I still think in terms of what they do with the moto gs, they get a lot right, nearly stock android, good updates, well balanced specs, no pointless flashy features like glass backs or curved screens.

Something from Oneplus might be worth a look too, although Chinese I think so probably mega-spying. But yeah Huawei stuff is alright too, but for the mega-spying. I'm running a secondhand Oneplus 5 with /e/ OS which hopefully avoids (some of) the spying. I would've put it on my Huawei but it wasn't supported.

Xiaomi consistently offer the best bang for the buck, but their version of Android is something of an acquired taste. My top pick would be the Poco X3 Pro at £160. It's a big unit, but you get ultra-fast charging with a huge battery, a 120Hz display, a headphone jack, dual SIM and a flagship-level processor. There will be heavy discounts available over the next few days, because 11/11 is the Chinese version of Black Friday.

The G9 Play isn't a bad phone, but the specs are generally underwhelming. There's no rapid charging, the screen is mediocre and the processor is a bit anaemic. If you can find it knocked down to less than £100 then it'd probably consider it, but it's poor value at anywhere near MSRP.

I have no idea why everyone hasn't bought a Poco X3 NFC. I'm blown away by how good this phone is for 150 quid.

My last two phones have been Motorola phones. I think I have a G8 currently. They do everything I need, but the charger port always winds up going to shit and the cable keeps falling out, or not being recognised, and that's the biggest downside for me with these phones. It's happened with both of mine, so I bet it'll happen with the new ones too.

>>27998>>27997

I've just checked the Poco X3, and all the specs are as good if not better than the G9 and G30 models I was looking at.

One big plus is that it has a compass / magnetic field sensor, which the Moto G phones have always cheaped out on for whatever reason.

If the price drops further over the next couple of days I'll go for the Poco X3, thanks lads. Should I anticipate any ballache transferring all my old Android settings and apps over?

>>28000
You'll spend ten minutes turning all the ads off.

Reason enough for me not to buy.

>>28001

What do you mean, ads? When browsing the internet, or ads built into the actual OS?

>>28002
The latter.

>>28003
>>28002
He's talking bollocks. I've never seen an ad in a year of owning this phone.

>>28004
The UK version has 0 ads whatsoever.

https://www.rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk.com/r/PocoPhones/comments/j90s08/how_to_remove_ads_on_poco_x3_nfc_poco_redmi/

See comments. And yeah, I've not had a single one.

So has that changed?

Mrwhosetheboss on YT was complaining about the ads a year ago.

>>28006
I'm not sure, but looking at the video, even he says:

"I should clarify that, you CAN disable ads in the settings of the phone - The point I was trying to make is that, I didn't like fact that they're there in the first place. "

Personally I don't remember even doing that, unless I disabled the setting unknowingly. But I can safely say I have not seen any ads.

>>28006

The Indian and Global version has ads. The UK version doesn't.

>>28000

>Should I anticipate any ballache transferring all my old Android settings and apps over?

Nope. You just log in with your Google account and it'll transfer everything automatically.

You can get £15 off on the Xiaomi store if you use an invite-a-friend link, on top of any other discounts. I won't post my own link, but if you search "xiaomi invite a friend" you'll find plenty of links.

>>28008
Looks like they're out of stock.

>>28008
>The Indian and Global version has ads. The UK version doesn't.


Does the EU fall under global, in this case?

>>28011

I couldn't say, but AFAIK you won't get any ads if your locale is set to UK during setup.

I went with an X3 Pro because I wanted a bit of extra RAM and storage (8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage). I spent about 250 GBP on it, all in, with a couple of fancy outer cases. I could have probably spent less if I'd waited for the right sale day, but regardless, I'm very happy with it.

Also, to clarify, I purchased the phone from a Swedish vendor for delivery within the EU, and I haven't encountered any UI-based ads. There was an option for "Personalised ads" when setting up the phone that I turned off.

Thanks for the recommendation ladm9s.

You almost tempted me too with your Chinese knockoff but I just ordered a Pixel 6. Spent an extra £200 to stay with EE to boot. Oof.

>>28015

The X3 isn't perfect, I will say. It's a bit heavy, unnecessarily big, and plastic feeling, but in terms of hardware crammed into an affordable package it's the best phone I've ever had.

>>28015
>Spent an extra £200 to stay with EE to boot
Same. 3 and O2 might have better prices, but I enjoy being have a phone signal.

>>28017
Just got it. I did a speed test and while EE don't rate the indoor 5G coverage as good at my house, I can get around 400 Mbps download. Very impressed.

What's the word on the current crop of mobiles? Looking at refurbs not new.

>>28105

What's your budget? Do you have a preference in terms of size? Are any features particularly important to you (e.g. gaming, camera quality, 5G, microSD slot)?

>>28106
I think memory capacity is the priority. Currently looking at the iPhone 7 and the Galaxy A20.

>>28107

If you like iOS and want a particularly small phone, the iPhone 7 is a perfectly decent choice. The screen-to-body ratio is pretty poor by modern standards though.

If you're willing to go up to £109 and don't mind a big phone, I'd be inclined towards the Redmi 10. Excellent specs for the price (albeit with a somewhat mediocre camera) and if you buy this week you'll get a free pair of true wireless earbuds.

https://www.mi.com/uk/buy/product/redmi-10

Just ordered a Pixel 6a. First time I've got an actually "new" new phone in a decade, I usually end up upgrading to 1 year old mid range handsets. My last phone was a Moto G7, which had amazing battery, but it's been very sluggish of late, lots of crashing when opening even low intensity apps. Hoping with my new phone I can actually watch YouTube without it shitting itself.

>>28137
What's the camera like?

>>28138
Seems alright, though I've only really had phones with shit to mediocre cameras so maybe it's not so good compared to its rivals. I like the magic eraser, very gimmicky, doesn't quite work as it should, but it's a real novelty erasing my cats whiskers or the lampost on the street and it look kind of legit.

I dropped my phone behind the radiator and instead of just landing and not breaking, it instead hit something on the way down which has rendered it about 20% as usable as it was 24 hours ago. It's an old phone (the same one I mentioned here: >>27999) so I'm happy to shop around for a new one.

I've always used Android but I don't really like it. I'm not a huge phone power-user anyway, so I normally buy cheapish phones, but I want one that will last for several years. The last couple of times I've bought a phone, I've thought I should get an iPhone instead. So...
>Do either of you own an iPhone?
>Can I get one with 5G, that isn't second-hand, for under £300?
>Are iPhones actually shit?
>Am I a mental case for trying to change allegiances in what should usually be a trivial change if this was a new bike or TV?

>>28455
From my research so far, it would appear that an iPhone SE (third generation) is exactly what I'm after, probably, but Carphone Warehouse won't do deals with EE and EE are fucking atrocious. I could pay ~£200 and ~£20 a month with Vodafone or Three with no effort at all, but EE will insist on giving me the phone for a tenner and then signing me up for a £60+/month molestation for this device I use much less than most people do. "Oh, but we'll give you 80 petabytes of data every month for that money!" Fuck you. I use WiFi most of the time and I think I only went above 500MB in a month once. I'm not bloody CERN; just give me a normal phone deal that doesn't feel like a savage cactus-bumming.

>>28456
You can get the phone on eBay for £300 and the SIM should then cost closer to £10 than £20.

Are SIM only plans intentionally shit? I'm content with my current phone (Pixel 6a), but when my contract comes to an end it's only a couple of quid cheaper a month to switch to a SIM only plan, than to upgrade to a Pixel 7a with the same features of the SIM only plan. I'd have thought that no longer having to pay for the actual phone would save me more than £3 a month versus getting a brand new phone.

I've never owned a smartphone or signed a contract before - will someone give me a rundown on how it works? I guess buying the handset outright would be better than paying monthly. What about sim contracts?
What should I know before diving in headfirst and being ripped off?

>>28716
The main thing to know is how much data you want to use. The market is not as good as it used to be, and the cheaper options have largely been abolished. Are you planning to use your smartphone a lot, with a lot of apps and streaming, or will your usage remain roughly the same? What I did when I moved to a contract phone was work out roughly how much I spent on pay-as-you-go top-ups per month, and then look for a contract that cost the same amount and included the phone for free. However, contracts that cheap and minimal seem to have disappeared.

I didn't have a contract for a long time, but I've had one now for probably four or five years. And I bought a smartphone later than most people, getting my first one in 2012. Is there a particular reason why you have resisted so long?

I did notice a few years ago that a lot of decent options disappeared through a combination of failure, consolidation, and integration. Three specific things that made things noticeably worse for consumers were the collapse of Phones4U, Carphone Warehouse deciding they wanted their own VMNO to get a second bite of the cherry, and Tesco, who already had a VMNO, deciding that they would no longer supply phones for other networks.

Annoyingly, for about a year I figured I should try and get a better deal from Virgin because I was still on the same allowances as when I'd originally signed on with them a few years before, and I could probably get much more data for less than I was paying. Unfortunately, I never got around to it before the migration to O2 (which I suppose was Virgin ending their VMNO), and now I'm paying a couple of quid more (because of annual increases) but getting far more data than I would need. I'm paying £11 for 100GB, but there seems to be a substantial credit from the switchover, so I'm not confident I could get a more suitable deal for less. Not that it matters, because the signal and speed where I live suck donkey cock.

>>28717
>Are you planning to use your smartphone a lot?
I'm embarassed to say that a recent post here at Britfa.gs has reminded me how much I wanted to try Pokemon Go, which I anticipate would encourage me to get out of the house and kickstart an improvement in my lifestyle. That and being able to send and recieve messages, images and internet links with the speech bubble interface as opposed to single messages at 30 letters per screen. I can't tell you how annoying it is to read a conversation across 5 seperate messages of 3 screens each. Or trying to retype a URL link that someone sends because "you just have to listen to this music dude".

>Is there a particular reason why you have resisted so long?
A few, namely; cost, lack of interest and battery capacity. My current phone cost only £11 including £10 credit, since changing sim only costs about £10 credit every 2 or 3 months, and the battery lasts aproximately 5-7 days. I use it very infrequently - infact it's often a chore to answer it.

To think of it now, even a £30 contract is gonna be too expensive.

>>28718
Bad news :(

>>28719
> Pokemon Go
You missed the boat. Niantic was a tech darling during Ingress, but at this point Pokemon Go is just another mobile game, don't waste your time.

>>28719

If you want a basic smartphone with a reasonable amount of data, you can pay about £9/mo on a 24 month contract. £15/mo would get you a genuinely good mid-range phone with unlimited data. Virtually all contracts these days include unlimited calls and texts.

https://www.carphonewarehouse.com/honor-x7a-blue

https://www.carphonewarehouse.com/motorola-edge-40-neo-black-beauty

If you're looking to do it as cheaply as possible, then I'd suggest a second-hand or refurbished phone and a sim-only deal. Second-hand phones from private sellers are usually slightly cheaper, but if you buy a refurb you'll often get a 12 month warranty. You can get something that's basic but perfectly useable for about £60. If you're willing to switch networks every six months or so, you can usually get a promotional deal with a reasonable amount of data for 99p a month. Changing networks is relatively straightforward as long as you actually remember to do it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266632614954

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cheap-mobile-finder/sim-only/