>>24774
>Expandable memory is a must.
Unfortunately the tech people have lost this battle to the bean-counters. Most of the decent phones have fallen victim to the idea that the manufacturer would rather you pay them £100 for more storage than let you buy a £5 SD card. Also known as the old rope technique.

>>24775
The HTC One M9 has an sd card slot. I'd recommend it off the basis of the M8 being very good.

I called up their customer retention team for an upgrade and was recommended a Sony Xperia M4 Aqua. They mentioned it having "plenty of onboard storage" despite it only coming with 8GB, ~1GB of which is actually free after all the bloatware bollocks I'll never use, as well as "the latest version of Android - Lollipop" despite Marshmallow superseding it in the feature department in every way.

Eventually I got sick of the chap on the other end reeling off bullshit analogies about how he bought one for his own mother, he thought it was that good, and hung up.

I called to ensure my contract called itself in time today and a lady tried to flog me an iPhone 6 after stressing thrice that I'd much prefer an Android handset. Bloody hell...

>>24774

Look no further than the Moto G, the newest generation has all of that. You can get one sim-free and instead get giff gaff on it which works like a treat.

>>24777
*cancelled, not called. ty autocarrot.

>>24777

Never trust those customer retention or upgrade teams or whatever they call themselves. They are always an outsourced con-job designed to get rid of the stocks of shitty mid-range and outdated models on people who don't know any better. They are a joke.

Phone companies are one of the few companies you should treat with total contempt as a customer. They are the finest example of bad business. heir practices are adversarial so so should yours when dealing with them.

>>24780

This goes for them all, actually. Mobile, Landline, Broadband; they're all cunts.

Even Plusnet have put their prices up for Fibre. It's a fiver more to start with, £24.99 up to £30 with evening and weekends, and after 6 months is now £38 instead of £35 a month. Now they are the same price as all the rest for Fibre+. That strikes me as price fixing and if they try to up my monthly bill at the end of this contract I'll tell them where to go.

If you get BT broadband buy a handset outright and get the contract from BT.

Carphone Warehouse are offering a decent plan (for me at least) on a Moto X. £21 for 1GB data, 5000 texts and 200 mins on their ID Mobile network. No handset charge. 24 months.

I can never work out to what to degree the phone companies are shafting us (as they all eventually are) so some advice would be great.

I have a friend who claims to have gotten the exact same phone model as me on the same network (vodafone) for a few quid less per month including free spotify by calling up one of the 'upgrade teams'.

I'd imagine that if you know fairly exactly what you want, at what price, with good patience and negotiation skills you can probably shave a few quid per month off by giving them a ring (assuming you don't mind staying on the same network). Obviously though you shouldn't trust anything they recommend as it'll most likely be whatever iCrap they've been told to sell for eye-watering rates.

>>24774
I was also on the One Plan, due to end this month (they've scrapped it, so you'll have to renew at the end of your contract regardless of whether you want to or not).

After 20 minutes on the line begging for my PAC code, they offered a £13/month 1 month rolling deal with unlimited mins/texts and 4GB data, which struck me as fairly generous. I'd suggest trying the same and grabbing a smartmobe off contract.

>>24774
You're an idiot, who is that silly to pay such exorbitant prices just to communicate with other people?

>>24792
>exorbitant prices
>£13/month

If that is even 1% of your total monthly earnings I feel sorry for you.

I pay 7 quid a month for my one. 250 minutes, unlimited internet and texts. It's stupid to spend 35 quid on it. Which is the point I was making.

>>24795

Did you seriously just income shame someone on an imageboard full of students?

Have a word with yourself, you contemptible cretin. If your self worth comes from how much you earn, I feel sorry for you. What a wanker.

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>24797
I don't think it's full of students. I mean sure, it's run by students but there's also a fairly vocal minority who aren't delusional marxists.

>>24792
I've discovered phones can do a little bit more than that these days.

>>24796
£7 per month is less than the equivalent giffgaff deal sans phone, so I'm going to assume you are chatting shit.

>>24797
If anything I'd say students are a minority on here, though there is no way to tell either way of course. For anyone working full-time £13/month can hardly be described as exorbitant.

>>24799

We have all sorts of people from all walks of life whose opinions on phone contracts aren't invalidated by their or your income.

That is the nature of anonymity. If you don't like that, then tough shit. Deal with it, Princess.

>>24797
>income shame

Did you seriously just cunt shame someone on Britfa.gs, of all places?

>>24800

How on earth have your network not cut you off?

>>24804
I'm led to believe Three's FUP is 1 TB.

>>24803

Income snobbery demeans us all, m8.

>>24805
Is that on the plan they're cutting everyone off and closed to new customers a year or so ago?

>>24792
If that upsets you, you'll be frothing at the mouth if I told you how much I spent on the phone.

>>24807
Not him but yeah, it is.

>>24807 >>24810
Nope. I'm on the successor plan. I'm only allowed 2 GB tethering mind, but I'm flying my 100 GB 747 under their radar regardless.

>>24813
I'm not sure I could download that much data if I tried, have you set up automated torrents just to spite the network operator?

Everyone complains about the S4 but mine's been nothing but good to me. The stock battery is fucking awful, though. An extended one is a must. If this breaks on me I'll probably get another since they are dirt cheap now.

>>24834

I'm fairly sure the S2 was the last solid model by Samsung, and ever since then they've just spiralled off into this crazy trend of increasing the size and screen resolution without significantly increasing the specs.

It's the same for the majority of phones really- The core hardware has gone practically fucking nowhere, while all the manufacturers squabble over who gets to have a slightly sharper screen in their flagship model this time, and who gets the best camera, and who gets the most goddamn fugly roundish fashionable design.

The standard storage space has been hovering around the 32gb for years. The standard processor has been the Snapdragon for years. They've all had 1-2gb of ram for years. But the consumer is happy to just keep shelling out for a lukewarm rehash.

The only sensible phones on the current market, on the market, for my money, are the Sony Xperia ones. They're the only ones with a "compact" (read: the comfortable, reasonable size phones used to be five years ago) model that doesn't nerf the specs to shit. They're the only ones to have all the specs you want, without some glaring weakness such as lack of SD slot or whatever. They are IP65 rated so dropping them in the bog won't kill them. Their battery life is pretty amazing too.

>>24835
>The standard storage space has been hovering around the 32gb for years. The standard processor has been the Snapdragon for years. They've all had 1-2gb of ram for years. But the consumer is happy to just keep shelling out for a lukewarm rehash.
They've been incrementally improved snapdragons, but in any case, so what? There's no pressing need to prove upon the internals for the most part, hasn't been for a few years.

*improve

I quite fancy the Moto X Play. Carphone have a good deal going on it atm. Thoughts from a few more phone-savvy fa.gs would be great though.

>>24835
>They are IP65 rated so dropping them in the bog won't kill them. Their battery life is pretty amazing too.

An interesting nugget regarding the moto-g, and I think Motorola phones in general, are treated inside and out with a coating that makes them safe to fully immerse them in water, but due to semantics, they can't describe them as "waterproof".

>>24835
That's quite reassuring to know, as my S2 is definitely on its last legs after 3 years of faithful service. I have no idea where to start on getting a new handset that I'll inevitably have to fork out for within the next 3-6 months, and I too hate the recent trend towards massive screens. If I can't fit my phone in my pocket or hand comfortably then it's just a developmentally stunted tablet and I don't want it.

>>24835
The S4 blows the S2 out of the water in terms of specs; what are you on about? I had an S2 before I got the S4, and while I would agree the S2 is built better and feels better in the hand, to say that hardware has gone nowhere is to reject some of the legitimately large advances phones have taken in the past few years.

We now have 4K IPS screens -- and chips capable of driving them. 4G radios, more RAM and more processing power.

>>24845

Phones are actually catching up with consoles at an alarming rate.

>>24845
The S4's been fantastic for me - came from an S2, and it's quite the upgrade. Every two years feels about right to upgrade to me. Won't be getting the S6 though - the missus got it, and the battery can't last the day, and the storage is nearly full already.

>>24774
Have to say that lass in OP's picture is well munting.

>>24845

Nah. It really doesn't. Sure it's a bit better, I'm not saying it hasn't advanced at all. But to say it's basically the same phone I had when I was knocking around in my college days with a few extra megahertz and a gig or two more ram, isn't exactly a quantum leap.

Nor am I saying it needs to be, I should clarify- Phones have been about on par with modest laptops for a while now. I was more just making a general point about what you get for your £400 factory fresh top of the line phone these days isn't quite as impressive as it was a few years ago, considered in perspective.

>>24849
Most people don't consider on paper specs impressive, mate.

>>24849

Flagship phones are thoroughly unimpressive, because they're just finding new ways to justify a £400-£600 price tag. It's the mid-range phones that impress these days - you can get within a gnat's fart of flagship performance for less than £150. Making a mid-range phone has always been an exercise in corner cutting, but it's increasingly difficult to see where those corners have been cut.

>>24851

>Making a mid-range phone has always been an exercise in corner cutting

People have stopped caring about corners, it's edges that are all the rage nowadays.

>>24849
>Phones have been about on par with modest laptops for a while now.

It's surprisingly difficult to find decent quantitative comparisons between laptop and phone CPUs, though the following from passmark shows that modern laptop CPUs still outperform phone CPUs by an order of magnitude (http://www.passmark.com/forum/showthread.php?4711-Apples-to-Apples-Comparison-of-Mobile-CPUs-and-Desktop)

To pick out typical examples:

Intel Core i5-4300U
Integer Test ~5788 MOps/Sec
Floating Point Test ~2638 MOps/Sec
Prime Number Test ~11.6 Million Prime/Sec
String Sorting ~2660 Thousand Strings/Sec
Compression ~4498 KBytes/Sec
Encryption ~634 MBytes/Sec

HTC One m8
Integer Test ~382 MOps/Sec
Floating Point Test ~750 MOps/Sec
Prime Number Test ~161 Thousand Prime/Sec
String Sorting ~2636 Thousand Strings/Sec
Compression ~2753 KBytes/Sec
Encryption ~9.4 MBytes/Sec

It's impressive how close phone CPUs are getting to laptops but it's false to just compare clock speeds and number of cores and conclude that they're on par in terms of performance.

Ofc none of this mentions GPU, memory etc. but I think it's fairly clear that a £500ish laptop will still blow a £500 phone out the water on those fronts, as you would rightly expect.

>>24853

The problem is heat and power. Put a modern ARM chip in a Chromebook and it'll keep up with a mid-range Celeron. Smartphone chips are effectively massively underclocked to stop them from eating through the battery and burning a hole in the phone.

ARM processors are starting to make inroads in the server market, where heat and power become a problem due to scale. Data centre customers generally care more about performance-per-watt than absolute performance.

Conversely, Intel now do some very low TDP Atom chips that are appearing in tablets and phones. They're not quite as energy-efficient as ARM processors, but they're cheap and have good single-threaded performance.

I figured I should probably get a new phone while it's Cyber Monday/week. What is the best value phone thesedays? Is it still the Moto G?

Though saying that I am kind of tempted to splurge on a phone with a 4K camera...
[ Return ]

>>25716
My other half recently got a Moto G4, it's ridiculously large.

>>25717
Your ilk were saying that about the Galaxy S3. Now look where we are.

>>25716

Redmi 4 or Redmi Note 4. You get flagship-level features for well under £200. Full metal construction, eight or ten core processor, fingerprint reader, good Sony cameras front and rear, full HD screen and an absolutely massive battery.

http://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Redmi-4-5_0-inch-2_5D-Fingerprint-3GB-RAM-32GB-ROM-Snapdragon-625-Octa-core-4G-Smartphone-p-1102622.html

http://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Redmi-Note-4-Fingerprint-5_5-inch-3GB-RAM-64GB-MTK-X20-Deca-core-4G-Smartphone-p-1080995.html

>>25719
I'm assuming at that price you get flagship-level features but without flagship-level support.

>>25720

Xiaomi provide frequent software updates and a good support forum. If you buy through Banggood you get a one year warranty, but you'll have to pay for return shipping. An independent repairer will have no problem replacing a cracked screen or a wobbly USB port.

Chinese phones won't work on 02's 4G frequencies, but the 4G works fine on any other network.

>>25722

Go for sim only on a monthly contract, so you can be more nimble and trade between the best offices at short notice.

Definitely ask around to see if a friend of a friend works at a provider, most will offer mate's rates deals to a practically infinite number of people. I pay £12 for unlimited calls, texts, and 8gb of data a month because a mate works at a provider.

For some reason the website is demanding that I supply an image with this post.

Are there any good places to get post-Christmas/January sales discounts on sim-free phones? I had a look at the carphone warehouse 'sale' but it seemed a bit limited. On the other hand, I'm probably not savvy enough with random ebay/amazon sellers to tell which ones just fell off the back of a van and which are legit.

Also model suggestions I guess - was thinking the new OnePlus 3T looks decent. Wouldn't say no to another HTC either, or maybe a Samsung. Are Motorola phones still the budget powerhouse they were a few years ago?

>>25772

>Are Motorola phones still the budget powerhouse they were a few years ago?

They're still good value and a safe choice, but the Moto G is no longer a complete no-brainer. The G4 lacks NFC and a fingerprint reader, which I'd be loathe to go without these days. The G4 Plus has a fingerprint reader but still lacks NFC, which I think is unforgivable on a £190 phone. Plenty of people couldn't give a toss about either feature, so it's horses for courses.

Chinaphones give you more for less, if you don't mind the caveats attached with buying from China. ZTE, Huawei and Alcatel have some very good value phones available in the UK. Vodafone's own-brand phones are particularly good value in the <£130 range.

If you're buying from a UK retailer, it's often cheaper to buy PAYG and get it unlocked rather than going sim-free.

>>25773
What are your thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy A3? I was looking at Chinaphones but their screens are just too big - the trend right now over there seems to be for huge phones that are close to phablets, which is just no good to me if it can't fit in a pocket.

Recently got myself a new phone (HTC 10, it's superb). Only thing is I don't really trust myself to go out on the piss/to gigs where I'll probably end up losing, breaking or getting it nicked. Happened to a previous phone of mine, even with insurance it was a massive ballache. Normally I'd just take a spare instead but my only spare is pretty ancient and barely runs messenger or google maps properly, so it's basically non-functional as a smartphone.

So I was thinking of getting a super-cheap but functional spare gigphone. Requirements are basically just that it can do text/calls, google maps/citymapper, messenger, whatsapp, and some kind of music player. Using nano SIM would be ideal but not essential as I have an adapter (well the cut-out the nano SIM came in at least). Second hand is fine. What can I get for <£100 - Moto G? Budget Samsung? Random chinaphone?

>>25802
Not sure why I sage'd that, force of habit I guess.

>>25802

Chinaphones aren't as cheap as they used to be thanks to the piss-weak pound, but you can still find decent deals. How about an eight-core processor, 3gb of RAM, 16gb of storage, Android 6.0, 4G, a metal chassis and a 720p screen for £79?

http://www.banggood.com/UMI-Diamond-5_0-inch-3GB-RAM-16GB-ROM-MTK6753-Octa-core-4G-Smartphone-p-1097138.html

>>25804
Thanks for the suggestion. Sounds too good to be true though - what's the catch? Apart from the long shipping times. How do I know if it will even work on UK networks?

>>25805

The phone I linked to will work on all UK networks. 3G and 4G networks are based on international standards, which is why your phone still works when you go abroad.

The only real catch is that warranty support is a bit rubbish. You get a 12 month warranty, but you have to post the phone back to China at your own expense if something goes wrong. You don't have to pay return shipping costs if it's dead on arrival.

Shipping usually takes less than two weeks, although nothing will get shipped until Wednesday because of the new year holiday. The cameras on budget phones are underwhelming, but that's equally true for the big brands.

Chinaphones are cheap for a number of reasons. The manufacturers aren't trying to do anything innovative, so they don't have to spend a lot on R&D. They re-use the outer housing for several models, they use stock circuit designs provided by the chip manufacturers, they use plain Android without any customisation. They don't advertise, so their marketing costs are practically zero. The manufacturers and retailers keep their overheads low and can operate on razor-thin profit margins.

Add up a lot of little savings throughout the chain and you end up with a huge difference in price. An £80 phone won't compete with a Galaxy S7 or an HTC 10, but you get an incredible amount of phone for your money.

>>25805
>Sounds too good to be true though - what's the catch?
Depends on how you feel about

1. the Chinese Communist Party knowing everything about you

and

2. your data being sold to the highest bidder.

>>25807

Surely you can unlock the bootloader and flash the fucker with something non party approved?

>>25808
Yeah, you can.

And once you do, the best case scenario (assuming there's no backdoor in the pieces of the OEM kernel which have made it into your custom software or a hardware backdoor in your chipset) is that you're no longer trusting shady Chinese companies or the Chinese state with your data, you're trusting some random xda forum poster or whatever.

>>25807

If that makes you uncomfortable, you're welcome to choose a phone that's been backdoored by the NSA.

>>25809

I would love a phone with a custom firmware-level backdoor that automagically re-roots your custom built non-vanilla Android/Linux kernel as it boots in real time. Have you got any idea how much such a capability costs to develop? There's no chance in hell they're distributing that on stock phones to all civilians; it's the kind of thing that's implanted on a target's phone remotely after compromise, not the kind of thing you just give away to anyone with 80 quid and some firmware dumping know-how. Sheesh.

>>25810
I actually am much more comfortable with speculative backdoors rather than backdoors which are required by law to exist and routinely discovered and exploited, yeah.

>>25805

>>25812
Nothing I mentioned requires anything like that, sunshine.

>>25815

Then please explain to the audience at home how you'd possibly expect to have a fully functioning privacy invading backdoor operating from the firmware level, "sunshine". Oh, you can't; because you're just another paranoid retard spouting bullshit on the internet. Go boil your head you mong.

>>25816

You don't pwn the software, you pwn the silicon.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/ches2012-backdoor.pdf

>>25816
https://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/11/android-backdoor-rootkit-bitsight-3-million-phones/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/15/android_phoning_home_to_china/

>>25817
You don't even need some rouge factory or whatever to do the hardware modifications in some cases. Mediatek (a huge company who make SOCs for a bunch of Chinese budget phone manufacturers) shipped a chip with debugging tools which allowed attackers to gain root access.

>>25817

> pwn

Ok, now I realise that I'm dealing with a moron.

Regardless, the link included reinforces my point; hardware level backdoors (whether of a level of complexity that I described or of a HIGHER complexity as is shown in the provided link) are used in highly targeted operations and not mass distributed in consumer devices.

>>25818
>>25819

Both of these would be completely removed by unlocking the bootloader and flashing a new OS over the top exactly as I originally suggested.

Rage and sage for steam from my ears.


>>25818
>>25819

>>25821
>Both of these would be completely removed by unlocking the bootloader and flashing a new OS over the top exactly as I originally suggested.
And, again, then you'd have to hope that whoever made the new OS didn't use compromised portions of the original in writing it, and that they're not incompetent or malicious enough to introduce too many new ones!

>>25821

>Ok, now I realise that I'm dealing with a moron.

No ladm8palmuckersunshine.

The document I linked to describes a highly indiscriminate attack. The Microsemi ProASIC3 is not a particularly specialised chip. It's a common, versatile and relatively low-cost logic array that goes into all sorts of low-volume production hardware. Digikey and Mouser have reels of them in stock - you can buy one online for about a fiver.

The researchers found that someone had interfered with the production process of this chip to subvert the security of every single chip coming off the production line. You can't insert a backdoor in one chip, it's physically impossible. You tamper with the HDL used to produce the maskset, embedding the backdoor in every chip.

Now consider the SoCs and baseband processors used in modern phones. They have a transistor count in the millions. They use intellectual property provided by many different companies. They're complex enough as to be essentially impossible to audit, even in the early stages of development. They're produced by one of a handful of companies, all based within spitting distance of each other in Taiwan and Shenzhen. The behaviour of a chip is essentially opaque, because you can only see what the designer chooses to expose via JTAG or what you can figure out with an electron microscope and a vat of boiling nitric acid.

The NSA spends hundreds of millions of dollars on BULLRUN, a program designed solely to embed vulnerabilities in commercial products. Their core operational strategy is to collect everything, everywhere then sift through it to find their targets. They put optical taps on undersea cables, their listening sites capture everything from DC to daylight, they monitor every phone line in the developed world. What are the odds that they haven't bribed an ARM partner to embed some dodgy logic in an IP block, that they don't have a man on the inside at Gemalto or Qualcomm, that they haven't used some classified bit of pure maths to tamper with the Verilog standards?

>>25823

> The NSA spends hundreds of millions of dollars on BULLRUN, a program designed solely to embed vulnerabilities in commercial products. Their core operational strategy is to collect everything, everywhere then sift through it to find their targets. They put optical taps on undersea cables, their listening sites capture everything from DC to daylight, they monitor every phone line in the developed world. What are the odds that they haven't bribed an ARM partner to embed some dodgy logic in an IP block, that they don't have a man on the inside at Gemalto or Qualcomm, that they haven't used some classified bit of pure maths to tamper with the Verilog standards?

You're right, but none of that makes a Chinaphone any more or less secure or insecure than any commercial computer or smartphone, which was the whole point of my original umbrage with post >>25807.

>>25822

Likewise, if you think CyanogenMod or CopperheadOS is inherently less secure than vanilla Android or whatever bullshit an OEM decided to flash on their phones then you're utterly wrong.

>>25824
>none of that makes a Chinaphone any more or less secure or insecure than any commercial computer or smartphone
Yes, it does, because we're talking about speculative backdoors vs backdoors which we absolutely know exist and are routinely found by white hat researchers with no profit motive.

>>25825

I've personally found obvious bugdoors in default Android libraries, there is no speculation here.

>>25826
The speculation in question is that western intelligence agencies have backdoors designed into devices. Given the debacle between Apple and federal investigators over the San Bernardino shooter's phone last year, and given the fact that they're plenty good at getting the data they want on the backend or over networks, I'm inclined to believe they don't. Which isn't to say it would be hugely surprising if they did.

But we 100% know that Chinese manufacturers have done this, do this, and will continue to do this (https://arstechnica.com/security/2016/05/chinese-arm-vendor-left-developer-backdoor-in-kernel-for-android-pi-devices/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/02/chip_chomped_as_devs_debug_backdoor_found_in_android_phones/ http://news.softpedia.com/news/backdoor-discovered-in-some-foxconn-made-android-smartphones-509271.shtml https://www.thijsbroenink.com/2016/09/xiaomis-analytics-app-reverse-engineered/)

And they do so in so sloppily a way that white hat researchers who go looking find them in hours, meaning it's safe to assume that plenty are also being found by malware authors with no incentive to disclose them.

Sure, you can change the software and there's a decent chance you'll get around it. Alternatively, you could just buy a phone that isn't fucking broken in the first place.

>The researchers found that someone had interfered with the production process of this chip to subvert the security of every single chip coming off the production line. You can't insert a backdoor in one chip, it's physically impossible. You tamper with the HDL used to produce the maskset, embedding the backdoor in every chip.

Hang on a minute - where is this asserted to be anything than an Actel debug channel? Ill advised, certainly, but I don't see a third party being involved. (And I actually paid those guys to crack a chip, for commercial reasons. We had the rights, but not the source. It was interesting.)

The way I see it: China is far away and can't do anything to me. I live in the UK, and the spooks here can put me in a gym bag. So the best option is the Chinese phone.

>>25829
Western spooks are going to get their hands on your data anyway if you're using western networks. It isn't either/or, it's one or both.

And the people exploiting the holes left in the security by Chinese manufacturers most certainly can do plenty to you.

>>25830
Better safe than sorry. I'd rather someone far, far away to snoop on me.

>>25831
Again, this isn't an either/or situation...

>>25832
Better safe than sorry, lad.

>>25833
Who do you think manufactures and supplies the gym bags?

>>25834
Yes but they don't make it for human beings to be stuffed into them.

>>25835
Are you sure about that?

>>25833
I don't get what you think is "safe" here.

>>25837
The idea that Chinese spooks watching me is better than American spooks watching me.

>>25838
And NSA/GCHQ can watch you either way. As I said, it's not either/or, it's one or both.

The myriad backdoors discovered by people with nothing like the resources of a state show that "spooks" are the least of your worries with Chinese phones, in any case.

>>25839
They can have as many back doors for the Chinese spooks to exploit for all I care. I care about here. So... Better safe than sorry, lad.

>>25840
The point is that regardless of who they're "for", they're poorly implemented enough that researchers looking for them often find and disclose them, meaning you can guarantee people with less benevolent goals finding them and keeping the news to themselves so they can collect and sell on data or use payment information themselves.

And on top of that, you're using networks operated by companies which are wholly willing to co-operate fully with the spooks "here".

So you're not "safe", quite the opposite.

>>25841
The more people that have access to it, the better. It is not really a secret if everyone knows now, is it? Better safe than sorry, mate.

>>25842
In that case, let's make sure your card details are safe. Just tell us the long number on the front, your name as it appears, the expiry date and the three digits on the back. Better safe than sorry, innit.

>>25843
No that's not better safe than sorry, mate.

>>25844
But if you don't tell us your details, how are we supposed to recognise them as yours when we see them? You'll be sorry then, m7.

>>25845
No mate, if you take millions more details plus mine, then is it okay. Better safe than sorry, right?

>>25846
You know what they say. A journey of a million miles starts with a single step. Now hurry, before the Chinese get their hands on them, otherwise you'll be paying for all sorts of crazy fetish porn without even getting to see it.

>>25847
No mate, you should do it all in one go, not one by one. Better safe than sorry.

The only information I have been able to glean from this thread is that it is indubitably better to be safe than to be sorry.

A lesson well learned, thanks everyone.

>>25850

> it is indubitably better to be safe than to be sorry

So what's the best value for money smartphone knocking on the market thesedays?

>>25960

If you're happy to wait a couple of weeks for a phone from China, then a Xiaomi Redmi 4x or Redmi Note 4 global edition. If you want something available locally, then a Motorola E4 or E4 Plus. They're very similar phones, but the Xiaomi phones are cheaper and better.

https://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Redmi-4X-Global-Edition-5_0-inch-3GB-RAM-32GB-ROM-Snapdragon-435-Octa-core-4G-Smartphone-p-1141850.html

https://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Redmi-Note-4-Global-Edition-5_5-inch-3GB-RAM-32GB-ROM-Snapdragon-625-Octa-core-4G-Smartphone-p-1129991.html

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Moto-E4-SIM-Free-Smartphone-Grey/dp/B0711SHYS8

>>25961

Amazing, cheers. Just ordered the Redmi 4x - looks like it has similar specs to an iPhone 7 in a £100 phone, fucking hell. Hope the delivery time won't be too ridiculous.

Don't get a Chinese phone.

>>25963
Why don't you expand on that, you fucking twat.

>>25964
Because it's been well addressed previously in the thread?

>>25965
Then don't shout about it since it is "already in the thread."

>>25966
It's a reminder, and it's not shouting. Don't have a teary mate.

>>25967
You don't tell me what to do mate.

>>25968

Keep sticking up for yourself.

Steady on lads.

If you want my advice OP I think you should avoid Chinese phones.

>>25975
Are you going to expand on that you twat?

>>25978
All the ones with Hauwei chipsets are well known to be backdoor-d to fuck. They have AT commands that allow you to turn on the microphone or camera, without any indication, for instance.

>>25979

Huawei don't make SoCs or baseband chipsets.

>>25979
That's an anti-Chinese myth.

Anyway, I'd rather the Chinese than Theresa knowing what kind of porn I watch.

>>25981
As has been addressed previously, there are numerous examples of popular imported handsets from China having backdoors identified and exploited by researchers. It's not just "the Chinese" who have access to your information, it's anyone with the knowledge and incentive.

>>25980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiSilicon

I have a smartphone and I'd like to get something less easily spied on or hacked or likely to sell all my data to whoever. Is there anything smart that's relatively secure (I like being able to use maps and whatsapp but not a lot else) or alternatively do I need to "downgrade" and if so to what?

>>26768
>secure whatsapp

Facebook owns WhatsApp now, the end to end encryption is utterly pointless on it now as they just take the data for 'targeted advertising' after it arrives.

There is nothing secure about it anymore.

>>26768

Iphones are probably the most secure computing devices available unless you do something manifestly stupid. Apple have put an immense amount of thought, care and engineering effort into their security. By comparison, Android is a scrapyard fire of awfulness.

CopperheadOS (a specially hardened Android distribution) used to be a reasonable second-best option, but they went tits up a few months ago. Blackberry are still in business and make Android devices with security bells and whistles, but I can't vouch for the actual security of their product.

>>26770

> Iphones are probably the most secure computing devices available unless you do something manifestly stupid. Apple have put an immense amount of thought, care and engineering effort into their security.

This is true, but the single platform makes them sitting ducks. All an alphabet agency needs to acquire is an iPhone X exploit and the software version, gpu, instruction set, and countless other things are already known. It's a fixed target.

On the other hand getting an exploit working across all versions of a simple fucking Samsung Galaxy - depending on the kernel version, the GPU, the CPU and a dozen other things is painful beyond all belief.

"Ok so the gpu based privilege escalation component works across all handheld models but the initial kernel entry component only works on 3.x and not 4.x kernels? Can you get me a list of which OEM Samsung models that effects? What do you mean it depends on the carrier and if they pushed updates or not?"

In a lab the iPhone is king of security, but in the field and from a logistics point of view I'd rather be hacking an iPhone than an unknown Android handset.

Sage for almost everything in this post.

>>26771

The going rate for an iOS 0day is $3m. It's not the sort of thing you squander on an indiscriminate attack or a low-value target. The single point of failure cuts both ways - an attacker gets the jackpot if they find an 0day, but Apple only have to defend a small surface area. They have substantial security resources (and a strong business incentive to differentiate themselves on security and privacy), giving them a superb track record when it comes to providing timely patches.

Android would have strength in diversity if manufacturers actually cared about security, but they clearly don't; Google and Samsung are the only manufacturers to provide timely security updates, with many second-tier manufacturers not bothering to ever patch their devices. Android is fundamentally Java-based, which is good for portability but terrible for security.

If a three-letter agency is out to get you personally, you're already fucked. For everyone else, you're not really worried about 0days but unpatched vulnerabilities.

>>26772

> The going rate for an iOS 0day is $3m.

I hate to be that guy but I'd like to see a citation to back that up. I worked with someone who gibbered happily about the $1million price tag vupen was throwing about a few years ago and I currently employ a chap who put together a full iOS exploit chain last year and I know for absolute certain that the company involved did not sell it for that kind of money.

Regardless, the smart cookies are the ones who are doing "hacking iPhones as a service" for 10-20 grand a pop. By the time any particular component in the chain is compromised I'm sure these companies have already grossed several dozen times their initial outlay in R&D.

> Android is fundamentally Java-based, which is good for portability but terrible for security.

Nonsense, don't allow yourself to conflate "JVM exposed via your web browser is insecure" with "software written in Java is inherently insecure". It's worse than comparing apples and oranges, it's more like comparing apples with a three course meal for two at a £100 / head restaurant.

>>26770
Think the original poster might care more about spying by marketers and nosey advertisers than alphabet agencies. In that case an iPhone isn't significantly better. Last time I checked a few *.ipa they were riddled with analytics crapware as well as their Android counterparts, if only to a tad lesser extent.

In this regard Android might be better but the amount of required effort depends on how much he wants to achieve. Flashing a custom ROM without gapps is one thing, not using 'well-known evils' is another. Using them (if you absolutely need to) but limiting your exposure - via things like Xposed or by fiddling with *.smali - is third.

A dumb phone limits your exposure to carrier network only if you wish to go that route. You probably wouldn't.

Interesting enough, WhatsApp's apk is relatively clean. But given its ownership by Facebook it probably need not be stuffed with third-party analytics.

For getting rid of analytics, rooted Android is your best bet.

Simply use something like AdAway to block analytics and ads at system-level. I haven't seen an ad on any Android phone I've owned since like 2013.

Are Xiaomis imported from China still the best bang for your pound?

>>26790

Yep. Get the Global version, otherwise you might not get 4G on all networks. I'd suggest the Mi A2 Lite, because you get stock Android with guaranteed updates direct from Google.

Gearbest are currently offering the 3GB/32GB Mi A2 Lite for £134.81, discounted to £113.40 if you buy via their app. It won't stay at that price for long, but it's still excellent value at £150.

If you want full flagship specs, go for the Pocophone F1 (also by Xiaomi)

https://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_009400282832.html

https://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_009492488405.html

>>26791
The latter there really looks good. My Nexus 6P is in a dire state, I'm thinking next paycheque I go for the Pocophone; unless there is something similar without the infernal fucking notch.

Even with a new battery to work around all the battery issues the 6P had, I still barely get 100 minutes of screen on time, and occasionally the phone will crash and decide to lose 40% charge in less than a minute.

I just wish removable batteries were still a thing, the most up to date phone I could get with one is an LG V20 which is basically identical, spec-wise, to the 6P. It does, however, have 12Ah batteries available on eBay. My old S4 with a 10Ah eBay battery was great, but the screen gets dangerously hot (with any battery), under moderate load the temperature of the glass gets to >60°c, my sister borrowed it without permission and then complained that she burnt her finger.

>>26792

If you prefer a bezel to a notch, you can turn the notch off in software. I don't find them a problem in practice.

Mercifully, notches are a temporary stop-gap, because Samsung's AMOLED division have figured out how to hide the selfie camera behind the screen. Vivo are already selling phones with an in-screen fingerprint sensor, which feels properly sci-fi. Within three years, all flagship and mid-range phones will have no notches or bezels.

It's amazing how old-fashioned the last generation of flagship phones look now. I wonder what's left to improve.

>>26793
Fair enough, it just seems like you can't exactly show much in the middle of the notch, like notifications.

I just hate buying a new phone when my old one doesn't have any serious damage; I don't know why I hang on to it though. I've replaced the battery twice and have the thing apart on a monthly basis to sort whatever problem it happens to have, but it seems wasteful to replace it, even though I know it will be much more convenient to have a phone which gets more than half a day's battery life. At over three years old it has outlasted most peoples' phones, but still, planned obsolescence (or just bad design) is shit.

>>26791
If my old Redmi 3 had an easily-replaceable battery, it would be the dog's.
It was an all-around decent phone and for my usage pattern its 4.1 Ah battery lasted for about a week.

>>26794

Not unreasonably, phone designers assume that a) most people want a fairly thin and light device and b) any phone will be obsolete within a few years due to better, newer models. You can buy massively rugged phones like the Cat S60, but they're inherently expensive due to the niche nature of the market. Fairphone make a phone that's designed to be repairable, but it's just not a good value proposition - at €529, you could buy three Xiaomi phones with similar specs and have change left over. Modular designs like Phonebloks and Project Ara went nowhere, because it's just not technically feasible to build a phone with the same level of upgradability as a desktop PC.

If you're carrying around a complex slab of electronics in your pocket all day, it's inevitable that wear-and-tear will take its toll. Everything just starts going a bit shit - the chassis goes a bit creaky, the screen gets scuffed and scratched, the battery and flash memory wears out, solder joints get fatigue cracks and tin pest. Most portable electronic devices eventually turn into old bangers, where nothing is definitively broken but everything is just a bit clapped out. Even if it was made to military standards and could reasonably last 10 years, most people would want an upgrade after a couple of years anyway.

Personally, it doesn't bother me much. A mid-range Xiaomi costs about £150 and is 90% as good as a £600+ flagship. If it only lasts you 18 months, that's less than £2 a week to own the most useful object in the history of humanity. You'd pay more than that for a copy of the Sunday Times, but I know which I'd rather have. The environmental impact of making a smartphone is roughly equivalent to using half a tank of petrol or six packets of butter, so I don't feel particularly bad about binning a phone just because it has become a bit long in the tooth.

>>26798
Likely just a result of my tight as fuck upbringing. Ah well, I might turn it into a PMP or strip it down and sell all the good parts.

Lads who have ordered from Gearbest, what are the customs charges like?

>>26799

>Lads who have ordered from Gearbest, what are the customs charges like?

The vast majority of the time, orders sent through standard mail will arrive with no charges. The sheer volume of low-value parcels coming in from China has totally overwhelmed HMRC and the big Chinese retailers are very adept at sneaking things through. Orders sent by courier will nearly always attract a customs charge, so I'd recommend using the default free shipping option unless you're in a desperate hurry.

If you do get stung, you'll pay an £8 handling fee plus 20% VAT (there's no duty on phones). Gearbest will under-state the value to a plausible degree, so expect to pay about £30 in total on a £150 phone.

>>26800
I ordered a keyring a while ago.
The description got cut off, and what should have been "leather bracelet keyring" got shortened to "leather bra"

>>26800
Alright. So £40 on a £230 phone? There are UK sellers on eBay selling Pocophones for £280-300, and without the one month shipping wait. Seems like there won't be much difference in price, I'll go for one from eBay and get it in a couple of days then.

>>26802

Most of the eBay sellers are a bit sketchy. Some of them aren't actually in the UK; others are selling smuggled phones out of a storage unit and will do a runner as soon as the VAT man comes knocking. You get a 12 month warranty if you buy from Gearbest or Geekbuying, but you can forget about it if you buy from some fly-by-night on eBay.

You usually don't pay VAT on phones from China and shipping usually takes less than two weeks, but it is a bit of a gamble on both counts.

The Pocophone F1 is £329 on the official Xiaomi store, with a full UK warranty and all your statutory rights. That might be worth considering if you want fast delivery and a bit more peace of mind.

https://www.mi.com/uk/pocophone-f1/

>>26802

If you haven't pulled the trigger yet, Amazon are doing the Pocophone for £279 for Black Friday. They've also got the Huawei P20 Lite for £229.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/POCOPHONE-F1-Xiaomi-Smartphone-6-18-Inch-Black/dp/B07JFFJDL3

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-5-8-Inch-Android-SIM-Free-Smartphone-Black/dp/B07CJRPK3P

>>26817
Fuck, that is a deal. I don't particularly have the cash, but might have to get that anyway. Don't think I'll get a better deal than that on a phone.

>>26818
Me and my m8 AmEx have pulled the trigger. I'll finally be free of the 6P.

It wouldn't allow me to send it to a locker or anything though, meaning that It'll be 3 weeks of attempted redeliveries before I actually get it.

WHAT THE ABSOLUTE SHITTING FUCK? WHY CAN'T I UNLOCK THE BOOTLOADER ON MY OWN DEVICE THAT I FUCKING OWN? FUCK.

>>26821

>WHY CAN'T I UNLOCK THE BOOTLOADER ON MY OWN DEVICE THAT I FUCKING OWN?

The fact you know what a bootloader is and are still surprised that manufacturers lock them down is baffling to me.

>>26822
It's more the pissing wait. Why? What possible reason (other than data-mining) do they have for this bullshit?

Not to mention that any non-root adblocker I install simply just doesn't work, despite disabling Async DNS in Chrome.

I wouldn't even mind if they would just allow root access by default.

>>26823

Xiaomi know that a lot of their customers buy phones from unofficial distributors. Some of these distributors were installing dodgy ROMs filled with malware. That's bad for customers and bad for Xiaomi's reputation. Xiaomi countered that by locking the bootloader. The time delay and the requirement to register a Mi account is intended to prevent middlemen from unlocking devices in bulk and installing their shitty hacked ROMs. It's not ideal, but it's the best solution they could come up with.

https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/android-botnet-malware.html

>>26824
Fair enough, now I've got over my initial teary I've managed to get VPN adblocking working and the Vanced version of YouTube doesn't require root any more, so I'm more or less sorted for now.

I still, for some reason, live in the days of Xposed and CWM but it's getting a lot easier to do stuff without root and dodgy zip files these days.

>>26823
>Not to mention that any non-root adblocker I install simply just doesn't work, despite disabling Async DNS in Chrome.
I have the same issue. I installed Brave browser and all issues are fixed. It looks like chrome as well.

I actually messed about with somebody's Iphone the other day for the first time in years.

They're absolutely abysmal, I genuinely struggle to see why they are still selling at the rate they are.

You can buy a Pixel 2 for like £500 now and that's not even the best deal there is, although it comes with an amazing camera and unlimited photo and video storage (until 2021), Google updates and is generally quite nice.

I'm honestly not sure what iPhone actually has going for it other than strong marketing and an old reputation, they're hardly revolutionary anymore, just solid and reliable and that's about it.

Anybody care to put me straight?

>>26827
>just solid and reliable

That's enough. Oh and the fact that I trust Apple more with my data than Google.

>>26828
>>26827
From my experience, iPhones are less reliable than similarly-priced counterparts. Especially the batteries.

>>26825
I'm in. Rooted. Finally got notification icons back.

>>26830
We really are living in some shit boring dystopian future. Instead of injecting nanobots so I can surf the cybertubes to access the mainframe, I'm listing and systematically removing hidden ads packages from my phone. Fuck.

>>26825
Does YouTube Vanced offer any advantages over Newpipe?

Also I like the look of the Nokia N 7.1 and would probably get it if I needed a new one. What do you lads think?

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/10/the-nokia-7-1-is-a-300-budget-phone-you-might-actually-want/

>>26830
Where is that pic from?

>>26832
You can sign in using your BotnetGoogle account and keep all your playlists, etc from PC. Last I checked, NewPipe didn't allow that but I may be wrong nowadays.

>>26833
https://youtu.be/bS5P_LAqiVg?t=504

>>26832

The build quality is excellent, the cameras are good, but the Snapdragon 636 chipset is only about 40% faster than the 625 you get in a Xiaomi A2 Lite and legions of other budget phones. It's a worthy contender to the Moto One and the Honor 8X, although a lot depends on fluctuating prices. The Pocophone F1 is clearly better value if you don't mind Miui.

>>26835
The Pocophone doesn't have NFC. Flagship my ass.

>>26834
Thanks mate.
> It pays homage to 1980s martial arts and police action films.
I was right, the camera/video editing job screams of 80s.

For the first time in my life I've managed to break a phone; I somehow contrived to throw my trusty Moto G4 down the (unflushed) toilet. It's presently covered in rice, constantly restarting itself.

I thought I'd have been able to get a fair few more years out of it? What's a decent replacement? I'm out of the loop with this sort of thing.

>>26909

The fact it's still powering on is a good sign, though why you haven't taken the battery out is beyond me.

A decent replacement is the Moto G6.

>>26910
>though why you haven't taken the battery out is beyond me

It doesn't look like it's a battery that actually can be removed.

>>26911

I'm probably thinking of the G4 Play, which definitely can.

Never mind then.

>>26909
Why have you been shitting rice?

>>26909

> I somehow contrived to throw my trusty Moto G4 down the (unflushed) toilet.

Luckily my toilets have always been flushed but I know the feeling of walking into your bathroom to have a nice shit while you flick through bollocks on your phone and as soon as you get within range shoooom the phone slips out of your hand at an unreasonable speed straight into the toilet bowl.

My record was doing this roughly two hours after having bought said phone.

>>26915
His subconscious decided that trolling him with tossing the phone down the loo was a bit over the board and made him eat some rice before.

>>26915
In my poo I have seen chunks of nut, sweetcorn, peas and seeds. It seems plausible to me that you could have solid rice in a Tues; it seems like one of those things your innards wouldn't break down fully.

Just over a month of using the POCO, my thoughts:

Pros:
- Really, really responsive and fast.
- Really good battery life.
- Once you get past the 72 hour bullshittery, rooting and installing recovery was smooth and you can still even use official updates (though updating to Android 9 did overwrite the custom recovery).
- Feels really nice in the hand.
- Barely gets warm, even under stress.
- MicroSD card slot.
- 3.5mm headphone jack.


Cons:
- Screen is LCD so backlight is clearly visible.
- Notch cannot be 'hidden' in MIUI 10.
- MIUI 10 also really does not like playing with my WearOS smartwatch - it seems to force applications to sleep to conserve battery life, meaning that my watch loses connection to my phone unless I'm listening to music.
-By far and away the worst feature, though, is the camera. It's really not good - it makes me feel like I'm using my HTC Desire again.

A couple of the complaints can be resolved after my warranty expires (warranty stipulates you can root but you need to use MIUI) with a custom ROM, but the camera really does let it down - until you consider the price, I suppose. I have my EOS 5D so it's not a major major issue, but sometimes I want to get quick snapshots and compared to my N6P it's just not great.

Would I recommend it? Yes, but with caveats; if camera and/or NFC are important to you then it's a no.

>>26997
> MIUI 10 also really does not like playing with my WearOS smartwatch - it seems to force applications to sleep to conserve battery life, meaning that my watch loses connection to my phone unless I'm listening to music.

Aggressive dozing is pretty typical for MIUI.
Unfortunately I don't remember what things there are to be ticked off in order to lessen this problem.

>>26997

Great phone until the defective charge cable almost set fire to my bed and burnt the contacts on the charge port.

Going to get a Honor Play since the hype has slapped another hundred quid on the Poco.

>>26999
I found the standard cable far too short, so use my (w)Anker cables that seem to serve me well.