The boss would benefit from a new one. She has a Sony, a few years old, in this price bracket, but its 32GB storage is perpetually full despite having capacity on a SD card.
Needs to be reasonably fast - I bought a couple of cheap phones just to take payments but they are painfully slow. The Sony has also slowed down (she hardly ever restarts it or closes apps which doesn't help).
Samsung A33/A34 5g look reasonable but some complaints of crashes. I guess they sell a lot.
Xiaomi Redmi 12/13 (many variants) a possibility.
At the top end, Google Pixel 7a looks good, I suspect a much better phone, but £300 - might replace my Poco X3 Pro with that although that's still working well at 3 years old. She is a basic user but impatient with anything laggy.
Suggestions or experience welcome. TIA,
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Motorola G of various marks have suites SWMBO and I as well as our son who lost his Pixel in the back of a taxi after a drinking sesh...
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>> Motorola G of various marks have suites SWMBO and I as well as our son
>> who lost his Pixel in the back of a taxi after a drinking sesh...
Used to be a moto g fan, dumped the last one early because the GPS chip was appalling. Moved away from moto to Google pixels. Found the sweet spot price wise on run out models. I have the pixel 6, and her indoors moved from Iphone to pixel 7. Pixel 7a is outstanding value for money right now* good camera, good phone. Being google phones they are more or less pure android with no fancy garbage on (Samsung)
* Pixel 8 been out for a while, pixel 9 over the horizon.
Pixel 7a widely available at £325
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 28 Mar 24 at 16:10
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I bought SWMBO a Moto G54 (we've had a good few Moto phones, and my, older G82, now unavailable, is excellent).
The G54 is everything you describe as wanting, EXCEPT, the camera is pants (in spades and on steroids). It simply would/could not focus, a problem that is very widely reported even now, with no fix. She uses the camera a lot.
It went back was replaced by a Pixel 7A, at no little additional cost. She is very pleased with that, and I suspect it would meet your requirements. Be aware however, that the storage you buy it with is all you get, there is no SDCard slot. (Though the internal storage ought to be enough). The Pixel 7A has the advantage of being one of the smaller decently-specified 'phones. It also supports e-SIM, which can be useful abroad.
Last edited by: tyrednemotional on Thu 28 Mar 24 at 14:06
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I bought a new phone before Christmas, a Samsung A54 which I got at a very good price on Amazon. The phone had really poor battery life and a few other bits I didn't like about it so it went back - having used it for quite a few weeks to try to get used to it.
So I then found a Motorola G54 at a really good price (£175) and bought that. I noticed the G54 was also cheap so I got one for SWMBO (£125). We are both really happy with them. My G84 has recently had the Android 14 update. Battery life on both is good and I've not seen the camera issues mentioned above. Both have 256Gb internal memory - though you ought to see what is chewing yours up alongside replacing it.
My main criteria are 1) good battery life 2) SD card slot and 3) headphone socket and they both have all of those - which is becoming harder to find.
My daughter has this week just changed her phone too, from a low-end Samsung, to a G84 based on how she's seen ours perform.
If you want to compare specs side by side look at www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone2=12543&idPhone1=12526
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>> and I've not seen the camera issues mentioned above.
Given that the complaints are not universal, and that the handset is still on sale, I can believe that the problem possibly doesn't affect all of them. (maybe a hardware change at different build slots?)
The complaints are, however, widespread, and many units have been returned.
On noticing the issue, I fairly quickly found:
forums.lenovo.com/t5/moto-g54-5G/Camera-won-t-find-hold-focus-on-zoom/m-p/5261016?page=1
Which describes the exact issues on SWMBO's 'phone. You'll note that the thread doesn't end in an answer/resolution, even after a good few months.
The same issues are repeated through numerous reviews, Reddit, etc.
I was disappointed, because previously the Moto range has served us well.
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If I can persuade her to have such a large phone I incline to the Moto G84, which seems to have a much better display than the G54, that being the main difference.
We are planning to go to Indonesia later this year so the e-sim could be handy too.
Or I could buy one for myself...
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Amazon have the G84 at £199 at the moment. Has been cheaper tnough
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As an ex-Poco fanboy I decided against the X6 as it didn't fit some of my criteria so well even though technically the spec is superior. I am a heavy user for a range of things so performance is obv quite important but the G84 hasn't shown any signs of slowness.
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Got a Samsung Galaxy F23FE for £249 in January including free headphones and Disney+ for a year.
www.car4play.com/forum/post/index.htm?t=30962&m=667752&v=e
Might be worth having a look to see if there are any deals on this as it should be a lot more powerful than some of the other phones mentioned.
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>>Got a Samsung Galaxy F23FE for £249
£400 now(:
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I'm not sure that much power (Samsung F23FE) is too important in a phone really - what do you use the phone for Zippy? I use it for non-state of the art games, navigation, browsing & email, listening to music (stored and streamed), watching stored media on flights (films etc), camera (still & video), timer, payments and banking, bits of techie stuff (network analysis etc) etc etc etc - even the occasional phone call!! - and none of my recent phones has struggled. Not to say I wouldn't buy a more powerful one, I just don't see the need.
Which reminds me, NFC is another of my criteria.
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>> I'm not sure that much power (Samsung F23FE) is too important in a phone really
>> - what do you use the phone for Zippy?
Usual phone stuff.
It's nice to have a phone that's "snappy" when opening apps etc. and has a really good screen and camera.
I absolutely would not have paid £400 for the phone but at £250 - actually less in real terms because of the free noise cancelling ear phones and Disney+ it was a bit of a steal, even when compared to budget phones.
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>> Poco X6 5G for £199?
>>
>> www.mi.com/uk/product/poco-x6/?skupanel=1
Ah...seems to be out of stock now(:
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An Oppo X3 lite nearly new from Amazon is within the price range. My son has the X5 which he is very happy with - but that was bought as they were facing a patent injunction so was rather cheap.
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I offered her my Poco X3 Pro but she says it's too big and heavy. Shame because then I would have had a Pixel 7a :)
I'll suggest the Moto G84. Not much smaller than the Poco but somewhat lighter and I think thinner. Lots of space and plenty of grunt for the money. And it comes in a nice magenta colour.
She's perfectly free to find her own of course and spend what she wants, but I can't escape responsibility for its performance so I feel free to influence. I'd prefer she doesn't go Apple because their intuitiveness doesn't match my intuition. It took me half an hour to figure out the remote for the Apple TV box, I didn't know it had a track pad.
She really wants a phone no bigger than the one she has which is a 6" display. In a nutshell, they don't make 'em like that any more, at least not with decent storage and speed.
She really likes my old Huawei P9 from 2016 which has 5.2" screen but that's stuck on Android 7 and I'm not even going to try and make that work - AFAIK Huawei are still getting not support from Google. It was a good phone when I got it.
Thanks for all the suggestions and experiences.
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>>
>> She really wants a phone no bigger than the one she has which is a
>> 6" display. In a nutshell, they don't make 'em like that any more, at least
>> not with decent storage and speed.
>>
The Pixel is probably the closest (at 6.1" for the 7A). A bit smaller than the Moto(s) but not over-noticeable. Whilst smaller, they are heavier though.
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I came to the G84 from a Poco X3 NFC and it is much heavier. Battery life was probably a bit better but there is a fault in the MIUI OS which made it drop connection regularly with Android Auto which I found annoying. I think the fault occurs over most recent versions.
My daughter got the Magenta, arrived today. It looks very good.
Last edited by: smokie on Thu 28 Mar 24 at 23:22
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She's gone for the Magenta. What she needs is the phone equivalent of a Toyota. Something that's on top of the job, just works, and starts on the button. First try with a Moto so fingers crossed.
The e-sim capability will be very handy later in the year too.
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Is the G84 up and running yet, if so what's 1st impressions?
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All this fannying about with different makes and models of phones. I just buy a new iphone every few years, not the latest models, but a few models back when the prices are reasonable.
They always work well, cameras seem good enough for me, always fast, always easy to update to the new purchase, talks with my ipad, and easy to facetime and send cheap texts overseas to other apple users.
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>> They always work well, cameras seem good enough for me, always fast, always easy to
>> update to the new purchase, talks with my ipad, and easy to facetime and send
>> cheap texts overseas to other apple users.
And expensive for what you get, and with guaranteed engineered over time redundancy.
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>>
>> And expensive for what you get, and with guaranteed engineered over time redundancy.
>>
True, but having just switched from an iPhone XSMax to a Samsung S23FE, I know I prefer the IOS user experience to the Android user experience.
Re the over time redundancy. iPhones get a lot more software updates than Android phones do.
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"iPhones get a lot more software updates than Android phones do."
Are they particularly buggy then> :-)
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No, it's just that they keep on developing new tricks to force customers to buy a newer product.
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>> And expensive for what you get, and with guaranteed engineered over time redundancy.
What am I missing out on then? And I replace every 4 or 5 years, so never had any redundancy issues.
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>>All this fannying about with different makes and models of phones.
The best thing about iphones is they 'support' them for 6 years. You're lucky if you get 3 years updates with Android.
But they are dear. There's still an SE I think, quite small, which she might have liked but they're £450? Also, I don't really get on with Apple, even though I had one for about 4 years.
The fannying about (once every 3-5 years in my case) is because I don't think it should be necessary to spend up to £1000 every few years on a decent phone. My Xiaomi Poco has been superb for £180 and will still show a clean pair of heels to many a low-mid range phone.
I am actually going to succumb to a Motorola Edge 40 at £300.* Man maths says it will be better when we go to Malaysia / Indonesia later this year if I can have my own e-sim:) Obviously, I have to do that now because it might go up, and while my Poco is still in VGC with a strong battery I hope to get up to £100 for it. It will still beat the pants off a new £200 Samsung. It has a slight deficit in bragging rights in that it is only 4g but that shouldn't bother very many.
*I like the Pixel 7a but I think the battery life comes in for a bit of stick, looking at reviews.
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Strange that updates are considered a relevant factor while mentioning getting a Motorola which offers one of the worst update guarantees.
www.androidauthority.com/phone-update-policies-1658633/
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>>Strange that updates are considered a relevant factor while mentioning getting a Motorola which offers one of the worst update guarantees.
And I don't think Motorola is unique. Just putting a point in favour of iphones.
Not a big thing for me. Just checked my Poco, a 2021 phone and it's on Android 11, 2/3 versions behind. Against that, iphones are expensive and I don't really like the UI, clever as it is. Best if you buy into the whole eco-system perhaps.
Android on the other hand is best in a purer form IMO, but manufacturers will insist of doing their own customisations so the interface is never quite the same from one phone to another. The Huawei UI was awful and I used a third party launcher to avoid using it.
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>>Just checked my Poco, a 2021 phone and it's on Android 11, 2/3 versions behind.
Hmm. Just checked for updates, downloaded latest MIUI (launcher) and it took ages, I thought it was a brick. But it also updated Android to version 12. And it works, after reloading a few widgets that went missing. Phew.
Whoever said iphones were easier was probably right, but HOW MUCH?
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The G84 ought to get Android 14 if it hasn't already
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Another vote for the G84. Updated last week to Android 14 without problems.
I just wish I could understand the Lenovo/Motorola Branding Naming strategy. An added variable is the difference between country of origin/sale. So no different to cars then.
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Just replaced my old Doro (dumb) phone with a brand new Doro 1380.
£28. Running cost with Tesco mobile PAYG about £10 per annum.
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>> Just replaced my old Doro (dumb) phone with a brand new Doro 1380.
>> £28. Running cost with Tesco mobile PAYG about £10 per annum.
And probably much better for making phone calls with. Dual SIM too.
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Whoever uses a phone to make phone calls? :-)
Less than one call a wee on mine, and mostly they are incoming spam calls (these days supposedly from a dieselgate claim company who have the number plate, and me as the registered keeper, of the hybrid car I sold well over two years ago.)
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So what's that? Two or three calls per day or more if you are suffering from problems down below?
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Bought a good £200 phone recently? - Bromptonaut
