New phone purchase advice ? - current phone is iPhone 5S

Hello all, I am looking at buying a new phone. I am currently using the iPhone 5S, but it is getting a bit old and I can feel it getting slower to respond.

I am looking at phones with a similar screen size and good quality but for a reasonable price. The new iPhones seem too expensive for me.
So I certainly do not want the iPhone 8 Plus size or Samsung Note or similar.

I had a look at Samsung and one that looked good was the Samsung Galaxy A5. It seems to have good reviews and I can find it online for around £250-350 (which seems like a good price range to me).

Apparently there's a Google phone which is similar to the A5 and is pretty good, but I was wondering if anyone here had any advice.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 Global Edition ~ £150 for the 4GB/64Gb edition. One of the best phones around.

I say go for any cheap chinese trash as everything is same the only difference is price.

If you desperately have to spend more $ on a phone than on PC and want some real quality with unique additions go for caterpillar's S60 (IC camera) or brand new model S41:
https://www.gsmarena.com/cat-phones-89.php

The Cat 41 phone can also be dropped from 1.8 meters down to concrete and still operate, but it can go even deeper in water, down to 2 meters, and work for one full hour at that depth. It has a 5-inch Full HD “Super Bright” display with Gorilla Glass 5, and can also work with wet or gloved fingers. Inside it has a MediaTek Helio P20 processor, along with 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, a 13 MP rear camera and an 8 MP front facing camera. Finally, it has a huge 5,000 mAh battery that’s so big, it can even be used to power up other devices with its Battery Share feature. The Cat S41 is now available to purchase in Europe for €449.

Display: 5-inch Super Bright Full HD
Processor: MediaTek Helio P20
RAM: 3 GB
Storage: 32 GB
Rear camera:13 MP
Front camera: 8 MP
OS: Android 7.0 Nougat
Battery: 5,000 mAh
Size: 152 x 75 x 12.85mm, 216g

Yea, my plan is to get this one in the near future. Unless a cheap chinese "clone" appears, but I don't think they're interested in making superbattery phones.

Thanks lost I’ll check reviews.
Joxer which Chinese ones are you talking about ?


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Not every phone is the same. Some phones ship with outdated Android versions and don’t even support the phones with security fixes once you’ve bought it. The Chinese brands are renowned for that. Obviously Google phones are always updated over time, Samsung has a reasonable policy, Huawei sucks when it comes to keeping phones updated. I can’t remember exactly who does well in this area, but I wouldn’t buy Chinese just because of this reason as it is for me a big motivation in choosing a phone. That and I need dual-sim.

Furthermore, a phone choice also depends on what you want to do with it. Battery life, performance and picture quality can be more or less important and impact your choice. In these areas phones are also not the same.

Also depending on your market different phones will support different frequencies. I.e, some will work better/provide better data performance with your carrier than others.

My personal beef has been in audio and there is a huge difference between audio performance from the speakers. If you use headphones/earbuds 99% of the time this doesn't matter much but I usually use the phone's speaker when makign calls.

I recently bought a Huawei P10, based on Norwegian reviews. So far I'm happy with it. Sound quality is excellent.

Don't know about updates, but there were system updates available when I bought it.

Screen resolution is 1920x1080 which is fine. Can't see the difference from the resolution of my old malfunctioning Samsung Galaxy (was a bit unreliable as a phone) on such a small screen.

It's not water tight, which may be a problem, but not for me after I quit dropping my phones into the toilet.

pibbur who hopes customer service/updates has improved.

If you want Android, I'd recommend going with a device that always runs the latest version of pure Android, like a Pixel or Nexus device. Especially if you're coming from iOS. Samsung makes good hardware, but their OS bloatware is awful.

I personally use an iPhone 6S Plus (should be cheap now but might be too big for your tastes) because of battery life and no OS / setup hassles from an IT standpoint.

I just got a Moto E4. It is cheap ($130) and has a very recent version of Android.

https://www.motorola.com/us/products/moto-e-gen-4

The lack of a coherent and reliable update system across the Android ecosystem is a security nightmare. Personally, I choose a phone that is well supported by open source roms, and update regularly.

Well my three year old samsung is sitll getting regular security updates but I don't think I iwll see a 7.x for it. This does kind of tick me off since they 'lock' the boot-loader so you can only use their rom (yes there are hacks that can by this with some effort on most phones) . I wish the a progressive FCC would make a rule that either vendors have to support their phones or allow you to do so.
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Pixel is probably the best bet and while the boot-loader is not locked (I think) google doesn't support phones very long.

Originally Posted by Ripper
The lack of a coherent and reliable update system across the Android ecosystem is a security nightmare. Personally, I choose a phone that is well supported by open source roms, and update regularly.

I'd say that's sound advice, though most (as in perhaps 98+% of people) don't care nor want to care about ROM and bricks etc.

I'd guess the most one could hope to push for is getting a phone that meets their requirements and is known to be easily and reliably rooted. Which will allow a firewall to be installed which will allow blocking the spying, nagging, bandwidth wasting crap, phones have on them before you even open the box.

I ended up getting the A5. The Redmi and others people mentioned here do not seem to have reviews as good or seem to have other types of issues.

We'll see how it goes.

Thanks everyone.