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Buying a smartphone (trying again!)
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What's the best budget phone-buying strategy?
Cheap phone that is solidly OK but not great.  
 24%  [ 13 ]
Once-great phone that is now a little out of date.  
 56%  [ 30 ]
Pay more to reach the bottom of a better brand. It'll be the bottom, but of a better brand.  
 18%  [ 10 ]
Total Votes : 53



seeker




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 29 2016, 4:06 pm
Update:
I just bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini on ebay for just under $60 including shipping and an otterbox. Hope it's in decent working condition. Seems like a good phone for my needs and Samsung seems to have the best radiation situation. Apparently they've done something in their phones that makes most of the radiation aimed away from you. Who knows.
DH said regarding the radiation - whatever, they are all bad for you, so just buy whatever and he'll use a wired earpiece thing. So I'm buying him the one that's on sale for $20 at Best Buy for Memorial Day. LG Optimus Zone 3.

Unless something doesn't work, phone hunt is over Very Happy
The only question remaining is whether it is worth bothering with a warranty on a phone that was cheap in the first place, or do you just keep it in its case, hope for the best, and start over again when it dies. More concerned about mine than his ($20 junk is easy enough to redo) but it's another $30 when I already paid twice as much as I meant to for the phone. It's already been used for a year so the odds of something dying are probably significant, but I'm not sure if Square Trade tends to just say it's your fault and not deal with it. Anyone know? They don't offer accidental damage on this, only malfunction. But I have had spontaneously malfunctioning phones before - unresponsive touchscreen, dead speakers... all on the LG enV line fwiw.
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Hashem_Yaazor




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 29 2016, 9:19 pm
My S3 mini is still working, so an S4 mini should be great Smile I happen to love the mini not being so huge and unwieldly Wink I used mine for a year and then resold it and that user is still using it....I wouldn't be so worried about it going bad too quickly, and within the first 30 days I think you have paypal protection, and probably extra from your credit card.
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seeker




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 29 2016, 10:22 pm
Yes I was specifically looking for something at least not large. I have girl hands and enough of a tendency to drop things even when they do fit. The iPhone SE looked positively droolworthy until I found out it would require a plan upgrade.
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gande




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, May 30 2016, 2:09 am
I also got the s4 mini recently! I bought it refurbished for $75 plus I paid for a warranty and an otter-box separately. I opted for the warrenty since the otter-box will do the physical protecting and phones tend to malfunction. I have had good experience with square trade so I decided it is worth investing another $15 and I know my phone will be replaced if it dies and I wont have to pay again.
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greengrapes




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, May 30 2016, 3:58 pm
I just got a phone from metro pcs for 40 buks. It works very well. Only issue the camera not great
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seeker




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jun 02 2016, 12:12 am
Metro PCS phones won't work on Verizon network, which means they won't work in many places. I'm sticking with what's worked for us. Even though their data rates are obnoxious, their unlimited talk and text is perfectly reasonable (on a family plan, anyway) and I can handle using mostly wifi.

Anyway my ebay phone didn't come yet but the ones I ordered for DH from Best Buy did. I had ordered the Moto E which was on sale when we first started looking into this, and before it arrived they had LG Optimus zone 3 REALLY on sale ($20) so I picked up one of those because they said you can actually test drive it and still return if you manage not to bang it up.

So in case anyone is reading this with interest of what they should buy, here's my review after playing around but not actually using either phone:

The LG is definitely no luxurymobile but for a $20 phone it is actually unbelievable. Technology is capable of much better especially in the camera department but who would have thought even a few years ago that you could have such a capable little thing for that kind of price (full price is on the low end too, but face it, this is the kind of phone you buy if it's on sale.) The screen is reasonably bright (once you turn off auto adjust) Moto is brighter but both are very adequate. Images and text are sharp. Moto has more responsive touch screen but the LG isn't actually bad and the Moto's sensitivity actually took more getting used to for me, it kept responding to things I hadn't meant to hit. I did not activate them with verizon, but did log into my home wifi and test-drove the app store and some websites. Both performed fine. The cameras are where they both fail dismally. I refuse to believe that they couldn't have done better EVEN in a $20 phone. Toy kids' cameras can probably do better than that. Moto was brighter but almost to a fault (midtones washed out) and had better color, but was very very grainy. LG was in some ways nicer looking because it wasn't so grainy and washed out but it was mushy instead and on the dark side even with flash (which moto doesn't have but now it seems that's not missing much.) Selfies are much better on LG, Moto's is a joke. All pictures I took indoors, in medium light (not dark but not what you'd call brightly lit either) of myself and the kids.
I loved that the LG was really thin and light, but DH liked the chunkier Moto better and appreciated its rubberized texture. I couldn't get a great grip on the Moto, even those few millimeters of thickness impeded my comfort. But his man-hands took it well.

So even though I was poking fun at myself for thinking a camera is an even slightly important feature in a phone, I'm actually happy I decided to go higher end because the low-end phones' cameras are just THAT bad. Yes, THAAAT bad. WORSE than my dumbphone, and I think even worse than my dumber dumbphone before that (which actually happened to be a Samsung, but I don't even think smartphones were a thing when that one was made. Maybe a newly emerging thing for the very rich and geeky.) Not worse than my first dumbphone but how dumb do you have to get? This is 2016. I will miss being able to get semi-decent pics of my kids when DH is watching them but he's happy with the Moto (anyone who isn't big on snapping their kids should be, it looks like a great phone) so I'll deal with it. But for me, I'm pinning my hopes on that ebay phone delivering as promised. Hoping the USPS surprises me by friday. My phone's random shut-offs are getting to be an Issue.
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Mevater




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Nov 21 2016, 10:34 pm
Seeker (and others), how are the phones?

I need a good family plan. Do you have opinions on phone plans as well?
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seeker




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Nov 21 2016, 11:24 pm
So I'm using my secondhand Samsung S4 mini, bought with otterbox defender case on ebay for around $60 shipped. I'm happy with my choice because it fit my personal needs and budget:
- I am comfortable with the small size because I like it to fit in my girl-hands.
- I need the otterbox case because I know myself and I've already sent the phone bouncing more than once, thanks to the otterbox it was fine. I could have bought a newer or refurb phone for the same price but those cases would have broken the deal.
- I'm OK with pulling out my real camera for real pictures. This phone has a definitely good camera especially when compared to lower-end phones, but it's not nearly a full camera replacement like the current generation phones are. I'm happy enough with it for making sure I don't miss those spontaneous moments, and the quality usually is good enough in my casual memory photo books.

My husband ended up returning the moto and getting a Samsung S4 (not mini, because man hands) from a refurb dealer on ebay, for about $80, plus a cheap case (I think he's less of a dropping risk than I am because he doesn't spend much of the day on and off the floor with little kids, and men's clothes come with deeper pockets which is definitely one of society's biggest problems right now.)

Because DH's is a refurb and not just someone's old used phone, it came with a newer version of Android which looks a lot nicer than mine. Mine seems a bit buggy to me and I'm hoping it's just because it's an older version of Android. Messaging will sometimes freeze up and need to be closed and restarted mid-text. Mildly annoying. I also envy his slim case but like I said, I'm too clumsy to afford that.

In sum, my S4 mini is a solidly good all-around phone, there are definitely way better phones out there but not sure if that includes any others that you can get in the $50 range. It also has a really nice shape and size (for girl-hands) if you're not stuck in a clunky idiot-proof case.

I'm on the Verizon "small data" family plan. It's a good deal if you have several family members because after the base price it's only $20 per line. I think the base price is $35 but I don't remember. So if you have 5 family members sharing the plan, that's like $27 per phone. And their network is the best in my area. That plan doesn't include tons of data but my family doesn't really use any, and we have wifi at home, so it's plenty for me. And I think if you use up your data you can get slower data for free? I'm not sure I got that quite right because I just heard about it, until now I was just being super conservative and keeping my data turned off most of the time (which wasn't even really necessary, I'm finding even with data on as long as I'm not transferring photos or other big files I'm not even coming near the limit just by checking email and a couple of apps)
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