I bought a Pixel 7a recently to replace an ageing Motorola. Neat and tidy with clean software but probably isn't going to blow your socks off if you're coming from a Samsung S22.
a year ago
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Looks like the development on lineageos is progressing towards official, for the poco f5, so I'm now tracking them to see if I can pick up one cheap. Thanks to you bastards.
I've had a look around....and if I was not gaming (I don't), and it was supported by lineageos (it isn't, nor likely to ever be an official device), and I wanted to buy new right now...I'd probably buy a Moto edge 40 Neo 12+256. £249 from amazon, in black. Great storage, not a particularly shit stock firmware.
Threw my phone onto the bed today. It stopped working. The screen won't come on. Must have been the proverbial straw that broke the camels back, as it's taken much worse many times over the last few years. Now have to slightly annoyingly buy a new phone. Looking at one of these I think:
Pixel 8 Pro - £849
Pixel 8 - £599
OnePlus Open - £1599
OnePlus 12 - £849
OnePlus 12R - £649
OnePlus Nord 3 5G - £489Currently leaning towards Pixel 8 for £599.
That's an eyewatering amount of money to pay for a limited computing device, primarily to run other companies software, so that they can leverage opportunistic pricing techniques against you.
Good point. I’ll buy a Raspberry Pi instead and spend the next week writing my own mobile phone operating system.
Looking at your list, I suspect your requirements exceed mine but I can recommend the Pixel 7a if you're after something more cheap and cheerful. Does everything I need it to do, and the Android operating system is obviously clean and quick, given that it's Google's.
I'm sure Tricky can think of a few reasons not to buy one (many of which I won't claim to understand) but under 400 sheets SIM-only, it's worth a look.
It's the camera for me that means spending a bit more than Tricky would like.
The 7a camera is decent I think, my son has one of those.
It is. Well, certainly an awful lot better than my last phone - a very decent, budget Motorola.
Just oddly wondering, by do they do deals in the UK where the cost of the phone is part of your monthly bill (I pay AT&T for the whole families phone bill and the cost of the phone each month)?
Yes, but the deals aren't as good as they were 20 years ago. Unless you're buying the latest Samsung folding thing, or the latest iPhone, it is generally cheaper to buy the phone SIM free and get a SIM card separately.
How does it make sense that it costs more to buy a phone from the network operator? We still subsidise the shit out of phones to keep subscribers on our network - I just had a quick look at my current offers and I can get a Samsung S24 for $10/month or a Pixel 8 for $8.88/month, both by extending my contract another 2 years.
That said, I think your contracts are generally much less expensive than ours.
I pay a bit more, specifically so that I'm not tied to a provider for a lengthy contract. I could transfer, without any penalty, on any day. Although I might lose whatever nominal balance or purchased bundled services.
If you amortise the cost of my phone handset over 24 months, then my total spend is between £11 and £18 a month. But I don't need a lot of data as I an predominantly on wifi. With no data I could trim that to a tenner a month all in, with unlimited calls and texts ( but I always have some data as my phone has various connections to network services - push notifications, email, location services, that would come out of PAYG costs if didn't remember to turn them off - or write a catch all automation script )
The cheapest plan we offer with unlimited talk and text along and a bit of data (3GB on 3G network speeds) is $35 a month BYOD, which is about 20-21 GBP. Given your 11-18 GBP a month includes the cost of device amortization, you're getting vastly better deals than us.
You could get that level of deal with 1pMobile (on the EE network) for £36 a year. .... although that needs to be paid upfront. .... no penalties to leave or transfer your number away at any time though. That amortises at £3 a month. Depreciate a phone at £8.67 a month (a two hundred pound phone every two years), and you are in the ball park of what I'm doing for a tenner a month.
.....edit.... as you were. Have just checked and 1pmobile have massively put their prices up in the last few weeks. I have one sim with them, and two with giffgaff.
Think here it's more seen as a financing deal/loan to buy the phone for folks who can't afford it outright and so there's effectively an interest charge.
I pay £51 a month for 4 sims with 100GB data and unlimited voice/texts. 5G allegedly but that is just a fake concept in my experience.
And it's on O2 which means 500MB of data would be enough as the signal is shit pretty much everywhere I go.
Will be switching back to the EE network soon as contract ends (probably to 1p Mobile that tricky mentions).
