The Android Thread

[Nacey]

Remember also that Brexit is now making all new electronics more expensive since it's all imported. So get used to higher prices.

[Nacey]

 

[Tiran]

It's that time again: What is a decent cheap android for my mum?

She really just uses WhatsApp, the occasional bit of internet browsing and Facebook. Probably nice to have half-decent storage, 16GB or so if it isn't expandable and definitely nothing too much on the large side physically, certainly no 6" bricks.

[Dan]

Are phone calls and texts to be assumed? What you've said suggests that a tablet with a data plan would be better for purpose treated like a laptop you can stick in your bag...

[Fyria]

I don't know about you, but I don't really know any tablets that would satisfy the smaller than 6" brick requirement here. 

[Nacey]

Also doesn't WhatsApp require a phone number anyway?

Moto G4 or Moto G4 Play are the best budget options around. While I'm less inclined to believe that Motorola will update these in a timely manner since Lenovo bought them, for £100 you can't really do any better.

Honestly there are two Android phones worth buying right now. The G4 or the Pixel. Compared to those everything else is terrible value or horrible or both.

 

[Largi]

I've heard good things from the experia line, but I don't know the cost right now

[Buachalla]

They're good, but they're more expensive than I think they should be.

I have a Z3 Compact, which is still running perfectly. So if you can find on of those for cheap than it's a good option, but the newer ones are pricey.

Edited February 8, 2017 by Buachalla

[Nacey]

It's not that every other phone is bad it's just that none of them are worth it when there is a low-end phone that can do basically the same stuff and has a nice clean OS version. Paying ~£300 for a mid-range phone just makes no sense in the current market. Just buy a ~£100 Moto G4 and then buy the whatever the equivalent is in a year's time and even if it doesn't get updated it's no big issue.

And at the high-end nothing touches a Pixel for responsiveness, performance and support. What are those Sony phones, £500 or something probably? And yet in usage it'll be closer to the Moto G than the Pixel.

1 hour ago, Buachalla said:

I have a Z3 Compact, which is still running perfectly. So if you can find on of those for cheap than it's a good option, but the newer ones are pricey.

Buying phones from 2014 that are already over a year behind on OS updates is a terrible idea unless you hate security and updates. There is just no price that makes this worthwhile when you can buy a G4 Play for ~£100. 

[Dan]

4 hours ago, Fyria said:

I don't know about you, but I don't really know any tablets that would satisfy the smaller than 6" brick requirement here. 

My point was that actually given the requirements (I don't use WhatsApp but understood it to be an internet messenger app), the requirements presented are better satisfied by a small tablet than a mobile phone. "Is a mobile phone of <6" " is a solution, not a problem. Having a small device that fits in your pocket doesn't matter if you're not using it in situations where you want to be taking it in and out of your pocket all the time.

If someone wants to "sell" me WhatsApp, they can try, but as far as I'm aware it offers nothing above a combination of FB Messenger and my phone by default.

Edited February 8, 2017 by Dan

[Nacey]

15 minutes ago, Dan said:

Having a small device that fits in your pocket doesn't matter if you're not using it in situations where you want to be taking it in and out of your pocket all the time.

It obviously does matter since Tom literally wrote in the post that she wants a small device. Also I'm pretty sure she wants it to be a phone since Tom asked for a phone.

[Tiran]

Yeah, it sounds like the G4 is top of the list to grab, I shall feed that back. Thanks everyone for the help.

As people surmised, I kind of assumed calls and texts are a given, no-one doesn't need to make phone calls nowadays. The out of box thinking isn't too bad though; I'm usually the first to question that sort of thing when someone tells me they want a laptop.

[Nacey]

8 minutes ago, Tiran said:

As people surmised, I kind of assumed calls and texts are a given, no-one doesn't need to make phone calls nowadays.

You can compare the regular G4 and Play here. Most notably the Play is about £30 cheaper with a 5in screen and NFC. Regular is 5.5in, has a faster CPU (not too important) and double the RAM (noticeable with a lot of task switching). I'd say the Play is better value unless you want a bigger screen which it sounds like she doesn't.

[Myrrh]

The G4 often has great deals below 100 if you check Hotukdeals. It's a favourite budget option.

[Dan]

I'm (still) looking at a Pixel, I'm pretty much decided that this is what I want to get. I have made a grand total of 2 phone calls in the last 6 months, and sent 3 texts (to people who don't check facebook often...), so I don't really care about having unlimited of those in my package, but I do make data calls and I do need to be able to use it on the move. Conversely I get through most of my 5GB a month, despite not having 4G. I pay way too much for my contract so basically any change will be a saving.

I have a tendancy to keep my phones way too long. I'm still using the Nexus 4 Todd sold me 4-5 years ago, down to using the same case.

Do people have any recommendations on any front around this stuff? I'm at a point where I haven't done this because I don't have confidence I'll make a good choice, so opinions and reviews are welcome to help me get to a point where I actually get something.

[Fyria]

1 hour ago, Dan said:

If someone wants to "sell" me WhatsApp, they can try, but as far as I'm aware it offers nothing above a combination of FB Messenger and my phone by default.

No one has ever successfully sold it to me. That said realistically, I'm personally easiest to contact via Hangouts and will tend to be most responsive there/use it wherever I can, but some people don't have Hangouts, so I'll grumble and resort to FB Messenger or text as a backup, not sure I've ever come across someone who doesn't at least use one of those three.

Maybe some people do the same with me and my lack of WhatsApp use. Haha.

 

[Dan]

My parents grumble at me for not having it, when neither side has struggled to contact the other via facebook... My Texts are generally sent to people who fail at having reasonable amounts of data on their phones because they're unemployed or don't think it holds value.

[Fyria]

Pixels everywhere! \o/ 

Seriously, if I could afford to do so, I would get a Pixel, the Nexus 6P battery issues have been very limiting and quite frustrating at points and I'm not convinced that if I get it replaced I won't go through the same issues again (it's not just me), I'm just waiting on a job to start saving up. T_T

[Myrrh]

Why do you need to be "sold"? You literally use whatever ecosystem your friends or family use; if it's WhatsApp then unless you don't want to speak with them you use WhatsApp.

My 6P has excellent battery life but it is quite new.

[Fyria]

Just now, Dan said:

My parents grumble at me for not having it, when neither side has struggled to contact the other via facebook... My Texts are generally sent to people who fail at having reasonable amounts of data on their phones because they're unemployed or don't think it holds value.

There was actually a point where my mother started to give up trying to find a medium that her kids were all on for messaging purposes, and actually just used Steam as because we all played Steam games, it was hilarious. Suffice to say, both my parents have been using Hangouts as a way to contact me for a couple of years or so now.

[Dan]

Where you and Todd are the only people I use Hangouts to contact, because I realise Facebook isn't reliable for reaching you and Hangouts is (and typically conversations are "Mythic+?")

[Fyria]

2 minutes ago, Myrrh said:

Why do you need to be "sold"? You literally use whatever ecosystem your friends or family use; if it's WhatsApp then unless you don't want to speak with them you use WhatsApp.

My 6P has excellent battery life but it is quite new.

Sometimes it's the avoidance of having a million things on your phone to message different people though, my brother (Alex, not Richard) uses WhatsApp I think, but we just text each other instead. Richard, well, I don't even know the best way to get in contact with him that isn't through my mother, but he's on Battle.net etc enough that that works, we rarely need to have any synchronous communication so it doesn't matter if I'm not notified instantly. None of us children have diverged to a single messenger platform because we communicate in different ways with our friends, so it ends up being our parents who adapt to talk to us rather than the other way around.

[Lagrosh]

Agree with Myrrh. I use WhatsApp & iMessage because that's what everyone I communicate with uses. Occasionally people also communicate with me on hangout or messenger, which is why I installed the apps. But other than that, it's basically all the other 2. It's the same conversation we used to have about ICQ/AIM/Yahoo/MSN. Being idealistic around any form of communication is fair enough, but you lose out as a result.

[Fyria]

2 minutes ago, Dan said:

Where you and Todd are the only people I use Hangouts to contact, because I realise Facebook isn't reliable for reaching you and Hangouts is (and typically conversations are "Mythic+?")

Yeah, I use Hangouts maybe 90% of the time, between parents, work and most of my friends, as well as preferring it as a medium in general as I can have notifications set up on Chrome and use desktop stuff (I imagine there's a tidy way to do this with Facebook, but I dislike Facebook anyway), so I don't need to be near my phone all the time to respond, which is great right now as my phone rarely lasts me a day before dying on "40% battery", don't even ask.

Also it's generally got pretty good integrability with other Android stuff like Wear which I also use. This is probably why it's the most reliable way to nab me for things.

[Dan]

Facebook does all those things for me by default, my google stuff doesn't which is odd. Meh, I get that its kind of environmental which people use. I think my Nanna used it because it happened to be on a phone which my Uncle gave her once, and she doesn't want to learn a new interface (which is kinda understandable considering she is bad at... well, everything except gambling), which means my Mum uses it for that.