[Closed] Android Phone - whats good ATM

Depends what you're on ATM. I'm coming up to end of contract and I can't see any reason to change from the Nexus 6p I'm using. Sure, the pixel 2 and, no doubt, the s8 etc are "better" but the cost difference is just not worth it imo.

The oneplus range has good reviews but I believe the latest incarnation has slashed the price difference between it and the traditional big brands.

Used/refurbished p6 maybe?

I'm not bothered about the latest and greatest, just looking for something fairly cheap and usable, that's not going to annoy me with proprietary guff.
I'm looking at new rather than used.
I'll give oneplus a look

Not sure if older Google Nexus phones are still available?

Really impressed with my Wileyfox Swift 2x, can't really see what the pricier options give you anymore.... Quality wise it's up there with Samsung and HTC etc. and except for maybe a better camera there are no features I'd actually want

Budget?

Just bought my daughter a Samsung A5 2017 which seems to be like an Apple 7 but half the price and with a headphone jack. Its very nice phone, quite tempted myself.

The other that caught my eye was a Sony ZX compact which is a bit pricy but cool if your of a walkman generation.

Motorola Moto E plus has a monster battery and good specs for under £150. It's reduced on the Motorola site and the tenner off code works. Virtually stock android 7 too which counts for it against the Huawei p8 lite and better battery/finish than Nokia 3 that are similar money. Budget £15 for a decent 64gb as card and Bob's your uncle.

I have the huwaei P8lite and it's generally good (was a stonking bargain when I needed one urgently) but there is a fair bit of bloatware on it

Daughter has a Nokia 3, she loves it.

OnePlus 3 here..... really rate it. Fast, dash charge is epic and it's almost a stock version of Android so no bloatware.

I've got the 2017 Huawei P8 Lite and it's very good (don't confuse this with the older version)
The "bloatware" is Huawei's EMUI v5 and it is not really that intrusive, in fact it's got some great tools like Phone Manager. If you prefer vanilla Android then you might not like it. I reckon it's a lot better than my iPhone6 work phone.
I paid £180 in early August but I've since seen it for £150. At that price it's a bargain.

Their high end phones must be amazing 'cos this one is really good at the price

there was a nexus 5x in ads yesterday? £100 i think.....

EDIT: [url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/google-lg-nexus-5x-32gb ]here[/url]

Really impressed with my Motorola Moto G5 Plus - £229 from Carphone Warehouse including £10 cashback just over a month ago 🙂

As above Moto G5S plus.

Moto g4 and e are v good atm. Mrs has g4 I have e4 with monster battery. Virtually no bloatware and what little there is can be told F.O.

V impressed

If you are thinking of going down the Chinese route then there's a few thing to bear in mind.
I've got a Xiaomi Mi5, which I am delighted with. I paid £180 pounds for it and it is equivalent in specification to far more expensive phones like the Galaxy s7.
I imported it directly from China, via Banggood. Banggood are one of the more reliable importers but it is still a comparatively risky way to buy a phone.
Delivery takes anything between 2-4 weeks and the tracking is completely useless. Buy the insurance and pay by credit card. Choose standard delivery and chances are you'll escape the import taxes - if you want fast delivery you'll get hammered by DHL charging you a handling fee and customs adding 20% making your bargain phone much less of a bargain.
If your phone goes wrong you are likely to have issues - nobody has spares in the Uk so the "guarantee" means it has to go back to China. I've heard stories of phones taking months to come back, or not coming back at all.
As I am careful with phones and always use a sturdy case I decided this was a risk worth taking. Speaking of cases - you obviously won't have the choice you would with an iPhone, but I've got a couple via aliexpress which have been fine.
Band B20. China doesn't use this 4G frequency so most Chinese phones come without it. In the UK B20 is used primarily by O2, although all the providers use it a bit. If you are O2, Tesco or Giffgaff this is a major issue - no 4G. I'm with EE and I haven't noticed any problems - 4G reception is better everywhere than the iPhone 6 I had before.
Xiaomi are about the best Chinese phones, I'd be wary of an elefone or doogee for example. Xiaomi use a modified android called Miui, I love it and it contains very little bloatware but it's not to everybody's taste - if you are used to stock android it'll seem a bit "iPhoney".
Sorry to waffle on but when I was looking to do this I couldn't find much information from people who had actually imported a phone themselves (as opposed to being sent a phone to review) so I thought this might be useful for someone.
Mike

When I was looking a few months ago the names that kept coming up were Motorola (G5+), Huawei, Wileyfox and the Lenovo P2.

I ended up going with the Lenovo P2 and snuck in just before Three stopped selling it in the UK. It's still available through Amazon etc. but it quite expensive compared to the £199 I paid.

I almost went for the Huawei; think it was the P9, but there were a few things missing from the spec that the Lenovo had. It looked like a decent phone though, as did the Motorola G5+.

My wife has just got upgraded to a Samsung A3 2017. It's OK, but feels quite cheap & isn't a very powerful phone. Battery life is good though & it takes good pics. She is happy with it, but doesn't really do much with her phone apart from texting, a bit of web browsing & photos.
Personally, I don't like the Samsung implementation of Android although that could be down to lack of familiarity with it.

Recommend what you got: Huawei Mate 9.

Superb battery and camera. And fast enough. 64mb memory.

Some good deals on Three as it's a one year old phone.

I've just gone from a Moto G5 to a Samsung S7. Although the Moto does the job, the S7 is a lot better, but you pay for it.

If you're interested in buying the G5 off me its yours for £75, 6 months old I think.

Motorola Moto G5s Plus

+1, or the standard G5s if you want it to fit in a pocket.

Thanks for all the replies - seems I have much research to be doing now!

Another oneplus user here.. No complaints at all.

Best phone Ive ever had

I made the switch a couple of weeks back after the iphone6 gave up the ghost. £550ish for a s8+ dual sim with an offer on at Samsung if you sent them an old but working phone so I just fired over a fairly knackered iphone5.

Android feels better, the screen on the s8+ is really bloody good. It's still taking me a bit to get into but glad I've switched and glad I paid the money for a great screen and camera.

The oneplus doesnt play videos by default in hd which put me off.. may put you off too if you watch a lot of youtube on your phone.

@alanf - just make sure you buy one quickly. I spent months looking and changing my mind as every time I went to buy one it was out of stock, or discontinued (Lenovo P2). Life's too short, spend the time you save riding or eating pies
I did a lot of research and took a punt on the Huawei and I'm very happy with it.
The [url= https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=8516&idPhone2=8698&idPhone3=8050 ]GSMArena compare too[/url]l is helpful

*pulls up chair*

My options are via Vodafone business. Rather restricted on there now (no Moto's 🙁 ) to Vodafone branded, Samsung and LG. Any suggestions - we need a few 'sorta midrange' and one thats 'spanking good'

Really impressed with my Motorola Moto G5 Plus

alexxx - Member

The oneplus doesnt play videos by default in hd which put me off.. may put you off too if you watch a lot of youtube on your phone

Mine does, HD and high FPS.

OnePlus 3 here..... really rate it.

yep another very happy user here, robust, does all I need without getting in the way.

Sorry to waffle on but when I was looking to do this I couldn't find much information from people who had actually imported a phone themselves (as opposed to being sent a phone to review) so I thought this might be useful for someone.
Mike

Sony xperia xa1

Thread hijack, apart from the Sony compact range, what's decent in the smaller phone world?

I find my Z3 camera lacking, not as good as the iPhone 5 it replaced

B.A.Nana - Member 

Yes cheers, Been thinking about it on a Mi Mix 2 from Gearbest, but still just not sure I'm prepared to take the risk on the money.

The Mi Mix 2 looks gorgeous - my next phone I think! (It also has every 4g band in the world, so no UK B20 problems).

Bought a g5s plus whilst my Nexus 5x was away getting a new board to fix the boot loop issue.

I would love it if it was just a smidge smaller. The 5x is just the right size and weight but isn't quite as soft as the g5s plus.

I was worried that the standard g5s would be similar performance to the 5x so went large.

Not sure whether to revert back to the 5x and flog the 5s plus. There's not a huge amount in it in terms of performance but just enough to be noticeable

I've had a Nexus 5X for a couple of years since release, can't fault it. Other half needed a new phone about 6 months ago and couldn't find better than the G5 plus. It is equally ok, although the camera is not as good.

Most of the new phones in the £200-250 range are not very compelling I found. There's also a lot of glass-backed phones around which I'm just not careful enough for!

The Mi Mix 2 does look nice, but £400 isn't cheap - especially for a Chinese phone

Personally, I don't mind splashing a bit on a phone - it's the most used, most versatile piece of technology I own.

On that basis, I have a Galaxy Note 8 - amazing screen (I probably do 75%+ of my browsing on a phone). Brilliant 'always with you' camera and the very useful for me, S-Pen

samsung are slow to release updates for android. some older phones won't get android updates at all, and that includes nexus phones at about 2 years old ( which i think is flipping rude, but there you go ). my experience of sony ( z3 compact ) is that they're fragile as fragile things. quick enough if you can put up with the back being crunchy, but sony's interpretation of android i found intrusive and, by and large, useless. i suppose if you get up to your nuts in it it might be quite good. their music player is good though.
motorola's phones get android updates pretty quick and there is very little bloat. i have a G5. it was 165 quid, the amazon one, that has 3Gb of RAM and dual SIM. found it as quick as the sony for pretty much half the price, and crucially, doesn't break as soon as you look at it.

On the Chinese side, I've got a ZTE Blade, they're going for around £150 and I really can't see the difference between it and far more expensive phones.

I've plumped for a Moto e4.
At just over £100 it meets the cheap criteria and sounds like it's not full of bloatware etc.

Thanks for all the rcommendations

On the Chinese side, I've got a ZTE Blade, they're going for around £150 and I really can't see the difference between it and far more expensive phones.

You're not looking hard enough, sure it will prolly do the same things as, say, an S8, but a Dacia will do the same things as a Mercedes.

As with most things you get what you pay for, whether that bothers you or not is up to you.

Looks like I was too late to this but I can thoroughly recommend the Honor 9.
Parent company is Huawei. Great phone.

I recently bought a Maze Alpha, but I've yet to sort out a nano sim for it to see how it deals with calls! 😆

Very snappy compared to my Nexus 7 2013 tablet, but then it has 4GB RAM and 64GB storage vs 1GB RAM and 16GB(?) storage IIRC. Bit smaller, fair bit lighter, nice screen.

Still to see what the GPS tracking is like for rides.

The Maze Comet has recently been announced, no idea how it compares...

I'm happy with my Nokia 8. Nice build, solid metal case, good battery life, good camera, stock Nougat Android with regular updates as not crippled with operator software (Oreo upgrade due soon).

Only custom thing is it can do photos and videos with both front and back cameras at the same time, and the camera software is tweaked to support that, plus a combined mode for main camera which has twin lenses (mono and colour).

Any recommendations for a waterproof phone? I'm reading this with interest as the contract on my Moto g3 is about to end and the phone itself isn't in the best nick. But it is waterproof which makes dropping it in a rucsac worry-free.

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