new smartphone - recomendations?

brightonman123

have an HTC wildfire S, coming to end of contract- at the time, £12 odd a month for free web, approx 300 calls, 300 texts seemed ok.

browser is a bit sluggish, and little inbuilt memory, but i mainly use for just twitter and email, so no biggie..

a half decent camera and battery life would be nice!

trying to find a similar/better phone with a like for like tariff now seems impossible! the shops have 'great value' deals, until you see what is (not) included - one place quoted an additional tenner a month, on top of a pricey basic contract, just for a 2gb web boost (NOT unlimited!)

make/model wise, i am torn between these:

samsung galaxy ace2

sony xperia miro

sony xperia j

nokia lumia 520

any users of these on MSE? good/bad points welcome!

Nile

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Orrin

The Nokia would be my pick from that list but there's also the Huawei Ascend Y300 which is creating a bit of a buzz at the moment.

Both can be had free on a 2 year contract for £7.50/month (or thereabouts).

Curr946

the windows phone OS will run much better on low end handsets than androids OS. I would opt for the nokia also

brightonman123

http://mobile.talktalk.co.uk/handsets/nokia-lumia-520-white

£15/month is best tariff i can see, but only for existing TT customers?
grrrr. 300 mins, 3000 texts, 1.5gb data.

other providers have far less data / much higher cost.

Orrin

What's your actual data usage though? You only mention twitter and email which shouldn't use much at all.

If you need unlimited data you can get the Lumia 520 on PAYG for around £100 and then spend £12 a month on GiffGaff.

brightonman123

its the worry about going over limit and getting charged $$$ i want to avoid..

had badtimes when i used a broadband dongle in the past, never again!

Orrin

Do your current bills not show how much of your data allowance you use each month? You can also get apps that track your data use which might be worth it for a month to give you an idea.

It's difficult to know what tariff to pick if you honestly have no idea how much data you use.

Sure you could get "unlimited data" just to be on the safe side, but you'll probably end up paying extra for something you don't need.

For example I don't stream music or video on my phone but I do use it for emails, twitter, weather, web etc. and I use well under 100 MB a month.

Another option if you're concerned about going over your allowance is Tesco Mobile who will cap your account if you ask them.