Recommend a small smartphone?

prowla

Enfieldian wrote: »

Do you have any links? I am currently looking and even eBay ones are selling for well over these figures unless trashed.

Check out gumtree. You have to keep your eyes open to catch one though.

On ebay, you can search for "iphone 4s -(faulty,damaged,no signal,parts)", choose "Mobile & Smart Phones" to lose accessories from the listings, then set the "to" price as £150, the location as "UK only", and then check the "Sold listings" box. That gave over 4,000 hits; some of those have other faults and so-on not caught be the filter in the search, but the point is they can be had for under £150.

Another route to getting one is to get a broken one and take it to the Apple Store, and it'll cost you something like £140 to replace it with a new one.

Given that the iPhone 4/4S are now older models and superseded by the iPhone 5/5C/5S, I would expect prices to be dropping. However, Apple decided to only keep selling the 4S as a low-end 8 GB model, which pretty much makes it useless, and so that makes s/h ones more attractive.

wba31

Why buy a used iphone when you could buy something else brand new for the same price? and i say this as an apple fan! the iphone 4 is 3 years old, the 4s is 2 years old. I've heard good things about the Galaxy S3, that's been mentioned, i'd look closely at that maybe?

Supatramp

I'm sorry, but I have to laugh at folk talking about buying 2nd hand iphones. The 2nd hand price is probably what they should have been in the 1st place, if you took away the Apple hype.

There are perfectly good BRAND NEW Android phones at less than the price of a USED iphone!!

prowla

What I said was that a used iPhone 4 is a better phone than a new Nokia 520; that is based on the fact that I have both.

I don't know about the S3 and Android phones in general, as I don't have one of them. They seem quite nice though, and maybe I'll look at one next time around... My kids have Galaxy Ace 2s, and I mentioned them earlier.

I've got a 2nd hand car too - saved a lot over buying a new one.

Daz2009

wba31 wrote: »

Is it intuitive to you though? just because your partner cant be arsed to do it doesnt make it unintuitive? my wife always get me to do stuff on her phones, not because she doesnt know how to, just because she'd rather paint her nails while i do it...

To answer your question no it's not but then again I've only ever had android.
Isn't one of the big selling points of Apple products is that they just work out of the box and don't need fiddling with to get the best out of them like android ?
When actually I prefer the fact that my phone(and tablet) is highly customisable.

jamels2

Hi, I am close to deciding what to get, I am going to try and 'root' the wildfire first and see if it makes it any better. If so I might just get a better battery.

Out of the new ones available in this order I am interested:

-samsung s3 mini- looks a top phone and just about affordable for me at £155

-nokia lumia 520-looks a good all rounder but i might have to cut my sim card to fit it?

-samsung galaxy fame - cheaper option but might not be much better than the wildfire as it's a budget model

I am ruling out the Y300, looks a good spec but I've read the keyboard is poor for writing messages and the design looks a bit bland. Also the Desire C which looks just the same as my wildfire and is not much of an improvement.

Daz2009

You don't have to stick with the keyboard that comes with an android phone,take your pick from dozens in the play store

AlecEiffel

I would ultimately recommend going into a shop and trying the phones you like and the different os's. One of the big selling points of android is it's tinkering factor but if you aren't interested in that you lose a lot of the appeal. And why have to install custom keyboards and root the phone to get an experience you want. But some love that freedom and good for them. Ios is simpler and works great but with less freedom. That was more important for me this time after years of android that annoyed me with bloatware etc. wp8 sits in the middle really. Try em all and see!

Johnmcl7

You don't need to root an Android phone nor install a custom keyboard if you don't want to, the defaults work well out of the box and similar to other platforms. I find it's misleading to imply that Android devices are not usable out of the box and need customisation to get 'the experience you want' simply isn't true, the bulk of Android devices are used pretty in their default state and by the numbers sold, most people are pleased to use the devices like that.

The advantage is if there's any aspect you don't like, it's usually easy to tailor it the way you want which can be as simple as downloading an application from the Playstore. Installing a custom keyboard is simple and gives you the option of having a better keyboard, neither the stock IOS or WP8 keyboards are very good but there's no option to use a different one which given how important text input is on a phone is disadvantage.

John

AlecEiffel

I'm not implying that android isn't useable out of the box, it very much is. I've had 5 android phones and rooted some and left some totally stock. My point was more that when you hear of people's opinions of the benefits of android a lot talk about how customisable it is, how easy it is to root, and how much you can tinker with it. But if you aren't interested in that side at all then it's not a benefit. I hated android on my two htc phones so rooted them and flashed different roms onto them regularly. Also the bloatware was appalling. My nexus device was great but I had lost interest in the tinkering side of it by then. I use an S2 for work and I hate it but am limited to what I'm allowed to do with it.

I personally find the ios keyboard much easier to use than the stock samsung keyboard, but it's entirely personal preference, hence me saying perhaps the OP should try out different models and os's in a shop.