Last month my fourth iPhone in six years was, in medical terms, crashing. The screen, which had pulled away from its glue, was behaving strangely. The charging port, no matter how thoroughly I cleaned it, only occasionally took power. Repair would be expensive, especially considering that my contract would be up in about six months. Buying a newer iPhone would mean spending $650 up-front, spending $450 with a new two-year contract or amortizing the price with my carrier’s new early upgrade plan. I felt trapped, as every smartphone owner occasionally does, between two much more powerful entities that take me, an effectively captive chain-buying contract iPhone user, for granted. I began to take offense at the malfunctioning iPhone’s familiarity. Our relationship was strained and decreasingly rational. I was on a trip and away from home for a few weeks, out of sorts and out of climate, slightly unmoored and very impatient.
And so the same stubborn retail-limbic response that prevented me from avoiding this mess in the first place^aEURS-^aEURSby buying an AppleCare insurance plan^aEURS-^aEURSactivated once more, and I placed an order I had been thinking about for months: One BLU Advance 4.0 Unlocked Dual Sim Phone (White), $89.99 suggested retail (but usually listed lower), $76.14 open-box with overnight shipping. 1,829 customer reviews, 4.3 stars. “This isn’t the best phone out there, but it is by far the best phone for only around $80-90,” wrote Amazon reviewer Anne.
Excellent article about what it’s like to move from a top-of-the-line smartphone to the cheapest models.
This is eventually going to be a huge problem for companies relying on high-end smartphones. It won’t affect Apple as much (in fact, it isn’t affecting them at all), but Android OEMs are feeling the heat. While the really cheap ones are probably not that interesting to us, the ^a‘not200-^a‘not300 models (no contract) certainly are. They deliver similar performance at less than half the price of the latest iPhone or Galaxy.
Anyone know of phones in the $200-$300 price range that support dual-band Wifi, 2.4 and 5 ghz? I’m in the market now. Like the Moto G 2nd gen but it doesn’t support 5 ghz and where I live 2.4 ghz is unuseable due to high interfeerance. Looking in this range because I don’t want to go on contract as I’ve been burned by the bastards before.
I have no idea what LG G2 sells for, but it at least does support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. I have one and it works flawlessly on either frequency.
I forgot about the G2, but it is in my price range if I can find a version without AT&T bloatware and config settings forced on to it (in particular they force tethering off). Also a Nexus 5 would be nice but no one’s selling them anymore. The G2 and N5 are very similar save for the software.
For around $200 I would buy Meizu M1 or Jiayu S3. Both have decent hardware (64 bit ARM v8 CPUS), LTE and both support 5GHZ WIFI band.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G
ZTE Blade S6
ZTE Zmax… just bought one from walmart for $191 total shipped to store its $250 from tmobile.
I use it on a tmobile prepaid plan and I have wifi calling included (I had to chat online with tmobile to get the wifi calling working since I don’t think my sim had been updated to work with it yet they sent me the update and it was working within 25min although they said 3hours I think) I could go with the monthly contract plan and pay $10 less and it is still cancel anytime you want.
This phone works on all current tmobile bands except for the upcoming 700Mhz LTE from what I understand. It had better signal reception than my previous Sony Xperia Mini Pro or ZTE Open C (Which was better than the Xperia even at $50 on ebay go figure…).
The specs are excellent for the price:
http://www.gsmarena.com/zte_zmax-6697.php
The only place this phone compromises for me is non removable battery… otherwise 2Gb ram, 1.2Ghz mid range quad core and 16Gb Flash + micro SD card. the camera is ok not stellar but adequate. And the screen is huge 5.7″ which is why it needs a 3400mAh battery to last as long as it does and last it does very well.
Nexus 5
I sold my iPhone 6 128GB for NZ$1300 and bought a Lumia 830 for NZ$599 (thus coming out NZ$700 richer that I used to purchase a Dell XPS 13) and to be honest after purchasing flagship phones for many years and now having bought a middle of the road phone I have to ask myself why I was so willing to purchase a flagship phone given that a mid range did exactly what I needed – a victim of marketing convincing me that, “why go for good enough when the best is even better!”.
I’ve had the Lumia 830 phone for over a month (I treated myself to a 128GB sdcard) and to be honest it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next few months when it comes to international sales for Apple now that the US dollar is increasing in value and Apple products are becoming increasingly more expensive – the iPhone 6 128GB has jumped NZ$250 which makes me wonder how many customers are opting to go for a cheaper alternative.
Funny, I experienced this last summer after I fell in a swimming pool with my iPhone in tow. Bought a $55 Android ZTE phone, and was such a horrible experience that I later bought a Lumia 520 to hold me over. The Lumia was actually a very nice phone for the price, which speaks to how much more responsive Windows Phone felt compared to Android; and as a result provided a much better user experience. As the article mentions, that was always the strength of the iPhone from version 1 – even if the phone was slow, interracting with it didn’t feel slow.
Well, you could just spend 10 bucks more. Just take 1GB ram and quad core CPU. I`ts really just a few backs more – and work as a charm. I have quantum 500 for maybe 90$ and it work better than Samsungs for 5x more (I mean flawlessly UI – camera of course won`t be as good).
The article’s author however would probably have been less pleased with a Windows Phone. He wrote that to his relief, all needed apps were there on Android, and explicitly mentions Instagram.
The WP app situation is still poor and especially Instagram is an app that has not been updated in a year and lacks important functions compared to the Android/iOS counterparts.
So much honesty and common sense.
We mostly read about the latest and greatest and I think many people buy that to feel good and secure that they have “the best that money can buy”. After that initial buy it all goes downhill quite quickly. You soon start to discover the small flaws and because this was supposed to be the perfect device it is hard to accept those small issues.
I am annoyed that my old laptop can only generate FHD on my QHD monitor. My parents are perfectly happy with the old monitor that I was happy to pass down to them.
My 1020 takes amazing pictures, but it didn’t get Denim so now it feels slow and I envy my wives 1520 that takes “only great” pictures so fast now.
I have that 4 year old work laptop that does everything that I want, but it only gets 100 MB/s on USB2 and doesn’t have touch.
And then I take a breath, go for a run, and think about that time I travelled for 1.5 year on a miniscule budget. Suddenly my phone and laptop are my trusty, reliable companions again. I give away some money and food to a homeless person, put the leftover coins in a jar for my son, surprise my wife with her favorite snack and play some boardgame all evening long while discussing the new Apple Watch and MacBook with a friend
You want touch on a laptop? I think you lost me there.
Of course I want touch on a laptop. It is great for browsing and many simple games, photo-watching and it makes part of my work (mobile development) easier as well.
Touch is never going to be the primary input on a laptop for me, but I surely would like to have it as an option
Well, that makes sense at least. Its also possible that I’m a dinosaur, who’s well equipped at using a mouse. I remember how frustrating it was for a lot of people to master ( leading to mac’s title bar and all) . Maybe kids today will grow up with touch being much easier and more efficient.
Touch is not for replacing the mouse, just like the mouse is not for replacing the keyboard.
I have 10 fingers, so I can do 10 touch-things at the same time. Realistically I normally only use 1-3 but sometimes more.
Drawing or note-taking or selecting many items all over the screen or playing some games is nicer with touch than with the mouse. Touch is also very direct, that is why scrolling a page is nicer with touch even compared to a nice mouse with a scroll “wheel”. Once the thing you wanted to see scrolls into the view you stop scrolling immediately and instead drag it to the center.
Swiping and zooming through pictures is just nicer than left-arrow/right-arrow/plus/minus.
I use touch much more often than the nub or touchpad, but I an live without touch, not without a mouse.
i agree and would also add that a lot of devices last a lot longer, i still have an iPhone 5 which is still very quick and very capable, i know not exactly the oldest phone to exist but thinking back a few years the idea of using a phone beyond 18months was a problem with massive lag and stability.
It’s the same with laptops, im amazed at the age of some of the kit i still use, when growing up laptops were replaced all the time and 2 years was good, now they seem to be still usable after 4 years.
i would love to be in a position to have the latest and greatest but like you i’d rather spend money on life, spending time with my nearest and dearest doing things together
My primary phone is a Nokia 3310 circa 2000 and laptop is an HP 8510w circa 2008 (with an SSD admittedly).
Hear hear. It always makes me laugh when I hear the wealthy act as if habitually going for the most expensive option somehow makes them more discerning consumers than people who always go for the cheapest option instead. On their own/for the own sake, both approaches are equally-mindless crutches for people who are too ignorant or lazy to understand the difference between cost & value.
The story is quite humorous though very close to home. I got tired of the endless cycle of subsidizing my phone habit, so I was not disappointed to see T-Mobile do away with the standard contract plans as we know them. I now use an LG L90 as my daily driver that I paid $50.00 for. That’s right, not a typo, $50.00. That minimal investment gets me a phone that is at least technically on-par with any midrange device on the market and has insanely good battery life.
I laugh every time I pick it up to use it.
I have a three year old Galaxy S3. In the initial rush of getting my first smartphone I went “high end”. Today, it functions nicely as a current “mid range” phone. I just don’t need more, so when it comes time to replace it, it’s “hello, mid-range”. I’ll even consider a Windows phone, too.
Yeah, probably would have kept my S3, if I hadn’t destroyed it. My Nexus 5 will probably stay with me until it dies, or someone builds a decent phone with a physical keyboard….
The Galaxy S3 currently sells in Europe for ^a‘not190 as “Galaxy S3 Neo” with the same specs but slightly larger RAM. With the AMOLED it is still a good choice in the “lesser midrange”.
as well as the motorola range of E and G’s which are very inexpensive but very very powerful, dual sim options, large screen options and the best bit about em apart from excellent build quality is that they are very vanilla android and get pretty timely updates, i know the 5″ Moto G got lollypop a couple of weeks ago,
You all got suckered, I paid $9.99 for my LG Optimus Fuel during “Black Friday Week” at Kroger. You literally pay as you go, buy minutes/text/data as you need it. Started with 180m/180t/180Mb for the first 90 days and added another 270m/t/d after 60 days. Once you learn your online/mobile habits you can turn things off unless you’re on wifi.
The phone itself is definitely a low end android but it serves its purpose very well, a communications device.
I really don’t look at it as getting “suckered”, my 53 year-old eyes simply cannot read a 3.5″ phone screen anymore. A 4.7″ screen is about as small as I can go without having my reading glasses on me.
I choose to think we were able to meet our needs quite nicely without going top-tier.
Let me rephrase it:
Most of you got suckered into buying flagship phones.
In the west, we all buy stuff we don’t need. Heck, anywhere in the world, people buy stuff they don’t need every day.
It’s not being suckered. It’s people spending their money how they choose.
Lets be honest, for most people, its being suckered.
Yeah the ZTE Blade S6 (5in) or ZTE ZMax (5.7in) like I have are both huge and relatively inexpensive.
The ZTE Zmax is a bit slower 1.2Ghz 32bit vs 1.5Ghz 64bit but has a huge battery… almost %50 bigger.
So, people that pay for features that you don’t use are suckers, regardless of whether or not they use said features?
Wow. What a small view.
Who said I wouldn’t use them, but why pay more when you don’t have to?
Err, because those features have value?
We can take your absurd line of reasoning further:
I was ok before the invention of the mobile phone, so why buy one if I don’t have to?
I was fine with my flip phone but wanted better functionality, I didn’t need a mobile computer. So I got the LG L34C. I paid for exactly the amount of features I wanted. Most people just don’t know they over pay for their phone or don’t use most of the features (i.e. automatic replies, messages, data control, etc.)
Got it for ^Alb89, replaced a ^Alb189 Nexus 4, which replaced a subsidised iPhone 4. It’s cheap. The touch screen had issues till the update about 2 days ago, but it’s a very usable phone and as I don’t care about the bling of customisation nor do I want root access for the sake of it, it suits me well.
That and the battery life is easily double of my last phone!
I was on the verge of buying the Lumia 635, when I saw the leaked announcement for the 640.
Now, I’m waiting eagerly for T-Mobile to ship it. It’s definitely time to upgrade from my old 710.
What’s he doing to them?
I’m not known for taking care of my portable electronics, but i’ve managed to keep an iphone functioning for 3 years, and it’s still working now in my daughter’s hands.
Yeah if you treat your expensive electronics so badly that they only last a year you probably should be buying cheaper stuff instead.
Good article though. A nice introspective look at our modern relationships with smartphones and the status associated with them.
I own an iPhone but my work pays for it. If I had to buy my own I would have to think really hard about whether I would want to spring for a premium smartphone. I’d probably end up with cheap and cheerful as well, although then I’d have to get a digicam to take pictures again so maybe that wouldn’t save me any money.
The iPhone is a nice phone, I got the original, Then I got the iPhone 4, not I have the 6. The biggest motivation for the upgrade, is actually how much more complex the web has changed over the years.
Ajax, HTML 5, Javascript Platforms such as JQuery, and AngularJS which offer a richer experience. Meaning more and more websites are offering that richer experience. So I buy the best, and keep it until it gets really slow to use.
Now I am staying with Apple just because that is where my Apps are. However that doesn’t mean other guys have a good model. The price for the phone, Well you get what you paid for. The real question do you need what you got.
I think you really nailed it there.
I develop mobile apps ans websites using the new technologies like AngluarJs.
My reference phone for testing is a Motorola Moto G a sub 200$ phone. My apps must run smoothly on the Moto G before they are published in the store.
The next step in the evolution of buying a good phone is to make sure it is supported by cyanogenmod. Cyanogenmod means you get the later releases of Android, the bloatware installed by the carrier removed, and the ability to load the phone with useful apps…
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Devices#vendor=;
Apple relies on carrier subsidies of $400-600 per phone. When (not if) the carriers decide to stop paying these subsidies Apple is fscked.
I’m looking at buying a ZTE Fit 4G for AUD99 (USD75:
Quad core, 1GB RAM. 8GB on board memory, 4.5″ screen 5MP and 2 MP cameras, 4G network.
Edited 2015-03-12 04:17 UTC
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I quit buying high end phones and switched to good enough Chinese phones and an MVNO (currently on H2O wireless).
I get pretty much the same use out of my $150 phone and only pay $27 a month for service (on the same network no less).
I was up to about $100 a month with AT&T before I decided enough was enough. I’m saving enough money now that I can just buy a new phone whenever I decide I need to (or drop mine and break it).
If you must have the latest and greatest, then this would not work for you, but if you like the freedom to replace your phone whenever you want and like saving money, it is the way to go.