Cheaper smartphones on the way?

[srw]

Yes I have been considering a phone from the Moto range for ages.

Of course I meant "cheaper than now".

Do you have any views on that?

If the shift in the Chinese market was going to have any impact on price in the rest of the world it would have been in 2013, which is when the Chinese demand slowed down significantly. Since then changes in demand have bimbled along rather than taking a big swing - the journalist is over-interpreting a statistically insignificant change.

Plus, of course, the Chinese only make up about one-seventh of the world's population.

 

[marinyork]

G6 is rumoured to land next month in std, Play and Plus versions. From £175.

There's a lot more than that rumoured for Moto at the Mobile World Congress.

 

[PaulSB]

Cheaper smartphones are already available. Either look at reconditioned phones or the basic Moto ranges. The current Moto G5 is a phone every bit as good as the 2016 top price models, but for a quarter of the price.

Another recommendation for Moto. My son has SLD and we purchased a Moto for him, I forget which model, approximately 3 years ago. Tom can happily use it but has no concept of misuse. The phone works as well today as when it came out of the box.

I have an iPhone 5S which I was forunate to get for free. It was sitting in a drawer doing nothing after a routine upgrade. When this eventually packs up, or I have £££ to spare, I’ll get a Moto without hesitation. The iPhone is fine but battery life is declining though it is approximately 5 years old!!!!

As I like techy things I would enjoy a new phone but equally I’m aware today’s phones do exactly the same stuff as the five year old version in my hand. All a bit faster and slicker perhaps but basically there’s been no miraculous advances in a long time - or at least as far as I’m aware

 

[Drago]

G6 is rumoured to land next month in std, Play and Plus versions. From £175.

175 sheets for a blummen mobile phone? What is wrong with people?

 

[Cycleops]

I have an iPhone 5S which I was forunate to get for free. It was sitting in a drawer doing nothing after a routine upgrade.

Not quite free, you would have paid quite a lot for it over your contract term.

 

[Dan B]

I carry a so-called "mobile phone" because it lets me check email, look at my calendar and access the Internet when I am away from home or when I'm at home but can't use a full-sized laptop (often because there's a baby asleep on me, or a baby I'm trying to get to sleep on me). Whether or not it can make voice calls is way way way down the list of things I care about in a pocket-sized communications device

(It's an LG G2 I bought second-hand off ebay about three years ago for £160, which data point I imagine doesn't really add much to the discussion)

 

[PaulSB]

Not quite free, you would have paid quite a lot for it over your contract term.

I know the point and you're right except this was a phone which was replaced by an upgrade/new contract. It was a business phone originally and was gathering dust in a drawer when I retired

 

[subaqua]

View attachment 393329

This was the best phone ever. Life was less complicated back then. Now i stare into my (work) phone more than my childrens eyes

I still have one ... And it gets used

 

[Markymark]

175 sheets for a blummen mobile phone? What is wrong with people?

Damn right, I’d never pay that much for a mobile phone. Happy to pay a lot more for a mobile computer that you call make calls on though.

 

[Dan B]

Are they sending them here, rather than the US? Who seem to have been told to cut ties with the manufacturers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cjnwl8q4qz2t/huawei

IIRC half our country's DSL connections go through Huawei products, so if you're avoiding Huawei on "security" concerns but have broadband at home you might want to think about that as well ...

 

[Drago]

And they they complain they have to work until they're a hundred and eleventy sixteen to paynfor all this stuff!

 

[nickyboy]

IIRC half our country's DSL connections go through Huawei products, so if you're avoiding Huawei on "security" concerns but have broadband at home you might want to think about that as well ...

Bob on...the hype surrounding Huawei security issues is just a way to keep the narrative of those sneaky Chinese going

Got a Huawei P9. Great phone, cheaper than alternatives with similar tech. Also unpopular enough with riff raff so that if you get it snatched (as I did), they throw it away

 

[Aperitif]

Bob on...the hype surrounding Huawei security issues is just a way to keep the narrative of those sneaky Chinese going

Got a Huawei P9. Great phone, cheaper than alternatives with similar tech. Also unpopular enough with riff raff so that if you get it snatched (as I did), they throw it away

"Huawei to go!" Nicky.

 

[Jason]

Yes they are. I bought them from Richard Branson's shop.

you think those glamour birds are virgins???? Oh

 

[mjr]

How much cheaper do you want? Alcatel have a smartphone available for £60, the Pixi, which is actually a decent bit of kit.

The EE version of the Pixi 3 is currently £30 on the high street with a £10 top-up on it, or unlocked for about £25 online. I think it comes with Android 5 (Lollipop) but someone seems to have shoehorned 7.1 (Nougat) onto one version (4009a - I've no idea if that's one currently on sale, as d e f i s and x versions have also been reported) at https://www.lineageosroms.org/forums/topic/lineageos-14-1-alcatel-pixi-3-nougat-7-1-rom/ although there's no feedback there. I'm not sure how much further that horse is going to get flogged because it looks to have 512Mb RAM and although Android 8 reportedly has an "Android Go" for low-resource devices, I think I read it needs 1Gb.

One of the stranger phones I saw was the Geotel G1 which seems to be a rugged phone with a battery large enough (7000mAh) that it doubles as a power bank to charge other devices. If only it was more obviously hackable, I might get it for touring.