thinking of buying a new (to me) smart phone

[MontyVeda]

...but i don't really know much about smart phones.

An old workmate is flogging a samsung note 3. It's five years old and on Jellybean. Is this an outdated OS in this day and age?

TIA

 

[Slioch]

Jellybean is probably a bit creaky these days, to be honest. Depends how much you want to spend.

I've got a Wileyfox Swift which cost me about £120 a couple of years back, and have a £5 per month "Goodybag" with GiffGaff who provide a free sim card. This phone is comparable in performance terms to the state of the art Samsung phone my wife has, but at a fraction of the cost and I'm not locked into an expensive monthly contract.

Wileyfox are currently selling their Swift 2 phones for under a hundred notes here, and it comes with Oreo, the latest Android.

I don't know how much your mate is willing to sell you his old Samsung for, but going for a new phone/latest Android may not be that more expensive?

Edit: Oops, sorry. The latest version of Android is Pie, which was launched in Aug this year. Oreo is still 5 years more modern that Jellybean though.

 

[midlife]

At five years old I'd be more worried about the battery and if all the buttons / charge port work. There are ways of updating the OS. New android phones can be had pretty cheap these days as above. There's a thread on LFGSS on android phones which has lots of info.

xiaomi redmi or similar quite cheap.

 

[Drago]

Being dumbphone owner (or a dumb phone owner!) I'm no expert on such matters, but cant the flavour of Android be updated?

 

[Cycleops]

Battery issues aside the problem with buying an old android phone I'd that it won't be updated to the newest version. The good thing about apple phones is that they are all updated by Apple from the 5 onwards. The latest Android One phones from Nokia and others are guaranteed updates for at least three years so maybe better to get a less expensive version of one of these unless you are worried about performance.
I'd say Nokia have the best quality budget phones right now although I don't have one.

I've had problems with Motorola phones which are often recommended on here.

 

[MontyVeda]

Being dumbphone owner (or a dumb phone owner!) I'm no expert on such matters, but cant the flavour of Android be updated?

no idea... my current phone is on the gingerbread OS, which isn't supported by playstore, which means i can't buy any apps and many don't support gingerbread. If there is a way to update my OS, then that's a better solution than buying a new phone.

 

[midlife]

Just out of curiosity what's your current phone? There are ways of updating but not always "officially" lol

 

[Soltydog]

At five years old I'd be more worried about the battery and if all the buttons / charge port work.

Agree with this, I have a Samsung S6 edge, which is now over 3 years old, the battery life is rather poor nowadays, so I bought an external battery pack which was fine for a while, but now the charging port is temperamental, so I've bought a wireless charging pod for use at home. There's also been a few times lately where the screen has frozen & I've had to turn pnone off & back on, so maybe time to change
I looked at a new phone last year, but the new models were close to a grand & I was saving for a new bike, so that took priority. Might have to look in the January sales

 

[Dirk]

Being dumbphone owner (or a dumb phone owner!) I'm no expert on such matters, but cant the flavour of Android be updated?

Later operating systems take up more processing power. Earlier phones would either not have the ability to run later systems or would be stretched so far as to cause speed/reliability problems.
As an analogy - try running Windows 10 on a PC that previously came with XP installed as standard.

 

[postman]

View: https://youtu.be/1xy3KnqI3so?t=9m20s
Gary has a problem with dumbphones.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

What smart features do you want to use?

 

[gbb]

If you're looking at Samsung mobiles, the J series are a lot better priced than the S. We've brought 2 or 3 of them for family members for Xmas, birthdays, replacing breakage, that kind of thing and they've felt no need to upgrade to something better. They're a good all round phone. Mines a J5, I think I we got the DIL a J3 and she's been more than happy with it....a 30 year old internet, social media lover, so it can't be that bad.

 

[Cycleops]

Samsung are good phones but unfortunately they load them with bloat ware and put a skin on top of the android OS. I recommend you buy a phone with a unadulterated Android OS for a faster easier to use experience.

 

[Grant Fondo]

Note 3 is only a year older than note 4 which is a great phone and a keeper for me after 4 years.

 

[Cletus Van Damme]

I wouldn't have a Samsung phone, I've only had one and it was full of bloatware. The best Android phones I've had in the past for virtually no bloatware have been LG and Motorola. The LG G3 was an awesome phone but old now. I've also had a cheap Huawei phone, which was way better for the money than Samsung offered at the time, but just full of bloatware crap. They seem to spend a lot on advertising now so are probably not as good value. I've heard that Xiaomi make good phones now.

I am not on Android anymore as I got an Iphone 8 work phone, beside the excellent MP3 player I would personally avoid it like the plague, the camera is also good, but it should be for what it cost, it looks like a secondhand £30 Moto G1, with an apple sign on the back. Everything costs money, it is locked down, the navigation keys aren't as good as Android, you can't get access to the phones file structure, you can't put music on it with out Itunes, I just really don't get it at all. But I guess if your into branding it must be an amazing piece of hardware...