Lumia 52x and 62x ($60-$150): There are so many low end Lumia devices that I can’t list all of them as seperate devices in this list. They all have very small differences between them (usually one model is exclusive to a certain carrier or one has LTE and the other doesn’t), which are very easy to figure out before buying one. For the most part, these devices are great and fly through Windows Phone without any problems.
Lumia 520 has been low as $59 in Canada but I really can’t stand its cheap screen without anti-fingerprint coating.
I am really tempted by the zenphone 2. Also, although I am dropping Sprint, they are tempting me with tbe LG 4 preorder, with extra battery, charger and sd card. Great offer, but I am trying to cut my bill a little more and get off contract.
Remember that you can get extra batteries etc for mad cheap at Monoprice. Picked up a 6500mAH or so external battery for like $20.
Also, I feel the need to re-pimp the prepaid T-Mobile plan I’m on, which is “unlimited” (speed-capped at 4GB IIRC, I’ve never hit it) data/SMS/MMS and 100 minutes (who talks on their phone any more?) for $30/mo.
You can get the same thing but with unlimited minutes for $40/mo from a reseller, like my wife’s plan with Simple Mobile. Bonus: They don’t block out setting the phone up as a hotspot.
I’m going to join an AT&T family plan, which shares 10 GB. I rarely go over 2 GB, and most of the other members are light users to say the least. Also, I’m pretty sure that T Mobile in southern PA/North Maryland isn’t great.
I’ve never used an external battery that came within 75% of stated a capacity. An oem swappable battery is both much smaller and far more likely to actually match the claimed mah
Oh yeah, family plans are often the best deals. I’ve found that with just myself and my wife, we’d pay significantly more on any family plan so the pre-paid stuff is the way to go.
Good point about the OEM swappable battery, kedaha. Though I haven’t owned a phone with an easily swappable battery since…my HTC Desire HD back in 2009 or whatever?
Yeah, but 75% of 9000mAh or whatever the latest goofy-ass LemonZero claims are is still a good sight better than whatever comes in most phones by default these days.
Aye, but in a package what…10 times the size? and that requires it being connected to your phone for a significant period of time, rather than something barely larger than a credit card and that makes your battery fully charged within 30 seconds.
for 72 hours the new Huawei P8 lite for $200US with bluetooth speaker and case is a great deal.
That looks pretty cool, think I’ll give it a try. Been thinking about a new phone, been dumb-phoning it for a while now. Having the bundled prepaid card is a good deal for me, since I don’t have a reason to do a family plan and would rather stay off contract.
Just picked up a Moto E for the wife. It’s just on the edge of underpowered, but build-wise it’s a nice phone and certainly reasonable for its $150 price. Would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a smartphone on the cheap.
bob, please report back how it is for you! i was going to buy one but i need another phone like i need a hole in my head with my iphone 6, oneplus one, nexus 5, lumia 930 and lumia 830.
Got my Huawei P8 lite earlier this week. I’ll have to use it for a while to get a really good feel for it, but initially I’m pleased with it. Hooked it up using the 30-day unlimited NET10 network card that came with it initially, though I’ll probably throttle back to a smaller plan after the month is up, since I have WIFI almost all the time and don’t need to pay for unlimited data. The phone feels light enough in the hand, the screen looks just fine with no issues thus far, and it ran for two days on a battery charge (which I admit was not heavy usage, but I did install some stuff and play around with it some). My only issue to this point is the volume, which even at max isn’t loud enough for me to use it with my cheapo-ok-to-sweat-on headset during workouts, but I suspect I can probably resolve that with a bit of research.
There’s probably a media player that will overdrive the source file, but you’re stuck with the hardware preamp in the phone. I have the same issue with mowing the lawn, even on my N5.
A powered noise-cancellation headset should fix that - it should amplify the volume. There’s relatively cheap ones around ($40?)
THREAD NECRO, ARISE! ineffablebob, how is the P8 lite holding up for you?
Well…I ordered a Xaomi Redmi Note 2 Prime in yellow. We’ll see if it’s a waste of money.
Are there any special tricks for dealing with a 4GB phone? Both of our kids have Moto-somethings, and they’re both terribly frustrated by the storage limitation (even with SD card, because apparently very little can actually be moved). Are there parts of the OS that can be actually deleted? (Korean input, stuff like that)
They have pretty much bare-bones apps installed that they actually use (Spotify, Skype, a couple others), and there isn’t even enough space left to download most updates.
Me and my 32GB HTC M7 have been immune to any storage problems.