Mid Range Android Phone - Looking for Suggestions

Guess I’m just not the typical phone consumer. My 2+ year old M7 looks, feels and acts like brand new. It isn’t the perfect device by any means, but I cannot image that there is a new phone so much better as to be worth spending hundreds of dollars to replace it.

Oh, if I hadn’t beaten the hell out of my N5 in a series of stupid incidents over the last 6mo, I might feel the same.

Are you talking about the HTC One M8? That phone came out in March 2014. It’s the M7 that would be limping into its third year soon.

Currently, AT&T is holding an event for AT&T Next. I get 200 dollars credit when I join my brothers plan, if I turn in my old phone. That increases my overall budget from 300 dollars (Asus Zenfone 2 territory) to about 500 dollars, but I don’t think AT&T has anything in that price range that I want (well, at least I hadn’t researched much). I still have some time to make a decision though, so maybe something new will come to AT&T Next.

Worst come to worst, the new Windows 10 950 is about $550, so I might end up walking out with that. I already use one drive and groove.

Sorry - what I have is indeed an M7.

It looks like the ZTA Axon Pro will come to AT&T next month. The new reviews are pretty good, especially with the recent increase in storage and the price drop.

Confirmed: you take much better care of your M7 than I did! The only bright spot from when mine was stolen was that it had a hard time holding a charge and was feeling sluggish–despite (or because) of multiple ROM flashes and factory resets.

My N5X is at 40% right now at 5pm after forgetting to charge it last night. Admittedly fairly light usage, but still. Doze makes a crazy huge difference.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think Doze only works when you’re not using the phone. Not so great when you’re on the go but perfect for me for when I’m at work and basically don’t touch my phone during the work day. Sometimes I would pick up my phone after work and find that it was at 15%. That doesn’t happen anymore.

I am finding that ATT Next has a real crap selection of midrange phones. All of the ones that I like would have to purchased through other retailers and without any discounts.

If you’re still considering the Nexus 6, I love mine. Thierry Nguyen says the battery life and camera aren’t great, but it looks to me like he doesn’t actually own one. The Nexus 6 has a 3,250mah battery. That’s the same as the iPhone 6+ and more than the Galaxy Note 5. Some benchmarks show it is bottom half in terms of battery life, but I get a full day when I need, yesterday went from morning to 9pm despite fairly heavy use. It also charges really fast, it was one of the first phones to offer fast charging. I’d say it’s about an hour from 30% to 80%.

The camera takes excellent pictures. Seriously, and my wife has an iPhone 5s. Online geeks compare low-light detail of background foliage, which is fine (and its competetive with the iPhone 6). The real improvement is that they actually figured out white balance, which other than the S6 I haven’t seen a single Android phone get right.

Honestly, almost every negative review comes down to 1) in late 2014 people weren’t used to the idea of a 6-inch phone. Read the Ars Technica review and it goes on and on… I paraphrase, but “why would anyone, ever want a 6-inch phone?!? Ridiculous”. And 2) it was released at a flagship price. This ticked people off because expectations were for a cheap phone ($19 would have been about right judging by the internet comments, check Anandtech review comments :)).

Food for thought.

Couple pics, not even good ones. Outdoor and indoor show good color balance and detail IMHO.

Edit. Hmm, need to figure out sharing with google photos.

True, I don’t have a Nexus 6. I was projecting off a combination of my own experience with the Moto X 2014 (which is the smaller version of the Nexus 6) along with general comments online. It’s always nice to read input from someone in the forum who actually owns one.

A 32GB Nexus 6 can be grabbed for $350 and a 64GB for $399 off of Amazon.

The new 32GB HTC A9 is available directly from HTC for $399. It’s been receiving positive reviews. Good camera, good speed, fingerprint sensor, only non-Nexus to be installed w/ Marshamallow, nice 5" 1080p Amoled display, 1 year free replacement for glass or water damage, and they are promising updates to the eventual next post-Marshmallow android release within 15 days of it becoming available.

It’s essentially a slightly cheaper version of the new Nexus 5X, but with a nicer build quality. It does still use HTC Sense, but apparently it’s been scaled way back to the point of being almost unnoticeable if you pop on the official Google Now launcher.

I believe I’ve been reading that the HTC A9 will be more when it comes to AT&T. That’s just the pre order deal. Still, I have my eye on it. If I can get it through AT&T Next, I can score a 200 dollar credit. Which might be worth it.

I gotta say the freshly announced OnePlus X (Verge, Engadget) looks pretty intriguing. The CPU can’t compete with the current flagship phones, which isn’t utterly surprising since this is a $249 device, but the build itself doesn’t look cheap, features a 1080p display and (thankfully) is only 5". 16GB of internal memory, but the device has a MicroSD slot.

Huh, that is a fine $279 offering. Looks like it compares favorably (on paper) with the 2015 Moto G, which is pretty good company at that price point.

Has NFC again. Just missing fingerprint sensor.

I gotta be honest, I freaking love the fingerprint sensor on my N5X.

And maybe not unimportant either for some: it has dual-SIM support.