Mobile Phone Upgrade?

Daiyus

Daiyus

Member
I've had an Xperia Z5 Compact for ages. It's a great phone, especially now I've paid off the handset and am paying next to nothing a month on a SIM only price-plan. Unfortunately, it is starting to get a bit slow. Most modern games I try on it just chug along, make the device stupidly hot. I'll probably do a full factory reset soon to see if that helps, but I doubt it will. Therefore I've been considering an upgrade.

However, it's been so long since I was in the market for a phone I have no real idea what's available. I barely use the "phone" element of my devices. Texts and phone minutes barely get used, and I use less than 1GB of data month on average due to having Wi-Fi everywhere. I don't want to pay a stupidly high tariff in order to get some better hardware. Ideally no more than £20 a month all inclusive.

So what phones should I be looking at? Because from what I can see there's basically nothing within that budget that even comes close to the features my current phone has. I want expandable storage (I currently have a 128GB Micro-SD), and a 3.5mm jack so I can use my dirt cheap headphones when I go for an evening stroll. It also has to be more powerful than an Xperia Z5 Compact. No point in "upgrading" if it's not going to run my gaming apps and emulators any better, is it?

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I anxiously await any recommendations.
 
Daiyus said:
I've had an Xperia Z5 Compact for ages. It's a great phone, especially now I've paid off the handset and am paying next to nothing a month on a SIM only price-plan. Unfortunately, it is starting to get a bit slow. Most modern games I try on it just chug along, make the device stupidly hot. I'll probably do a full factory reset soon to see if that helps, but I doubt it will. Therefore I've been considering an upgrade.

However, it's been so long since I was in the market for a phone I have no real idea what's available. I barely use the "phone" element of my devices. Texts and phone minutes barely get used, and I use less than 1GB of data month on average due to having Wi-Fi everywhere. I don't want to pay a stupidly high tariff in order to get some better hardware. Ideally no more than £20 a month all inclusive.

So what phones should I be looking at? Because from what I can see there's basically nothing within that budget that even comes close to the features my current phone has. I want expandable storage (I currently have a 128GB Micro-SD), and a 3.5mm jack so I can use my dirt cheap headphones when I go for an evening stroll. It also has to be more powerful than an Xperia Z5 Compact. No point in "upgrading" if it's not going to run my gaming apps and emulators any better, is it?

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I anxiously await any recommendations.
Click to expand...

I believe the new pixel 3a has a jack.

It doesn't have expandable storage but their phones come with free cloud back up of all your photos videos etc. so I haven't found myself even coming close to filling my 64gb pixel 2 XL
 
Might be worth considering getting the contract separate from the phone if you don't mind paying for the phone upfront, I'm on a 1GB data rolling-monthly/cancel anytime contract, £5 a month from iD.

You can also use £10 or so bluetooth to 3.5mm adapters to use normal earphones wirelessly which is useful for phones without a jack, usually allows you to push the volume further too, though cheaper ones aren't the greatest quality.
 
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Pixel 3a or One plus 6T. 6T has a better processor or at least scores higher pretty consistently from what I've seen.

Both are probably the best mid range phones right now.

I use a Pixel 2XL and love the software. Vanilla Android (or Google as they want to call it now) is so much better than any competition using there own version.
 
OnePlus 6T is an awesome phone, but the OP is looking for something cheaper I suspect. Great phone though, I love mine. Just DO NOT buy any accessories from OnePlus, especially their garbage overpriced tempered glass protectors. JUNK! Fleabay for those things.
 
Cheap phones to me personally are not worth it. Midrange phones are where its at now. The new CPUs in the midrange for Pixel3a is as fast a snapdragon 835 which isn't that old or slow. It's impressive really because it's also consuming less power and has better feature support.
 
At £400 here I'm not sure most would consider the 3a midrange, for a £20 contract I think you're usually more looking at around £180-300 phones depending on contract length, like the Moto G7 series, or a bucket load of Huawei models, including some spec'd quite similarly to the 3a like the Smart P 19, though you usually have some trade offs to do in this range you can often find models with a good build quality and lots of premium features, 600 series snapdragons or equivalent, just nothing too fast and no OLEDs or similar.
 
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Depending on budget I'd go:


Nokia 6.1 < Pixel 3A < S10E


Not cheaper or more expensive, used flagships are worth checking out as well. 6.1 is probably less powerful too. Pixel is also relatively weak on processing power.
 
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Ngl I thought the 6.1 was abit outdated nowadays, didn't that compete more with the G6 than the G7?
 
For around 260 you can get a "new other" Razer phone on the bay.

I bought one a few weeks ago from a mate who dropped it in sand and a small portion of the touch screen doesn't work. I paid £37.50 for it missing the end mesh covers but it had all been cleaned. I only wanted it as a docked music player any way and was going to set it up on my beyer clone amp. It comes with a USB c to headphone dongle and is, hands down, the loudest phone I've ever heard. So much so the amp is still packed away.

I made some end covers from solid plastic acetate as I will never use it for anything else but for lolz I did run some benchmarks and it's other world fast. So much so I've considered buying a Razer phone 2 as a daily driver.
 
looz said:
Depending on budget I'd go:


Nokia 6.1 < Pixel 3A < S10E


Not cheaper or more expensive, used flagships are worth checking out as well. 6.1 is probably less powerful too. Pixel is also relatively weak on processing power.
Click to expand...

I wont touch S10 if i was paid. Such poor phones compared to their predecessor.

oneplus 7t, mate20pro, would be my choice. Sadly I see the Oneplus prices slowly creeping up with the rest of the ludicrous market. Shame really. The pixels are the only ones I never get to have fun with.

I had an easier time obtaining the galaxy fold than a pixel hehe.
 
Oneplus prices keep going up because the prices of the market, in general, keep going up. As we get closer to 7nm the amount of Fabs capable of producing chips goes down. It's a lot of demand and only so much supply.
 
I think it's also to them with them finding widespread success in some Western markets(Besides moving to more premium handsets all round at the top). The average sale price for smartphones has been dropping around the world since 2013, and in every region except North America, almost halving in Europe, but I think if you broke that up places like the UK would show a rise too.
 
Update to this. Having spent an entire week trying to find a phone that stood out to me and having been very frustrated (seriously it's as bad as choosing a bloody monitor!) I stumbled across a curious device made by Xiaomi, a brand I'd heard of before. I had a few choices really. Asus ROG customer return £500. A Razer phone 1 £300 or a Razer phone 2 for £430. I looked at Samsung s8 and s9 for around £3/400 and etc.

The only thing is? I have a second hand razer as I mentioned and tbh it's built like crap. It's about battered half to death, and nowhere near as solid as I'd like. Eg, the black anodising is begging to be chipped back to raw alu, and it has been badly.

Then I spotted the Xiaomi Black Shark for £270 and I jumped on it straight away. Brand new from Debenham to boot.

I shall update soon....
 
Warchild said:
This was an interesting timelapse video. The most shocking part was seeing Nokia performance over time.
It shows telephone sales per brand as it progresses year by year up to 2017.

https://www.facebook.com/finanspark35/videos/678098922660824/
Click to expand...

You seem to know your onions. Opinion on Xiaomi?

I've read tons of reviews and one says it's faster than all of the competition (easy win over Razer 1, slower CPU than Razer 2 but faster GPU so faster overall and faster than ROG phone also) and is built better to boot.
 
Think Xiaomi have a lot of viable models out there might be best to say which ones since there's a lot of variance in value between their lines I guess like all the big Android manufacturers. Ian Cutress has covered a fair few good ~£200 models out recently. Personally these are all too big for me but the Oppo realme Pro 3 looks very attractive specs+price wise.
from: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1436...me-pro-3?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
40731d4b8f225d1fe9cf209868b759fe.png
 
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I like big phones. I'm developing arthritis so small phones are out.

IIRC it's a Snapdragon 845. Forget the GPU now. It's really quick apparently and in worst case I can get a new screen, unlike the razer.
 
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