Also it's worth pointing out on here that the denizens of bit tech are in the hyper small minority of people who pay attention to device prices and/or buy the device outright... I can whole-heartedly state, based on my time doing support for the things, that 90% of iPhone owners have 0 concept or comprehension of how much the device in their pocket costs to buy. It's simply '£x a month'. The number of people who would freak out when doing advance repairs, and they'd get a credit card hold for the device cost [worse if they'd done it on a debit card bc the money would just be straight taken from the card]...
I know there are a couple of s in here, but: I've not recommended anything, fella I've just given my own opinion and said that anyone who wants to spend more is very welcome to do so - it just doesn't make sense for me. Similarly I wouldn't bat an eyelid if someone wanted a 4090 even though I personally think diminishing returns makes it a bad choice for my own personal use-case. The difference with phones, again imho, is that the point at which those diminishing returns kick in is much earlier than it is for GPUs. Personally, I just don't believe that "the high end phone experience is massively better" or "a wildly different experience" when comparing a phone with an RRP of £350 with one with an RRP three times that. If you disagree then it's all good: the market supports both of our preferences as well as people who want sub-£100 phones or even foldables that cost the thick end of £2,000
Why does it matter how much someone wants to spend on a phone, or anything else for that matter? We all spend money, based on our own priorities and means. I only get annoyed when some arse keeps coming on a forum, just to boast about how much they have spent.
I don't think anyone is saying anybody shouldn't spend this/that/the other on anything. By saying some of us don't want to spend such and such on a phone doesn't mean we're judging those that do. It's just what we do and our experience of phone ownership. My 7.2 was only £100 new. I'll be spending more next time just because I want a better camera. Will I be spending iPhone money? Nope. Can I understand why people do? Of course and all power to them. Plus I wouldn't trust myself with carrying around a phone that costs that much, i'd lose it or break it through being worried about breaking or losing it
I guess as well it hugely depends in what you use your phone for and what quality level you are comfortable with. I class myself as an "everyday' phone user. I use the internet, mainly via WiFi at home and occasionally via 5G outdoors. For this purpose, it works speedily and without frustration. Swype keyboard is rapid and responsive. Screen casting, flawless. I don't play games as a phone is too small for it to be enjoyable, I use my PC for that purpose. Photos? I just take snaps of my dog down the beach or odd trips on the bike down to the seafront, again for snaps, it's perfectly adequate. I have tried iPhone twice over the last few years but I find the general navigation and typing experience to be sub par in comparison to android but understand this is personal preference. Also Google Pay, I just hold my phone to the reader then walk away. Apple, had to do the double click dance every time, highly annoying. Banking, eBay, news, sport, weather, YouTube watching, all flawless with zero slowdown. Battery life? Always plenty left at the end of the day. Being able to respond with quick responses on my Garmin Fenix 6X, watch, no problem. (Can receive but can't respond to messages on iPhone; another minor annoyance which led to me ditching the latest attempt at an iPhone) This phone cost me about £150. I cannot think of anything I need or want to do that it doesn't, or the things I want it to do that it doesn't do well enough. If I wanted an amazing camera, I would buy a camera, not spend an extra £800 on a phone. If I wanted to play games at 4K with everything maxed out, I'd upgrade my 4060, not spend £800 extra on a phone. The screen on a phone is just too small to warrant me spending the crazy money people do for mainly what I consider to be gimmicks like erasing backgrounds or people from pictures. I mean, who cares? You are only going to save them to the cloud to never be looked at again.
I really like my Fairphone 4. As @fix-the-spade mentioned, it's fine and does phone things pretty well. Cameras aren't amazing, but they're decent enough for taking a quick snap of the dog or kids. Spare parts don't overly worry me as they do seem to hold stock for quite a while (numerous 3/3+ parts and some 2 parts are still available directly). My thought on the replaceable battery was more that I could have two batteries, so if I'm out and the first one runs flat, I can just pop another in. Price wasn't an issue for me as work pays for my phone for reasons that are beyond me because I don't use it for anything work related!
Yes, yes it is, my daily driver for work is a £250-£300 quid samsung, and my personal daily driver is a £1000 Pixel 8 Pro (although I 'only' paid £800), and it's a night and day difference. I would confine the Sammy to the tech drawer of shame alongside old Iphones and Razr's if I wasn't paid to use it.
For me, just the usual day to day experience; Additional software features Better cameras Better display (colours) Better display (frequency) Better display (size) More up to date operating system Speed of opening apps Speed of closing apps Lack of lag when many apps open Better battery performance Quicker battery charging Complete absence of bloatware Additional unlocking procedure Quicker boot up / turn on time Better materials (glass V's plastic) The cheap Sammy is 2 years old, but still viable, still works, but is soooooooo basic and slow, for the Sammy to come out on top I'd have to compare it to a Nokia Ngage
Via family experience Samsung's cheap phones are awful, not simply bad but awful. My S5 ran fine until I broke it, various parents/siblings have had Galaxy A phones and they were all bad, slow, clunky, prone to freezing. They clearly put the effort into the S phones and everything else is secondary.
My last phone was damaged recently getting repair and had a good deal on an iPhone 12 jumping from Android admittedly. As I simply couldn't get on with it, mainly from an ease of use perspective, I switched to this G53. I must say that performance wise, I noticed ZERO difference save for startup which is once a day, so don't really care about that. Think this is a 120HZ screen, so no issues there. Perhaps Samsung are particularly bad at the budget end of things as I went from a near £500 to a £150 phone and the experience was better for my use case.
Samsung are pretty bad at entry level but their midrange is solid (A53, A54), though on the pricier side at around 350€ (this side of the pond). I got my mother-in-law a second hand Pixel 6a for about 200€ and that's been solid for a while now. If you go for a 6a, ones with grapheneOS sell cheaper and you can easily put the original rom back on them. Phones other than Samsung and iPhones depreciate pretty quick, maybe having a look at second hand phones is handy as well.
...on a Samsung? We talking about the same Samsung? The Samsung that ships its own custom browser with the handset? That Samsung? Samsung Bixby Samsung? I had a Samsung Galaxy... something, years ago, back when flagships were £500 instead of £1,500. I will not be having another Samsung. (My main TV's a Samsung too, from before the days of smart TVs - it's got two SCART sockets and an analogue tuner, to give you an idea of the age. I love it, but when it finally goes to Silicon Heaven I won't be getting a Samsung to replace it - unless something dramatic changes between now and then.) EDIT: I totally misread that, didn't I? You're saying the Pixel is the one without bloatware, compared with the Samsung. Yeah, makes sense.
Still haven't made a decision on this. I was pretty set on the Motorola, 'cos cheap, but I've found a reseller (Your Co-op Mobile) that'll do me the Fairphone for £606 delivered - still the most expensive of the lot, but nearly £50 cheaper than Fairphone direct. HMM.
My Fairphone is also with Coop. They use EE SIMs for non-business customers which was one of the reasons I chose them as I had a terrible time with O2. I will say that for your extra money, you probably aren't getting anymore phone as such. It won't be faster or able to do anything more than any other mid range phone, but you do get the repairability and all the eco-friendly warms of knowing you've paid a better rate for some poor miner in God knows where to move many rocks!
Samsungs bloatware these days is good bloatware though, so good that it goes back and helps make Google and Microsoft make their OSes better.
I'd be buying it outright, rather than moving provider - I've been with Vodafone since before Sony and Ericsson got married, and I'm too lazy to shift now. I like the company ethos, though selfishly I have to admit it's the promise of long-term software support that's got me tempted. Plus the idea of being able to pop the back off and swap batteries tool-free, like the good old days when Nokia actually meant Nokia! Nope. Nup. Nuh-uh. Not going for a Samsung, any more than I'd go for an Apple. Fool me once, and so on. Now, if there were a modern Android-based equivalent to the Nokia N95 8GB - by far the best phone I've ever owned - I'd be first in the queue...
