Reasonably priced smartphone for serial iphonist
Discussion
ZesPak said:
In all honesty, what are you doing with your phones? I manage to kill a couple but most still live a healthy life (both mine and my wife's old Galaxy S2 are still in service)... My old iphone was only decommissioned because of serious software issues.
heavy use kills batteries, droppages, workshop fluid spills etc...
OnePlus 3/3T
OH just got a Huawei P9, its rather nice I have to say.
And get this, bought from O2 for £240! They have them on display at £379, but seem to have some deal on whereby you take the phone out on a O2 refreseh contract that is something like £30 a month. But its split, £10/mo for the contract, £20/mo for the phone for 12 months. Or something like that, might be £10/mo for the phone at 24 months. Either way, the total amount payable for the phone according to the contract is only £240 instead of £379. And the way it is set up is that they essentially loan you the £240 at 0% for the phone.
So they said in the shop, take the contract, come back in 24 hours and pay the balance on the phone and then you can switch to whatever sim-only deal you want.
OH just got a Huawei P9, its rather nice I have to say.
And get this, bought from O2 for £240! They have them on display at £379, but seem to have some deal on whereby you take the phone out on a O2 refreseh contract that is something like £30 a month. But its split, £10/mo for the contract, £20/mo for the phone for 12 months. Or something like that, might be £10/mo for the phone at 24 months. Either way, the total amount payable for the phone according to the contract is only £240 instead of £379. And the way it is set up is that they essentially loan you the £240 at 0% for the phone.
So they said in the shop, take the contract, come back in 24 hours and pay the balance on the phone and then you can switch to whatever sim-only deal you want.
Foliage said:
Have a look at honor either 6x or 8 depending on your budget.
Some of the Chinese phones not available in the UK (you can import them), like the mi5s or Note 4 are exceptional.
Honor 8 gets good write ups and is a lovely phone in the flesh. Some of the Chinese phones not available in the UK (you can import them), like the mi5s or Note 4 are exceptional.
Edited by Foliage on Thursday 19th January 15:57
Things to note though....As the Honor 8 and P9 are the same price pretty much (Honor 8 on Amazon for £369, P9 can be had at most highstreet places for £379, though read my earlier post about O2 refreshes little loop hole)
Whilst it is essentially a re-skinned P9 (Honor being a subsidiary of Huawei), it is missing the Leica modes on the camera, it also is missing gorilla glass screen up front, uses a slightly inferior type of LCD panel and uses a slightly slower Kirin 950 vs the 955 in the P9 (though I have seen reports of latest Honor 8 phones coming with the 955). The Honor does however pack 4 GB of RAM (vs 3GB on the 32GB P9 available in the UK) and I believe it also comes with the 9V/2A fast charger in the box whereas the P9 only comes with the standard 5V/2A charger.
JB! said:
ZesPak said:
In all honesty, what are you doing with your phones? I manage to kill a couple but most still live a healthy life (both mine and my wife's old Galaxy S2 are still in service)... My old iphone was only decommissioned because of serious software issues.
heavy use kills batteries, droppages, workshop fluid spills etc...Ordered the swift 2 X for next day on the wileyfox website only to receive no despatch confirmation. Contacted them today and they're having delivery problems, 4-5 working days. Annoying as I need a phone, so I cancelled the order.
After seriously considering the Samsung J5, discounting the moto G4 being too big for my liking, and nexus 5x a bit more than I wanted to pay... Ive ordered the wileyfox swift 2 from Amazon next day.
For what I use it for, it's well worth a punt for £119 with free screen replacement voucher.
If I don't get on well with it I'll go back to the big brands, but I'll let you know how I get on.
After seriously considering the Samsung J5, discounting the moto G4 being too big for my liking, and nexus 5x a bit more than I wanted to pay... Ive ordered the wileyfox swift 2 from Amazon next day.
For what I use it for, it's well worth a punt for £119 with free screen replacement voucher.
If I don't get on well with it I'll go back to the big brands, but I'll let you know how I get on.
Edited by Farmer Geddon on Friday 20th January 09:32
Nice, looking forward to hear from it.
My experience with these chinaphones things is a mixed bag. When they work they are amazing bang for buck. When they don't... everything seems to take weeks.
And ime they don't fail more often, but phones just fail sometimes. I had a Samsung and an iPhone replaced under warranty.
My experience with these chinaphones things is a mixed bag. When they work they are amazing bang for buck. When they don't... everything seems to take weeks.
And ime they don't fail more often, but phones just fail sometimes. I had a Samsung and an iPhone replaced under warranty.
Good decision to not get the Nexus 5X.
I preach this to everyone, AVOID LG mobiles. They are built on a shoestring, and in a few different models now, they have faced notorious bootlooping issues (some caused by widespread manufacturing defects, which LG may or may not admit to depending on your region), to which LG say: not our problem
I preach this to everyone, AVOID LG mobiles. They are built on a shoestring, and in a few different models now, they have faced notorious bootlooping issues (some caused by widespread manufacturing defects, which LG may or may not admit to depending on your region), to which LG say: not our problem
Edited by rampageturke on Friday 20th January 12:40
Here's a bit of a puzzler with my new WileyFox Swift2 - it won't connect to my work's WiFi. Every other place it connrvts faultlessly, but not at work. It seems stuck on "obtaining IP address" and doing nothing else.
Google says this seems to be an accasional Android thing.
Annoying but not the end of the world as long as it only happens on yhe work Wi-Fi.
Google says this seems to be an accasional Android thing.
Annoying but not the end of the world as long as it only happens on yhe work Wi-Fi.
I'm a month into WileyPox 2 Swifting. Nothing has broken yet. I don't know if it connects to 5Ghz wifi, or what the security settings are on the work wifi, but if it connects to everything else but work, that narrows it down.
Someone will be along in a minute with the answer to the 5Ghz or not question.
Someone will be along in a minute with the answer to the 5Ghz or not question.
slow_poke said:
Here's a bit of a puzzler with my new WileyFox Swift2 - it won't connect to my work's WiFi. Every other place it connrvts faultlessly, but not at work. It seems stuck on "obtaining IP address" and doing nothing else.
Google says this seems to be an accasional Android thing.
Annoying but not the end of the world as long as it only happens on yhe work Wi-Fi.
Used to happen on my uni's WiFi, try turning the phone off then on againGoogle says this seems to be an accasional Android thing.
Annoying but not the end of the world as long as it only happens on yhe work Wi-Fi.
Foliage said:
Its not launched until the 30th Jan, so your not getting a 2X from amazon on next day
You can say that again! I didn't say I did. I bought it from wileyfox's website which Its available from now. They're having delivery issues, so I ordered the 2 instead from Amazon, not the 2 X.
rampageturke said:
slow_poke said:
Here's a bit of a puzzler with my new WileyFox Swift2 - it won't connect to my work's WiFi. Every other place it connrvts faultlessly, but not at work. It seems stuck on "obtaining IP address" and doing nothing else.
Google says this seems to be an accasional Android thing.
Annoying but not the end of the world as long as it only happens on yhe work Wi-Fi.
Used to happen on my uni's WiFi, try turning the phone off then on againGoogle says this seems to be an accasional Android thing.
Annoying but not the end of the world as long as it only happens on yhe work Wi-Fi.
I suspect the phone and the router are sufficiently far apart that the phone is picking up the wifi signal, but the wifi router isn't receiving the phones weaker signal response.
Foliage said:
Some of the Chinese phones not available in the UK (you can import them), like the mi5s or Note 4 are exceptional.
Yep, left off posting about it as the discussion was more about cheaper-end stuff, I've had my Mi5 a few weeks.It's fantastic for the money, I'm really happy with it. 820 2.15mhz and 530 gpu just like the rest of last years flagships. Camera apparently not as good as an S7 in low light and it's only missing things like IP68.
Just be sure you know what you're buying if you go Chinese, what community ROMs there are and do you need one, the retailer could have installed anything. If it comes with a domestic ROM it will have English but can you OTA update without a Chinese VPN? Also 4G bands for your network (20 800mhz support is rare). There are some horror stories about every retailer including Gearbest, though many have no issues. Always use Paypal.
Mine was £235 from 'Geekbuying', marked $40 value so the duty was reasonable
Came with the official global ROM, looked free of crap and OTA worked perfectly, but you could not select UK as your locale, which has no real effect. It was fine as it was but I'm now running a community ROM. Wiping is recommended pre-install, it has no SD slot so you need to sideload/push the ROM via ADB.Re: SmileyFox security
Been running some firewall checks on what goes out of phones, both over wifi and mobile data.
WileyFox is pretty neutral as stock, the usual culprits are Google Play Services and location/Cell/Wifi data. App permissions as stock are pretty good, and almost everything you don't want emitted can be blocked with the NetGuard app (PlayStore).
In comparison, a Lenovo phone out of the box is contacting China Telecom, and GMO Internet once a second when the phone is quiet. These are probably legit requests for api-push services, but with China Telecom you never know.
WileyFox seems comparatively 'quiet' until privacy-slurping apps are installed, but y'all know that. The most secure phone we've tested is a used BlackBerry Bold 9900 (Ebay £34). It uses BlackBerry Internet Services and nothing gets out of it unless permissions are first granted. :-)
Lenovo screenshot, 1 minute of logging:
Been running some firewall checks on what goes out of phones, both over wifi and mobile data.
WileyFox is pretty neutral as stock, the usual culprits are Google Play Services and location/Cell/Wifi data. App permissions as stock are pretty good, and almost everything you don't want emitted can be blocked with the NetGuard app (PlayStore).
In comparison, a Lenovo phone out of the box is contacting China Telecom, and GMO Internet once a second when the phone is quiet. These are probably legit requests for api-push services, but with China Telecom you never know.
WileyFox seems comparatively 'quiet' until privacy-slurping apps are installed, but y'all know that. The most secure phone we've tested is a used BlackBerry Bold 9900 (Ebay £34). It uses BlackBerry Internet Services and nothing gets out of it unless permissions are first granted. :-)
Lenovo screenshot, 1 minute of logging:
Edited by Slushbox on Saturday 21st January 08:20
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