Best moderately priced smartphone right now?

by philg

Now that the iPhone 7 excitement has abated slightly, what about phones for people who don’t have money to burn?

A friend wants a phone with dual SIM cards. He used to be an iPhone user but reduced financial circumstances have forced him to leave Apple’s garden (after a few years of marriage with two kids his wife sued him and a Massachusetts court has ordered him to pay roughly 80 percent of his after-tax income in child support; the legal fees consumed most of his retirement savings). He would be able to use any smartphone operating system, but probably shouldn’t be spending more than $200.

What’s his best option right now?

23 thoughts on “Best moderately priced smartphone right now?”

  1. Since his situation appears to be long-term, IMHO it is more important for him to find a budget cell provider, either pre- or post-paid. The difference between a $150 phone and a $300 phone, if kept over 3 years, is a bit over $4 a month (plus tax.)

  4. I recently (about two weeks ago) bought a new smart phone. I was looking for the cheapest phone with the best features. I ended buying a Ulefone U007 (53 euros on amazon.de, and 69 dollars on amazon.com) and I am extremely happy with it. It packs a lot for the price: Two SIM card slots, Android 6.0 Marshmallow, fast Quadcore, 1GB ram, 8gb ROM (pop in a cheap microsd card to expand it), 5.0″ 1280 * 720px screen, 5MP front camera, 13MP back camera with flashlight and auto focus. Wifi, GPS, bluetooth, etc, Gorilla glass 3, the usual stuff. Long lasting 2200mAh battery. The added surprise bonus for me, was when it arrived, it already came with a nice transparent case AND it had protective film already installed on the screen!

    Compare 50 euros to what I paid in 2012 for a Samsung Galaxy S i9000 (380 euros!) it is an amazing upgrade. Mind you, I tend to keep phones for a long time before upgrading. And I am a cheap bastard.

    Cameras are not too important feature for me – but I’d say the ones on this phone are pretty average. Otherwise it’s a great phone for the price.

    Here’s a spec comparison between the iPhone 6 plus and Ulefone U007: http://www.china-prices.com/phone-versus/1245-6157/apple-iphone-6-plus-vs-ulefone-u007

  5. Correction, I bought the Samsung in 2010 just around the same time of year I bought the replacement. So I had my first smart phone for 6 years! Times flies – and my memory fails me. I upgraded the OS with hacked roms (SlimKat) so that kept it usable with the latest apps. We’ll see if my new cheapo phone can take me another 6 years…

  7. Assuming he doesn’t mind used, buy a used iPhone 5 and service from Ting.com. Both the phone and service are quite reasonable. Test the phone to make sure the (Sprint) coverage is sufficient for his needs. The iPhone 5 is a great phone and has a great camera.

  8. Moto G4 or similar variety, step up would be nexus 5x or moto x pure (Perhaps look for sales or refurbished to hit the price point. Refresh coming soon – so more sales). 5X has better camera probably and fast OS updates – Android N7 is nice, certainly a bit more polished and noticeably more efficient battery and performance wise from prior N6 which was good anyway (also good antennas, good screen and fingerprint unlock is the best out there, eligible for Google Fi service if interested). Moto G is good because it’s least modified version of android and probably fastest updates outside Nexus. Moto X if you like bigger screens

  9. Huawei P8(ALE-L04), Huawei Honor 5x, Sony Xperia M4 all close to $200, released within the last 2 years, have Android 6.0 update available, and most on eBay/amazon will be carrier unlocked. Be careful of the difference between the US version and international version of each model, the latter which you won’t be able to get supported 4g/LTE bands in the US. All are gsm phones and will only work on AT&T or T-Mobile.
    Alternatively, the Xiaomi Note 3($150) with features comparable with phones twice its price is only available in China but can be found on eBay. Should work on AT&T but will only support up to HSPA+(LTE bands not compatible in US). I consistently get a 6-7 Mbit/s downlink on a Sony Xperia Z5 Compact on AT&T HSPA+ which allows me to stream an HD movie.

  10. for a 100 more the Nexus 6 is still available new n Amazon and works worldwide with project fi – a wonderful cheap combo if you use little mobile data

  11. Moderately priced for someone who never had enough money to get married is a lot less than for someone who married, divorced, & paid child support. A $40 prepaid Virgin phone is as good as it gets. It’s utter trash, can’t do most of the functions required to have a job these days, but you can fake around it.

  12. How is it possible that in US people still want to marry and have kids ? Paying 80% of income in child support is horrible.

  13. I purchased two Microsoft Lumia 650 for my wife and me last June and so far we are quite pleased with them. Use include a month long road trip on the Rocky Mountains ( both Canada and USA) where they served as cameras and GPS navigators. $200 each from Microsoft website, dual sim with T-Mobile pay-as-you-go service. Still using them everyday here in Cambridge, Ma.

  14. Elephone p9000
    Excellent phone which competes very well against phones above is price range.
    You’re not paying for advertising or branding, comes direct from China avoiding a lot of middlemen. I’d be worried if I were apple or Samsung.

  15. I like last year’s flagship phones. For example LG g4 can be had for around $200, which is less than half the cost of a g5, but the differences between them are minor.

  16. In addition to the above, there are a few good options for a decent phone, dual SIM, which may do the work.
    A lot have been said about Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro/Note, another good candidate is the Samsung J7 (some say it has a fair-only camera), and of course there is HTC Desire 626 DualSim. Olefone is a good option as well.
    LG G4 is a great option if taking great photos is a must-have! you won’t regret.

    If money is a real factor, then DOOGEE X5 MAC Pro is another option to consider (less than $100) along with Xiaomi mi5 (Standard) and Lenovo K3 Note.
    I would also check the price of Asus ZenFon 2 (4GB RAM, 64GB ROM) as its price has just dropped down.

    There are a few good options in the market.
    I would consider checking the needs vs. features and make a choice.
    1) Camera quality – how important it is?
    2) ROM – would 32GB be enough? (applicable to number of installed applications, as photos can be stored on the external SD card in most cases)
    3) Battery capacity
    4) CPU (820 is super cool but 620 is fair and suits most >40 years old guys 🙂

    Hope I have helped

  17. Easy. A nexus 5x with Project Fi activation is $199. Fi is $20/mo for unlimited talk and text and $10 per GB of data, pay only for what you use.

    Fi uses t-mobile, sprint and US cellular networks, and verizon/at&t where the first three has a roaming agreement with them. It auto switches seamlessly between them or available wifi for service. It can connect to a wide range of wifi services with full end to end encryption as well.

    By default and with only a check mark in account setup it’ll also provide full voice/text/data service in over 135 countries. Pretty much anywhere t-mobile has gsm international service. Which may eliminate the dual sim requirement.

    Unless you want a particular phone, use more than 2.5-3GB of data per month or require native verizon or at&t service where you live, the 5x/Fi combo is a real no-brainer, especially for people on a budget.

  18. @ jsc #12,
                     You ask two important though veering off-topic questions, so here are the shortest possible answers to both in reverse order:

    Horrible 80% “child support” awards are possible in the USA, because collectively the Americans have lost the ability to discern the material from the spiritual: they measure the value of the latter using the dipstick of the former. This allows treating children as exploitable resources and profit centers. What harm it does to the kids themselves is immaterial and, anyway, hardly maturing for at least a decade (deferred deficit).

    “How come Americans still want to marry and have kids”

    Force of habit, pomp and circumstance. But the question that we should be asking instead is, once they reach adulthood, [AT WHAT RATE] do children who realize that they’ve been their—let’s not beat about the bush—mothers’ meal ticket at the expense of wellbeing of their dads’ AND themselves, self turn to the same racket/ perpetuate that society-sanctioned femmes inhumanity to men.

  19. I am going to guess that his plaintiff doesn’t think that getting 80 percent of his income is “horrible”! Some lawyers have told us that judges in Massachusetts like to come close to an old rule of thumb: 1/3 of a man’s income as alimony, 1/3 of a man’s income as child support, 1/3 for him to keep. Due to a statute limiting alimony following short-term marriages judges like to award child support (continues until the youngest child turns 23) of about 2/3 of a defendant’s income. 80 percent is obviously larger than 2/3rds but there will be a lot of variation from judge to judge and case to case.

  20. This may be just a typo, but any “plaintiff who doesn’t think that getting 80 percent of [a defendant’s] income as being ‘horrible’” [for the defendant co-parent, say] is just a amoral gold-digger in any and all moral value systems known to man (except, apparently, the XXIc USA). Moreover, one abusing its parental responsibilities to bring up stigma-free offspring of them both. Or maybe that is not among American parental responsibilities per se, esp. when exploitation seems a more readily available option. In which case why not commoditize it further still, until you wind up on the level of the “modest proposal?” (I’m sure the foodies would have a field day, too!)

  21. ianf: In our book project out of perhaps 1000 people interviewed we found only a couple getting cash from the American family law system who considered that cash to be excessive or undeserved. Those people were attorneys, not plaintiffs.

  22. And what was the percentage of calling them excessive/ undeserved “awards” among those sentenced to fulfill these (the defendants or however we might call them)? The beneficiaries of these “deserved” (—?how?) largesses could hardly be expected to oppose them, so that makes my argument Q.E.D.

  23. ianf: What percentage of defendants thought they were paying excessively? The divorce industry runs smoothly and firmly on no-fault tracks, but the individuals feeding it don’t seem to have adapted to that. Research shows that Americans think the child of a one-night encounter shouldn’t be as lucrative as the child of a marriage, for example, though the law insists that both be equally profitable. Consistent with that, men who didn’t want to stay married didn’t object to supporting their former wife in the style to which she had been accustomed. Regardless of the circumstances, we didn’t interview or hear about any man who objected to paying for a child’s actual expenses. Where men were unhappy it was because (a) the wife had decided to end the marriage and (b) their state or country’s law provided for long-term alimony and/or alimony via profitable child support. As the majority of divorce lawsuits are filed by women this was the majority of men.

    Note that by far the angriest group of consumers we encountered were women. A man had decided that it would be more enjoyable to have sex with a new and younger woman. So he sued his wife to collect a property division and alimony. In the states that recognize an ongoing role for a father some of these men were able to get 50/50 custody of children and child support. That added gasoline to the fire of the woman’s rage.

    So the happiest people were those who decided that they could be better off by shedding an unwanted spouse and got paid handsomely for repudiating their marriage vows. The unhappiest people were those who had wanted to remain married but had been sued and then stripped of their children, most of their savings, and most of their income going forward (essentially the typical man in a winner-take-all jurisdiction).

    From an industry point of view, the winner-take-all approach is best because people will fight hard to avoid being the loser even if the statistical odds are long (e.g., Massachusetts where 97 percent of people collecting child support are women).

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