Be Excellent To Each Other

Budget?

Around a hundred quid, I reckon.

Oh, you want the moon on a stick. I see.

Nah. I'd say something that was top end three years ago would be fine, but then you know, it wouldn't have had any patch updates for three and a half years.

Moto E fits that bill: http://www.tesco.com/direct/tesco-mobil ... 8-5707.prd

5.5"

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5-5-Dual-SIM- ... SwLpdW-h8J

5"

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5-0-Lenovo-A5 ... q0_Lh7mrhw

I've had one of these.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SWEES-5-0-Tou ... q-Z355nIdw

And it gets really good reviews. I had mine for over a year before cracking the glass on it and rendering it useless.

All three of those phones have 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of storage. I don't care how lightly one uses a device, both of these are terrible statistics.

They also run KitKat and won't have had any security updates since forever.

The top one is bloody Jellybean

Fuck me.

Iphone 4 useless all along!

Make your mind up. You said you wanted something that you can email and browse with for £100, now you're complaining that it doesn't have the very latest software on it.

I'm confused.

Any way, yeah they are both a little light on specs because they're less than £50 but either would do what you wanted them to do without issue. I had that Swees phone for a year and used to play games and emulators on it with no issues. Odd that Mal brings it up, but my Iphone 4 used to CTD all the time. Especially with later OSes on.

The best "Budget" sort of phone right now is this.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-Unlocke ... uawei+lite

But it costs more than your £100.

That's a decent shout.

In the Beex spirit of recommending something completely daft and not matching the brief...

IPhone 6s plus.

Have you thought about getting a racing bike instead?

Or a coffee machine.

The latest software contains a load of security patches.

Get a Xbox 360.

Amazon have three Oppo Find 7a phones for £122 on the Warehouse.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listi ... ition=used

I love mine. The upgrade to Lollipop was easy too, just copy on the custom rom and reboot following a very simple procedure. The quality of the phone is exceptional too, it was once a £350 phone. 1080p screen charges fully in 40 mins and has the best camera I've ever seen on a phone.

Because no one would want a One, right?

Far too new.

I Just ordered a Nexus 5X (reasonable specs, decent price, nothing fancy but still likely to be a big step up from the Iphone 4S that I'm currently rocking). Paid outright, so not tied to any operator. I really did want an S7 but that's over twice the price. Hoping the 5X will last for a couple of years until I have more spends available for teh premium modelz.

Expect a slew of 'how do i.... / 'recommend me an app for... / what the hell is ....' style questions soon.

I'm actually quite excited to try a new phone system, I've had my current one for so long now and have just become a little bored with the stability of iOS so thought I'd get something I could mess around with. I expect tears at some point.

I have the 5x and my only complaint is the battery life. Oh and the lack of SD card slot. Other than that, it's all good

This is pretty much exactly my thoughts on it too.

Although at least it charges quickly.

How bad is the battery life? And are you using the 5X a lot during your day?

I'm not a heavy user and during the working day am mostly sat at my desk (so I can charge it before I go home) an have got into the habit of a full overnight charge regardless.

I'm a pretty heavy user. Phone comes off charge around 6am, used pretty consistently through the day and it starts beeping for juice (20%) usually early evening. I put it back on charge at bed time (in the region of midnight). Occasionally it dies before bedtime, but that's usually on quiet days at work.

That sounds alright actually. I'm going to buy a couple of cables so I can leave them scattered around (at work, in car etc) just in case.

I get about the same as DavPaz.

On the other hand, quick chargers charge it very quickly, so if you have one available that's OK. Charge from a USB port is very slow indeed.

Not if the USB port supports higher amperage charging. My 2.1A Anker six-port USB-2 chargers are pretty good, for example, as is the one in my car (also an Anker.) None are as good as the pack-in 3A/5V USB-C charger, admittedly.

Any decent 2 player turn based strategy games about?

Hearthstone!

Can i play that over the course of a day with my mate?

Oh right you mean a sort of play-by-email type thing, in that case, no.

That space one that Craster and I like that I've forgotten the STAR REALMS!

And I think X-com, too.

Not really my thing, and I only played it on PC, but Frozen Synapse supports asynchronous multiplayer.

That's the word Mali should have used.

There have been rumblings of a mobile version of Naked War by The Pickford Brothers for ages but it doesn't seem to have happened yet.

That would be off-the-scale incredible if it came to pass as it was a stunningly good game, and it is asynchronous.

Chess. Scrabble.

Darts

It's a shame more people don't play Snap Attack, the Scrabble-like spin-off of Wordament. Great little word game but worldwide, you get about 100 people max playing it at the same time (in English anyway.. I suppose the other languages might be popular).

I loved letter press on iOS, but they only seem to have an imitation on android. Nevertheless, seems pretty much the same and is an excellent asynchronous game. Like risk crossed with boggle.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.infinite_imagination.letterplex

Star realms is fun.

I am Grimddd if you want to play against me.

If he accepts your challenge, that is

Shh

MaliciousA. But you knows that, already.

New phone time for Mrs H today as her contract is nearly up. (They let you renew 4-6 weeks early if you sign your life away again.)

Last time she got a Galaxy S4 Mini on a two year £35pm contract and broke it inside of three months, so I replaced it with a Moto-G V2 and said she wasn't allowed to have nice things.

We're going to the Manx Telecom shop today and it's entirely her choice as to what she'll get, she deffo wants to stay with Android as she's very much into the Google eco-system and has loads of apps and stuff, so that's the fifty-six billion different flavours of iPhone that exist these days straight out of the window.

Also the list of phones they stock isn't comprehensive (the Pay Monthly drop down menu on this page lists them all https://shop.manxtelecom.com/ ).

I'm minded to recommend the Xperia Z5 Compact as it's a bit smaller than a full-size smartphone, but packs full-size specs. Mrs H has gravitated towards smaller phones in the past. (Hence the S4 Mini, as she found the regular S4/S5 too big to use comfortably - I think the S5 was out at the time and the S4 was end of line.)

I know Sony's Android skin is pretty crappy and long in the tooth now, but I could just do what I did to my S7, which is to replace all the manufacturer shit with the lovely clean Google stuff from the App Store, and uninstall everything else.

Looking at the list there's really not much of a choice when it comes to slightly smaller phones anyway, they're either iPhones, low-end shit from LG and the likes, or the Z5 Compact.

We shall see anyway.

Z5 Compact get. It pretty much won by default really as it was the only 'small' smartphone that wasn't an iPhone or a shitty budget sort of affair. (I'm not saying other options in the Z5 Compact's category don't exist, but MT don't stock them if they do. I note for example however, that Samsung don't do a 'Mini' anymore.)

It's currently munching its way through over 1GB of various updates. Amusingly it refused to even start a system update because the battery had less than 50% charge (48%), despite the fact it was plugged in.

There are currently three different types of iPhone available to buy, colour and storage size notwithstanding. How many different Android phones are out there?

MT have the 6, the 6 Plus, the 6S, the 6S Plus, and the SE - in a variety of capacities.

so 5 then

Five basic models, with an assortment of capacities and colours (the capacities of course making huge differences to price, with no expandable storage, thus making it a serious extra consideration). It's a pretty convoluted product range IMO, especially compared to what it used to be like.