Because it looks cool.

I dunno, Android is close to Google and Google is YouTube and there's a synergistic theme going on?

If anyone can be arsed please feel free to move the posts to the correct place. Although if we're going to start asking 'Why is Thing Y in Thread Z here at BEEX?', mods gonna be busy as fuck.

Why is discussion of what is the proper thread to post things in clogging up the android thread?

What should be is the new GPD XD I ordered over Christmas. It came on Saturday and I've had a quick play with it so far and it seems to be a pretty competent machine. I've been playing some PSone games and Amiga games but it'll do much more.

I'll post more about it when I get to grips with it if anyone is interested?

Yes please.

mods gonna be busy as fuck.

Decided to get a cheap spare Android phone to use for work. I'd initially looked at small tablets, as I'll mainly be using it for running apps, so didn't plan on needing a SIM, but the cheap tablets all seemed a bit naff, so I went with a Spark X phone instead. For £70, it seems pretty good so far, and it runs Nougat, which my main phone doesn't. Some really mixed reviews on there, but figured it was worth a go.

Stupid charging port location aside, it's been a good phone so far. The launcher that it came with seemed to glitch occasionally, so I've switched to Nova and everything has been fine since then. I'm rather liking the default calling app too, Truecaller, with its lookups on numbers as they come in. This is how it displayed a call to me a few minutes ago from one of those "We can see you were recently in a car accident..." companies..

Fuck me, just had a look on the Google Store for Pixel 2 prices, £629 for the 64GB model, £729 for the 128GB model.

Case closed, I'll go to PAYG and stick with the S7.

Google seem to have lost their shit a bit after the midrange priced majesty that was the Nexus 5. (Which on balance, I think is still the best phone I've ever owned.)

I feel like that Billy Connolly recollection when he went into a store in New York and saw a carpet he liked, asked how much it was, and was told it cost $5000, and the impoverished Scottish welder in him just jumped out and screamed 'FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A FUCKING CARPET!'. Like, even though he could easily afford the carpet at that point, the ridiculousness of it costing that much amazed him.

I kind of feel the same way about smartphones now. I wonder what the markup is on the Pixel 2, are they working to the same obscene profit margins that Apple are now?

The Play Store always charges ludicrous prices for the Pixel phones but Carphone Warehouse will sell you the 128GB model for £560 which is pretty reasonable for a flagship with the top end storage.

You wouldn’t download a phone...

fundamentally, nothing that's out there now is any better than my S7.

That still sets my Billy Connolly Alert Light flashing.

I appreciate I've effectively been paying that much via the contract system, but there's something about that amount of cash upfront for a smartphone that I instinctively recoil from. Especially since, fundamentally, nothing that's out there now is any better than my S7.

I could build a new media centre PC with some reasonable gaming ability for that sort of cash.

People pay that for vacuum cleaners.

£560 is a huge amount of money to pay for a phone, I think is his point.

There's a good chance you've been paying more than that through your contract. If you're going to 'instinctively' recoil from something despite knowing the truth then there's probably not much anyone can do for you; you're making decisions (and moaning about stuff) based on weird factors at that point. Not that I expect this knowledge to stop you moaning about it mind.

the choice to just keep your existing phone; no one's forcing you to upgrade after all.

Yep, I honestly don't see what people get out of expensive phones. I guess they just want to spend money on pointless crap but can't quite stretch to a gold fucking toilet seat.

Except it's not. Is my point.

For such an incredibly capable device that sees so much use and fits in your pocket I don't think £560 is at all 'a huge amount'

I wish I were as rich as you.

If my next phone could be mid range and have similar picture quality to my s7, I'd be all over it.

I use my phone probably more than any other object in my life. It entertains me on journeys, it keeps me connected and informed, it's invaluable when navigating on holiday, it takes pictures of a hilariously high quality and gives me access to my music collection on the go. To me that's easily worth a few hundred quid every couple of years. If that value proposition doesn't work for you personally then, well, .