none of this helps me pick a new phone,mick.
I meant to get this one out as a third post with a few of the more popular mid-range and budget phones. Otherwise, a fertile ground to scour is the flagships from everyone who isn't Apple or Samsung from previous years (ex.
Moto X Pure Edition and
Moto X 2014;
LG G4 and
LG G3;
Nexus 5;
HTC M8). Many of those can be had for under $200 for the baseline 16GB model. If you're looking for smaller phones I could spend some time rounding up the best of those, but as I said, they're falling out of favor quickly.
The best budget deals on phones tend to vary from carrier to carrier because they all tend to have some offering that their customers could walk out with that day, then they move on to the next model quickly. Last year a friend walked out of the MetroPCS store with the
Kyocera Hydro Wave for either $50 or $100 (to be used on T-Mobile). This phone was made for the AT&T/T-Mobile networks, but I never saw them carry it. Decent screen size, waterproof, shockproof, plays the games he likes. He's a mechanic, so the combination of cheapness and durability really attracted him. These MNVO stores specialize in that market, and the phones handsets are divided by which networks they were intended to run on (AT&T + T-Mobile versus Verizon + Sprint + US Cellular). MetroPCS services the AT&T and T-Mobile markets.
If there are specific questions about specific models or carrier options out there, I will offer a detailed comparison, but otherwise, there is a massive number of phones in the budget class, and my posts are already huge. Alternatively, if you want to know about cheaper phones, or smaller phones, or Windows phones, I'm also willing to answer questions.
**************************************
While we wait for the Pixel handsets to be formally announced, and for any potential announcement for a new flagship from Microsoft, in the meantime, we can list the two respective "in-house" flagships for Google and Microsoft at this moment. The
Nexus 6P Gold 64GB is available for $499 on Amazon right now, and the 32GB is available in any color for $449. I'm seeing the
Lumia 950 XL 32GB Black for $421. Another midrange handset that was essentially flagship-class last year was the
Moto X Pure Edition 32GB ($330). This year, the
ZTE Axon 7 ($399) wrests the title of "flagship killer" with its Snapdragon 820 chipset and supplementary suite of features, but like most Chinese phones, it will only operate with full compatibility on 3G GSM networks: AT&T and T-Mobile. The
ZTE Axon Pro ($299) and
Asus Zenfone 2 ($229) are a few other mid-range performance phones worthy of consideration by users on those carriers.
Huawei Nexus 6P
5.96"
Unlocked
$449 (32GB) / $499 (64GB) / $599 (128GB)
Microsoft Lumia 950 XL
5.7"
Unlocked, Windows Phone
$421 (32GB)
**************************************
Now for the top mid-range & budget handsets. ZTE continues to wedge into the US market at the budget end with its GSM-compatible offerings (for AT&T or T-Mobile where the budget options are the richest because their network technology more closely matches the international market's-- specifically China).
Huawei also makes a showing, but Motorola reigns across networks again for more frugal buyers with its
Moto G series, hands down. With Android's Marshmallow or Nougat versions it will conjoin external SD cards to a single virtual partition with the internal SD, so the
256GB PNY Elite Performance Class 10 95MB/s MicroSDXC card for $90 can take the $149 16GB variant and turn it into a portable PC with legitimate storage. In fact, even though most websites will tell you that these are only compatible with 128GB/256GB cards, in reality, they all operate on SDXC technology, and can support up to 2TB in theory. Right now,
PNY's $192 512GB MicroSDXC card is the best bang-for-your-buck in that largest current market size.
The
G4 Plus differences are:
Moto G4 versus Moto G4 Plus: The features that make a phone
- a superior camera (16MP vs. 13MP that includes additional features like laser autofocus and phase detection)
- a few more sensors (most importantly the fingerprint-to-unlock sensor on the bottom of the phone)
- differing RAM options: 2GB in 16GB model, 3GB in 32GB model*, and 4GB in the 64GB model
*I didn't see the 32GB option for American buyers on Amazon.
FYI, the Snapdragon 617 chipset in these phones has caught up to the flagship Snapdragon 8xx chipset line from several generations back (i.e Snapdragon 800 and Snapdragon 801). In benchmarks these phones perform roughly identically to the
LG Nexus 5 and the
Oneplus X.
The
G4 Plus would be my top recommended buy under $300 and the
G4 would my top recommended buy under $200.
Moto G4 Plus
5.5"
Unlocked
$249 (16GB + 2GB RAM) / $299 (64GB + 4GB RAM)
Moto G4
5.5"
Unlocked
$149 (16GB) / $179 (32GB)
Oneplus X
5.0"
Unlocked
$199 (16GB)
Huawei Honor 5X
5.5"
AT&T / T-Mobile
$185 (16GB)
ZTE ZMax Pro
5.5"
MetroPCS (AT&T / T-Mobile)
$99 (32GB)
