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Decent (cheapish) android phone?

dabigm

ULTIMATE Member
So my phone just died. So now i'm after a 'decent' 5G phone for < £300.

Some of the ones i've looked at already:

Samsung A52s (same one i had last time). £250-300 ish. Unimpressive phone but does the job.
Oppo find X3 Neo 5G- £299 - seems fairly well spec'd for this price, but no experience with Oppo.
Motorola G62. £199 - fairly low spec , but £199.

Anyone got any better suggestions?

Important things for me are a decent 5G baseband, speedy enough / enough ram for most things (I don't game on my phone), 4K video recording would be a nice to have but not essential. Not too bothered about storage space. 128GB or above will be fine.
 
I do not regret choosing one with Ethernet Tethering. You should consider whether to add, or not add, that to your criteria.
 
I do not regret choosing one with Ethernet Tethering. You should consider whether to add, or not add, that to your criteria.
Good point. I used that a lot on both my Asus and my Samsung. Currently looking most at the Oppo X3 Neo and I can't find out if it does that or not.
 
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Have you looked at Pixels? The 6a is out, but can also look at previous versions.
Main advantage with these is good cameras, good OS support and usually excellent 3rd party firmware (such as LineageOS, GrapheneOS etc).
 
Have you looked at Pixels? The 6a is out, but can also look at previous versions.
Main advantage with these is good cameras, good OS support and usually excellent 3rd party firmware (such as LineageOS, GrapheneOS etc).
Pixels are a bit late to the 5G party, the first one is the Pixel 4a 5G, then you have the 5, 6, 6a, very easy to root though.

6a can be had for around £300 from vodafone and has 5 years of security updates:



 
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Have you looked at Pixels? The 6a is out, but can also look at previous versions.
Main advantage with these is good cameras, good OS support and usually excellent 3rd party firmware (such as LineageOS, GrapheneOS etc).

Yes. Tensor can die a slow painful death, (It's Exynos based)
but well at £300. tempting yeah. I think i'll get either the pixel or the oppo
 
I would begrudging recommend the Oneplus Nord 5G, if they have them in the Amazon Warehouse for a decent price when they have the extra 20/30% off. I think I paid just under £150 for it, and for that price I can live with the odd software niggle.
 
It may be just out of your budget but I've just bought myself a shiny new Xiaomi 12 Lite 5G for £419 off Amazon. Gotta be one of the nicest phones I've owned for the price - Snapdragon 778G which is fast enough for the majority of people unless youre still 10 and game on your phone, 5G on the X53 modem, 120Hz Screen, 67W fast charging (only takes about 25-35 mins for a full charge) and 8GB ram + 128GB storage and dual SIM. I'm really enjoying mine so far.
 
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Xiaomi Poco F3 is still the best Budget Phone in my book, excelent specs for the money, the 8gb + 256gb version can be picked up brand new for around 200 quid if you look hard enough.
 
Poco F3 does look nice indeed. The xiaomi 12 looks nice too. There are thankfully quite a few choices at this price range. I'm leaning more towards qualcomm based ones than others

Was ready to pull the trigger on the Oppo since it beats the spec of the Pixels. But The Xiaomi and the F3 are super interesting at just a little bit more money.

hmm looks like the F3 isn't in stock, says "Notify me" on their website instead of a buy button.
 
I bought my Samsung A52s when it came out last year, and am happy with it. They said they would guarantee 4 years of security updates, so if it takes me to Oct 2025, that's good as far as I'm concerned. I like that it supports a microSD card (which can be removed to put in a second SIM). I keep my music on microSD. And it has a real headphone socket.

Doesn't support eSIM though, which would be nice for travelling.
 
Went for the pixel in the end. The £100 currys voucher helped. Not in love with it's CPU but the rest of it seems pretty good. I'm justifying it to myself by telling myself it's £254 after the voucher :ROFLMAO: thanks for the suggestions everyone.

Now I have to find something for Kid 1 as well, she wants her own phone for xmas. I wonder if it's better to wait for black Friday for hers though.
 
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Went for the pixel in the end. The £100 currys voucher helped. Not in love with it's CPU but the rest of it seems pretty good. I'm justifying it to myself by telling myself it's £254 after the voucher :ROFLMAO: thanks for the suggestions everyone.

Now I have to find something for Kid 1 as well, she wants her own phone for xmas. I wonder if it's better to wait for black Friday for hers though.
Curious if you will prefer CalyxOS or GrapheneOS
 
Curious if you will prefer CalyxOS or GrapheneOS
Yeah that's about a week ahead of me at the moment :D right now, working phone would be nice. Thankfully before my last one dropped dead I at least backed up my google auth 2FA keys or there'd have been real issues. Right now, locked out from my bank (Santander) can't even login on the web as it says authorise the login on my phone 🤦‍♂️

I'm not sure if i'll root it. Santander is also one of the worst banks i've seen for moaning about rooted phones. When I had HSBC they had no issue with it. But Santander would say my phone didn't meet some security requirement and just close.

I'll be doing some reading about both of those though.
 
Yeah that's about a week ahead of me at the moment :D right now, working phone would be nice. Thankfully before my last one dropped dead I at least backed up my google auth 2FA keys or there'd have been real issues. Right now, locked out from my bank (Santander) can't even login on the web as it says authorise the login on my phone 🤦‍♂️

I'm not sure if i'll root it. Santander is also one of the worst banks i've seen for moaning about rooted phones. When I had HSBC they had no issue with it. But Santander would say my phone didn't meet some security requirement and just close.

I'll be doing some reading about both of those though.
Lineageos+magisk (zygisk+universalSafetynetFix) got me around Virgin Money app (Pixel 3a).

Hsbc indeed are sports about my rooted phone, they just show a warning and let me continue.
 
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