May have to buy a Smartphone?

[Radio Fixer]

May have to buy one as my wife is pressuring me.  It would be for her as a Grandad (Doro make) which we both have does all I want.  Rarely use it anyway.  Use PC for Internet stuff.

A friend says an Apple early IPhone may suit her for ease and expense.  I cant see her doing much on it as she is not very tech savvy.  The IPhone maybe best for me as well as I will no doubt be pestered with how do I do this    

Looking at this:

Apple iPhone X 64GB 256GB - Grey Silver - UNLOCKED - Excellent Grade A Condition | eBay

At the bottom it says the particular phone is a 10 model which I guess is to allow the use of the same blurb when advertising another.

Any comments would be much appreciated.

Thanks Gary   (currently suffering with Covid: no fun)

[Murphyv310]

Hi
I can't stand I phones and wouldn't take one as a gift. When I worked for 9 months in a call centre for TSC, handling Vodafone ten years ago the biggest and most unreliable phone was the I phone of the time (4) with most complaints about poor phone reception, which is the primary reason...... It's a phone!
I've always preferred Android and currently run an OPPO A54 5G, faulty new stock which was £35, simple fault with the Sim card holder.
Writing this message on it and works a treat. Also had Huawei phones which work very well indeed.

[ppppenguin]

My wife has had iPhones for years without any reliability or other problems. It's a long time since the 4. I use a Samsung Android.

Hope you recover soon.

[Murphyv310]

My daughter would never buy anything other than an I phone until she used a Samsung Galaxy in 2017 and could make calls when up north. Never went back to apple again.

[joebog1]

When I worked and could afford them, I bought Iphones. Now retired I bought a Umidigi smartfone. Its called a "tough " fone and that it is.
Whoever hatched the half baked shitty advertising ridden Drongoid non operating system needs *******.
I CAN vouch for the Tough bit. In complete frustration I threw it with all my force against the floor. It didnt break.
It is also waterproof up to 1.5 mtrs for 30 minutes.
I then downloaded Android studio and trashed the origional OS and replaced it with an older version where I could load the various "apps " that controlled the advertising.
Compared to Apple it is still a pile of junk, even if it does have 5 cameras and 128 gigs of RAM.

BUT !!! It cost $250 NOT $2500 as an "equivalent " Iphone costs.

Just be carefull what you buy!!

Joe

https://www.umidigi.com/page-umidigi_bis...rview.html

[Murphyv310]

Hi Joe
That of course is the other issue is the price of the I phones....... Outrageous price and big profits etc.

[Mark Hennessy]

Of course, you can pay a fortune for an iPhone.

Or, like any purchase, you can do your research and spend an amount you're comfortable with to get what you want.

I would suggest that you don't look at the "normal" iPhones, such as the iPhone X, 11, 12, 13, 14, etc. Those are for people who wish to spend serious money on premium phones. Instead, look at the "SE" models.

There are 3. The 2016 SE, the 2020 SE, and the 2022 SE.

Work replaced my Android phone with a 2016 SE in - you guessed it! - 2016. The company made a decision that was pragmatic pretty pragmatic at the time, and has proved to be a good call several years later: rather than attempt to support countless variations of Android and Apple phones, let's just support Apple.

My 2016 iPhone SE received regular OS updates from Apple until September this year. Not bad for a 6 year old phone, and something that you just won't get from Android, whoever makes the handset.

I was agnostic at the time - I had no preference for Android, but if anything, I was slightly biased against iPhones because of various people I know who were Apple fans, and that can be off-putting. But to me, it was just a phone, that needed to work as such.

After a few months, I realised I was no longer needing to do the things I had to do to keep Android alive and well. No more reboots every week to prevent rogue processes flattening the battery; no more needing to forcibly close processes I didn't actively need to keep it stable and reliable. In other words, it just worked. If only you could say that about every modern device...

I hadn't looked into the life-cycle aspects of iPhone vs Android at this point, although I had spent several hundred pounds on Android devices that were great for the first year or two, but became unusable after updates that had either bricked them or made them much less responsive. Perhaps Android today is better in this regard, but my experience definitely was not good. Reviews today will always highlight the long support periods you get from Apple phones (typically 6 years since model inception) and contrast that with the 2 years you'd expect from Android devices (though I've read some recent reviews that stretch that to 3 years, so that's positive).

After 6 years of continuous support and completely reliable operation with my 2016 SE, I've now got a 2022 SE. So far, so good. I get 2.5 days between charges, and everything on the old phone was automatically transferred over to the new. The "ecosystem" works really well, and if you have a young family, the family sharing and screentime controls work really well to make sure your kids aren't doing things they shouldn't be. The return-on-investment is really good - the SEs are around £400 new, which works out to be around £67 a year for the hardware. You can, of course, buy second-hand. That's what we did for the kids, using CEX, who are easy to deal with if there's a problem.

There are a few limitations with iOS, meaning that some apps that exist in Android can't be ported to iPhone. One example would be wi-fi analysers. That's because Apple don't allow app developers deep access to some aspects of the operating system on security grounds, but then, that helps to make them generally more secure than Android (though there's no such thing as completely secure operating systems, of course).

Price-wise, new SE models have always been around £400. At the time of release, they have the most up to date processors, but the case/chassis/screen is older. The 2022 iPhone has the iPhone 8 chassis, but the innards of the iPhone 13 (which costs double). My son has a 13, and it is larger, with a nicer OLED display, but the 2022 SE is much the same as his in every other respect. Obviously, work pays a lot less for them (and, as mentioned, gets a fantastic ROI on them over their life).

The iPhone 4 did suffer from "Antenna-gate", but Apple gave out "bumpers" free of charge to affected users. That was in 2010.

[peter scott]

I'm sure iPhones are very reliable and I am very impressed by the cameras in the recent models but like all Apple products they are very difficult to use unless you are a guru. Too many obscure gestures and oddities for doing things.

Peter

[Mark Hennessy]

Yes, I think that if you are new to touch interfaces, so don't already have a tablet or similar, then you'd probably experience quite a learning curve. I certainly remember going through that. I was relatively late to them - probably 2012 or 2013 IIRC - so there were plenty of people around me who helped me with the basics.

Once past that, I really wouldn't like to say how Apple compares to Android - as I haven't played with Android for many years, I'd be speaking from a position of ignorance (but that shouldn't stop me - this is the internet after all! :-). I know that iOS has a reputation for being user-friendly, but I personally find iPhones harder to drive if they don't have a home button (the SEs retain this; everything else from the X onwards has dropped it). Without the home button, there are a few new gestures to learn. Some of them work on the iPad, so I'm aware of those - but mostly ignore them - but I know I'd need help from my teenage kids if I was gifted a posh phone. In the meantime, my basic SE is all I need.

Whichever smart phone you choose, you do need to create an account with either Google (Android) or Apple to use them. That feels like a pain, but it does ease things - again, speaking about Apple here because that's where my recent experiences are - like upgrading your handset as everything just transfers across. All photos and data are automatically backed up, and you can access everything from the iCloud web site (or install iCloud on your PC - I've tried it, but generally don't bother). You get a reasonable amount of storage space for free, and if it wasn't for the rest of the family, I'd still be using that. I pay a nominal sum each month (couple of quid - can't remember exactly) for extra storage for their photos, etc. The family sharing features work really well. I've got a decent level of control over what they can do and for how long, and that's really helped them to be good at managing their screen time. Also you can see where they are, which is really good for parents learning to give them their kids some freedom as they get older. Perhaps Android offers similar facilities by now? I remember being a little reluctant to dive into the "ecosystem", but have to admit that it does work well. Of course, all of this contributes to the price - software isn't free to develop (and actively support with new functionality and security updates for 6 years).

Just checking CEX, I see that 2020 SEs are around £200, and 2022 SEs are around £300. If the condition is "A", they are basically unused, most are "B", which is fine, but they did once tell me that grade C are best avoided. The most recent SE has the best processer and battery life, but otherwise they are much the same in practice. Obviously not necessarily saying that this is the best option for Gary, but at least it gives an idea of the price of entry if curious. I'd definitely recommend CEX over eBay for something like this - you need to inspect it in the flesh, and it's nice to be able to take it back if there are issues (only happened once, but they were brilliant about it). And if an iPhone is what you're after, I'd repeat the point about the home button making it easier to use - I'd definitely pick a 2020 SE over an iPhone X that was released in 2017 and has an older chipset (and a battery that is 3 years older).

Happy Christmas to all, and hope you get well soon Gary

[Radio Fixer]

Thank you all for interesting and helpful views.

Starting to feel somewhat better from the virus just wish sleep was easier ! makes a long night when you are awake for half of it.

Gary