Advice re Android purchases

Ncmusic

Ncmusic

Ncmusic

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Joined
17 Aug 2023
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1
Location
Birmingham
I need a bit of advice, im a 48 year old man ( dont worry, its not going to get weird) so by tech knowledge standards I might aswell be dead. I need to purchase a smartphone for about £50, second hand, I recently bought a samsung note 4 from ebay that was new old stock, it looked good, however had Android 4 on it so it literally wouldnt let me download anything, I sent it back, the trade seller was selling it as " mint ", it was but I couldnt actually use it! It was pointless, can anyone recommended a decent phone that i can actually download apps and updates with for this price and if not what android versions and I looking for when searching.


Thanks in advance.
 
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I used to have a Note 4, and one of my spare phones is a Samsung A3 (2015) so around the same age. It can hardly install anything from the Play Store now, so I can relate to your problem. I just use it as an MP3 player.

Like others said, £50 won't go far, whether it is a phone or not! Even in year 2000 as a poor student (!), I dropped £60 (about £130 in today's money) on a Nokia 5150.

If you work, you could put an ad up on your intranet noticeboard asking if anyone has an Android phone going spare and you are willing enough to offer £125 in cash. That will get you a low or mid range Android but don't go any older than 3 or 4 years old as it will soon lose compatibility with Play Store apps.
 
I picked up an Oppo A5 2020 model new for just under £100 as a backup phone a year or so ago - should get a good condition one around £50 - fairly recent version of Android and reasonable spec phone.

Have to say I was still using my Note 4 as one of my phones until about a week ago - I forget what version of Android it was on, it was newer than 4, but had no problems with it other than 1-2 apps in recent weeks which it was too old for - everything else even banking apps ran.

Probably worth dodging the Note 4 though as most if not all of them it seems have a problem with the MMC chip coming loose over time even if barely used resulting in slowdown and eventual boot failure. (Mine lasted from something like 2015 until mid 2023 before it became an issue even so but some people had it happen much earlier).
 
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Ncmusic said:
I need a bit of advice, im a 48 year old man ( dont worry, its not going to get weird) so by tech knowledge standards I might aswell be dead.
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I don't understand when people of your age say this, you were only born three years after me (I was born in '72) and so have lived your life as computers and tech. started to become mainstream across all sections of industry and society. You should be au fait with tech.
 
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@Malevolence - I agree with what you said about people of our age, but it does take all sorts really!

Granny, now aged 94, got online in 1999 and is pretty adept with day-to-day internet including banking.

Dad, bless him, was 20 years younger than Granny and was the only person in the family who never figured out WhatsApp. He still wrote cheques.

A mate who I see most weeks is 49 and still goes into his bank branch to pay his bills.

@Ncmusic - did you manage to sort out a phone? I late realised it was your 1st post, so welcome :-)
 
david25 said:
Use GSMarena for reviews, then any £100 Nokia or Motorola that you can like, this a big slap of average from Nokia https://www.argos.co.uk/product/2911915?clickPR=plp:23:28

But it will be adequate if a little slow compared to mid-range £300 or premium £600 phones
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I've got a £100 Motorola. In theory it's fine, but the reality is it's garbage. It has every annoying feature enabled by default and will re-enable them without warning when it installs an update. The other day it started watermarking all my photos with the phones make and model.
 
Related to this thread - weirdly since my post above I've had several emails relating to apps I use and ending support for older versions of Android this year including Barclays are killing off support for anything older than 8.0, other apps dropping support for older than 7.0 and one is even dropping support for unmaintained Android versions so pretty much anything older than 11...
 
Rroff said:
Related to this thread - weirdly since my post above I've had several emails relating to apps I use and ending support for older versions of Android this year including Barclays are killing off support for anything older than 8.0, other apps dropping support for older than 7.0 and one is even dropping support for unmaintained Android versions so pretty much anything older than 11...
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Sounds like a good idea, no reason any Android device should be running anything older.

I bought an unused 2019 S6 Tablet for the wife, updated it to Android 12 straight away without issue, simple enough.
 
A2Z said:
Sounds like a good idea, no reason any Android device should be running anything older.

I bought an unused 2019 S6 Tablet for the wife, updated it to Android 12 straight away without issue, simple enough.
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Though there are realistic limits how long older OSes can be maintained, there are a lot of still useful Android devices which have never had an official release more than 2-3 versions newer than they shipped with, several version behind current, and/or can only be updated by unofficial means breaking things like Knox or other security features which can cause problems with things like business software or banking apps, etc.
 
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Rroff said:
Though there are realistic limits how long older OSes can be maintained, there are a lot of still useful Android devices which have never had an official release older than 2-3 versions newer than they shipped with, several version behind current, and/or can only be updated by unofficial means breaking things like Knox or other security features which can cause problems with things like business software or banking apps, etc.
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Maintaining multiple branches is an absolute pain. We've been through a similar thing at work the last few years (completely different product to a phone, but software with different versions nonetheless) cutting down on the number of active branches.

In an ideal world you'd have one current version (latest version) and then the version prior to that. We're a bit luckier in the sense that we can support our hardware for a number of years so the latest updates are still available. Android manufacturers don't want to do this. Sony are really bad at this - I think the last flagship phone I had came with a new version and then only had a single upgrade. The hardware on it was decent so they could have looked at rolling to the next version and then the original version it came with would be unsupported.
 
Semple said:
Maintaining multiple branches is an absolute pain. We've been through a similar thing at work the last few years (completely different product to a phone, but software with different versions nonetheless) cutting down on the number of active branches.

In an ideal world you'd have one current version (latest version) and then the version prior to that. We're a bit luckier in the sense that we can support our hardware for a number of years so the latest updates are still available. Android manufacturers don't want to do this. Sony are really bad at this - I think the last flagship phone I had came with a new version and then only had a single upgrade. The hardware on it was decent so they could have looked at rolling to the next version and then the original version it came with would be unsupported.
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Sure there are security updates and some changes underneath such as power management but the updates to Android confuse me - most don't really do anything different for the end user experience and over time some neat features from older builds seem to become watered down or removed entirely. The OS really could be maintained much better. A lot of it seems to be simply moving the window dressing around and calling it a new release as far as features and UI, etc. go rather than any real evolution.
 
Samsung, I think, offer 3 or 4 Android full version upgrades from the original version when you first buy them.
I've just bought an A04s for fifty quid from ebay. Only 32gb but hey ho, I'll add an sd card. Hoping it'll have/upgrade to Android 13 when I get it. It has NFC though. NFC for this sort of price is difficult to find.

Any other manufacturers gaurantee Android version upgrades for 2, 3 or 4 generations?
 
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Rroff said:
Sure there are security updates and some changes underneath such as power management but the updates to Android confuse me - most don't really do anything different for the end user experience and over time some neat features from older builds seem to become watered down or removed entirely. The OS really could be maintained much better. A lot of it seems to be simply moving the window dressing around and calling it a new release as far as features and UI, etc. go rather than any real evolution.
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I think that's because we're at a point where there is nothing major functionality-wise to be added. No different to iOS or even Windows.
 
Baldbloke said:
Any other manufacturers gaurantee Android version upgrades for 2, 3 or 4 generations?
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Samsung four generations of Android OS updates and five years of security patches

Oppo four generations of Android OS updates and five years of security patches

Xiaomi four generations of Android OS updates and five years of security patches

Google three generations of Android OS updates and five years of security patches

Honor three generations of Android OS updates and five years of security patches

OnePlus three generations of Android OS updates and four years of security patches

Nokia three generations of Android OS updates and two years of security patches

Sony two generations of Android OS updates and three years of security patches

Motorola two generations of Android OS updates and two (or sometimes three) years of security patches

This is on mid-range to flagships models, budget models might have less.
 
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Adding to above, not all manufacturers will offer security updates monthly. OnePlus for example usually does them every two months. Samsung and Google are the most consistent with these updates.
 
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