Mobile Phone Thread

[nnfox]

1 hour ago, Innovindil said:

Anyone got any recommendations on a cheap phone for my dad? Looking to spend somewhere between £50-100. 

Depends if you have to have a smart phone with internet connectivity... £100 doesn't get you much in that arena.  If you just need a basic phone for calls and texts then a £20 feature phone would probably be an option worth looking at.

 

48 minutes ago, The Bear said:

Motorola do decent cheap phones. 

If you do need a smartphone, then I'd agree with Motorola.  Decent phones that perform pretty well.  Their top phone is about is about £250 but do have cheaper ones, some less than £100 but the touch screen can be laggy and it can be a frustrating experience using it.  I wouldn't spend less than £100.  If you could stretch to £150 then that would be beneficial.

 

Avoid Alba.  

 

Huawei make decent phones and have a budget range, just do some research on any prospective purchase because Huawei and Google had a big fall out a couple of years ago and some apps might not be available on newer Huawei's - I'm not totally up to date with that situation.

[The Bear]

The Moto E (2nd generation) has decent specs and 4G.

 

Available for about £40.

[Bellend Sebastian]

I had 3 Motorola phones in a row and to be honest it was only the first that wasn't a massive pain in the arse in some way. I think the quality's gone down hill in recent years. Moto G 1st and second gen were bullet proof and absolute bargains, more recent ones better on paper but loads of reliability issues. I blame Lenovo, who make them now.

 

In fairness, my Mum's G6 is doing ok, but it's not exactly used heavily. Mine didn't make it to the end of the warranty

 

 

 

 

 

 

[enmac]

Apologies if already mentioned. Nokia 6.1 is OK. Mine is 4 gb ram, 64 gb memory. Got mine for about £80 unboxed on ebay with warranty. 

 

https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_6_1-8972.php

[jonthefox]

Has anyone got the Huawei pro 30?. More interested in the camera tbh. 

[The Bear]

17 hours ago, jonthefox said:

Has anyone got the Huawei pro 30?. More interested in the camera tbh. 

Check out the review on gsmarena. That'll have an in depth camera section. 

[FLAN]

Just ordered two iPhone SE for me and my son through work for no charge (incentive scheme). He’s on a 6 and mine is a 7 but both contracts are so cheap I didn’t want to upgrade and cover the cost of a new handset

 

[Livid]

Just swapped my IPhone XR for a 12 and really beginning to wonder why I bothered. 
 

Double the memory which was my main reason for swapping, improved camera (not noticed) , a hardened screen which seems to be a fluff magnet, a better resolution (again not noticed) and it doesn’t appear to work on any of wireless chargers that worked on my XR, using the exact same manufacturer flip case I had on my XR. Apparently I could get a MagSafe charger but it’s highly unlikely that would work with a flip case anyway. 
 

I love Apple but I don’t want to be restricted to an Apple case and charger. 

Edited 13 June 2021 by Livid

[Bellend Sebastian]

Anyone on EE getting a 5G signal in the Leicester area? When I first got my phone a good few months ago it would pick one up fairly regularly but I cannot remember the last time it did

[Leicester_Loyal]

Apple event scheduled for Tuesday 14th September, should be the new iPhone, Airpods and Watch.

 

Going to pre-order the iPhone 13 myself.

[Raj]

Daughter is 13 today.

Got her refurbished  apple xr from amazon for about 290.

My Mrs and I have Samsung's.

I know feck all about apple and iPhones.

I susp6 she knows all she needs to know and wont ask us!!!

[yorkie1999]

Anyone have any experience with oap's and iphones? Got my mum one of those easy to use mobiles that are designed to make using a phone easier, but it doesn't. I've got a few iphones kicking around the house and wondered if one would prove easier to use, if i set one up as a basic phone,  than a button phone.

[The Bear]

8 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Anyone have any experience with oap's and iphones? Got my mum one of those easy to use mobiles that are designed to make using a phone easier, but it doesn't. I've got a few iphones kicking around the house and wondered if one would prove easier to use, if i set one up as a basic phone,  than a button phone.

You can try but it'll probably be a waste of your time. 

 

Both my mum (67) and her neighbour (85) asked me to get them a more modern touchscreen phone. I got them cheap £50 Motorolas with basic apps. They both have no idea half the time. My mum can do the basics and look at websites but the older neighbour struggles to send texts never mind anything else.

 

If my mum asks me to look at something or fix something, she's got 100+ tabs open in Chrome and notifications buzzing every minute from news websites she's been looking at and clicked OK for notifications. 

[yorkie1999]

17 minutes ago, The Bear said:

You can try but it'll probably be a waste of your time. 

 

Both my mum (67) and her neighbour (85) asked me to get them a more modern touchscreen phone. I got them cheap £50 Motorolas with basic apps. They both have no idea half the time. My mum can do the basics and look at websites but the older neighbour struggles to send texts never mind anything else.

 

If my mum asks me to look at something or fix something, she's got 100+ tabs open in Chrome and notifications buzzing every minute from news websites she's been looking at and clicked OK for notifications. 

I was thinking more along the lines of only having the phone and facetime apps on the the screen and basically hiding everything else. Oh, and find my phone cos i'm sick of her buggering off on her scooter and no-one having a clue where shes gone.

Edited 8 September 2021 by yorkie1999

[Jattdogg]

17 minutes ago, The Bear said:

You can try but it'll probably be a waste of your time. 

 

Both my mum (67) and her neighbour (85) asked me to get them a more modern touchscreen phone. I got them cheap £50 Motorolas with basic apps. They both have no idea half the time. My mum can do the basics and look at websites but the older neighbour struggles to send texts never mind anything else.

 

If my mum asks me to look at something or fix something, she's got 100+ tabs open in Chrome and notifications buzzing every minute from news websites she's been looking at and clicked OK for notifications. 

That awkward moment when your mum has notifications on from pornhub and multiple tabs of uploaded content

[Julian Joachim Jr Shabadoo]

5 hours ago, The Bear said:

You can try but it'll probably be a waste of your time. 

 

Both my mum (67) and her neighbour (85) asked me to get them a more modern touchscreen phone. I got them cheap £50 Motorolas with basic apps. They both have no idea half the time. My mum can do the basics and look at websites but the older neighbour struggles to send texts never mind anything else.

 

If my mum asks me to look at something or fix something, she's got 100+ tabs open in Chrome and notifications buzzing every minute from news websites she's been looking at and clicked OK for notifications. 

 

My ex's late grandad asked me to teach him how to use a big button phone (designed for pensioners) that could only call or text. Not only could he not use it, but whenever he asked me how to do something it wasn't even charged.

 

Then he thought he'd find it easier to use his late wife's decrepid budget Android phone, Alcatel (?), and can't have cost more than £30. The touchscreen on it was barely usable and the lag made doing anything on it a purely infuriating experience, but I wrote detailed notes for him on how to do the basics, and showed him repeatedly but he could not grasp any of it. Then he got hold of an iPad, and every time I saw him he'd ask how to get on the web. Tap the fvcking compass icon, tap the fvcking address bar and type anything. With your finger. He couldn't be arsed with passwords, so would stubbornly make something stupid up and not take a note of it. He managed to delete his entire address book that someone else had manually entered in for him. He couldn't understand that the WiFi password, the login password, etc were all different things. I told him make sure you don't mess up the login or it'll be unusable. Next time I went round it had bricked as he'd tried to unlock it with the wrong password god knows how many times, and it does warn you each wrong answer that there's a longer lockout period each time, but he'd still just kept typing any old shit in.

 

Then he decided he wanted a smart TV, with a budget of about £400. Me and the ex did some research and found a decent 4K LG model on sale at Curry's, good size for his living room, wrote down the model name and even offered to order it for him, but he thought better. Next time I went over, he had this bulky plastic shit JVC (or something) non-4K non-smart garbage TV that the Curry's salesman had duped him into buying, and it was the same price. Like the kind of TV you see on Black Friday sales for £100, and he'd spunked £400+ on. I tried to explain the differences between the shit TV he bought and a smart TV but he wanted to keep it. A week later he asks me how to watch iPlayer. FFS. Now I have to order and set up a NowTV stick for him (so that's two remote controls for him to not know how to use) of course you need to register with a valid credit/debit card but I warned him if you watch anything on there that isn't iPlayer/All 4/ITV etc it'll charge you, and it'll keep charging you til you cancel. God knows how much shit he signed up for trying to fumble his way round it. Got to a point where I really dreaded going round to see him, knowing you were just going to waste an hour of both of your's time, stress, and nothing to show for it. What is this idiot going to buy next? A drone?

 

Some elderly folk may be a bit more switched on and can learn the basics, but that whole experience just made me realise how impatient I am. Would absolutely not do it again. At least with most things, you can just go on YouTube and search for a tutorial. When you can't even get on YouTube because you've bricked your iPad and your smart TV IS NOT SMART, then don't bother.

[nnfox]

12 hours ago, yorkie1999 said:

Anyone have any experience with oap's and iphones? Got my mum one of those easy to use mobiles that are designed to make using a phone easier, but it doesn't. I've got a few iphones kicking around the house and wondered if one would prove easier to use, if i set one up as a basic phone,  than a button phone.

If you do try that, realise that there's no guarantee of success, but one tip I would advocate is to put a game on there like Candy Crush or something.  It gets them used to interacting with the screen - looking at it and touching and swiping etc.

[Bellend Sebastian]

7 hours ago, Julian Joachim Jr Shabadoo said:

 

My ex's late grandad asked me to teach him how to use a big button phone (designed for pensioners) that could only call or text. Not only could he not use it, but whenever he asked me how to do something it wasn't even charged.

 

Then he thought he'd find it easier to use his late wife's decrepid budget Android phone, Alcatel (?), and can't have cost more than £30. The touchscreen on it was barely usable and the lag made doing anything on it a purely infuriating experience, but I wrote detailed notes for him on how to do the basics, and showed him repeatedly but he could not grasp any of it. Then he got hold of an iPad, and every time I saw him he'd ask how to get on the web. Tap the fvcking compass icon, tap the fvcking address bar and type anything. With your finger. He couldn't be arsed with passwords, so would stubbornly make something stupid up and not take a note of it. He managed to delete his entire address book that someone else had manually entered in for him. He couldn't understand that the WiFi password, the login password, etc were all different things. I told him make sure you don't mess up the login or it'll be unusable. Next time I went round it had bricked as he'd tried to unlock it with the wrong password god knows how many times, and it does warn you each wrong answer that there's a longer lockout period each time, but he'd still just kept typing any old shit in.

 

Then he decided he wanted a smart TV, with a budget of about £400. Me and the ex did some research and found a decent 4K LG model on sale at Curry's, good size for his living room, wrote down the model name and even offered to order it for him, but he thought better. Next time I went over, he had this bulky plastic shit JVC (or something) non-4K non-smart garbage TV that the Curry's salesman had duped him into buying, and it was the same price. Like the kind of TV you see on Black Friday sales for £100, and he'd spunked £400+ on. I tried to explain the differences between the shit TV he bought and a smart TV but he wanted to keep it. A week later he asks me how to watch iPlayer. FFS. Now I have to order and set up a NowTV stick for him (so that's two remote controls for him to not know how to use) of course you need to register with a valid credit/debit card but I warned him if you watch anything on there that isn't iPlayer/All 4/ITV etc it'll charge you, and it'll keep charging you til you cancel. God knows how much shit he signed up for trying to fumble his way round it. Got to a point where I really dreaded going round to see him, knowing you were just going to waste an hour of both of your's time, stress, and nothing to show for it. What is this idiot going to buy next? A drone?

 

Some elderly folk may be a bit more switched on and can learn the basics, but that whole experience just made me realise how impatient I am. Would absolutely not do it again. At least with most things, you can just go on YouTube and search for a tutorial. When you can't even get on YouTube because you've bricked your iPad and your smart TV IS NOT SMART, then don't bother.

Oh God, I'm feeling this.

 

Reminds me of my old boss, who went to Comet (remember that?) to buy a big telly, with the only thing in his head being that it must NOT be a plasma TV, ended up spending, without realising what he'd done, nearly two grand on guess what?

 

Around the same time, he needed to replace his car, so off he goes to the Audi dealership, knowing f-all about what he needs other than it must be a Quattro, like his last one was. Turns up a few days later in a motor that he claims is 'top of the range', but looks suspiciously to all of us like the polar opposite, with a small engine and certainly no four wheel drive. Takes him a few days to realise that he's been sold the opposite of what he wanted, and is then furious, and it's everyone's fault but his.

 

Would it surprise you to learn that when it came to mobile phones, he would always buy mad things that nobody could help him with? He got some weird Blackberry thing after everybody stopped using them - it wasn't even the traditional sort of Blackberry with a little keyboard on it, but just a Blackberry branded device which for me wins the award for the least user friendly phone I've ever had to use. I think that's the one he ended up hurling across the room, to be replaced by a Nokia smartphone, one of the early ones when Nokia still had their own operating system, when the buying public were already either going down the Android or Apple route, so I had to waste hours working out how to use that before training him on it.

 

Needless to say, I don't work there anymore

 

 

[Julian Joachim Jr Shabadoo]

3 minutes ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

Takes him a few days to realise that he's been sold the opposite of what he wanted, and is then furious, and it's everyone's fault but his.

 

 

 

 

That's the bit that really pissed me off, when they're obviously in the wrong but won't admit it.

 

- man asks for advice on new TV, must have iPlayer, at a budget

- Advice given, did a fair bit of research to find a suitable TV that not only will do everything specified but has had decent user and professional reviews

- man goes against advice and wastes same money on a CLEARLY inferior product, then moans that it won't do what he wants after I'd pointed out it wasn't a smart TV

 

Literally all he had to do was buy the model I'd recommended, or let me order for him (as offered), or returned the one he bought, or not moaned about his own decision/asked how to watch iPlayer. He failed at all those points. Nothing against the Curry's salesman managing to sell the shit TV for double its actual value. It was either really old stock that was just kicking around the stockroom, or it was one of those models that they list at £400 for 2 weeks so for the rest of its lifespan they sell it for £200 with a big "50% off" sticker on it

[Bellend Sebastian]

5 minutes ago, Julian Joachim Jr Shabadoo said:

 

That's the bit that really pissed me off, when they're obviously in the wrong but won't admit it.

 

- man asks for advice on new TV, must have iPlayer, at a budget

- Advice given, did a fair bit of research to find a suitable TV that not only will do everything specified but has had decent user and professional reviews

- man goes against advice and wastes same money on a CLEARLY inferior product, then moans that it won't do what he wants after I'd pointed out it wasn't a smart TV

 

Literally all he had to do was buy the model I'd recommended, or let me order for him (as offered), or returned the one he bought, or not moaned about his own decision/asked how to watch iPlayer. He failed at all those points. Nothing against the Curry's salesman managing to sell the shit TV for double its actual value. It was either really old stock that was just kicking around the stockroom, or it was one of those models that they list at £400 for 2 weeks so for the rest of its lifespan they sell it for £200 with a big "50% off" sticker on it

There's no getting away from it, as you get older, your ability to make good decisions deteriorates. These old codgers who get ripped off by fraudsters weren't always a soft touch. A friend of mine's parents were ripped off by a dodgy plumber to the tune of thousands (won't share the story now as it's frankly too depressing for this time of the morning) and she reckons that even a couple of years earlier they'd never have been taken in like that in a million years.

 

I do feel sorry for the generation that grew up without tech and then found themselves having to get on board with it just to be able to live a 'normal' life. My Dad would have been in his 40s when we got our first home computer in the 1980s, and he had no interest in it whatsoever. He wouldn't have been thinking 'if I don't get a vague handle on this, my life will be more difficult in my 80s than it might have been'.

 

Naturally, he's useless with any tech now. Can just about go on the internet on a Windows laptop, but that's it.

 

My brother and I a few years ago made a vague pact that we would try to keep abreast of technology (and this is the key bit) even if it doesn't interest us, because having seen what's happened with our parents, we don't want to get left behind or find ourselves being forced to learn a skill when we're ancient and it's a hundred times more difficult

[Julian Joachim Jr Shabadoo]

31 minutes ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

There's no getting away from it, as you get older, your ability to make good decisions deteriorates. These old codgers who get ripped off by fraudsters weren't always a soft touch. A friend of mine's parents were ripped off by a dodgy plumber to the tune of thousands (won't share the story now as it's frankly too depressing for this time of the morning) and she reckons that even a couple of years earlier they'd never have been taken in like that in a million years.

Proper scams are a tragedy, but I just couldn't understand how he'd been talked into buying the TV in question. He'd already specified that he wanted a smart TV, I gave him a note with the model to buy to take to Curry's, and came away with a TV which wasn't smart. The salesman either lied (which would be wholly unacceptable) or in the time he was in the shop, he decided that he didn't want a smart TV as originally specified but then days later changed his decision... but wouldn't return the unsuitable TV. He showed no signs of dementia at all, just very stubborn!

 

 

36 minutes ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

My brother and I a few years ago made a vague pact that we would try to keep abreast of technology (and this is the key bit) even if it doesn't interest us, because having seen what's happened with our parents, we don't want to get left behind or find ourselves being forced to learn a skill when we're ancient and it's a hundred times more difficult

 

Yep I'm the same. I think I was quite lucky growing up with video games etc, and the internet suddenly came into play when I was about 10 so quickly worked that out (and being able to spot what websites are not to be trusted etc), had my first mobile phone at 11 when pay-as-you-go was introduced. I suppose the next step would be making my whole house smart like a couple of my friends have done, as that'll all be standard in the next few years.

 

I will not install TikTok though. If TikTok evolves into some sort of lifesaving app by the time I'm 70 then I'm screwed.

[Steven]

3 hours ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

There's no getting away from it, as you get older, your ability to make good decisions deteriorates.

Fook off. I am an old git but I am just as sharp as I have ever been. Maybe it is all the bubble and squeak I have for breakfast. 

[Bellend Sebastian]

21 minutes ago, Steven said:

Fook off. I am an old git but I am just as sharp as I have ever been. Maybe it is all the bubble and squeak I have for breakfast. 

You're putting content on the internet and using an emoji. There's no way you're THAT old.

 

Also, very glad you are using up vegetables in that way

[Haywood_6]

Got a One Plus Nord 2 this week. Very good very nice

[Suzie the Fox]

21 hours ago, yorkie1999 said:

Anyone have any experience with oap's and iphones? Got my mum one of those easy to use mobiles that are designed to make using a phone easier, but it doesn't. I've got a few iphones kicking around the house and wondered if one would prove easier to use, if i set one up as a basic phone,  than a button phone.

My mum who is in her 70's gets on better with my cast off iphones. The main thing i told her was to use Siri, so she never has to swipe/type get used to apps etc. Its quite funny to listen to her as she will say 'siri please could you phone <insert name> thank you very much' I've told her numerous times there is no need for please and thank you's, but she wants to be polite