phone shucks

[darkoshi]

Back to my quest for a newer cell phone.

Based on my criteria:
- should support a fairly recent version of Android
- removable battery
- support reading very large microSD cards - at least 256 GB
- not too big or heavy
- preferably under $200, so a used but working phone (though some of my possible choices ended up being < $300 used)

I had previously come up with these models: LG G4, LG G5, LG V10

Now I found out that all 3 of those models have a hardware issue that can cause a bootloop. If I buy a used phone, besides the increased risk of getting a bad phone to begin with, if it only develops problems later on, I wouldn't be able to get any warranty support for it.

Now what do I do. There really were very few models I found that had removable batteries.

There was another model, the Moto G, which I previously read conflicting info about the battery. I think I've figured it out now. The regular Moto G4 doesn't have a removable battery. But the Moto G4 *Play* does. But it only has half a gig of RAM. Surely that's not enough for a good experience? Seems I misread the specs. The page I was looking at said 1 slash 2, which must indicate it comes with either 1 or 2 GB RAM. But the GSM Arena page says 2 GB.

Ah, phew. GSM Arena lets you search by features such as the battery, and it shows a lot more than I saw before.

Comments

[marahmarie]

- support reading very large microSD cards - at least 256 GB

That is indeed...very large. Are you carrying entire website databases around with you or what?

Now I found out that all 3 of those models have a hardware issue that can cause a bootloop (also, the word "bootloop" has <a></a> around it in the source, but no link)

LG (even the small, cheap crap Android-running LGs I've used in the past) seems susceptible to that.

But it only has half a gig of RAM. Surely that's not enough for a good experience?

Depends on the OS and your Internet speed. On my Nokia (runs Win10 right now; was built to run Win8) it's sufficient but not as perfectly seamless as one might want. That said, as long as your Internet is quick and your OS and apps aren't bogging down the CPU and RAM, video playback should still be pretty smooth.

OP has a bigger, better phone with a full 1GB and it's much quicker and feels more seamless. Fwiw, you won't really know how bad a half GB is until you try out a phone with a full GB. :)

And GSM Arena is the best. I've used it for a few years now to compare everything, phone-wise, when I shop and before I buy and I actually feel like I couldn't make an informed decision without it.

[darkoshi]

I fixed the link - thanks for letting me know.

So far, I mostly use my phone as an mp3 player (at work, to drown out distracting noise). The large SD card would be to hold my music collection and give it space to grow. I thought I was already close to 32 GB, but I just checked and my mp3 files currently take only 23 GB.

But I'd also want extra space to be able to take photos and HD video, etc. So it seems best to get a phone that officially supports a very large card, even though I'll probably never use that much. (I don't really understand why a phone would support a small card but not a big card, considering they have the same interface. But if the phone specs say max 32GB, I'll take their word for it.)

I added "Android" to my criteria, as that's important to me too. Not because I particularly prefer Android itself, but because of the wide array of apps it gives me access to. Although now I wonder if the specific apps that come to mind when I think of that, are available for Windows phones too. I'll do some checking.

[marahmarie]

But if the phone specs say max 32GB, I'll take their word for it.

I don't know, that's a good question. This was the best I could find on that (but your search mileage may vary):

https://superuser.com/questions/892401/if-a-device-specifies-that-it-can-support-sd-cards-up-to-64gb-would-larger-size

I kind of take it that depending on which file format the phone supports you can try a bigger card than the max 64GB or 128GB the phone says it can handle, but success rates seem to depend on what the OS lets you do so are relatively unknown from there.

Windows phones...I know I've said this before, but app support/available apps on the phone itself are really terrible. For people like me. You're a bit more tech-inclined, though, so you might have more luck. While Windows apps were supposed to all be compatible with Android by now (which might've gone better than the reverse case) Android apps - afaik - still have to be sideloaded onto Windows phones. But from Win10 up (possible 8.1 Update has this, too, but I can't recall) there's a menu where you can turn on sideloading and take it from there. Never tried it, myself.

I did try to use BoA's official Win10 app, and it couldn't even correctly take pictures of my checks to deposit (which could be down to "my phone has a crappy camera" - which it does - or could be the app), which was when I pretty much gave up on the Win app ecosystem.

[lovelymavka]

Well, my sister had a cell for awhile but she couldn't deal with monthly fees and all that jazz. Good luck with the phone thing. :-)

I'm Sam btw. I found you by the random journal thing. :-)