So, what phone should I get?

[andrewducker]

My phone is dying. Largely the power button is going, which frequently causes a press on it to either wake the phone up, then put it to sleep, then wake it up again; or to make the phone reboot. I'm going to try and fix this, but my hopes are not high. And so I am probably in the market for a new phone.

What I want is basically something like my existing Nexus 5, which frankly does everything that I want in a phone. Slightly faster would be nice. As would a bit more memory.

As such I took a look at the Nexus 5X. Which is a lovely piece of kit, costs £300, and fulfils all of my criteria, except that it only has the same amount of memory as the Nexus 5 (2GB) and with the number of apps I run simultaneously, 3GB would be nice.

On the other hand, for £170 I can get a phone that's almost as good, the Moto G 3rd edition. Which is neary half the price, has similar memory, storage, and screen size. The resolution is a litte lower, but frankly I'm not sure I'd notice. It's definitely the phone I'd recommend to anyone looking for a budget-ish phone.

The other advantage of the Nexus 5X is that it will get new versions of Android for two years. While the Moto G 3rd Edition does have Marshmallow, chances are it won't stay up to date for more than a year.

I did take a look at the Nexus 6P, which my brother Hugh has, but it's definitely too big for me. Lovely device, though, so that's a shame.

Oh, and I want something that runs as close to Stock Android as possible. I really cannot be arsed with someone else's skin splodged on top. Which basically rules out Samsung and HTC, from my understanding.

Any suggestions?

Comments

[matgb]

I am really appreciating my Xperia M4, and am regretting not paying the extra to get the Z4, will definitely be seriously considering the Zx when I next upgrade. It does suffer with only 8Gb onboard storage (the UK carriers all went for that one not the 16Gb one so it's permanently requiring me to move stored stuff to the SD card).

Of course, one of my biggest criteria was waterproof, which doesn't sound like it matters to you at all. I have zero clue how close to stock Android it is, it's certainly easier to use than the Samsung I had before.

Having said that, had never heard of Wileyfox before reading your LJ comments, that does look interesting, but it's not waterproof so no good for me really.

[marahmarie]

Oh my, I'm late to this party...so did you get a new phone? The nice thing about Nexus is it's stock. I've used an older Nexus (3, I think?) not as a phone but as a wifi-enabled net portal, and the thing really rocked (I shouldn't say that past tense, as it's still with me around here, somewhere). Non-stock Android always seems to have issues (mostly with memory use) that Nexus did not.

Other than that, I have no suggestions, as my last Android was a Fuel, an older, very small/simple model that has a camera that works once every year or so. Should I ever upgrade it, I'll either buy a Nexus or do a lot of research and need to look up a lot of advice on what's best, as the Android ecosystem is really just endless.

[andrewducker]

In the end I went with a Nexus 5X. Not quite as high-powered as I'd like, but it'll keep up with stock Android, and it's good enough for everything I'm likely to throw at it.