What mobile phone do you use?

As the title says.

I've a iphone 5 something or other that I've had for a good while now and I'm getting fed up with it. So I'm looking for something new. It needs to be sim free as I'm PAYG but because of this a new phone can hit £700 odd!!! For a phone!!! So to be honest I'm looking at 2nd hand or older phones. The other thing is size, why have phones got so bloody big recently? I want something I can get in my pocket. Thoughts so far are the sony xepria z5 or its compact version. I like samsung as well but their smaller phones seem to suffer badly with spec levels but still hold premium prices. I will not be watching films etc on it, just calls, messaging, bit of internet and the odd game.

So, thoughts?

I have a Nokia 2610 (PAYG).. about 10 years old, which I put about 10 quid a year on. Locked to Tesco.
I also have a lousy Nokia Lumia 610 Windows 'smart' phone, which was originally on contract, but paid for long ago. Unusually though, it is unlocked, so I use it in the Phils. (Should have got the Samsung which was on the same deal... doh !).

My son has a recent model Sony Xperian, which he tells me is a decent phone.

old Nokias are the best for texting from the back of a motorbike in the Philippines.

in the UK I am not so sure.

I have an unlocked HP iPAQ voice messenger that I got almost ten years ago.



I am not a phone person, it is turned off most of the time.

Well bugger me, somebody wants a phone to use as a phone; how novel and so 1990s!

I rate Nokia's Android phones - X, XL and X2 - highly as they're decently spec'd and (now) cheap as chips. But because Nokia sold its phone division to Microsoft, the Android range isn't getting any support or updates so you will have to root it and install a more recent version of Android (I have Jellybean installed on my XL and it works a treat). As you don't want a phablet-sized phone, I'd go for the X2 which is the newest in the range.

My wife has two old Nokias which she uses for texting and making/receiving calls, not as a pillion passenger but from the comfort of our airconditioned Fortuner. They are much, much better for that than any smartphone.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and it is superb but it is a smart phone and costs £450 sim free. I bought it because I find the stylus wonderful for hand written notes etc.
My wife has Microsoft Lumia 535 - this is a very nice phone and is about £80.
The Note 4 is not five times better than the 535 !

You can't go wrong with Samsung like the one Dom has.

You're not a luddite are you, Dave_E ?
Most people have them on all the time, for family and any emergencies for example.



People are buying these again but with modern parts inside.



I had one of the above mobiles on a job once - what a pain in the backside.

yes Nokias are the best model of phone for the Filipino national pastime of text messaging, and also calling. Though smartphones come up well short, when it comes to texting, they are also a bit of a nuisance by comparison, even for calling.

foreigners have this mindset, that they only need to have one phone, and also only one SIM card. When Filipinos don't think like that at all. Even very humble people of limited means have two phones - one smartphone for internet/Facebook/Viber etc, and then another 'normal' phone for texting and calling.

Filipinos also see the merit in having two SIM's, with one of them being SMART/SUN and the other one GLOBE.

GLOBE users are always reluctant to call and text non GLOBE SMART and SUN users and vice versa.

some areas you can get a GLOBE signal and not a SMART signal and vice-versa too. It just pays, to have more than one sim.

by necessity, because if they know it saves them pesos, almost all Filipinos know the prefixes for the numbers of the 3 big phone companies. They know that 0919 and 0999 is SMART, 0923 and 0942 is SUN, and 0927 and 0916 is GLOBE, and so on. They all know these prefixes. For the amusement of foreigners, sometimes in foreigner bars in the Philippines I have demonstrated this by asking staff like waitresses if 0915 or 0932 or 0949 is SMART, SUN or GLOBE and so on. They almost always get it 100% right, when most foreigners haven't got a clue whether a 0926 number is SMART, GLOBE, or SUN. Filipinos may well not know what the capital city of Italy or Spain is. But they all of them have memorised the 80 or so SMART, SUN and GLOBE prefixes.

I have four phones. One of them is a Lenovo (4,999 pesos) tablet that is big enough to watch youtube movies and so on. Then I have a smaller Starmobile smartphone (5,999 pesos) that is easier to use than the tablet is in some contexts. They are just for internet. I almost never use either of them to send text messages or make and receive calls. That is where the Nokias come in. I have two Nokia 'normal' phones, for texting and calling.

both the Nokias are dual-sim. In the Philippines one of the Nokias has one SMART sim in it and one SUN sim. The other Nokia has a a GLOBE Sim and a 'spare' SMART Sim.

in the UK I also use the Nokia dual sim phones as it also pays to have sim's from more than one company in the UK too, not just the Philippines. In the UK I have two SMART sim's set to roaming that receive dozens of incoming text messages from the Philippines every day.

Considering buying a phone with the dual sim card facility is always a good option, you then have the facility to use two different networks at the same time.

I have Lenovo phone dual sim unlocked bought in the Philippines for....3,999 pesos. got KitKat android. not really a phone geek. drop once and it's done in,
Plus I use it for work and being in the construction industry having an expensive phone soon gets clogged up with crap.

I'll look into that, ta

I like that statement, reminds me of my father, just needed lad on the end

Some helpful advice folks, thanks for the input. The screen on my iphone 5 something is starting to really play up now. Hopefully it lasts till pay day!

did make me chuckle. I've no idea why anyone needs a screen over 5.5 inches for. Who on earth want to watch a phone screen for +2 hours while watching a film. Its beyond me. A phone is for calling texting, a bit of internet / posting dribble on facebook, playing the odd game. Truth be told I think I'm leaning towards a sony xperia z5 compact but I've got to check prices on ebay

Nice idea mate but not something I really need or require to be honest.

can you get at the battery?