android I am going to looking for a new phone, recommendation please

18,554 · November 15, 2017

On 11/13/2017 at 11:55 PM, The Evil Overlord said:

at this point, anything by motorola

I would have thrown in on the nokia 8, it is extremely good, and very capable, but I'm losing faith in their promise to keep it updated.

Any personal favorites under Motorola?

18,554 · November 15, 2017

9 hours ago, warwagon said:

Might want to check how often those unlocked versions get updated. I was researching it when I was searching for my last cell phone and the unlocked version seemed abysmal when it came to updates.

Where might I come across this information? A simple google search or are you using somewhere like the XDA forums?

43,878 · November 15, 2017

31 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Where might I come across this information? A simple google search or are you using somewhere like the XDA forums?

https://forums.androidcentral.com/lg-v20/823713-i-have-lg-v20-unlocked-model-us996-how-do-i-get-latest-update.html

It may have come out with an update since then, but if it went from December 2016 to god knows when after september 2017 that's embarrassingly pathetic.

27,102 · November 15, 2017

Picked up a Nokia 6 for some testing last week and it's not bad... the only lousy thing about it is the camera. Otherwise it handled tasks well, tends to lag a little running several apps. Battery life is great.

19,756 · November 15, 2017

1 hour ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Any personal favorites under Motorola?

Any of them, I still have my first gen motog4g

They're all a little lackluster in the camera department, but if you don't take pics on your phone, this won't concern you. The X force range (droid turbo, I think) is their higher end stuff. Lenovo hasn't ruined the brand yet.

18,554 · November 15, 2017

4 minutes ago, The Evil Overlord said:

Any of them, I still have my first gen motog4g

They're all a little lackluster in the camera department, but if you don't take pics on your phone, this won't concern you. The X force range (droid turbo, I think) is their higher end stuff. Lenovo hasn't ruined the brand yet.

I see. I bought my daughter a Moto-X and she says it is really good, I bought it directly from Motorola (save the middleman step ) plus I was able to apply a student discount to it, I'll have to look and see if I still can pull that off again!

19,756 · November 15, 2017

3 hours ago, jnelsoninjax said:

I see. I bought my daughter a Moto-X and she says it is really good, I bought it directly from Motorola (save the middleman step ) plus I was able to apply a student discount to it, I'll have to look and see if I still can pull that off again!

Added benefit (of most western spec phones really) they're usually set up to work on most carriers

3,725 · November 15, 2017

7 hours ago, warwagon said:

https://forums.androidcentral.com/lg-v20/823713-i-have-lg-v20-unlocked-model-us996-how-do-i-get-latest-update.html

It may have come out with an update since then, but if it went from December 2016 to god knows when after september 2017 that's embarrassingly pathetic.

My unlocked LG V20 gets Android security updates and LG App updates on a frequent basis.

It appears that a lot of Android users Root their phones and could therefore easily mess up stuff that would affect automatic updates so that might be a possible explanation for any particular odd case.

Near as I can tell there is only 3 options if you want fast and frequent updates on all aspects of the software. Google Phones, Microsoft 950 and 950XL phones and recent Apple phones.

3,725 · November 15, 2017

6 hours ago, jnelsoninjax said:

I see. I bought my daughter a Moto-X and she says it is really good, I bought it directly from Motorola (save the middleman step ) plus I was able to apply a student discount to it, I'll have to look and see if I still can pull that off again!

You need to give careful thought on whether the camera in your phone is important to you or not. There is a huge drop off in quality outside of Hero phones. The Samsung S7 gets great reviews for its camera and has sold so many that used models are easy to find in any market and it will be vastly superior in every way to any current mid-range phone you could find.

I would have bought an S7 but I wanted the option of a Band 66 radio for future flexibility and Samsung only added that Radio with the S8.

If you don't care about the camera, then with Android the next thing to make sure of is the CPU and RAM and the screen resolution. You want to get a crappier lower resolution LCD if you get a crappy CPU so it has less pixels to push.

Phones are no different than desktop computers these days. You can't get something for nothing. They have a CPU, a GPU, RAM, LCD, Camera Sensor, Radios, various sensors and storage, all of which cost money.

The mid-range is a battle between the manufacturer and the consumer to see which one of those can be crap without the consumer noticing too much. The manufacturers use the Hero phones to pass in-depth reviews and the mid-range and low-end to make money.

3,725 · November 15, 2017

I am very careful with my equipment so it was quite a shock to me when an 12 year nephew was handed my 950XL phone and the first thing he did was drop it on a hard floor where it hit on the corner and shattered the internal LCD but NOT the outer Gorilla Glass layer.

This ended up in my purchase of the V20 for this and other reasons but first I investigated various case designs and how they might protect such damage from occurring with very inconclusive results. The only credible info I could locate on the actual attempt by anybody to specifically design a phone to prevent LCD damage was the LG V20.

https://www.androidauthority.com/lg-v20-drop-test-714756/

http://www.ubergizmo.com/articles/lg-v20-durability-drops/

So if drop protection is a concern, careful investigation of your prospective device might be in order.

Reviews on the internet are very shoddy in general. For example many reviews actually downgraded the V20 for falling apart every time it is dropped! They couldn't be bothered to discover that instead of indicating a fragile phone, it is careful engineering design to protect the LCD.

3,725 · November 15, 2017

I briefly looked into Moto but could not find any good availability in my area but the "plug in" accessories sure seem like the first cell phone innovative idea to come along in a long time...

https://www.neowin.net/news/motorola-announces-the-polaroid-insta-share-printer-moto-mod

18,554 · November 16, 2017

@DevTech, would this be a good one to consider?

3,725 · November 16, 2017

40 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

@DevTech, would this be a good one to consider?

That's the 918 variation of a V20

It is pretty much identical to the 915 model I bought and has the advantage of some ROM availability should you desire to root and play with ROMs down the road. I could flash my 915 with a 918 ROM but I'm holding out for a Oreo 915 to come out at some point.

Anyways I digress horribly. The 918 will work smoothly with T-Mobile and also has Band 66 which is a future source of low cost LTE.

If you want to use it on another carrier, I'll try to assist if you give me carrier details so we can check radio bands. Note that the bands a Carrier will use depends sometimes on the geographical region but also many of the bands they provision in their specific model are never used so if the bands match up to what is actually being used in your area then the phone will work ok with a few rare exceptions where the Carrier blocks a specific phone for silly ugly spiteful reasons.

Despite comments you might see, there is no phone in existence that has every possible radio band. You need to pay attention to bands when buying phones outside of a Carrier.

990DS (Global)

2G bandsGSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 - SIM 1 & SIM 2

3G bandsHSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100

4G bandsLTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 17(700), 20(800), 28(700), 38(2600), 39(1900), 40(2300), 41(2500)

SpeedHSPA 42.2/5.76 Mbps, LTE-A (3CA) Cat9 450/50 Mbps

918 (T-Mobile)