New Phone
My venerable Nexus 5 phone has lasted me nearly 3 years, but there is a growing spot where the screen seems to be delaminating and the battery is not lasting through the day any more. So I decided to replace it and started to research all the many phones out there.
I realized that I don’t actually need a high-end, flagship phone any more, Android is now mature enough that a good, budget phone will do pretty much everything I need it to do. I don’t really play games on my phone, and I have a dslr when I need to take good pictures, so what I need is a phone that will- make phone calls (duh!), handle texting and light social media, let me listen to my audiobooks and music, take acceptable snapshots, and last a full day on a charge.
After going backwards and forwards on phones from BLU, Alcatel, LG, etc.etc., I decided to go with what is seen as the best of the budget phones- a Moto G 3rd Generation. It is not the fastest phone (in fact, in performance it’s a little behind the 3 year old Nexus 5 it’s replacing), nor does it have the highest resolution screen (only 720p, but a lower resolution screen uses less battery), but it’s pretty much pure Android without lots of bloat added (apart from a couple of nice Moto touches like the double-twist to open the camera), and the camera is definitely a step up from the one in the Nexus 5, and as well as having supposedly great battery life, it’s waterproof (great for dog walks in the rain!). And it was only $220 (I did spring for the one with 16GB of storage and, more importantly, 2GB of RAM).
It arrived yesterday and I spent a couple of hours setting it up, and so far I like it a lot 🙂 We’ll have to see if the battery life is as good as they say, but it seems to do everything I need it to quite adeptly, and it takes surprisingly good pictures…
Jackie and Crisp both have the previous version of this phone (2nd Gen), and both are very happy with it- I shall post a further review when I’ve had it for a while and have had a chance to see what it’s like for everyday use.