For the past 10 years I never bought a phone for more than 300 euros.
I usually get a new phone every 3 years to have the latest tech and donate or recycle the old one.
For the last year I had an iPhone 13 pro (usually goes around 1100 euro) as a work phone and my personal Redmi Note 11 Pro I bought for 270 euros and not once I told myself: Man, this iphone is at least 3 times better than my Xiaomi. It’s clearly a premium product but a middle category budget phone can match most features and even more. I still have a headphone jack, bigger 120 Hz screen, IR blaster and an amazing fingerprint sensor.
Ya, this pretty much me. I had a bad experience with the budget pixel. Wouldn’t recommend them… But otherwise haven’t really missed out on having a top end flagship phone at all.
Yup, I’m on the Redmi train as well, got a Redmi Note 10, will probably upgrade next month or this month depending on how much money I have left after all expenses. Had it for 2 years or something and it has a crack throughout a good length of the screen otherwise I’d keep it even longer. Cost me 200 € new.
May just get the same phone you got or a newer one/alternative if I find one until then. -> Probably the Note 12 (Pro, if the features are worth it), looking at GSMArena right now. Rooting it again will be annoying though
Cheap smartphones are an incredible value. My wife bought a 180 EUR Realme 7 about 3 years ago, and it’s still working great, it’s plenty fast for everyday things (she’s not a gamer), has 8 GB RAM …
One thing you really need to compromise on are the cameras. But the problem is that I’m a sucker for cameras, so I keep buying expensive flagships …
I’ve purchased several budget/midrange phones as my daily driver, and the long term performance simply wasn’t worth it based on the things that I do with my phone.
Now, this is based on cheaper phones with specs from several years so this doesn’t hold true anymore.
I though genZ only bought iPhone because of the green bubble or something?
And i thought 90% of them have brain damage in general…
Aren’t they all broke as well?
This is a thing that isn’t happening, at least not among Gen Z. What a bullshit article.
As if we needed another sign that ZDnet was trash…
I fucking hate these obviously bullshit articles. “Gen Z is using feature phones”, “Gen Z are using paper maps”, “Gen Z is doing XYZ”.
No, they aren’t. At best some sad excuse for a journalist found a handful of tweets and wrote a whole article on it like it’s a “trend”.
Look, I know “journalists” are being squeezed to produce at an unreasonable rate but if you write drivel like this then you have no business calling yourself a journalist, hell I don’t even think you can call yourself a “writer” or “contributor” either. It barely passes as writing and you are contributing nothing to society.
This same BS headline happens every generation. As soon as any small trends form, the media latch onto it like it’s gonna be the next big thing…
No, feature phones aren’t gaining mass adoption again. No, feature phones aren’t going to kill smartphones. It’s just a subset of people deciding to downgrade, or who want to buy a secondary phone.
If I was not disabled with way too much time to burn, and where the weight of a phone is ideal, I would go back to a dumb flip phone like this. Smart phones are an addiction that, at best, must be consciously managed. Heck, I’m beside my workstation procrastinating right now.
It’s after 1AM and I’m meant to be sleeping…what the heck am I doing? I’ll put the phone down now, just after I post this comment and maybe just refresh my front page one more time.
and the numbers don’t lie.
Righto Scott Steiner.
I want an Android phone with a full physical keyboard, blackberry style. Not sure if I want to ‘digital detox’ but I don’t value a lot of what our common phone design has to offer.
Ooh running that shiny new Android 10! I wonder if it’s easily updatable and/or if there are images available.
Ooooo! Thank you!
What’s the phone on the left in that top image?
Edit: turns out it isn’t a phone - it’s a Gameboy Advance SP.
I heard cassettes are making a comeback too.
