A New Mobile Phone

 A few weeks ago I wrote about trying to decide if I should get a new mobile phone and use it as a dedicated work phone. As luck would have it, the mobile phone I use as our house phone stopped holding a charge. While it used to go a week or so between charges, it could only go 24 hours. It was time to replace the device. Fortunately I had already done a lot of research and had some good ideas on what to replace it with.

The phone that stopped holding a charge was a very robust demo unit given to me by Sony. I loved that phone as it had one of the best cameras at the time. I took it with me to Fiji and captured some amazing photos that no other phone at the time could match. As that trip took place a year before COVID, phones have improved a lot since then. I also have not taken many photos with that phone since I relegated it to home-phone duty. In fact, I hardly ever answer that phone as the only people that call it are scam artists or telemarketers. It is nice to keep the phone number though as it is the one tied to countless accounts and we do receive important calls on it about twice a year.

I decided to list out all of the features I need in a phone and it wasn't that long. I need the phone to be able make calls, text, work with 5G, and be as cheap as possible. While my carrier offers free phones, that comes with the catch of a service contract for several years. While I doubt I will change wireless companies, I do want to keep that option open. Besides I knew I could find a pretty cheap phone based on previous research.

Next I did an Internet search on cheap Android phones. There is only one option if I needed an iPhone and that is the SE which costs more than I wanted to spend. The search string I used was, "Cheapest smartphones for 2023." I got a nice list and looked a bit more into each of them. Ultimately I decided on the Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G 256GB (Unlocked). Best Buy had them on sale for $200 and that is an amazing deal for what you get. It has a very fast processor, 256GB of storage, and a stylus for those times when your finger is just too fat.

So what are the downsides? The phone is massive. It is not quite large enough to be a tablet but it sure isn't small enough to fit in my pants pocket without being uncomfortable when I go to sit down. That is fine though as it technically is our home phone and will stay at the house.

I have had the phone for a couple of weeks now and it is working as expected. There are a number of software updates and they installed flawlessly. I've experimented with the phone to see if I should install my work e-mail and it would work perfectly for that. Now all I need to do is see about loading it with movies and bringing it on a plane so I don't have to rely on the seat-back screen in front of me.