# Advice Needed - Smartphone Purchase



## UrbanMan (Jun 18, 2015)

I need to buy a smart phone. It is simply essential that I have Whatsapp, a GPS navigation app, and some other basic apps such as here in GDL there is an app very helpful for public buses (routes, trip planning). I am a Telcel customer, and intend to continue with them.

I have no knowledge of phones, other than of course I want 4G. There are many stores here in the city which are selling phones with 4 or 8 GB of internal memory quite cheap. 

Some have told me 16 GB is the absolute minimum, but the people who are saying this do quite a lot with their phones. However, they could be correct.

Thoughts?


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

UrbanMan said:


> I need to buy a smart phone. It is simply essential that I have Whatsapp, a GPS navigation app, and some other basic apps such as here in GDL there is an app very helpful for public buses (routes, trip planning). I am a Telcel customer, and intend to continue with them.
> 
> I have no knowledge of phones, other than of course I want 4G. There are many stores here in the city which are selling phones with 4 or 8 GB of internal memory quite cheap.
> 
> ...


I have been very happy with the smartphone I bought at my local Telcel store. It's a Huawei PRA-LX3 - not sure if it has 4G, but the camera is wonderful!


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## UrbanMan (Jun 18, 2015)

Isla, do you use Whatsapp and a GPS app? I know you don't drive, but many use the GPS app for walking or making sure Uber drivers know there they are going.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

UrbanMan said:


> Isla, do you use Whatsapp and a GPS app? I know you don't drive, but many use the GPS app for walking or making sure Uber drivers know there they are going.


Of course, I use WhatsApp and Messenger. I don't have a GPS app installed, but it is available for installation via the Play Store. I do have a Map app installed and use it all the time to get to places around the city, but don't feel the need for a GPS to give me spoken instructions on how to get from A to B. I can handle the navigation on my own!


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

I bought a Huawei P9 lite whatever that is and love it.. thanks Islaverde.. yes I use wahtsapp, GPS, bank on the phone etc and as you say the camera is great.

I had a smart phone that would drive me crazy as it changed all the words I put in and probably had a bug and would change languages and would substitute crazy words for what I wrote.. I junked it and now I can write in French , English and Spanish and not worry about the insane substitutions..


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Isla Verde said:


> Of course, I use WhatsApp and Messenger. I don't have a GPS app installed, but it is available for installation via the Play Store. I do have a Map app installed and use it all the time to get to places around the city, but don't feel the need for a GPS to give me spoken instructions on how to get from A to B. I can handle the navigation on my own!


The Map App —is— a GPS app. There is no need for a dedicated GPS app unless you have a specialized requirement. I have one for hiking and running. However, the regular map app uses the GPS receiver in the phone to know where you are.


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## UrbanMan (Jun 18, 2015)

Isla Verde said:


> It's a Huawei PRA-LX3


This phone sells for over 4000 pesos, very much on the expensive side. Looks very nice, but possibly overkill for what you are doing with it.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

TundraGreen said:


> The Map App —is— a GPS app. There is no need for a dedicated GPS app unless you have a specialized requirement. I have one for hiking and running. However, the regular map app uses the GPS receiver in the phone to know where you are.


I thought a GPS app gave you spoken instructions for getting to your destination. It's true that my map app tells me where I am, but I never paid attention to this information as I usually can figure that out on my own!


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## eastwind (Jun 18, 2016)

citlali said:


> I bought a Huawei P9 lite whatever that is and love it.. thanks Islaverde.. yes I use wahtsapp, GPS, bank on the phone etc and as you say the camera is great.
> 
> I had a smart phone that would drive me crazy as it changed all the words I put in and probably had a bug and would change languages and would substitute crazy words for what I wrote.. I junked it and now I can write in French , English and Spanish and not worry about the insane substitutions..


I have an android phone. I installed Spanish as well as English. When I'm typing, the keyboard space bar says either "< English (US) >" or "< Espanol (ES) >". If I swipe the spacebar sideways it changes which language I'm typing in. The Spanish keyboard includes the N with the squiggle over it to the right of the L key, but more importantly, the auto-correct feature auto-corrects using the dictionary for the language you're typing in. So if I type "Island" using the spanish keyboard it wants to auto-correct to "Islandia", whereas the EN keyboard doesn't try to correct that word. 

It was a while before I figured out how it all worked, and I was as frustrated as citali until I did.

I bought a high-end smartphone because I had kept my previous phone for 10 years. I figured that I would keep the new phone a long time and buying the top-end was better in the long run. It's now about a year and a half old.

It came with 32GB of "storage". I've made almost no effort to cull my installed apps, I just stop using the ones I don't like, so I have a lot of apps I could remove if I wanted. I've got about 10GB free. The summary lists 5.61GB of apps. I store very little in the way of personal files. Some people need lots of space for music and video on their phone, but I don't use it for that, I have 400 MB of user data, almost all still images that I could easily offload. This is very little, maybe 30 pictures or so.

It says 20.8GB of system/user data, and if I subtract the 5.6GB of apps and .4GB of user data that's about 15GB for Android, which seems like a lot given that some phones have less memory than that. Perhaps the version of android you get, or the available features, are constrained if you don't have enough memory for the "full build".

If you think you'll have trouble keeping the phone for more than a year or two, my advice would be different, but if you can expect to use it for 4 years I'd invest in a phone with 32GB of storage. If you want to do the Millennial thing and store a bunch of music on it and walk around with earplugs in all the time I'd recommend even more storage, but maybe a phone with removable storage would serve for the extra. 

The phone also has 4GB of "memory". This is, I think, volatile DRAM for use as main working memory rather than storage. This memory may be integrated into the CPU chip rather than on a separate chip - which won't matter to you except if so it means you don't have any choice about how much of it you get for a particular phone model, which will generally always have the same type of CPU.

All that said, Apple et al charge outrageous premiums for their models with more storage. It costs them really very little extra to ship a phone with 32 rather than 16GB of storage (a few bucks at most) and they mark that up to over $100. 

The best advice I had was from a friend who said: if you've already bought into the whole Apple ecosystem, of course get an iPhone - but be aware that you'll eventually own an apple laptop and notebook as well if you don't already. If you don't have anything Apple already, get an Android. Sure the different play stores make a tiny difference, but don't obsess on that, pick an ecosystem and stick with it.


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## Zorro2017 (Jan 9, 2017)

I use a cheap Hisense I got at the Moviestar store and Google Maps is a lot better than my Garmin GPS. We were looking for a particular hotel in Tlacotalpan, my GPS couldn't find it but the app did.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

UrbanMan said:


> This phone sells for over 4000 pesos, very much on the expensive side. Looks very nice, but possibly overkill for what you are doing with it.


I do a lot more things with my phone than I have mentioned here. I could afford the price and I love the camera and editing program (the most important feature for me), so it isn't overkill at all!


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## eastwind (Jun 18, 2016)

Since we're all sharing....

My phone is a Samsung 7 Edge model. If I could do it over, I'd not get the edge feature, that was $100 nearly wasted. It cost nearly US$800 new, but I got a BOGO offer and gave the second one to my brother. My previous phone was a Blackberry I paid nearly $500 for in 2005, which I got about 12 years out of - $41.50/yr. I suspect I'll not do nearly as well on the samsung, but it has a lot more utility.


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## Zorro2017 (Jan 9, 2017)

It seems that most phones plug in charger inlets seems to go bad after 1 - 2 years these days, at least my Samsung did which is why I don't pay a lot for a phone anymore. Also the Samsung has an epoxy holding the front on which 9 times out of 10 will shatter if removed while trying to replace/repair the plug inlet. We were told in the states that there was "no guarantee" the face would not break during the repair of the plug.


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## eastwind (Jun 18, 2016)

Yeah, I've heard that. I ponied up for a cordless charger for my phone so I don't use the jack except while traveling.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Since we are sharing, I have an iPhone. They are expensive to buy unlocked but it was worth it to be able to plug any SIM into it. I use it for testing software that I develop as well as for all the ordinary things, so I make enough from it to pay for it itself in short order.


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## ElPocho (Aug 25, 2017)

I brought my old phones. 
One phone has a Google project Fi phone number. I'm keeping that line. It's $20 a month plus data. Data is $10 a GB anywhere in the world. 

Fi have me two extra SIM that only do data. I can put those in my old phones and have internet service. 

When I get to Merida, I will get a basic cheap phone just for cell service, just to make and receive local phone calls. I'll get the cheapest phone or just get a SIM and pop it in an old phone.

The logic is I'm mostly using my already purchased new phone for data heavy use. 

Cell phone service is not very important.



Problem with the Project Fi service is that you need a Special phone.

Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk


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## ElPocho (Aug 25, 2017)

ElPocho said:


> I brought my old phones.
> One phone has a Google project Fi phone number. I'm keeping that line. It's $20 a month plus data. Data is $10 a GB anywhere in the world.
> 
> Fi have me two extra SIM that only do data. I can put those in my old phones and have internet service.
> ...


Update - within hours of recommending a US based cell provider, my brother walked me to the corner and we bought a SIM. Service cost is a lot cheaper than any service in the USA...

He recommends virgin, as they have a plan to allow unlimited service to the USA and Canada....


Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

ElPocho said:


> Update - within hours of recommending a US based cell provider, my brother walked me to the corner and we bought a SIM. Service cost is a lot cheaper than any service in the USA...
> 
> He recommends virgin, as they have a plan to allow unlimited service to the USA and Canada....
> 
> ...


AT&T bought the former IUSACell, now it is called AT&T Mexico. If you pay for a year at a time, you can get unlimited calls and text and 2 GB of data for Mexico, the US and Canada for about $200 mxn/month.


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## ElPocho (Aug 25, 2017)

TundraGreen said:


> AT&T bought the former IUSACell, now it is called AT&T Mexico. If you pay for a year at a time, you can get unlimited calls and text and 2 GB of data for Mexico, the US and Canada for about $200 mxn/month.


That blows my mind...
Last time I was here, it was a hassle just to buy a SIM, I mean passport paperwork etc...

Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk


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