Need a new phone real soon, never shopped for one before.

[JaegerB]

Hey guys, so today my Xperia E3 finally shit itself (browsing reddit, 34% battery, freezes and when i go to turn it off and on again it doesn't turn on again and the charging status light stays dark when plugged in). I live in Australia, and my nearby tech stores are JB-Hifi, Officeworks, the good guys, bing lee, etc. I need a phone in the next few days, but since I've never actually shopped for a phone before (xperia was a gift) I was wondering what insight you guys could give me.

Specs, budget, requirements are:

 - Android

 - Preferably not samsung

 - Budget of 250 - 400 AUD

 - Needs a capable camera (nothing crazy like the pixel), but good enough because I actually couldnt take photos with my xperia it was that bad.

 - At least 4GB of internal storage

 - micro SD card slot

 - somewhat robust

 - And most important, available at a bricks and mortar store in australia (or kogan, since I know their shipping time is reasonable).

 

Any advice is appreciated!

[Droidbot]

see if you can get your hands on the zte axon 7 at officeworks or jbhifi. call up some local stores and ask about it, it's GREAT for the money.

 

snapdragon 820, 4gb ram, 64gb storage, microSD, 1440p display, 20mp camera for $399 ish aud

[JaegerB]

Just now, Droidbot said:

see if you can get your hands on the zte axon 7 at officeworks or jbhifi. call up some local stores and ask about it, it's GREAT for the money.

 

snapdragon 820, 4gb ram, 64gb storage, microSD, 1440p display, 20mp camera for $399 ish aud

I'll check it out, yeah. You got any ideas for phones on the lower end of my budget as well?

[Droidbot]

1 minute ago, JaegerB said:

I'll check it out, yeah. You got any ideas for phones on the lower end of my budget as well?

you might be able to hit a carrier phone up, what carrier you on?

 

otherwise nokia 6,. moto g5s, etc are good and around $250aud when on sale

nokia6 has a really good camera and both have snapdragon 625 which is a really nice chipset (ive been rocking the redmi note 4x based on it for months), great battery life.

[ScratchCat]

1 minute ago, JaegerB said:

I'll check it out, yeah. You got any ideas for phones on the lower end of my budget as well?

The Redmi Note series are rather good, quick and have impressive battery life.

I would recommend the Redmi Note 5 Pro if it is available, otherwise the Redmi Note 4 (Snapdragon version).

[JaegerB]

2 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

you might be able to hit a carrier phone up, what carrier you on?

 

My carrier doesn't do phone bundles (aldimobile). Thanks for the help, I'll check those out!

[TrigrH]

https://www.eglobaldigitalcameras.com.au/sony-xperia-xz1-compact-g8441-4g-32gb-black.html

 

Highly recommend, slightly out of your price range though.

[r4tch3t]

You should be able to get a second hand galaxy s7 for around 400aid. I got one second hand and it's been great.

[MrDrWho13]

1 hour ago, JaegerB said:

Hey guys, so today my Xperia E3 finally shit itself (browsing reddit, 34% battery, freezes and when i go to turn it off and on again it doesn't turn on again and the charging status light stays dark when plugged in). I live in Australia, and my nearby tech stores are JB-Hifi, Officeworks, the good guys, bing lee, etc. I need a phone in the next few days, but since I've never actually shopped for a phone before (xperia was a gift) I was wondering what insight you guys could give me.

Specs, budget, requirements are:

 - Android

 - Preferably not samsung

 - Budget of 250 - 400 AUD

 - Needs a capable camera (nothing crazy like the pixel), but good enough because I actually couldnt take photos with my xperia it was that bad.

 - At least 4GB of internal storage

 - micro SD card slot

 - somewhat robust

 - And most important, available at a bricks and mortar store in australia (or kogan, since I know their shipping time is reasonable).

 

Any advice is appreciated!

I'm not sure how 250 - 400 AUD translates to which phone tier you're looking at, but here's my advice:

Absolute minimum 16GB storage. Avoid that if possible. Never get 8GB or lower storage because you'll never fit all your apps on it. 

The top pick if you can afford it would be the Oneplus 5 or 5T.

 

Lower down in the market is the Moto G5 (Although I disagree with Lenovo's management of the Moto series), and the Nokia 6. Ideally you'd buy this year's model of the Nokia 6 but that's coming in April. I have the 2017 Nokia 6 and it's a little slow overall because of the low-end snapdragon 400 series processor.

 

You may find second hand phones at this price point. If you're looking for these, try to get the Samsung Galaxy S or Note series, or LG V series from at most 2 generations ago. Older than that and you'll end up with slow phones with degraded batteries.

 

If you find a phone you like but from a brand name you haven't heard of, you may want to be wary. They tend to package loads of crapware with the phone which fills the storage and slows the phone.

You want at least 3GB RAM these days, a Snapdragon 600 series (625, 635) or 800 series (830, 835, 845) processor (Although there are similar CPUs from other manufacturers).

 

Finally, I'm not sure how important this is where you are, but I would try to buy the phone outright sim-free, then get a sim-only contract with a carrier to avoid potentially paying more and being locked into something you don't want.