Buying a smartphone is a really big hassle. I had to do that last year. I choose the Google Pixel 4A but then I had to return it since the battery was having issues. I ended up going with the OnePlus 7t. I like it it's pretty nice overall and has lasted me.
Phone wise my very first phone I got was back in 2012 was a Huawei Activa 4G, it was part of a prepaid plan, it cost about $100USD for signing up for the plan and the phone lasted me about a year and a half. It wasn't even that good of a phone back then but I was able to get by and the pictures were not bad. I was still in highschool at the time and that's what my parents got me. It was using Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread.
Around 2013/2014 is when I got my second phone the Alcatel One Touch Fierce. That was on special i think and I was able to get it around $50USD my first phone broke and I needed a new one for a school trip that I was going on. In some way it's was better than my first one and in some other ways my first phone was better than the Alcatel one. That was running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The main difference between this phone and my first one was that it was a lot thinner, I use to be very embarrassed (and also worried that other kids would make funny of me for it) was that my first phone was very thick. So the phone was already large and then when you added a cellphone case it only make it a lot larger. But with this one it was a lot thinner even with the phone case on.
These phones were very cheap and because of that there were certain things that I could not do one them, which is why I ended up buying a 2013 Nexus 7 tablet (which I kept using until maybe 2015).
In 2014 I went to college and also had more money so I splurged and got the 2014 Moto X gen 2. I liked this phone and there were certain things about it that other phones still can't do for some reason. Moto labs was cool since I could custom order a phone to look how I wanted. Mine had a bamboo back (from from actual bamboo) the voice commands were also cool, before you had "Hello, Google" or "Ciri" or "alexa" commands without touch your phone (so getting your phones attention without touching it at all and only using your voice), so that was pretty cool and especially because on the gen 2 one you could customize the prompt that the phone respond to. So you could say "pick up that can" and your phone would respond to you and be ready to do something. So "pick up that can, and play some music" and it would play music. It did no work 100% of the time but when it did it was really cool. You were also able to customize it so that would do certain things automatically, it would automatically send messages to missed phone calls it would also go silent when ever you would have a meeting, etc. This cost me around $500USD, which I payed for all upfront, since I was still doing a prepaid phone plan. It was running Android 4.4.4 Kit Kat but after the Kit Kat update it was not as good as it initially was.
2014 was also when I got the Moto 360 smart watch that thing lasted me 3 years and it was a nice companion to my Moto X. I wish that they still kept making them and yes technically there is a new one but it's just licensing out the name. Maybe I will eventually get another smartwatch since I liked being able to look at notifications without having to get my phone out and unlocking it (even though that whole process is a lot easier now).
By 2017 my Moto X was acting up and could now longer hold a charge (it's my fault for using a fast charger) so I ended up getting the Moto G5+, it still had some features of the Moto X but a major of the cool stuff it had were not there but at least it still had motion controls (so you could start the camera, turn on the flashlight) one of the issue that I have had with my phone over the years especially with this one is that when you click on the camera app it does not always work and that the app will just close before it even brings up the camera. Android 7.0 Nougat.
2020 was when I decided to get a new one seeing how I now had a full time job for the first time and how the G5+ was just not cutting it anymore, I was not even getting calls and texts from people at times. I was thinking of getting the Moto G Stylus but that would not be out until much later into 2020, I tried the Pixel 4A and returned that and that's how I ended up with the OnePlus 7t. Overall a pretty good phone. The biggest issue that I had with it was that when ever I would use twitter and tried to open an external link on Twitter that after a minute it would freeze up chrome and seeing how I use that often it was a hassle to deal with, this lasted maybe 8 months or so.
Going through 5 different phone in 8 years is not too bad.
I would say that the Moto line is pretty good and it does have very stock Android with some extra stuff here and there that are nice to have.
I may stick to One Plus for now.
PS technically my very first smartphone that I ever owned was a iPhone 3G that I purchased off some one at school, I spent $80USD on pretty much a paperweight though since it never worked and the repair shop that I took it to never got around to fixing it. By this point in time the iPhone 4 was already out and was very popular. (I think technically the iPhone 4s was just about to come out)
From what I am seeing it does not guarantee the pre-order bonus stuff and also it's showing up as $49.xx USD for me and that just seems to be the base version. Maybe they also had a deal or something and it's now over.
ugHI:
:frogChamp: :cooked:
metacouncil.com
