Buying a New Phone

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Rakk

The Awesome
Moderator
Hello all, Is it a good idea that to buy a phone we should sell our old phone? Any advantages?

I normally keep my old phone as a back up plan just in case :)
Certainly wouldn't sell your old one before getting a new one, but some people do indeed sell their old phones on cos it helps cover some of the cost
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I usually sell my old handset IF it’s worth anything. If it’s only worth £100 or under I’ll isually keep it as a backup as Rakl says. Apple stuff tends to hold its value much better than android.

Personally I used o2 recycle for years to see my old handsets but this year I used GoodBuyTech and have to say they were even better and offered more money than O2.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
As someone who has had 2 phones (ever) and not disposed of either, what data/safety considerations are there when getting rid of a handset?

Other than removing the SIM card, lawl...
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
As someone who has had 2 phones (ever) and not disposed of either, what data/safety considerations are there when getting rid of a handset?

Other than removing the SIM card, lawl...

I think if you do a full reinstall of the OS before letting go of it it’s pretty safe.
 

amyleah

New member
Thats really nice replies. But isnt good idea to recycle these old devices? I mean if we are not using these phones then whats the purpose to keep them instead recycle them. What you say?
 

Stephen M

Author Level
As Spyder says a reinstall should do the trick. I always keep one phone as back up but recycle the others, even if they are worthless to us there can be useful to some charities.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Here on Crete things are much the same (and the phones are the same too of course). We generally keep one of our old phones just in case and then sell the other(s) to a shop locally. I assume they're used by the shop either as spares when repairing similar old phones and/or go off to the third world to be re-used. Either way, it makes more sense to sell an old phone on and get some kind of use from it than just scrapping it.
 

Tony1044

Prolific Poster
One of the things I've noticed over the last few years with both laptops and mobile phones is that from a hardware perspective, they are better built and tend to last longer than ever before.

I think the fact that we've gone past the point for both where you get massive performance gains every time there's a new CPU for example also helps.

Cases in point - I travel all over for work. My laptop and phone travels with me. My laptop is a PCS Defiance II from 2015 and my phone a Galaxy S7 Edge that was a Christmas present in 2016. Both are still going strong and both are defying the need to upgrade.

One of the things that I do loathe about Android and Samsung in particular though, is the way they treat them as almost throwaway - Samsung commit to two major OS versions (if you're lucky - depends on timing) for their flagship devices.

Once mine stops receiving updates, I will look at either something like Lineage OS (Cyanogenmod replacement) or change my phone - and the only reason I'd do the latter is because the app my bank uses is unbelievably picky about the OS being factory-default/not rooted in any way.

I know Google have decoupled their update mechanism from the vendors with Project Treble but I'm not yet seeing any real world benefits (in fairness I've yet to see a handset recent enough). It frustrates me that high-end phones are made obsolete way before they should: that cannot be healthy for our environment and I'd love to see legislation to force them to support them for far longer. I don't mean extra features or updated OS's either - just security patching would suffice.

But if by updating every 6 months you mean buy a new handset...that's an insane idea and unless you cross a major release date you would get absolutely no benefits from doing that.
 

Tony1044

Prolific Poster
Hmm that was prophetic - my phone's been playing up lately. I'm struggling to hear people on calls even though I'm in areas with a normally good signal.

I say normally good because I've noticed, just with it sat on my desk that it is often going from no signal to HSPA to 4G at random and people have started to complain that they cannot hear me either on and off during a call.

Given it's a couple of years old and the repair companies around me aren't that good, I decided to look at buying a replacement.

Jeez there's a lot of choice.

In the end I opted for a Samsung refurbished Note 8. This flagship beastie was something like a grand when it was new but I've just picked it up for about £300.

I'd say it's worth pointing out that I had a Note 3 and I loved it - the stylus was indispensable for me. Less so for taking notes etc, but I could use it to sign documents or as a quick and dirty graphics tablet which was massively useful to help my son with homework when I was working away as we could both write/draw on a whiteboard (he had a cheap graphics tablet on his laptop).

I have no real brand loyalty in many ways - I'll buy whatever is good value and does the job but despite my reservations about how Samsung still treat their devices as throwaway, I do like their phones in use.

I'll feed back how I find it after I've set it up and used it for a while.
 

polycrac

Rising Star
I have a Samsung one, S8+, and like it well enough with the massive exception of Bixby, the un-uninstallable 'helper' with a dedicated button that means it keeps opening up. Next time it might be enough to drive me to another brand, assuming I can find something bloatware free.
 

Tony1044

Prolific Poster
I have a Samsung one, S8+, and like it well enough with the massive exception of Bixby, the un-uninstallable 'helper' with a dedicated button that means it keeps opening up. Next time it might be enough to drive me to another brand, assuming I can find something bloatware free.

Hmm. I was reading that Samsung issues firmware to turn the button off and shut down Bixby? I'll see if I can't dig it out again.

Edit: Here you go - this is what I was reading earlier - https://www.androidcentral.com/how-completely-disable-bixby
 
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Teched Up

New member
I normally keep my old phone as a back up plan just in case :)
Certainly wouldn't sell your old one before getting a new one, but some people do indeed sell their old phones on cos it helps cover some of the cost

Ditto dude. Thing is, I would prefer to keep them as backups. Reason being, to replace the old phone if I lost my new one (having sold the old one) would be far more expensive, cos you gotta sell cheaper than the value for new phones, second hand

Besides that you can pass onto family members :p
 
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