Time to replace the mobile
I use my mobile phone a lot and, even though I don't look at it quite so often now that I have a smartwatch, it still gets hammered every single day. For almost 3 years now, my digital companion has been an HTC One M8. A very able beast she is too, so much so that I felt no need to spend an extra £12 a month to upgrade to the HTC 10 last year.
HTC. Ah yes, I have used many of your phones over the past few years. Between work and personal mobiles I have had the Hero, Desire, Desire S, One X and One M8. Great phones all. I like HTC; I like HTC Sense. Or at least I did. A system update a while back introduced more crapware that I didn't want and couldn't uninstall. Things that I had to go and disable because they wouldn't stop firing unwanted notifications at me: News Republic, Peel Remote, take a bow. However, once disabled, things got more or less back to normal. Apart from the odd time when she doesn't charge up overnight. And the increasing number of occasions when she stutters a little. She's getting old and she's had a hard life. It is time I think for honourable retirement.
So I am on the prowl for a new device. It has to be high-end because of the amount of time I spend on the thing - I don't like lag - but it doesn't have to be from a well known brand. I know there is a new flagship HTC due out soon (following the rather poorly received U Ultra), but that will be well over £500 to buy or over £40 per month on contract. Google is refreshing its Pixel range later this year, but the cost issue remains. Gone it seems are the days when you could pay nothing up front and less than £30 a month for a flagship phone (as I did when I got the M8).
I am thinking about this OnePlus 3T thing. Significantly cheaper than the Pixel, but still with pretty meaty performance (Snapdragon 821, 6GB RAM) and the Oxygen UI skin is light-touch. Also, they've just brought out a limited edition Midnight Black version which does look very nice. It does however have a 5.5 inch screen, so I'm not sure if that is just getting a little too big. Something I have probably said about every smartphone upgrade these past 7 or 8 years. At some point though, a phone will get too big, question is: is that now with a 5.5 inch screen? (As it turns out, following a lunchtime jaunt to the O2 shop, its overall size is not that much bigger than the M8.)
Whatever I decide on, I am probably just going to buy the phone outright. Yes, it is a bit of a financial hit but, continuing with a SIM only tariff, it works out cheaper over the 24 months required for a contract and gives me the option of switching from O2 to a cheaper network at any time. Food for thought...
HTC. Ah yes, I have used many of your phones over the past few years. Between work and personal mobiles I have had the Hero, Desire, Desire S, One X and One M8. Great phones all. I like HTC; I like HTC Sense. Or at least I did. A system update a while back introduced more crapware that I didn't want and couldn't uninstall. Things that I had to go and disable because they wouldn't stop firing unwanted notifications at me: News Republic, Peel Remote, take a bow. However, once disabled, things got more or less back to normal. Apart from the odd time when she doesn't charge up overnight. And the increasing number of occasions when she stutters a little. She's getting old and she's had a hard life. It is time I think for honourable retirement.
So I am on the prowl for a new device. It has to be high-end because of the amount of time I spend on the thing - I don't like lag - but it doesn't have to be from a well known brand. I know there is a new flagship HTC due out soon (following the rather poorly received U Ultra), but that will be well over £500 to buy or over £40 per month on contract. Google is refreshing its Pixel range later this year, but the cost issue remains. Gone it seems are the days when you could pay nothing up front and less than £30 a month for a flagship phone (as I did when I got the M8).
I am thinking about this OnePlus 3T thing. Significantly cheaper than the Pixel, but still with pretty meaty performance (Snapdragon 821, 6GB RAM) and the Oxygen UI skin is light-touch. Also, they've just brought out a limited edition Midnight Black version which does look very nice. It does however have a 5.5 inch screen, so I'm not sure if that is just getting a little too big. Something I have probably said about every smartphone upgrade these past 7 or 8 years. At some point though, a phone will get too big, question is: is that now with a 5.5 inch screen? (As it turns out, following a lunchtime jaunt to the O2 shop, its overall size is not that much bigger than the M8.)
Whatever I decide on, I am probably just going to buy the phone outright. Yes, it is a bit of a financial hit but, continuing with a SIM only tariff, it works out cheaper over the 24 months required for a contract and gives me the option of switching from O2 to a cheaper network at any time. Food for thought...
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