What is good around $100 used?

S

spaceman

[H]F Junkie
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Jan 7, 2005
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Wife's phone needs to be replaced. Screen went. Just an old moto g so yeah. Not fixing that.

I see a 32 gb droid turbo and nexus 5 on the FS here. She just needs a solid phone. Nothing fancy. Just texts and FB crap with a good reception. Thanks
 
The Droid Turbo is a great phone overall, limited to the internal storage (the Droid Turbo 2 added the microSD slot proper), and it'll run circles around the Nexus 5 in terms of performance. Both of them are basically EOL products so don't expect any updates for either of them anymore (not even the Nexus 5 but there's still the huge community of support for those devices with builds of AOSP and custom ROMs based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat, can't say the same for the Droid Turbo). The "root" that seller is speaking of is called Sunshine and it works fine but it's $25 so as he stated that would be added to the cost (so about $140-ish).

I'd take the Droid Turbo myself but it's up to you and the SO to decide. If you look around for new(er) devices you can sometimes find them on eBay/Swappa/craigslist fairly cheap: I've actually had a Droid Turbo from craigslist that was $75, guy just moved on to another device and didn't want it so that was a good deal. Found a Droid Turbo 2 late last year for $125, amazing device and yes the claims of the shatterproof screen are for real as it would take a literally "He-Man" type swing with a sledgehammer square on it to cause a problem and I have my doubts even then.

I see the Nexus 5 he's got is basically unused and yes it's more than likely a refurb which ain't all that bad I suppose. I find the specs of the Droid Turbo to be more useful for myself than the older Nexus 5 (it's about 1 year older almost to the day) and the Quad HD display is quite nice but these of course are my opinions on things. If you're into experimenting with stuff, the Nexus 5 would be the phone to get, but if the Wife wants something pretty solid and dependable then the Droid Turbo would be the choice I'd recommend of those two particular devices from that seller.

There's just too many used phones in that price range to even begin to start recommending so if you're going to buy one here at the [H] then you'll find something at some point useful.
 
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I picked up a lg g4 for about $110 shipped like new on eBay for someone. Actually I forgot how capable thatphone is for the price.
 
While it's possible to get a fantastic deal on an LG G4 these days in many places - it's my fave smartphone ever, even to this day I consider it as perfect as one can be for myself and my requirements for a smartphone - the downside is they do have the boot loop issue and there's basically no way to know for sure if the one you might be buying will or will not exhibit the problem or when. Yes some of the earliest models (with serious numbers 505 meaning they were manufactured in May 2015) appear to be more susceptible to the boot loop issue, especially if it's used a lot for gaming which stresses the CPU/GPU heating them up then cooling/heating/cooling/etc which is believed to be part of the failure that causes the boot loop problem itself.

It's been shown that later models manufactured into early 2016 (not a lot of them out there as LG was ramping production down by then) were still having the boot loop issue so, if you decide to get a G4 (if you find one at a great price, anything around $100 or less is pretty damned good considering) take that into consideration. LG said they're repair G4's that die for boot loop problems even outside of the original warranty period but since it's been just shy of 2 years since the G4 was released they're getting to the point where they won't do that anymore, sadly.
 
Why is it better than the droid or nexus? Both of those have faster cpus for example.
 
The G4? Well, it has a 6 core Snapdragon 808 SoC in it, a better display (matches the Droid Turbo's resolution but it's a bit brighter overall), a removable battery, a microSD slot for storage expansion, and arguably one of the very best cameras in a smartphone ever even today (16 Mpixel, f/1.8 aperture, absolutely incredible image quality). So yeah, it'll smoke either of those devices twice over and keep going but again the downside is the boot loop issue. If I could get my hands on a G4 that absolutely would never ever boot loop I swear I think I'd never buy another smartphone but that's just me, it fit all my requirements for a smartphone perfectly across the board which is why I miss having one so much. :D

Clock speed is not an actual indicator of real world performance, especially with ARM-based devices like smartphones so those "big numbers" can be misleading - the Snapdragon 808 in the G4 would literally run circles around the Snapdragon 800 in the Nexus 5 and the 805 in the Droid Turbo due to architectural improvements in the SoC (System on Chip) design.

If someone offered me any flagship smartphone on the market today free of cost I'd sell it and then use the proceeds to buy a few G4's just in case one died I'd have another to take its place, and I'm not joking in the slightest.

But for your wife I wouldn't recommend you risk the potential of buying a used G4 only to have it up and die on her when she might need a smartphone the most, grab something like one of the others or even something else that suits your/her needs at a good price. Better to get something that has a proven track record of reliability overall like the Droid Turbo than risk the money for no good reason. The Nexus 5 is also a fine device as I stated but the battery life was never a big strong point for it - the Droid Turbo will last much longer for several reasons (more efficient processor and a larger capacity battery just to name a few).
 
Space, since you're talking about my phones ;) For $25 you can pay to have the bootloader unlocked on the Turbo, and there are custom Nougat 7.1 roms already out for it. If you want to add that to the cost, I'll unlock it for you if you don't feel comfortable on your own.

Honestly, the only thing holding the Turbo back is the OS version. Putting 7.1 on there will make it a beast.
 
I wouldn't get an LG G4 because of the boot loop issue, and this is coming from a former G4 owner who was very pleased with the phone overall.
 
The G4 is indeed a great phone.. until it dies. I personally know 2 people who had this phone and both of them straight died in just outside of the year warranty. They didn't even boot loop, just died and wouldn't turn on. In addition to seeing countless other G3/G4 owners online having their phones prematurely die, there's no way I'd touch a used one.

I would go for a newer budget phone over an older flagship too, if just for warranty (most will still honor it even if purchased 2nd hand, I know at least Moto and Google will from experience) and longer software support and probably better battery life too. Can you not pick up a newer used Moto G variant for not much more than $100 too?
 
I bought the droid turbo w the 7.1 update. She does not want another moto g. Wants a better screen. Thanks
 
braamer said:
I wouldn't get an LG G4 because of the boot loop issue, and this is coming from a former G4 owner who was very pleased with the phone overall.
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The Nexus 5x is in the same boat as it's also made by LG and almost identical to the G4, hardware wise.
 
Stay away from LG g4s. My wife's we bought on swappa with a 2015 Nov manufactured date died. 13 months and it was toast...
 
spaceman said:
I bought the droid turbo w the 7.1 update. She does not want another moto g. Wants a better screen. Thanks
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The Turbo isn't on 7.1 or even 7.0. It probably won't get it at any point either since it didn't get Marshmallow until like 2-3 months after Nougat was released. If you plan on ROMing it for that, I hope your wife doesn't mind random bugs and instabilities. The Moto G4 from last year has a much better/larger screen than the ones before it, larger than that Droid Turbo's as well and still 1080p res and is on Nougat/7.0 officially even. You can get it for $130 new on Amazonhttps://www.amazon.com/Moto-4th-Generation-Exclusive-Lockscreen/dp/B01EZC9WC0 (with lockscreen ads.. which are easily removable). Notice how everyone in the reviews praise the screen. Too late now though, I guess.
 
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T4rd, I'm putting the AOKP 7.1 update on the Turbo for him. We went over the one slight bug it has (one error popup on boot).
 
Ended up putting Lineage on the Turbo. No errors, everything is working perfectly.
 
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