For years I've been a Samsung Galaxy user, but I've finally cracked and got myself an iPhone.
A refurbished one admittedly, but a pretty recent one.
Not that I've never been an iPhone user - work used to give us iPhones as the corporate phone, but I always had my own phone as well, and that was also a Samsung - good battery life, decent screen, reasonable camera, reliable, and since I retired four years ago now my Galaxy's been my one and only phone - and it's been a really good productivity aid.
But after four and half years, it's beginning to show its age. It's still stuck on Android 6, and it needs a new battery - only twenty five bucks for a third party one admittedly -but I took that as a sign that it was time to change.
Now, where we live, we have to have Telstra.
Non negotiable.
Optus's coverage is ok over most of the town, but we live in a blackspot. Vodafone's not great either, but Telstra works, a bit on the edge but we get a usable signal.
This means that you can either buy a phone from Telstra, either straight up or on a plan, or else you buy an unlocked phone from someone else.
Now you can buy a reasonable midrange phone from Telstra for not a bad price, and if you wanted the convenience of a phone on a plan it's probably not too bad a deal, but you can probably do better buying from one of the online retailers.
And that's why I ended up with a 12 month old refurbished iPhone.
Most corporates have standardised on iPhones as a company phone creating a healthy market in good second hand and refurbished phones, but it's not the case with Samsung phones meaning you probably are going to end up buying new.
So on the day I did this I could get a 12 moth old refurbished iPhone 8 for $600 and a new Galaxy S10 for a $1000. As always your mileage will vary, and it could be that next week someone drops a whole lot of decent Galaxy's on the market.
Being a cheapskate, I went for the iPhone and Apple's well known build quality.
I'm not a heavy phone user, and I'll probably keep the phone for a few years. So build quality and long term reliability is important to me, other things less so.
As I'm no longer working, I hardly call anyone these days, and if I do, I use my Skype account half the time, and I'm not a great user of mobile data.
In fact the principal things I use my phone for is
A refurbished one admittedly, but a pretty recent one.
Not that I've never been an iPhone user - work used to give us iPhones as the corporate phone, but I always had my own phone as well, and that was also a Samsung - good battery life, decent screen, reasonable camera, reliable, and since I retired four years ago now my Galaxy's been my one and only phone - and it's been a really good productivity aid.
But after four and half years, it's beginning to show its age. It's still stuck on Android 6, and it needs a new battery - only twenty five bucks for a third party one admittedly -but I took that as a sign that it was time to change.
Now, where we live, we have to have Telstra.
Non negotiable.
Optus's coverage is ok over most of the town, but we live in a blackspot. Vodafone's not great either, but Telstra works, a bit on the edge but we get a usable signal.
This means that you can either buy a phone from Telstra, either straight up or on a plan, or else you buy an unlocked phone from someone else.
Now you can buy a reasonable midrange phone from Telstra for not a bad price, and if you wanted the convenience of a phone on a plan it's probably not too bad a deal, but you can probably do better buying from one of the online retailers.
And that's why I ended up with a 12 month old refurbished iPhone.
Most corporates have standardised on iPhones as a company phone creating a healthy market in good second hand and refurbished phones, but it's not the case with Samsung phones meaning you probably are going to end up buying new.
So on the day I did this I could get a 12 moth old refurbished iPhone 8 for $600 and a new Galaxy S10 for a $1000. As always your mileage will vary, and it could be that next week someone drops a whole lot of decent Galaxy's on the market.
Being a cheapskate, I went for the iPhone and Apple's well known build quality.
I'm not a heavy phone user, and I'll probably keep the phone for a few years. So build quality and long term reliability is important to me, other things less so.
As I'm no longer working, I hardly call anyone these days, and if I do, I use my Skype account half the time, and I'm not a great user of mobile data.
In fact the principal things I use my phone for is
- receiving verification codes via SMS
- calling J to let her know where I've parked when picking her up
- a little bit of twitter and email checking
- checking the weather
- looking at maps if I'm not sure where I am in Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane
in fact just about any phone would do, but the iphone has a useful ecology round it of extra apps, bump covers, hands free holders for use in the car etc etc I thought I'd go for the iphone and Apple's build quality ...
[update 29 November 2019]
and I get Telstra's wifi calling service in the box - which given the sometimes spotty local cell coverage is a definite plus ...
[update 29 November 2019]
and I get Telstra's wifi calling service in the box - which given the sometimes spotty local cell coverage is a definite plus ...
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