NOTE!

This guide only focuses on buying used, good value new and niche phones!

USD is preffered because it’s the most common currency to use on any article (imo).

Yup, here goes another buying guide…

Buying a smartphone is not really an easy choice, since you get a lot of:

  • Brands

  • Choice

  • Configuration

  • Price range

This guide will follow these price ranges, and that’s because I don’t want to get queasy with infinite price ranges:

  • 10$ - 50$ for dumbphones

  • 150$ - 300$

  • 500$ - 700$

  • 1200$+

Q&A just like my laptop guide!

Q: Should performance and value be on top?

A: No. Reliability should be on top first, just like any tech product.

Q: Why used phones are popular?

A: Depreciation, just like used business-grade laptops

Q: What are the minimum as of this era?

A: Depends.

You should adapt to this Q&A and awnser for yourself.

Good starting points, because Y E S

For smartphones, you should aim for these common series choices:

  • Samsung: A-series and S-series, may vary on price

  • Xiaomi: mainline Xiaomi series, from 500$ - 1200$ (Used of few years ago - New)

  • Google: Pixel a, mainline and Pro (or Pro XL if you’re on 9 series or higher), may vary on price just like Samsung

  • BBK Electronics - a “hub” for vivo, Oppo, realme and OnePlus: Not much choice here, but OnePlus from series 12 and up would do, starts from 300$ - 800$ (may vary)

  • Motorola: a lot of choices here, price may vary!

If you want niche series of smartphones, look for:

  • Fairphone, quite expensive, but you get repair-friendliness

  • Nothing (owned by Carl Pei, not literal nothing), flashbang on the back (before 4 series)

  • Pine64 and Purism, not really recommended, but if you want Linux preinstalled, get it!

However, if you wanted dumbphones:

  • Nokia and HMD (modern series, non-smartphone)

  • KaiOS dumbphones

My personal requirements

Should be:

  • A smartphone

  • Must be boring enough

  • Have GrapheneOS support

  • 8 GB of LPDDR5X

  • Usable storage

  • smol :)

Which pretty much grounds down to 5 phones:

  • Google Pixel 6

  • Google Pixel 7a and 7

  • Google Pixel 8a and 8 [MY CURRENT ONE!]

Conclusions

Do not trust benchmarks, they’re just for show. And if you buy one for the benchmarks, congrats, get dunked by reliability score going down!