I've been tasked with buying a smartphone for my father-in-law.
He drops phones a lot, so it needs to be tough and it needs a decent battery. Very basic internet use - e.g. email.
Any thoughts in the $50-100 price range?
Tough smart phone for father-in-law $50-$100
MJ1 on 01/08/2019 - 18:29
Last edited 01/08/2019 - 18:33
Last edited 01/08/2019 - 18:33
Comments
Any phone with glass displays will
shattercrack if dropped, so if you want a drop-proof phone all you gotta do is find a phone (possibly a non-smartphone) that's made from durable plastic.Some feature phones do have email access, such as the Nokia 8110 (aka Banana phone)
https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/24/nokia-8110-4g/Sells for less than $100 when on sale
There are also smartphones in the sub $100 range but they're Android Go phones which from my experience, are slow, but tolerable if the only things you expect to run on them are email, messaging apps, a browser and GPS navigation (one at a time, no multi-tasking as the apps close themselves when they run up against the 1GB Ram limitation). Example are the Nokia 1 and Nokia 2.1. The downsides: they're not as hardy as a feature phone and battery life is much shorter.
$50 to $100 ? lol
You can buy Chinese branded smartphones with rugged shells and waterproofing that may be within your budget, such as this one
There are heaps more and out of those you may find one that you'd like but I cant comment on reliability or warranty as I have never owned one.
Or if you'd prefer to buy locally look at Telstra Dave T83 or T84. You might be able to pick up one on Gumtree or eBay for cheaper. I'd assume these to be Tesltra locked but them being rebranded ZTE phones finding an unlock code would not be that hard.
Not possible.
Get a cheap $100 phone, and put it into a decent case. Would probably come from gumtree.
Look into older 2016-2018 phones, particularly from Xiaomi, Moto, Nokia, Oppo, LG and maybe even Samsung. Sounds like he would require one with a big screen though.