5.5 inch with good battery & camera under £200?

Soldato
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I've been browsing the web and there are plenty of conflicting recommendations for Android smartphones under £200. I don't really want to mess about with importing direct from China - presumably UK based ebay suppliers are ok?

Anyway, aside from wanting a well made and decent performing phablet the key things I'm looking for are:
  • 5.5 Inch HD screen (would rather go larger than smaller)
  • Good battery life (to get at least to full day out of it)
  • Decent camera
The Lenovo P2 sounds ideal and was recently recommended on a review site at £169, however I can't find it for less than £220 from anywhere that looks reputable. Some other contenders that may involve compromises:

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4x (£179 ebay UK dealer)
Nokia 6 (£200 high street retailer)
Wileyfox Swift 2 X (£145 big river)
Huawei P10 Lite (£180 high street retailer)
Moto G5 Plus (£200 high street retailer)
Honor 6X (£190 high street retailer)

Any top tips please (or ones to avoid) from the above, or is there a great alternative or bargain deal that I've missed?

 
Last edited:
Soldato
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I have the Lenovo P2 from 3. £200 unlocked

I've no idea why they stopped selling them. Apparently there are few problems with the phone but I don't have any problem with mine.

Camera...well it's not the best but not the worst.

Battery ....mind blowing
 
Soldato
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Remove the Wileyfox Swift 2 X from your list.

I purchased one as an emergency phone when i dropped and broke my Nexus 6.

Good Points:
  • Excellent battery life
  • Fantastic build quality - feels way more expensive than it's price tag
  • Virtually stock Android
  • Screen is excellent (although 5.2" 1080P, so smaller than your requirement)
  • Phone is fast despite the Snapdragon 430 SOC. 3GB RAM helps.
  • NFC, Fingerprint reader, Quick Charge 3.0 via USB Type C
Bad Points:
  • The Camera - Compromises have to be made somewhere and this is it. Low light performance is terrible. This is the one area that I really noticed the step down from previous Nexus 6.
Overall I'm happy with it as a temporary stop gap until I see something I like/can afford.
 
Associate
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I know you mentioned that you don't want to import from China but you can get the Lenovo P2 from Gearbest for £158 with Priority line shipping which they ship to a UK address and then to you via Yodel.
 
Associate
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If the Huawei P10 lite tickles your fancy (isn't it only a 5.2 inch screen though? And camera isn't the best?) Then there's a deal at the moment to get it for anything between £90 and £155, depending on whether you use topcashback and whether that pays out, and how 1 month contracts work.

The detail is in here:

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hu...ing-tcb-50-tracked-net-15499-50-10499-2830983

Suffice to say:
a) You can buy the phone for £140 plus a £15 rolling one month contract with either o2 or Vodafone, which I understand is completely fine to cancel after 1 month, no issue there. From what I've read it should be unlocked to any network.
b) It gets slightly dodgier but slightly cheaper if you ask for a refund on the 1st month paid, before 14 days are up, which by distance selling regulations you apparently can (but unclear how that affects keeping the phone, some suggestion that you should be fine doing that). This would save you the £15 to take it to £140.
c) Also topcashback are doing £50 back on phones bought at CPW on a one month rolling contract, but unclear how long you need to be on the contract for before it will pay out, so if you do cancel the contract as part of option a or b, it may not pay out. Some suggestion you can do a / b and still get c, but no guarantee.

There's a lot of conjecture in the comments but no absolute info, at least last I checked (which was a couple of days ago admittedly), but worth reading through if you do want it.

Either way £155 is cheaper than you've found, and depending how risky you want to make it, you could potentially get it as low as £90. The topcashback is a no risk thing to try, if you don't get it, you don't get it. If you do, bonus! Just don't rely on it as part of your decision. I was tempted by it as a backup phone as it was on my original shortlist, but reviews are a little patchy and it seems my dodgy purchase from China may actually be coming after all (a ZTE Axon 7 at £175) so I'll probably not bother with this now. But at £90 it'd be a steal, and even at £155, it's a pretty decent price.

Incidentally I had a similar dilemma myself - in short looking for a new phone, not really wanting to spend more than £200. Only differences were I wasn't necessarily after 5.5" (certainly no bigger than that), and was happy to try buying from China. Also I wanted 64gb internal memory + SD card (unless a fantastic 32gb deal came along). Spent quite a bit of time looking around, looking at motorolas, samsungs, xiaomis, huaweis, lenovos, LGs, any number of less well known brands. For me the ZTE Axon 7 was by far the best value for money, and until I saw that deal, none of the other sub-£200 phones ticked all the boxes - be it poor camera, poor phone quality, not enough memory, etc etc. Main issue with the ZTE is buying from abroad though, and more specifically gearbest, who seem a little dodgy and frustrating. I don't think you'll get anything that does everything well, for less than £200, if you don't want to go down the china route (or even if you do). So may be worth thinking about what you want to compromise on.

Other phones that may come in at your price range, not sure on UK prices though
Moto G5 Plus (decent camera apparently but phone quality not the best)
Lenovo P2 (camera is apparently pretty poor, otherwise decent)
Xiaomi Mi A1 (pretty decent all round, my second budget choice and almost pulled the trigger a couple of times. I think it recently started being stocked to order from Spain for 220 euros, which may be acceptably local for you. Check but should be covered by warranty (chinese imports aren't). Camera not the best but OK. Can get from China for £150ish)
Samsung A5 - bit pricier but a decent lower quality version of the S range.

Final comment - I'm by no means an expert so don't rely on any of the above thoughts, and do your own research to verify if you do!

Hope helps!

Edit: happy to share my full list if you want - I had a whole spreadsheet going with colour coding, about 20 phones on there!
 
Soldato
OP
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Moto G5 Plus (decent camera apparently but phone quality not the best)
Lenovo P2 (camera is apparently pretty poor, otherwise decent)
Xiaomi Mi A1 (pretty decent all round, my second budget choice and almost pulled the trigger a couple of times. I think it recently started being stocked to order from Spain for 220 euros, which may be acceptably local for you. Check but should be covered by warranty (chinese imports aren't). Camera not the best but OK. Can get from China for £150ish)
Samsung A5 - bit pricier but a decent lower quality version of the S range.

Edit: happy to share my full list if you want - I had a whole spreadsheet going with colour coding, about 20 phones on there!

Feel free to share!

The Moto G5 plus looks a bit small. The G5S Plus would do it but is more expensive. How's the battery life on the Xiaomi Mi A1? Could be a contender - trying to work out whether eglobalcentral.co.uk actually ships from China rather than the EU.

Or to confuse things further, something like a used Samsung S6 Edge Plus looks like it could be within budget...
 
Associate
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Actually no struggling to find my list, only got an earlier version. I would send it to you rather than post it up as it's an excel spreadsheet but may not be so worthwhile now given it's not so uptodate.

If you're relaxing your 'no-china' rule then there are definitely better value deals there (which you obviously take at the expense of less reliable companies, longer wait and no reliable warranty). May be worth seeing what comes up on black friday. eg. again sadly through gearbest, but the rumour is that they will be selling the Xiaomi Mi 6 128gb version for £240 which is a fantastic bit of kit for that price. Up there with the S8 in all departments. No Band 20 I think which may affect your 4g depending who you're with, and only a 5.15" screen, but other than that the specs and reviews of it are really impressive.

Edit: The Mi A1 battery life I don't personally know, but from what I've read it'd get you through the day with a bit to spare unless you spend your entire day mobile gaming!
 
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