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Comment by quantisan | Hacker News Reader

I had a ZTE Monte Carlo and used it for 3 years. It's surprisingly durable as a device. Everything works and there're minimal physical damage after my careless use for 3 years. Whereas my other Chinese brand phone (Umi) had more and more problems as it wears out just 1 year after.

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I'm currently rocking the indestructible, inexhaustible nokia 105 (phone flashlight ftw), but next year when I go east to seek my fortune on the continent I've accepted that a smartphone and associated nightly charging ritual will become essential.

What would HN recommend as a cheap, durable android device? These ZTE things look pretty good...

Also, what happened to those ultra cheap windows mobile devices targeted at "emerging markets?"

Moto E, G, etc.. Almost as cheap as chinese brands, but with much better update / software support.

I have Moto G. Software updates are fairly regular, but I still switched to Cyanogenmod. I'd say there isn't much difference between CM and stock android. You can tether with CM without worrying about telco tethering blocks, something that doesn't work on stock android

"You can tether with CM without worrying about telco tethering blocks, something that doesn't work on stock android"

Doesn't that depend on your carrier? IIRC some carriers detect tethering by looking for packets with different TTL values (which would represent different devices' defaults, or indicate an extra decrement as the packet went through the phone), or inspecting HTTP User-Agent.

potentially, but stock Android tells the carrier it's tethering, and there's no way around it. CM doesn't. http://danielpocock.com/android-betrays-tethering-data

You can hack around both TTL values and user-agent btw. Deep packet inspection, maybe less so

I was unable to replicate his results on my Nexus 5 running AOSP. This behavior has possibly changed in newer versions of Android.

Also, DPI can be trivially bypassed by running all traffic from your phone through a VPN. All traffic, tethered or not, will be indistinguishable to your carrier.

On my Android Moto G, running Android 4, I could not get around my carriers (Three UK) tethering block. CM solved that.

VPN would work for DPI true, hassle though.

Are you running the 'stock' Google-provided ROM, did you try an actual fresh installation? I'm running a clean AOSP ROM, without any kind of CM customizations.

It depends how much of an upgrade you're looking for. If you want a flagship-esque phone without the price the new $220 Moto G is an excellent pick. I absolutely love mine—it's fast, has a good battery and is much more stylish than other phones in the category.

The only thing keeping it back from being a flagship is the camera. Also possibly the 5.1 screen-size. But hey, I prefer the 5" screen over the 5.5" to 6" ones, so it works for me.

EDIT: Also, Motorola has almost no bloatware on the phones. The few apps they pre-install are actually quite good.

I got the Moto G 3rd generation a few weeks ago, and I really like it, so I second this recommendation.

My two main complaints are that you can't touch to wake (and there's no physical button on the face) and that I don't get an SMS notification when the phone is sleeping if the messaging app is already open to the person who sent the new message (which is very, very common for conversations).

If it's not the focused app, I get one like normal.

What is a flagship? Just a really good phone?

It just means the company's primary high-end phones. For example, the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6.

Moto E or G - wide base, good support, replacement parts easily available and installable. My kids keep breaking my screen, and I can replace the screen assembly for 30 bucks (takes about 20 minutes).

>Also, what happened to those ultra cheap windows mobile devices targeted at "emerging markets?"

Nokia 635, $40: http://www.amazon.com/AT-Nokia-Lumia-635-Contract/dp/B00LBFF...

We bought one for my future mother-in-law, because the Windows Phone tile system was easier for her to deal with than the Android home screen. Plus, when she dropped it in a puddle after a few months, no big deal.

> Nokia 635, $40

I don't understand why these low cost Nokia's get so little love here in the U.S. My 520 was $50 a few years ago and is a rock solid piece of hardware. I guess it's the missing apps on Windows mobile?

I bought a Nokia 640 for $99

It's great. I love it. It's not quite as nice as my old phone, but it's 90% of the value, for 15% of the price.

And in some ways, it's better than my old phone (lighter, more damage resistant, better battery life, better cellular reception)

This looks pretty sweet. And will run windows 10 apparently. Shame it doesn't go for less than £50 without a contract. Double the US price, as usual.

EDIT: Except it comes in 512mb and elusive 1gb RAM versions, with identical product names and prices, so I have to search around to get the good one. This is how it starts! Perhaps I don't need a smartphone...

I bought a Xiaomi Note 2 months ago and really happy with it. It's comparable to an iPhone in terms of quality and at least twice cheaper (~315$). The only downside is that you have to figure out how to install Google Play Store by yourself (and most online tutorials on how to do it are outdated).

HTC Desire 610, 170USD. I don't know about durable yet, but at a quarter the price of a new iphone and a decent feature upgrade all around from a 5-year-old iphone 4, I'm happy.

ZTE is as big as Huawei. Both of ZTE and Huawei manufacture telecom equipments. Umi is a tiny company. That's why ZTE phone is much better than Umi phone.

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