Samsung cell phone options

I switched from an S7 to the S20 FE 5G around when it came out. I think it's the best mid-range phone out there, at least when I was making the decision. The A51 is a lower tier. Getting into that tier I start to worry about battery life, sluggish performance, not great camera, etc.

The A line is their budget line. It's probably fine for a daily driver, as long as you aren't expecting flagship performance. Odds are it won't last as long as that S7, though, because the hardware isn't top notch. You have to decide if you rather spend $300 every 2 years or $900 every 3-4.

Thanks for the advice, everyone.

May just grab the S21. I can't stand low performance electronics. Was wondering if an A51 would be adequate, but sounds like maybe not.

I was at Walmart they had the Samsung S20 Ultra 5G for $650 is that a good deal?

I'm in a similar scenario. I'm also not shelling out $900 plus on a phone. $500 or so is my limit.

I was given an old Galaxy S6 a year ago. But I hate it as it has many shortcomings. It keeps randomly dying, and I'm desperate to get a new phone soon. I'm not that knowledgeable about all the latest and greatest features. From the research I have done, I am leaning towards a Galaxy S20. Fairly nice camera. AMOLED display. 12 GB of RAM. 120 refresh rate. 865 Snapdragon chip. And it's the smallest of all the recent Galaxy phones. I don't have giant hands, so the other variations don't appeal to me since they are even bigger. And the biggest advantage it has over the Galaxy S21 and other competitors is that it has expandable storage. I'm always running out of storage. And I hate the camera cutout on the Galaxy S21.

Unfortunately for me, Best Buy only gives trade in credit for the Galaxy S7 and subsequent models. Anyone have a Galaxy S20? If so, what is your opinion of it?

The Pixel 4a with 5G is the winner in my opinion for the most bang for your buck.

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I thought about getting a Pixel. But the expandable storage of the Galaxy S20 is the difference maker for me. I really hate running out of storage.

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One thing to keep in mind is if you currently use Google Photos for free unlimited storage of photos and videos. As of June 1, 2021, the pictures you take will count toward your Google Drive storage limit, and you’ll need to subscribe to Google One if you’re running out of room. Any photos and videos uploaded before June 1st 2021 won’t be affected.

Google Pixel phone users will still have unlimited High Quality uploads to Google Photos after the June 1 cutoff. Samsung and other Android Phone users will only have Google Drive (free until limit met, and then they have to pay for Google One storage) Pixel phone users will have a limit on original quality uploads, but they can set their settings to High Quality and then they have unlimited uploads. This does give you an incentive to buy (or stick with) a Google phone if unlimited free Google Photos storage is a make-or-break factor.

Also, it's not an elegant solution compared to microSD, but you can also use an OTG USB Flash Drive Storage Stick for Android such as pictured below. You get the extra storage you need while you are taking pictures, but you have a flash drive hanging off your phone, plus it takes extra battery power for your phone to power the OTG drive. I keep the majority of pictures on Google Photos uploading automatically, and once there I delete most of them to keep my microSD card with plenty of spare capacity. So its not a big deal and 128GB is plenty for me.

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How much is that flash drive? Is it quicker loading pictures than the micro SD card?

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Note: I'm not an expert on the OTG Flash drives. I don't have one but I do have an OTG cable that provides a regular powered USB port and I use it just to connect regular flash drives. I think it accomplishes the same purpose but you can have multiple flash drives using the same OTG cable. So I think it is less expensive and more versatile to just buy an OTG cable and use your own "regular" USB flash drives.

My initial purpose for buying an OTG cable was to be able to view Survival Summit mpeg4 survival videos (directly on my phone) that I had purchased on flash drives. It works great for that. I know it can also be used to transfer any kind of files including pictures and videos from your phone to the flash drive. But I don't know if you can take pictures directly to the drive. You might have to take pictures to internal storage or to an SD card and then transfer them. So if you are on vacation for example and are running out of storage you could plug in the OTG cable and transfer all of your pictures and then delete them off your phone. That is a little clunky but I know that would work and you can transfer pictures, videos, etc. very fast (up to 5GB per second if you use USB 3.0).

They also have OTG apps on the Google Play Store. You could check them to see if any of the apps allow directly taking pictures and videos straight to an OTG flash drive.

If you go to Amazon and do searches on "otg flash drive for android" and "otg cable for android" you'll see all of the different options. For the otg cables with flash drives built-in, they cost maybe $10 to $85 depending on storage size which I think is up to 512GB on some models like the one I pictured in my prior post above. The OTG cables (only) which will power and utilize your own flash drives costs less. The one I bought on Amazon costs $8.99 and is a quantity of 2 JSAUX brand USB C to USB adapter using Type C 3.0 transfer speeds (5GB/second). It is plug and play and would transfer files very fast (as long as your "regular" flash drive is USB 3.0 and not USB 2.0 which is 10 times slower than USB 3.0).

Here is a picture of the exact OTG cable that I use on my Android phone. I really like it. It is high quality, plug and play, and works great. You could connect all of your "normal" flash drives to it in a plug and play fashion directly to your Android phone. Read the Amazon description for any OTG cables or OTG flash drives to see the compatibility with particular brands and models of phones.



In summary, with everything considered, for me, I think the best mid range Android phone is the Google Pixel 4 with 5G. It has a lot of top end features and capabilities at a lower cost compared to the similar Samsung models, plus it allows me to continue to use Google Photos unlimited for free. The 128GB storage is not a factor for me, but if it was, I could alleviate that using my OTG cable and flash drives.

Samsung doing away with the Active series pisses me off to no end.

I am going to tide my 8 until it completely dies.

Any word of they ever plan on bringing it back?