Urgent request for advice about replacement phone

[mikeprice]

Hi all

 

Mrs mikeprice has just found out that her phone will not support WhatsApp after 1st Jan

 

Thing is - she has only just started using the app but now relies on it for communication with family - especially about the new grandson who is still in hospital

 

Sooooo

 

now she needs a new phone quickly - not enough time to check things out properly - and anyway I am no phone expert as I only use them for mapping cycle rides and as phones

 

so

the basics

she uses no apps at all - except WhatsApp - and basically just uses the phone as a phone, for text messages and occasionally as a camera (about 3 photos a year!!!)

and I am pretty sure she will not be happy with a physically large phone - the smaller the better

 

 

Are Nokia still good??? Currys (yes - I know) have one for £80 which comes with Android 10??????

 

 

Thanks - need to get it and have it set up by 31st Dec - so bit of a rush!!!

Probably need something I can pick up from a shop as delivery will take too long

[Steve21]

Out of curiosity is it actually an iPhone 4 she has? Most the stories that have come out recently list a huge amount of iPhones and then say actually they can all be upgraded to support it

 

Steve

[ArtemisLion]

When people ask me for a cheap smartphone I usually recommend whatever the current Moto G is, as they are great phones for £160-£200.

 

If you are sure your wife doesn't want to take the odd pick or use the browser then you can get a Oppo A5 for about £100, Probably the cheapest usable phone I've seen recently.

 

Good luck and congrats on the new gandson.

[mikeprice]

Firstly

 

 

WHAT - you expect me to allow Mrs mikeprice to have apple carp in the house

 

have you not read my posts!!!!!!

 

or - more sensibly - no current is a samsung old thingy running Android 4.something

 

secondly - we have seen a MOTOROLA Moto E6S in Currys and Argos for about £80 that kinda seems OK

 

will look at the Oppo A5

 

Thanks to all

[Ditto]

I've been happy with Moto G. This will be hard to beat https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7126877 or via JL https://www.johnlewis.com/motorola-g8-power-lite-smartphone-android-4gb-ram-6-5-inch-4g-lte-sim-free-64gb/royal-blue/p4934678

[steveg]

I've been happy with Moto G. This will be hard to beat https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7126877 or via JL https://www.johnlewis.com/motorola-g8-power-lite-smartphone-android-4gb-ram-6-5-inch-4g-lte-sim-free-64gb/royal-blue/p4934678

 

I've got a g6 as a work phone, our deputy has a g5 (I think!) my dad and daughter both have a G6, and she just got a G9 plus for Christmas. All have been very reliable and always good value for money.

[Roberto]

Firstly

 

 

WHAT - you expect me to allow Mrs mikeprice to have apple carp in the house

 

have you not read my posts!!!!!!

 

If you want something that will last a long time, Apple's phones are the best in the business for longevity in terms of things like OS support, maintainability, etc (for example, my employer recently traded in about 800 iPhone 6s which was a model released in 2015 but will run the last Apple phone OS. Yes you pay a premium if you're buying new Apple gear. That's why. I'm not aware of many Android devices that can claim the same.

 

or - more sensibly - no current is a samsung old thingy running Android 4.something

 

secondly - we have seen a MOTOROLA Moto E6S in Currys and Argos for about £80 that kinda seems OK

 

will look at the Oppo A5

 

Thanks to all

 

The Oppo is a good shout but I'd look at Google's own devices the pixel 4a or 5 are strong choices imo.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Roberto

[mikeprice]

OK - update - based on urgency

only reasonable thingy I could get today - which gives me a day to get everything sorted was the Motorola from Tesco Mobile

 

which is OK - looks good

 

sooooooo

 

firstly - everything SHOULD be backed up to Google

check - OF COURSE it isn't - somehow it has become disabled

 

so I re-enabled it and watched the sync run

 

for ages

 

 

so - next - move SIM to new phone - which involves snapping off the different size thingys down to nano and putting the SIM into new phone

 

all looks good - phobe works as a phone - connects to wifi OK

connects to the google account

 

 

by the application of a miracle Mrs mikeprice remembers her Google password first time - Never been known before!!!

 

all sorted

 

 

left it for ages because it decided to apply a load of updates and had a bath

 

when finished all updates done

 

 

restore from Google

 

not so much

 

 

no contacts

 

installed WhatsApp

 

no backup on Google Drive so couldn't restore its settings

 

 

Oh FFS

 

contact with her son is important overnight so I fiddled the nano SIM back into its bigger bits

 

and I'll try to find out about why the Google backups are not done tomorrow before she gets up

 

or just cheat and stuff everything onto an SD card somehow

 

 

how hard can it be????

 

 

 

 

when I did mine it kinda just worked

[Roberto]

... reads above saga... remind me again why it’s apple who are “carp” somehow?

 

Seriously though, to transfer WhatsApp settings to a new iOS device, WhatsApp have designed the mechanism around a separate backup routine inside WhatsApp itself that writes a backup to iCloud separate from the normal device iCloud backup routine, so you have to trigger the WhatsApp backup then an iCloud backup to get something you can restore/transfer. God knows why other than because Facebook are terrible terrible people I guess?

 

Might be worth having a poke in WhatsApp settings to see if it’s the same on Android. It probably will be similar.

[jedmondson]

WhatsApp android has its own backups. Settings / chat / chat backups? You do need to be signed into Google drive on WhatsApp first though.

[Steve21]

OK - update - based on urgency

 

Going back to my original point was in regards to checking if what you're reading is actually going to affect the phone you currently have (whether Apple or not...) as WhatsApp already said that they aren't blocking any new ones in January (most of those were 2020 changes), there's just policy updates coming into play:

 

All the news reports that say WhatsApp will stop working on the old iPhones and Android devices that don't run at least iOS 9 or something newer or Android 4.0.3 or something newer from January 1, 2021, aren't saying anything new. These old phones are already not supported. They are just talking about the WhatsApp policy change that was announced in December 2019, and somehow connecting it to January 1, 2021.

 

Which is what's linked on their site as it is now, so would be worth checking what it's actually runnig on: https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/download-and-installation/about-supported-operating-systems/?lang=en

 

In other words, nothing is changing on January 21 as far as WhatsApp and phone support is concerned. The phones that are supported right now - iPhones running iOS 9 or newer and Android devices on Android 4.0.3 and newer - will continue to be supported on January 1, 2021. And all devices that are not supported right now, which are extremely old iPhones and Androids for which support was dropped in February 2020, will continue to be NOT supported.

 

So just to recap and make it clear: So far, there is no change in WhatsApp policy on supported phones. If WhatsApp is working on your phone right now, it will continue to work on January 1, 2021.

 

At least will stop you having to worry about fixing all this today if you find it is still supported, and will give you time to sort out the issues with the new one (As others said whatsapp backups up separately to most phones within its own settings)

 

Steve

Edited December 31, 2020 by Steve21

[MkII]

On my Android recently I just signed into WhatsApp and everything was restored. No backup needed.

[mikeprice]

OK - new phone now working - only took a day!!!

 

it would have helped if most of the apps that claim to be able to transfer Contacts actually transferred contacts

 

and also it Android 4.something had the export contacts button in a place you could finding without sacrificing 17 goats and 3 frogs (if anyone is missing - sorry!!!)

 

anyway - also time lost due to all sorts of charging problems

 

 

anyway - turns out the whenever a message came up asking anything about Google 'someone' always said 'no'

due to security reasons

 

 

hence every possible backup or sync possibility had been blocked

 

including - for some reason - Good Drive had been uninstalled which didn't help!

 

still - all done now - once I realised the problem Whatsapp was easy - just found the setting to allow backup - added the gmail account - and it worked

Then just needed to uninstall Whatsapp on the new phone and re-install it - apparently this is the only way it can restore from a backup

 

 

just need to copy the photos across now