Advice on what new mobile phone to get?

[ParallelLines]

A few threads I’ve posted on that might be pertinent -

Experiences with cell phone sub-carriers

I’m going to answer this two ways, the first is from the reverse of what you said - I went from a MVNO to a Primary carrier, and then as a former employee (Tech support) of a major carrier. So first, going from a MVNO to a major carrier was a huge step forward (improvement) in customer service, specifically. In general, if something was wrong prior to that, it was reboot your phone, check the signal, sorry, must be the network. Done. I won’t say you get what you pay for, but if something was…

AT&T is sending me a phone unsoliticited, activating it, and disabling my current phone?

Figured I’d share this link for those who are frustrated with features they don’t want and won’t use on a newer phone - (warning there -IS- one 3g phone on the list, so I’d avoid it, but most are 4g) The top pick is $44 on Amazon, which is pretty darn good for a budget phone with no carrier incentives. WARNING WARNING WARNING - I said this upthread, but when I did this as a job, it was always frustrating - not all carriers support the same bands (frequencies) on 3g/4g/LTE/5g - so check with…

The first has some of the then-current pay as you go T-mobile plans, as well as some basic analysis of the non-primary carriers, the last is another user in your situation, and my last post has a link to a number of quality ‘dumb’ phones.

One word of caution, which will ALMOST certainly not be needed - if you get an unlocked phone you will probably be absolutely fine for most of your use. But, you will need to take a little more time researching to make sure that the bands it supports are the bands in the areas you will be using it. Almost never an issue for a basic call or text, but if it touches on data, it can get a lot more squirrely - like an MMS.