Seeking advice how to pick a new cell phone for 2026

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m about done with my old Motorola smart phone and cheap Consumer Cellular plan. The phone is small and it’s very hard to type on the keyboard, and Consumer Cellular is very reasonable, but slow and unreliable if you are trying to get data without wifi service.

I have broadband internet and a land line with AT&T, and they promise a 20% discount on the monthly charge if I bundle a cell phone with them. They offer, among others, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra ($1300) and the Google Pixel 10 Pro ($650).

Any advice or experience with either of these phones? Is the Samsung worth 2x as much as the Google for someone who doesn’t rely on the phone for business?

2

What features of a phone are important to you? Camera, fast internet, watching videos, good speakers….?

3

If you like Android, and if you don’t have any special particular requirements, can I suggest a Google Pixel 10 phone — free — combined with Google’s own cellular service, Google Fi, for $35 a month? Both are cheaper than through AT&T.

(Optionally, you can also use my referral code JU27Y9 for another $60 off, if you want)

The Pixel gets you a pretty decent phone, free of bloat, with updates straight from Google for many years — fewer security issues down the road.

The Fi wireless service gets you unlimited calls and texts and 30 GB of high-speed data. It also gets (much) cheaper per line if you add any other family or friends to your plan.

The Samsungs have various additional niceties (better camera lenses, faster processors, etc.), but they run their own modified versions of Samsung Android. If you just want a solid, reliable, and simple Android phone, it doesn’t get much more basic than the Pixels from Google. There’s nothing extraordinary about them, but they’re fast enough and stable enough and will be supported for long enough that it’s a good, if nondescript, choice.

There’s also an XL size available for a little more money if you want a bigger phone. The Pro mostly just adds better cameras; the basic 10 non-Pro is totally fine if you don’t care about that.

I’ve had many Pixels, including the 10 Pro right now and many more before it all the way back to the first one. They’re perfectly fine middle-of-the-road phones.

Fi has been great. It’s an amazing value for what it gives you, especially if you ever travel overseas (their international plan is unparalled, with free texts and data in most countries). Even if you just stay domestic, the base $35 plan is still much cheaper than most other carriers.

My partner and I have been on this combination for many years, and it’s worked quite nicely for us.

4

Must be android, easy to use keyboard, reliable internet with decent speed, little bloat, decent camera. I don’t play action games or take fancy photos.

The last straw with Consumers Cellular and my old phone was a recent trip to Mexico. Even though I allowed roaming and was paying for 30 GB of data, I could not get internet access without wifi. This was a giant PITA – when I landed the airport wifi was down, and my phone would not even let me onto the UBER website. I had to call a family member & get them to send an UBER to me. A couple days later it started working – sometimes, but never reliably.

So nothing fancy, I just don’t want any surprises.

5

Wow, thank you! This sounds like a really good option. I wanted to stay with AT&T because they offered a “deal” and I want good cell coverage, not because I love them.

Ooh, even better! I’m definitely going to check this out, sounds ideal for me.
Thanks again!

6

If international travel is something you do frequently (or even on occasion), then Fi is GREAT for that. When you land, you turn the phone off airplane mode, and within a minute or two you’ll have internet and phone service again — same number and everything. That’s it. Nothing else to do.

The $50 plan includes Canada and Mexico. The $65 plan incyludes 200+ countries.

Us, we stay on the $35 plan most months of the year, and just switch it for 1 month when we need to go abroad. (It just takes a few clicks in the app and happens instantly. Also, Fi has no contracts, so you can switch plans or cancel service anytime you want. If you get a promotion on your phone hardware, you might lose some portion of that promotion if you switch away, but you keep the phone. And it’s unlocked from day 1.)

This is really the original philosophy behind both the Pixel line and the Fi service. Google got sick of other manufacturers and carriers playing stupid games with their phones, and decided to make their own “good enough”, “vanilla” phone & service to show the industry (and customers) how it could be. Both the Pixel and Fi service are thus some of the simplest options out there, at least in the Android world.

7

On Android, the keyboard is just another app, by the way. You can use any keyboard you like. Personally I like Microsoft SwiftType, but the default (on Pixels) Gboard is OK too.

That’s depends on 1) your modem’s supported frequencies (the Pixels are typically good for that) and 2) your carrier.

Fi won’t be the absolute fastest anywhere, but it’s usually fast enough in most places. You can almost always pay more money to get some other carrier with faster internet, but Fi has been fine in the countries I’ve been to with it.

(Google doesn’t put up their own towers. They subcontract with T-Mobile, so uses their coverage. T-Mobile is huge in Europe and has a lot of roaming contracts with Asian carriers. Google’s market power allowed them to negotiate an even better deal than regular T-Mobile customers get, giving you roaming included basically everywhere if you use their $65 plan, or even just switch to it for a month when you travel.)

You’ll never really know until you try it. You can look at coverage maps, but those aren’t really granular enough to give you any real certainty.

But with Fi and most other phones & carriers, there’s usually a return period (14 days?) if it doesn’t work well for you.

Welcome, and hope you like it! We’ve had several discussions about Fi on this board; you can search the history to see others’ opinions of it (generally positive, if I remember correctly)

8

PS for checking whether a particular phone’s modem will give you good coverage abroad, you can use a site like this: https://www.kimovil.com/en/frequency-checker/MX/google-pixel-10

Most “flagship” phones will support all the channels (or very nearly all of them), but some budget models from budget carriers will not. That can make a big difference when traveling abroad… two different phones in the same country, connected to the same carrier on the same plan, can have radically different speeds (or not be able to use the internet at all) if one’s modem isn’t compatible with the frequencies in use in that country.

9

If I may piggyback onto this thread, what about someone (like me) who needs none of those things? My current phone is an obsolete Samsung Galaxy J6, and it cannot even install the Uber app. All I want is a minimalist phone that can summon Uber when my car is in the shop or I’m otherwise indisposed, and that can make phone calls and do text messaging. What’s a good basic but modern phone?

10

I’d still say a Pixel (or an iPhone, if you prefer).

The reason is that Google is the one who most directly controls Android (and Chrome!). When they make a new Android version, it’s Pixels that get them first, and Pixels that get them for the longest. Eventually the third parties, including Samsung, will stop providing updates — especially for their budget models.

When a new Android API is released, Google can directly update the Pixels to support it. Every other manufacturer has to do their own in-house work to bring their modified OS up to date. That takes time and effort on their part, and they’re not always willing to do that. Samsung is better than most on that front, but still not as good as the Pixels or iPhones.

Among the Pixels, the “a” models (like 10a, instead of the base 10 or the 10 Pro) are the budget line that takes away a few features (like cameras), but are still good. However, they’re not always cheaper — many times, limited-time promotions can make the 10 or 10 Pro cheaper than the 10a or sometimes even free, like right now, if you’re willing to switch carriers.

11

I have a Samsung Galaxy S21 and an S22. I bought the S22 refurbished for use an an extra phone for traveling, and saved a ton of money. Their cameras are fantastic. The S22 which I bought about 2 months ago cost around $200. A new S25 starts at $800.

12

I think “reliable internet with decent speed” is probably a pretty moot point. You can probably take for granted that the 5G modem on any available 5G phone “just works”. For “easy to use keyboard”, what I think you want is the biggest screen you can find. Which means that you don’t need the most expensive phones because some mid-level phones have bigger screens than many near top of the line phones. For instance, a couple of years back I got my Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G (8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage, free 256 GB MicroSD card) on sale for $300. It has a screen bigger than the $1000+ Galaxy S phones short of the Ultra model.

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Motorola-Moto-G-Stylus-5G-2025,Samsung-Galaxy-S25/phones/12684,12340

For “little bloat”, you need to buy an unlocked phone not sold to you by the carrier, where you can delete lots of the pre-installed stuff and don’t have the carrier-added bloat.

Also, don’t wait for next year’s models. There is a huge demand for RAM right now driving up prices for everything.

13

For domestic use, yes. If you intend to travel abroad though, this isn’t always the case — as my friends on budget Samsungs learned the hard way, only after they landed. Their phones didn’t support the frequencies in use in that country and they had to rent an external modem.

14

@Reply You are very persuasive – you should make Alphabet give you a commission!

I pulled the trigger! I got the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL because I really want a bigger screen and the regular Pixel 10 is the same size as my old Motorola.

Taking advantage of the New Years promotional + your referral code :clap: , I’m getting the phone & Google “Essential” Fi for about $52/month for the first 2 years. Since I’m paying Consumer Cellular $48/month for a phone & service I am not satisfied with, I think that’s a win.

AT&T for the same phone and discounted monthly service (since I’m a customer – reluctantly– already) would have been $105/month.

15

Hah, technically they did! The referral code gives me a bit off our next bill. But really, I just recommended it because it’s worked well for us (and several other family members on their own plans). My extended fam is a mix of iPhone and Android users, but all the Android ones are on Pixels.

Refreshingly, Fi has been one of the few really consumer-friendly services that Google offers, and thus far free of enshittification and advertisements and such (to my surprise, believe me).

I hope you like it, but if you don’t, don’t feel bad about returning it. There’s a LOT of choices out there, both in terms of phones and carriers.

Did you happen to see the folding version (Pixel 10 Pro Fold) too? I’m suspicious of them — they seem fragile — but they can give you a HUGE screen when unfolded, if that’s really that important to you. A family member has one and loves it. I’ve never tried one myself. They’re quite a bit more expensive, though.

Otherwise, yeah, the XL should be bigger already!

16

I looked it over, but it seemed fragile and gimmicky to me too, plus being a lot more than i wanted to spend. If anyone out there has tried one of the folding phones, I’d like to hear what they think about it.