I dropped my phone the other day and screen has bright lines all over it. So time for a new phone.
I mainly use my phone for watching video content, and since my current phone and Netflix both support HDR, I have decided to make this a minimum requirement. Would also like a a pixel count and high battery capacity.
I have no interest in anything at all about a camera; I never take pictures. I am not too bothered about iOS vs Android. Maybe good sound quality would be a secondary consideration.
Any ideas for a phone with a good screen and an average camera? I would prefer not to pay extra for the latest camera tech if I can avoid it.
If you were happy with the quality of the screen before, try having the screen replaced at a repair shop. I replaced a screen on my iphone for less than $100. It took them about 30 minutes.
Nowadays it is going to be hard to not pay a lot for snazzy camera capabilities, that is what the majority of buyers is looking for, i.e. youthful buyers.
Based on the limited requirements you gave us, I’d probably say something like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5g.
Sure you don’t want or need the cameras, but as @BippityBoppityBoo said, that’s going to come as a given on any new, high end smartphone. But you’ll get a good sized screen (6.8 inch), very high resolution (1440x3200) with up to 120hz refresh, and 5g to facilitate downloads for streaming which will be needed at those resolutions, although I hope you’re pre-downloading over wifi or the like.
It also has 5000 mAh battery, which is pretty good, and better yet has fast charging as well as wireless charging.
If you’re more of an iPhone person, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is similar but slightly weaker in almost all categories. But you generally get a smoother performance in some ways as it is free of the manufacturer bloatware that infests most non-Pixel Android phones.
Either way, you’re looking at phones in the $1000 range. If you give us a better idea of your budget, prior phone, and preferred operating system, we can probably pin-point something that’s a more specific fit rather than just pointing to the best screens and batteries, which will 90+% of the time be the most expensive flagship models sadly.
Googling, that phone was released in September 2018, so it’s three years old. And if you take it to an Apple store, they can replace the screen at a cost of $329. If you’re otherwise happy with the phone, doing that might be the best thing overall. (Although at this point, you may also want to get the battery replaced.)
The bloatware is a minor pain, and tolerable as long as your phone is high end, I wouldn’t force an OS change over it. I was just saying that iOS does have that as an advantage despite being ever so slightly weaker on the visual side than the top tier Samsung phones. Honest I’ve had iPhones, Android and even Windows phones over the last decade or so, and unless you want or need the customization (or have computers/wearables/etc that work best with a specific phone OS) of android, the iOS options are just fine. I’m system agnostic.
As for other comments, I really, REALLY like the iPhone 12 mini because I personally want a phone that fits well in the pocket, but 64G of memory is just . . . not a good idea. Expect any OS to eat a third of that at a minimum, and I cannot recommend any phone with less than 128. Especially if you’re downloading HDR video to review offline.
So any of the higher end phones will do you right, and considering what you’re upgrading from, the iPhone 12 vanilla is probably more than good enough as long as you get a 128G model, but the screen on the Pro Max is slightly bigger, of course at a higher price point.
I think it is probably pretty safe to say that pretty much any phone made today (that aren’t the cheapest, most bare-bones available) is going to have a good screen. With the exception of the horrible notches and cutouts most modern phones are afflicted with.
When I hear “screen quality” I think OLED, my Samsung phones with OLED had beautiful screens. OLED is nice because the screens aren’t backlit, so black pixels are truly black, and colors are vibrant.
Regarding bloatware on Android, certain phones/brands can have it, like Samsung. It’s not really a big deal, just annoyance at pre-installed apps like Facebook that you can’t uninstall. But it’s not like they are on your homescreen if you don’t want them there, and there aren’t ads.
FWIW I have a Moto G Stylus and there are no uninstallable apps aside from things like YouTube that comes with all Android as far as I know.
I’ve ordered the pixel 4a (without 5G) since it satisfies my requirement of hdr and has ok resolution (full hd) and was on special at the google store.
Is the form factor super important? If you just want something to watch video, and not having to pocket it is an option, you might want to consider a tablet.
In general, you can’t seperate great screens from great cameras - top tier phones are going to have top tier everything. That said, a pretty good screen on a $300-400 phone might suit your needs just fine. Not sure which might support HDR, though. Do phones do HDR10/Dolby?
But not an Amazon Fire. Too few audio codecs supported well. With mine, some of the videos play loud enough, but most of them have audio unlistenably too low. Meanwhile, various phones can take anything that I throw at them with no problems.
