My Phone Broke
 

I had a ZTE F866, but then the screen/CPU connector ribbon snapped, so now there is no image. I want a cheap replacement, preferable under £50 (US$ 101) that has a camera, preferably on the '3' network (I'm in the UK).

Um...anyone?

go get a nokia, I have always had great luck with them and they aren't expensive for what you are asking for. I got mine for 50 USD which would be 25 pounds.

What model was it?

like the 6104i or something. It has camera and bluetooth and thats all I really care about.

I like the look of this phone price and features-wise, but is it reliable or is or easily broken? I know that according to the (UK) level crossing ad, it will survive being in a car hit by a train, but that's only a ad.

Also, i want a pay-as-you-go phone, not a contract one.

Eh, I'd get a RAZR if you can.

Expensive? Yes. But they are pretty durable.

I have a pay-as-you go Sony-Ericsson W300i that has proved to be very bombproof so far. It's a GSM phone with camera and bluetooth.

I have a friend who accidentally threw his Motorola out the car window (Don't ask; I'm still trying to figure out exactly how he managed to do it.) as he was driving down the road. It got hit by a car or three, and the case was busted up pretty good. However, except for the screen, the phone still worked fine. It would make and receive calls, and could be charged.

OTOH, my friend used that incident as an opportunity to get a non-Motorola phone.

I have had two junky motorola phones so I don't buy them anymore. I went back to Nokia. Been using Nokia phones for years and they have some of the best reception I have ever had with a phone.

My RAZR has survived being stomped (intentionally, BTW), kicked, thrown into the wall, and dumped and water, not to mention being dropped numerous times, and it still works to this day. Both screens.

But that's just my phone. I'll easily vouch for Nokia, though they are stopping CDMA phone production, so I can't buy one from my carrier.

Yeah I have two friends that also have had crappy Motorola phones, but one of my friends has had one and it was great. So, its different for everyone.

I use Alcatel 550 - a very reliable phone, though rather rare. It cost about 100$ 3 years ago. Still alive:)

The real difficulty with choosing a phone is in matching it to the service provider. I had a CDMA Motorola v60 for years and found that because my local service provider used Sprint for US roaming I always got lousier service in the North Eastern USA than others who were on Verizon. Now I've switched to a GSM phone, I get much better service from New York City all through New England right up to Northern Maine. No single provider services all of those in GSM, so it's always interesting to look at the phone and see who the provider is. Can change over a few miles. Apparently roaming is not tied to a single provider.

I'd avoid the nokia which has the spring loaded flip open device. My kids are tough on phones, always carrying them in pockets, fidgeting with them, dropping them, and the spring loaded flip open device failed pretty quickly.

One of my boys had a razr, which lost one of the connector hinges on the side, and eventually the ribbon, I think like yours, snapped.

Both boys are now using older samsungs which friends gave them, just slipping in their sim cards. These samsungs survived their friends, and (knock on wood) are surviving my sons.

Well with my Nokia I have done the following to it and it still works:

1) dropped it
2) dropped it, then kicked it immediately when it hit the ground
3) Misplaced it in a pint of beer
4) fallen on it with it in my pocket

sure, it is kind of beat up and the screen is scratched but everything still works and I get pretty good reception.

Is it one of the spring loaded openers?

(pint of beer?)

:o

its a flip phone, not sure if its spring loaded. Yeah I dropped it in a pint of beer at the bar once. Not sure exactly what was happening but I think we were being rowdy......:rolleyes::cool:

LOL as my kids would text.

My blackberry has taken a down right beating too. I have dropped tool boxes on it, kicked it, had it fall down some stairs once, and had it fall off my pocket clip while up on a ladder too. So far I have only scratched it, it still works.

Sometimes I wish it would break because then I wouldn't have to answer it.

I can relate.

When the girlfriend calls, I may as well superglue the phone to my ears.

BTW, she has a Motorola V262, and I will say, That phone SUCKS. It's been through 5 batteries. I told her to get a v323i as I've used that one and it works pretty good.

What about a Samsung E250? Are they reliable? Are slide-phones in general reliable?

My guess is that it will be reliable, as determined by how much care the user takes of it.

Eg, with my sons, I wouldn't go that route, everything they touch tends to break.

If the user carries it in a protective holster, it'll probably be quite reliable.

More moving parts, more fidgeting, more droppage, equal more breakage.

Diminish any adverse factor, reliability increases.

;)

This comes as news.

http://phorium.wordpress.com/2007/08...royed-a-v323i/

Poor thing never stood a chance. *sniff*

My father's Nokia 3410 was pretty tough (but i don't want one of them, too lacking in features). It survived being dropped in a pot of cold water(turned off), he just disassembled it and sat it in front of a fan for a few hours and that was it. He also dropped it on the ground a few times, once on a cement floor, but in the end all that happened was the text buzzer (not the actual speaker) broke.

I tried reviving it to no success, and now, I'm without a phone because my mom took mine.

First my laptop (indirectly her fault) and now my phone (very much her fault).

I'm going to suggest that she gets a friggin' nokia. She's been through a LG, two Kyocera's, and now four motorola's.

Me? One nokia (which I replaced because I wanted a flip-phone), two motorolas (First was a v262, which I lent to a friend, who broke it, then a second v262 which I gave to my girlfriend on my mom's recommendation, which is how I got the RAZR).

If I had known the v262 was trash, I'd still have my Nokia 2270.

Far and away, the consensus of opinion on this thread is that those Finns know their Fones.
:D

I got a Sony Ericsson K750i for £59 in a sale. Should i run the battery flat, then charge it, or charge it first? The man in the shop told me to charge it for 6 hours, but I'm not sure if i should run it flat first, as it probably came wih some charge in it.

I have a W300i and I ran it absolutely flat then recharged it.

This is my older son's razr, which lost a hinge/connector from the side, and became loose, tearing the ribbon which connects the circuitry from the keypad to the display.

[IMG]http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/6803/mgrazrfu3.th.jpg[/IMG]

Wee Guy, we've not had problems just immediately charging the phone's batteries upon purchase.

My wife has a RAZR and constantly complains about the stupidity of the interface and the hard time it has receiving a signal. She just hates the thing for whatever reason, but that's just one persons opinion, right?

iPhone, there, it's been said.

As for a good phone for cheap, I'm a fan of Nokia except for the one I currently have (3220). Odd that I should get the only Nokia I know of that truly sucks.

I have a few friends who have the Samsung t619 and they all really enjoy them, they have a nice screen and are good at catching a signal. As for durability...well, all my friends have only had them for a month, so not much I can say in that vein.

I also was irritated with the razr's interface, but I suppose I've become accustomed to its idio(t)syncracies, and now I'm hardly annoyed at all.

Since I'm in the market for a new phone, I was thinking about this one:
http://www.metropcs.com/phonesdetail.php?code=n2865