Android phone for 14 year old

BenEadir

Hi all,

My 14 year old recently lost his Sony Xperia phone, the one with the slide out game pad and is now looking for a new phone. He's keen on the Samsung Galaxy Mini but at €250 it's €50 over his budget.

Any suggestions for a teenager friendly Android phone for +/- €200? It needs to have a good screen for gaming/movies, have Micro SD card expansion and good battery life.

Appreciate any pointers you can give me.

Cheers,

Ben

Cantona's Collars

This? http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056653168

Not mad expensive.

Wouldn't give a 14 yr old a phone that costs over €200,they can barely mind themselves let alone a phone.

elderlemon

Boys are usually less careful with phones than girls. I gave my son (12) my Galaxy S2 and he dropped it within a week and broke the screen. It's/he's been ok with it since then. He absolutely loves the phone.

Whatever you get make sure you put on (and get them to keep it on) a heavy duty case/cover.

irishpancake

zerks wrote: »

This? http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056653168

Not mad expensive.

Wouldn't give a 14 yr old a phone that costs over €200,they can barely mind themselves let alone a phone.

Yeah, get him the Ascend G300, you won't get better value, you can still get it for just under €100, if you port another number, like a Tesco free SIM number.

You can find any number of posts with directions of what to do in the link given by zerks.....

Also, if you buy it via fatcheese you can get another €24 cash back!!!

That's just €76 net, and this phone can be unlocked very cheaply, on eBay, for around €7-€10, even less, like this guy

It might even come with ICS pre-installed, but if not, there is an easy OTA update path, and then let him loose on it, custom ROM's, custom recovery, etc, etc....

Go for it, it's the best value out there, unless you go the Chinese route.

BenEadir

Thanks All,

Got him the Ascend G300 today and it's perfect. Great size, very good screen, plenty responsive and not the end of the world when he loses it :rolleyes:

Thanks for the recommendation, another big thank you to my Boards.ie friends

Ben

irishpancake

BenThere wrote: »

Thanks All,

Got him the Ascend G300 today and it's perfect. Great size, very good screen, plenty responsive and not the end of the world when he loses it :rolleyes:

Thanks for the recommendation, another big thank you to my Boards.ie friends

Ben

Your welcome!!

Just interested to know, has it now got ICS out of the box??

Allow him to mess around with it, that's how my young fellas started.....

back in the late 80/90's, like on Amstrads and Commodores at home, and using the verrrry slowwww Internet over dial-up lines, but it stood to them......

and they both now work in IT, and have jobs in Ireland.

Remember, by and large, this is not just a phone, it's a powerful computer, fully connected, by mobile data and wifi, and running very sophisticated software on very good hardware.

It is so far away from the basic stuff we had in the 70/80/90's, which sent men to the Moon, and got them back, it is really amazing, powerful and under-rated.

Think of when PC's had no hard drives, only large 5" floppy drives/disks, and such little capacity they were laughable, no Windows GUI, certainly no Android or Apple.

Enjoy.

Czarcasm

irishpancake wrote: »

Your welcome!!

Just interested to know, has it now got ICS out of the box??

Allow him to mess around with it, that's how my young fellas started.....

back in the late 80/90's, like on Amstrads and Commodores at home, and using the verrrry slowwww Internet over dial-up lines, but it stood to them......

and they both now work in IT, and have jobs in Ireland.

Remember, by and large, this is not just a phone, it's a powerful computer, fully connected, by mobile data and wifi, and running very sophisticated software on very good hardware.

It is so far away from the basic stuff we had in the 70/80/90's, which sent men to the Moon, and got them back, it is really amazing, powerful and under-rated.

Think of when PC's had no hard drives, only large 5" floppy drives/disks, and such little capacity they were laughable, no Windows GUI, certainly no Android or Apple.

Enjoy.

Got a little tear of nostalgia in my eye reading that irishpancake!

Just on the whole appropriate age for a child to have a phone thing- it truly is dependent on how you as a parent or guardian judge the child's maturity and suitability.

My son started off on a samsung galaxy europa, now he has a galaxy mini running cyanogenmod 9 and his archos 80 cobalt tablet which he makes great use of since he got it. He's had a netbook since he was six, because I couldn't abide by the damn thing, can't say I'm too gone on the tablet either but if it encourages him to learn, gives him a good foundation in IT from Android to Windows, with Linux in between!

irishpancake

Czarcasm wrote: »

Got a little tear of nostalgia in my eye reading that irishpancake!

Just on the whole appropriate age for a child to have a phone thing- it truly is dependent on how you as a parent or guardian judge the child's maturity and suitability.

My son started off on a samsung galaxy europa, now he has a galaxy mini running cyanogenmod 9 and his archos 80 cobalt tablet which he makes great use of since he got it. He's had a netbook since he was six, because I couldn't abide by the damn thing, can't say I'm too gone on the tablet either but if it encourages him to learn, gives him a good foundation in IT from Android to Windows, with Linux in between!

Fully agreed man.....

don't get too emotional there or I'll get started meself

It really helps if you have a good handle on stuff yourself, or be willing to find out.....

My missus has a netbook since 2008, I think, a Sammy NC10....

upgraded to 2G RAM, still running Xp.

and she loves it, but just this year she got this g300, so now she has got with the program!!!

Now Netbooks are so last century....

all mail, FB, etc, gets checked on the g300, and the Netbook is getting a well deserved rest.

BenEadir

irishpancake wrote: »

Your welcome!!

Just interested to know, has it now got ICS out of the box??

Allow him to mess around with it, that's how my young fellas started.....

back in the late 80/90's, like on Amstrads and Commodores at home, and using the verrrry slowwww Internet over dial-up lines, but it stood to them......

and they both now work in IT, and have jobs in Ireland.

Remember, by and large, this is not just a phone, it's a powerful computer, fully connected, by mobile data and wifi, and running very sophisticated software on very good hardware.

It is so far away from the basic stuff we had in the 70/80/90's, which sent men to the Moon, and got them back, it is really amazing, powerful and under-rated.

Think of when PC's had no hard drives, only large 5" floppy drives/disks, and such little capacity they were laughable, no Windows GUI, certainly no Android or Apple.

Enjoy.

Thanks IP,

Yes, it does have ICS out of the box. I think it was 4.0.1 but it immediately updated to 4.0.3 OTA.

Nice little phone. Have stuck a 16GB Micro SD card on there for him so he can load up his apps and store movies, pictures etc and put Dropbox on there with it's auto picture/movie upload (over wi-fi) so he won't lose any photo's he takes messing around with his pals which he'll value in years to come.

He's already learning to programme in Java via Coder dojo and loves hacking Minecraft etc so he's well on his way and will probably be teaching me a few tricks in a year or two.

Such is life!!

Ben

irishpancake

BenThere wrote: »

Thanks IP,

Yes, it does have ICS out of the box. I think it was 4.0.1 but it immediately updated to 4.0.3 OTA.

Nice little phone. Have stuck a 16GB Micro SD card on there for him so he can load up his apps and store movies, pictures etc and put Dropbox on there with it's auto picture/movie upload (over wi-fi) so he won't lose any photo's he takes messing around with his pals which he'll value in years to come.

He's already learning to programme in Java via Coder dojo and loves hacking Minecraft etc so he's well on his way and will probably be teaching me a few tricks in a year or two.

Such is life!!

Ben

Root, custom recovery and custom rom!!!

3 steps to a better user experience.

Also, try out Cyda's script to use the Internal SD which is unused when you have that external SD.....

it's basically Link2SD modified to Link2Int, and it gives you back that 2GB wasted internal space, for used apps only...which is pretty good....

It.s all on Modaco

Czarcasm

BenThere wrote: »

He's already learning to programme in Java via Coder dojo and loves hacking Minecraft etc so he's well on his way and will probably be teaching me a few tricks in a year or two.

Such is life!!

Ben

I had a look for our local Coder dojo as I've been hearing great things about it, but sure wouldn't you know it clashes with his scouts on a Saturday!

As irishpancake was saying, it helps if you have a good handle on stuff yourself (I'm self employed myself as an IT consultant, so I constantly have to keep upskilling!), but as much as I can teach him about operating systems and security, the various office programs (I haven't taught him any serious code yet, reason why in a minute), I only ever designed and wrote code for applications and systems, I was never a gamer, so I don't have the creative ability needed for games design. I'd love to see him learn some fun stuff to do with computers while at the same time mixing with people his own age.

Riesen_Meal

Czarcasm wrote: »

I had a look for our local Coder dojo as I've been hearing great things about it, but sure wouldn't you know it clashes with his scouts on a Saturday!

As irishpancake was saying, it helps if you have a good handle on stuff yourself (I'm self employed myself as an IT consultant, so I constantly have to keep upskilling!), but as much as I can teach him about operating systems and security, the various office programs (I haven't taught him any serious code yet, reason why in a minute), I only ever designed and wrote code for applications and systems, I was never a gamer, so I don't have the creative ability needed for games design. I'd love to see him learn some fun stuff to do with computers while at the same time mixing with people his own age.

Great post, trying to get one of our lads who is 9 into programming, he started an after school coding classes recently, so I told him I would buy him a raspberry pi when it's done, then he can hack it and his minecraft Game all he wants, and this course will give him an idea if he likes it or not, but if helps him build his mods for the game that's bloody great, he hopefully will learn something that may benefit in future...

I may even give him my old HTC phone, purely for hacking/ADB purposes...