Love my Motorola Moto G5 Plus 32 GB unlocked cell phone. Under $200. Good reception in places cheaper phone did not get a signal. I Like Android. Very highly rated phone on reviews. Has Gorilla glass.
This may be technically true, but the OP shouldn’t worry about it. If you stick to the Google Play store, malware in the wild is rare.
Regarding security, OS upgrades which include security fixes take a long time to become available on non-Google Android phones, since they have to go through Google, the device maker, and the carrier.
Google issues upgrades monthly, but you may be lucky to get upgrades every few months on non Google phones.
Google phone on ProjectFi.
Yes I paid outright for the phone, but my monthly bill (just me) has never been over $30,
PM me if you want a referral credit.
Just upgraded last night to 6plus (my husbands old phone) and he went to a 7.
I got Bunsen beat–my old iphone was a 4…the lady at the Apple store was estatic, she said she hadn’t seen one in years and called it “retro”. I just wanted a phone to put the Uber app on it.
I prefer Android phones but they’re more work to buy - you need to pay attention to how much internal storage they have (most cheaper ones don’t have enough for all the apps he will probably want), and features vary a lot between them - my Nexus 5x had the best phone camera I’ve ever used. It died after being dropped a lot, screen replaced, dunked in water…so I left Google Fi because I didn’t want the big $$ Pixel phones they sell now.
I just switched to MetroPCS (T-Mobile no contract carrier) and got a new free phone. They offered 4 models, I chose the one with 32g internal storage and am liking it very much. Plan is crazy cheap especially for a family - 4 lines with unlimited everything for $100/mo, a bit more for fewer lines.
I f you like iphone and Sprint, consider Virgin Mobile. They have a crazy deal now where you buy an iphone (or bring your own) and it’s $1 a month for 6 months, and very reasonable after.
Around here TMobile is faster with better coverage, but YMMV.
I’m on my second iphone. I had my first for almost 4 years and had no problems until the battery finally died at the end. My older daughter had a motorola phone that worked fine the first year (although she felt the iphone was more user friendly) but was horribly glitchy with a bad battery life the second year. She recently switched to iphone. My younger daughter had a samsung for one year and it was better than the moto phone, but the battery life wasn’t that great. she also recently switched to iphone and is much happier.
One plus, mine is the 2 and it is terrific. It doesn’t have NFC but newer versions do. It is a lot of phone.
PS: Some Android phones have removable/replaceable batteries. I used to have one and when I went camping or whatever I simply brought 1-2 extras. That was before those little battery chargers were so ubiquitous.
@roethlisburger - not true that you would have to download unsafe apps to have a security problem. A couple of years ago there was publicity about the “Stagefright” exploit — a hacker could send an SMS message to a phone and the user didn’t even have to open the message to allow the hacker to take control of the phone. Because each phone model has a slightly different version of Android and because multiple manufacturers are involved in releasing security updates, it took months before patches were available for all models.
It was actually MMS messages with exploits in attached media files when the messaging app was set to automatically process media files contained in the MMS messages, or any other situation where a media file with an exploit could be processed with an application using the vulnerable library.
Yes, that is the issue with non-Google Android phones. Google issues a fixed version (and Google phones can then upgrade to it). Then device manufacturer takes the Google fixed version to make a fixed version for its device. Then the carrier takes the device manufacturer fixed version to make its fixed version for that device on that carrier. More popular non-Google devices may take some months before getting security fixes. Less common ones may never see a software upgrade.
Among more recent security bugs, some phones are still waiting for the fix for the BlueBorne Bluetooth vulnerability (turn Bluetooth off if not fixed on your phone) or the KRACK WiFi vulnerability (which basically means that you should assume that traffic over WiFi is not WiFi-encrypted and you should use other encryption for that traffic if that matters to you).
If you’re concerned enough about security, you can install an antivirus app for Android. I’m well aware of the security issues involving mobile phones. The important issue for the average user isn’t what vulnerabilities security researchers have presented at the last BlackHat, but what exploits are being used in the wild.
Apple has much tighter standards for app in their store. Android is basically the Wild West for apps and there have been many security problems and apps collecting all sorts of personal data without your consent. Depending on what Android phone you buy you may or may not get the latest updates.
It is puzzling to me why anyone would need any apps beyond Google maps… that’s a useful feature to have, but everything else is easily accessible via the browser. 
Bunsen–I have weather, Uber, health apps, grocery lists, kindle app, gas buddy etc. All very useful.
@roethlisburger — I’m not that concerned— and my phone came bundled with antivirus protection, fwiw. I was just pointing out that Apple has a clear advantage over Android with respect to security because the latter is so decentralized. There are plenty of things to hate about Apple, IMO, but security isn’t one of them.
Happydad wants a better camera than he has on his flip phone, he wants to be able to use GPS, and there are apps for organizing the various sessions to visit at professional meetings that he attends each year. He also will use Facebook (gotta post those bazillion photos) and probably whatsapp to call some of his pals who are outside the country.
If I get a smarter phone, I’ll be expected to have a bunch of those teacher apps (Kahoot, etc.) for work. Since I don’t want to have to learn how to use them, I plan to be the last in our house to up-grade.
We are an iPhone family. I don’t use many apps, but the ones I use, I use a lot. Hard to imagine running my life without them!
I have the Google Pixel phone, my first smart phone. I got it because of the larger keypad. While I still haven’t figured out all the bells and whistles, I do know that it takes far superior pictures that my husband’s recent model iPhone.
^Have you seen pictures taken with iPhone X? Sublime! Even the picture I transferred from my old phone looks great. I used one of the pictures taken by me on the lock screen. A friend said she thought it was a picture downloaded from National Geographic