LG G2 Mini Alternatives?

[Luminis]

Hello guys,

need some help from the phone buffs Totally not in the know when it comes to phones.

So, here's the situation: I'm currently using some no-name chinese Galaxy S3 knock-off - and that thing's slowly biting the dust. Getting slower by the day and it just shut off during work today for no reason at all. I have my fair share of doubts whether I'll get it running again. Might just be gone for good.

So, yeah, new phone. I've been looking at the LG G2 Mini. It's sitting just below 200 €, so bang on in terms of budget. Does all it needs to do - the battery lasts long (big factor for me) and it's more than capable enough to run some simple games and emulators. I don't need super fancy stuff, after all. Good battery life, enough performance to play my old GameBoy and SNES games on it, easy to handle, light on maintenance and decent durability - those are my prorities.

The G2 Mini gets a lot of praise from magazines and online reviewers, as it seems. It usually edges out the closest competition, the Samsung Galaxy Core. But there are other phones in that price range that seem to fly under the radar, such as the Wiko Rainbow or the Huawei Ascend P7, for example.

So, what's your opinion? To go with the known quantitiy or would you rather go with the dark horse that might offer slightly better performance (even though the additional performance isn't necessarily going to be put to good use)? Are there any phones by bigger companies that I should look at?

Thanks for the help, by the way. I'm usually knowledgable enough when it comes to technology and stuff, but phones have never been my 'thing'.

 

[Robin]

You get lots of bang for your buck from Lenovo, Huawei, Hisense etc and could get a full size full featured phone for around that price. Or you could go with a lower spec big brand name phone like the G2 mini, Sony's sub €200 offerings are pretty good (M2).

I think the quality of these emerging Chinese brand phones is excellent and seeing as nearly all Andriod phones are made with the same stock components from OEM factories you can't got far wrong. I reckon brands like Xiaomi, the Chinese Apple, is one day going to take over the mobile world.

 

[Luminis]

/edit: Threat can be closed. I made up my mind and narrowed it down to two phones 👍

Well, seems like I might prolong my current phone's life a bit. Got it running again, but who knows for how long

@Robin. , I'm kinda careful with those Chinese brands. They aren't widely sold in Germany, it seems, and customer service seems to be a bit lacking as well. My experience with my current Chinese PoS isn't the best, either. My Lenovo laptop has a bunch of issues as well... I don't know, the brands you listed all offer phones with what seems like great hardware for relatively little money, but Huawei kinda seems like the only "mainstream" brand of those, at least as far as the German market is concerned. And the Amazon reviews for the Huawei phones are all very favourable, too 👍

I might be able to get something like the Ascend P7 around christmas. That thing seems like a great phone and I might be able to stretch my budget a bit if I can hang onto my current phone until then... Whatcha think? Worth it? I might just look at the Ascend P6, otherwise. Both seem to offer better value than the G2 Mini - so it's all about whether Huawei's phones are actually as reliable as LG's. Which I'm clueless about