I have a Motorola, and I’m pleased with it.
They currently have three under your price cap.
https://www.motorola.com/us/smartphones
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I think that whenever I get a new phone, which will be Android, the first thing I’m going to do is take a utility knife and remove the Bixby button. I have lost track of the number of times I’ve accidentally pressed that while trying to unlock the work phone. It just keeps getting in the way. If I want Bixby to help, I’ll use the app to launch it.
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I always just turn the button off. The last phone I had and my work phone both have it. I’m pretty sure there’s a way to disable it. Maybe I just made it take 3 clicks to work or something. One of the thing I love about my Xiaomi phone is no Bixby button. Seriously.
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Samsung finally made it possible to disable it. If I accidentally press it, nothing happens.
I also don’t love the curved screen. I think it is a stupid gimmick with zero value add.
Hmm never had that problem on my iPhone… lol jkjk Siri pops off all the time in my pocket because of my airpods pro case.
Samsung finally ditched it this January, ten years after the feature was introduced.
I resurrected this thread because I was reading a story on Not Always Right and was getting ready to post a “I miss my Blackberry” comment before I started searching to see if there were any phones that have physical keyboards. There’s only a couple, but then there’s this:
The Clicks Create case for the iPhone 14 and 15 with a keyboard that docs with the Lightning or USB-C port and provides pass-through charging. $140 each.
It gives you the Blackberry experience of a physical keyboard without losing a third or half of the screen because it’s taken up by the keyboard. From what I can see, it’s a little better than a Blackberry because the keys are separated from each other. You’ll be able to immediately feel if your finger is on the key or off center.
I use a Logitech K380 Bluetooth keyboard when I have to do a lot of data entry on the work phone. I’ll buy things like the K380 if it makes my job easier, but I’d have to wait until they make the Android version of the keyboard and make the case that fits the phone. What they have now will only fit exact phones and can’t be moved between, say, a Samsung Galaxy S20 and the S20+, S20 FE or S20 Ultra.
With there being so many different sizes of Android phones, what Clicks needs to do is make the keyboard separate from the case. You dock the keyboard unit with whatever phone you have, then put the two inside an adapter case that’s specific to your phone. Want to move the keyboard to a different phone? Just buy a new adapter case.
That would reduce their manufacturing costs because they wouldn’t have to keep designing new mounting hardware for the keyboard every time they need to make a new case. It might even increase their profit margins because they can offer more cases faster and they could probably bump up the price slightly for both the keyboard and the case than selling them as a single integrated item.
Good info, thanks!
I have the Logitech K830. It have wireless as well as Bluetooth connectivity.
Best of both worlds. The touchpad is a big plus, especially if I want to add a bluetooth mouse.
Not sorry I bought it. I sometimes do miss the numpad though.
Also time for me to brave the world of smartphones once more.
I’m not happy with my Redmi Note 8 at this stage, especially the fingerprint sensor, seems it’s got a bit iffy, and doesn’t always respond properly, leading to a lot of rejected fingerprint login attempts.
Not sure if Redmi’s quality is the same as previously.
If anyone is looking for a new phone, check out the ‘Nothing’ phones. I recently bought a ‘Nothing 2a’ to replace my slowly dying Nokia 7+.
The 2a does everything I need in a phone (ie, send/receive texts, make/take phone calls, take the odd photo) and it was pretty reasonably priced, too.
Ah, but can I play Pokemon Go on it?
Yes. It’s a regular smart phone with all the capabilities of any upper-mid-range Android device. I don’t need any sort of hyper-performance gaming phone with 7.1 Dolby surround sound or a super-high-quality camera.
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It actually looks pretty good. When I can get a new phone, I may look at one. It has up to 512GB storage, which will actually hold all of my music easily and have enough space left for performance.
Logitech leaving the phone market gutted me.
And here I thought 64Gb’s internal storage would be good enough… nopenopenopenope
Next phone will have 512Gb as a minimum.
It’s just crazy how bloat is creeping in all over… 
As long as it’s an Android phone, you can move pictures and videos off of it really easy instead of having to go through iTunes or another application.
Also check if the camera is defaulted to what Apple calls a “Live Photo”. It’s really a short video of a few seconds before and after you take the picture. I burned through the free iCloud storage space that came with my previous before I found out about that. (Old guy rant: If I wanted a video, I’d take a video. If I want a picture, I don’t want a video.)
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I’m really an Android guy. All of my previous smartphones was Androids.
I love the feature of having a CF card installed which you can use for extra storage on some Androids.
They haven’t done that, but they are working on model-specific Android phones. Up first are:
- Pixel 9/9 Pro
- Razr+ (with a note that the Razr will work with it)
- Galaxy S25
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Will be good if a phone with a physical QWERTY can be produced… the virtual QWERTY is not cutting it anymore.
edit - their idea is a bit better - a case with a keyboard.
Unfortunately this will make the phone a bit longer, but I will take this tradeoff just to be able to type properly again.
Dang virtual keyboards…
Yeah, I’ve been looking pretty hard at that RAZR idea they show.