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galaxy player line discontinued?

D

dumbth

Newbie
Looks like the supply is drying up, and prices are rising on amazon. Is the galaxy player line being discontinued, so you have to buy a phone to get these features in compact form? Another forum suggested this, with only an overpriced, underdistributed 5.8 version on the horizon.
 
Thats what I read on abi and it apears true. Sucks! I am thinking about getting an extra 5 beforw theyrw gone.
 
<< does not recommend refurbished. unless you are very lucky, you might end up getting one that may not work very well. in electronics especially, gettin' them as new is a lot better. something to think about :)
 
Also, some of the refurbs, 4.2's anyway, are UK versions and the US service won't work on them under warranty and the UK service doesn't answer requests for service. Bought two and one had problems, luckily the seller stretched his 30 policy a little for me.
 
I've had great luck with refurbs of all sorts... i consider them debugged, and have better success rate with them than with new. The 5.0 refurb i got had a flat dead battery and was slow to charge, or at least the battery estimator was untrained. Now it works fine. There are stickers on it to redirect all service calls to the refurb site in my country.

At first i was disappointed by the thing being clearly a step backward in design compared to my sgp42, which is a smarter and more recent design. But i can suffer the back speakers, nonreplaceable battery, etc for a better camera and bigger screen sometimes.
 
smsungal said:
<< does not recommend refurbished. unless you are very lucky, you might end up getting one that may not work very well. in electronics especially, gettin' them as new is a lot better. something to think about :)
Click to expand...
I haven't had that experience.
I've purchased refurb that looked and performed like new.
 
My limited experience with Refurbished products has been positive, but I'm sure part of that is because the only refurbs I've bought were directly from the manufacturer.
 
I just purchased a refurbed 5&3.6 from amazon yesterday. The 5 as a backup and the 3.6 to carry around in my pocket. I am hoping for the best.
 
brosko said:
I just purchased a refurbed 5&3.6 from amazon yesterday. The 5 as a backup and the 3.6 to carry around in my pocket. I am hoping for the best.
Click to expand...

If this were me, the 5 would be my daily; the 3.6 would be the backup. The 5 is extremely pocketable.
 
If you stay with the SGP line, you're staying with Gingerbread. That's the BIG downside. Pretty soon we're going to find that some apps will not run correctly (or at all) on GB. (I've already come across a photo-editing app that would not run on GB)

And yes, for some reason, none of the major manufacturers are making a wifi-only device in the 5-6" range. You get a 7" tablet or you get a phone. Too big or too expensive...take your pick.

My plan at this point is to wait until the price of SG Note 2 drops a bit more and pick up one of those. International unlocked 16 gB versions is about $560 right now. (Unlocked/no contract) By summer when the Note 3 is around the corner, that will be sub $500 and I'll bite. The plus side is that it will be ICS and upgradable when Sammy issues the OTA updates. Could just run this on wifi only but buying unlocked allows me to go over to Straight Talk and get "unlimited" data, phone and texts for $45/month. I'll finally ditch my old GSM Razr phone.

Although the Note 2 is still considered a very high-spec device, the one thing that I will truly miss is stereo speakers for listening to music, video and Netflix. Don't know why HTC is the only ONE to get stereo, forward-facing speakers on a device.
 
blackdog709 said:
If you stay with the SGP line, you're staying with Gingerbread. That's the BIG downside. Pretty soon we're going to find that some apps will not run correctly (or at all) on GB. (I've already come across a photo-editing app that would not run on GB)
Click to expand...

You will always find apps for Gingerbread on Google Play or Samsung Apps because of contractual obligations with the OEMs but what you say is true with third party vendors.

I've downloaded and installed a few apps from f-droid.org and they all seem built for the latest and greatest. Take Firefox and Opera Mobile for example, they're absolutely rubbish for the SGP (especially FF).
 
Actually it was an app that was featured a couple of months ago on Google Play. I attempted to d/l and got a message "not available for your version of android". Gingerbread is no longer the major share of android out there, and it's probably going to be a lot less this year. At some point, maybe next year, I would think it's going to become out of date. (i.e.; devs will not be writing for it any more).

Maybe I'm wrong. It's been known to happen. :)
 
i think there will still be plenty to choose from in the play store for GB for at least the next couple of years.
 
Here's another option or two from an independent manufacturer, based in Florida, called Blu Life.
They make cut-rate phones, without all the advertising, for pretty cheap money. They have three new high-end phones coming out very soon, ranging from $230 to $300 unlocked. They have 4.7", a 5" and a 5.7" options.
Pretty good deal I think. Android 4.2 even. Screen res is "only" 720, but otherwise pretty nice for less than half the cost of a SG4.
Downside is that you probably will not get over-the-air updates from this manufacturer . (on the other hand as Samsung Galaxy Player owners, we never got updates either)

Review here. Supposed to be due out and available on Amazon "in April".
BLU Life Series phones include quad-core CPU, Android 4.2, start at $229 unlocked
 
As soon as I clicked your link my immediate thought of the Blu Life series was white Nexus. All 3 of them look very nice.
 
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