Best Buy Prepaid Flip Phones
The feature flip phones of today still hearken back to their pre-smartphone counterparts, focusing on basics like calls and texting while providing battery life that's measured in days instead of hours. They're reasonably priced, very pocketable, often much more durable, and make a great option if traditional voice calls are your primary reason for carrying a cell phone.
best buy prepaid flip phones
Why we chose the LG B470: If you're looking for a flip phone with a few appealing extras, there's the LG B470 prepaid basic flip phone, offering a 1.3MP camera with zoom and customizable effects and built-in Bluetooth. It can even download and play multimedia files like video and music. The outer 0.98-inch display is monochrome, which helps extend its week-long battery life and lets you instantly read texts without having to actually flip it open. A colorful 2.2-inch main display is accompanied by an enhanced audio mode that augments high frequencies. A text-to-speech feature reads texts aloud, a benefit for folks with vision issues. It works on AT&T.
Long battery life is one of the biggest advantages of a traditional flip phone. While most smartphones need to hit the charger every night, the battery on a feature phone can last for a week or longer without a charge. Since they don't need to show as much information or play high-definition movies and games, flip phones can use smaller and more durable screens than their all-glass smartphone counterparts. This makes them ideal for folks who want to ensure they can stay connected on long trips or work in remote areas under challenging conditions.
However, there's a whole new generation of flip phones that will appeal to folks with more modern tastes, adapting powerful Android smartphones into a novel folding form factor with dual screens and catchy designs. These latest flip phones are full-featured smartphones in a more compact package, making them ideal for the smallest pant or shirt pocket. Battery life may be a bit shorter than what you're used to in modern flagships, as the more compact size leaves less room for larger batteries. The foldable design is still novel and something that's appealing to a younger generation who weren't around the first time flip phones like the Motorola Razr hit the market. Modern flip phones like Samsung's Z Flip 4 also come in a wide array of colors to attract younger buyers.
Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 4is, hands-down, the best flip-style smartphone on the market right now. Samsung has slowly been revolutionizing the flip smartphone market, and it's come of age over the last couple of years. The 2021 Galaxy Z Flip 3 was already an impressive piece of kit, and its successor has taken that great design and made it even better, with a faster chip, improved battery life and faster charging, and some nice design refinements.
What's the best phone in 2023? It may seem like a simple question, but it's anything but. Smartphones are so good these days, and while it's great having so many excellent options to choose from, it also means that finding the perfect one for you can be a challenge.
That's why we're here to help. Below, you'll find our picks for the best phones you can buy right now. Whether you're a longtime iPhone fan, are a diehard Android user, or you're open to any smartphone, we think you'll find something on this list that'll suit you perfectly.
Why you should buy the Samsung Galaxy S23 UltraThe Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is the best Android phone around right now. Ranking highly in our look at the best phones and defeating all the competition in the best Android phones stakes, you can't go wrong here. Truly exceptional, it does everything fantastically well. Perhaps its highlight is its camera. Ever wanted to take a photo at night but were frustrated by low-light photo quality? That's going to be a thing of the past here with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra making everything look good. Its 200MP camera is even capable of taking photos of the moon thanks to its exceptional zoom quality.
This is one of the best, most modern flip phones you can buy. It has a 2.8-inch display, a quad-core processor, and built-in GPS. Its outer display lets you get a glimpse of your incoming calls and messages. Additionally, the battery gets an impressive 16 days of standby time.
If you want to store more photos, videos, or music, it offers a MicroSD card slot. It's also one of the few flip phones that can create a Wi-Fi hotspot, since it supports 4G speeds. It even has GPS and a web browser.
Bluetooth compatibility on a flip phone is important if you plan on using hands-free services or have a pair of wireless headphones or wireless-enabled hearing aids. Voice-to-text services may also rely on a Bluetooth connection.
If you wear hearing aids, you likely know the struggles of trying to use a non-compatible phone: Feedback and interference can ruin a conversation. Hearing aid-compatible flip phones come with an M and T rating, based on standards set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). M measures compatibility with acoustic hearing aids and T measures compatibility with induction hearing aids. Look for an M or T rating of 3 or 4 for the best user experience.
Only a select number of flip phones come with more complex, built-in medical alert capabilities, so pay attention when purchasing. These phones can include features like fall detection, enhanced GPS and a certified urgent response system to make sure a senior user can quickly and easily receive help anywhere, any time. You also save money by not having to purchase a separate medical alert device, though be aware of battery life differences between products.
Convenience stores and electronic retailers will sell prepaid SIM cards and burner phones. Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and other similar stores will have a good selection of cheap devices or SIM-only plans that allow you to call and text, and not much else. You can often buy prepaid SIM cards from corner stores like 7-Eleven and drugstores like Rite Aid.
Sick of the NSA tracking you using your phone's positioning coordinates? Or do you just want an anonymous phone to conduct personal affairs? Either way, prepaid little phones known colloquially as "burners" can provide you with partial privacy. Even the NSA can't track them with accuracy.
Burners make excellent temporary and permanent-use mobile devices, coming in all shapes and sizes. There's even portable WiFi hotspot burners, which I've written about before. Android is currently the dominant operating system on prepaid smartphones (be wary of smartphones, though), but the market includes all manner of software. Some even use the open source Firefox OS. But how does one begin using a burner?
Third parties can still geolocate burner users by accessing a phone's GPS and WiFi. Prepaid phones can also be tracked using the traditional, albeit less-accurate, method of cellular triangulation. However, even with such features enabled, locating a prepaid phone's user remains difficult. Even the NSA has issues immediately locating and identifying prepaid burner users.
Ars Technica covered how the NSA seeks to thwart the anonymity offered by prepaid phones. Fortunately, the NSA's methods aren't 100% effective in identifying their users; prepaid burners still give users a means of sidestepping surveillance.
Two primary kinds of prepaid cell phones exist. Those that come locked to a particular MVNO, such as Virgin Mobile and Tracfone, and those that sell SIM cards that can insert into an unlocked device. While not entirely true, CDMA carriers tend to sell phones and GSM tend to sell SIM cards. Technically speaking, however, these boundaries break down upon closer scrutiny, as Straight Talk sells CDMA SIM cards and all GSM carriers sell phones.
Prepaid phones provide both internet access and a means of communication to the homeless, or those with bad credit, who oftentimes experience difficulties communicating with employers. Burners make this possible by not requiring a social security number or legal name. For these reasons, prepaid phones remain popular for both legal and illegal reasons.
Burners require a small amount of setup before using them. Buying a phone, as opposed to a SIM card, is the easiest method, although it costs slightly more. Most major retail outlets carry prepaid phones and SIM cards. For example, Amazon, Walmart and Target sell prepaid phones and SIM cards. Getting started just takes three steps:
We've covered the best flip phones and best overall dumb phones if you're interested in buying one, or if you want to keep using your phone, you could consider a burner app for your smartphone instead. And check out the best burner phones to buy.
Prepaid carriers have come a long way over the last ten years, and now just about any unlocked phone will work with these wireless networks, from the most budget devices to feature-packed foldables. But if you're looking to get the best value for money, the Android phones under $350 below are the right place to start. The OnePlus Nord N20 has all of the right features with fast hardware, good cameras, and support for sub-6 5G.
More and more people are looking to leave contracts behind, especially if they know how to switch carriers, and prepaid carriers offer a lot of value. In fact, most of the best cheap Android phones will work on just about any prepaid carrier. Most of these phones here will work on any carrier with LTE, but 5G compatibility can be a bit less predictable. Even so, the software has gotten a big boost on cheap phones, thanks to more manufacturers committing to multiple years of updates.
Overall, the OnePlus Nord N20 5G delivers the best overall experience with very little meaningful compromise. While it will only work on T-Mobile's network and must be purchased through its official prepaid brands, it's still an incredible value. This phone supports 5G on T-Mobile's fastest bands and the Snapdragon 695 shames other phones at this price. While it won't get OS updates beyond Android 12, three years of security updates mean you can keep using it with confidence. 041b061a72