Good Morning .... Plan on buying new phone on Black Friday

[skatergirl]

Hello everyone!

i hope you all have been well. I have not been to the site for a long time, but I will be coming back around to learn about the new phones.

Surely I will stick with Samsung. I am getting a new Verizon plan in two months. Finlly kicking the last person off my plan, yay!! So, I am going to go with the 5G Do More Unlimitted and get the 50 percent off my watch monthly fee.

I still have my Note 9 and I have my mom's Note 9 back. Both paid for, yay. My mom could no longer use a cell phone. She has stroke dimensia. Anyway, I can trade hers in when I am ready.

Thinking Black Friday will get me the bsst deal. Not sure what is happening with the Note series. I have not been paying attention of late beause I had the beast of getting these two Note 9s paid off, drudged myself through poverty and had no way of getting any new phone.

Hopefully I am back but I don't want a device payment. I have stashed $800 for a cash deal on the best device I can get for that money (up to $1,000 but hopefully not that much) because I don't want a payment.

This morning I could have traded in my mom's Note 9 and gotten the S21 ultra for $840. It says the Ultra has S pen support, buit no curved screen. Are curved screens gone? I could give on that feature, but for $850 I might as well wait. Both phones are still perfect and with two of the same phones, I was able to cancel my insurance.

Sooooo, I am not in a rush. Will be coming back here often to see what you fine folks have to say about the 21 and whatever is happening with the Note series. I would prefer to stay with the Note if possible. But if a Note is going to cost me $400 more, I may have to go with that 21 Ultra.

Thanks all! Missed you.

 

[brentj]

From what I've read, it seems very unlikely that a new Note will be released this year, and there's no telling whether one will ever be. I'm very happy with my Note 9 and plan to hang on to it for quite a while. I'm sure the S21 Ultra has a lot going for it, BUT:

(1) S pen "support" doesn't mean anything to me if I'd have to get a case that the S pen clips into on the side of the phone (no "silo" for the S pen like on the Note);
(2) no headphone jack - I could probably learn to live with that; and
(3) no micro SD card support - this is a biggie for me, I like to be able to carry around a lot of music, photos, and videos on my phone, I don't want to rely upon cloud storage and a data connection to access them, and I don't want to pay an arm and a leg for more built-in storage that probably wouldn't be sufficient for my purposes anyway.

If Samsung sticks with the no-SD-card approach, I will be looking for another brand of phone when I do get around to upgrading. Hopefully some company will still give users what I think many of us want.

Good luck in finding a phone that suits your needs. The Note 9 is still my pick.

 

[Climb14er]

Seems like there are only a handful of us AC folks here who are still running the Note 9, maybe more who are lurking on the site. This is a great phone, does everything I ask of it, 3.5mm Jack and SD card slot, huge bonuses that are disappearing from current phones. Display, reception, speed are all excellent. Will be receiving security updates throughout the year, maybe longer. I will have to transition to another phone sometime in the future, don't know at present which direction I'll be taking. Still on extended VZ warranty, have gotten two additional Sammy battery replacements under warranty from ubreakitifixit. If this phone continues to do its thing, I'm not going anywhere soon. The Note 9 is a powerhouse with many top notch features.

 

[Brad Bilger]

Seems like there are only a handful of us AC folks here who are still running the Note 9, maybe more who are lurking on the site. This is a great phone, does everything I ask of it, 3.5mm Jack and SD card slot, huge bonuses that are disappearing from current phones. Display, reception, speed are all excellent. Will be receiving security updates throughout the year, maybe longer. I will have to transition to another phone sometime in the future, don't know at present which direction I'll be taking. Still on extended VZ warranty, have gotten two additional Sammy battery replacements under warranty from ubreakitifixit. If this phone continues to do its thing, I'm not going anywhere soon. The Note 9 is a powerhouse with many top notch features.

I'm tickled to death with my 9. Perfectly happy to run it as long as I can (or until my wife decides to update her iPhone.) I think that even Samsung is starting to phase out the Note 9. Even the official Samsung US support forum has died. They killed the forum the other day and grouped everyone into a single group for "Note Phones". Which is strange because the UK site still has the individual forum for the Note 9. They did it in such a nice way too.. They started locking threads with the message "This has been answered elsewhere, go search for it". Then when they finally merged the groups, the latest message for the 9 was from 2019.

 

[skatergirl]

So .... after reading replies here and looking around, I am not in a big rush to get a new phone, even on Black Friday.

Who knows by then if I will change my mind, but I am not overly impressed with what is out there. The curve screen seems to be dissapearing and I still use the headphone jack.

I guess we will see. I probably need to actually look at the S21. The Note 20 is still available.

 

[Morty2264]

So .... after reading replies here and looking around, I am not in a big rush to get a new phone, even on Black Friday.

Who knows by then if I will change my mind, but I am not overly impressed with what is out there. The curve screen seems to be dissapearing and I still use the headphone jack.

I guess we will see. I probably need to actually look at the S21. The Note 20 is still available.

And you know what? New phones will come out around then and you may change your mind *again*! The smartphone market changes so quickly. Let us know what you decide!