Nokia G21 Android phone - Nordic blue £99.99 @ Amazon

Yep, the 3.4 I had was shockingly slow and the 5.4 was a downgrade over the 5.3, except for the main camera which was now 48Mpx instead of the 13 or 16Mpx one on the 5.3. Those were the last Nokias I bought due to their lax updates and the fact you could get a far better specced Xiaomi for less money (the Redmi Note 9T 5G I bought was under £170 and almost as good as the £350 Nokia 8.3 except for screen size and cameras).

I'm tempted with this because it's a proper Android phone for under £100 and it only came out last year so should see updates till 2025, yet that Unisoc/4GB combo worry me.

Many of the more well-known brands are starting to take updates more seriously (they kinda have to if their competitors are) and most are offering several years of updates. What they're not promising though is how frequently they'll come, and for Oppo/OnePlus/Xiaomi this seems to be around once a quarter (even some Samsungs are only updated quarterly), whereas Nokia used to be monthly. Of course, plenty of brands such as TCL and the lesser Chinese ones will be lucky to see more than a handful of updates, if any at all. I hear Motorola/Lenovo are also pretty poor in this regard, but I've not had a Moto since the G4 so can't say for sure.

This particular Nokia will be updated (I think it was released in Feb/Mar this year) to Android 13 but will go no further due to Nokia's practice of releasing a phone on the previous version of Android, so it came with A11 despite A12 having been out for around 9mths prior to launch. However I believe it still gets three years of security updates

TBF, I'm not considering this phone (nor any other sub-£100 device, I was merely curious if there were any decent-brand new phones in this budget). I used to be a huge Nokia fan between 2018-2021 but saw a marked decline in the 'premiumness' of their build, and frequency of updates, and eventually gave Xiaomi a try; though that's another story.

Whilst I can live with 64GB storage and a non-FHD screen, only 4GB RAM is a little too limiting nowadays, especially when paired with a Unisoc chip. Still, I'd take this over many of the Chinese competitors in this price band, as the Nokia name still carries some respect and the phones will eventually get updates if you're patient.

Unfortunately if they want this phone they'll need to spend £118-£125 now as it's gone back up again.

Yeah, as a rule I don't buy 4G phones any more (though I succumbed to temptation yet again and ordered this just now). However we only get 5G on EE in my village, with no plans for 5G on any other network for several years yet. Also several of the RWG SIMs I've got (who run on EE and do now offer 5G) are still stuck on 4G so I'll put one of them in it. The main thing is I wanted to see how good or bad Unisoc are and if Nokia have improved their update cadence. I do like the stock Android experience they offer and they are compatible with the Intune company portal thing we use at work, though I suspect 4GB may not be enough, but at least Amazon have good returns.

That seems to be common with a lot of phones from various brands, and is often tied into the power management settings, suspending apps when not actively being used, or even disconnecting the wifi and mobile data, all to eke out a bit more time from the battery.