Recommendation for a Prepper Phone ?

  Message: Moto G 4 gen fell from my pocket while using moto-taxi, a car drove of over it (on a dirt road). But due to the Poetic heavy duty case and motorola quality I guess, the phone survived, although it is visibly curved and the top of the screen has a dozen breaking lines.

Still works perfectly. The kids that picked it up believed the phone was dead, so they returned it to me when we went back to search for it.

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In case it gives the ghost, what it your current recommendation for prepper phone ? Moto G 5 Gen seems to have a removable battery. Samuel . Hello Samuel, I’m glad the Moto G has performed well for you.

The Moto G series is a high value phone that I have recommended in the past several times. Low price yet high quality and very good specs. I basically look at 7 things when shopping for a new phone.

• Good value. Doesn’t matter if its 200 bucks or 800, I just want to get my money’s worth. This is particularly important with a product that depreciates as fast as a smartphone.
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• Updated Specs. I want a phone that works well and does what you would expect a smartphone to do today. I want a nice, big screen. A fast processor, to take good pictures. I want a micro SD card slot for extra storage. I don’t need the latest most expensive, but reasonable for the current times. One of the things I’ve noticed is that many “rugged” phones cheap out on the specs, and are several years behind, simply because they focus on being rugged than in being up to date tech wise.
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• Most well-known brands are of good enough quality. Apple makes a reliable phone. Samsung hold on nicely. Lenovo makes good laptops and sure makes good phones too. LG has been good to me so far and reviews seem solid enough. But I avoid no-name brands or cheapo phones with no backing from a trusted manufacturer.
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• Water Resistance. For a survivalist, few things are as important as knowing your phone will still work even if rain, floods, falling in a river or God knows what else. In case you’re wondering about IP67 vs IP68, it just means that IP67 can be dropped into a body of water up to a meter deep for half an hour, while IP68 guarantees protection in water up to 1.5m deep for the same period of time.
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• Both are resistant to dust. These are lab tests though, carefully placed in water containers on pretty much ideal conditions. In practical terms it means that the IP67 IPhone can take a bit of water splash when brushing your teeth, maybe survive being dropped in the toilet, but little else. Lets say if you barely survived a flash flood and are calling 911 from a tree top, you want IP68.

(Iphone X IP67 water resistance on a thousand dollar phone is unacceptable, by the way )

• Popularity and availability. I want a phone that is popular enough in the market to find cases and screen protectors for it. Obscure models suck at this.
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• Big enough battery so as to last a reasonable period of time. Removable battery would be nice, but less and less models are produced with one and they often sacrifice water resistance to achieve that.
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• Built in FM radio. Again, not as popular as it used to be but some models do have it. The cool thing about a real built in FM radio is that in the worst case scenarios you can still pick up air signals to listen to the news, rather than listening to the radio through the internet data service like so many people do.

As for recommendations, I have a few based on how much money you want to spend. For a budget yet high quality smartphone, I still recommend the latest Moto G, currently that being the Moto G6 (water-repellent though, no IP certification).

Another phone doing very well at a similar price range is the Huawei Mate SE  ( IP67 Water Resistance)  . Its one of the best sellers over at Amazon and holds a 4.5 star rating with almost a thousand reviews. This would be my top choice as of today for a budget smartphone.

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Huawei Mate SE 

A phone I really like is my current one, the LG G6. For a few more bucks you get a high quality, high spec phone.  It’s a last year flagship model but at the current price I believe it’s a great deal. Its 2:1 screen form factor makes it easy to slip in any pocket even with a reasonably durable case (I use the Spigen armor), yet the screen is big enough so that I don’t miss my olf Note.  It is true waterproof IP68, a big battery, perfectly placed fingerprint reader on the center back and two great cameras.

LG G6

If youre wondering about Iphone X, I haven’t bought an Iphone in years. Android is just more compatible with everything and more flexible. Besides, a IP67 water proof rating on a thousand dollar phone is insulting.

Samsung Galaxy S9+

If you want one of the best phones around and don’t care about spending even more money, there’s the Samsung Galaxy S9 plus. My wife got one a few months ago and is very happy with it.  The best current specs, also waterproof IP68 and just beautiful all around. Just get a good case and screen protector because those edges are pretty exposed. I’ll stick to my LG G6 though, but if I lose/break it, I’d probably go with a LG V30.

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FerFAL

Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”