Phone / Tablet for 8 year old

Anthonylfc

and no i'm not letting him have one for calls

but he likes games that need wifi or cellular connection

pokemon go is just 1 game , i find im giving him my phone all the time

is there an android phone ( for the data ) or tablet that he can use outside to play his games ??

he has an ipad mini but its the older gen and only wifi

????

what's your budget?

a cheap option would be to buy a cheap 4g dongle to create a hotspot for the ipad mini that you already have. then you'd have to buy a mobile service for it (the dongle) - use a sim card.

or otherwise just create a hotspot off your phone if you are going to be nearby to your child - no need to buy anything.

cheapest option for service would be lycamobile but it's only 3g but should be fast enough for most online games assuming the service is ok in your area.

could get a few gb data for 5 euro for 30 days. click data bundles here. do large downloads on home wifi
https://www.lycamobile.ie/en/bundle
just order a free sim card online and it will be sent out to you.

if you buy the data bundle he couldn't make calls so just top up online by 5 euro, buy the bundle so no calls available (except incoming) so you could get a cheap phone and buy that service also.
for games you'd want an OK phone to be able to run them.

battery life on these mobile broadband dongles is probably a few hours.

so it would create a wifi network that the ipad mini could connect to.

a dongle like this. may be cheaper ones but make sure it's one with a battery and unlocked. an older 3g one would do for lycamobile as their service doesn't use 4g. you could buy an extra battery online for a 5 euro or so also to provide more usage time.
https://www.adverts.ie/mobile-broadband/mobile-4g-wifi-huawei/17232278

Anthonylfc

excellent info thank you

i could use a personal hotspot but i find these to never work good , few mins and drops signal etc

cheap phone with data would be good

any ideas of what would be good ?

was looking at wish/geek and cheap android phones on there

I wouldn't go too cheap on a phone as

1. the cpu will not be good enough to run 3d games

2. the battery life may not be that good. games are the biggest drain on battery life on a phone.

3. storage could be low. 32gb min needed (and sd card expansion capability)

4. the ram could be too low. need 3gb really these days

the mi a2 lite would be ok

it's 146 euro here

https://www.eglobalcentral.eu/xiaomi-mi-a2-lite-3gb-32gb-dual-sim-black.html

but honestly you'd be better off buying a tablet that takes a sim card. a tablet is much better experience for playing games due to the screen area. an 8 inch size is ideal.

this tablet would be pretty decent for games and takes a sim card. it's 122 pounds from amazon and you can put a sim card in. I don't think that you'd get it much cheaper anywhere else as getting it from china you'd have to pay VAT and a customs collection fee (although it is available for 130 us dollars on gearbest but add 30% onto that for customs overall and the extra from amazon is worth it for proper warranty and returns). for a tablet with enough power for games and a built in 4g capability it's a decent price. it has an antutu benchmark score of 100,000 so will be fine for games and will even run 3d ones. if you buy a really cheap phone you're probably looking at antutu score of 45,000 or so which will really struggle on a lot of games. check the cpu antutu score of any device you consider. the battery life would not be as good either. this tablet should get 5 hours for games which is not bad (as I said games drain devices more than any other type of app). the battery size is 5500mah which is decent. a lot of cheap phones will only have 2500 or 3000mah batteries.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ALLDOCUBE-Display-Deca-Core-Android8-0-Phablet/dp/B07KZX12H9/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1548576443&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=m8+tablet&psc=1

I'd go for the tablet over the phone for sure. could also be used for watching youtube /movies etc.

pick up a case for it as well to protect it - ebay or amazon should have some. cheapest ones will come from china if you can wait a month!

this reviewer is very good and has reviewed it here. he gave it a good review and I'd trust his reviews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr9DPsjhIVs

so for example here we have a cheap phone on wish for 79 euro delivered which looks good. although with customs collection fee and VAT you'd probably add on another 20 euro min bringing it up over 100 euro delivered.

https://www.wish.com/search/mobile-phones-android/product/5c19ddc9ee1dd3729e678a18

it has a Mediatek MT6580 cpu which checking only has an antutu score of 22,450 compared to the helio x27 in the tablet that I linked which has over 100,000 (the reveiwer got 106,000 in his test in the video)
this will not be good for games at all.

in fact something like that will run really slowly in general.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Mediatek-MT6580M-SoC-Benchmarks-and-Specs.167881.0.html

none of the phones that I've looked at there on wish have any decent sort of chip which is important for running games - even ones costing 150 plus.

some of them don't even tell you in the info what chip is in them so that is a sure sign that it's a sh1t one!

by the way - if required - that tablet can also receive phone calls.

can use the loudspeaker to do so.

Anthonylfc

glasso wrote: »

by the way - if required - that tablet can also receive phone calls.

can use the loudspeaker to do so.

so basiclly xiaomi mi a2 lite with a €5 data bundle ( or whatever amount of data i want )

so download apps on wifi and let him use the data when out and about ??

same with tablet ?

Anthonylfc

Anthonylfc wrote: »

so basiclly xiaomi mi a2 lite with a €5 data bundle ( or whatever amount of data i want )

so download apps on wifi and let him use the data when out and about ??

same with tablet ?

yes

as I said I'd go for the tablet as it's a better experience for most games.

lycamobile is by far the cheapest option for data but the speed is low but should be sufficient for most games.

with most other providers you have to pay min 15 per 30 days.