Deals: get geared up with Samsung, Google or CMF phones and accessories
Black Friday is more of a general vibe of the season rather than a particular day, so there are discounts before, during and after. We’re in the “after” period and now is a good time to refresh your gear.
Let’s start with Samsung. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is still its best camera phone and even when the S25 Ultra arrives, it will only upgrade the ultra wide camera (from 12MP to 50MP). That’s what rumors say, anyway. You can pair it with a Galaxy Watch7 (44mm), available in Bluetooth and LTE variants, and Galaxy Buds3 Pro and the total savings will go up to £385.
Let’s look at a similar offer for Google fans. The Pixel 9 Pro has the same cameras as its large Pro XL sibling, something the small Galaxy S24 can’t say. You can pair it with Google’s new and much improved Pixel Watch 3 (45mm), also available in Bluetooth and LTE variants, and the Pixel Buds Pro 2. The savings work out to £203.
We also have a cheaper alternative, this one CMF themed. The CMF Phone 1 punches above its weight with a quality 6.7” FHD+ 120Hz OLED display, Dimensity 7300 chipset and 5,000mAh battery. The back can be swapped out for a custom look. The CMF Watch Pro 2 doesn’t have the best health tracking sensors, but it’s cheap and customizable too (the front bezel is replaceable). Finally, the CMF Buds Pro 2 offer noise cancellation on the cheap and a unique feature – a volume dial on the charging case.
You can pair the Samsung or Google accessories with a Galaxy Z Fold6 or a Pixel 9 Pro Fold too. The reason to stick with one brand is that accessories work best with a sibling device, e.g. ECG on Galaxy Watches only works with Galaxy phones. The Pixel Watch app can do ECG even when connected to non-Pixel phones, though. However, DND and Bedtime sync only work with a Pixel.
If you’re not a fan of large horizontal foldables, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 is an option (Google doesn’t have a flip foldable yet).
The OnePlus 12 series is having a going away party. The OnePlus 12 is £300 off for the 16/512GB model and £200 off for the 12/256GB, so the extra RAM and storage are only a £50 upgrade. The OnePlus 12R is £200 off.
The OnePlus Nord 4 is £100 cheaper than the 12R. It’s a mid-range phone, but its Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 is quite competitive with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 inside the 12R. The 6.74” display isn’t an LTPO panel like on the R-model, but it is the same pixel density. The 12R has a slight advantage in terms of cameras. Both phones have 5,500mAh batteries with 100W wired-only charging. Of course, the Nord 4 is famous for its now rare metal unibody.
As a cheaper option, there’s the OnePlus Nord CE4 Lite. It has a 6.67” 120Hz FHD+ OLED display and IP54 dust and water resistance rating. It is powered by the Snapdragon 695.
The Sony Xperia 10 VI finally left the 695 behind in favor of the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. It is a fairly petite device with a 6.1” 21:9 display (the phone is only 68mm wide) and the selfie camera and stereo speakers live on the top and bottom bezels instead of digging into the display. The 48MP main camera is joined by an 8MP ultra wide (the Nord CE4 Lite doesn’t have an ultra wide).
The Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ surprisingly has DeX – the desktop-like multitasking used to be an exclusively S-series feature. If you get the 128GB variant, the tablet will have 8GB of RAM instead of just 4GB, which will really help with the multitasking.
Apple’s iPad (2022), aka 10th gen, is its most affordable modern option (by that we are referring to the USB-C port). It’s not as good at multitasking, but that’s a software limitation – the Apple A14 is still a fast chipset for this price range.
The Amazon Fire Max 11 is half off if you get the 64GB model, the 128GB is 43% off (in both cases, it’s a £125 discount). Note that these prices are with lockscreen ads. Still, that’s quite cheap for a good quality 11” IPS LCD (60Hz, 2,000 x 1,200px) and stereo speakers – great for streaming and light gaming.
Tablets like the Tab A9+ and Fire Max, plus phones like the Xperia 10 VI, Nord CE4 Lite and CMF Phone 1 have microSD slots – yes, these days it’s mostly the cheaper models. You can get massive amounts of storage, 2TB!, for just £150 with the SanDisk Extreme microSD card. It’s rated A2 (4,000/2,000 read/write IOPS for app usage) and can deliver sequential read speeds of up to 240MB/s.
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