I’m a tight fisted guy and it’s so tempting to just go Argos buy a £100 phone and take to my 02 shop as I’m on O2 sim only and let them set me up ! If it only lasted 3 years I wouldn’t lose out ?
You would get 3 or more years Mike out of a £100ish phone, there are many between £50 – £100 that would be able to call, text and Whatsapp on, The pixel density screen resolution won’t be great but it will be useable. It won’t be laggy but it will be limited to what tasks you perform as the processorwill be low end and the onboard ram will be 1-3gb and onboard storage will be more than likely 32gb possibly a more realistic 64gb. It will take photos but the camera wont be the best.
You could get a 5g phone for probably less than £200 but, cost savings will be made elsewhere with screen resolution and its internals.
That said a £100ish phone will give you the basics of calls, messages, social media and video calls over Whatsapp Messanger etc.
There are some smartphones in this catagory that I wouldn’t touch and others I would, so please ask before rushing out and buying one.
Apart from calls messages video calling what do you want from a phone-photo quality etc.
I’m not saying taking it to a shop to set up, but I’d be doing the basics like charging the phone and letting it fully apply any updates and setting th easye basics up prior. we can go into that later.
What