He who is trader_4 said on Sun, 24 Dec 2017 12:30:24 -0800 (PST):

These are meant to be second phones for the kids, which is why the
price-to-performance is a factor - since I want to get the best bang for
the buck.

That concept does not compute, at least for me.

Just like with buying tools, you want to make sure that they pay for
themselves over time, or that you get the best tool for the best price.

You can get the best tool at the worst price and you can get a bad tool at
an even worse price - but the concept of getting the best bang for the buck
should be familiar to you.

Is it not?

I just switched to t-mobile myself. Way better than sprint here in my area
of NJ. Actually I'm with Mint Sim, which is the sub whore of a whore.

I know people in NJ who are in love with Verizon signal.
They can't stand Verizon prices - but the signal strength is their gig.
So I have to get them Verizon phones.
But these phones are for local kids - where T-Mobile is just fine.

I can put the T-Mobile SIM card into almost any GSM phone and it just
works.

It won't work in a locked phone from another carrier.

I haven't had Verizon since they started unlocking phones, but AT&T
unlocked every phone I asked them to unlock, as did T-Mobile.

The paperwork from Costco clearly says T-mobile will unlock these phablets
after two billing cycles - so I will help the parents of these kids to get
them unlocked ASAP (because the FCC rules on unlocking, actually Library of
Congress regulations, change over time).

I was looking at the stylo before I decided on the ZTE.
This has a 6" screen, 4000mah battery and I love it.

That's a bit bigger in both screen size and battery size.
Is the battery removable?

To me, the battery being removable is one of the most precious hardware
features of many Android phones. For example, I bought my Samsung Galaxy
SIII when it was new, and now I change batteries any time I want. I have a
7,000mAH battery for example, which works beautifully.

You can see the external battery charger I use in this picture - where I
typically charge four new batteries at a time so that I can run 24/7 as
long as the electricity holds out.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/12/24/stylo3plus_phones.jpg

My model for myself is the same that most of us use for my shop tools.
I buy the best phone that exists for whatever price it costs, and then I
use it forever or until it's no longer feasible.

At about 5 years for my Samsung Galaxy SIII, it still is going strong
(since I replace batteries any time I want) but the USB port has been worn
out so I do all my transferring of data over the air to a networked drive
on my local home network.

How to mount the entire mobile device file system on Windows
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/misc.phone.mobile.iphone/j2nTvKDVF2Y/W4CvRyK1AAAJ

What did you think of the hardware comparison?
Did I get anything wrong or miss a key hardware-comparison factor?

Fast charging on the Lg?

Thanks for that addition. Fast charging is a good point.

The LG claims to have "fast charging" and the charger that came with it
explicitly says that on the side.

You can see the LG "fast" charger in this pic:
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/12/24/devices.jpg

I'm not sure though, "what" fast charging really means because I generally
use 2.4Amp 5VDC five port wall worts - so what would this "fast charger"
that came with the phone do that the wall wort doesn't already do?

Charging time?

Somewhere in the literature I saw "2 hours" charge time from dead to full.
Does that sound reasonable for a phablet?

And to really compare the cpu performance you need benchmarks.

I agree. Surprisingly I didn't find any benchmarks for the LG Stylo 3 Plus
that I could compare to the iPhone 7 Plus.

These benchmarks would be interesting because while the iPhone 7 Plus has
half as many CPU cores as does the Stylo 3 Plus, the speed of the 2 cores
that the iPhone has is a bit faster and there is more RAM in the iPhone.

So it would be interesting to see how the doubling of CPUs benchmarks
against that hardware feature.

If anyone has comparison benchmark numbers, that would be fantastic!