I have tried to cancel the contract based on the fact that I made my decision based on incorrect information but my providers customer service were having none of it & stated that I should have read the warranty myself.
I only received the phone warranty with the phone which was after I had signed the contract ?
Also I have just found the original box the phone came in with the little warranty booklet in it & there it states that the phone warranty is 24 months & the battery & accessories warranty is 12 months ?
Another phone call tomorrow I think.
A problem with the UK is that we used to have many govt bodies that made sure that big business treated their customers properly & you could contact them to get them to arbitrate between you & the business to reach a fair outcome.
Sadly this present govt has pretty much shut them all down so the individual is left to deal with a big company on their own.
The outcome of this is that there is little customer protection now.
Looks like an awesome phone, especially for the price.
Why not check and see whether or not a Windows Phone would suit your use? I’ve used WP since they started, having decided to ditch the Droid because I got sick of endless customisation and buggy ROM’s. Anyway, plenty of WP’s have removable batteries. My current is a Lumia 735 which is 17 months old on its original battery and I can still very easily get a proper days usage out of it without switching everything off. If I take care with usage it can be two days. If I switched things off, I expect three days would be achievable. In any event, I could just as easily buy a spare battery to keep me ticking over.
As things stand right now - 7.39pm, I took it off the charger at 6am, been using it today as normal, battery is 56%.
So, if it has the apps you need, why not consider one? You may well get a better put together phone for less cash.
SP
It really is, for the price. And if you pay closer to $100 you can step up to an even nicer class that holds its own against the likes of Samsung and LG and HTC.
My wife has a Lumia windows phone (635 I think) & I really can”t get on with it.
I haven”t had a phone on contract for years as my last 3 phones I have bought myself & just got a sim only deal.
If I can get anywhere with having my contract cancelled I will buy a phone (with a battery that can be changed) & just get a sim only deal.
If not I will have to decide what to do as there is still 14 months left to run on it 
The annoying thing is that I only gave my previous S3 mini phone to my step son a fortnight ago as he had broken yet another phone :person_facepalming:
At the moment my phone is on charge for the 3rd time today & is red hot.
Apparently though, according to the three staff, this is quite normal :person_facepalming:
You should give WP another go. Not for an hour, or a day, but for maybe a week. Then it all starts to click and make sense and you start to realise that android seems so…. inefficient. Here I am at 16 hours off the charger at 51%.
Good quality, cheap WP’s are pretty easy to find.
Yeah SB it is fun to see these cheaper phones rock!
(And FYI we need a Dutch subscription so we can login to governmental things and these cheaper phones have dual sim and that is vital for us so I would not choose a flagship since they usually only support one sim ) )
Oh yeah wp is nice and all but when I put my sim in a new Android and login I have contacts, apps and all back without it costing me time.
Likewise with WP. Oh, and all my photos and videos that get automatically backed up to OneDrive. That’s a very useful feature should your phone be lost, stolen or damaged.
>ChiPhone
Android 5.1, and “This Android/Windows device is designed to function specifically with the current Android/Windows OS installed on it. Any alterations such as upgrades, modding with custom ROMs, rooting or flashing the Android device with other firmware will automatically void the device’s warranty.”
Not that warranty is much of a concern at that price.
bella-headlight, sorry to say but, you didn't gave your A3 battery optimal care. Of course anyway, I have to admit that, based on what you've reported, it seems your battery was factory defective.
I have a Moto G 2013 since early past year; I've, consistently, charged it up to no more than 60% of its total battery capacity in order to preserve battery lifespan. See BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries. After in excess of a year and half of usage, I really can't say my battery life has diminished even a little dime; in fact, it is better than when “new” because since February of this year I installed a rooted & optimized ROM on my phone. Sorry but, I'm just not going back to an unrooted system. A rooted system is a must for computer experienced geeks like me: Hacker's Keyboard, customized screen DPI settings to see things smaller onscreen (less zoom, no jackassly big interface bars, …), no stupid battery draining apps/sheesh, no dumba$$ “system” apps worth jack$hit, …
Of course it is “just me”, but due to my advanced computer science knowledge I can beat most if not any not so smartass $600+ phone user in almost any duty with ease. I'm not joking.
Check this out:
Amazing price for such a smartphone. I'd get one of those myself (and install a custom ROM on it) if I had to.
On the other hand, you can DIY change your smartphone's battery for cheap. Not long ago a friend of mine came to me crying about having destroyed his Moto G 2013 screen: we changed the whole thing in a short time after receiving an $25 alternate colour replacement. My friend was in bliss…
Cheers ^:)
Original post date: Sun, 09/04/2016 - 02:46; typo fixups and removal of an accidentally placed profanity. :-)
WRT Chinaphones. I’ve recently bought the dual sim ulefone Paris ($125) and it has proved itself to be a disappointment.The biggest issue I have is that during calls, the phone has an electronic interference sound that the other person hears, but I don’t. On the positive side, I dropped it twice on Sunday and the screen didn’t break!! 
How low do you allow it to discharge? Based on that link, if you discharge the battery too low, it would reduce the life. I think an ideal state is between 40-90%
I have had the Samsung S5 mini for a little over a year. It has a replaceable battery. About 6 months ago, I left it in my pants pocket and ran it through the washing machine. It is still working and battery life is great. I can’t say anything bad about Samsung phones as of yet.
I had an S3 mini for over 3 years as my previous phone.
Bought it outright myself.
At about 2.5 years old the battery suddenly failed (bulged) so I bought a new genuine battery for it.
I got the A3 about 10 months ago on contract as the deal being offered on a 2 year contract actually worked out cheaper than me buying the phone outright & paying for a sim only deal for 2 years.
I put the S3 mini in drawer as a spare.
Unfortunately a couple of weeks ago I gave it to my stepson as he had broken yet another phone & couldn”t afford to buy another.
Within a few days of doing that the A3 started playing up :person_facepalming:
The only reason that I switched from the S3 mini was that I found the text keyboard a little to small for my fingers & was always hitting the wrong letter.
Other than that the phone did everything I wanted plus more.
I have watched a few you tube videos on changing the battery on this A3 & it is not an easy task as the phone is extremely difficult to take apart to get at the battery (the actual battery change is straightforward once the phone is apart but it is very easy to damage it during dis-assembly).
I am not prepared to spend $120 to have a new battery fitted so it looks like I will have to buy a new phone myself & then when my present contact ends in 14 months switch to a sim only deal.
I liked Samsung as I was familiar with their operating systems & menus but may go for a different brand after this experience.
How low? Pedal to the metal my dear. :-)
agent80, the power management circuitry inside of your smartphone is programmed to prevent any attempt at over-discharging the battery. My battery monitoring application (Battery Monitor Widget) consistently tells me the lowest battery voltages ever seen on my device have always been above 3'1V.
Now, think of it: how the hell would any brand of smartphones and or other li-ion powered devices dare to provide the warranties they do leaving their li-ion batteries' management in the hands of uneducated users? 
Cheers ^:)
Yeah but charging it to 60% is kind of uhm, hmm, aaa, ….
I charge mine to 90-95% since I learned about li ion.
Then I can use the phone for two days and during each day it is on with internet on and I use internet for hours.
Location is off and switched on when I want to check maps.
I do have a second battery at 70% but never have it at hand when I need it lol.
Before we go out for longer times I charge it and bring a flashlight that can charge it from 0 to 18% while in use. That is enough since turning all off but 2G and low brightness gives a long long time to call and be called.
(But when it is 35°C in the shade as it has been for a long time now I do not bring that flashlight since it gets way too hot in our car
I do have cables and sigarette lighter adapters for charging on route without the need of li ion cells.
Confirmation from Sony that fully charging lithium-ion batteries rapidly degrades capacity:
——excerpt——
Bad news for the throw-it-away-and-buy-new-every-year marketing approach, finally.
Good news
I want four 30Q cells for testing high drain lights but have made a deal with myself to replace the other 18650 with 4,35V cells in the future and keep n charging them to 4,2 just for this one reason
And wauw it has been a long looong time since I visited Slashdot where it was a daily site once. Why I stopped I don’t even know so long ago was it 
That’s what I thought about the Chinese phone I bought for my wife - it was good for what must have been about a year (warranty period I guess), then it became absolutely riddled with malware and adware. Even a complete factory reset wouldn’t clean it, so I’m guessing it was all baked into the rom on a timer of some sort. I’m a bit of an Android tinkerer myself, and it even caused me to give up in the end. Being an obscure brand/model, there are usually no custom or clean roms to be found for these devices.
My Google Nexus 4 on the other hand, which must be 4 years old, is currently rocking Marshmallow, and the battery still lasts 2 days on a full charge.