Hiking a new trail in the Adirondacks, leaning over the railing at Niagara Falls, or simply stepping from dock to boat in the San Francisco harbor can all be simple elements of your very exciting travel plans. Until you hear that sound we all fear and unfortunately know too well. The stress-inducing, heart-breaking clatter or plop of your $999 IPhone or $750 Google Pixel slipping from your pocket into the below ravine or splashing into a seemingly bottomless and rapid moving body of water, gone forever and taking your piece of mind and heart along with it.
The only possible scenario that could make this terrifying possibility worse, is remembering that you ignored the advice from reading this article strongly advising you to pick up a more affordable travel device. We found two devices, all under a $200 price tag, which you can pick up used from Amazon, switch your service to for the duration of your travel, and not risk a stroke if your phone forgets that it lacks wings and absolutely can not go skydiving without you.
ZTE Axon 7 Mini ranges between $150 – $200 has a 16MP camera in back for those panoramic shots, and an 8MP camera in front for those late-night clubbing or early-morning sunrise hike selfies. It also has two SIM card slots, so if you travel international (like Mexico or Canada) you can pick up a cheap local service plan without having to drop your current service back home or juggle swapping SIM cards. Finally, it charges from empty to full in 90 minutes, and if you’re really in a hurry, the first 30 minutes of charge provides enough juice for nearly 7 hours of talk time.
Huawei Honor 5X can be found for roughly $100, and it’s upgraded cousin Honor 6X with double storage capacity is around $200. The 6X is the first phone to offer three card slots, that’s two SIM and one microSD. The expandable storage space allows you to increase your internal storage to 128GB, meaning more than 30,000 photos or more than 450 hours of video.
Both of these devices are Android operating systems, which allows you to couple the phone with the free Google Photos app. You’ll have as-it-happens, geolocation tagged backups of your photos, videos, and travels to sort through when you get back home. You never have to plug your phone into a computer or figure out how to get your memories off your phone and into your photo albums.
