So I need a new phone - Help!

So what's up Giant Bomb community I'm looking for some advice regarding phones. I'm in the market for a new phone and as someone who has no experience with smartphones I'm looking for some direction and advice.

I was thinking the new Nexus but then I saw it and it through me off a bit with both its size and price tag. Here's some of my thoughts and ramblings if they're of any help:

• I'd like to play the occasional game on the phone
• Are Windows phones decent, if so, which are the ones to go for ?
• Is having Cortana on your phone as great as I think?
• How does the Xbox integration work with Windows phones?
• Good battery life is a plus
• Contract or sim-free?
• If it's expensive I'd like it to last about say three years
• I'm also looking to get a PS4 / XB1 so is it worth getting a higher end phone over a console?

Any advice is appreciated as I've said before I'm pretty much clueless.

I really enjoy my windows phone. Pretty rare that I run into an app worth using that isn't available but I'm not a big app guy. Not the best game selection.

Cortana is pretty much just name for their personal assistant. No real ties to the name. And personal assistant is more what it is than the search buddy that is Siri. It figures out your home and place of work and you tell it certain details and set reminders. And it does stuff like aggregate news items and remind you when you need to leave your home to get to an appointment. Nothing game changing but helpful.

Xbox Integration is a pretty seamless when you use it. Log into your windows phone with your microsoft ID and you're done. That said, a lot of games aren't xbox-games. Because Microsoft's restrictions make xbox certification and updates hard. Hopefully that changes.

If you go windows phone, go Nokia or Microsoft Lumia as it is now called. Nokia can make a god damn phone. The 928 or 1020 or Icon. Apparently there are some new overdue flagship phones coming soon. Low end is also apparently pretty nice.

Now is also a really weird time for Windows Phone. It is looking more and more likely that windows phone 10 will just be windows 10 on a phone -- which might be ridiculously great. Windows Phone Central has even go so far as it change its name to Windows Central.

Is there anything to the "xbox integration" on windows phone that isn't available on other platforms through apps?

As far as size goes you might have to accept that smart phones are big now!

If the high end smart phones are a bit too pricey, I think I can recommend the phone I just got, which is a Sony Xperia M2. It's their mid range phone, apparently not as powerful as the z2, but I don't really play games on it so it hasn't bothered me, and it' near half the price of most high end phones. I'm sure that most games that are really designed for phones would be fine on it. It has one of the better battery lives I've seen in a smart phone - I get about 2 days from it if I'm using it fairly heavily, and if I'm using it how I normally use it (some phone calls, maybe about an hour a day using it as an MP3 player) then I get 3 or 4 before it needs charging. It also has that sweet 4g capability.

For the more general questions, I'm no expert but here's a few thoughts:

On whether it will last for 3 years: My last phone was a Samsung Galaxy S2 which I got second hand from my sister. It lasted me 3 years, and she had it for 2. It still works, actually, but it was slowing down a lot and the OS had developed some odd bugs. Basically there's no reason, imo, that any phone wouldn't last 3 years at least if you take care of it. Obviously with phones getting larger and thinner it's a bit easier to break them accidentally now, but if you're not clumsy then you should be ok!

On whether to buy Sim Free or get a contract: Best thing to do is to compare any contract that comes with a phone to the cost of the phone, and the cost of an equivalent SIM-only contract. If you get a phone on contract (in the UK) it's normally a 24 month contract, so it's a case of subtracting 24 months worth of the SIM-only contract from 24 months of the with SIM contract to find out how much they are charging you for the phone, essentially. It will invariably be over the odds, but that's thee premium for financing your phone I suppose. I suppose this is actually totally obvious, but I feel like in this country they try and obfuscate the fact that what you are doing is financing a purchase. If you have the money in hand, it will almost certainly be better to buy the phone out of pocket and get a SIM only contract. Less money overall, and it will have less impact on your monthly cash flow.

On whether a better phone is worth it over a console: Obviously this is a personal decision, but for me I would say definitely not. The range of types of game you can get on a phone is pretty limited, and honestly once the initial excitement has worn off I very rarely find myself using my phone for games. It might be worth it if you are travelling/commuting a lot and don't get much time to sit down and play games, I suppose.

@guanophobic:

If you're playing an xbox game, you get proper xbox achievements and achievement points. And your games hub pulls in your xbox live profile. So, nothing big.

I owned a Windows Phone before, it is not worth it. The OS is good, it's just that there are way too few good quality apps. I'm not talking numbers; obviously you don't need millions of apps. I'm talking 'basic' functionality. For example, when I had my Windows Phone (which is about 6 months ago now), Tinder was not available on it. An official train schedule app was not available on it. Heck, I believe even an official DropBox app was not available on it. Only mediocre third party ones. Just to name some examples. Also, the OS has some issues. I listen to a lot of music and you actually cannot use the slider to adjust the time of a song. You'll have to button rewind or fast forward. I have mixes of an hour long, you can imagine how that might be frustrating. Also can't set custom sounds for many different notifications.

It just lacks basic functionality overall. That's not worth sacrificing over a cool looking OS.

I have an Xperia Z2 now. Couldn't be more happy with it. Battery life is great, all the options I want, all the apps I need and I can take it under water with me. Which is actually a plus.

I love me a huge phone.