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Thinking maybe 128 gb

the phone finder at gsmarena i linked you to can help you narrow down your choices for you.

or if you are brave enough to venture out, i would go to Best Buy and look and play around with the various phones they have out on display. sometimes, especially now, they will have exclusive deals with the various carriers on certain phones. they should have some good deals to offer you.

maybe start with something like this:
Moto G Stylus Cell Phone with 128GB Memory (Unlocked) - Mystic Indigo
 
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That looks good. What do they mean by activated? I guess that means having a sim card. I was planning to use it wifi only. By the way, the phone finder said 0 results. I must be using it wrong.
yeah i linked to an unlocked phone, so it will need to be activated if you plan on using any cellular service. if you just want it for wifi, then there is no need for activation.
 
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Here are a few that pack a good bang for the buck:
those are mostly chinese phones........i would pass on those. there is just no support for them here. i would stick with the name brands......even though xiaomi and oneplus are pretty big......in china though.

but this is my opinion. i'm sure others have great experience with them, but if your carrier has no support for them, i would look for something else......just my 2 cents.
 
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The "unlocked" phones offered on Amazon AR GSM

I understand that carriers like Verizon and Sprint have an activation procedure for BYOD. Where they'll only register and activate certain devices that they approve, and Xiaomi is not one of them. I've read many times on AF about this. You can't just insert a Verizon or Sprint SIM into any device and it connects. They have to register and activate a phone's IMEI, MEID, and/or ESN.
 
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I understand that carriers like Verizon and Sprint have an activation procedure for BYOD. Where they'll only register and activate certain devices that they approve, and Xiaomi is not one of them. I've read many times on AF about this. You can't just insert a Verizon or Sprint SIM into any device and it connects. They have to register and activate a phone's IMEI, MEID, and/or ESN.

The unlocked phones on Amazon are GSM and won't work with Verizon or Sprint, anyway. The unlocked phones that I've purchased have worked flawlessly, my carrier is AT&T. I had a Huawei Honor 8 for a couple of years, and for the past year and a half I've been using a OnePlus 7, which is the best phone I've ever had. That includes a Note 5 I bought the week that they were introduced. One of the nice things about unlocked phones is that there are no BS apps pre loaded by the carrier, my OnePlus was especially barren, there was really nothing beyond a camera app, a contact list, a messenger, a gallery, gmail, and a file manager, which suited me just fine.
 
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The unlocked phones on Amazon are GSM and won't work with Verizon or Sprint, anyway. The unlocked phones that I've purchased have worked flawlessly, my carrier is AT&T. I had a Huawei Honor 8 for a couple of years, and for the past year and a half I've been using a OnePlus 7, which is the best phone I've ever had. That includes a Note 5 I bought the week that they were introduced. One of the nice things about unlocked phones is that there are no BS apps pre loaded by the carrier, my OnePlus was especially barren, there was really nothing beyond a camera app, a contact list, a messenger, a gallery, gmail, and a file manager, which suited me just fine.

As I thought in the US. If you're buying "international" or grey import, you should be aware of carrier restrictions.
 
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A thought from issues that have been posted in the past on AF. "international" Samsungs are often grey imports, like from the Middle East, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.

AFAIK Samsung US can't and won't honour warranty on dual-SIM foreign phones, and they've had to go back to the region or country they were originally intended to be sold in. Also there's been posts about phones not receiving updates.

And I know some people have had similar issues with grey market Canon and Nikon DSLR cameras and lenses, like been refused warranty service.
 
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