Can you elaborate on your points and maybe your kind of work a bit?

I’m not quite sure I know what you mean by phone compatibility. If we’re talking simple file transfers, both Windows and Linux should be able to do that pretty easily (for Android phones, just remember to change the USB mode to file transfer).

Is there a reason you’re after an i7 specifically? I think you might be working off of out of date information: laptops above bottom-of-the-bargen-barrel tier these days run solid state drives by default (it’s actually somewhat uncommon to find a new machine with a 2.5in drive bay that would support a mechanical hard drive). Additionally, Intel dropped the ‘i’ prefix from their names a few years ago. Plus, modern processors from both AMD and Intel have gotten really good lately. Like, a mid range choice from either manufacturer is more than enough oomph for office use and light gaming.

My knee jerk reaction is probably the Framework 13, the pre-build intel core 5 option clocks in at exactly $999. It isn’t top of the line or bleeding edge, but it’s got enough compute to handle every day workloads. Framework’s are orders of magnitude more repairable than any other brand on the market, which means it should last a very long time (most parts are designed to be user serviceable if something happens to break. They also sell main boards that you can swap in if something new comes out and you want to upgrade the machine down the line).

That said, if you’re looking for more budget friendly options, I’ve historically had good luck with the Dell Outlet (before I switched to buying framework’s), they sell overstock and manufacture refurbished machines at a pretty decent chuck off of retail, plus you have the option of attaching a warranty to the machine and it’s covered the same way a brand new machine is (it’s not strictly necessary, but I usually opted for a 4 year warranty with accident protection to keep the machines in service for at least that long. Mostly, because the laptops were purchased with the understanding that they’d get tossed in a bag and dragged around (academic use) and at least this way I could make Dell send a repair tech if something broke). Also, if you time your purchase around black Friday, you can usually combo the sale price of the machine with a service like Rakuten to get something like 10% cash back on the order.