Rants are welcome, even encouraged :)
Feel free to skip the following text
The last 4 phones I had were just a mess. I am starting to loose hope of there being something that would work well. I just recently got a new phone, it’s a mess as usual. Maybe what I am experiencing is enough for a warranty claim, maybe it’s just a quirk to be dealt with…
Every couple years every newer phone I try is just worse and worse. I thought that maybe once PinePhone and available software gets mature enough…, but at this point, maybe other phones will just get crap enough.
My last good phone was ironically an ultra-cheap Lark Cumulus 5HD. It was just 50 EUR new. No lags, no crashes, swappable battery, a just works experience. 50 bucks…
Chronologically…
Moto G5s Plus
Great hardware, except that focus on my camera was kind-of broken, but I was too lazy to get that repaired under warranty.
But SW, god damn Motorola. Slow buggy mess. Crashes, freezes, battery drain. BUT, I was able to fix it with ✨a custom ROM✨
Poco X3 Pro
If you had any MIUI device, you know. Alarm clock may get killed optimized, ton of bugs to learn working around, built-in ads and spyware. Lots of it, based on blocked DNS logs.
HW - cheap and powerful. Average lifespan of the motherboard being whopping… 9 months. The phone ate 3 of them.
Moto G54 5G Power
Once again, great HW, SW not so much. The 3 button navigation was completely broken in high DPI and what made me return it - non-skippable updates. Just full-screen permanent update notifications. Only option: update. Nope.
Ulefone Armor 24
Few SW issues: Long-pressing dock icons while an app is open crashes “Quickstep”, in turn killing navigation (both gesture and buttons…). Alarm clock gets killed most of the time even with all optimizations off.
HW, least I think I should classify it as such: The phone has a chance to negotiate (?) 12V for split-second intervals using QC 2.0 (based on my USB tester) which it doesn’t expect, and throws overvoltage error. This happens with all QC-compatible chargers I tried, even the original one when used with OTG adapter.
The original one otherwise uses USB-C with PD, which works, sure. But after using it data transfer to PC via cable is broken until reboot.
I was very much a full-time phone person, but now it’s too much. I got a cheap touchscreen ThinkPad and use it with KDE Plasma (wayland). I was doing basically everything on a phone before, now I instead try not to, but with everything being an app, damn.
LG V20. It’s old as shit but it has tons of features that you can’t get all on a new phone. IMO phone technology peaked on this one.
Just off the top of my head: Headphone jack, Replaceable battery, Small second screen you can put app shortcuts on, Hi-fi DAC, IR blaster, SD slot
Unless you have a philosophical/moral reason against it, try a Samsung. Can’t speak for the cheaper models, but the top models (S-series and Z-series) are usually really great.
Yeah, I do. Mocking Apple, then doing the exact same thing themselves. Also I kind of require a headphone jack and SD card slot. Even if the phone had >= 1TB, it’s still great for independent storage backups. Of course, being inside the phone it shouldn’t be relied on, but it did save me with the Poco X3 Pro for example. For added security, I use Termux and pipe the TAr archives to GPG.
The advantage of this is being doable basically immediately and offline at high speed, anytime.
But regardless, thanks for the recommendation. Maybe it will once be my only choice.
I have the Samsung Galaxy A54 it has an SD card slot and I just use an adapter so I can charge it and use headphones at the same time. Some companies sell it much cheaper. The only downside that I found was that Samsung promised that all Galaxy phones would get the AI integration but when the update came out the Galaxy A54 was not included so I can’t have AI built in to my phone.
Well, if you don’t mind alternative OS, try SailfishOS with an officially supported device. I used it with the Xperia 10 III and I really liked the experience, sans a few bugs.
It has a compatibility layer to run Android apps, though not everything is supported (to my irritation, fingerprint is not), but it works well.
I think newer devices are supported nowadays.
Good luck with a headphone jack , any reason you couldn’t just use USB c headphones ? It seems like the phones you are choosing are lesser known phones with less people using it , so less testing and more like to have issues . If you want something that is just going to work you will probably have to settle with a pixel or Samsung. My galaxy s21 lasted a few years and took a beating and kept going m
I agree, one of the last companies selling quality.
I’ll add that I got an a03s this week to use as a backup while my primary is on the healing bench.
It is garbage for use. I would have been less irritated setting those dollar bills on fire than I am trying to use it.
To give an example, this morning I went grocery shopping. Conncted Bluetooth headphones, opened only Spotify and my shopping list in notes. Every 45-90 seconds the music would hang, didn’t matter if the phone was in my pocket, in my hand locked, it in my hand unlocked with Spotify in the foreground.
To open YouTube, with nothing else open, to type three words that bring the desired video to the top of the search, and to start playback takes minimum of 30 seconds. I don’t bother with any video on here.
Typing this post has taken entirely too long because the fucking keyboard/autocorrect shit is too slow and causes all kinds of input lag.
I was going to end with saying it’s great for basic communications, but honestly… It’s shit. It’s motivated me to fix my regular phone as quickly as I can. Something I’m not prone to do without motivation, if at all.
Edited to add that even network speeds are garbage. Wi-Fi is far worse than cellular data, and that’s not great. Did some side by side testing with the other phones on the same network. The speed difference isn’t small, I didn’t write anything down so I won’t give numbers, but it’s bad. Real bad.
Oof. A0 series is horrible. You need at least A2x series phone or better to even have a usable phone.
I’ve got an A71 5g and my only bitch (it is a big bitch though) is that it’s slightly different from the 4g A71 in form factor so there are no good choices for cases.
I will never buy a phone that doesn’t support an application like SoundAssistant that let’s you completely silence certain applications and force audio multiplexing. If I can’t forcefully silence applications that I don’t want making sounds I live in misery.
Fairphone 4. No complaints at all
I know it’s fashionable to hate Apple here, but switching from android to iPhone was the best decision Ive made. They just work. All of them. As a software guy, I spend my time making computers do stuff, so my phone needs to just work
Currently iPhone 15 Pro.
I replace every 2-4 years so I can give it to my kids another 2-4 years
- iPhone 13 Pro
- iPhone X
- iPhone 6+?
- iPhone 5?
An iPhone 12 Pro as my daily driver. I bought it four years ago, and might get a battery replacement in the coming months to extend its lifespan until Apple stops supporting it. The phone is as reliable as the day I bought it. It just works.
As for quirks, there are plenty that appear, disappear, and reappear with each software update. I made a post about it a while back[0]. One that bothers me the most is the ability to seek a video in the native player by swiping across the screen (not just using the scrub bar), a la Apollo for Reddit’s video player. This feature didn’t work in iOS 14, the OS it shipped with, or in 15. It worked in 16, which is when I discovered that the native player has this feature, but it stopped working after updating to 17.
I also use, in decreasing order of usage, a Moto G60 Fusion (with a debloated and de-Googled stock ROM), a Pixel 6A (running Graphene OS), and a Mi A2 (with Ubuntu Touch). Unlike my daily driver, these devices do not have a SIM card and serve as experiments to assess the feasibility of living without reliance on big tech. I acquired these phones from friends and family who were either discarding them or exchanging them for new ones. I also disassembled a few older Asus Zenfone and Redmi Note models that were either too outdated or bricked, to learn more about their innards and architecture.
OnePlus 6 I got secondhand for a great price. Love the hardware (especially headphone jack). Don’t love the back being made of glass (just… why???)
the main problem
IT IS TOO BIG
Samsung Galaxy A02s. This thing feels like it isn’t that old, but damn sure operates like it’s old. Thing lags like a slug to where I’ve had performance lag in keyboard interfaces to even recording audio clips on Discord. It’s battery life is shitting the bed, even at 100%, it is down to 94% immediately even when it’s not used.
Samsung Galaxy A32-5G. This is my primary and I like it, still does fine and was worthy to slap an Otterbox protection case on it. Does what I need it to do and is reliable, it’s roughly 3 years old.
HMD Vibe. I hate this phone. Bluetooth is terrible, cameras are all trash, it sometimes just doesn’t ring when someone is calling, no NFC, no finger print. Face unlock is slower then just putting in my pattern.
I had the Nokia 8.3 5g just before it that I accidentally took swimming. It was the best phone I’ve ever had. No bloat, everything worked perfectly. I can’t understand how they had that phone, then made this piece of trash.
Moto G Stylus 2020. No real complaints about the phone. Battery life is about 2 days. It has headphone jack and SDcard slot. I like the chop chop motion to turn on the flashlight and the twist motion to run the camera.
Pixel 4a with CalyxOS.
Support has ended while my phone is still working great and could probably last me a few more years (4 already) I get that companies can’t support devices forever, but I wish they would apply their 7 year support policy retroactively because now I’m going to buy a new phone for the simple reason that mine is now insecure (no security updates for firmware)
This sucks and it’s so wasteful.
Recently jumped from a Pixel 2 XL to the 9 Pro Fold. I had the 2XL for quite a while, and a few times over the years it developed this issue where it would shut off when I plugged it in to charge, unless YouTube was playing for some reason. Sometimes it would stay on if I turned it back on after it was plugged in, but not always.
I used my phone as my morning alarm, which typically meant starting a video like this before going to sleep. Generally the problem went away after a month or so, and so I just dealt with it. This last time was pretty persistent though, and got to the point where I decided to get a new phone.
Obviously I’ve only had the Fold for a couple months, so nothing crazy I’ve noticed so far. First time I’ve ever had a brand new flagship phone, which is neat I guess. A little pricey, but I do a lot of reading on my phone so honestly I think it’s a decent investment. Doubt I can go back to reading PDFs on a non-fold, but I tend to keep phones until they’re run into the ground, so by the time this one gives out there should be plenty of cheaper folds on the market.
Small phones pleaseeeee!
Every time I buy a new phone I’m devastated to learn that I can’t get anything usable with one hand.
I need a 5.5 inch phone, anything bigger is hard to use, anything past 6 is impossible with one hand
Oh, you’d absolutely hate my phone: https://www.gsmarena.com/ulefone_armor_24-12602.php
Look at the dimensions, especially thickness and weight. Ironically though, it feels better in hand than a large thin slab. Thin phones are better smaller.
If you’ve seen that Energizer P28k thing, this is larger and heavier.
That’s some battery. How long do you get between charges?
I try to keep it around 20 - 80 %, that’s 2 - 3 days. Fully charged, (by the way, there is more capacity beyond “100%”), 4 possibly even 5 if going to like 5%.
But I use it heavily.
Also, that flashlight at the back can actually drain it quite fast. Hell, if you have like 30% it can’t keep it on full power steadily, it starts flickering a bit. It gets completely disabled <20%. Earlier if you use it in the camera app. Ideally, if you want to use it combined with the camera you’ll have > 50%.
You may be able to charge your laptop from it if it supports 5V charging. It can supply 10W. To get some idea, my ThinkPad L390 yoga is currently consuming 3.73W as I am typing this.
But as I wrote, good luck charging it, though my unit may be defective. I don’t have another one to compare to.
Samsung Galaxy S9. have replaced the battery twice, got it at launch. skipped the s8, had s5 and s7 prior. it’s not rooted, user lawnchair launcher and love it. will drive it til it dies.
Huawei P30 Pro, decent cameras and screen, battery still going strong after 3 years, pretty happy with it!
I agree with the one user who stated that modern phones are too goddamn big.
I’ve had Samsung’s Z Flip5 for over a year now and I’ve been really enjoying it. Small form factor when folded that actually freaking fits in women’s pockets. And when unfolded, I have a case with a ring that helps me hold it and reach higher up on the screen. Honestly, I would like if it was a bit smaller when opened, but it’s a fun compromise.
It doesn’t seem to fit in with what you want though, as it doesn’t have a headphone jack and isn’t going to be as durable as a regular phone. Still, it’s fun and I like it!
