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.
Pixel 6. Upgraded from a pixel 4a.
Where’s my fucking headphone jack.
Also why is the 6 so heavy
I’ve got a Fairphone 4. Had quite the headache, cause I had a slightly broken one. I don’t want to go into detail, but I can say the support on Fairphones side is excelent, they were super friendly and helped to fix the issues as best as they could. And the nice thing is that you can repair most things yourself. But it is still a “nerdy” product. Fairphone doesn’t have the best flagship with the fastes processor. But if you value something, where you own your hardware, and can repair stuff easily, you should consider it.
I have an iPhone 12 Mini.
I am an IT guy, I just want a phone that works.
It is not amazing, it is not horrible, it has good cameras, it’s fine.
CarPlay is awesome, the size is great, the battery is too small. The notch isn’t as annoying as I first thought.
It’s a fine phone.
Same here. iPhone 12 Mini, was an Android user before but this is probably the best Phone I ever had.
Android phones always had the issues with no more Android updates and getting slow with time.
Now my only problem is a battery which gets weaker every year and I don’t know what I will get next since this form factor is pretty much dead but I don’t want a bigger phone.
why not just replace the battery?
Yeah - I will try that as long as it is possible
I spend all day work on software. I am now a PM after spending 15 years writing code, but totally agree with wanting to not have to worry about hardware/software once I’m done working.
My personal phone is a Pixel 3a. I would classify it as not amazing/not horrible/decent camera and just works. I personally like some of the UX patterns in Android more than iOS, but these days the two are more or less in parity. Unless you get an OE ROM. Those can be a wreck.
I’ve had three Google Pixels now and they’ve all developed problems with just freezing up or shutting down randomly. Won’t be getting one again. Also, the smaller versions keep getting bigger with every iteration. What’s the point? I want a small phone.
Pixel 4a. It has a headphone jack, the bootloader is easy to unlock, and it’s well supported by third party developers (I run LineageOS on it).
The stock kernel doesn’t support ExFAT, which is annoying. I’d prefer if it was a little smaller.
Rant: every newer phone is worse in terms of bootloader, size, or headphone jack.
The stock kernel doesn’t support ExFAT
Oh yeah, this also annoys me with my current phone due to Kiwix. Thankfully split ZIM mostly works.
Fairphone 4. No complaints at all
I have an iPhone. It’s pretty recent, but definitely not the most recent. No, I don’t know exactly what model it is. It’s an utterly boring glass brick that lets me find out stuff and say stuff and take pictures. It set itself up from my last iPhone like a clone emerging from a vat, and someday it will be fated to transfer its lifeforce to its brother-self-son. Such is the way of the iPhone.
It’s… fine. I got a red one.
Pixel 6A. No headphone jack, no sd card slot, low battery life, but has grapheneos support.
Its so much heavier than the Pixel 4a, also the fingerprint sensor is worse
pixel 8 running graphene
pretty decent
fingerprint sensor is mid as hell, but cameras and screen are super nice
Just in case you know, is there a way to lock network bands in Graphene (couldn’t find an answer). It’s basically why I limited my selection to MediaTek this time around, but some custom ROMs might have that on different SoCs possibly.
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.
Pixel 8 Pro. I take issue with the buttons all being on the right side, which makes combination presses difficult. The cameras are positioned in such a way that it’s difficult to keep stable while not covering them. Gestures are less good than iOS, but it’s literally 2024, and digital buttons should die. I do not like the under-screen fingerprint reader. Rear was so much better on my OnePlus 5T, and that was probably my best unlocking experience.
No headphone jack (surprisingly not new).
I went from a oneplus 5t to a pixel 7a, I really miss my oneplus. The newest oneplus at the time was too expensive and big for me, so I tried something different, but I will definitely go back once I get the chance…
Pixel 6 with Graphene OS.
It’s perfect. I wouldn’t swap it for anything. Graphene is a delight to use. Android as it should always have been. Regular updates, very secure, no bloat, full (optional) Play Services support, all my banking apps work.
Only downsides are:
- Google Wallet/Pay doesn’t work but I’ve never seen the point in mobile payments anyway.
- No headphone jack, which I was dead against but tbh Bluetooth earbuds these days are superb and wired headphones were cumbersome.
No headphone jack, which I was dead against but tbh Bluetooth earbuds these days are superb and wired headphones were cumbersome.
I gave that a go, but nope. I did have a phone with no headphone jack, and used BT earbuds in the past. Another battery to keep charged, having to unpair them each time to use with a laptop, then re-pair them, occasional but annoying audio cuts with RFI (WiFi hotspot, microwave oven,…), very noticeable delay with FPS games (that was otherwise unnoticeable).
Just nope. Bluetooth audio is nice with a laptop, so that when I have earphones connected to it, I don’t have to disconnect them to hear something from my phone, but that’s about it.
Is it bad trying to set up Graphene if I already have a Pixel with data on it? What could I do to back my whole phone up prior to migration?
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.
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
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?
