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.
I’ve been a droid/moto fanboy since my first droid phone, but I have tiny hands and the newer models are just too big. It’s annoying as can be.
So this last cycle, I swapped to a S23. It’s a better size - could stand to be a bit smaller, but I can generally use it with one hand. But I just don’t like it. Samsung added a bunch of their own stuff on top of the android stuff, and it’s constantly asking for new permissions for different privacy policies and other things.
I’m also so upset that I lost gesture controls. And the fingerprint sensor is a laugh.
On the plus, the camera is really good and the battery life surprises me sometimes. It’s a fine phone, but I miss my motos. Still, I’ll keep it around for another few years and pray there’s something more compact that will come out. Or the razrs will get better.
Fairphone 4. No complaints at all
Pixel 8. No complaints.
Stock ROM?
yup
Gigaset GS5 from Germany.
Overall it is a solid phone. Stock Android, Headphone jack, dual Sim, a micro SD card slot (not a dual Sim or SD card tray), and a replaceable battery.
My grips with it are all surrounding the charging circuitry. It doesn’t do fast charging and when charging while also using the headphone jack it will induce noise.
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?
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.
The volume spontaneously resets itself to the default level ~50%. I think it means the headphone jack has issues, and it’s thinking a device is being connected/disconnected.
I generally switch between Sony Xperia and the Samsung A series, I’m currently with Sony. This is an unpopular opinion but the side fingerprint scanner really bothers me. It’s too good compared to the under display scanner and the phone keeps getting unlocked on accident when trying to look at the time or even turning off the screen. Plus I had to register 4 different fingers to cover all hand positions. It’s a good phone otherwise.
I was actually considering getting an ulefone armor at some point but the bad software stopped me. As most of your issues are with software you should probably keep away from the really cheap brands.
I have the Xperia as well. Perfect phone, really ticks every box. Except for that damn fingerprint reader. Idk how such a thing gets into production without someone realising it’s the worst place to put it.
This is a feature I miss from MIUI. Side-mounted fingerprint scanner with the option of press to unlock rather than just tap.
It does have an option to only scan after pressing the button. But it gets a bit weird if you just pressed the button to lock the screen as there seems to be a mini race condition somewhere in there.
Moto G Stylus 5g 2023. I’m satisfied with the hardware but Android has its own issues and it only gets 1 major version update, to Android 14, which it’s running now. Main new feature of the 2024 version is wireless charging.
Samsung note 20 ultra 5g.
The battery fucking blows.
Ouch. I must have gotten pretty lucky with my Note 20 5G, my battery lasts pretty decently under normal daily use.
Used to have a Note 8 for about 6-7 years, was a good phone until the very end when the battery started to go.
Asus Zenfone 10. Reminds me of the Nexus 5x, but less buggy and less lag.
It has one absolutely atrocious bug that still hasn’t been fixed - randomly auto brightness will just crater into fully dimmed brightness, leaving the phone unusably dark in the daytime. I’ve disabled auto brightness to avoid this and have probably done more harm than good to my overall phone experience, but damn if it isn’t frustrating when you try to use your phone and have to find somewhere to duck inside to even see it.
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
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 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?
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.
