Hey everyone,
So, for a bit of context I've used every smartphone I've owned until it was dead in the sense that the hardware wasn't repairable anymore. The realme6 pro I'm using at the moment is currently on life support so it's time to look for a replacement.
Here's some criteria for what it's important to me:
- I'm not a phone gamer, I don't care how well it runs Genshin Impact or PUBG, but I do use emulators like Citra.
- I don't really care about photography, any fancy camera is a bonus, it's not something I normally would consider when comparing phones.
- Wireless charging would be nice since from experience charging ports are a common point of failure. It's not necessarily a must however.
- A micro-sd and headphone jack would be nice to have, but I'm ready to sacrifice that if the phone has decent storage.
- Bloatware and weird proprietary forced, subscription/AI/ads bullshit baked into the default OS are a big no from me. I'm not as hardcore as some of the Lemmings I've met, but I do value privacy.
- Little extras such as an IR blaster, notification slider, or maybe some fun little gimmick like the glyph interface on Nothing phones is of medium importance to me. I like to tinker too, so any decent customization options is a plus.
I don't need a top of the line flagship, I'm looking for a midrange phone that's available in Canada. With that in mind, I had some ideas already:
- Nothing phone 2, this one seems fun and ticks most boxes for me. What's holding me back is the 3-4 years of updates (but that seems standard enough nowadays) and the relatively high price. If you can ease my mind and tell me I'll still be able to comfortably use this phone in 2028+ I might get this.
- One plus 12R, I like the specs and price on this one. What worries me is the bloat I've seen mentioned. Has anyone had experience with their android flavour? If so, is it feasible to remove/deactivate all useless apps?
- Pixel phones, I haven't researched these enough to decide on a model though. I might give GrapheneOS a try if I end up using a Pixel, I'm impressed by the 7 years of Android updates too. What's holding me back however, is the lack of "fun" compared to my other options, no IR blaster or distinguishing features makes it equal to my other options.
With all that said, any other recommendations are very welcome. Looking forward to reading your thoughts :)
The death of almost all my phones has been the phone carriers withdrawing support for the phone modems. 2G to 3G to half-assed LTE, so I finally got a relatively cheap 5G phone and that will hopefully do me for a while. That said, the LTE phone (Moto 4G) lasted 5+ years before it became near unusable, again because of carrier support, but also because web bloat had slowed the browser to a crawl.
I think, basically, that you can get sufficiently good phones pretty cheap now, and it's not worth spending $500 on a 4 year phone when you can spend $150 each on two 2-year phones. Beyond 4 years I think you can't count on anything.
I've been using Moto G series if that matters. The hardware value for money is very good, almost everyone agrees. They have notoriously short lived software support. I don't know how much I care. My G4 that I got in 2017 was still running Android 7 when I retired it late last year. I might attempt to run LineageOS on it, but really, the thing is slow and the hardware (Micro USB port and volume buttons basically) are now flaky, and again there is the carrier support issue, so it's basically not worth it.
See: https://www.motorola.com/us/smartphones-moto-g-family
The most interesting ones imho are the 2023 G Stylus 5G (the one I have, $250), or the 2024 G Play or 2023 G Stylus (4G) (both are $129). All of these run Android 13 and will supposedly get an upgrade to 14. There are also some new models with 14 already, that cost a bit more. All have microSD slots except for the 2024 G play. All have headphone jacks and I consider that important. I think some of the new ones might have wireless charging, but otoh I think that may make it harder to replace the battery.