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.
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.
Off topic. But does your A54 have issues with wifi constantly disconnecting. I had one and it had wifi issues and I just wonder if thats every phone or did I get unlucky and got a bad batch.
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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.
Edit: As of now, only the trial version is supported for newer phones, so to get the best experience, you should either wait for the commercial license availability, or buy a used Xperia 10 III.
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
Using OTG and wired headphones at once, for example with RTL-SDR.
Also my current phone (the Ulefone with charging issues) has a massive battery (85.14Wh) and is massive, which I like. For comparison, my thinkpad has a 45Wh battery.
Unfortunately, no regular brands would even think about offering a phone that’s 27.5mm (1.08 inch) thick and weighs 647g (1.43lbs). In my case, a bit more, since I also put it in a case anyway.