Generally, for me it would be Xiaomi and Samsung. Both have decent features at a decent price. I mean, they can run some games without too many problems or open TikTok.
I prefer Samsung UI, but Xiaomi is very tough to beat on performance per dollar. Huawei if you trust em.
Motorolla is xcellent budget pick with strong battery life and smooth daily performance.
True to the point I have given my parents, in their seventies, Motorola phones that can last all the hours of bejeweled and mahjong they like to do on top of hours of Facebook and Instagram conspiracy theories.
Upvote for your username 😂💜
No, I never did. But maybe low end Motorolas are different than their flagships
I have to deal with tons of app issues in work, from users of Samsung and Xiaomi. I would honestly never buy either brand.
They are both filled with proprietary garbage, you have to use workarounds to try and disable and even then, these two companies are some of the worst for simply ignoring the workarounds and overriding them.
My aunt has a xiaomi, yesterday that motherfucker showed us an ad before entering into settings.
If you want top end, I’d say Samsung. If you don’t need top end and are more concerned about value, I think a Pixel would be a good choice.
Xiaomi if you can’t afford a pixel that runs grapheneos, otherwise anything that runs grapheneos (only pixel atm but they’re looking for more)
Nailed it
Personally, I don’t think there’s are any “best brands” per se as most of them are just cramming shit features like AI and spyware to please their shareholders. Now “best phones”? There are definitely some good ones out there like some Fairphones or others. I’m using a OnePlus Nord, and while I don’t like the company, the phone was affordable and had almost all the features I wanted. LineageOS flashed onto it solved the spyware issue as well.
For the past decade plus I’ve just been buying the cheapest unlocked phone available. Last two have been Motorolas. They run all the games and do everything you want from a phone. Bonus, they let me delete x and Meta 's bloatware.
I’ll never buy a Samsung precisely because you need to root them to uninstall meta’s bullshit.
I’ve had two samsungs and I’ve never had a problem removing meta shit.
Might be because I’m UK, I think unremovable bloatware was outlawed a few years ago
I’ve just switched to a Motorola from a Xiaomi, and I’m in the UK. The Xiaomi wouldn’t let me uninstall quite a few apps. The Motorola is giving me the option at least
Does yours not have Glance? I have a Moto G and there’s this app I can’t uninstall that puts “news stories” that are actually advertisements on my lock screen. I can disable it but if my phone reboots it re-enables itself. It’s the sole reason that this in my last Motorola phone.
I had something similar when I first set up the phone, but I disabled it along with most of the other junk. Apart from immediately after an update, I haven’t seen it again. Even then it was easy to disable.
I had an automatically installed games folder after the update too, and that was a bit trickier to remove, but it was just a case of finding it in the settings. I’m stuck with Facebook because of a music festival I’m involved with, but long pressing it and dragging it to the top of the homescreen gives me the option uninstall it. I don’t know if it’s an actual uninstall or just disabling it, but it looks legit
I’m probably wrong then.
I just have a very vague memory from years ago that uk companies were told to stop preinstalling their own bloatware on phones.
It particularly affected companies like O2 and Orange whose phones would come preloaded with all sorts of branded shit.
I do know that all of a sudden the practice stopped, maybe it was voluntary?
I know what you mean, there was something that changed. I can’t remember exactly what happened either though. I just know that I can uninstall a lot of the apps that I couldn’t before :)
I miss my motorola phone. Maybe it’s because I forgot how annoying it was but my fucking god I hated my samsung phone for weeks until I had beaten it to submission.
Me too!
I went from a succession of Motorolas to a new Samsung.
The hardware is fast, but OMG it’s full of proprietary shit that is fighting with Android vanilla and FOSS apps that I’m trying to use instead. OneUI is a disaster of compatibility with some apps, including Voyager.
I switched from a Motorola Droid (still miss the slide out keyboard) to the LG G3, V10, V20 (loved the knock code unlock) to a Pixel 3a XL and now a Samsung S21 with my next upgrade to the S26 Ultra.
For me the S26 series checks a lot of boxes, one of the biggest being 7 years of updates while preserving online banking. My S21 still has a lot of life left in it performance wise and bad actors targeting devices is big business. Flagship devices IMHO are at the point where they will be viable for 7 years so upgrading is no longer a game of chasing the latest version. It also helps that my carrier will have the S26 Ultra for around 700 or less cash (the current price for the S25 Ultra is 699 and they often give a 100 dollar discount for preorders) so I’m going to pay about 100 per year or about 27 cents per day for the device over it’s lifetime.
I’m also an amateur photographer/underwater videographer (trying to make a living at it and start funding a non-profit using the income steam) so being able to record high quality B-Roll and get good pictures in the same package is a huge bonus.
I had been leery of using the amoled screens for a long time and after using the S21 and Tab S8+ for a while now I no longer have that concern and my only issue with the S21 was with physical SIM cards not working right if the phone was compressed. With E-SIM’s that is really no longer an issue for me.
I stick with android because I use linux on my desktop and server. I also have apps that are not available on the walled garden and I choose to use things that not only the garden doesn’t allow but neither does Google. I’m also confident I can transfer my 4k video files from my microSD card to my portable HDD with android. Because I have to live out of cases for extended periods while also carrying a ton of equipment I have to maximize portability.
My use case is very unique, so ymmv.
Whatever last year’s Google Pixel was, nab it on sale and install GrapheneOS. Its the best bang for your buck every time. Should last 5+ years unless something goes horribly wrong.
All of my google phones…minus the nexus 6 have had hardware issues, but now I’m looking at a pixel 9 pro xl and wanting to put Graphene on it…but damn
I’ve had a nexus 6p - battery went to shit in basically 2 years, nexus 5, same issue and power button fucked up, then I got a pixel xl2 and… fingerprint reader went out, power button only registers a press every like 40 times, and battery is complete shit.
Still running a note10+ on its original battery, but I think it’s time to update…but the bad taste from google has me scared for a repeat.
Batteries are a consumable. Think of them like tires. After a certain number or cycles or age they should be replaced.
Sure but my note10+ is still running on its original battery with 86% life left on it. That’s 6 years of use and it’s still going strong
I was a pixel user since pixel 1, always buying A year or two behind whenever mine would crap out. My last 2 gave up awfully quickly both with bloated fat batteries. Google was supposed to replace the battery for free but I couldn’t figure out how to bring it anywhere local. On the second one, it stopped turning on when the battery got fat, and no way in hell was i sending in my phone without wiping it. I’m never doing pixel again. They’re unreliable.
I do miss the low light camera so much
. Should last 5+ years unless something goes horribly wrong.
like every generation of pixel
samsungs are far from quality unless you get the flagship ones.
I’m on my 2nd Motorola G series. Very good hardware value and the 1st was almost bloat free. I had to debloat the 2nd but it’s mostly ok now. I keep hearing cringe things about Samsung. No idea about Xiaomi.
I have a OnePlus 12, and I personally enjoy using it. Over a year from purchase, the battery can last up to 2 days of light use, or 1 day and change for heavy use. The cameras are great for being cameras. There is decent support for software and security updates (nowhere near the best out there, but decent). I tried to disable all of the AI integration I could, simply because I don’t like it for how I use a phone. Other than that, it’s a solid “flagship” phone at a reasonable price (around $650 USD at purchase).
when I got mine I decided getting the old standar pixel model new as the current was being discounted because the new one was around the corner. The price to camera for that phone which was looked at as doubly old seemd the best. I was only looking at camera quality because honestly everything else does not need to be super awesome to me and anything with a decent camera is going to have relatively decent stats outside of that. Its a really hard thing to gauge though as how do you value each individual increment. That is another reason that I just went with camera and did what felt the best. I was not looking for the best camera but best bang for the buck while being a good stong choice.
Been rockin an HMD Skyline for about a year and it’s been good, bonus is you can repair them yourself, well at least with the few available parts and that’s still more than other brands that glue the phone together and force you to go to their repair shops.
