General Smartphone Discussion Thread - What phones to recommend and which ones to avoid?

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Betonhaus said:
And the samsung Ring is a solid titanium band so you need a special saw to cut it open
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That sounds safe if it's got a Liion battery in it. Sparky!
Battlefield42 said:
Huawei ones are notorious for their folding phones. Dunno about other chink shit
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Notorious good or bad? With the pricing of Motorolas stuff comparatively I'm guessing it's not worse, but I wouldn't trust a gimmick phone like the ultra expensive trifold when only one has come out so far. Regular single hinge devices seem to have become fairly reliable.
 
Toolbox said:
ultra expensive trifold when only one has come out so far
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I saw so many videos on that thing being bricked. Dunno why people want a folder when the screens are so fragile (and retards removing the "screen protector" and then wondering why the screen doesn't work anymore).
Maybe i'm not zoomer enough to consoom shitty expensive product.
 
Battlefield42 said:
I saw so many videos on that thing being bricked. Dunno why people want a folder when the screens are so fragile (and retards removing the "screen protector" and then wondering why the screen doesn't work anymore).
Maybe i'm not zoomer enough to consoom shitty expensive product.
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You've already got testimony from me and another here these things aren't built shittier than any other phone on the market, unless you're in a particulate prone environment most of these devices should last several years. I was surpised too. When Samsung finally started bringing theirs to market several years ago, yeah these were complete shit. They improved rapidly. If you want a device that closes compact and expands into a large screen, I don't see a better option out there. The Razr and most other models these days include a solid screen you can use as a backup anyway so the novel part breaking doesn't kill your use of it entirely.

Note that doesn't apply to Huawei's stupid expensive tablet-phone. The entire thing is one folding display that folds on two hinges in two different directions. A bit silly.
 
Traded in my Pixel 6a for this, got it for basically nothing. I don't mind that the screen is 720p, in fact I prefer that for battery life. Even disabled the 120hz and locked it at 60. The Dimensity 6300 isn't exactly powerful but since it's TSMC 6nm it'll be power efficient. My only complaint so far is the amount of preinstalled shitware, was easy enough to remove at least. Even has NFC for payments.
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GSMarena
 
Considering purchasing a Unihertz Jelly when my Tim Apple Phone finally shits the bed. Are custom ROMs even a thing on this thing? I can't imagine any developers supporting such a niche device.
 
has anyone switched from android to iPhone, and what was their experience?
 
GoysGoneWild said:
Welp smartphones continue to be my nemesis. A week after replacing a OnePlus Nord N200 for a Pixel 6a, google pushes out their battery nerfing. I had no idea.

Anyone know if this battery concern is legit? Or a case of google using retards punching holes in batteries as an excuse to planned obsolescence a whole line of their phones?

Follow up. Anything I can do? Would nuking Android and installing Graphene fix this? Would installing Graphene fuck me in some other way?

Fuck me I hate these things.
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As far as I know you will be free of their "fix" with Graphene.
 
I have the Samsung fold 5 and it's starting to have some problems and it's developed the seam. I wanna downsize a bit and idk what i want to get next. Honestly I mostly just stream games and stuff but I'll admit I like shiny toys and at least "decent" gimmicks. Normally I wouldn't care but the seam is getting worse and I'm having screen glitches.
 
I'm a broke fucking third worlder who has a redmi note 8, the chink piece of shit constantly keeps freezing on me, someone said it's because it cannot keep up with the software updates anymore and that I should learn to install a custom OS, where do I start, what do I do, what are the pros and cons? I'm really foreign to the field so I'd be really happy if you guys can give me a hand on this one
 
Betonhaus said:
has anyone switched from android to iPhone, and what was their experience?
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It was a bit of a mixed bag, but I switched a long time ago for the decent support lifecycles:

Apple Pay was a massive step up and the Wallet app actually does what it says on the tin without any silly transaction limits getting in the way, even without Internet access.

Safari has decent ad-blocking capabilities, when paired with AdGuard, the result is awesome. The only problem is that Safari itself is far less stable than Chrome is on Android (even with the extra content blocking) so some websites just run like absolute ass, but tbh, browsing the web on a phone sucks anyway.

There’s better support for SMB (network drives) via Files and network drives can be accessed seamlessly from applications in the same way as cloud resources. It is also awesome to be able to use native Linux file managers to access the sandboxed document folders of each application in a completely plug and play way, just wire in, approve the trust prompts and anything/everything you'd want to copy in and out becomes available.

However, backing up photos automatically is still a shit-or-miss situation, where software seems to need to use push notifications and/or GPS tracking as a dirty hack to be able to get decent background processing time. A workaround is to use Shortcuts to spin up your sync app of choice upon exiting camera view so the sync app gets some guaranteed foreground time. This problem kills a lot of the usefulness of NextCloud and somewhat cripples the timeliness of apps like Mobius Sync (Syncthing) but decent on-device password managers (like Keepassium) and notes apps like Obsidian still seem to work well enough with sync apps of choice in spite of this.

The policy of not allowing too much background processing does mess with a lot more than you'd initially think, as IRC clients needed a well-configured BNC to be remotely usable, BitTorrent had to be shifted off-device and typical clients you'd use to remotely access other computers for RDP, SSH, SFTP all needed quirky workarounds (e.g. some SSH/SFTP clients can set up fake VPNs to keep connections open, a prerequisite for SSH tunnelling) to allow for a workflow where they can stay in the background.

The unresolved problems are numerous though. I had to say bye bye to emulators as Apple doesn't allow JIT compilation outside of Safari, caller reputation checks are basically non-existent here in the UK for iOS, and proper on-device call recordings just aren't a thing.

All in all though, it was still pretty good.
 
So is there any difference between the pixel 8 and 9 that isn't mentioned by most comparison sites? Planning on using graphene for them but would be handy to know if should be aware of anything between 8 and 9.
 
Anyone have experience with /e/OS? I've got a Pixel 7 Pro now that I'm sick of as it's crumbling to dust. Part of my frustration is Google bullshit, and I'm just looking around for anything that could be an alternative to Android direct-from Google, and iOS isn't an option for me.
 
There's a used Oneplus 12r being sold for quite cheap here. I'm considering buying it since my Oneplus 6 isn't getting an update for LineageOS 23. Anyone with a phone like that here? Is it shit or decent?
 
So a couple of days ago I decided to pull the trigger on a Pixel 10, just because my wife has an 8, and during this summer my 7a is just too dim in summer bright light. The new non-a series have an IGZO-like panel which makes the much brighter than normal OLED screens. Being able to record video in HDR is an added bonus.

It arrives today and I honestly thought I got some fucking refurb. The box looked like absolute dogshit made from thrice recycled Indian shit. I was just about to hit "refund" in the store, but I stopped and looked at an unboxing video, only to find out that's how it's supposed to look.

Seriously go look it up. The picture printed on looks like it came out of a dot-matrix printer from the early 90s, and the "eco paper box" legit looks worse than toilet paper. The stickers that seal the box are always fucked up and look like they've been already opened a third of the way. Even inside where you normally have a foil that protects the screen, there's now some kind of celuloid paper that does shit to protect the thing. I 100% believe people would question if this shit is a knock off next to literally any other phone in a store.
 
Atlas Sneezed said:
So a couple of days ago I decided to pull the trigger on a Pixel 10, just because my wife has an 8, and during this summer my 7a is just too dim in summer bright light. The new non-a series have an IGZO-like panel which makes the much brighter than normal OLED screens. Being able to record video in HDR is an added bonus.

It arrives today and I honestly thought I got some fucking refurb. The box looked like absolute dogshit made from thrice recycled Indian shit. I was just about to hit "refund" in the store, but I stopped and looked at an unboxing video, only to find out that's how it's supposed to look.

Seriously go look it up. The picture printed on looks like it came out of a dot-matrix printer from the early 90s, and the "eco paper box" legit looks worse than toilet paper. The stickers that seal the box are always fucked up and look like they've been already opened a third of the way. Even inside where you normally have a foil that protects the screen, there's now some kind of celuloid paper that does shit to protect the thing. I 100% believe people would question if this shit is a knock off next to literally any other phone in a store.
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Indeed - it's been a sequential process, the boxes get worse every time.
 
So as it turns out, LineageOS might be fucked in some ways thanks to jewgle's nonsense. I had to install it since no-one would replace my 4a battery when it got that forced update. For a while I wondered why I couldn't get MMS messages like group texts, photos, etc, turns out it was actually RCS messages (if I understand it right) because being on a custom OS no longer lets me meet the security requirements to use them.
God damn it, man, this is ass for longevity. Having the entire company suddenly decide to update their phone in a way that fucks over your battery and then just shrugs their shoulders and goes "oops, skill issue, just buy another one of our phones dude" because they don't wanna admit they fucked up is bullshit.
 
MisterListerTheBlister said:
So as it turns out, LineageOS might be fucked in some ways thanks to jewgle's nonsense. I had to install it since no-one would replace my 4a battery when it got that forced update. For a while I wondered why I couldn't get MMS messages like group texts, photos, etc, turns out it was actually RCS messages (if I understand it right) because being on a custom OS no longer lets me meet the security requirements to use them.
God damn it, man, this is ass for longevity. Having the entire company suddenly decide to update their phone in a way that fucks over your battery and then just shrugs their shoulders and goes "oops, skill issue, just buy another one of our phones dude" because they don't wanna admit they fucked up is bullshit.
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Yep, without bypasses you can't meaningfully pass play integrity; and this has caused a huge rift in the rooting community. These days, you have to resort to keybox and fingerprint spoofing, and there's no way to get it working permanently; since leaked keyboxes get revoked routinely and the beta pixel prints expire. This doesn't just affect RCS, but tons of applications rely on the play integrity api, they assume that a rooted phone is inherently less secure than a non-rooted one, and will refuse to work if you don't pass.

Modern rooting is far from what it was when it first came to prominence; and depending on your priorities, it's arguably not worth it anymore; since there are so many things you can do without it. But it's a trade-off. Either you learn to work around failing play integrity checks, play the cat and mouse game, or give up and unroot.

I was rooting my phone mainly out of habit and if I had the ability to root my phone I usually would, but nowadays there are phones that are just flatly not rootable, due to the lack of the oem unlock option. To make matters worse, some phones, especially samsung, break TEE permanently which means even if you decide to unroot, restore stock and re-lock that is not enough for you to pass these kinds of security checks anymore.

I love lineagos, but it's simply not worth it to constantly have to keep up with google's ridiculous security policies. thankfully my phone restores tee if you restore stock and re-lock; so now I just stick to rootless solutions for whatever I'm trying to do.

Not being able to install lineageos sucks, but it beats constantly fighting google's security policies.
 
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