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 like my Oppo. It was a good price for the specs and the fast-charge battery is still going strong a couple of years on. Made in China.
Been Samsung for about 5 years. It just works, although that wasn’t always the case. I was Apple once upon a time, as their OS was rock solid, albeit insanely locked down. Everything else just seemed jankey and unreliable. S25 ultra is my current phone. It’s decent, but I haven’t been excited about a new phone in over a decade.
Love me that bloatware
Love me that bloatware
“Best” != “Perfect”
Samsung has been very reliable for me. But I would get a better Galaxy model. Something above A15, A16 .etc because those phones are just underwhelming.
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.
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 average person it is probably Xiaomi: made in China, and even by Chinese phone standards it seems well known for its low cost and high build quality
However as a lemming and someone who has a Xiaomi gifted by parents and hated everything they crammed in the OS… How do you define a “best” brand of cell phone when there are barely 3 usable brands (Google Pixel for GrapheneOS, Fairphone, …)
For me the pixel phones. I just really enjoy them and the possibility to load graphene.os make them even better
samsungs are far from quality unless you get the flagship ones.
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.
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
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 :)
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 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.
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.
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
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 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.
I’ll probably get flak for this due to being on Lemmy, but I’ll throw out the iPhone 16e. It’s priced really well against competition and you can often get them prepaid and unlocked at a decent discount.
And I’m sure someone will loudly tell me how wrong I am, but I’ve found the build quality to be best-in-show. I’ve dropped it with no case at least half a dozen times and you can’t even tell.
It’s not a power-user device so no, you don’t get all the fancy custom ROMs and such, but for doing all the normal phone things, I’ve not had a single issue.
I was a hardcore Android user for about 10 years, but now there’s so few real advantages over iOS that I just prefer the simplicity of iOS.
It’s not a power-user device so no, you don’t get all the fancy custom ROMs and such,
most people don’t need custom roms, contrary to good free software apps that don’t steal your and your friends data through you.
but for doing all the normal phone things, I’ve not had a single issue.
for that, literally a dumb phone is enough, and will last longer than any iphone or android. if android enshittified to the level of iphones, I would refuse to buy anything than a dumb phone, maybe not even that.
literally a dumb phone is enough
Not to:
- Browse the web
- Check my bank balance
- Tap to Pay
- Use most any chat service (including open-source ones)
- Take a reasonable picture
- Listen to music (Brining another non-streaming player isn’t a reasonable trade off for most anyone)
- Remotely manage my home network (admittedly less “normal phone things”)
- The list goes on…
While I would love to be a Luddite and say I don’t need a smartphone, there’s just a swath of convenience that you can’t get any other way.
A refurbished iPhone was going to be my vote.
Flagship performance, about 7 years of updates, but costs what a mid range android phone costs? Yeah it’s a banger of a deal. A similarly priced android phone would have half the performance and MAYBE half the updates.
If you just want a basic but nice phone to do modern phone things it’s hard to go wrong.
