Of these 3, the Pixel 9. It can run both GrapheneOS and CalyxOS.
The Pixel 8a can also run both, but it only costs $400. CalyxOS will support both phones until 2031.
I’m about to switch from iPhone to a Pixel 9 so I can put CalyxOS on it. Used iPhones since a 3GS in 2009, but the time has come.
There’s not a lot of reason to even jump from the 8 Pro to the 9 Series unless you slurp up the marketing hype, especially if you don’t care about intensive tasks like games.
For me personally, the new phone feeling comes from wiping my device every now and then and selecting exactly the right slate of apps to make my life easier/better/more organized.
When it comes to hardware it feels like there is less differentiation than ever before. Oneplus could make a case for their slider button, phones with a headphone jack or removable battery can claim bonus points for that, and I hear Sony has some nice form factors (tall & thin). When it comes down to it, the most important question for me is can I unlock it and get rid of any pre-installed junk.
I’d love more info on the “confusing charging situation”.
Nope, if you got more info on it it wouldn’t be confusing anymore.
The Pixel
I love my Nothing Phone 2. Check them out.
Of the 3, probably Pixel,but if definitely we flashing it.
I love my Nothing Phone 2. Check them out. Lol just did that and ran into an unexpected Spez mugshot under “meet the investors”
Well fuck. Did not know that…this might just have ruined my day lmao
I guess the plus side is, Pei left 1+ because he didn’t like where they were going and felt restricted, so maybe it’s purely a money thing? He’s shown he’s successful in the market with his vision, so I’ll assume it’s just financial backing and no pressure from the “board”?
I’m coping hard rn lmao
I had a similar inquiry, I think the conclusion is Pixel. It’s not ideal but they’re supporting updates for 7 years now which is a good push towards deshitification. And as others put, it can have custom firmware which can prolong that even longer (or if you want out of that Google ecosystem).
Haven’t took the leap yet though. I’m typing this from a hand me down Galaxy S10 that’s held together with rubber bands because the back glass became unglued. I haven’t had updates in a while but bs Knox protection threatens to brick the thing if I flash a new firmware. Pixels are expensive, though.
S10-clutcher gang represent.
Hot glue might do the trick
Eh, I think I’ll order a 15 dollar back glass replacement since it’s also a little cracked. I only got this phone because I replaced it’s spicy pillow battery myself (it was due for the trash heap). I might as well treat it with a little more care until I get some broken Pixel to play with lol
Only partially related answer but I’m being (foolishly) hopeful the new Samsungs (S25) might make it to LineageOS … might … one day … perhaps.
well you can’t easily root asus phones anymore from what i understand. if these are your ONLY options id go for the pixel and run a de-googled rom.
I’d seriously add the song xperia vi into that consideration. Solid audio and screen.
Looooove the battery life on the Xperia 1 VI, very good even on 5G. Just a shame it’s so expensive
Does depend on your carrier though. AT&T is pretty much off the table, it’s not whitelisted.
I recently changed from the major carriers to JMP.chat (and now USMobile) because my carrier randomly decided a Pixel5 can’t work on their network. But if I buy a Pixel 5 from them, it works.
JMP.chat pipes your SMS into XMPP, which is awesome, for $5/mo, including phone calls. I just use USMobile for a data connection now.
Yes, but if a phone isn’t on AT&Ts whitelist you can’t even get a data connection. It’s bs for sure (the phone can use the same bands), but it means you can’t register it with AT&T, and I’m not going back on anything like sprint.
VI isn’t on LineageOS, only V is.
Still good enough, unique shape (nicer in hand), solid build, good-ish snappers.
Motorola One. Cost me 200 bucks four years ago. Claims to be water resistant, but I’ve dropped it in the lake about a dozen times and accidentally tossed it in the washing machine once (I got it out right away.) It hasn’t so much as frozen since buying it and the battery can still go about two days without a charge.
It’s called the Moto One. Motorola doesn’t make phones. Lenovo makes those, they bought the Motorola mobility brand years ago.
Oh my stars and garters, was I not specific with my words? Am I ignorant to which company has acquired other companies so I can be as technical as possible?
Or did I buy this phone, the one I’m typing on now, from the Motorola website, and it came in a box covered in motorola branding? How absolutely idiotic of me to assume Moto was short for Motorola.
I can not believe I was this wrong on the internet. The damage I’ve done to the collective knowledge of everyone who’s seen my comment, who didn’t know any better, can never be healed.
How will we ever recover from this tragedy???!
You really pissed him off lol
People buy them all the time thinking they’re buying a Motorola phone. They’re not the first person to be upset/disappointed that I pointed that out.
how is “ultra-portable” a positive, when all these phone are the same size, and not even small phones at all?
Same way "Confusing Charging Situation " is a thing when they all charge the same way, plus minus wireless but the pixel can do both, unless that is what is confusing.
I looked it up and the ROG phone 8 pro isn’t even smaller or lighter than the other two - if anything it’s slightly bigger and heavier. Truly useless as a positive point.
Yeah, these pro/con lists are just random bullshit with 0 accountability and consistency.
The only useful comparisons are ones that show the actual specs side by side, and even then it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Just finished setting up my Xperia Z2 Compact with Lineage OS. It is such a relief to have a truly compact phone again
samsung galaxy S10. headphone jack, expandable micro SD storage, none of the bloatware.
Samsung? No bloatware? Since when has that been a thing
could always root and rom it, or whatever that means. My tech-inclined friend said it would fix any bloatware, but I’ve always just ignored the features I don’t want and it’s cool
It runs Lineage, the last of the Galaxies iirc.
deleted by creator
Positives … Good AI features
Negatives … No 4K recording on all lenses
Some people just have different priorities.
Negatives - only 128gb storage
WTF who writes this shite?
🤖
I suppose it’s bad if you play a lot of mobile games or you’re a grandparent, but it’s more than enough for everyone else.
“Or if you’re a grandparent”? What makes you say this?
Lots of pics and vids of the grandkids, maybe?
My phone has 256gb storage and it’s constantly full. Next phone I’m getting needs to have 1tb+ storage
Lol Samsung A-Series still has microSD cards. 1TB sd card go brrrr
(just watch samsung pull the sd slot from the A-series too 😭)
what do you use that storage for? could you send a screenshot about the storage usage statistics?
I have so many apps that I rarely use and I still only have used 45 GB. I use an sd card for the media, though, and a lot of app backups that you probably can’t do anyway, but that’s not much of a difference
45G is often the size of the OS nowadays. :/ Mine is 30G by itself. The rest of my 128G is taken up by apps/photos/videos I could admittedly clean up. I also have a 512GB SD card I use to carry my entire music library (well, a compressed version).
on my device, calyx os takes 22 GB, and I think this is a lot. I can’t understand what takes 45 GB in a system. Technically probably it’s only half of it used at a time because of A/B partitions, but half of that is still a lot
Mostly media
“Others” is just more media it’s not counting for some reason
hmm I see. what kind of media is that, movies and music or pictures and recorded videos? if it’s the latter, you don’t have a computer at home right?
It’s all of the above. I do have computer and self host plex but I need to keep some of the stuff locally because I travel a lot
Yeah. AI and quality of video recording is just not high on the list for me.
I hate that they lumped the “AI” features into one.
Like… I love AI up scaling, but AI assistants can f*** off.
If I’m paying $900 for a phone, you’d better believe that 4K30 is the barest of bare minimums I’m expecting that rear camera to do unless it’s a deliberate tradeoff for something more ethical like a Fairphone. The Pixel 9 base model can shoot at 4K60 and 1080p240 (256 GB and the same $900 price). “Good AI features” lmfao blow it out your ass, Asus. I wonder where this comparison chart is coming from anyway.
My 2022 iPhone SE, that I bought new for about $550, records 4K at 60fps.
I’m a little shocked that isn’t the base standard for all smartphones now.
There are Samsung A-Series phones that support 4k @30fps
Galaxy A25 is about $299 and has 6.5 inch 1080p 120hz display, records at 4K @30fps
Galaxy A35 is about $100 more than the above, and along with the above mentioned, also has IP67 water resistance hand under-display fingerprint sensor
Cheap phones are getting so good these days
I don’t care about camera quality at all, I much prefer longevity, performancd, ports, other sensors, custom ROM and root support. And so, most smartphones of manufacturers chasing the trend of camera quality, especially if they are 1k+, are not fit for me.
- shove it up your asus
My priority would be longevity, ports and an open bootloader.
+ good custom rom support.
Und natürlich Schildkrötenfreundlichkeit :3
The pixel, so you can put graphene on it
Is graphene less glitchy than stock on a pixel 8? Or at least no worse? I’m tired of unfixed glitches since the pixel 6. YouTube PIP and split screen specifically
It doesn’t aim to make enhancements beyond privacy/security specific ones. In that sense it’s more likely to give you issues with certain apps because of things like sandboxed Play services and apps not having access to the device identifier.
That said, I use it and if you’re OK with giving up certain things like Google Pay, then I recommend it.
To add to that, most of the time there are easy work arounds like just using the apps browser version instead of an app. The only thing I’ve had a couple times was my keyboards just wouldn’t pop up. No matter what I did the keyboards were dead for about 3 minutes each time it happened, they started to work again but it’s just a quirk of a privacy focused OS
I’ve had a lot of Google phones: nexus s, galaxy nexus, nexus 4, 5 and 6 and a pixel 3. None of these phones lasted more than a year (I got many of them replaced at least once from the warranty). I’m not hard on the phone either, they just don’t seem to last and it’s always something stupid. On the pixel, the usb c port bent multiple times because I was still using wired headphones when I took my dogs for walks. I had enough of that and with Google basically becoming Apple anyway, I switched to an iPhone 13 three years ago. I haven’t had a single issue with it. I still think android is a much better OS. It comes down to this; if you want to mess with the phone, android is more accommodating but you may need to replace the hardware a lot more frequently. If you don’t want to mess with the phone and want something reliable, the iPhone is better.
