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.
Unless you have a philosophical/moral reason against it, try a Samsung. Can't speak for the cheaper models, but the top models (S-series and Z-series) are usually really great.
I'll add that I got an a03s this week to use as a backup while my primary is on the healing bench.
It is garbage for use. I would have been less irritated setting those dollar bills on fire than I am trying to use it.
To give an example, this morning I went grocery shopping. Conncted Bluetooth headphones, opened only Spotify and my shopping list in notes. Every 45-90 seconds the music would hang, didn't matter if the phone was in my pocket, in my hand locked, it in my hand unlocked with Spotify in the foreground.
To open YouTube, with nothing else open, to type three words that bring the desired video to the top of the search, and to start playback takes minimum of 30 seconds. I don't bother with any video on here.
Typing this post has taken entirely too long because the fucking keyboard/autocorrect shit is too slow and causes all kinds of input lag.
I was going to end with saying it's great for basic communications, but honestly... It's shit. It's motivated me to fix my regular phone as quickly as I can. Something I'm not prone to do without motivation, if at all.
Edited to add that even network speeds are garbage. Wi-Fi is far worse than cellular data, and that's not great. Did some side by side testing with the other phones on the same network. The speed difference isn't small, I didn't write anything down so I won't give numbers, but it's bad. Real bad.
Oof. A0 series is horrible. You need at least A2x series phone or better to even have a usable phone.
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.
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