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.
Samsung Galaxy A35
I had the Samsung Galaxy A54 and it had issues with constant wifi disconnect and can't be fixed even with factory resets, so I had to get a new one. (According to reddit, wifi issues are so common with A54) A55 does not exist in the US, so A35 it is.
Reason I didn't get an S-series is because of missing SD card slot. Yes I'm this petty. I might've gotten the S24 Ultra if it had sd card slot, but corporations likes to be douchy, okay you play stupid games 🤷♂️. A35 is powerful enough anyways, whatever, saves me money too. I'm enjoying my 1TB sd card (that cost like $100 extra on top of the phone) that would've costed like $1500 total for in the S-series phones.
The only reason I still want samsung is because I want use a Samsung Smarttag to track my cat, amongst other items I want to track. And I hate iOS, so Samsung trackers are the only viable alternative to Airtags.
There's not much special, its just a phone. Not flagship, but also not a shitty budget. Its "okay".