You can set a default sorting for your lemmy feed in your profile settings, which will be persistent between desktop and the application.
I have been using NewComments for a while, but now that the lemmyverse is more active I'm giving Hot another go.
Whether or not you default your feed to Subscribed or Local depends on how many communities you've found, perhaps leaving it on local for a while will help you find new communities that you can build up your subscriptions.