Sony provides official AOSP builds for a number of their Xperia phones, I'm very close to getting one because of that.

http://developer.sonymobile.com/open-devices/

https://github.com/sonyxperiadev/

Not to mention the Xperia Z5 Compact was the ONLY phone last year carrying flagship specifications with a screen under 5 inches. It's crazy to me that no other phone manufacturers are trying to capture the market for smaller phones now that even Apple no longer makes them.

Unfortunately, most people in the US have no idea Sony even makes phones because the company has utterly neglected to market them here.

I'd kill for an actual linux phone. I hear good things about Ubuntu's phone, but I've yet to try it.

Purism are working on a Debian phone! https://puri.sm/

(I wish them luck...)

I bought the BQ Ubuntu tablet. I hate to say it, but it's terrible. You have to set up a cloud account with Canonical to download or update apps (no reason given). Most of the apps are pretty bad. It's constantly pinging YouTube and news websites to show me stuff I don't care about, and can't turn off. No easy way to set up a VPN. No CalDAV, CardDAV. Difficult to imagine Shuttleworth himself using one.

Fine for watching films on airplanes, but very little else.

> No easy way to set up a VPN.

That's not true, it's right there in the network settings. I use it. Maybe it just doesn't support the type of VPN you want to use?

I stand corrected!

Is it a real linux system under the hood though? I don't care much about apps or anything, I care about being able to customize it to work how I want. terminal, cron, scripts, etc.

Technically yes, it's a slight variant of Ubuntu. However the packaging system out of the box doesn't allow `sudo apt-get install x` (at this point I stopped).

You would actually kill someone after using it in current edition - yourself.

not good, eh? What don't you like about it?

I run Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 4, have done for about 6 months now.

It's tolerable, and refreshingly non-intrusive compared to Android. At one point I started craving Snapchat and put Android back on, but all the intrusive nag screens put me off and I went back to Ubuntu.

It crashes a lot but that might just be my Nexus 4, it used to do it on Android too.

It's a bit slow, the camera app is rubbish, there's no Snapchat, the email client has some weird bugs, there's no adblock. But it has Telegram, and it can do calls and texts, the web browser is OK, and the terminal app is good.

Got a moto g4 for under $250. Works perfectly for me. Good specs, stock android more or less, unlocked.

http://www.motorola.com/us/products/moto-g

Isn't its bootloader locked? Last time I checked you needed to go to Motorola's website to download a key specific to your phone so you could unlock it, but it voided the warranty.

1 year goes fast, I'm still using 1st gen Moto G, and unlocked it.

My entire family uses different Moto G versions. I have the G4, one of my sisters has a G3, and my parents and my other sister have G1s. They just seem to work and are very good first-time smartphones for my parents. It has been several years since they got them, and I don't even have to provide technical support. Honestly, I see very little reason to unlock the phone.

It wasn't mandatory mostly because Motorola was commited to provide the latest Android which ensures you'll never be out of a new feature. But G1 aren't supported anymore, if today's Google conf apps aren't Lollipop friendly you're stuck with unlocking.

But it's owned by Lenovo... a Chinese company.

Chinese - put something on the phone

Americans - tap the network backbone.

What's the difference?

End to end encryption works over insecure networks, but not with insecure endpoints.

I'm sure the NSA has something to say about that, at least with consumer grade encryption.

That's why I always use military grade encryption.

> military grade

I see what you did there (o;

For two years I used an S4 I put CM12 on, and now I have an S5 with CM13. I get all my phones for <$180 after they are two years old and just stuck a 64GB SD card in the S5 with the mergable Android 6 storage for room.

I've never seen appeal in new release phones. If there was some high end Android game I'd want to play, I wouldn't want to play it on a tiny screen anyway and I'd just play it on ARC. As it was, I still think the S4 is plenty spiffy a device for day to day use, and my S5 is even faster than that.

It is similar on the desktop. Who needs a high end i7 when an AMD APU does good enough? Unless you need performance, riding the bleeding edge is a waste of money and frustration when things break.

Use your data against you how? Like frame you for a crime? Figure out when you're on vacation and burglarize your home? This doesn't seem a likely business model. They generally attempt to use your data to assist you. I mean maybe the NSA hacks them and reads your emails but that's hardly Google maliciously trying to make your life worse.

If you don't like LG and HTC simply because of popularity metrics then perhaps you are getting too young rather than too old.

Nah, I'm old enough to see that if their mobile division tanks, I'm not going to get updates.

But young enough to think you're getting updates in any case...

You're implying that Samsung and Sony aren't well known for not giving updates.

    I don't like Samsung because they bloat Android.

Out of your points, this might be the easiest one to solve. I got a Samsung after being a Nexus owner, and it's not so bad! You can change to the Google now launcher, Google keyboard and so on, and Samsung does not actually get in my way.

There are so many apps that I can't uninstall on my Galaxy S3... That alone makes me want to have something else.

Also, I use google's keyboard, but once in a while, samsung puts back theirs (after an update or whatever), and it infuriates me.

Samsung _does_ get in my way, but it's possible it's because I have an old phone and the newer ones are better at this.

Very happy with my Oneplus 3.

What's the deal with Dash Charging?

I see it uses USB-C but I don't understand the difference between Dash Charging and just regular fast charging over USB-C. It feels like unnecessary confusion.

Even after Googling I'm left wondering what the difference is beyond patents - as a user why do I care about this what method it uses to charge quickly?

Just charge quickly, and do it with any (specs compliant) USB-C cable if it can be negotiated with the power brick.

This is an interesting option for a phone despite that though, I'll have to find a colleague or friend who has it to checkout the OS and inspect for bloatware but this looks promising.

The reason Dash Charging is fast is because it moves some of the charging hardware into the brick itself, meaning the phone doesn't get as hot when charging, allowing it to charge faster. One of the main reasons charging speed is limited is because the phone gets too hot, so moving heat to the brick means the charging speed can be faster without having to throttle to keep temperatures low.

You might call the branding unnecessary confusion, but in my experience it's been a differentiating feature, one that less tech savvy people I know mention when talking about reasons to switch to a OnePlus 3. And it's not a marketing gimmick either; I've seen it work in real life, and it's speed is kind of incredible.

I feel the same way. There's so many options on the market, yet I don't like any of them. Is Windows mobile 10 a hopeless case?

I don't like them because they are growing horizontally. You have an idea and boom google whatever, boom apple whatever, etc...

I mean, wouldn't the line about Google apply to any of the other Android OEMs?

Check out https://oneplus.net/

Jailbreaking solves the walled garden issue. What are the millions of other reasons?

Its time for you to buy the Jack Bauer phone

Nothing against Amazon then?

Same problem here.