But I'm inclined to agree. Just look at the 6 and 6 Pro. They rolled out an upgrade, ruined cellular connectivity for a good chunk of users, and then all of the engineers peaced out for the holidays, with no way to downgrade to a usable release for effected users other than wiping their entire phone and starting from scratch. For their flagship phones.
With word that the 6a is ditching the headphone jack and rear fingerprint sensor, and also inching up in size to gargantuan phablet dimensions, it'll be easy to switch away in the future.
Then it downloaded the update for Android 12 (I think), and got corrupted, and essentially became unstable and unusable - things like bluetooth headsets would crash the device.
This was a phone that was working great, until it wasn't. I wasn't able to find others with the same issue. Their customer service is non-existent. End of the line.
This is what pushed me to get an iPhone recently - at least I can walk into an apple store if the thing crashes completely. I've bought multiple android devices over the years, and its always been underwhelming and disappointing. The only upside has been that its been cheap. Now that I can afford one, I think an iPhone is the only viable choice (for me).
I know there are people who own Google devices and this has never happened with them, but this has been my experience of being a life-long android user.
I was an Android user back in the Nexus days, and had something similar happen to my Nexus 7 tablet. It worked fine, updated Android, became unusable. I read they finally addressed it later, but I had already moved on.
And if not, my single experience with Best Buy is that I can get my iPhone replacement the next day.
Like many others in this discussion, I switched to Apple after Google screwed me with one of their phones.
After that I just can't trust Google at all with hardware and since then my opinion of Google as a whole has largely soured. The Galaxy S6 I got to replace it worked quite well but after several years went back to the iPhone .
It's very, very nice that you can go into an Apple store for iPhone support. Mailing in your phone to another manufacturer to deal with an issue is a miserable experience, and Google's uBreakifix relationship is not perfect for regular customer service and manufacturer defects.
On a low budget used iPhones are pretty good choice. I've a couple of 2016 SEs bought for ~$100 each. Work well, usual Apple plus points. Easy to get fixed when you break screens, batteries etc. too - go to any phone fixers.
What security issues should I be concerned about? It's difficult to spend the time going through the CVE database to figure this out, I see a lot of privilege escalation issues but I don't install apps that I don't trust anyway. I still get browser updates. I care less about the bugs and more about the attack vectors.
I'd rather have a secure sandbox with untrusted apps then have insecure sandbox with a ton of attack surfaces in trusted apps.
Quote from the article: "The malware spread primarily through Google Play but also through third-party marketplaces, push notifications on compromised websites, sponsored links on Google, and messages delivered by WhatsApp or SMS. At the time, Brata targeted people with accounts from Brazil-based banks."
With browser updates, limited browsing, restricting app downloads, you might be in the clear. But looks like malware makers also use WhatsApp or SMS.
The writing's on the wall when it comes to Android SOCs now anyway, Apple phones from 4 years ago perform better and still get updates. They have their own issues, but they're not existential level problems.
But frankly it's really hard to justify not getting an iPhone anymore. I have three kids and they all want iPhones and all their social life is on iMessage. Not to mention that all the apps I have to use for work are better supported in iPhone and have issues on Android but IT doesn't really care. It's becoming really difficult to justify not just getting my wife and I iPhones in the next cycle and planning to hand them down.
Its frustrating that all the big companies act like "we're big, so we'll do what we want, no matter how annoying it is to the end user" ... and the small companies really can't compete/disrupt the market because they're not big enough.
When I tried Android I couldn't get the same device to stick around for more than a year. After my 5X bootloop fiasco I tried another manufacturer and found out I couldn't even upgrade my software to patch a security issue because I had to wait on the vendor to add their crapware before releasing the update. I waited 6 months after Google released their update and then gave up... I don't know how Android users deal with the update nonsense.
I had my last Android phone for 5 years, and never had a problem until the last month; when it was just too slow and would reboot every now and again. It had security updates for the first 4 years.
My wife just switched off her iphone to an android because there were just too many places where it would ... just do it's own thing instead of what she told it to (like I noted in another response; placing songs on the cloud instead of on her phone like she told it to). It didn't "just work" in a lot of cases, for any sane definition of that phrase.
I was thinking about this the other day, and how Apple's departure from skeuomorphism made a lot of "just works" analogies a lot more dilute. I've never been particularly fond of Apple's design chops, be it from 2008 or 2018, but there's something to be said about how digital Corinthian leather and wood textures makes a person perceive a device. It also made their design philosophy fairly straightforward: if you're designing a digital bookshelf, it should work similarly to a physical one. There was no ambiguous frosted-glass layer of UI, nor "lickable" candy buttons littering your experience. It was just... functional. Modern Apple seems pretty disinterested in that stuff though. Relative to the rest of the tech industry, they're the same clowns in a different circus.
This right here is what sums this topic up for me.
But also so many of the people around me use iOS devices now that I end up having to learn how to use them anyway. Yikes I sound like an Apple shill... but the opposite is true. lol
My wife went into iTunes and moved a bunch of songs onto her phone. Then she went out and tried to play those songs... and it tried to download them off the cloud (using data, which is a limited resource). Apparently, copying to the phone didn't _actually_ copy them, just put sort of "shortcut" there pointing at it on the cloud. That was definitely _not_ what she wanted, but the software decided otherwise.
I feel like this gets talked about a lot in the abstract but it's rare that I actually run into a limitation in normal usage, and when it is I usually agree with the decision behind it (e.g. limiting cross-application data access for security reasons or moving away from kernel extensions). I think the best example is not supporting different browser engines but I have very mixed emotions there because I'd love to be able to use Firefox but iOS is basically the main thing keeping “the web” from meaning “what the Chrome team chooses to support”.
Apple were releasing updates to the 6s in 2021 still. That's a 7 year old device. Security updates only pretty much - but still its crazy. My wife will not upgrade her old phone as a result (I get one every year through work and just sell my old one).
It also really helps with resale value. I can't believe what I was getting for my old iphones.
A SwiftUI app vs Compose app right now is night and day, bugs from iOS 13.5 to 13.6 are catastrophic meanwhile Android devices with extremely old operating systems run the latest UI toolkit with very few issues.
I for one won't "upgrade" to a bigger phone with no fingerprint sensor and no headphone jack. I don't agree with many things Apple does, but their iPhone support is pretty damn good.
There are unlocked 4G phones such as the Nokia 225 for under $50 and the Nokia 6300 for under $70.
I could then either use the SIM from my iPhone, or if I didn't mind using a temporary number instead of my regular number while the iPhone is being repaired Mint Mobile has a "try before you buy" kit for $2 that includes a SIM and new number that is good for one week of service. It is meant to let people test out Mint Mobile before switching to make sure coverage and service are satisfactory, but seems like it would also work for someone who just wanted temporary service.
The thing died on my desk at work, wouldn't even turn on, just a few days before I was going on a long trip so after a few hours of looking for fixes and talking to support I just went to an Apple store and got an iPhone. Now I at least feel comfortable that if I have an issue I can go to a physical store and get help in a pinch.
Does Apple give you a replacement before sending in your existing phone?
Maybe in the US, on Apple's homeland, but I doubt they do this in the EU. Would be cool if they did though.
Whenever I upgrade phones, I still keep my previous device around so that when I had to send my last gen to the service, I can always quickly switch to the previous one for a couple of weeks until it's back
Still annoying, and phones shouldn't die like that, but it was probably the best thing they could have done by that point.
If you had backups running to your Mac or PC (which can happen over WiFi automatically when both the phone and mac are on line power), you've got a whole-device backup that will have you up and running as fast as it takes the backup to restore.
Google told me, a US customer, to send my device to Huawei's nearest service center in mainland China at my own cost for diagnosis and repair. That is unacceptable for a Google-branded product designed by Google, unveiled by Google, marketed by Google, sold directly by Google, warrantied by Google, and bricked by Google.
Imagine, if you will, Audi sending you to Bosch in Germany (at your own cost!) after an Audi dealership in Indiana bricks your ECU during a recall service.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/29/tumblr-ios-tags-ban-apple/
I escaped from such a world as a child. Apple's sanitization of the internet is fundamentally unethical.
Shame, because my Nexus 5 and Nexus 4 still run great. I don't use them as phones, but they're still solid devices I use for other projects.
I would have thought Google finally bringing the hardware design in house with the pixel phones would let them create a real competitor, but they seem to be just okay?
Lack of focus maybe? Might just be a case of commoditize your complement, in this case the complement for Google is the hardware.
It felt like cheap plastic crap too (imo).
The iPhone 5 was the first iOS phone with turn by turn nav and LTE which were the reasons I stuck with the Nexus phones as each one got worse. The 5's battery life was also ridiculously good in comparison and the hardware design holds up even now ten years later.
The HTC Nexus One was the best of the first three, I'm not sure why Samsung gets so much love for hardware. The Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus builds were both ugly and poor. The Nokia N9 was beautiful and I was bummed when Microsoft turned them into windows only devices, they would have been great android phones.
That was another thing at the time which pushed me away from android, they didn't have control over their OS because of this lack of control over hardware.
It was a little like Windows and all the crap that came installed on it, except worse because you couldn't even reset it.
I'm not an Apple fan. I don't use any Apple products right now. However, it's impossible to deny that Android phones are always 2-3 years behind Apple in terms of hardware and software.
I also never spend more than $500 on a phone, which has iPhones out of reach.
I would totally love an iPhone mini because i find the Xs too big but i don’t feel like it’s worth spending money. I would also totally buy a non-googled Android (because I don’t like nowadays Apple mentality) that I could keep updated for years but it just doesn’t exists.
So here I am, with my Xs, which honestly, feels like, to me, an exceptional phone for 2022: beautiful, fast, updated, nice picture quality, reliable, and totally cheap. It would be a total dream if the App Store wasn’t a dictature or if side loading was possible.
I migrated to Android back in the IPhone 8 and IPhone 10 Max Plus++ whatever era. I just couldn't deal with a $1000 phone.
But now Apple has the IPhone SE which goes for as low as $399.
I will sometimes just buy a model or 2 back used or refurbished since they last for quite a while. You could probably get the 11 for under $500 as well.
There are still a lot of things I like better on Android, but it's not worth it.
Regardless, as of 2020 the only non absolute shit Android phones are Pixels. Essential, which was another non-shit Android, is dead because rather than re-iterating its boneheaded founder decided the market was in the TV remote control like device.
Samsung's flagship phones push ads as a part of the operating system. Let that sink in. On a $1,200 phone!
OnePlus can't make its interface not crash. Neither can it convince the carriers to whitelist its profiles in the United States for 5G and Wifi calling.
I admit that Bixby is a ridiculous barnacle whose eradication would improve the product.
Out of all sucky Android devices and due to my work I probably touched at least 3/4 of models sold via non-grey market channel in the US the only phones that are functional are Pixels, which sucks.
My wife has an iPhone 12. Pixel 6 today is either in the same class or beats it. Of course it is highly unlikely that it will beat it in 2024 given Google track record of refusing to reiterate.
My impression is Google's are still the most updated. I've had a Nexus S, 4, 5 and currently have Pixel 3. I've never really had any problems with the Google-managed devices. Motorola and Samsung... let's just say I will never, ever buy a phone from them ever again. The choice is between Pixel and iPhone. But after the Pixel 3 I will not pay for the "premium" class Pixels.
People are willingly paying iPhone prices for Purism and Pinephone hardware with low specs and old chips. Does Samsung not want this money?
Now people look at the ads and the product placement. If you want to sell millions of a device, that's how you do it.
I start by excluding the ones with literal malware and after that the primary determinant is price, because if it's going to be rapidly disposable anyway then there's no point in making a large investment.
"Let's force them to buy a new phone more often" is the kind of first year on the job MBA move that sounds profitable on paper as long as you fail to notice that the average Android phone now sells for less than a third of the price of the average iPhone. And that's revenue; the difference in margins is even bigger.
It's certainly not common enough that you see mentions about it on HN or Reddit - and yet, you see mentions of adjacent things like requests for tech support. So, it's clearly not very common.
The premise of asking for a recommendation is that the tech has already done the research (e.g. for themselves) and can provide a two word answer off the top of their head. There is little reason to complain about this on a message board or even bother to remember when it happens. But it does.
You even admit to doing it yourself. How many swings of a $400 purchase from one vendor to another does it take per capita to be enough to care about?
...for almost certainly tiny numbers of sales in both cases, and nowhere near "iPhone prices" for Pinephones. Samsung cares about money, and their current strategy is far more lucrative than selling very small amounts of Librem devices at modest profit margins.
iPhone SE is $399. PinePhone Pro is $399. Samsung is averaging ~$250.
> ...for almost certainly tiny numbers of sales in both cases
They're doing preorders and are regularly sold out and backordered, despite having high prices and old hardware and weird bugs. That is what high demand looks like.
Meanwhile no change to the hardware is required and Samsung could carry on selling to everyone they currently do, plus all of those people.
This whole comments section is full of people complaining about this. If you give them a choice between two otherwise fungible phones, one that has open source drivers etc. and can therefore run an up to date vanilla kernel indefinitely, why wouldn't they all choose that one?
The custom Linux phone I make is also sold out! I've made zero units and there are zero available. That is what high demand looks like.
There is clearly more demand than there is supply.
This is the weirdest position to stake out. That nobody wants this because everybody who makes one has a line of customers around the block and mainstream media outlets are writing stories about how much people want this, which go to the front page of tech news aggregators because of all the people who feel the same way.
What evidence of demand are you looking for? A larger production run which is also commercially successful? You can't expect that as a precondition for doing one.
Until Apple bricks your phone with a stealth update because you haven't upgraded quickly enough.
https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-iphones-settlement-idU...
Upside of the settlement was I got a battery replacement for $30 (performed same day in store) and coming up on 6 years since release the original iPhone SE is still running the latest version of iOS.
If their phone doesn't have a replaceable battery then blaming the phone is correct.
OnePlus phones are/were also quite good (at least when I bought my OnePlus 6, I have heard it went… downhill from there). But I did two years of updates, plus one more through LineageOS. And I'll probably update again when LineageOS has their Android 12 release.
OnePlus phones are good because they are (still) easily bootloader-unlockable, and are thus good (excellent) for custom ROMs. They do update fairly often on stock, but I think the stock ROM is getting worse and worse. Still, they're up there.
I "upgraded" to a Pixel 6 and Android 12 has been completely fine for me, so it might be certain people. I am aware some of my friends had bugs with Android 12, though.
I also bought a Nexus/Pixel 5 phone or whatever around the same time and that too had issues after 2 years. I forget the issues but it had to be rebooted frequently, at least once a day due to slowdowns. Replaced with an HTC that ran much better for 4 years until I accidentally killed it.
After those two turds I will NEVER buy google garbage ever again.
I've put it on a shelf until I can get time/money to recover the data from the flash, but lesson learned.
I bought a Samsung.
Large numbers of pixel 3/3xl's have started dying in the last year and it looks like it's the flash wearing out on all the early adopter/heavy user devices. This happened to me too.