AppleCare specifically covers water damage of any kind, and is what I would assume OP would be referring to as a "premium warranty and repair service".

ApplecCare is as much a warranty as their Apple's phone are guaranteed waterproof.

It's marketing.

The 3 year warranty add-ons is an insurance. One can get an insurance for any device.

The standard iPhone warranty disclaims water damage [1] and Apple has been sued in the past for using humidity activated sensors.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/109350

And if you truly are ultra budget $300 phone guy then sure this doesn't apply to you.

Wonderful hardware but f*k Sony with the update policy.

My last Xperia was I Mk 2. Nominally flagship. Great hardware, great spec, I loved the form factor.

It got one major Android update and total of 18 months of security updates since the release.

Like, WTH?

No more Sony for me.

I update pretty frequently, but all the older devices get used by family members, etc.

I hope that a few years down the line there will also be great midrange Motorola phones with GrapheneOS support. But they have to start somewhere.

I just keep buying phones with way more features than I desire just so that having too many apps open at once or going to the wrong Javascript laden web page doesn't slow my phone to a crawl. I just tell myself that at least I only replace my phone every 5 to 7 years. If it wasn't for work, I'd keep them longer, but the OS has to be patched for work stuff to be on it.

The Pixel phones are precisely that, and they are the only phones supported by Graphene for now. The a-series is a particularly good value and I am posting from one.

I think if work demands a better phone, then work should be buying you a better phone.

but they bumped up prices significantly a few months ago due to chip prices or tarrifs or who knows what, it's not so cheap anymore.

In my experience this is literally the iphone SE. Look at the chipset, its no slouch.

Over decades of buying Android devices, I have yet to pay more than $300 for one. The one I'm using was actually free in exchange for buying a year of T-Mobile prepaid credits. No, it never was the fastest thing on the planet but it makes calls and runs the apps I want.

Miniaturization costs, and I would expect a flagship phone to cost at least as much as an equivalent CPU/RAM/storage laptop. The cost of miniaturization, modem, camera and OLED more than balances the bigger screen and keyboard/trackpad.

I could see myself splashing out on a more expensive phone if it were less locked down - so probably never. However I don't play games and as a Gen-Xer my laptop is where the rest of my digital life lives; it makes sense that those for whom the phone is their primary device would prioritise it more (especially with somewhat predatory financing).

That said, I will keep on replacing the battery until the circuit board itself turns into ash

But our appreciation keep getting skewed because flagship phones make leaps forward.

~750€ for the Motorola Signature, with 512 GB storage

~900€ for the Pixel 10 Pro XL, with 256 GB storage (the 11 Pro XL costs much more at ~1200€, since it just came out a month ago)

It just puts Google in the same sandbox Google puts everyone else.

Typing this on a pixel running graphene.

Yes, you can do that, but Graphene is probably best used without Google apps at all. If you use Google Maps, sandboxed or not, Google still knows where you are, what speed you drive, etc, and can rat you out to car insurance companies or the government.

That totally depends on your goals. For some it's security, for some it's privacy from Google, for some it's removing the ability from Google to (worst case) remote brick/block your device. The latter may sound a bit far fetched, but if I was employed by, say the ICJ, I would know what system I'd run to avoid that.

One of the things that I like about GrapheneOS is that it accommodates all these use cases and on a gradient (e.g. personally privacy from Google is also important, but I like that I can use sandboxed Google Play Services with most of its permissions removed).

Can you provide a source that they've said this recently? This seems to be a bit of a misrepresentation.

They say:

>The Play Store app is also the most secure way to install and update apps from the Play Store.

on /usage, but this does not indicate it's the most private way or that it's the recommended way to install apps. It seems to me to indicate that this is their assessment of the security of the ways to install apps that are distributed on the Play Store, not a recommendation or privacy assessment that applies to other apps or to their users in general.

They don't recommend against Aurora Store [1], but it is not user friendly as the Play Store because app installs frequently fail and automatic updates do not work as well. Installing apps from Aurora has the advantage of no google account, but Google is still handed a list of all the apps you have installed, IP address, app details, device details, and GSF ID. It will likely stop working or become even more broken. It is useful when apps block installs from the Play Store because of play integrity.

I use it myself for the few Google apps I install like Camera because I don't want to install play services.

I would consider their actual recommendation to be their own App Store and Accrescent (alpha).

Obtainium is great but not user friendly.

The claims about problems with F-Droid are true. It's not like they oppose FOSS, their whole operating system is FOSS and they've never said anything bad about IzzyOnDroid, which fixes the problems with F-Droid and even adds a bit of security.

[1] https://nitter.freedit.eu/GrapheneOS/search?f=tweets&q=auror...

Stock Android (AOSP) misses stuff like Call Screen, Hold for Me, Direct My Call, Digital Wellbeing,

If it was the same the hostility like this wouldn't matter that much: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-not-killing-aosp-356...

Get your update process working @Motorola!