I’ve been looking at phones to replace my Pixel 4a as the battery goes and it becomes increasingly silly to get it replaced instead of getting something new. I don’t like huge phones, which i consider to be anything over ~6.2". Everything under that is either:
- A Google Pixel with poor efficiency, thermals, and call reliability
- A Samsung Galaxy S with a high price, locked bootloader, dodgy privacy, and bloatware
- A miscellaneous brand with abysmal software support lifespan, variable bootloader lock status, and little to no custom rom support
the ASUS Zenfone 10 would have been honestly perfect for me - sub-6" screen, headphone jack, good performance. But they just haaad to remove bootloader unlocking despite promises to the contrary so now you have to settle for one more OS update and three more years of security updates for something that costs $600+. blurgh.
I got a third party phone that I LOVE
BUT
Options for cases fucking suck if you don’t have one of the 3 flagship phones. It’s so bad.
I have a OnePlus 11 because it’s similar to a Samsung Galaxy in specs and also it charges FAST as FUCK boi. 12 minutes from 0% to 50%, 15 more to hit full.
tried Xiaomi? I’ve got a Redmi Note 10S, have had it for probably 2-3 years now and it still runs fresh. Good battery life too. Very cheap.
It’s 6.5 inch though, and the camera isn’t great. Think their other versions are smaller.
Some say there’s a lot of bloatware - I’ve thought that at points but it’s like any other phone these days in that regard. It’s probably easy to remove although I’ve never bothered.
EDIT: just checked, there’s a Xiaomi 12 that is 6 inches.
EDIT 2: huh, apparently to unlock it you have to do a load of bullshit. Oh well.
I helped a friend with unlocking their newer Xiamoi device not too long ago and it wasn’t that bad, all you have to do is link your device to your Xiaomi account and then download their Mi Unlocker program on your desktop and connect your phone, no more waiting.
Basically the only way to get a small screen size phone these days to get one of those ridiculous flip phones with a fully functional cover screen, like the latest Samsung Galaxy Z flip or Motorola Razr. All the other phones are just gigantic. And the flip phones, while cool, are ridiculously expensive and fragile.
One thing that makes it more tolerable is to use Universal Android Debloater to get rid of the obscene amount of bloatware that some makers cram into their phones. But the era of unlocked bootloaders and rooted phones has come to an end, and these are basically just appliances now instead of universal computers. It’s really sad how shitty and locked down everything has gotten. Ten years ago, I was rocking a Samsung Note 2 with custom firmware, and the world was your oyster, I could do anything I wanted on it. New phones are… they have nicer cameras, I guess. The CPUs are faster, but that only just barely keeps up with the insanely bloated software.
