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.
Normal sized phone gang reporting in.
I’d really like a good telephoto camera option in a similar size range, but there’s not a lot to choose from.
Following.
I was going to link anandtech’s guide but they haven’t updated it in nearly three years
I’m amazed that anyone gets Google Pixels. It seems like every one has some sort of ridiculous design flaw.
I’ve been using my OnePlus 9 which has been solid so far. I had to loose the headphone jack unfortunately which I really hate. Not sure what their new phones look like at the moment, but they’re one of the Chinese manufacturers that at least had phones at cheaper than the flagship price point.
I have no idea on the bootloader side of things, but OnePlus has been good about the OS updates. I’m on Android 14 at the moment.
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.
