Generally, for me it would be Xiaomi and Samsung. Both have decent features at a decent price. I mean, they can run some games without too many problems or open TikTok.
Personally, I don’t think there’s are any “best brands” per se as most of them are just cramming shit features like AI and spyware to please their shareholders. Now “best phones”? There are definitely some good ones out there like some Fairphones or others. I’m using a OnePlus Nord, and while I don’t like the company, the phone was affordable and had almost all the features I wanted. LineageOS flashed onto it solved the spyware issue as well.
For the average person it is probably Xiaomi: made in China, and even by Chinese phone standards it seems well known for its low cost and high build quality
However as a lemming and someone who has a Xiaomi gifted by parents and hated everything they crammed in the OS… How do you define a “best” brand of cell phone when there are barely 3 usable brands (Google Pixel for GrapheneOS, Fairphone, …)
samsungs are far from quality unless you get the flagship ones.
I miss my motorola phone. Maybe it’s because I forgot how annoying it was but my fucking god I hated my samsung phone for weeks until I had beaten it to submission.
For me the pixel phones. I just really enjoy them and the possibility to load graphene.os make them even better
I have to deal with tons of app issues in work, from users of Samsung and Xiaomi. I would honestly never buy either brand.
They are both filled with proprietary garbage, you have to use workarounds to try and disable and even then, these two companies are some of the worst for simply ignoring the workarounds and overriding them.
My aunt has a xiaomi, yesterday that motherfucker showed us an ad before entering into settings.
For the past decade plus I’ve just been buying the cheapest unlocked phone available. Last two have been Motorolas. They run all the games and do everything you want from a phone. Bonus, they let me delete x and Meta 's bloatware.
I’ll never buy a Samsung precisely because you need to root them to uninstall meta’s bullshit.
I’ve had two samsungs and I’ve never had a problem removing meta shit.
Might be because I’m UK, I think unremovable bloatware was outlawed a few years ago
I’ve just switched to a Motorola from a Xiaomi, and I’m in the UK. The Xiaomi wouldn’t let me uninstall quite a few apps. The Motorola is giving me the option at least
I’m probably wrong then.
I just have a very vague memory from years ago that uk companies were told to stop preinstalling their own bloatware on phones.
It particularly affected companies like O2 and Orange whose phones would come preloaded with all sorts of branded shit.
I do know that all of a sudden the practice stopped, maybe it was voluntary?
I know what you mean, there was something that changed. I can’t remember exactly what happened either though. I just know that I can uninstall a lot of the apps that I couldn’t before :)
Does yours not have Glance? I have a Moto G and there’s this app I can’t uninstall that puts “news stories” that are actually advertisements on my lock screen. I can disable it but if my phone reboots it re-enables itself. It’s the sole reason that this in my last Motorola phone.
I had something similar when I first set up the phone, but I disabled it along with most of the other junk. Apart from immediately after an update, I haven’t seen it again. Even then it was easy to disable.
I had an automatically installed games folder after the update too, and that was a bit trickier to remove, but it was just a case of finding it in the settings. I’m stuck with Facebook because of a music festival I’m involved with, but long pressing it and dragging it to the top of the homescreen gives me the option uninstall it. I don’t know if it’s an actual uninstall or just disabling it, but it looks legit
If you want top end, I’d say Samsung. If you don’t need top end and are more concerned about value, I think a Pixel would be a good choice.
I’m on my 2nd Motorola G series. Very good hardware value and the 1st was almost bloat free. I had to debloat the 2nd but it’s mostly ok now. I keep hearing cringe things about Samsung. No idea about Xiaomi.
I’ll probably get flak for this due to being on Lemmy, but I’ll throw out the iPhone 16e. It’s priced really well against competition and you can often get them prepaid and unlocked at a decent discount.
And I’m sure someone will loudly tell me how wrong I am, but I’ve found the build quality to be best-in-show. I’ve dropped it with no case at least half a dozen times and you can’t even tell.
It’s not a power-user device so no, you don’t get all the fancy custom ROMs and such, but for doing all the normal phone things, I’ve not had a single issue.
I was a hardcore Android user for about 10 years, but now there’s so few real advantages over iOS that I just prefer the simplicity of iOS.
A refurbished iPhone was going to be my vote.
Flagship performance, about 7 years of updates, but costs what a mid range android phone costs? Yeah it’s a banger of a deal. A similarly priced android phone would have half the performance and MAYBE half the updates.
If you just want a basic but nice phone to do modern phone things it’s hard to go wrong.
Whatever last year’s Google Pixel was, nab it on sale and install GrapheneOS. Its the best bang for your buck every time. Should last 5+ years unless something goes horribly wrong.
. Should last 5+ years unless something goes horribly wrong.
like every generation of pixel
All of my google phones…minus the nexus 6 have had hardware issues, but now I’m looking at a pixel 9 pro xl and wanting to put Graphene on it…but damn
I’ve had a nexus 6p - battery went to shit in basically 2 years, nexus 5, same issue and power button fucked up, then I got a pixel xl2 and… fingerprint reader went out, power button only registers a press every like 40 times, and battery is complete shit.
Still running a note10+ on its original battery, but I think it’s time to update…but the bad taste from google has me scared for a repeat.
Motorolla is xcellent budget pick with strong battery life and smooth daily performance.
True to the point I have given my parents, in their seventies, Motorola phones that can last all the hours of bejeweled and mahjong they like to do on top of hours of Facebook and Instagram conspiracy theories.
Upvote for your username 😂💜
No, I never did. But maybe low end Motorolas are different than their flagships
I’ve stuck to Samsung for the longest time, and the hardware is objectively built with quality in mind. At least their flagship phones. However, they’re so ridiculously priced these days, and now that I have to pay for them myself I’d have to spend a larger portion of my monthly paycheck than I am willing to. Plus the OS is so mangled and getting more and more annoying and intrusive.
I recently bought a Nothing Phone for one of my kids, and I think I wanna try them next; Seems good and reasonably priced.
I switched from a Motorola Droid (still miss the slide out keyboard) to the LG G3, V10, V20 (loved the knock code unlock) to a Pixel 3a XL and now a Samsung S21 with my next upgrade to the S26 Ultra.
For me the S26 series checks a lot of boxes, one of the biggest being 7 years of updates while preserving online banking. My S21 still has a lot of life left in it performance wise and bad actors targeting devices is big business. Flagship devices IMHO are at the point where they will be viable for 7 years so upgrading is no longer a game of chasing the latest version. It also helps that my carrier will have the S26 Ultra for around 700 or less cash (the current price for the S25 Ultra is 699 and they often give a 100 dollar discount for preorders) so I’m going to pay about 100 per year or about 27 cents per day for the device over it’s lifetime.
I’m also an amateur photographer/underwater videographer (trying to make a living at it and start funding a non-profit using the income steam) so being able to record high quality B-Roll and get good pictures in the same package is a huge bonus.
I had been leery of using the amoled screens for a long time and after using the S21 and Tab S8+ for a while now I no longer have that concern and my only issue with the S21 was with physical SIM cards not working right if the phone was compressed. With E-SIM’s that is really no longer an issue for me.
I stick with android because I use linux on my desktop and server. I also have apps that are not available on the walled garden and I choose to use things that not only the garden doesn’t allow but neither does Google. I’m also confident I can transfer my 4k video files from my microSD card to my portable HDD with android. Because I have to live out of cases for extended periods while also carrying a ton of equipment I have to maximize portability.
My use case is very unique, so ymmv.
Generally I don’t promise loyalty to any specific brand.
What I look for is a minimum of 5 years of software support from time of purchase.
Large battery 5000+ MAh and an OLED display.
Edit: oh and the option to use my own rom if I decide too.
