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#android #samsung #googlepixel

00:00 Intro
00:29 Sponsor: Save 10% on your website or domain name with Squarespace
01:49 Hardware: too many bad choices
04:41 Why NOT Samsung Phones?
06:30 Why NOT Google Pixels?
08:14 Software Issues: nothing fits
11:18 Alternative ROMS?
13:35 What to use, then?
15:27 Parting Thoughts
15:55 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly
16:49 Support the channel

My preferences are: relatively small phone, very close to 6 inches, a high refresh rate display, 90hz or more, a capable camera array, preferably with a video portrait mode, and, the hardest one, I don't want a phone sold by a chinese company.

Let's start with the size. Current phones are just way too big. If I can't reach the top left corner with my thumb without shifting my grip, it's too big. Period.

As per the provenance of the phone, Chinese manufacturers are a red flag for me. It's not paranoia, but every chinese company is legally required to hand over all information about their users to the chinese government: https://www.techradar.com/news/dell-w...

I used Samsung phones for a long while. I started on the Galaxy S8, then I had an S9+, an S10e, then an S21. I ran the default Samsung ROM on some of these, and I find Samsung phones great. I even miss the curved edges screen.

My problem with Samsung is more in terms of reliability. All phones I owned from them had the exact same issue: after about a year, they stop recognizing my SIM card. This happened to EVERY Samsung phone I ever owned, so I'm done with them.

So that leaves Google, the Pixels are highly rated by people who use them.

But first, and it's subjective, I find them horrendous to look at. Plus, they're very unreliable. The first gen had severe performance degradation, the second one had a bad OLED screen that burned in way too quickly, and an easy to break USB C connector. The third pixels were plagued by software issues. The fourth pixels had a bad screen again, and a very insecure face unlock mechanism.

The fifth pixels seemed to have huge manufacturing issues with the screen separating from the main body, and almost right after launch as well.

The 6th one has issues with the fingerprint sensor not working well, the assistant could ghost dial random contacts, there was a screen flicker issue, so basically no quality control on that phone.

And as per the pixel 7, it looks like the camera glass is spontaneously cracking.

I'm sure I could look hard and long enough and find something that I'd enjoy, but Android is just messy. Samsung's brand of Android, called oneUI was pretty good, with a great design flair, easy to use with one hand, with major controls at the bottom of the screen, good gesture navigation, and looks wise, it was pretty good.

BUT it's riddled with ads in a lot of the default applications, and it's a mess of applications you can't remove. It's bloatware central.

If you go with Vanilla Android from Google, then you get something that is way more trimmed down, with only Google apps and services, but the design is horrible, in my opinion.

Which leads us to alternate ROMS. Graphene OS works on Pixels, and as I explained, no way I'm buying one, not with that track record.

Then there's Lineage, or /e/, my favorite one, which goes even further than Lineage in terms of removing Google crap, and has a very nice simple aesthetic that I find super pleasing.

/e/ is what I would use, if I could find a phone I like to use it on. My Galaxy S21 is in a drawer, and I'd love to use that with /e/. But I can't, because they don't support it.