I am curious about comunity opinion on the topic, which is the overal top noch phone (running iodéOS) for everyday heavy useage.
The criteria is: durability of the phone, great battery running time, enough power and capability for taking nice and steady snapshots and video, reasonable pocketability, good and bright screen, superb sound quality (phone calls and loud speaker), availabity on the refurbed market. Fast recharge speed is also welcomed.
I am recently on Pixel 5 with iodéOS Premium. The phone is very light, greatly pocketable and the battery (I have installed a new battery + new display) usually can deliver 2 days between charging. Camera (with the GCam from F-Droid) takes OK pictures, but nothing special. Sound, especial during phone calls, is sort of dull. Because I do carry my phone without any case, its body is very slim, which is great. So is its weight - very light phone.
On the other side, the screen is not very bright, especialy outside on the sun. Haptic response is very weak, charging is pretty slow, sound is generaly muffled. Camera is below average.
Looking forward your opinion, which one is (for you) the best phone for the heavy usage. Thanks for your opinion and time.
i use motorola edge plus 2023 with iode os, it is stable. good battery last. snapdragon 8 gen 2 is powerful, 8 gig ram keep running apps in the background. i use the gcam port and
Pixel 5 was an oddity in the line up, as I recall it had been slated to receive the first tensor SoC but due to delays it had to be equipped with a mid range SoC. So, if you are a heavy user I suggest that you narrow your choices to flagship level phones ( all the latter pixel series are such but beware the recent Google decision about providing device trees going forward). Apart from Pixel, you may want to consider Motorola or One Plus models. The “best” phone is a loaded term so you may want to first consider what you would want from next device. If you are interested in continueing with a compact device, then you might be limited to pixel anyways. One note about pixels is Google only implemented cooling into devices starting with 9 series. All previous models suffer from overheating or battery related issues…
Thank you both for your perspective on the topic. I am always curious about opinion of fellow tech enthusiasts, especially in the field of giving used and formal glory devices new, free and meaningful purpose. It is really ironic, that mostly Pixel phones are the ones to recommend for fleshing with privacy respecting SW.
This is also my opinion now. I am looking into the Sony Xperia 1 or 5. It is very good hardware and the package is also no sought in the power department. Only uncertainty is in the field of photography and video capturing.
I use Sony devices for years now too and also recommend them. Its great that Sony (still?!) supports unlocking the bootloader. Biggest downside is that it cannot be relocked, which leads sometimes to problems with App insatallation…
Having the original Sony camera software would be really great!
I consider several factors, but I care less about my phone having the best hardware.
Firstly, it needs to be one that is officially supported, because OS (security) updates are important and the hardware support less likely to randomly break.
Secondly, the phone should support a locked bootloader, otherwise the system is too insecure for me. I’ve been told that some apps even refuse to work on a phone with an unlocked bootloader, so this is also a question of app compatibility.
Thirdly, for signal reception and future-proofing, the phone should support VoLTE and 5G. Otherwise the phone may just break soon as support for 2G and 3G shrinks (it might even be gone already). I’d like my phone to be able to last a while.
With these requirements, I am down to the following vendors:
Braxtech
Fairphone
Google
Shift
Personally, I’d also like to be able to replace a battery without dealing with glue or sending the phone on a two week adventure to a repair shop. This only leaves Fairphone and Shift for me.
Though if you prefer flagship hardware instead, only Google remains.
Makes sense. For me, dismounting any phone to pieces and than put it back in working order is no problem. Did it plenty of times with plethora of phones. So even changing faulty battery on glued on phone is normal for me. But I can see that hot battery swap is even better. Never used Shift or Fairphone before. May be I can give it a go and try it. Pixel phones are mediocre in HW specs at the best. Lot of money for not that great HW. The main draw of masses to Pixel phones is the original surveillance SW made by Google. But if one uses Pixel as a degoogled device, the magic is gone. Only the mediocre HW remains. As an Pixel 5 user that is precisely what I experience every day. It is OK, but very often laggy.
Great conversation so far. I am glad I can be a bit absent from the forum for a bit and come back to thoughtful conversations instead of need to spend the time fighting back the trolls
I would say that your country of origin comes into play regarding the used market availability. Sonys are extremely rare in the USA which means the availability just isn’t there (I wish they were!). I have my choice of hundreds (maybe thousands) of Pixels, but have to hunt far and wide to find a few reasonable Sony options (and the extreme price hike on them reflects that too).
If you do have a high value on photo quality, for Pixels better than mucking around with all the GCam configs to find the right one, you can just install Pixel Camera (and disable networking for it). Google’s proprietary pre-processing black box secret sauce does result in better quality photos than I can get on any other hardware I have used. Motorola cameras always seriously disappointed me (but my last Moto was a G6 from 2018).
Regarding speed, in my research for phones to sell at https://openmobile.us (refurbished phones with iodéOS preinstalled for USA customers) I consolidated all the NanoReview benchmarking scores for the Pixel line, and it is like this (Antutu 10 CPU bencharmarks):
It may not match the newest snapdragons (I didn’t look at those) but it is quite performant… you could run some of the Sony or OnePlus chips through NanoReview and see how those compare.
Anyway, I think for me it mainly comes back to what is available in your local markets to compare / contrast price and availability of different options.
Thanks Rik for such a deep insight into the problem of best performance used phones (with degoogled OS). In my country, in the middle of Europe, there is available any and every phone one can imagine or whish. Sony, Pixel, OnePlus etc. I am recently pulled towards Sony Xperia 1 V. The only thing what I am not sure about is unlocked bootloader on Sony phones.
I’m with Pete on this one, and even if an evil maid gets your device the first time to put some sort of keylogger on it (typical “evil maid” scenario), I don’t even know how or if that could even work with Android (the logger has to be installed outside the system, maybe replace the bootloader or something but I don’t think that is even possible to then be able to keylog your screen input to store your pin / pattern?)
The main point is that your userdata is all encrypted, without your unlock pattern / pin it is not visible regardless of having an unlocked bootloader or not. You need to be unlocked in order to be able to decrypt and mount your userdata.
Personally, I think the more common threat vector is from malicious apps a user installs and / or compromised networking (shadow hotspots or cellular), but neither of these would be a greater risk with an unlocked bootloader.
Anyway, back to Antutu 10 CPU benchmark for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in the Sony Xperia 1 V, it comes in at 371,605 so basically on par with a Pixel 8 Tensor G3 (Pixel 9 Tensor G4 are only marginally faster at 387,719): https://nanoreview.net/en/soc/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-gen-2
Sony quality and features (SD card is a big one missing on all Pixels) are top notch, you are spoilt for choice if you are in Europe
Evil maid attack . Now I have to be aware of another thing in my daily life. And yes, phone choices in Europe are crazy plentiful. Very spoiled market here.
Basically they need physical access to your device 2 times: first time to put in a sniffer (that you aren’t aware of), 2nd time to use the “sniffed” info to then impersonate you to unlock the device, get info out of the device then remove sniffer and put it back in your drawer before you return. James Bond and Jason Bourne may be at risk here!
The only real and big downside of a degoogled phone (in my user case), is poor performance of the camera SW. Because I am making a lot of video content, phone is very often the first device reachable for capturing new video. In controlled scenario I use Canon camera, stative, lights, microphone etc. But on the go, phone it is. Today’s Chinese flagship phones, like Xiaomi 15/17 Ultra, are very capable camera systems. Far better than any iPhone, Samsung and Sony phone. Unfortunately, it is not possible to put iodéOS on such a brand new phone. If there is a possibility to degoogle any recent real flagship cameraphone and keep the “camera magic” functional (except Google own phones which are subpar to any real top noch camera phones), that would be a dream. But I know that I have to be real, so only recently possible way is to use Pixel 9 pro with GCam SW restricted to network access. Or to use just and olny for making the B-roll videos another phone camera and handle it not like a phone, but strictly only as a camera device.
. Now I have to be aware of another thing in my daily life. And yes, phone choices in Europe are crazy plentiful. Very spoiled market here.