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.
Xiaomi if you can’t afford a pixel that runs grapheneos, otherwise anything that runs grapheneos (only pixel atm but they’re looking for more)
Nailed it
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, …)
For me the pixel phones. I just really enjoy them and the possibility to load graphene.os make them even better
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.
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.
It’s not a power-user device so no, you don’t get all the fancy custom ROMs and such,
most people don’t need custom roms, contrary to good free software apps that don’t steal your and your friends data through you.
but for doing all the normal phone things, I’ve not had a single issue.
for that, literally a dumb phone is enough, and will last longer than any iphone or android. if android enshittified to the level of iphones, I would refuse to buy anything than a dumb phone, maybe not even that.
literally a dumb phone is enough
Not to:
- Browse the web
- Check my bank balance
- Tap to Pay
- Use most any chat service (including open-source ones)
- Take a reasonable picture
- Listen to music (Brining another non-streaming player isn’t a reasonable trade off for most anyone)
- Remotely manage my home network (admittedly less “normal phone things”)
- The list goes on…
While I would love to be a Luddite and say I don’t need a smartphone, there’s just a swath of convenience that you can’t get any other way.
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 😂💜
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.
I prefer Samsung UI, but Xiaomi is very tough to beat on performance per dollar. Huawei if you trust em.
