Ask Lemmy

I've generally enjoyed the iphone line the most. Idk if the iphone 4 was actually the best or if I just have a lot of nostalgia for it, but either way I'd say the iphone 4

I've owned a total of 3 smartphones in my life. The very first one I got was an Alcatel Evolve. I got that in 2017 I want to say. It was a budget phone, just enough to get the job done and had it for roughly 5 years. I ended up smashing it in 2021 because by that point, it's performance has slowed to a crawl and it's battery life was poor to the point where it could not be used anymore for daily use.

To replace it I got a Samsung Galaxy A02s, another budget-line phone and it is still around me today. Not quite as good as it was the first year I had it for and it's only purpose is to give me entertainment during breaks and meal times at work.

Alongside it, my current and best phone that's my primary is the Samsung Galaxy A32-5G. Because of how much I spent on it, I gave that phone an Otterbox protection and it has done wonders since there were times because of my stupid coat pockets, it'd fall about a couple feet from the pocket to the concrete flooring at work. It is used for everything, almost.

I'm currently using a Samsung s21 ultra, and it's kinda meh. The compass is not bad, it's horrendous. It used to be offset by say 90 degrees, but nowadays it seems more likely that it's a random number generator from 0 to 360 degrees, making any maps app bacically unusable unless you look at road markings, and other buildings to guess which way you're facing. The main camera has over time developed a hardware issue that makes all pictures always out of focus, unless you hit the phone on a hard surface to dislodge the focusing mechanism. From a software standpoint it's a good device. No major bugs, and it's pretty stabile.

My favorite phone was a used Samsung s6 as it felt kinda "flawless". Battery was good, camera was great (for the time), and hardware was pretty awesome. It was a great phone while it was still getting updates.

Current: Asus zenfone 9 favorite: Nextbit Robin

such a perfect phone for the price. Wish they made something like it now

I miss my note20. I'm a behemoth, with massive hands, so it was just the right one-hand size for me hah. It was also just a quality phone that survived a lot of abuse. Contrast to my pixel 7 pro, that I bought for one feature, and whose screen has had numerous issues in the year I've had it... Not happy with that switch.

You can rip my blackberry key2 from my death cold hands.

S8+ I thought was the best one that I had till I upgraded

Current Pixel 9 Pro. Second best phone I've used, but it hasn't stood the test of time yet.

Best I used was the Galaxy S7.

Note 9 would be my top choice, but it started having display issues around the 2-year mark.

Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G

Currently have Pixel 9 Fold, it's ok

Best is probably HTC G2. Still waiting for HTC to make a G3

Current: S24U, Moto Razor 2023+, Pixel 8 Pro.

Best phone: Probably the LG V20 or V30. Can't remember which.

I liked my Motorola One Vision, 21:9 source ratio was a banger, lots of screen real estate and the phone fit in the hand nicely, vanilla Android was cool, I hate the iPhoney flavor of Android my current OnePlus has, only downsides was:

• Exynos chip resulting in poorly optimized software, battery life was shit
• LCD screen, OLED would be nicer
• Poor cameras, even 2x zoom looked mushy AF
• Motorola's poor software support, it got Android 10 a year after it came out, we were told it'll get fast software updates because of the Android One programme
• The fingerprint sensor on the back was the shittiest one I've ever used, barely worked, face unlock was a godsend... until COVID came
• Motorola's thought with this one the middle of the phone is the best place for the NFC antenna, I had to do some weird ninja moves with the phone for the touchless payments to work

Using a mid budget Redmi Note 10 pro, nothing exceptional, it works pretty good with a nice screen. My favorite was the Nexus 5.

I got a Nothing Phone 2 after two 1+ phones (5t and then an 8 Pro, and didn't like where the OS was going). I love it. It's been awesome, maybe 7 months with it?

Currently using a Moto G Stylus 2020, this thing has never had major updates pushed, and the last security one was a while ago, it's pretty decent but has gotten much slower over time and is probably near the end of its life.

The best phone I had was an iphone 7, it was originally terrible, but the it was iOS 12? (13?) that came out and it was so much better. Like you would have major performance issues with this thing before the update, Apple was probably at their peak around then. I stopped using it because it was vendor locked to Sprint, and sprint stopped existing in my area when T Mobile bought them out

CAT S22 Flip as my daily driver. I also don't really use my phone for content consumption anymore; I just need the basics + hotspot.

"Best phone" doesn't really exist for me in the smarphone era because they've all been compromises. If my OnePlus 3 had a slide out QWERTY keyboard, it would probably qualify, though.

Currently using a Galaxy S21 FE. I'm honestly not rhat picky, as long as it's not apple, and as long as it's fast enough, as my employers have paid for them. I got this one after being on the wrong side of the country while my phone died, so I had the shop clerk phone up the guy at the head office to confirm that I could just pick one and send them the bill. The S21FE was what was in store at the time, and I was kind of in a hurry, as I was in the middle of a projectrelated field work.

I've mostly stuck to Samsung because that's the (mangled) version of Android that I'm used to. It takes some tampering with adb to remove the bloat, but once done it works really well.

The "best" phone (quotes, because I think that's highly subjective) I ever had was the Galaxy Note 2. I loved that phone. Great stylus, good OCR, and once it got used to my terrible handwriting, it was much better and less prone to error than typing on the softkeys. The Note 3 through 6 were not available in my country, so I know nothing. And it annoyed the fuck out of me that Note 7 was a safety hazard, because beyond that it seemed like a really good phone. Sadly the later iterations of the Note series seem too cheaply made. Plastic stylus, etc.

Honorable mention: Openmoko GTK 2. I loved it, but the concept of a linux smartphone (or smartphones in general) hadn't matured completely in 2007, so it wasn't at the stage where it could replace my dumb phone completely.

Today, as mentioned, I'm not that picky. I feel like most phones are the same, except the ones that are too cheap. There is only so much useful hardware that can be crammed into a phone, and beyond that there are mostly improvements on things such as the camera. The rest comes down to software.