What smartphone do your use? What's the best phone you had owned?
What smartphone do your use? What's the best phone you had owned?
Moi? I use currently a NOTE 20 ultra 5g. Probably my second best phone, I only hate the fact it's so massive (I miss being able to use just one hand for my phone) and the mediocre battery life for someone like me that watches a lot of videos. But the S pen is so handy those few times you need it.
Pixel 8 with GrapheneOS
Asus Zenphone 10; headphone jack, minimal bloatware, two physical sim slots, good battery, small size so it actually fits in a pocket, finger print sensor on the power button so it's seamless to unlock. Best phone I've had in quite a while
One possible drawback is that I don't think it supports esim or has an sd card slot.
I recently got an Asus zenfone 10. I usually buy midrange phones but this time I couldn't find a good one. I like small phones, and they seem to be an endangered species these days. This one also has a headphone jack which is nice.
The OnePlus 7t back when it was on oxygen os 10. Great hardware, perfect software. It was the first phone I got where I didn't need or want to flash a custom rom. Unfortunately, every software update that it got since then felt like a downgrad. After oxygen os 10, oxygen os and Oppo's color os have been going through something of a merge. The result is that oxygen os is no longer as stock-like as it used to be and lots of small convenience features have disappeared in favor of flashy yet useless-to-me features. I have an 8t now and it's fine but I don't think that I'll get another OnePlus.
iPhone 12 Mini. I loved my 5S and first gen SE and I still can’t understand why phone manufacturers these days insist on making tablets and calling them phones. I just want something that fits in my pocket. I would probably have switched to Android years ago but I haven’t found a single Android phone with a small form factor, decent performance and decent camera.
Pixel 7 pro here. They're overpriced at release but if you're willing to buy last year's model they're pretty good.
Currently using a Galaxy A52s 5G w/ LineageOS... Best phone I've ever used.
iPhone 15 pro currently. Blackberry passport was the GOAT though.
I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max. It's a nice phone. I like IOS better than I thought I would. I do think the Galaxy I had before it was pretty good though, too. If I didn't struggle so much with the iPhone keyboard, I guess this would be my favorite, but I use my phone so much and the swipe typing is so rough, it's hard to give a full endorsement.
That said, I am probably overestimating how gos typing on Android was. I remember lots of autocorrect issues, but iOS has a bunch of keyboard bugs that make correcting errors even more frustrating than making them in the first place.
I've been a fan of the Pixels. I'm on a 7 now, no complaints.
US owner of an EU Fairphone 4. It is functionally locked to T-mobile due to AT&T not wanting unlocked devices on their network and the 5G bands dont always line up correctly so calls while driving are tricky. Beyond that, I love the device and can do that cool party trick where you can take out your battery and everyone stares in awe at my organic, free-range smart phone. (That part is a lie, I dont go to parties).
Joking asside, I like having an attempt at an ethically sourced phone, even though it is a finicky device. There is a US redistributor and they sell a model with region appropriate changes and a de-googled cloud backup service, but im not in the market for replacing this thing yet.
This cherry phone with a physical keyboard from the Philippines that allowed you to watch television using an antenna in the top right. However it sadly stopped booting for me.
Samsung Galaxy S20, still doing good work for me.
Nothing really compares to that first iPhone though.
Currently a Galaxy S9+. Battery life isn't the best anymore, and I'm running low on internal storage, but it's still serving me well. I'm not even sure what I'd upgrade to, I really need the SD slot that almost nothing new has anymore.
Best was my old Motorola Droid 2, I miss slide-out keyboards so damn badly.
Pixel 4a. I'm too lazy to get a new phone that often. Though, I don't get any proper updates anymore, that sucks. Best phone has always been the current one I use at the time.
iPhone 14 Pro. Got it deeply discounted from my carrier when the 15 line came out.
It's ok, but it's a modern smartphone like any other so I have too many dislikes to say it's the best. The phone I think of most fondly was probably my LG Keybo 2
Samsung Galaxy S10+ stable, battery lasts, all good
Best phone I ever had was an LG G7. It was dope.
I have a Pixel 8a. Before that I had a Pixel 4a. Both of these are probably the best phones I've owned.
I say both, because for someone who isn't a heavy user, the only real benefits of the 8a over the 4a for me are the bump in performance and the 120hz screen. Oh, and updates too, of course.
My current and best phone is the Pixel 7 :3
Probably 1+ 6t (that's before it was merged). No bloat nice phone.
Or my old BlackBerry before they stopped bothering to test anything and rested on their laurels. I miss the one place portal everything posted its notifications etc. Android is awful for that.
I like my Pixel 7 Pro (current phone) but I have to have a launcher on it because their home screen sucks.
I miss the Nexus 6. I loved the large comfortable display and dual front-firing speakers. It does not have modern pros like a fingerprint reader, USB C, or a recent processor. But it also doesn't have modern cons like an obstructive front camera, 9:18/20 display, or curved glass.
Huawei nova 3 was the best one I had, Second best one I had was iPhone 6s plus because it was handed down to my mom from my dad and then handed down to me and i still had software updates and was still smooth compared flagship samsung trash i owned that slowed down after 4 years. I might have put iphone6s as the best if sideloading was easier.
I absolutely love my Xperia 1 VI. I didn't realize how much I missed the headphone port until I had it back. Also there's so many fun camera settings to play around with. And the expandable storage that I loaded up with ROMs
Redmi Note 11
Nokia N-Gage
I once played around with a fair phone. It felt like the best phone I ever played with.
I had an old Motorola that had Android, replaceable battery, and audio connection. It does after 4-5 years when the power button stopped working and they stopped updating the phone after the first couple of months.
On an iphone 13 mini because it's just about the last reasonably-sized smartphone left even though ios has tons of little quirks that annoy me. Favorite was probably the OG Pixel I had until like 2020 when it finally died, RIP
Between an Android or an Iphone smartphone.
Anything with Android on it for sure.
When you look at smartphone manufacturers, the only reason you should consider a specific manufacturer besides price (i'm talking function wise) is for any prebuilt settings. Some might have some special kind of battery saving feature among others including opening Android more compared to others. Some phones might have build in local radio support or Bluetooth others likely don't.
Samsung S10 here. It needs replacement or LineageOS.
Best phone? I LOVED my Nexus5. Oh man, was that a great phone. Before that - get ready - StarTAC 7800: a feature-flip. Not as indestructable as my micro-TAC 550 but still a great phone.
Cheap android phone with custom rom support.
Samsung Galaxy A13 5G. It's fine.
iPhone 15 Pro and Pixel 6 for work. They’re both fine. Does phone things. Wish the battery life on the iPhone were better though.
iPhone 16 pro. Too early to tell but this might be my favorite ever.
Previous ones I also really enjoyed were all nexus or pixels but they all inevitably shit themselves after a couple years of use. Most recent one pixel 7 just decided it was gonna drain 6% battery per hour while idling out of nowhere. And nothing I tried fixed it. And I tried a lot.
I have a Galaxy S24 Plus. My three gripes with it are that it is too big, no headphone jack, and no SD card slot. Really, being too big is the worst. I miss smaller phones. Like the Galaxy S6. My favorite phone was probably either my ZTE Axon 7, which had fantastic front facing stereo speakers and a nice aluminum body, or my HTC Vivid with its horizontal dock.
Samsung Galaxy note 4 or my current asus rog phone 6d. Note 4 was a peak of smartphone design, large screen, exchangable battery, stylus ( mostly for fun, i do like to have phones that have something special in them, but it was quite usefull for playing nonograms , havent actually used it for notes ever ) microsd, jack. Evrything ever needed in a phone was there.
Rog phone 6d on the other hand has suprisingly many features minijack ,TWO usbc ports , actually large storage ( microsd is good but android has a lot of limitations on what you can use it for so its not that usefull and you still need fairly large internal memory unfortunetly ) and most imporantly the back has rgb ( have i mentioned that i like phones that have something special ). Also it comes with a fast charger included ( which shouldnt be special for such an expensive phone but apparently getting single usb cable for charging somehow became a standard practice ). Also a large screen and it looks sick.
Some motorola g30-something.
Great value for money. I don't care for anything extravagant when it comes to phones.
I miss my Galaxy S4. After that, things just got worse and worse... Shoutout to my Nexus 6 for the screen size and ratio, though.
Current phone: OnePlus 9 Pro
Best phone ever: Nokia N900
iPhone SE. I would use a smaller model of iPhone, if there was one. I need a phone I can easily take with me, not some aircraft-carrier sized high-tech device ;)
One Plus 8, it's been more than 4 years. I refreshed it with a /e/OS install and I still love it!
I've only had to replace the charging port a few days ago. It's not too hard if you have a heat gun
I miss my LG Alias 2
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G
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.
Using a mid budget Redmi Note 10 pro, nothing exceptional, it works pretty good with a nice screen. My favorite was the Nexus 5.
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
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
Considering the state of the phones back then my 1+ 3t was amazing. No bloat, dirt cheap. A real flagship killer, as they positioned it.
These days I only require a phone to have fast charge like OnePlus or Oppo delivers it. 15 minutes charge for a full day of use. That's awesome. I can never go back to iOS because I'm so used to my custom keyboard and the gestures I use for quick acces to apps and other stuff.
S8+ I thought was the best one that I had till I upgraded
You can rip my blackberry key2 from my death cold hands.
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.
Pixel fold
V60
Best phone ever made, headphone jack, beautiful sound, perfect screen, had the extra screen if you wanted, did everything, microsd, no bullshit software, still had docked mode.
Had the z fold 3, was OK, but it was really way too skinny to use folded, and unfolding it all the time was a pain, the pixel fold really nailed the form factor.
Shame google makes garbage software, Samsung put infinite bloatware, but they also had docked mode and charge limit, which this crap doesnt. OTOH at least I can read and use it folded.
Currently g42 hawao with calyxos, best past one was nexus 6
Lenovo ThinkPhone. I like it. Very tough, fast, and good battery life.
Permanently Deleted
Current: S24U, Moto Razor 2023+, Pixel 8 Pro.
Best phone: Probably the LG V20 or V30. Can't remember which.
Currently on a CMF phone 1.
Best phone is a tie between Nokia E70 or the HTC Dream. Suitable form factors and physical keyboards <3
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.
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.
Currently a Note 8, my favorite was the Note 4. I love big phones lol. I have fat fingers and I just really liked it. My least favorite was the iPhone. I got an iPhone 2 awhile ago and even jail breaking it wasn't enough for me to like it. I actually had that phone until a few months ago. I was using it as an alarm clock (that's literally all it could do), but the battery broke the screen, so 🤷🏿♀️
I have the Samsung XCover 6 pro. Solely because it has replaceable batteries. Kinda a bad camera but I dont take a lot of photos so it doesnt matter to me.
I have had 3 brands. One I cannot remember, ZTE, and Samsung. Samsung has been the best I've had. My A71 has been my best phone so far. I'd say my A15 is the best, but I only had it maybe a month or two before accidentally going swimming with it.
Current: Asus zenfone 9 favorite: Nextbit Robin
such a perfect phone for the price. Wish they made something like it now
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.
Current is a Pixel 6 Pro, it's faster than the 5a but the 5a had better battery life. Both with Graphene. Best would be either the unbreakable LG P500 or Pixel 6 Pro, worst was definitely the LG G3.