Help a nerd choose a new phone after 7 years

I’m cross posting my own here, I hope it’s allowed. Maybe it will reach someone who has a similar problem.

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/14292422

Hello!

So I’ve been using my trusty old OnePlus 5T until now, without any problems. I always followed the phone market for replacement but I simply didn’t see a phone that would fit me, so I just kept repairing and using the current one.

Recently, after 7 years, the glue inside the screen assembly started to loosen up, which caused a little gap between the OLED panel and touch panel. Moisture got in there, and the OLED panel started oxidizing, leaving a nice purple patch on the side of the screen, that is slowly growing as the panel is powered on. It was my fault ignoring the gap for so long, but here we are.

Regarding my new phone, I have a few “constraints” and preferences that I want to stick to, even they sound stupid or unreasonable. (This is why I simply didn’t bother buying another one yet)

MUST:

  • Be Android
  • Not be Samsung - had some before, don’t want to go back
  • Have headphone jack - yes, this will narrow the selection quite a bit
  • Have OLED screen - anything OLED, doesn’t matter which kind
  • Be similar size or smaller than OnePlus 5T - the ~160mm x ~70mm is sort of optimal for me.
  • Be under 200g, preferable under 180g
  • Dual SIM (2 physical cards)
  • Something released recently (2022-24), so it still has some support, accessories sold, has more chance to use it for another 7 years.
  • NFC
  • Be customizable: unlockable bootlooder, option for different ROMs, basically community support…

Preferable stuff:

  • Some reasonable camera. I don’t use it often, so definitely don’t need some Pixel level stuff.
  • High refresh rate screen - I don’t game on my phone, but general stuff looks nicer
  • No under screen fingerprint sensor - Not a big deal, but I know that it’s easy to fuck up the software side and calibration, so it can become a pain in the ass.
  • Wifi 6 or greater - “ac” Wifi is enough in the current 5T, so not a big deal just future proofing
  • IP rating - I take care of my phones but still, it would be nice to not worry about moisture or dropping it in wet stuff.
  • Expandable storage - Again, no big deal. I don’t use the camera often, so I don’t even fill up my current 128GB OnePlus. I usually backup and delete stuff from my phone yearly.
  • Extra programmable function button - Not a deal breaker again, but I got used to OnePlus alert slider and I would program a similar button to the same functionality (switching between normal, do not disturb and mute).

Of course it should have a reasonable price too, but I’m willing to pay for a phone that I will use for a long time.

So after all my unreasonable requirements and wishlist, GSM Arena’s phone finder comes up with 3 different phones that look interesting:

  1. Asus Zenfone 10 https://www.gsmarena.com/asus_zenfone_10-12380.php
  2. Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_note_13_pro-12581.php
  3. OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus_nord_ce_2_5g-11269.php

1. The Zenfone

The Asus Zenfone series was my original choice as next device, I’ve been following the series for a few years, and I like the phones. Zenfones were unlockable by getting a device specific key from Asus’s servers and using that in fastboot mode. As far as I know, this was done by Asus’s unlocker app.

However, about a year ago, Asus decided to close this endpoint on the server, and removed the unlocker app from their website. This caused not only new Zenfones but older ones couldn’t get unlocked anymore either. You can google this drama if you’re interested, or just look at the threads on XDA Forums for Zenfone 10, Zenfone 9 or Zenfone 8. Right now, people are just waiting for someone to do something. Things are happening as I write this.

Besides all of this, Zenfone 10 is basically the perfect phone for me. People say that the software is also a plain Android with optimizations and you can turn off Asus features if you don’t like them. This is pretty much the same with OnePlus, and I liked using OxygenOS. But this unlocking bootloader drama is feels bad. Especially that Asus only provides 2 years of software support. I would be happier knowing that I can reflash my phone if I don’t like something.

2. The Xiaomi

Never had a Xiaomi before, but all my family and friends had one once in their life. I like the general quality and feature set of the phones and this looks nice just looking at the spec list.

The problem with this phone is it doesn’t even have a forum section on XDA, so I don’t know how active the community is behind it.

Second, slightly bigger problem: I don’t like Xiaomi’s OS. never liked the UI layout and custom functionality. I would 100% wipe the original OS from it and go with something else. But of course I don’t know if that option is available with this phone.

3. The OnePlus

Nothing particularly bad with this one. I understand that this series is now OnePlus’s budget series, so I won’t get the fancy Snapdragons and it’s the oldest from the all. I think it still looks OKish, community is active, OnePlus allows unlocking so no concerns there.

It doesn’t have an alert slider like other OnePlus phones do. Meh, no big deal, but still wanted to mention it.

My biggest “first world problem” with this phone is it having a MediaTek CPU. I used phones with MediaTek CPUs before, they are OK in performance but so hard to work with… Every chip is different, with different drivers, random links for random shitty software, the partition map in a text file that you need specifically for you device to flash it… If you’ve tinkered with a MediaTek phone before, you know what I’m talking about.

4. Bonus: Nothing Phone

Yes, I know Nothing Phone doesn’t have a headphone jack. But it’s also kind of like the Zenfone, and I like the LED array on the back. My 5T still has the RGB notification LED and I would prefer something similar. Plus the phone has a community behind it. I also know about the Nothing drama with their messaging app. I don’t really care. I would not have used it anyway. And as I said, if I don’t like their software, I’ll just flash another one.

So, what do you think? Should I give up my headphone jack rule and cry whenever I need to use the adapter with my headphones? What if that little worthless shit breaks? What if I want to charge? I know very well why the headphone jack isn’t there on phones nowadays, and I try not to support that direction or products that do this, trying to “vote with my wallet”…

Or should I give up my freedom of choice and let Asus decide when my phone stops to work? Or wait to see what happens at the end of April with the “Asus’s statement regarding this issue”? Maybe wait for someone who may or may not find a method for unlocking Zenfones which may or may not get patched by Asus? Is the Zenfone series popular enough that the community can solve this issue? Maybe, maybe not…

Or stay with OnePlus, dive back into the MediaTek world with an already old phone?

Or go Xiaomi and pray for it to not be crap in the long term?

Or fuck it and go Pixel and flash one of the many ROMs out there and cry about the headphone jack?

Thank you for reading this far.

notenoughbutter,

nothing would be a good choice :p

LanternEverywhere, (edited )

Why oled only? Modern lcd screens are fantastic. For example look at the OnePlus n30, its lcd screen is super bright, very colorful, has absolutely no PWM, has a refresh rate of 120 hz, has a wide viewing angle range with no change in brightness or color, and is just gorgeous all around.

eltimablo,

The battery life and black levels are always going to be better on an OLED, no matter what you do to the LCD. There's no chance of backlight bleed on OLED screens, either.

LanternEverywhere, (edited )

Well for half of that, the spec you actual care about is battery life. The n30 has massive battery life. And for good modern non-curved lcd screens there's never any backlight bleed anywhere. Yes, the blacks aren't fully completely as black, but on a good modern lcd they're very close to it, and in exchange you get all the screen advantages i listed above. Oled always has worse viewing angles, worse color accuracy, worse way of making the screen "dimmer" by using pwm rather than actually making the screen dim, etc.

eltimablo,

Yeah, but LCDs miss out on the ability to go greyscale to save even more power in emergencies. Due to the way LCD screens work, the same trick would likely increase the amount of power draw it incurs.

LanternEverywhere,

But again it sounds like the spec you actually care about is battery length. If you get an oled phone with a medium capacity battery, then its usable battery length would be far surpassed by an lcd phone with a large capacity battery.

Obviously you should go with whatever you like, I'm just trying to help you figure out what are the actual features you care about.

eltimablo,

I'm not OP. I'm just chiming in with info I gained from selling TVs for several years.

a1studmuffin,
@a1studmuffin@aussie.zone avatar

I would strongly consider just crying about the headphone jack. Like you I’m really annoyed that most phones got rid of it, but take a look at how many more options you have on gsmarena phone finder if you ditch it.

My main use case for it was sharing my wired noise cancelling headphones between my work PC and phone for zoom calls. But I ended up getting a nice pair of Bluetooth headphones recently and so haven’t used it in a long time. I’m sure it’ll still annoy me on occasion living without it, but if it’s only a few times a year I can live with that for all the options it opens up for new phones.

13esq,

I was rather annoyed about losing the headphone jack but now I don’t have one I honestly don’t miss it.

You can get a decent midrange set of wireless headphones for £30ish, the sound quality is indistinguishable from wired and I no longer have wires tying themselves in to bird’s nests or getting caught in things. I have an over ear pair and the battery lasts for ages.

Inb4, if you’re a audio engineer you can probably tell the difference but to an average listener the experience is the same, a lot of people like to kid themselves that the difference in sound quality is really noticeable

bmarinov,

You would be better off with a dongle. I have one which supports hi-res audio and has plenty of power to drive my over ear audionerd headphones. Phone jacks and DACs can’t ever match that.

OpenStars,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

The OnePlus company heavily jumped the shark somewhere around the time of the 8-9-10 series, with one of the company’s two cofounders leaving (the non-business tech guy if you take my meaning). I have heard that it has gotten better since then but if their stock OS is still based off of the Huawei-based ColorOS then I would strongly advise caution with that company who may disappoint the entire user-base once again (e.g. in refusing to provide updates, or releasing actively bad ones that convert your beautifully buttery-smooth device into a steaming pile of cRaP that acts like it is drunk when you make requests and the system has to think before doing any minor task. Yes this literally and personally happened to my 7T, and I will never trust OnePlus ever again as a result. They really do have a long history of alternately doing just that, then winning it back then, then betraying their users again.

I am not current on the status of their hardware though, so it might be okay if you planned to immediately replace the OS with something else?

Note that there are USB-C to Mini Audio Jack Adapters. I don’t have one so cannot speak from personal experience, just throwing that out there.

tzudad,

@OpenStars @kivulallo I had an OP9 and it was okayish most of the time. I picked up a crazy good deal on a 9 Pro after the 10 came out and it was good, but not like 8T good. Now I have an 11 and Color OS is tolerable, but the 11 is crazy fast and makes the whole package right tasty. I tried 3rd party launchers, but ended up tweaking the OP launcher to get rid of the most annoying things. You can do a lot worse than OnePlus and I'm not sure about finding anything much better.

OpenStars,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

That company will disappoint and make you feel actively and bitterly betrayed, one day, if the past is any indication, bc they seem to routinely do this every few years when it suits them. But until then, the phones are pretty good, yeah, some of the absolute best on the market. I too argued against people that said exactly this to me, citing how that was the past, but they hadn’t done anything like that for awhile at the time, and anyway I can always replace the OS and thus break my dependence upon the company. Then they sent out a literally infamous (for being HORRIBLY buggy) update to the 7T that made my phone get so hot that I legit thought that it might explode. I am convinced that it melted some internal shielding component bc it has never worked the same sense - it rapidly heats up and makes my hands hurt to hold it for even a few minutes at a time while running a heavy app such as a game. The update itself also made it perform really bad, so eventually I did replace the OS with the same older copy of the OS that I had left before the update, but while it went back to being buttery smooth, the heating issues never went away. They literally damaged my device! I will never trust that company again.:-(

And I am far from the only one - the Reddit forums (for OnePlus and for the 7-series) used to be filled with us who absolutely loved our phones more than most people care about some purchased product. We were “fans”, “enthusiasts” even. But immediately after the update those forums were filled with people as bitterly disappointed as I was, until eventually they grew quiet as people just abandoned them, a year or two before the Reddit protests. Even then, I strongly considered as my next device a used OP7T or 7Pro or 7TPro and just immediately after purchase replace the OS so that a buggy update could not harm the device as their previous one had. So my beef with OnePlus has nothing to do with their hardware, which I agree is excellent, and everything to do with the company and how extraordinarily anti-loyal they are to their customer base - they have quite a long history of throwing us them under the bus, not often tbf as in less than yearly, more like as they shift to the next phase in their business plan, and it would just be inconvenient for them to honor their prior promises for stable updates, when they really would rather not and concentrate instead on whatever new business direction they desire to head into.

So again, I am not saying to avoid their hardware, but do yourself a favor and never trust that company or you can end up being extremely disappointed, like all of us before who refused to listen to people saying exactly that in the past.

dragontamer,

Dual SIM (2 physical cards)

With the dawn of eSIM, I’m not sure if Dual physical-SIM is very useful.

Last time I went on a trip, I just downloaded an eSIM + kept my physical SIM slot.

Retrograde,
@Retrograde@lemmy.world avatar

Have you considered the Sony flagships? They fit all your criteria except maybe the bootloader bit

fiercekitten,

The Sony Xperia 1 iii, 1iv, and 1 v should meet all of OP’s requirements except size, and should have most of the bonus features too. Last year I was able to find a used xperia 1 iii for under $500USD. Sony allows bootloader unlocking so I put LineageOS with microg on it, rooted with magisk, and my phone does any thing I want (as long as that thing doesn’t require Google Play Services).

cm0002,

Or fuck it and go Pixel and flash one of the many ROMs out there and cry about the headphone jack?

I’d say this option is your best bet, Google has long supported unlocking your bootloader since even before the Pixel reboot when they were known as nexus devices.

Personally, if you’re open to also tossing your weight requirement, the Pixel Fold has been fantastic. A rare solid Google First-gen product. Iirc Google actually sells the inner screen as a first-party part (Probably the biggest issue I foresee getting it to 7 years). It’s got waterproofing, but dust otoh… you’re not a construction worker, are you? LMAO

I’m using the PF right now, and it’s kinda like getting a dual monitor setup for the first time, once you use it on a daily basis you won’t be able to go back. I think the PF2 is releasing this summer if they’re able to stay on track and you can wait

Other than that, Pixel 7a I believe is still being sold if you’re looking for a budget device, or the Pixel 8 Pro for top tier

ETA: it doesn’t have a second physical SIM, but all Pixels iirc (I know the PF does for sure) supports 1 physical and 1 eSIM simultaneously

iheartneopets,

Do you know if the Pixel Fold handle GrapheneOS okay? I have the surface Duo 2 right now, and was looking for a replacement, but really have grown to love the dual screen. So this could be my answer if the foldability doesn’t interfere with a new OS!

cm0002,

I don’t have personal experience with GrapheneOS, but it looks like the PF is well supported so you should be fine.

That being said, you may want to wait until this fall for the (currently rumored) launch date of the PF2 (Now known as the Pixel 9 Pro Fold apparently lol) if for nothing else but to grab a PF1 on a good deal

pineapplelover,

June 2028 is the pf’s eol. I would second the other commenter on waiting it out for the pf2

iheartneopets,

Nice, thank you for the heads up!

SolarPunker,

Consider your privacy, a Pixel with GrapheneOS is vastly suggested.

pineapplelover,

And you can kind of dual sim if you use esim along with physical sim.

pewgar_seemsimandroid,

I’ll be seeing any phone for your requirements

Ginger666,

If you are worried about a headphone jack, you are severely limited.

What kind of headphones do you use?

AlDente,

Wired ones.

FlowVoid,

Maybe get a 3.5mm to USB dongle and just keep it attached to the headphones?

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble,

Especially with how small and cheap those adapters are just stock up on them and scatter them all over the place. I have adapters that I’ve never used but are near me at basically all times.

hperrin,

I’ve had very little experience with OnePlus, but my sister has had a OnePlus 8 for about two years, and has had consistent, weird problems with it. She hates it.

menixator,

OnePlus really fell off after 6 IMO. I used my OP 6 for 5 years and only replaced it because the power button broke and I didn’t want to bother fixing it. But I bet I could get another 2-3 years out of it if I tried

DevopsPalmer,

I’ve been on OnePlus since the 6, i loved that phone too. I did switch to the 8T for a cheap price recently and I have to say it’s not the 6 but it has surprised me for a 4 year old phone it’ feels more capable than my wife’s newest Samsunch

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Sorry to tell you but that phone doesn’t exist.

Adulated_Aspersion,

FAIRPHONE 5

Water_Melon_boy, (edited )

Typing this on a Zenfone 10.

The good thing is that this phone don’t really have bad querks like ZF8&9, and the 2 years update only means not getting new android features, Zenfone still works perfectly fine a long time after the 2 year mark.

And yes, Asus has been quite an A** hole in the whole bootloader situation, but putting that aside there are still plenty of ways to tinker a phone without root(Fdroid, adb, launcher, netguard, etc…).

I would say If custom ROMs are too important for you, get a Pixel, they are just that good with it.

But if you are willing to look past that, Zenfones are great.

rem26_art, (edited )
@rem26_art@fedia.io avatar

I got a Xiaomi POCO F5 recently that might fit all your Must criteria (idk about size), but another Xiaomi may work. Just if you're located somewhere that doesn't use the Type C Socket, you may need an adapter or a different 67W charger

Xiaomi has a bootloader unlock process, though it is a bit involved. You've gotta put your SIM in the new phone, create a Xiaomi then you've gotta run their bootloader unlock software, which needs a Windows Computer, idk if it runs in a VM, if thats an issue for you. Then you've gotta keep your SIM in the phone and have it on for a full 7 days and then run the bootloader unlock software again, which will wipe your phone, but now the bootloader is unlocked

You do have to use MIUI for a week before you can wipe it and try something else, but once you go through it its fine. I've been using Paranoid Android on mine with no issues.

This should apply to any recent Xiaomi phone. Just something for your consideration

jjnjjlr,

Are you in the US? If so what carrier are you using. I was looking at the POCO F5 before getting a great deal on a OP11. I would have still staved money going with the POCO but ultimately chose the OnePlus because no carrier would tell me if the POCO would work or not on their towers. Bands wise it said it would but the carriers said unsupported.

Anyway, I second this phone OP. It has great specs for the price. Having gone op5t > op7pro > OP11. The POCO was really tempting me besides the clarity on whether or not carriers would support it.

rem26_art,
@rem26_art@fedia.io avatar

Yeah im in the US. I use Tmobile and it works fine for me, 5G and all. Looking at the bands that the POCO F5 supported, it seemed like only Tmoblie uses one of the radio frequencies that the F5 uses for 5G. That probably means that I wont have 5G everywhere in the country, but I lucked out and its good for where I live.

With MIUI, i did not have the option of Wifi calling with Tmobile, for some reason, but on Paranoid Android it works just fine.

IIRC the F5 had more bands that worked with Tmobile and AT&T for LTE

Edit: This was when I bought it. Carrier band support may have changed since Nov 2023

jjnjjlr,

That’s good to know. I had at&t when I was looking but recently switched to Google Fi which I think primarily uses Tmo towers. But that sounds about right iirc based on when I was looking at them.

I’ve been keeping tabs on it’s xda forum and seems to have taken off much faster than the OnePlus 11’s. There is only 4 roms that are solid enough to use daily. While it seemed like there is much more activity on the f5’s forum.

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