The Android phone thread

Got to send it in mate. Anything in warranty, just do it.

I've had my s9+ for nearly 4 years now and have been casually looking around for something new to replace it but I'm yet to come across something that interests me.

There doesn't seem to be anything interesting anymore save for the foldables. I did consider the fold3 at one point but it's a bit too close to the fold4 now to jump in.

I have the Oppo Find X2 Pro, the fingerprint scanner has never worked brilliantly for me unfortunately, though I guess they've fixed that as they're quite a few versions on from the X2 and also I never found any reviews that ever mentioned the FP sensor to be an issue so perhaps it's just me. Though the FP scanner on my HTC before the Oppo worked absolutely faultlessly. That said I just use the face sensor which works well. But apart from that it's been absolutely brilliant, for my needs anyhow, super-quick at everything, hardly any bloatware, run lots of apps at the same time etc, camera's good, storage is absurdly big and the quick charge in 38 minutes is just mental. Though on the charger front it does concern me slightly that if this charger ever goes pop I'll have to stump up big bucks for a genuine replacement if I want the fast charger option. One thing I found at the time was the lack of covers available for the Oppo so I just use the stock clear cover that came with it which hasn't gone yellowy yet like some seem to which is good, but maybe that's changed a bit too now they're a bit more mainstream.

That's annoying, dfunked . Fingers crossed that I don't get sucked in by the marketing for the incoming Pixel 7. Because one of the more annoying drawbacks (and I realise how first world problem this is going to sound), is the lack of a decent blurring feature in the gallery app. I think I mentioned this in on FontGeek previously and people did suggest a few alternatives like Snapseed, photoshop, etc. But they are all rubbish for what is a such an easy and helpful feature for geeks that spend too much of their time on the internet like I do.

But if someone can name an app that can do what the video shows that is not Snapseed or photoshop, please let a geek know. 

Maybe the video is not perfectly indicative of what I want it to do. I'll look into the blur function on Google Photos again. I am trying it now and if it does what you say it does, then I love it. But I am clearly too cackhanded to work it out! I'll play with it again, because what I ideally want to achieve is to be able to blur out specific lines in text on an image, etc. So that I can post sensitive info on Twitter, etc, without giving away personal info.

After all this talk of not being a super fan of the Pixel 6, I see that the phone is currently on sale. £450. So I bought one for my missus. At that price, the drawbacks are more than acceptable. And looking at how expensive the world is getting, I thought I might as well be sensible and keep my own Pixel 6 for a little longer.

Still using pixel 5 here, by far my favourite phone I've ever had, battery life still good and no desire to get anything different.

They don't make them like this any more!

I was and still am a Pixel lover, but the prices were too high for me in these apocalyptic times.

Was very wary of moving to something else but was lucky to snaffle a mint Poco X3 NFC for just over £100 on ebay and not looked back.

Don't think you can go far wrong with most android phones once you disable all the shite they put on them in the name of advertising, only thing I miss are the regular updates but no biggie.

Added bonus of having a mobile bill of £12, a fraction of what I was paying on my old pixel contract with EE

Decided to give my 6 Pro another chance after a factory reset and the latest update, as I still haven't gotten around to popping in to Currys to get it repaired and can't start an RMA via Google.
Multiple charges to get through a day and overheating enough for mobile data to be disabled at one point. I'd still get another Pixel mind you, as it's a solid phone aside from the teething issues mine had, which in fairness you'd expect with their first attempt at a custom chipset.
Fingers crossed the repair sorts my issues...

Yup. Have had a few Sammys along the way and despite decent hardware, the software is awful. Maybe it's not so much of an issue now, but stock Android all the way for me imo

Ooh this does look nice. Have the same reservations regarding the SD slot though
Well, that and I'm a cheapskate who's no way spending that much on a phone, so maybe one to look at in future once the price tanks 

No SD slot hasn't been an issue for me since 128GB+ became standard and I started streaming music instead of having a massive collection on there. Don't think I ever even used it on my S10+...
Photos/vids get backed up multiple ways so I just clear those down every now and again.

Have had my Galaxy A50 for almost three years. Compared to back when I first bought it, the phone is considerably less efficient now. Granted, it was never a great performer in games, but even the general UI experience feels much more sluggish now. 4GB of RAM seemed enough three years ago, now you can barely switch between three different Chrome tabs before the phone reloads the first one (which means sometimes my half-written post gets deleted as the tab refreshes just because I had the gall of checking out another site first). Opening new apps is a lot slower too.

I was considering upgrading to an A52S, which does seem much more powerful (to give an idea, the processor in my A50 nowadays seems comparable to an entry level phone such as the A03). Except, I'm not really up for games. So I'd be paying quite a bit of money, at a time when I'm trying to save up, to get more or less the same features as I have now, though faster. Unfortunately cheaper phones are not an option either, as I do like always-on display, headphone jacks and waterproofing.

Anyway, is it normal for Android phones to get this much worse after system updates, or is it a Samsung thing? I get that new OS and app versions can become heavier as the average chipset power goes up, but it's pretty ridiculous. Maybe I could try and uninstall some bloatware, but I'm worried about breaking something.

Edit: went and removed some bloat (mostly Bixby stuff). Phone does seem a bit snappier now. We'll see how it holds up in a few days.

Bought my lad a Lenovo Tab M10 Plus, 4gb but only 10", does everything pretty quick, less than half price of the S7 though.