My current phone is 7 years old, does not support recent android versions, and battery life is becoming atrocious. This feels like right time to change my phone.

Currently, I know of & am considering 3 options:

  • Google Pixel
  • iPhone
  • Samsung Galaxy

I heard that Pixel is the best choice for privacy, despite it being Google^TM. Should I go with it, and install Graphene OS or similar options? The very fact that the name “Google” is attached makes me nervous. Also, I don’t think I can trust android, so I would have to install Graphene OS or the like. In the case, app support would be lacking, though.

I am considering iPhone as well, since it has “reputation” of being secure. Of course, Apple can access my data, but that might be a good enough compromise? Honestly, I don’t know. It’s the best supported option as well - lots of apps support iPhone.

Galaxy is just the one that I am the most familiar with (my current one is Galaxy S8). I don’t trust it, though. Do they even make good hardware nowadays?

EDIT: Turns out, Pixel phones are poorly supported by local telecomm companies. It is relatively cheap though. Still worth it?

EDIT2: I heard that data & message is fine, but the call quality is impacted by lack of VoLTE compatibility.

    • fullovellas@lemm.ee
      2·
      4 hours ago

      I guess there are some tradeoffs, for sure. I’ve encountered a couple things:

      • Bad location functionality. The phone is most likely to blame for this, but I can’t say with certainty. GOS uses a custom proxy server for location related operations, so maybe that’s the reason, or maybe I fiddled too much with settings and messed something up.
      • Very ocasional crashes due to exploit protection. This almost never happens, but can be annoying. Some app may have a bug that would be overlooked by another OS or try to access some feature that is considered exploitable and the system will kill it, letting you know why with a notification. You can fine-tune these protections at the system or app level to make it work for you though (at your own risk).
      • If “tap to pay” refers to NFC payments through some app like Google Pay, I think they do work. You just have to enable NFC (you can even enable it only if the device is unlocked, which is cool), and configure contactless payments with your payment app. I don’t use this feature though, so I’m not speaking from personal experience.

      I think that’s it, really. I found the actual user experience to be quite breezy.

      • arcterus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        1·
        3 hours ago
        • The location functionality has significantly improved recently since it no longer relies solely on GPS, but yeah, it could still be improved.
        • Generally, I’ve found the apps that tend to have problems with exploit protection are games, VPNs, and banking apps (which is probably the sort of app you’d most want exploit protection on…). I’m not sure if I’ve ever had an actual problem with other apps honestly.
        • While NFC works, Google Pay does not. Google needs to basically certify the OS for it to work, and they refuse to do so (monopoly gonna monopoly). Basically, this means if you’re in the US or some other country where Google Pay is pretty much the only payment option on Android, NFC payments don’t work. Some places in Europe at least have NFC payments available through banking apps though, so if you happen to reside in one of those countries and your bank has one of those apps with payment support, you should be fine.