Ask Lemmy

I like my Oppo. It was a good price for the specs and the fast-charge battery is still going strong a couple of years on. Made in China.

Been Samsung for about 5 years. It just works, although that wasn't always the case. I was Apple once upon a time, as their OS was rock solid, albeit insanely locked down. Everything else just seemed jankey and unreliable. S25 ultra is my current phone. It's decent, but I haven't been excited about a new phone in over a decade.

Xiaomi if you can't afford a pixel that runs grapheneos, otherwise anything that runs grapheneos (only pixel atm but they're looking for more)

Samsung has been very reliable for me. But I would get a better Galaxy model. Something above A15, A16 .etc because those phones are just underwhelming.

when I got mine I decided getting the old standar pixel model new as the current was being discounted because the new one was around the corner. The price to camera for that phone which was looked at as doubly old seemd the best. I was only looking at camera quality because honestly everything else does not need to be super awesome to me and anything with a decent camera is going to have relatively decent stats outside of that. Its a really hard thing to gauge though as how do you value each individual increment. That is another reason that I just went with camera and did what felt the best. I was not looking for the best camera but best bang for the buck while being a good stong choice.

Personally, I don't think there's are any "best brands" per se as most of them are just cramming shit features like AI and spyware to please their shareholders. Now "best phones"? There are definitely some good ones out there like some Fairphones or others. I'm using a OnePlus Nord, and while I don't like the company, the phone was affordable and had almost all the features I wanted. LineageOS flashed onto it solved the spyware issue as well.

For the past decade plus I've just been buying the cheapest unlocked phone available. Last two have been Motorolas. They run all the games and do everything you want from a phone. Bonus, they let me delete x and Meta 's bloatware.

I'll never buy a Samsung precisely because you need to root them to uninstall meta's bullshit.

For the average person it is probably Xiaomi: made in China, and even by Chinese phone standards it seems well known for its low cost and high build quality

However as a lemming and someone who has a Xiaomi gifted by parents and hated everything they crammed in the OS... How do you define a "best" brand of cell phone when there are barely 3 usable brands (Google Pixel for GrapheneOS, Fairphone, ...)

For me the pixel phones. I just really enjoy them and the possibility to load graphene.os make them even better

samsungs are far from quality unless you get the flagship ones.

I miss my motorola phone. Maybe it's because I forgot how annoying it was but my fucking god I hated my samsung phone for weeks until I had beaten it to submission.

Whatever last year's Google Pixel was, nab it on sale and install GrapheneOS. Its the best bang for your buck every time. Should last 5+ years unless something goes horribly wrong.

I’ll probably get flak for this due to being on Lemmy, but I’ll throw out the iPhone 16e. It’s priced really well against competition and you can often get them prepaid and unlocked at a decent discount.

And I’m sure someone will loudly tell me how wrong I am, but I’ve found the build quality to be best-in-show. I’ve dropped it with no case at least half a dozen times and you can’t even tell.

It’s not a power-user device so no, you don’t get all the fancy custom ROMs and such, but for doing all the normal phone things, I’ve not had a single issue.

I was a hardcore Android user for about 10 years, but now there’s so few real advantages over iOS that I just prefer the simplicity of iOS.

I'm on my 2nd Motorola G series. Very good hardware value and the 1st was almost bloat free. I had to debloat the 2nd but it's mostly ok now. I keep hearing cringe things about Samsung. No idea about Xiaomi.

Motorolla is xcellent budget pick with strong battery life and smooth daily performance.

I have to deal with tons of app issues in work, from users of Samsung and Xiaomi. I would honestly never buy either brand.

They are both filled with proprietary garbage, you have to use workarounds to try and disable and even then, these two companies are some of the worst for simply ignoring the workarounds and overriding them.

https://dontkillmyapp.com/

https://dontkillmyapp.com/problem

I've stuck to Samsung for the longest time, and the hardware is objectively built with quality in mind. At least their flagship phones. However, they're so ridiculously priced these days, and now that I have to pay for them myself I'd have to spend a larger portion of my monthly paycheck than I am willing to. Plus the OS is so mangled and getting more and more annoying and intrusive.

I recently bought a Nothing Phone for one of my kids, and I think I wanna try them next; Seems good and reasonably priced.

I switched from a Motorola Droid (still miss the slide out keyboard) to the LG G3, V10, V20 (loved the knock code unlock) to a Pixel 3a XL and now a Samsung S21 with my next upgrade to the S26 Ultra.

For me the S26 series checks a lot of boxes, one of the biggest being 7 years of updates while preserving online banking. My S21 still has a lot of life left in it performance wise and bad actors targeting devices is big business. Flagship devices IMHO are at the point where they will be viable for 7 years so upgrading is no longer a game of chasing the latest version. It also helps that my carrier will have the S26 Ultra for around 700 or less cash (the current price for the S25 Ultra is 699 and they often give a 100 dollar discount for preorders) so I'm going to pay about 100 per year or about 27 cents per day for the device over it's lifetime.

I'm also an amateur photographer/underwater videographer (trying to make a living at it and start funding a non-profit using the income steam) so being able to record high quality B-Roll and get good pictures in the same package is a huge bonus.

I had been leery of using the amoled screens for a long time and after using the S21 and Tab S8+ for a while now I no longer have that concern and my only issue with the S21 was with physical SIM cards not working right if the phone was compressed. With E-SIM's that is really no longer an issue for me.

I stick with android because I use linux on my desktop and server. I also have apps that are not available on the walled garden and I choose to use things that not only the garden doesn't allow but neither does Google. I'm also confident I can transfer my 4k video files from my microSD card to my portable HDD with android. Because I have to live out of cases for extended periods while also carrying a ton of equipment I have to maximize portability.

My use case is very unique, so ymmv.

Generally I don't promise loyalty to any specific brand.

What I look for is a minimum of 5 years of software support from time of purchase.

Large battery 5000+ MAh and an OLED display.

Edit: oh and the option to use my own rom if I decide too.

If you want top end, I'd say Samsung. If you don't need top end and are more concerned about value, I think a Pixel would be a good choice.

Google Pixels only because GrapheneOS is the only mobile phone OS worth using currently.

Been rockin an HMD Skyline for about a year and it's been good, bonus is you can repair them yourself, well at least with the few available parts and that's still more than other brands that glue the phone together and force you to go to their repair shops.

I have a OnePlus 12, and I personally enjoy using it. Over a year from purchase, the battery can last up to 2 days of light use, or 1 day and change for heavy use. The cameras are great for being cameras. There is decent support for software and security updates (nowhere near the best out there, but decent). I tried to disable all of the AI integration I could, simply because I don't like it for how I use a phone. Other than that, it's a solid "flagship" phone at a reasonable price (around $650 USD at purchase).

I prefer Samsung UI, but Xiaomi is very tough to beat on performance per dollar. Huawei if you trust em.