Hey folks, looking at getting a new phone. My current one is a Pixel 3a XL. Love the phone but it’s starting to show its age and most importantly, has not had a security update for a long time.

My priorities:

  • Long software support. I want to get as long as possible out of this next one.

  • Decent cameras. Mainly for landscape shots when hiking or whatever. The astrophotography mode on my pixel is also pretty neat and is like to have that option.

  • Price. Ideally I don’t want to spend much over $600 US. I’m fine getting a return or even used in hood condition phone off eBay, but I can’t stomach paying over $1000 for a phone.

  • I’m interested in running a custom ROM. Graphene, Lineage, /e/is, anything. Not a deal breaker if I can’t.

  • Finally, probably the hardest one to find with am of the above; a headphone jack. I greatly value the ability to plug into any car, speaker system, etc without dongles or bluetooth (ew).

My candidates so far:

  • Asus Zenfone 11: Meets most of my desires except Asus software support is reportedly awful, and of promise feature updates for 2 years and security updates for 4. Being a year old already that greatly reduces an already short window. Also probably has a locked bootloader and limited support with ROMs. Has a headphone jack and a decent set of cameras, and I’ve seen refurbs on eBay for $600.

  • Pixel 9(pro?) Has everything I want (updates, cameras, grapheneos, price is ok) except no headphone jack. Might be able to DIY a case with an adapter built in so I can charge and use the jack at the same time? If anyone has experience with that I’m super interested in hearing about it. Have a 3d printer.

I know some of the budget Samsung phones have jacks, and the Moto G power, but I’m leery of getting something too budget when I want to use it for years to come.

I’ve seen Sony phones mentioned. Very expensive. How’s the software on those? Cameras good?

Anyways, thanks for you’re time if you read this. Going to be doing more reading. Really wish Asus had better software policies, otherwise that would be an easy pick.

Edit: Thanks for the thoughts, folks! I’m leaning heavily towards getting a newer pixel, either the 9a or 9 pro XL (refurbished). Probably will wait until after this year’s is announced for any price drops or whatever.

  • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    It depends on the phone model

    The market is plagued by colossal phones already. The last thing I want is an even bigger one.

    you can tweak that from settings or developer settings.

    It still uses additional resources to downscale the image rather than just displaying natively. This is why the Steam Deck is 800p.

    batteries are becoming bigger

    I haven’t seen such a thing.

    do not disturb

    but then…that’s a whole other problem, isn’t it? Do you just never get urgent messages?

    both Android and Apple offer a subscription tier model

    Not interested in more subscriptions.

    on Reddit

    Not ever again.