Tell me about smartphones? [Matthew's Journal]

My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S II, but it is now damaged beyond economic repair[0]. So I need a new one. Desiderata:

Not much bigger than my current phone (125.3x66.1x8.49mm) so it still fits in my pockets!
Android or similar (see below)
Decent camera
Easy to transfer files to Linux (Kies Air works quite well; jmtpfs isn't bad in Debian squeeze)
Not vastly expensive
Available unlocked
Will get plausible updates

The apps I make most use of currently are the web-browser and email clients, the Met Office app, the torch, and the camera. I also use google maps (and navfree when abroad) and the ssh client, gstrings (a tuner app), the wifi analyser, a metronome, UnTappd, and the Good Beer Guide. After an initial flurry of game-playing (I played a lot of PvZ, and some Archipelago), I seem to have largely stopped.

The things that have annoyed me about this phone are mostly the google apps that you can't remove, and then have filled up some special storage for updates so I can't download updates any more, even though I have loads of space on my SD card and have moved all the apps I can there. The lack of an Android update (it's still on 4.1.2) recently leaves me a bit concerned about security, too.

I don't want to go iOS, which I think means I'm stuck with Android if I want anything resembling enough apps? Although presumably I could install cyanogen-mod (is that plausibly safe these days?). There are Ubuntu phones, but I think they don't really have apps to cover my use cases?

The obvious replacement would be a Galaxy 6 or 7, although they are a bit larger. Any other things I should be looking at?

[0] screen is cracked, and repair is about £150, which for a 4-year-old phone is daft (I could get a new S 2 for that!)

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I had a Motorola Moto G, which was great, then replaced it with a Motorola Moto E which in retrospect is a bit too tight on storage space (but the new version of the G was larger than the old one which is why I chose that way).

Next time I change I am going to remember the existence of https://www.fairphone.com/ as enthused about by rmc28.

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I'm a bit surprised you don't seem to be able to cyanogen-mod a fairphone.

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(In contrast I know

sebastienne has had Not Great experiences with customer service around getting the thing to charge reliably; afraid I can't immediately remember more details than that, but it's possibly worth flagging up?)

My understanding for Android is that security support is best achieved by getting a current-ish Nexus, and the offerings in that range at the moment seem pretty good (in particular camera-philes seem to think their cameras are decent now). I don't know what your "vastly expensive" threshold would be; I just bought a Nexus 5x for £300-ish from the Google store, and it may well be possible to get such a thing cheaper elsewhere.

Possibly too big physically though? Dimensions are 119.77 x 196.33 x 15.36 mm.

This would be my recommendation, too. Prod me at work if you'd like to see mine and play with the form-factor.

I had the same space issue on my old phone; my current Note 4 has 32gb which seems to be plenty in practice. Might be a bit different if loaded up with movies but that's easier to put on a µSD card.

I think the Samsung Galaxy A3 probably satisfies most of your points; it's the right sort of size, and I get the impression you're not really looking for a flagship phone.

I don't think he wants a flagship phone, but given the general model is 'buy one phone every four years and eeke it out', going for the blingy end of phones at the point where you need to buy one makes the eeking it out a bit less painful...

Let's see if that makes sense. From Amazon it seems I can get an S7 ("current") for £540, an S6 ("1 year old") for £350 and an S5 ("2 year old") for £250. Assume, based on age, we can get 4, 3 and 2 years of useful life respectively. That works out at £135pa, £117pa and £125pa. So there's something to be said for going for last year's model, but anything beyond that smacks of false economy.

The A3 is an odd one - there's such a thing as the A3 (2016) which is cheaper (about half the price) and smaller than S-series models but reasonably up-to-date software-wise, and then there's the just plain A3 which is an October 2014 model. A different tradeoff than going for an old model.

Some comments from IRC:

wileyfox swift [explicitly aimed at cyanogen-mod]
http://oneplus.net/

These are both a bit larger (though the oneplus X is smaller), and aimed at the privacy-conscious user. No conspiracy theories here ;-)
BQ (who make Ubuntu tablets) do cyanogen-mod phones

My-partner-A has been using onepluses for the last couple of years and seems to generally like them; I've not heard bad things about them from other people I know who possess them, but equally I've not especially sought out opinions. Would be happy to point A here to have thoughts at you if you'd be interested!

That would be helpful, thank you :)

Hello! I am he!

So I've had a OnePlus One for somewhere in the region of 18 months. It still gets regular software updates despite not being sold any more, although that may not be much of a useful data point given my phone is running CyanogenMod (as it was when I got it) but new OnePlus devices are shipping with OxygenOS, which is an Android fork controlled by OnePlus directly. The price was very good for the spec, and I understand that's also the case for the newer OnePlus devices, although I can't say I've checked directly.

OnePlus aren't top of the ethical charts; they ran a few dubious advertising campaigns when first starting up, and they have the same ethical issues around smartphone manufacturing that most smartphone companies have, but I don't think they're particularly better or worse than the likes of Samsung or LG. It's a Chinese company, if that makes any difference to you.

If I were looking at buying a new phone now, I think I'd be looking at OnePlus, Fairphone and Google Nexus; I don't trust the bigger brands (other than Google themselves) to give me a competitively priced Android device that'll keep getting updates. Unless the Nexus devices have become considerably cheaper again, it'd probably be a toss up between Fairphone's (debatably) better ethics and OnePlus's better price/spec.

Thank you!

Are there ethical problems with Fairphone beyond their choosing Qualcomm hardware (and so making running a free OS impossible)?

Fairphone make a lot of noise about how they're trying to source ethically mined metals and the like, and I've seen some reports (admittedly some time ago) about how they're better but not really that much better on that front than the major handset manufacturers.

Fairphone also make a lot of noise about their handsets being repairable, and the reports I've seen agree with that; iFixit in particular have sung the Fairphone's praises on this front (see their teardown (https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Fairphone+2+Teardown/52523) if you're really interested). As a simple but illustrative example, loads of the connectors used in the Fairphone are pogo pins rather than simple press connectors – more expensive, but much more reliable if you're going to take your phone apart to make repairs, hack around with the hardware or just to be nosey.

As you say, they're using a Qualcomm SOC and Android, so it's in no way a completely free setup; it is, as ever, a balancing act. Nonetheless I think they're the closest I've seen to a free/libre handset that still has the weight of an active app developer community behind it, though.

The big catch is the price: €530 for 2GB RAM and a Snapdragon 801 SOC, versus (for example) the OnePlus 2 for £250 with 4GB RAM and a Snapdragon 810 SOC.

(I've also, via Wikipedia, just discovered SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/), which claims to be a much more free OS than Android, while including Android libraries to allow it to run Android apps. It doesn't appear to be currently available for the Fairphone, but this blog post (https://www.fairphone.com/2015/10/22/jolla-community-working-on-sailfish-os-for-the-fairphone-2/) implies it's something that the people behind both Sailfish and Fairphone are actively interested in and working on.)

No phone observations (other than indirect experience of Fairphones being good) -- just want to say that I'm glad jmptfs "isn't bad" in Squeeze, 'cos it's way flakey in Wheezy. Might be enough to push me into an upgrade.

Yeah, it used to be unreliable in wheezy, but it's been much better since I moved my desktop to squeeze.

I like my Samsung Galaxy s4 mini, which apparently is running Android 4.4.2 - there do seem to be quite a few factory installed apps, though you can "disable" them if you're willing to ignore the warning that some things might not work. Not tried transferring to Linux. Got it unlocked from giffgaff after Amazon sent me one with the seal broken which I returned! If I had a bit more money I'd have got the s5 mini instead. I don't want anything bigger as I too like to fit my phone in my pocket.

What counts as "vastly" expensive? In every single other respect, the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact looks perfect for you. Indeed, it's on my own shortlist right this second.

It's 127×65×8.9mm, so very much the same size as what you have. Android. Best-in-class camera. I imagine it's no better or worse than any other Android phone for file transfer. Available unlocked. Sony is better than most at upgrades. But it's £300.

From what I read about the Galaxy S phones - the S7 has some features from the S5 which skipped a generation. Features that I use, like an SD card, waterproofing etc. When I got my S5 (which I'm very happy with) the S6 was new so I could get the S5 at a discount. The last Samsung Galaxy of your approximate size spec is the S5 mini, but that's behind even the S5 for the Android update curve - no, hang on, there's the Galaxy Alpha, which is at about the same place in the curve as my S5.

YMMV, but the S5 is pocketable for me, even with a slightly bulky case.

My general advice with smartphones is to go for a Moto G 3rd Gen (2GB version) if you want something at the cheap end.

And to go for a Nexus phone if you want something higher up. I really liked my Nexus 5, and the 5X is a nice step up.

I don't consider it worthwhile going for one of the really high-end phones, like the Galaxy S-7. I'm not sure what I'd use it for that my current phone doesn't do.

I have a Google Nexus 5 and it has served me well since 2013. Yesterday the power button decided to randomly press itself lots so the phone's screen would switch off and on or the phone would reboot repeatedly. Now it seems to be working again, touch wood.

Today I worked out what phone I would replace it with - I would get a Samsung Galaxy S7 (not edge). I tried out a few phones in PC World at lunch time. For me the Nexus 6P is too big. The Nexus 5X is the right size, but so is the Samsung S7 and it is much shinier. You can get one from Simply Electronics for £466.95. I was initially sceptical of the Samsung alterations to Android, but from using it they seem fine. It has a really good camera, great screen, SD card slot, waterproofing, fingerprint scanner, wireless charging, feels high quality.

For less money you can get a new Nexus 5 for £235. It's been a great workhorse so I would be tempted to just get another one of those, but for me it seems like a missed opportunity to upgrade to shinier things. Stick or twist?

Good luck.

I've ended up going with Nexuses for my / Carrie's last few phone upgrades, and have been happy with them.

ps this is clearly not even remotely what you're after but I'm kinda waiting for them to start showing up on eBay...

Mmm, AFAICT the rugged smartphones sacrifice a lot of phone for their rugged, IYSWIM. We get an Android magazine at work, and it reviewed a few of them in the most recent issue and wasn't exactly impressed...

I've got one of the non-smart Sonims and it has going for it the fact that I've had it five years and have totally failed to drown it, at all, even slightly, plus I don't have to charge it more than once a fortnight. They're claiming (and I believe them) that the battery life is equivalently good, so for the sake of having a device I could drop and not have to worry about running over with the wheelchair while trying to work out where it's got to... :-)

(Also turns out they are showing up on eBay in the UK now! Which is very exciting! ... except that they're £800, which: no.)

(I mean actually I want to wait for the specs to get a bit better and also for the price to come down a lot, but they are actually now available in the UK! Which they weren't, last time I checked.)

Edited Date: 2016-03-30 10:39 pm (UTC)

I started on the Galaxy Nexus (which seemed huge at the time, but was fine in a trouser pocket); now I have the Nexus 6, but that will fail on your size requirements! The smaller Nexus 5X has the advantage of being mid-range price. The camera isn't going to be top of the line compared to say the S6/S7 but may still be good enough.

I love my sony xperia compact, though on breaking the screen repair has been similarly expensive. ... I mostly got it for the awesome camera though as I no longer have a camera, and need one for work, but I've found it to be a great phone in all respects.

Love love my Fairphone (1st generation) so can't comment on the 2nd - but customising and repair is the raison d'etre - might be worth directing your technical questions at their support team?

While it is a andriod phone I had to put my own google stuff on it - very little bloatware on it out of the box.

I have a motorola G3 which I bought with clubcard vouchers from Tesco in one of those "we'll increase the value of you vouchers by n times" deals. It works well, and the latest version of Android allows you to format an SD card to act as internal storage thus giving you as much space as you like. If buying again I would go for the higher spec model with more RAM, but am otherwise happy.

User

livredor referenced to your post from Ethical capitalism (http://livredor.livejournal.com/335306.html) saying: [...] doesn't translate to 'possible' in the real world. The other phone that people have recommended [...]

Matthew's Journal

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Ethical capitalism

July