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Hi, and hello. This post is somewhat inspired by DiscoPotato’s post on their dilemma regarding smartphones or mobile phones, especially with Google’s upcoming changes regarding developer verification. TL;DR: we are beyond fucked.

So a couple days ago, I decided to step inside a department store, ya know, just to see what kind of smartphones are being sold at the moment. There were tons of models from brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, Poco, Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Honor, and a whole bunch of other cheap crap from brands that you may not heard of. The phones were near the entrance, and so was the electronics section too. I stood at the phone stands taking a closer look, as a lady came to me and asked something like “is there a model that you’re trying to find specifically?” She was an employee at the department store, wearing a shirt that had the Oppo branding on it, as well as the logo of a major phone carrier here where I live. I pretty much said no. I found a small sign inside a cabinet that said “Google Pixel, finally in [country name]” and I asked if it was available. The lady at the stand counter said it wasn’t, unfortunately, but there was a shitty overpriced Pixel 7 on the shelf, with a miserable 128GB of storage, lmao. During my search for anything that would catch my eye, I realize that there isn’t anything that I want. Sure, there are good phones hardware-wise, but they often disappoint in software: they have locked bootloaders, they don’t have custom ROMs available at all. While I was browsing the phones on display, I was almost desperately scrolling the LineageOS supported devices list on my phone to find a device that was on the list that was on sale on the shelf, but no dice.

As a kid I was so excited and hopeful of what the smartphone would become, but now, all I see on the store shelves are awful, shitty, and often pretty disappointing. These are locked down devices made to run nothing but Google approved™ software. And the moment that the developer verification hits, I feel that this is the point of no return. Our last small glimpses of user freedom: awesome moddable smartphones, cool FOSS projects that made everyone’s life better, now snapped away in the wind. Bootloader unlocking is going the way of the dodo, meanwhile cool custom ROMs that focused on customization keep dying, until there is nothing but LineageOS left. And even LineageOS is going through some rough times. Back in the day it was pretty common that most phones from a major brand like Samsung or Motorola, especially those who had Snapdragon SoCs, had good ROM support. As long as it wasn’t locked down by Verizon or some other scummy carrier, it was pretty likely some guy on XDA would eventually figure it out. And if you were lucky enough, you would have someone willing to dedicate time, blood, sweat and tears by supporting your device enough that said ROM turned into an “official” custom ROM. I will stand by the statement that custom ROMs greatly extend the life of smartphones by keeping them running up-to-date software, and also are a good way to take control of your damn device.

I feel so much dread about this because I am in the middle of a crossroads. My current phone is broken (and barely working) and it seems it is not much worth fixing it again, because buying the screen and battery and getting someone to do it for me pretty much is more expensive then what the phone is worth, not to mention dealing with the random slowdowns and crashes and just the general lag that this thing has. And sure, I can go ahead and get another phone but the pickings are really limited. I guess I can get a Motorola phone that is built like shit, or buy a very expensive Pixel phone that can run cool OSes like GrapheneOS, but the price is significantly higher compared to the American MSRP. And I guess that there is that one GrapheneOS phone thing that keeps being brought up time and time again, but like, I bet that will definitely will cost an arm and a leg (and not sold in the country I live in, because fuck me i guess).

So at the end of the day, my options are the following:

to repair my nord n10

Gotta be honest, I never liked this phone. I should’ve picked up the Pixel 3a when I had the chance, since it was literally next to this shitty thing on the store shelf. It would’ve saved me so much pain with ROMs, and then would’ve saved me from the multi-year wait until a custom ROM was finished enough to actually even work.

Lets say I repair this phone. Spend more money on it then it is worth. Cool, now I have a phone that works, but often freezes out of nowhere (even on stock software), feels sluggish all the time, always feels like something is wrong, and is built like cheap trash. If I want to use custom ROMs, then I lose fast charging and get locked to a pathetic charging speed of only 8 watts. I also have to deal with the cameras on this thing, which are so blurry that I struggle to take decent pictures of this. It looks like the camera needs glasses, fucking hell.

I think the most grim thing is the fact this phone has been essentially abandoned. Oneplus isn’t updating it anymore, and while there are custom ROMs, most of them are unfinished, and the one official LineageOS build is no more. It genuinely makes me sad. The fact this phone had a lot of potential, but it got squandered by Oneplus who didn’t give a shit about updates because “other companies do the same!” and this phone wasn’t popular enough to get that community ROM support. And with a shattered screen and a very degraded battery, this phone is pretty much almost worthless.

to get a pixel phone (and get ripped off)

The Google Pixel is a line of devices that were manufactured by HTC (or what used to be HTC) and sold in select countries around the world. It is a supposedly “flagship” device sold by Google that mostly has the intention of being the benchmark of what an Android smartphone should be. Or at least this is how it was marketed when it was new back in 2017 or so. I think nowadays the Pixel is just another smartphone that as the intention to sell even more of Google’s AI gruel. But I suppose there is one saving grace of this thing: It is one of the few devices where, not only lets you unlock the bootloader, but also relock it as well, which is something that is almost never found in the Android space. This is big because it significantly beefs up security, and some ROMs take full advantage of that. Both GrapheneOS and CalyxOS take advantage of this, managing to create the most secure Android ROMs (distros?) out there. Of course, there is also tons of development for these devices because of the fact that Google, up until recently, had everything you need to get started on creating custom ROMs. Think about any custom ROM project, and the Pixel line of phones will almost always be listed on the supported devices page. If I were to get a Pixel, I would probably get my hands on a Pixel 9a, which has plenty of features that I’d like to have.

But this comes at a cost. This phone costs significantly higher here compared to other regions like the United States or Europe, despite the fact it is officially sold here. And it fucking sucks. Even the so called “budget” oriented Pixel 9a costs around 700+ dollars, and even more if you are stupid enough to finance it. I don’t have 700+ dollars just sitting there, so that would mean I would have to finance the thing, or save up, but I don’t know if I can deal with this current phone that I have right now for that longer. And well, that sucks. Other two things that I would end up losing would be the headphone jack, and the SD card slot, and that makes me so fucking sad, but like everyone is doing it now, so… Also another thing that I will have to deal with is my music library. I like having my music available at all times, and that library is around 139GB so far, which will not fit on a smaller 128GB model and would take half of the storage of a 256GB model, which kind of sucks. And sure, I can go though the trouble of converting everything to MP3, and keep a MP3 specific library on hand just to use for the smartphone, but like, that is extra hassle, and I know myself I won’t keep it updated across devices. If only there was a form of expandible storage that can quickly expand storage easily, if only…

Will I spend far too much money on a phone that has worse specs compared to other phones at the same price point? Who knows, but to be honest, I am starting to get tired of this bullshit. I just want a phone that works for the most part, and this is why I haven’t gotten rid of this phone from the list yet. I guess the silver lining is that this phone will get 7 years of updates, which makes it a far more compelling pill to swallow compared to most phones that at best get 2 or 3 years of updates.

buy a motorola phone yet suffer because it sucks

In the past I used to really like Motorola. They allowed bootloader unlocking, had SD card slots, headphone jacks, and a bunch of pretty neat features that also worked on custom ROMs. I had a couple Moto phones in the past: the Moto G4 Play was my gateway to more regular use of custom ROMs, and the Moto G5 Plus was when I really started to get really into using ROMs and fucking around with Android in general. These phones were awesome, and cool, and I miss them a lot, but Motorola afterwards started to go on a downwards spiral.

Ever since the Moto G6, it seems that Motorola started to go off the rails. Now the brand is full of very awful and shitty phones that no one would like to own, and trying to pick one is now more than ever hard to do. You have the G and E lines of smartphones, but inside the same lines there are device tiers, which are themselves extremely inconsistent.

If I were to buy a Moto phone, it would be probably something like the Edge series of smartphones, or even a G series phone, like the G84. These phones seem to be nice, and have the features that I want. Sad thing is, that I can’t really find these phones new, and they have barely a year left of support, which means I am gonna be buying this thing and immediately watch it go out of support. Fucking hell. And Motorola also only gives at best 3 years of updates, which is unacceptable to me at this point.

Oh, and bootloader unlocking is only available on select models. Because of course it is.

find something used, perhaps

There always the option of buying something used. But that is tricky because the only phones that you’d find are the following:

Also like, if you are trying to find a certain model, most sellers don’t know or care what phones they have. For the most part, they don’t give a shit about you and your nerdy questions. They will never find the model number that you are looking for, or the specific processor the phone has. So I suppose there’s that.

other random phones that i guess i can get:

This is a rapid list of devices that I may consider as well:

get an iPhone and get it over with it.

I got to admit, the allure of the iPhone has never been stronger. If I am gonna be essentially forced to give up third party installing, might as well switch to the other platform that at least gives me a slightly better experience. A platform that at least pretends to care about my privacy (they don’t, lmao). A platform where the apps work better for the most part. Of course, this is a dumb idea to be honest. iPhones are locked down pieces of shit, but considering phones nowadays being locked down pieces of shit, what is the difference? Might as well bite the bullet at this point.

the shitty conclusion

I really don’t know how to finish this. I guess it is just disappointing to see how downhill we really went, I guess. I already talked quite a lot related to all this in past posts here, here, here and here. And I guess I’ll try to make next post less negative, if such a thing is possible, mayhaps. Maybe talk about a game that I love or something. But for now, here is this long ass rant about smartphones or whatever.

Ultimately, I think the phone I would probably end up going with is the Google Pixel 9a or maybe that one Motorola phone if I can find it anywhere. I am especially leaning towards the Pixel, because I kinda want to get it and not have to worry for the next 7 years and just be done with the smartphone shopping.

updates: