When I use my (Android) phone I very much feel that I am not the customer but rather the product and it would be much worse (I think) if competition wasn’t there. in some ways, my experience with one (bad) Chinese phone was much better than what I had with one from South Korea.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a partially state-owned publicly listed Chinese pure-play semiconductor foundry company. It is the largest contract chip maker in mainland China.
…SMIC ordered an EUV step-and-scan system from ASML Holding for $120 million in 2018. The order was blocked after the US government lobbied ASML and the government of the Netherlands.
(…Wikipedia)
Try a Pixel rather than a Samsung. Despite being from Google (whose main schtick is advertising) it’s a pretty clean experience, while my family members’ Samsung and LG (who have since exited the market) devices have pre-installed, unremovable apps, stupidly hard-coded configs and - esp in the case of Samsung - often seem add new bullshit in after updates.
Samsung in particular pisses me off given how they charge a premium for devices that are full of intrusive bullshit.
Espionage is worse on a Pixel, if that’s something you care about then obviously avoid. I’m not sure if Graphene OS on Pixel devices is good for daily users though, it could be an option.
Yeah even current Pixel versions can still load the alternative OS’s, which is nice. Espionage… I’m not sure it’s really higher on Pixel. Pretty much all of that is already available to Google via the Android OS/services itself so I’m not sure they’d need to add anything for the phones (not that it makes it good, just didn’t seem any worse than i.e. my old stock-build Chinese phones), but with the Sammy devices you also get the preinstalled shovelware plus you to agree to Samsung’s conditions to use the second.
Thanks, I always went for the cheapest phone. Now, it’s been a few years with my last purchased and next time I will try and follow your advice or maybe go for Moto G…
Avoid the moto g series, they’re a clean Android experience but moto cheaped out on the CPU and they’re terribly slow. The Google pixel 6a is a good cheap phone and it’s going to get updated to Android 14 and security updates for another 2 years. I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit and it’s a clean stock android experience.
When I use my (Android) phone I very much feel that I am not the customer but rather the product and it would be much worse (I think) if competition wasn’t there. in some ways, my experience with one (bad) Chinese phone was much better than what I had with one from South Korea.
Try a Pixel rather than a Samsung. Despite being from Google (whose main schtick is advertising) it’s a pretty clean experience, while my family members’ Samsung and LG (who have since exited the market) devices have pre-installed, unremovable apps, stupidly hard-coded configs and - esp in the case of Samsung - often seem add new bullshit in after updates.
Samsung in particular pisses me off given how they charge a premium for devices that are full of intrusive bullshit.
Espionage is worse on a Pixel, if that’s something you care about then obviously avoid. I’m not sure if Graphene OS on Pixel devices is good for daily users though, it could be an option.
Yeah even current Pixel versions can still load the alternative OS’s, which is nice. Espionage… I’m not sure it’s really higher on Pixel. Pretty much all of that is already available to Google via the Android OS/services itself so I’m not sure they’d need to add anything for the phones (not that it makes it good, just didn’t seem any worse than i.e. my old stock-build Chinese phones), but with the Sammy devices you also get the preinstalled shovelware plus you to agree to Samsung’s conditions to use the second.
Thanks, I always went for the cheapest phone. Now, it’s been a few years with my last purchased and next time I will try and follow your advice or maybe go for Moto G…
Avoid the moto g series, they’re a clean Android experience but moto cheaped out on the CPU and they’re terribly slow. The Google pixel 6a is a good cheap phone and it’s going to get updated to Android 14 and security updates for another 2 years. I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit and it’s a clean stock android experience.