Samsung sees 95% drop in profits for a second consecutive quarter::Today, Samsung posted its Q2 2023 financial results. The report says Samsung’s profits have dropped considerably compared to last year.
Samsung sees 95% drop in profits for a second consecutive quarter::Today, Samsung posted its Q2 2023 financial results. The report says Samsung’s profits have dropped considerably compared to last year.
Genuine question: what do you recommend instead? Not really excited to support Google via pixel either and didn’t love my last iPhone. Is there a good choice anywhere?
Oneplus has gone to shit as far as software is concerned, but the hardware is still good, so if you’re OK running a custom ROM, they’re good.
I last used the Xperia lineup ages ago, but it was a pretty decent experience, close enough to stock Android and the additions they did add were actually improvements. No idea if that’s still the case, but you could look up some reviews.
Ditto for Motorola, which was nearly stock Android back in 2014.
Murena sells refurb and new phones with /e/os preinstalled if you want to go google-free.
I do miss the early days of Android, when you had players like HTC creating completely unique Android experiences (I mean so did Samsung, but their uniqueness was how slow Touchwiz was).
Edit: Also completely forgot the fact that Nokia makes some good phones, including pretty affordable ones and some higher end ones. But personally the one person I knew with one had issues with the USB-C port and had to have theirs repaired by the warranty and then refunded on the second or third round. But that was a much older model, maybe 5 years now, they likely have fixed the issues on their newer ones.
Whatever is most popular under $200. Unless you game or use your phone to take photos a lot, it will do just fine, there’s not much to be added to justify any additional costs. Ironically, most phones in that category would be Samsungs.
I’ve been happy with my pixel. As much as it might be not ideal if you don’t want to support Google, ironically it’s like the only phone you can de-google and still have a locked bootloader and full features
Doesn’t that invalidate safety net?
Sorry I’m not 100% sure what your asking. If you’re asking about custom roms, I’d trust many custom roms (Graphene is my favorite) better than a lot of manufacturers’s roms. And a bootloader that can be re-locked is a big boost to security, since it requires that the OS be signed by the devs instead of making it easier for malicious code to be shimmed in and run at the OS level even if I install a custom operating system.
SafetyNet is the name of Google’s tamper protection thingy. Basically, if it’s not a trusted chain, safety net won’t pass.
This doesn’t impact phone functionality, but some apps check for this and refuse to work if it’s not passing. Google Pay is one of the more well-known examples. Some other banking apps will also check for it. Oddly enough, Pokemon Go also used to (not sure if it still does).
Ah, sorry, yeah potentially. I’ve heard that banking apps won’t work most of the time (but usually just use the web any way so can’t confirm). Though oddly if you wanted to use Google Play on Grapheme it works perfectly fine, so maybe not.