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Comment by sergiosgc | Hacker News Reader

I know I can clean up crapware, via adb, but on principle vote with my wallet. It's not acceptable to charge me something that rounds to a thousand euros and then fleece me for a few extra bucks.

Right now, I restrict my selection to Android One [1] phones. The current one is a Nokia 8 Sirocco.

[1] https://www.android.com/one/

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I bought Nokia 6.1s for my parents. Only $225 for a phone with great build quality, more than acceptable performance, quick security updates and a pure Android experience. The 32GB of storage is plenty for them.

The biggest drawback is probably the camera which although not horrible is a few years behind recent flagship phones. Not everyone cares about having the latest greatest camera on their phone. The camera is perfectly fine for my Mom to send me a picture of the latest thing she saw at Costco for a great price which she thinks I need to get and that will account for 90% of photos taken with their phones.

Mid-range Android phones that are part of the Android One program have really started making it difficult to justify spending the money flagship Android phones are costing these days.

Similarly, I've got Nokia 7.1 for my father last Christmas. It was 330 EUR (including VAT), Android One, with Pie already available. The camera is perfectly fine for him.

Once my phone will start acting up, it will be difficult to justify the expense for a flagship, when midranges are as good as they are.

I've had similar feelings... having finally ditched my Huawei Nexus 6P, which I came to loathe. This was after years of buying Google developer devices (going back to the G1). The 6P was the last straw, as I came to resent spending hundreds on something with a soldered-in battery that could be (and turned out to be) unusable after 24 months. The battery was a wreck.

I ended up getting an unlocked new LG V20 from eBay, which is a slightly older phone, but the most decent spec I could find with a replaceable battery. Been great so far, so it's been worth it for $190. Got a couple of spare LG batteries too, for $25 each.

Nice reminder about the ADB uninstall trick, as there's some AT&T stuff that would be nice to remove if possible. I'm also tempted by LineageOS, but need the core Google Android apps - so probably too suspicious to use a bundled install that someone else has put together.

I'm using the bundled install, micro I think. It's okay, it works just fine.

I always wondered what to replace my Nexus 5 with, thanx for the info.

Careful about buying 'new' copies of that phone on Ebay: there are none. Almost all of the new copies bring sold on Ebay for the last year or so are fraudulent. Finding an actual new LG V20, outside of perhaps Korea, is unlikely.

edit: just checked Ebay, and yup, there are no legit new copies to be had, except for maybe AT&T or unlocked variants for $400+. There's a very low chance that anyone will be/or has been able to find a new LG V20 for at least a year, and almost certainly not for a reasonable price.

It is a similar situation for numerous other smartphones on the used market, most new copies for sale are actually remanufactured/used that have been repackaged and fraudulently resold as new from somewhere [originally] in China. The fake LG V20 new copies began flooding the market somewhere in the past 1-2 years, and have dominated since, but that practice is typical for smartphones in general.

Item was described as "new and sealed factory unlocked", and I had no complaints when it arrived. If it is repackaged, I was completely unable to tell any difference from other new devices I can remember unpacking (new from Amazon or directly from a vendor). The spare batteries I sourced from a separate UK supplier.

It's definitely intended for AT&T, but worked fine with Three in the UK as soon as I entered the appropriate APN info and restarted.

Here's a relisting, for what it's worth :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372561134735?ViewItem=&item=37256...

Ah, perhaps my experiences are only valid for US/North American buyers of US carrier variants. I know that there was a proliferation of repackaged V20 models being sold as new, and they all seemed to come from the same source - they had the same packaging Chinese/international packaging, but the devices included were used/remanufactured and were often incorrectly-specced for their purported carriers, giving away their fraudulent origins.

Like the packaging shown in that Ebay link is incorrect for an AT&T variant. AT&T almost never uses OEM packaging, instead they use some weird gimpy branded boxes of their own. If it didn't come in a box like this, then it was a fraudulently repackaged and was not new:

https://i.imgur.com/n2dFAq2.jpg

Also the printed inserts should have AT&T branding on them, and will include AT&T-specific inserts. The flood of fraudulent LG V20s usually include generic international versions of the printed inserts. Watch for the IMEI label on the box being pasted over with another label, to hide the ID numbers of the device the box originally came with.

Just because its not new doesn't mean it might not work fine, it just means you'll likely never get warranty coverage; or if you do get LG to accept it once they examine in-house for repair you're probably boned.

Odd question. I bought V20 as a replacement for a Zenfone ( long story ). I like it. It does its job. I think I tried everything and I cannot root it. ADB just does not work regardless of what I try.

Anyone had similar issue?

This is awesome! I had no idea how to find the phones that have better OS support, so I was stuck with the Pixel line.

Is this basically considered stock Android? Or is that yet another tier?

It's stock, but the options are not great and the hardware companies are not especially eager to put powerful phones on that platform

There is an LG G7 with Android One. That seems like it could be a great mix of flagship hardware with stock android.

It's the best option out there but still a lower range phone.

It's actually a different phone than the non Android one version.

Oh! I did not know that, I assumed they were equally specced.

I'm intrigued. I'm not in the market for a new phone right now as the one I have does not mess too much with android either.

But for the first time in 15 years I think I might consider a Nokia next time I go shopping...

I also would have gone with Nokia because of their clean software and build quality... But they are doing weird strategies with the European market. E.g. it's almost impossible to get the 64GB version, or if you can it has a massive price increase. Or some good models just don't get released here, like the 6.1 Plus.

The 64GB versions are mostly dual-sim, and only some 30 EUR more expensive than the 32GB versions. I wouldn't call it massive price increase.

Then I was thinking of bying the Nokia 6.1, the 32GB version was 250$ while the 64GB one was 340$ and mostly out of stock.

The new 7.1 with 64gb is not available at all here. Only through imports with an 110$ surcharge.

What's your experience with Android One? First time I hear about it but I'm intrigued, doesn't it come from Google anyway? So the "secure" claims are kind of empty?

I'm using a Xiaomi Mi A1 for some time now and so far so good. I was looking for a pure Android experience without all the crapware and custom UI's that come from any major phone brand and this is exactly what I got.

Also, direct updates from Google for 2 years without interference from the brand (Xiaomi in this case). Which means I have security updates every month.

I'm not going to buy anything that's not an AndroidOne from now on, with the exception of a Pixel.

> Also, direct updates from Google for 2 years without interference from the brand (Xiaomi in this case). Which means I have security updates every month.

You got exactly NONE updates from google. "Android One" has a requirement for vendors to provide updates. All those updates were from xiaomi.

After doing research in order to buy a new phone, I find it strange that Xaomi products are being suggested as an alternative to vendor anti-privacy and bloat.

MIUI is baked in and you need to register an account with Xaomi if you want to unlock your bootloader and put, say, LineageOS on your phone. Xaomi has a bootloader lockout period on their phones, during which you must wait and use MIUI for a period until your bootloader unlocks. They've increased that period from what was once a couple of weeks, to over a month on new models. That's plenty of time for Xaomi to harvest your data.

Meanwhile, there are other phones that allow you to unlock your bootloader without a data harvesting period.

Mi A1 is Android One phone, i.e. no MIUI, but pure Google experience.

A couple of months ago, I started getting notifications for random alibaba crap on my Xiaomi phone. Turns out, there's a system app which sends you ads as push notifs. Switched to iphone the next day, privacy is the killer feature.

I think you mean privacy, not security, which there aren't really any claims about.

Google aims to provide security updates to all Android devices, but specifically targets their product lines (Nexus, Pixel, etc) and Android One devices as they have a little more control over the software.

Pixel has no bloatware.

My Pixel came preinstalled with at least three of Google's multitude of chat applications.

If that's not bloatware then I don't know what is

Mine downloaded them after initial setup. I simply cancelled the downloads of the crapware messaging apps that hadn't started and uninstalled the ones that had already downloaded.

What about OnePlus?

Even though I am an extremely happy owner of a 5T, I won't buy another OnePlus device now that they have removed the headphone jack. That's the difficult part of voting with your wallet - your choices become more and more limited if the market isn't aligned with your personal preference.

Well said. I like small and light phones, not iOS. I'm typing this on an Xperia X Compact (2016). Follow up models weight more and maybe the product line will be discontinued. Even the iPhone SE is dead.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/atom-world-s...

This might be the greatest prison phone ever

Wow, that's really small. Actually it's what phones used to be before 2007.

I got one off the kickstarter, and it's a neat little gadget. It hasn't fully replaced my main smartphone, but it's great for outdoors activities, or if I'm wearing an outfit without big pockets and don't want to carry a bag.

Did get another SIM or move the one from your phone into the Atom?

I swap my SIM when I want to use it, but it would be less hassle to get a separate one.

But then, how do people contact you? Anything tied to your phone number wouldn't work. Perhaps only Telegram, Skype, Messenger work cross device. Phone calls and WhatsApp don't.

For phone calls, good old call redirect is still a thing :P

No idea about whatsapp though.

If I'm out cycling or paddling, I probably don't want to be all that reachable, anyway.

I have the original Jelly phone, and it's actually smaller than Nokia phones I used in pre-smartphone days.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-the-sm...

How's the battery life? I got the Atom even though it's uglier because I read bad reviews of the Jelly's battery.

Also the 5T camera is awful if you aren't using their proprietary vendor blobs. Custom ROMs like Lineage take absolutely shocking photos.

Can confirm. You are kinda forced into using their ROM.

I just want a good Android phone with at least some level of enhanced privacy. Its such a pity Copperhead went kinda weird.

I have the 5 and the photos are awful with the stock app...

And that one small time they were caught spying on all their users interactions [1] I say that as a pretty happy OnePlus 3T user.

  [1] https://fossbytes.com/oneplus-spying-users-disable/

For me it was the opposite, the removal of the obnoxious and ancient headphone jack was one of the reason I bought a 6T.

I'm really curious why you think that. Obnoxious why? How?

And ancient = bad? Boy, do I have some bad news about power sockets you have at home.......

I want to embrace the future. The more phones to get rid of the headphone jack, the more headphone companies will realize they need to make wireless versions.

That's like saying you want petrol stations to start closing down, so that manufacturers hurry up with electric cars. The logic is sound, but in the meantime it would be just bloody inconvenient to drive miles to a nearest petrol station while you still haven't got an electric car.

I want wireless headphones too, but I don't want to use adapters with my existing(and very expensive) headphones that I have right now. More importantly, having a headphone jack does not stop bluetooth headphones from working.

It would be nice if there were a way to deliver something resembling a quality audio to wireless headphones first. And a way to connect quality headphones to that magical wireless delivery system. Then you can get rid of a jack.

Audio over Bluetooth has been one of the most consistently terrible user experiences I've encountered, and I used Linux as my daily driver in the early 00's.

Be warned that Google does NOT push updates to these Android One phones, the OEM does, so they take their time and (potentially can) include as many crap apps as they want.

Xiaomi puts a lot of crapware in their Android One mobiles. They have their own line of apps, "Mi", and they include many of them pre-installed by default.

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