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Comment by tbrock | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why folks subject themselves to this for $1000 when other options are available.

You don’t have to keep supporting Samsung by buying their phones. Get a pixel instead.

Google branded hardware has a notorious reputation for problems about 1-1.5 year down the road. This has happened with every single Google device anyone in my family has ever owned and so we've basically stopped buying Google. Very few manufacturers apart from Samsung come close to Apple in terms of sheer hardware quality and service support and Apple OS's lack of customisability, pathetic camera and lack of 3.5mm jack completely rules it out for me. That's basically why I have paid a premium for Samsung over the years. I may look at Huawei too now that they appear to have significantly upped the hardware quality game.

Being virtually stock Android, pre-installed software is easily disabled (even FB) - the only major complaint is inability to assign Bixby button to something else without rooting.

? I used a Nexus 5 up until last year. Ended up upgrading last year, not because it had issues or because lineage stopped releasing for it, but because IT at my new job refused to let six-year-old devices on the network. Meanwhile, my parents complained continuously about their three-year-old iPhones getting slower and slower. Anecdotes, yeah, but...

My nexus 5 still works, I don't use it anymore but the thing was an absolute tank.

Nexus 5 was not a tank in my experience.

On mine the plastic frame cracked between the power button and the volume control (I think a reasonably common problem with this phone, I've never had a frame crack on any other phone). After that one button gets stuck on, which makes phone cycle reboot - OK - I can workaround that. Then the microphone went bad: that is caused by the crack causing pressure on the micro-connector which causes an electrical issue. That wasted more time and eventually my workaround for that issue failed.

I have had close experience with 5 different Nexus devices, and 4 of the 5 had nasty failure modes.

The Nexus line has been far less reliable than the iOS devices I have had experience with, and all the Apple devices got far more security updates over their useful life. Note: I usually use Android phones and iPad tablets (although I have also personally had iPhones and Android tablets).

The soft plastic casing definitely cracks easily. On the other hand it does not fail catastrophically. I have dropped my Nexus 5 on the floor more times than I can count and while it has miniature cracks around the button/power connector it's nothing that prevents the phone from working.

> On the other hand it does not fail catastrophically

So my two complete failures due to the crack were not "catastrophic" then?

The case cracking is common, and those two failures were common enough: most users would consider the phone uneconomic to fix, and not everyone has my tenacity or skill to waste time fixing their phone.

I also think it was that phone where the flash slowed enough to make it barely usable.

Back on topic.

The only Nexus I have had that hasn't had a problem was a Samsung Nexus 10 (still goes, but stuck on insecure Android 5.1).

The only Samsung phone I have had was the original Galaxy Nexus, which was still going when I gave it away last year. It's problems were: 1. screen burnin (OLED) and 2. Google didn't release Android 4.4 (due to TI dropping OMAP4 support?) even though 4.4 came out within 2 years. That phone cost more than an iPhone 4. My colleagues got iPhone 4 phones at the same time, and they got updates for twice as long and their phones remained useful for far longer.

So my experience with Samsung hardware has been good. I have always avoided buying Samsung because I hate their modified Android versions and lack of updates.

The Nexus 5 is one of my favorite devices for PostmarketOS (project to get sustainable mainline Linux on smartphones and tablets): https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Google_Nexus_5_(lg-hammer...

I loved mine, I'd still be using it if I could have found one that didn't have motherboard issues. It was a pinnacle of industrial design and I'm sad that smartphone designs have moved away from it.

My Nexus 5 was also fantastic.

And then I heard the horror stories of everyone in my office who, having had a great experience with the N5, went and bought a Pixel.

My iphone 4 was pretty much as fast as the nexus 5 and way less buggy. The nexus 5 is the only phone that I almost threw against a wall, I’ll never touch android anymore after that shit show. You must have a very high tolerance to bugs and poor performance. My friend was very happy when I sold him that piece of crap, so it must be subjective.

What did you replace it with? I also use a N5.

Pixel 2 XL, since I also had to stop using a Nexus 7 at the same time and I didn't want to have to deal with not having a large screen to read on. It's been good so far. I haven't had any issues with the lack of a headphone jack, mostly because that jack was also the one part of the Nexus 5 that'd also failed so I was already on bluetooth-only. I upgraded about eight months after the release so they'd hammered out the QC issues on the screen. I see some black smears when I'm scrolling over pictures with black backgrounds on dark themes with the brightness all the way down in a dark room, but that's not something I'd call an issue. The real problem is actually the curved screen, which is sensitive to touch all the way out to the bezel a millimeter or two around the side of the phone, so I get a few misclicks a month when my palm hits the side of the screen while I'm trying to type. I get about two days of battery out of it despite heavy use while I'm on the subway to and from work. It does not feel a sturdy as my Nexus 5, and the screen is not as nice to read on as the Nexus 7 was; the aspect ratio is far too tall. It's definitely better than my old Droid Incredible, though I still miss the physical keyboard. I don't know if it'll be as good as the Nexus 5. It's so far only a sixth as old.

OnePlus phones (originally replaced N5 with a OnePlus 3 .. now upgraded to 6T) .. they have the same "flagship killer" ethos of the original N5

Same here. On 5T. My only issue was lack of security updates in the end. I could try to flash with another distro but too much work with too little gain. Love my 5T even more.

There are LineageOS images for the 5T. I had weekly updates on my N5 until 26 ian 2019 and it's a six year old phone.

It's now possible to reassign the bixby button to something else without rooting the phone.

Oh interesting. How do you do that? I don't see anything obvious in the settings area.

You've gotta make sure that all your native samsung apps are up to date and then you should see the setting: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-remap-the-bixby-...

Rooting will still give you the most functionality, but Samsung has finally at least partially relented.

Ah thanks! Wasn't seeing this option

Tasker can assign the Bixby button as of the newest update that just dropped. Also double clicking power and volume up and down long presses (though I had to use adb to enable the volume on my phone, none of this requires root).

I hadn't messed with tasker in a long time but that got me back.

I have been a samsung buyer for at least 6 years and 4 phone models. The bixby button is an absolute deal breaker for me. I dont know what i will do, but it wont be a samsung with bixby

I assigned the Bixby button to WhatsApp in settings, no root needed

I got an S10 because of the headphone jack and sd card slot. I uninstalled or disabled any software I didn't need pretty easily. I find it to be a fantastic phone.

Those things are available on cheaper phones that don't come with so many ads.

(for example, the Moto G7. Of course, lots of people have Lenovo concerns)

Except cheaper phones tend to be worse consumer products.

> I don't understand why folks subject themselves to this for $1000 when other options are available.

After my "flagship" HTC10 became unusable within 2 years because of battery issues, I was in the market for a new phone. But I was determined to not spend over $250. I ended up with Nokia 6.1. The only issue with it is that it is just a little slow because it uses snapdragon 435 (I think). However for the same reason it's battery lasts up to 2 days. Other stand-out features are unibody metal design, and Android One (meaning no bloatware). I bought it for only $180 from Best Buy after price match, and sold the HTC for $60 at decluttr.com. I think this is one of the best value purchase I ever made- up there with a Toyota Corolla.

If I wanted the best camera in a phone on the market, my choices were the Note 9 (before the Pixel 3, I think) or one of the iPhones. I have enough invested in the Google/Android ecosystem that moving would be painful, plus I'm not a fan of Apple.

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