You can buy a used SE (2020) for only about $150 and that'll probably be supported for another 4 years.
I've spent more than that from shopping at Costco on an empty stomach (rookie mistake).
I've spent more than that from shopping at Costco on an empty stomach (rookie mistake).
Still a solid choice. I find it hard to imagine there's any android phone that can beat this phone for the same price (used or not!), OS support, camera quality, speaker quality, CPU speed & task switching speed, overall responsiveness, etc.
Oh wait, those are all things you can not do with those iOS devices. Since these happen to be things I do it seems that iPhone won't be myPhone. Also, why don't these friggin' iOS devices support Ogg/Vorbis? I just added a transcoding option to Spodcast [1] to allow those poor souls using such devices to follow Spotify-hosted podcasts through RSS. None of my devices had any problems with Ogg/Vorbis but it turns out iOS simply does not support it. VLC on iOS does as do some other apps but those are not podcast players. Bad Apple.
Vorbis was popular with video game developers who didn’t want to pay for MP3 or MP4 licensing but outside of that nope.
I almost went with the new pixels as that is one of the few android phones actually having a non-locked bootloader (to not have to deal with Google’s privacy violations on my probably most used device), but the many bugs and hardware issues I heard about (plus the terrible support!), as well as not having it sold in my country made me stay with apple, even though GrapheneOS is a spectacular project I wanted to use.
So don’t make it seem like a trivial choice - the fact is, we have basically only 2 options and both suck for different reasons. (Unfortunately, the third one of linux phones are not truly usable as of now)
A shorter version of this would be "the short life span of Android devices is highly exaggerated". As a bonus you get a mostly surveillance-free device, apart from the overt surveillance which comes with having a radio beacon in your pockets that is. Put the thing in flight mode and you're fine. In this respect Android devices running custom Google-free firmware (an important caveat) are the Linux PCs compared to the bolted-shut "No serviceable parts inside" Apple Mac and the increasingly invasive Windows world. Even the discussion around them is similar:
- Linux is not ready for the desktop... but I've been using it since 1993 on the desktop, from 1996 on exclusively.
- Linux does not support your hardware... while the opposite is true except for the newest hardware which can take a few weeks to months before support arrives.
- Macs just work... until they just don't work and the vendor tells you it's your fault, or the new release suddenly removes support for half of your software.
- Linux is not suitable for gaming... tell all those people running their games on Linux because they run faster/better than on Windows
- Linux users have to spend more time tinkering to get their machines to work... until it becomes clear that the tinkerers tinker because they see it as a pastime while others just install a distribution (in a few minutes) and use the thing as a tool.
- etcetera.
Even shorter because that wasn't very short either: Android devices can be used for a long time. So can Apple devices. Take your pick based on your wants and needs, ignoring the falsities being spread by the true believers.
Technically it should be sold for everyone in $190 (22,000JPY), but some shops don't want to sell without contract. Govt make a regulation that limits discount for new contract to 22,000 JPY and careers must sell phones without contract. So shops should set non-contract price to 22,000, to sell for 0JPY for new sign up.