Ask HN: How do you choose what phone to buy
6 comments
I wait until Apple stops supporting my phone or I run out of memory. I then go out and buy the smallest iPhone I can get my hands on having twice the memory. The last time I did that was in 2020 when I got my iPhone SE2. They're rumored to bring out an SE4 next Spring. All I really use my phone for is a music player, a snapshot taker, messaging, and managing boarding passes and transit cards. I really don't need a lot of fancy hardware.
Since I do not install any apps I just look for the biggest, heaviest phone with the biggest battery then use ADB to disable some stuff so the big battery lasts longer on standby.
I switched to Google Fi / phones many years ago to avoid the apps I cannot uninstall and pay by the Mb for data. My bill is regularly sub $30
screw Verizon and ATT
screw Verizon and ATT
Always iPhone. Thanks to vendor lock. Can't give up seamless integration between other apple products.
Seriously, I had an android some 10 years ago, and spent a lot of time and effort trying to avoid the Google ecosystem. They quite simply are a spy agency. At the time I was moving, and the carrier had no coverage up in the hills, so I had to switch carriers, and switched to Apple at the time.
I have been a mac person since before there were macs, so the support framework was there. The "chief" android virtue, removable memory, seems gone now on android phones, as well.
Now that a lot of ios apps run on AppleSilicon, it's even smoother. Do I love ios? I really hate it. Some bizarrely simple (safari) things like "get image URL" that I do 30 times a day or more, are just not doable, and the desktop feels about a billion times more productive. ( You can hold your finger down on an image and "share" but only email is reasonable for getting the URL at all, and I deliberately keep email off the iPad. For focus on task.)
Would I switch from ios? Only to linux, and that's still "early" in my estimation. It could change soon.
Apple still infuriates me. I backed up a phone prior to a trade-in, and went to restore to a new phone: "OS upgrade needed". I had backups of all photos and books, so I restored manually. Galloping upgrades[0] are a royal PITA. I downloaded the latest Calibre to the mac and had to go back several versions to get it to run on Ventura. Thanks to all the things I never asked for (and I am staring at ios 26 "we changed everything because it felt good" ) it's a constant struggle. Apps stop working and new versions are "subscription only".
It sucks terribly and other stuff sucks worse.
[0]. Yes, I know, yearly upgrades are mostly to support the new hardware bells and whistles, but you get them whether your hardware needs them or not. Photos? What the hell did you do to photos? Finding stuff seems to take twice as long, and searching for a photo remains a very bad joke, even with the latest ios. I am sure that Google does it magnificently (image recognition) but I don't trust Google as far as I can fart against the wind.
And in the end, it's that "I distrust everything you do" that makes android completely unacceptable to me, and I am not interested any more in trying to pry Google and android apart, even if it's doable.
I have been a mac person since before there were macs, so the support framework was there. The "chief" android virtue, removable memory, seems gone now on android phones, as well.
Now that a lot of ios apps run on AppleSilicon, it's even smoother. Do I love ios? I really hate it. Some bizarrely simple (safari) things like "get image URL" that I do 30 times a day or more, are just not doable, and the desktop feels about a billion times more productive. ( You can hold your finger down on an image and "share" but only email is reasonable for getting the URL at all, and I deliberately keep email off the iPad. For focus on task.)
Would I switch from ios? Only to linux, and that's still "early" in my estimation. It could change soon.
Apple still infuriates me. I backed up a phone prior to a trade-in, and went to restore to a new phone: "OS upgrade needed". I had backups of all photos and books, so I restored manually. Galloping upgrades[0] are a royal PITA. I downloaded the latest Calibre to the mac and had to go back several versions to get it to run on Ventura. Thanks to all the things I never asked for (and I am staring at ios 26 "we changed everything because it felt good" ) it's a constant struggle. Apps stop working and new versions are "subscription only".
It sucks terribly and other stuff sucks worse.
[0]. Yes, I know, yearly upgrades are mostly to support the new hardware bells and whistles, but you get them whether your hardware needs them or not. Photos? What the hell did you do to photos? Finding stuff seems to take twice as long, and searching for a photo remains a very bad joke, even with the latest ios. I am sure that Google does it magnificently (image recognition) but I don't trust Google as far as I can fart against the wind.
And in the end, it's that "I distrust everything you do" that makes android completely unacceptable to me, and I am not interested any more in trying to pry Google and android apart, even if it's doable.
I consider acceptable a price of about 100 Euro per year of security updates. I prefer 300 Euro and 3 years to 600 and 6 years, not because of the money but because of the extra time I give myself to break the phone. A 300 Euro phone is still very good and fast.
I'm currently on a Samsung A40 which is past the end of its updates but everything newer is larger and weights significantly more, except some S2x phone from Samsung which still weights more (why?) but at least it's not much larger.
Previously I had a Sony Xperia Compact (I can't remember the exact model) which was a little too tick but it had the right size, if it had no bezel like more recent phones, and a Samsung S2 which had the best size (if it had no bezel) and perfect weight.