Fucking Cell Phones

[mharr]

Additional: this is without doubt based on the minimum system requirements of whatever cyberpunk dystopian bullshit your service provider intends to install, so you're also likely to want ease of rooting and assuming Android, no nonsense ADB compatibility.

I do know you should add Samsung to your Fuck Naw list, as they love to replace all basic systems with their own aggraving crapware. In general this sounds like a job for a rooted hand-me-down with an open source OS replacement.

[Mongrel]

I only know what half of that means, but yeah, that too.

EDIT: Oh okay, that's what ADB means.

[mharr]

If you're unfamiliar, adb has a bunch of neat tricks but for me its primary use... Well you know all the bloatware apps on smartphones that come with the 'uninstall' button disabled?

They're not protected from the command line.

[Thad]

Samsung's got the advantage that they tend to be pretty well-built; it's quality hardware. And I think they actually support their phones longer than Google at this point, which is another point in their favor. But yeah the crapware's a deal-breaker for me too. YMMV.

My current phone is a Pixel 3a I bought on eBay. I don't think it would meet your requirement for being rugged without a case, but it's basically stock Android. I think the Pixel line is probably a good place to look.

OnePlus is a good brand too, and I frequently see those phones praised as the best bang for your buck.

I'd say look at the Pixel and OnePlus lines, see if you can find one that's a year or two old on eBay. Check reviews for the model, make sure you're dealing with a seller who has good feedback, and check your cell provider to make sure the phone you're getting is supported. (Bit of warning: sometimes the same model phone will be released in multiple versions, some of which are locked to a specific carrier. You'll want to check and make sure the phone you're getting is either unlocked, or locked to your carrier.)

And you might need to get a case even though you don't want one.

[Mongrel]

Suggestions are useful so far, but just FYI ebay's out because they decided to fuck Canadians sideways a few years back by forcing unnecessary courier, handling, and customs charges on sales with their totally bullshit ebay shipping program.

It's bad enough that you can end up paying more than twice the price in the end for anything on ebay, even though USPS would be far, far cheaper (even WITH normal customs and insurance). I could probably buy a new phone for the REAL price of buying a used one on ebay.

[Thad]

If you've got another similar used-phone site (or local shop), that works too, just so long as you've got a way to be reasonably confident you're not getting ripped off.

I'm also not sure what kind of deals your carrier offers for a new phone; it's pretty common for them to offer a "free" phone in exchange for a multi-year contract. Those aren't terms I personally approve of, but a lot of people are fine with them.

[Lottel]

I'm not quoting something a page back especially for this but

I've literally made fun of people like Mongrel this time last year, when I had blackberry people wanting to know how I can fix their phone.

In one instance, I had to explain it to them that actually 12 years out of a phone was very good and then laughed out loud when they said I needed to sell them a phone that I could contractually guarantee would last another 12.

I think they left with the iPhone SE 2020 against my recommendation.


Edit: and by "people like Mongrel" I mean people who somehow still have a working blackberry in 2021. It's impressive and thrifty, but you do give up a lot of stuff that's assumed of you in today's digital society.

[Brantly B.]

These same people would be horrified by the suggestion that they move to Finland.

[Thad]

These same people would be horrified by the suggestion that they move to Finland.

Man I manage to make it this long without bringing up the PinePhone and you just waltz in here and drop a Jolla reference like it's nothin'?

[Mongrel]

These same people would be horrified by the suggestion that they move to Finland.

Being Canadian, Finland has always sounded like a lovely place to me.

[Brantly B.]

I was talking about actual Nokia phones.

[Mongrel]

I was talking about actual Nokia phones.

*respectfully removes hat*

[Caithness]

Didn't Microsoft buy out Nokia and then shut them down a couple years later?

[Mongrel]

Didn't Microsoft buy out Nokia and then shut them down a couple years later?

Eh, not quite. Back when they dominated the market, Nokia's OS (Symbian) was already headed for a dead-end. They floundered around for a replacement, but couldn't quite put one together.

As a quick fix, they had the option of partnering with Google or Microsoft, to use their OS instead. They choose... poorly.

I mean at the time it KIND of made sense, because MS wasn't into making hardware and Nokia had a gaping hole where their software should be, so they weren't direct competitors, whereas with Android they'd have been competing only on hardware and not software. What really killed them both on the partnership was the vicious spiral of the OS not having enough apps, and devs therefore not liking it as a platform and thus moving to design apps for Apple or Android (and yes, Windows Mobile was Windows Mobile which certainly didn't help anyone). Hindsight, etc.

I forget who ended up buying out what, but Nokia was always much bigger as a huge supplier of network technology, so they kept on doing that even after shuttering their consumer cellphone division. IIRC they're still one of the top two manufacturers in the world for cell teleco infrastructure.

That's kinda the reason a small Finnish company got so big in the cell business in the first place. For a time, in the 90's and early aughts, they were selling hardware for literally every single part of a cellular business from network switching to consumer phones, bottom to top, and that got them a HUGE number of initial carrier contracts at the dawn of widespread consumer cell use. The consumer stuff (i.e. the phones) was also ahead of it's time (for a short while), which is why we mostly remember Nokia phones fondly. They pioneered an absolute shitload of stuff, including the original GSM standard.

Eventually they got their cellular IP back and now it's owned by a subsidiary (HMD) that occasionally makes nostalgia-sales updated versions of old Nokia phones (old shell/look, with modern internals and software, OS is Android-based), though the manufacturing is all in Chinese factories; the consumer manufacturing part of Nokia is the only thing that's gone for good.

HMD keeps making little squeaky noises about actually restarting Nokia as a full consumer brand of cellphones again, but nothing's come of it yet.

[Thad]

Eh, not quite. Back when they dominated the market, Nokia's OS (Symbian) was already headed for a dead-end. They floundered around for a replacement, but couldn't quite put one together.

Though Nokia's old MeeGo OS still kind of exists, as Sailfish, a proprietary OS that isn't really widely available outside Europe*. That's what I assumed Brent was talking about when he mentioned Finland.

* It's a little more complicated than that. Like Android, Sailfish has a free/open-source base OS but requires a bunch of proprietary bits for additional features. The FOSS bits are available worldwide, but you have to pay to download the full OS with the proprietary bits included, and AFAICT they won't sell it to customers outside Europe.

[Mongrel]

Yeah. IIRC, MeeGo was their original in-house replacement for Symbian, but they cut the deal with MS because they didn't think MeeGo was ready to, er, go yet. Another might-have-been.

[Thad]

Yeah, it's kinda fascinating looking at all the mobile OS's that are still out there in some form. Palm's OS became webOS, which is now owned by LG and mainly used in TVs but also has a mobile fork called LuneOS. Canonical abandoned Ubuntu Touch, but a nonprofit called Ubports picked it up.

And that's not even getting into newer efforts. I saw something the other day that there's a tablet OS called JingOS; it's seen at least one solid review and it looks promising but it's still too early to tell whether it has legs.

None of which helps you pick a phone, but I think it's all fascinating.

[Büge]

my phone battery got an edema or something, cause it's all swollen :(

[Upthorn]

my phone battery got an edema or something, cause it's all swollen :(

I just yesterday learned about the existence of the Spicy Pillows subreddit. So you can rest assured that your phone battery is not alone in its ailment.

[mharr]

It is a welcome alternative to suddenly deciding to become a crotch mounted incendiary grenade. Assuming the battery is modular it should be one of the cheapest jobs at your local indie repair place.