I've been looking at phones to replace my Pixel 4a as the battery goes and it becomes increasingly silly to get it replaced instead of getting something new. I don't like huge phones, which i consider to be anything over ~6.2". Everything under that is either:
- A Google Pixel with poor efficiency, thermals, and call reliability
- A Samsung Galaxy S with a high price, locked bootloader, dodgy privacy, and bloatware
- A miscellaneous brand with abysmal software support lifespan, variable bootloader lock status, and little to no custom rom support
the ASUS Zenfone 10 would have been honestly perfect for me - sub-6" screen, headphone jack, good performance. But they just haaad to remove bootloader unlocking despite promises to the contrary so now you have to settle for one more OS update and three more years of security updates for something that costs $600+. blurgh.
My phone's coming to the end of security updates but still works fine and is fast enough. I have the same issue, that there aren't any appealing phones out there really. I also still like headphone jacks.
My Xiaomi phone that doesn't have a good custom ROM that's still updated. I did the bootloader unlock, I had to make a Xiaomi account and ask them nicely to do it and wait a few months, but that was years ago and the process probably changed.
There's not any good camera apps for my phone on a custom ROM, they're all worse than the normal one on MIUI. Also other stuff I use like Google Wallet and android auto didn't work good.
yeah banking apps and associated stuff can be a big loss. have you tried a modded GCam apk? they're supposed to be pretty decent
I either lose the close-up macro lens or some other feature when using modded gcam. Tried a bunch of xmls and couldn't find a good one.
ANX camera is supposed to be as close as possible to stock Xiaomi camera app, but it was also a miss for me.
Next time I buy a phone I'll figure out how good the camera is first. Maybe I'll just buy the least flawed old pixel I can find and put graphene OS on it.