What's a good phone now that doesn't force ads on me?

tester1121@lemmy.world to Android@lemmy.world – 99 points –

I'm using a Pixel 6 Pro right now, and I'm looking around to see if there are any good phones. However, I have heard that there are ads in the newer flagship phones (Samsung, Xiaomi). I am willing to spend around USD$750 on a new phone, but I just don't want any crazy ads or preinstalled apps like Facebook. Are there phones that don't suck nowadays? I can buy a phone that is sold in the US, Canada, or EU.

(I don't want to go through menus to disable ads (Xiaomi), and I'm currently looking at phones other than the Pixel lineup to see if there's a better option for me)
(I also don't want to mess around with custom bootloaders/systems, I rely on Google services way too much)

EDIT: If it wasn't clear enough, I am not looking for things like GrapheneOS or LineageOS or others, I am looking for a phone and judging based on the stock system on it.

165

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

You should keep your phone and install GrapheneOS. It's not hard, you just have to reboot your phone and press few clicks in your browser. You can install Google Play and every Google service should work (except Android Auto and you can't use NFC with GPay).

Android Auto works by now. GPAY not so much sadly.

I got tired of gpay breaking on crdroid. I just ended up getting a credit card that works with Garmin pay for my watch instead.

Where I live some banks have their own contactless payments app which can be set as default in Settings. Sadly many banks only support Google/Apple Pay.

This. People with Google Pixels wanting to switch is something I dont get. You literally own the most secure phone on the planet, with the best OS.

I just want to see if other phones don't suck nowadays, I'm not switching to a different brand just yet (I own too many Google things).

They do poorly. Securitywise (which also means update lifespan and ease of creating a custom OS with full support) Google Pixels are unbeaten.

Samsung actively prevents custom OS from using many security features.

Most other phones have nonexistent update spans.

Fairphone maybe, they are still worse softwarewise than Google.

I have already said that I don’t want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems.