Phone Recommendations

Last update : 13/10/2023

- Introduction -

- Not recommended / avoid -
Apple
ASUS
Huawei / Honor
LG (except the V30 and/or EU LG cellphones)
Nokia (HMD)
Samsung
Sony
Carrier-locked devices
Cellphones with dynamic partition
"Gaming" cellphones
Cellphones without headphone jacks

- Unimportant points -
\ "Vote with your wallet!!!"

- Universally recommended -
Bootloader unlockable
Custom ROMs & TWRP availability
Cellphone Condition
Warranty
Miscellaneous hardware stuff you care about

- Recommended with caveats -
Personal recommendations
Google Pixels
OnePlus [3(T); 5(T); 6]
Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco

- Not tried out yet / unknown -

Just keep using your old cellphone if it still works

Introduction

Personal cellphone recommendations of what you should get & what you should avoid. This page ignores all issues of firmware (except for egregious ones like Xiaomi's) as they cannot be either modified and/or audited to become trustworthy.

Not recommended / avoid

First off, here's the rough list of devices / brands I recommend avoiding.

Apple

Sure, iPhones have those good build quality & record-smashing benchmark performance (breaking their own record obviously). They're also easy to use for the sheeple who's allergic to Android (or more specifically Samsung). However, even with those advantages, I don't think they're worth considering, considering the issues below :

ASUS

ASUS - a brand known for being in both the gaming sector (ROG, Zephyrus, TUF) & consumer sector (Zen-whatever, vivobook). And with some QC issues since the ZS630KL.

15/4/2023 Update : I no longer recommend ASUS phones (even cautiously) since their UnlockTool leaves users' bootloaders on ASUS' whim. Unofficial unlocking methods do exist, but since they don't seem all that reliable, I cannot recommend even that.

General advantages of ASUS :

General disadvantages of ASUS :

Huawei / Honor

On paper, Huawei (and Honor by extension) has an undeniably awesome spec sheet - enough to arouse my performance enthusiast side. However, as its bootloader are no longer officially unlockable, it is getting a veto from me, regardless of its mouth-watering specs.

In addition, while there are unofficial methods of unlocking the bootloader, they're either a paid service, or malware bait.

LG

By default, LG will not allow bootloader unlocking unless you're using the EU variants (officially supported) / US unlocked (might require screwing around with the site). However, with their developer website being now useless, bootloader unlocking is impossible except by using security exploits (such as the LG V30, which will be mentioned below).

The V30 is one of the few LG cellphones to be exempt from this list just because it has an exploit for bootloader unlocking (Archive). But still, development for the V30 is basically dead in the water.

Nokia (HMD)

Similar to Huawei, Nokia doesn't officially allow bootloader unlocking. However, unlike Huawei, Nokia releases their cellphones under the Android One program, which makes them even worse, since Xiaomi & Motorola's Android One cellphones allow bootloader unlocking (Xiaomi even uses fastboot oem unlock). While there could be some unofficial ways to unlock a Nokia cellphone's bootloader, it might involve tearing down the cellphone (or, even worse, using paid stuff).

In addition, Huawei also made it clear that there's no bootloader unlocking for their cellphones, unlike Nokia, as Nokia has a bootloader unlocking site (but it's only for Nokia 8). 12/4/2023 Update : Nokia's bootloader unlock page is dead.

Samsung

The elephant in the room. The biggest Android manufacturer known to date. But not a cellphone brand that I would take, use, & recommend without severe hesitation. However, after hearing a news where Samsung disables the Fold 3's cameras once the bootloader's unlocked, I decided that Samsung cellphones are simply not worth it.

General advantages of Samsung devices :

General disadvantages of Samsung devices :

Sony

Personally, Sony is a brand I personally don't like, especially since they price their devices unfairly (not to mention their PS3 debacle, which further sours them in my eyes). In addition, despite the ridiculous(ly low) secondhand prices, Sony has carrier-locked variants (complete with every issue it brings), which further complicates the prospect of getting one.

General advantages of Sony :

General disadvantages of Sony :

Carrier-locked devices

Carrier-locked devices may not have the ability to unlock bootloader, putting their life at the mercy of the carrier & their maker. Once either deems them obsolete, you can't extend their life by installing custom ROMs, since there's no way to unlock the bootloader to begin with (except for cracking the sim/bootloader lock, maybe with some credit-based online tool). Of course, some carrier locked cellphones (non-T-Mobile US LG V30 is the only example I could provide) could unlock bootloader (by using an exploit), but they're rare.

An example of how bad a carrier-locked phone can be is the SOV36 Xperia XZ1. In addition to the obvious seal on bootloader unlocking, the SOV36 lacks a recovery partition, making any attempt at resetting it without Android Settings completely null (at least in my personal experience, with a lockscreen pin).

Cellphones with dynamic partition

This indirectly translates to any & all cellphones released with Android 10 (and beyond) out of the box. Since cellphones with dynamic partition are currently unable to modify system, vendor, & product partition (aside from installing custom ROMs, for now), you can't just debloat it as you wish. However, there is work done to make super partition read/writeable, so you might want to wait & see.

8/8/2022 Update : Late update, but informing that there's a way to mount partitions in TWRP as RW, allowing modifications to such partitions.

"Gaming" cellphones

These so-called "gaming" phones such as ASUS ROG, Lenovo Legion, Nubia Red Magic, Razer Phone, vivo IQOO, & Xiaomi BlackShark. They're not really gaming cellphones - they're actualy just decent networking phones with some gaming flairs, such as :

Personally, other than the ROG Phone II (since there's some custom ROMs & the ever-important inbuilt headphone jack - 9/10/2023 late update : with ASUS' removal of bootloader unlock, I will no longer tolerate the ROG Phone II.), I can't recommend "gaming" phones, at least until someone out there makes an actual "gaming" cellphone, with microSD, HRR LCD, inbuilt headphone jack, & active custom ROM support. (by the way I have a recipe ready for those who thinks they could manufacture one)

Cellphones without headphone jacks

This is my personal opinion - I cannot & will never (except for the Pixel 3 & Mi A2) use a cellphone without a headphone jack (and cellphones without any kind of ports by eventual extension, should it exists) unless I have a very good reason to do so. Here's why I won't generally use and/or recommend cellphones without headphone jacks :

Unimportant points

With recommendations, there's bound to be questionable ones. We're tackling some of them here.

"Vote with your wallet!"

Now, look here - I almost wanna agree with you on this one - after all, assuming people really got what they voted for, I might be seeing the "perfect phone" around - especially in my hands. But let's be real here - the market won't provide, especially since the manufacturers never really has to. Heck, those manufacturers keep on limiting options (extinction of 16:9 on phones, widespread 16:9 laptops, cars spouting random unnecessary telemetry, IoT shit, I can go on) as we slowly become more dependent on them.

For example, let's take smartphones, because this page's supposed to recommend it. Headphone jack is supposed to be something all phones come with; then came EU demanding -20dB on headphones & Apple shilling "courage" for killing the jack, and suddenly the jack becomes something to actively seek, because they weren't there on the flagship - the option where everything has to be offered. Instead, we keep getting irrelevant stuff (that we never asked for - except for those planted shills over there) such as "supahhelpful ey-aye" & the "best camera of the year" (and more jargons & gimmicks; but you get the gist of it) shoved right up our faces, just because.

Universally recommended

Actually, I cannot universally recommend a device at the moment - there's just no "truly perfect device" out there (perfection is subjective). I now have a projection of my "perfect phone" though it remains imaginary for now.

Hence, instead of truly recommending a cellphone, I'd recommend what you should look for, & in which condition as well. For more tips for cellphones, I recommend going here as well.

Bootloader unlockable

This is the most important factor in selecting a cellphone. However, many brands vary in their bootloader unlock protocol.

Avoid cellphones with non-unlockable bootloaders, since you can't install custom ROMs and/or TWRP without unlocking the bootloader.

Consider getting someone (a friend / family member) to help you if your cellphone's bootloader unlock protocol requires an account & you refuse to make an account for it. This applies to plenty of brands, such as Xiaomi.

Bootloader unlock protocols can be divided into several types, such as :

If you can get your phones with its bootloader already unlocked, it's probably better to do so, especially if the device is in an acceptable option.

Custom ROMs & TWRP availability

Even if the device can be unlocked, it won't matter much if there's no custom ROM and/or TWRP to apply it. You could technically use adb sideload, but it's not ideal, especially if you're flashing on the move & away from a PC.

Building your own ROM and/or custom recovery (or a TWRP build) for your device is also an option, if you have enough resources to do so.

One way to check out custom ROM and/or TWRP availability is to check the XDA forum and/or Telegram updates channel for your device. However, the former's cuckflared & the latter is an app-first ecosystem that may not play well with non-app users. My reviews and/or ROM list page do roughly list which device is supported by what ROM, but I admit it suffers from my bias of not recommending shit ROMs, so there's that as well.

Another way to circumvent the lack of device-specific custom ROMs is to use GSI ROMs, but they're less stable than device-specific ROMs, so there's that.

Cellphone Condition

Advantages of getting an used cellphone :

Disadvantages of getting an used cellphone :

Advantages of getting a brand-new cellphone :

Disadvantages of getting a brand-new cellphone :

Warranty

Moving on to what most of us may have in mind - warranty, since we've probably been conditioned to take our device to the service center every time there's an issue with it.

While it's a good thing to have when your device fucks itself up, chances are it's going to be void - especially if you have unlocked the bootloader (or flashed anything custom). So, in this case, don't rely on warranty - start learning how to fix your own cellphone. Only go to service centers when you're absolutely sure you can't fix it (just prepare to be ripped off).

Miscellaneous hardware stuff you care about

These includes "optional" hardware features you'd want to have in a cellphone, such as headphone jack, micro SD, alert sliders, side buttons, & such. My preferences can be found in the personal recommendations section below.

As for more interesting hardware features such as kill switches (Wi-Fi, mobile, mic, camera, & such), you probably won't find them anywhere except for something like Purism Librem 5. While I'm somewhat interested in having this feature, chances are they either won't fully work like expected (disabling microphone won't prevent other sensors such as the gyroscope from recording audio, for example), or questionably useful (physical kill switches are fine & all, but someone with physical access could disable / enable it without you knowing).

Recommended with caveats

Here's the rough list of devices / brands I recommend getting, with a few caveats that can be (somewhat) easily bypassed for the most part.

Personal recommendations

I'll link my cellphone list & cellphone reviews for more details (read : what I've gotten & used personally).

Also, let me add in what I tend to look for in cellphones :

Google Pixels

In contrast to their Goolag & Go-ogle policies, Google's Pixel cellphones are surprisingly open towards modders... at first sight. It's just that Google tends to make Android less user-friendly with every annual "upgrades". Google's Pixel phones also suck where it matters, notwithstanding whatever upstream issue Google brought on themselves (and their users).

General advantages of Google's Pixels :

General disadvantages of Google's Pixels :

Personally, I don't want to recommend Google's Pixels (if you're a r/privatelife regular and/or a follower of TheAnonymouseJoker you're avoiding Pixels anyway) since they are generally inferior to most cellphones at their price point (aside from their camera if you consider it). However, depending on your usage case, here is what I can recommend in case you really want to get a Pixel cellphone :

OnePlus [3(T); 5(T); 6]

OK, let's face it: OnePlus is basically the US branch of Oppo (BBK by extension) in everything but name. However, this doesn't mean that their older (& unfortunately discontinued) cellphones suck. In fact, the 3(T) & 6 is pretty good (and less problematic than the more advanced Poco F1). 5(T) is probably fine, but I haven't used them & probably won't use them, considering OnePlus' rarity in the region I'm stuck in & lack of well-maintained ≤A12L builds for it other than /e/) is fine enough, provided that you could maintain it yourself (again, it's discontinued) & don't mind trading in microSD for fastboot oem unlock.

General advantages of OnePlus :

General disadvantages of OnePlus :

Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco

On one hand, Xiaomi's (and Redmi & Poco - but not BlackShark) phones tend to be affordable (for the hardware they offer, at least on the midrange) & popular for developers (which means you should at least get official LineageOS & crDroid). However, on the other hand, unless you get the older Android One phones (which are discontinued, which is a shame considering the bootloader unlocking protocol), you'll be faced with what I can say is the worst bootloader unlock protocol ever - Mi Unlock. It requires a Mi Account, phone number, arbitrary wait time (from 72 hours to 2 weeks - though HyperOS seems to change it to just 72 hours), and a Windows computer because Mi Unlock is Windows-only; as well as Xiaomi's arbitrary blessing if the device is on HyperOS. And if you somehow got your Xiaomi phone stuck in EDL? May God (and/or whatever divine entities you believe in) have mercy on you, because you will need a "Mi Authorized Account" from some unknown provider who'll probably overcharge you for some unbricking... or maybe take it to Xiaomi's service centers where you'll definitely be overcharged for unneccessary motherboard "repairs" (actually a full motherboard replacement). So yeah... I'll just drop this conclusion early on : When buying a Xiaomi phone (or their aforementioned sub-brands), always try to aim for one with an already unlocked bootloader unless you're enjoying the pain from Mi Unlock. Or, if you're aiming for a specific model but there's no pre-unlocked unit, maybe find a service center that reliably (and preferably on the same day, though that's highly unlikely) unlocks Xiaomi bootloaders (or borrow an Intel computer running Windows and/or phone number from someone else)? Just... never boot EDL. And NEVER get a Xiaomi phone with HyperOS unless you're some honor student in the Xiaomi's "school" (or you could tolerate the pains Xiaomi will inflict you for attempting to escape MIUI/HyperOS).

General advantages of Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco:

General disadvantages of Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco:

Not tried out yet / unknown

Brand(s) I haven't tried out yet at the moment (and have no plans on trying out unless there's a good reason for me to do so).

Just keep using your old cellphone if it still works

I know that this page is supposed to tell you which cellphone I'd recommend, but fuck it - if that thing still works, keep using it. If that thing needs repairs, do it as long as the costs are cheaper than buying another cellphone of similar specifications. If that thing's beyond repair, only then you can come back & re-read what I would have recommended, and make sure whatever you've bought fits what you need.

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