$500 for an A series is insane. You can get a refurbished S24 for $100 less with a way better processor.
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Remember when it was a joke that the iPhone cost that much? "It's $500, you have no choice of carrier, the battery doesn't hold a charge, and the reception isn't very..."
Not to be on Samsung's side, but maybe they slowed the end charge to avoid any battery overcharge issues?
I think even some Chinese OEMs throttle somewhat post 80% (and/or give user the option to limit charging upto that point only). I have a spare entry level Samsung phone. It supports 25 W charging though it gets very slow post 80%. It's not a big deal because the battery capacity is good and with an efficient chipset and 60Hz display, it does way better than my main Realme phone which I need to charge almost twice daily.
everyone does. It's how the lithium battery charging cycle works.
My personal experience with Samsung phones is that they are rubbish, slow, full of bloat you can't remove. Maybe the high end are good, but the A-series have no business being so bad for the price.
The bloat! It used to be apps but now it is baked in with knox, samsung services, ugh
I have been thinking about getting a S24 Ultra purrly for its AI less flagship position with stylus but I cannot pull the trigger on a samsung device.
How about a Sony Xperia phone?
I loved them, I had the Z flagships for a few years. Their naming convention absolutely sucks but given camera is a priority for me they are top of the list but they are a little overpriced to be honest.
I am looking at getting a Sony Xperia Z 1 V second hand, still a grand though
My SO has had several and really liked them until they broke or got lost (the phones' quality really aren't to blame here). I've offered the Sony Xperia 10 VI to my dad last Christmas and it doesn't come with much bloat at all, I would call it good.
But if you want a completely bloat-free phone, you can't beat Google Pixel flashed with GrapheneOS.
My SO has had several and really liked them until they broke or got lost (the phones' quality really aren't to blame here). I've offered the Sony Xperia 10 VI to my dad last Christmas and it doesn't come with much bloat at all, I would call it good.
Sony Xperia phones are great, until you unlock the bootloader and it wipes the camera software, leaving you with a camera that takes worse pics than a literal potato.
But if you want a completely bloat-free phone, you can't beat Google Pixel flashed with GrapheneOS.
This is my plan for my P9PXL. I'm weaning myself off of Google's services, but I need to find something comparable to Keep. I use Keep for a lot of random notes and ideas, and so far nothing I've found comes close (Nextcloud Notes included).
All phone cameras suck without heavy postprocessing. Pixel binning and the tiny sensors with fixed aperture means unless you have a good software processing the picture is gonna be bad. They use composite capture which constructs the final picture out of many pictures taken almost simultaneously with different sensitivities. Unless the camera software is tailor made for the hardware, it will look awful. It's also why different phones with the exact same camera hardware take radically different pictures.
Oh yeah, for sure. There's no reason for that partition to be wiped out though.
I use a few of the google apps via the sandbox google-play services on GrapheneOS and it works fine (Maps, Android-Auto, Camera, Playstore).
They've gotten a bit better with this lately I think. Although it has certainly gotten slower over the years, my A52 4G is definitely still usable despite being released over 4yr ago as a mid-range phone.
A bit better maybe, but still the worst phones you can possibly buy, in my humble opinion.
I had a Samsung A50 for some time. Worst phone I've ever see in my life. Terrible build quality, the thing came apart all by itself, and it's my work phone that I really use at a minimum. And the worst is how slooooow this phone as always been.
Last year I got it "upgraded" to a A35 5G, it's a little faster, but the build quality still seems to be rubbish and the bloatware is through the roof !
I hate the mandatory "updates" which is only a prompt to install "suggested" apps. Even when deselecting everything, it still starts downloading TEMU. Fuck that.
Yes ! I've got the exact same experience, it was mad ! Pop-up to update a bunch of baggage apps I would never ever want, I dismiss it for it to appear again exactly one week later. I untick everything and press next. It installed the stuff anyway ! This should be illegal.
Do they really have no microSD card slot or is it one of those that you can use 2 sim or 1 sim + 1 microSD?
Samsung dropped SD Card support a while back, and it's fucking stupid. The EU should find a way to go after them.
They removed sdcard slot support in A36 and A56 series phone.
Friend bought one and brought him a high capacity sd I wasn't using, to my surprise it genuinely didn't have a slot for it.
My $350AU (~$200US) Motorola G84 has been near perfect for the price. Only the camera sucks a bit, and Facebook Messenger notifications are unreliable; but it shits all over the A20.A30 I had before. Of course, Motorola is a gamble itself though - for example with this phone, you can't use the camera if you're connected to 5G on some networks, and they won't fix it.
Too much bloatware.
I mean, LineageOS offer around 9 years of support, depending on device. You could turn your back on the corps and install a ROM made by and for the people. LineageOS and others are mostly there to support phones for many years after the manufacturer quits. Reference: 2011 phone with 2020 software and Google security updates
But in the vast seas of phones, Lineage OS still supports a very small subset. Major players like Google or Samsung are covered but a LOT are skipped.
If one's phone supports Lineage OS, well and good but it's not a fix all
If you have the technical-know-how and the patience, you can install LineageOS on unsupported devices. It might be unstable but, again, if you know what you are doing, you can get around many of the issues.
Most people who use and support custom roms make sure the phone they're buying is supported before hitting the checkout button.
Want to but can't install it. It is too hard.
I'm genuinely curious: what about it is "too hard"?
too hard
There are tons of things you have to do succeed to get it to boot Lineage OS or similar. Last time I checked there were no next-next-next installation guide on the phone. It is line trying to install arch linux without the arch installer.
Yes, I really want to use anything else than Android by Google. Lineage OS would offer more updates. But also possible do install other apps as I have heard it means rooting it which always is required to get Lineage OS?
I can install debian server on PC. No problem. But on smartphones you are suppose to do some unlocking of bootloader? Then install some TRWP or something to boot into. There you have some unzip tool that you have to find tree(!) files and install them in the right order and be lucky you picked the exact right one(WHY is it not enough with ONE file and wipe/clean is done automatically?). Then you have to do something about recovery I think. IF you succeed installation(I have never succeeded that far), you have to install g-something to get google play to work so you can install apps and get them in working shape. Then when there is a new Linage OS android version you have to repeat everything AGAIN. This is really madness how much extra work and hard it has to be...
WHY can't it just be in Android by Google to just install an app called installer Lineage OS - click confirm installation and let it do the rest?!
Those "next-next-next" installers are doing exactly what you described under the hood. However, with Android devices, there are so many variants and drivers that a single installer couldn't possibly cover all of them.
The Lineage OS devs make solid guides that are pretty easy to follow though. If your device is supported, there will be a guide for it. Yes, you have to use the command line for some parts. That's hardly the hardest part.
Somehow it is possible for both Windows and Linux on PC to get an installation guide with next next next installer click guide. You dont get that on Android ever.
Ideally it should be as easy so anyone could install it that want to. Today it is simply too hard. Alternative rooms dont have chance to be mainstream without that.
That's the difference between ARM devices where manufacturers put everything on a single chip, and x86 PCs where everything is standardized.
Not sure why that matter. Google manage to run Android on the ARM device and we know Android is open source so just copy that over to the custom build for Lineage OS.
Also why not make a standard to solve it for all OSes? We have ARMv8 as one standard.
I literally explained why it matters. SoC hardware varies too much, and they aren't standardized like PCs are. It's not as simple as you think. It should be, but in reality it's not.
The "PC" got its start as "IBM-compatible", which is what PCs that we know and love today are still based on. It's a standardized architecture, CPUs are all x86-based, and there are a lot of common drivers (HID devices like mouse & keyboard, generic gfx drivers that can run most GPUs at a basic level, etc).
ARM isn't standardized like PCs are. That's where the disconnect is. There are no "generic" drivers for things like modems, chipsets, graphics, etc. like there are on PCs. And there are literally thousands of ARM phones running all sorts of varying hardware that use proprietary driver from the manufacturer that may or may not ever be updated.
Even if they need special drivers for each device, they have solved it. Lineage OS supports tons of devices. How did they get the drivers? that does not matter. But they got it working or the project would be pretty dead. So the drivers problem is solved, now just make a good next-next-next guide.
Sure, Lineage OS does not support all kind of devices. But I think they can still have a common, user-friendly, installer process even though the drivers are different.
I am guessing that they will make a standard for ARM in the future so it will work like any other PC where they can just plug in any random usb device or similar and it just works.
Oh my god dude.
Look, I get it. But if it was that easy, don't you think the devs would have implemented that already?
Why don't you hop over to their repos and start contributing?
Make sure the cell provider hasn't banned the model. AT&T banned a bunch of perfectly good unlockable international phones and kept the locked local ones not supporting lineage. They still work of course, just can't make calls.
Lineage tends to work mostly on older phones.
the A series as a whole has been nothing but a disappointment from my observations. The a50, 51 and 52 have all sucked, the a11 and a12 series were subpar at best and the a20/21 series might as well not existed.
after the third continuous series of disappointment I stopped following the series though so maybe it's better.