Mandatory labels on smartphones and tablets in the EU now let consumers compare their battery life, durability, and repairability ratings before purchase.
I honestly just fear updates at this point. They always seem to break more stuff than fix, the only exception to that for me has been PixelExperience custom ROM (discontinued).
Edit: Android is simply missing proper backups. Bad update on my laptop? Timeshift. Bad update on stock Android? It is what it is.
First Moto G5s Plus which got high battery drain, sluggishness and crashes after Android 8.1 update. This was bad enough I had to fix it with custom ROM. Then Poco X3 Pro which reportedly had issues with performance after MIUI 13 update, so I stayed on older software. Now my Ulefone Armor 24, which only has one update primarily to fix Google pay, but also brings a newer security patch, reportedly causing many crashes that make the phone unreliable and a bad experience.
Also many Samsung phones had an update that removed access to manual band mode selection, and if I recall correctly, that update didn’t even revert them to default.
It’s not the best for security, but I basically now just fear any updates. If everything works, then it can only be broken.
Maybe I should at least somehow start checking known vulnerabilities. As of recently, I should probably stop using applock on my outdated Ulefone
Exposed ”com.pri.applock.LockUI“ activity allows any other malicious application, with no granted Android system permissions, to inject an arbitrary intent with system-level privileges to a protected application. One must know the protecting PIN number (it might be revealed by exploiting CVE-2024-13916)
I dunno. This feels like a case of making a rod for your own back. The EU are doing a good job of creating a safety net, but ultimately there’s a reason that Samsung, Apple and Google are and should be so popular. I would never buy a phone from a manufacturer without ensuring their update history was up to scratch, that means good, timely updates.
Unfortunately, when buying a phone I always have to make some compromise. If I aim for hardware or very specific feature, there’s going to be a compromise in software.
If I was looking for software, Google Pixel with GrapheneOS looks quite nice.
To be specific with the key features/functionality of my phone:
Software: Surviving high DPI without the software falling apart (I hate how large everything is on phones by default, plus >=600dp the tablet mode is awesome), OMAPI (needed for external eUICC), manual band mode selection (indoors and in vehicles this can sometimes make a huge difference, like from 35Mbps to 150Mbps based on my tests), manual cell tower selection (I haven’t yet made much use of this apart from figuring out that towers in city seem to have 1km limit), and a lot of other stuff in Engineer Mode that I don’t yet understand so I won’t touch (some settings can persist factory reset).
Hardware: 85.14Wh battery (22,000mAh for the more marketable way to write it, and for comparison, my ThinkPad has a 45Wh battery), Dual SIM + SD card (not hybrid), IR blaster, headphone jack, custom button (short, long, double click), 1,000lm light that sucks up 6W (I don’t have a way to measure that though), night vision camera (IR), FM radio that works without earphones (still works better with them).
I honestly just fear updates at this point. They always seem to break more stuff than fix, the only exception to that for me has been PixelExperience custom ROM (discontinued).
Edit: Android is simply missing proper backups. Bad update on my laptop? Timeshift. Bad update on stock Android? It is what it is.
First Moto G5s Plus which got high battery drain, sluggishness and crashes after Android 8.1 update. This was bad enough I had to fix it with custom ROM. Then Poco X3 Pro which reportedly had issues with performance after MIUI 13 update, so I stayed on older software. Now my Ulefone Armor 24, which only has one update primarily to fix Google pay, but also brings a newer security patch, reportedly causing many crashes that make the phone unreliable and a bad experience.
Also many Samsung phones had an update that removed access to manual band mode selection, and if I recall correctly, that update didn’t even revert them to default.
It’s not the best for security, but I basically now just fear any updates. If everything works, then it can only be broken.
Maybe I should at least somehow start checking known vulnerabilities. As of recently, I should probably stop using applock on my outdated Ulefone
https://cert.pl/en/posts/2025/05/CVE-2024-13915/
Though my device has AppLock v14, so I am not sure.
I dunno. This feels like a case of making a rod for your own back. The EU are doing a good job of creating a safety net, but ultimately there’s a reason that Samsung, Apple and Google are and should be so popular. I would never buy a phone from a manufacturer without ensuring their update history was up to scratch, that means good, timely updates.
Unfortunately, when buying a phone I always have to make some compromise. If I aim for hardware or very specific feature, there’s going to be a compromise in software.
If I was looking for software, Google Pixel with GrapheneOS looks quite nice.
To be specific with the key features/functionality of my phone:
Software: Surviving high DPI without the software falling apart (I hate how large everything is on phones by default, plus >=600dp the tablet mode is awesome), OMAPI (needed for external eUICC), manual band mode selection (indoors and in vehicles this can sometimes make a huge difference, like from 35Mbps to 150Mbps based on my tests), manual cell tower selection (I haven’t yet made much use of this apart from figuring out that towers in city seem to have 1km limit), and a lot of other stuff in Engineer Mode that I don’t yet understand so I won’t touch (some settings can persist factory reset).
Hardware: 85.14Wh battery (22,000mAh for the more marketable way to write it, and for comparison, my ThinkPad has a 45Wh battery), Dual SIM + SD card (not hybrid), IR blaster, headphone jack, custom button (short, long, double click), 1,000lm light that sucks up 6W (I don’t have a way to measure that though), night vision camera (IR), FM radio that works without earphones (still works better with them).