[aitchnyu]

After giving up on Nokia and friends complaining about Moto and Pixel, its brothers in stock Android, I switched to Samsung and felt it was a massive improvement. If I'm refusing to buy Chinese brands and iPhone and stuck to models available in India, what are my choices?

[oriolid]

If any apps work on the Samsung phone, it's because of the app developers' sweat, tears and cursing when they work around the phone-specific bugs that seem to be different for each model. Even Huawei and Xiaomi are better than that.

Source: I work an audio-related mobile app. The audio engine code is littered with comments that read like "On phone X, Y happens and we do Z to work around it". In about 75% of the cases X is some Samsung model. And before you ask, X is the phone it was discovered on so there's no guarantee that the same issues don't occur on other phones but somehow Samsung is the name that always pops up.

[albrewer]

I've not really had issues with the Pixel. This is anecdata, but I've had the 2 and currently have the 4a. My wife has the 5. We've had zero issues with them (except for stuff we did ourselves, like cracking the screens) over the past 4-ish years.

[oriolid]

I had the 1. The battery died after 2 years but it had already stopped receiving Android updates at that point. The 4a has been good so far but around here the 4a and 5a had really poor availability.

[albrewer]

Yeah I guess I should have added in the caveat that I've never owned a phone in 15 years that has lasted more than 2 years due to some kind of mishap. Usually a broken screen or water damage.

On a side note, My favorite phone I've ever had was an LG Envy 3. It was about the size of the palm of my hand and, closed, had a 1.25" screen and a standard 9-key keypad. It could also flip open to reveal a full qwerty keyboard and a 3" screen with some respectable stereo speakers.

[nebula8804]

Have you heard of Purism or Fairphone? Not sure if they work in India though. Maybe this is an angle for India to enter the market.

[caycep]

Sony?