[shiroiushi]

Yeah, exactly. Phones aren't going in a positive direction at all. What I want is a phone with excellent battery life, a great OLED screen, a great camera, plenty of local storage (and expandable with a microSD card), durable/rugged, and fast enough to feel snappy and not laggy. I don't want AI bullshit, stupid features that tie me to cloud services and help advertisers build profiles of me, can't-delete bloatware, stupid features that spy on me, etc. I also don't want to buy a brand-new $1000 phone every year or two when there's nothing wrong with the old one.

[iakov]

You're describing an iPhone. I've switched from Android to SE2 in 2020, and bought 15 last year on release day to get the type-c charging. I feel it ticks most of your boxes:

* excellent battery life - can't complain about it. I'm not streaming YouTube on 5G on the phone, and I've found out that it can last about two days per charge with light use - messenger apps, phone calls, emails. YMMV of course. * a great OLED screen - it's bright & crisp. I haven't seen a better screen in person yet. * a great camera - it's a very good camera IMO. Takes good shots of people and nature and shoots impressive videos of music shows in dark basements. * durable/rugged - not sure about 15, but my SE2 was abused and dropped. The metal sides were dinged, the screen had a few nasty scratches, but the phone held up together very well. * fast enough to feel snappy and not laggy - iOS is much nicer and snappier that any of the Android phones (HTC Desire S, Galaxy Note II, Xperia Z3, Xiaomi Mi6) I've had. * don't want to buy a brand-new $1000 phone every year or two - I think iPhones do last a few years, given the fact that my wife uses 13 and has zero desire (or reasons, really) to upgrade.

The only requirement the iPhone doesn't fit is the storage - Apple charges an absurd price for storage upgrades on all of their devices. I went with the cheapest option and pay for a large iCloud subscription, and it seems to work well - the photo and file sync between the phone, Macbook & even my Windows machine is seamless and quick.

It also feels nice to give my money to a company that doesn't shove ads down my throat. Apple are not saints, they collect a lot of data and telemetry that I'm not a fan of, but at least they are not a corporation that is built on advertising.

[shiroiushi]

It's not an option: I can't block ads on it with uBO and Firefox. Also, I can't connect it by USB to my Linux machine and download photos. You also forgot about the expandable storage. The lack of headphone jack also sucks.

>It also feels nice to give my money to a company that doesn't shove ads down my throat.

That's funny, because you're giving money to a company that actively wants to prevent you from blocking ads on, for instance YouTube, by restricting your app and browser choices. Meanwhile I can install any app I want on my Android phone, including apps Google won't allow on the Play store such as SmartTube.

[tracker1]

No headphone jack, no expandable (microsd) storage.

Not listed on software, is the ability to install whatever I want, not what Apple decides I'm allowed to install.

[Tade0]

I share this sentiment which is why I'll be passively-aggressively going for a Sony Xperia 5 VI once it launches.

Not because it's particularly great (it's not), but because it's the only somewhat mainstream manufacturer to retain the headphone jack on their flagships as well as microSD card slot.

My only gripe is that it's mostly likely going to be a 180+ gram brick.

[fsflover]

The snappiness (yet) and camera are not great, but Librem 5 might be relevant here. Headphone jack, ability to run anything without tracking (FLOSS GNU/Linux by default), microSD, smart card. If you install SXMo, it will be snappy, too.

[Lammy]

Looks great except for the eMMC. That's the part that died on both of my previous phones (Galaxy NoteⅡ and Galaxy NoteⅣ; currently still using an iPhone 7 that's on its third battery and literally falling apart) so I am very wary of getting another phone with that type of non-replaceable storage. I know that people have replaced them but it takes some awfully fiddly soldering just to end up with another part that Will Die At Some Point.

[fsflover]

True, however, in the worst case, you can boot the phone via USB (uuu).