Got an iPhone some months ago because it was cheaper than getting a Pixel or S24 and I hate it.
The apps suck, sideloading sucks ass because of both apple restrictions and the lack of modded apps, browsing sucks because the adblockers suck because the extensions suck, FOSS is pretty much dead of iOS, call spam detection sucks, keyboard sucks.
I never saw an ad on android for the past three years because of how good my setup was with modded apps and Firefox+uBlock but iOS is pure Advertisement Hell.
The OS visuals and responsiveness are better than most android skins but 60Hz is trash as well and 4GB ram means that I can not even open like 3 tabs at once without the others shutting down.
The photo management sucks the most. Any photo I save goes straight to my Camera Roll and has ZERO organization which memes no more epic funny memes are getting saved on my phone anymore.
The integration with Google Photos is also non-existent and images get saved only when I manually sync them and I will never buy iCloud because I hate the locked down apple ecosystem.
Modded apps also suck and nothing is as good as revanced plus the 7 day refresh limit sucks because of course apple wants 99$ per year to have the godlike ability to install your own apps.
Airdrop is maybe the only positive I remember about this. And maybe the battery life which is better than my previous phone's battery.
I always buy a new $200-ish Android phone every 4 years. The huge benefit is that I don't have to stress my $2000 phone breaking. Repairs are way cheaper. Also FOSS apps are cool and good. I guess posher friends than me have gotten used to the iOS ecosystem. I'm not gonna give them a hard time for it, but it's an expensive addiction.
Current phone? Looking to get my next £200 android, lol.
Still rocking my 3 year 11 month old Pixel 5 with no issues, Google lists a few refurbished ones at about $150 though I can't speak to what that experience would be like since I got mine new and managed to not break it this whole time.
Samsung A15. Seems fine. Don't want to 100% recommend it, as I'm not a full hardware spec nerd, and someone may know better.
How's the camera?
Seems OK. My gf said it takes good photos. I am so not a photo person, tho. I'd look online for a better answer.
I have a pixel 6 rn and am pretty happy with it. Just checked backmarket and they're going for ~$160 USD. Solid battery, pretty quick, great camera, no 3rd party bloat, 128GB ssd. You could do a lot worse for the price
Doesn't it have a lot of bloat cos of the Google stuff?
The google-branded phones are aimed towards developers. While they ship with the full suite of Google applications, the real reason anybody buys these phones is to plug them in to ADB, unlock the bootloader, and flash custom firmware.
Google phones are known for being basically just pure stock android without much bloat. That's like the entire purpose of their existence.
Graphene OS.