Since Google is about to brick my Pixel 6a with the battery botchering update, i find myself in the same struggle again i had when buying the 6a.
Basically you have to make compromises on performance and camera and then this was, what i came up with:
- Zenfone 10 (flagship with prices still above launch price (!), which soon gets no updates anymore)
- Unihertz Jelly Max (small, but thick and bad camera)
- Rakuten Hand 5G and Rakuten Mini (also bad camera and older Android)
- Balmuda Phone (which i really like, but also bad camera and discontinued, so probably not even security updates and no custom rom support)
- Bluefox NX1 (really tempting, but appearantly kind of bad build quality and no NFC)
All other options are even older phones. Samsung S25 line does exist, but i really like vanilla Android.
I think the price chart of the Zenfone DOES somehow indicates the existence of a market and i wonder if it would be big enough for a small niche player!?
Personally I am considering a pixel 8, which is the "smallest" of current phones, but it still really isn't small. And i don't see myself as a Google customer because of the battery topic...
I personally would have been more happy had Eric made a small android phone instead of the new pebble, but hey...
I got a Pixel 8, and it's not small, but it's reasonably sized. About the same as the Moto G7 I replaced, much smaller than my kid's current Moto G Power. The good thing about the Pixel 8 is that you can run LineageOS on it, which was the main thing that determined my choice.
Basically you have to make compromises on performance and camera and then this was, what i came up with: - Zenfone 10 (flagship with prices still above launch price (!), which soon gets no updates anymore) - Unihertz Jelly Max (small, but thick and bad camera) - Rakuten Hand 5G and Rakuten Mini (also bad camera and older Android) - Balmuda Phone (which i really like, but also bad camera and discontinued, so probably not even security updates and no custom rom support) - Bluefox NX1 (really tempting, but appearantly kind of bad build quality and no NFC)
All other options are even older phones. Samsung S25 line does exist, but i really like vanilla Android. I think the price chart of the Zenfone DOES somehow indicates the existence of a market and i wonder if it would be big enough for a small niche player!?
Personally I am considering a pixel 8, which is the "smallest" of current phones, but it still really isn't small. And i don't see myself as a Google customer because of the battery topic...
I personally would have been more happy had Eric made a small android phone instead of the new pebble, but hey...