Comment on How do you search for honest product recommendations?
OpenStars@discuss.online 5 months ago
I haven’t found a way. I too used days of research, going to a physical store to try something when possible/applicable, YouTube reviewers, many many websites that used to be trusted, plus Reddit reviews. They all lied, or maybe I’m doing something odd to cause my own problems? Or both:-).
And even when they did not lie, about their past experiences, in one case the company itself ended up betraying its entire userbase so bad it made an international sensation and the cofounder left the company in protest - OnePlus I’m looking at you regarding the 7-series updates. I will never purchase a OnePlus product again in my life as a result, which is doubly sad bc nowadays they once again seem like good devices, and triply so bc I know of nothing else remotely like those “flagship killers” of old - that whole genre of phone is just over now, and they were merely the last hold-out.
You have to somehow be an expert in every little thing these days, and when you do find something you may want to consider purchasing more than one of the item to avoid having to go through all that again when the first one breaks, if that makes sense for the situation (for a keyboard I dunno?).
If only after doing all that you could share what you found with family+friends, to spread the love and avoid the same pain all around!? But in reverse, would you trust the reviews of your family members & friends - how sane are they, when it comes to this stuff? We want reviews from people better equipped to do so than we are ourselves, not average or below:-).
Which is why I’m saying that depending on the cost you may want to just roll the dice and see, and also expect to spend even more days of research, and also go back through historical archives of Reddit forums as much as possible. The goal of all capitalism is to take your money, period. The likes of Amazon and Google have truly enshittified the act of internet commerce:-(.
Audalin@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Also was a OnePlus user - now switched to Nothing Phone (2).
OpenStars@discuss.online 5 months ago
Yes, echoing the other commenter: how is it?
I live in the USA so getting one would be problematic but I hear perhaps not entirely impossible for me.
Do you know how it compares to e.g. Fairphone?
Audalin@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Other than what I said in the other reply:
Looks like it has a US release? If you’re unsure or getting a European version, double-check it’s compatible with American wireless network frequencies &c. Specific operators might also have their own shenanigans.
Nope, never tried Fairphone.
Potatisen@lemmy.world 5 months ago
How is it?
Audalin@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Very solid, I think (except water protection, but my previous OnePlus also didn’t have good water protection anyway; and I’m careful enough).
I don’t tend to use glyphs or the default launcher (and therefore its special widgets that only work there; but the ability to have apps in folders on my main screen while being hidden from the app menu is more important for me than a handful of widgets, so Neo Launcher it is).
A recent OS update added configurable swap (up to 8GB), calling it “RAM booster”. I don’t use it, but if you want to run a local LLM (or rather a SLM), you could try making use of it? As long as you figure out how to make the model use main RAM and not the swap.
I like the battery life (or maybe it’s just because it’s the first phone where I started charging at 20% and stopping at 80% semi-consistently).
Termux still works despite the new Android versions becoming more hostile to apps executing binaries they didn’t have included already.
One thing I miss from OnePlus is the ability to deny some apps network access entirely. (I think it was removed in later versions of Oxygen OS?)
OpenStars@discuss.online 5 months ago
OnePlus phones no longer use Oxygen OS - it has been supplanted by Color OS, the same as used in Huawei phones.
With the cofounder having left OnePlus (to start Nothing phone!), and the demise of Oxygen OS, and the ending of the offering of “flagship killer” models, the company has entirely rebranded itself these days to be a “full flagship” along the likes of Samsung and Google and Apple, though ofc far behind all of those.
They are half-decent phones, reputedly, i.e. possibly worth replacing the OS on just to get the hardware for the specs, though the other cofounder - the one who remained behind - has a history of alternately playing nice for a few years then betraying the entire user base, then rinse & repeat with newer customers, so for someone who does not want to replace the OS with a custom ROM I would not recommend them.
My own phone’s update (7T) was so buggy (it made a minor but noticeable international news sensation) that - I kid you not - I thought that the device might literally explode. I quickly turned it off and it did not, but it got REALLY hot for awhile. After researching, the solution was simple: boot the device into recovery mode and wipe the temporary cache. But WTF OnePlus, you couldn’t have had the update do that automatically rather than scare people like that? And I think that melted some internal shielding component b/c even after replacing the OS the phone has never behaved the same - I can no longer hold it in my hands anymore for more than a few minutes at a time b/c it literally hurts and even makes red marks on my skin. My device went from buttery-smooth scrolling - a phone I LOVED, and raved about to anyone who would listen, proudly showing it off - to a piece of crap in less than ten minutes, due to a buggy update rollout. :-(
My update experience seems worse than most, but I am far from the only one, when the company decided that their most popular model - the 7-series - simply was not worth maintaining anymore, as they dropped support for Oxygen OS from the 6-series and older models, and switched to the Color OS for the 8-series and newer models, leaving the 7-series delayed for a long time whether the company would do anything at all for us.
i.e. Carl Pie left for good, solid reasons - not just to start a new thing but to leave the old bad thing behind:-|.