Hi everyone,
Currently looking at either a Pixel 8 or a S23 as a replacement for my Zenfone 8 that is slowly becoming a hindrence due to (primarily) the battery. I would replace it, but as it costs a lot to do that here and I have needs for a non-compromised water protection DIY feels like a dangerous option.
So S23 vs Pixel 8, what would you guys recommend assuming I can get either for the same price?
I like the S23 hardware a bit better on paper, but as Pixel phones generally are very flashable my anti-Google sentiments might (ironically) push me there.
I would get a fairphone 5 for the hot-swappable battery etc if they weren’t so expensive for what you get, and as Im buying second hand reuse is better for the environment anyways.
Got an s23 ultra last year, I’m loving it. I don’t really know what the people here mean by bloat, you can uninstall almost everything you don’t want, and disable the rest of the apps right from the phone. ADB exists if you want to dive deeper but I haven’t found the need.
Loving the fast chip and crazy cameras, some of Samsung’s extensive software is actually useful, and one ui has more customisability than any other flavour I’ve tried before. Much of the customisation is hidden behind this this app called Goodlock that allows you to change pretty much anything on the os. For example you can hide the app names on the home screen or have different actions depending on the angle you drag the back gesture from the side (I have a down swipe set to a system wide search for example). It’s crazy in comparison that Google doesn’t even allow you to remove their dumb search bar from the home screen without changing to a different launcher.
Even so, there are some small idiosyncrasies that are annoying. You can’t have a vertical app drawer without changing launcher, it’s annoying to apply themes from the play store and not Samsung’s shitty theme store, and if you unlock your phone with your face you can’t still tap your finger afterwards to unlock, you have to swipe. Every platform has some of these, you gotta pick your poison here. Graphene os up until recently didn’t support android auto and I still don’t think you can use your phone for contactless payments. Not sure about play protect and banking apps, I’m sure others here can tell you.
I the end, I got the ultra for the camera hardware but I also really didn’t want to give Google any money. With Graphene os now having android auto I might have reconsidered but I’d have to do more research on what limitations Graphene has.
How do you find the battery life? The ultra looks interesting (I feel I would get good use out of the pen), but sadly a bit too expensive for me to consider it good value.
Battery life is brilliant! I have my phone set to only charge to 85% to preserve battery health and the only times it runs out is next day when I forget to charge it overnight. The snapdragon 8gen2 is much more efficient than the gen1 the year before (and Google’s tensor chips). I was not happy with the price either. The S23 is 90% of the ultra for much less money. I ended up going with the ultra purely because I kinda disliked the shape/feel of the S23 in my hands and found a decent deal. But the s23 is much better value (same chip, still very good camera and screen) all you’re missing out is the 10x zoom and the S-pen, both of wich are nice to have but definitely situational.