I’m thinking Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Other processors are welcome if the phones are unlockable and are ideally somewhat likely to have rom development in the future.
Surely Xiaomi phones fall into this category?
I was going to say this, but apparently the 13 Ultra isn’t available in the UK. However the other 13’s do have the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor.
Xiaomi (or Poco or other derivative brands) are pretty good bang for your buck when it comes to hardware. It’s just a shame they come with all the Chinese buggery. I definitely wouldn’t recommend them with stock MIUI, but when you hack the shit out of them they’re not bad.
I don’t particularly mind miui aesthetically, but is there any other reason to avoid?
The camera on my Mi 10t Lite 5g is crap.
It’s ok in good light during the day, but as soon as I use the zoom, it falls apart. It puts random artifacts into the image and looks awful. If you take a non zoomed photo in good light and zoom in, it’s really pixellated.
I use mine for banking, so I haven’t been able to try another ROM to see if it’s a software issue, so you might be able to get around it.
Xiaomi cameras, and Android cameras in general, tend to be proprietary things. So custom ROMs are likely to make things worse, if anything. That’s certainly the experience I’ve had - many functions available in stock are unavailable in the open source camera apps.
Saying that, I put up with it, as the camera isn’t the main thing I wanted from the phone. I’m more interested in the display and storage capacity. And my phone is mid range anyway, so it was never the best for camera functions. I’ll happily have a merely functional camera as long as I can have a crisp display and 256GB of storage. And an IR blaster, so I can play with public TVs and DVD players.
That’s a shame about the cameras. I forgot to mention that I found Open Camera from F-Droid to be quite good, but I haven’t had any luck getting around the limitations, it’s just a better camera app.
I’m ashamed to say that I fell for the marketing with regards to the camera. Ads saying that it’s x amount of megapixels, but failing to mention that it’s a tiny sensor and a lot of dodgy upscaling…
On the bright side, universal-android-debloater has helped me to get rid of some of the bloat that came with the phone, like the browser that keeps taking over document reading duties. It’s here if you or anyone else are interested
Open Camera is a favourite of mine, mainly because of all the options. In particular I was using the time stamp function. However I found better camera performance from the more standard Camera app that came bundled with the ROM, at least for my specific phone.
You don’t need to debloat ROMs, usually. I don’t even run Google Play Services myself.
I’d love to be able to root my phone and put a new ROM on it, but I’m so dependent on things like banking apps and NFC payments, that I couldn’t risk it not working for now.
I’m trying to break the dependency, but it’s going slowly so far. It’s just so convenient having something in my pocket that replaces so many other little things.
Only mad people use stock miui.
It’s filled with ads, bloatware, idk what backdoor also available. I don’t even put my email on miui just to be on safer side.
Xiaomi phones are sold mostly because they are cheap so good for experimenting around gets picked up by devs. You can check premium xiaomi phones they lack custom rom development cause their audience is small and why do something on a platform where nobody is bother to even buy it.
Ads everywhere. Also sending your data to China.
Not sure about the newer ones but I just unlocked and loaded crDroid on my mi max 2(oxygen)
Android 13, good vndk 33, runs mithorium SSIs and regular GSIs from DSU sideloader!
Here’s an advice before buying any phone check their xda and telegram groups if development is there. Most commonly devs don’t buy overpriced devices cause majority people also avoid them. You’ll find more Roms in a 300- 500 dollar device compared to a 1000 dollar one.
I have a ximi phone with around 20 25 custom rom development lots of kernel development. Roms are almost bug free.
What model and what processor?
I would like to buy a phone with a flagship processor from a few years ago for a discount ideally. I have an exynos note 9 atm, and it’s fast enough, but the battery is slowly becoming unusable and the screen has hairline cracks.
I’m looking for a flagship Snapdragon phone but the range is so limited with little development that I’m even considering buying an iphone istead and using my note9 for entertainment.
I’m using mi 11x, globally it is known as poco f3. Development is phenomenal roms are almost bug free and good for daily use.
Specs are snapdragon 870 its just a rebranded flagship processor 865. Handles tasks effortlessly, battery life is 6 hours of screen on time on 120hz, you’ll get 9-10hours if you use 60hz.
I’m currently running a custom rom based on CLO project. Works fine for me. Idk how the current market it. Previous snapdragon phones sucked a lot 888 888+ 8 gen 1 all these were made by Samsung so they overheat like crazy and thermal throttling is another long paragraph.
If you’re interested in any other device I’ll suggest either go for 865/ 870 or 8 + gen 1 processor (remember the plus) and above. Current cheapest 8+gen1 will cost you around 400-500 dollars.
It seems like ROM support from lineage-os has slowed down significantly these last two years and are only supporting pixel phones