this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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I need one for general purposes only, NOT for gaming, so I don't really care about gaming-related features.

I'm going to buy it in Asia, as that's where I live (Vietnam specifically), and would appreciate any advice. 🙂

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'd get a generation or two old pixel, can get fully unlocked ones on Amazon for pretty cheap. Just replaced my mother's pixel 2 with a pixel 5 for less than $200

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What does fully unlocked mean? Can such phones be sold at official retailers? And if not, why would I want it unlocked? Plus, is it easy to do so?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Unlocked means it's not tied to a carrier (mobile phone provider).

Not too sure about the rest of the world, but North America has a huge problem with carrier-locked devices. You buy a phone from YourCellProvider, and you're stuck using the phone only with YourCellProvider.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Damn america is so good at coming up with the most distopian solutions ever and it sucks that people still allow them to

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's more because they'll let you pay for the phone in two years with 0% APR, but you can't just leave, not pay, and use the phone on another provider.

Before it used to be free or heavily discounted, but now it's just a 0% APR credit service.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What a pain. They finally ended this in Canada at the end of 2017. All phones sold since then have to be sold unlocked. Any phone sold before that time is likely still locked to a carrier, but that carrier must provide the unlock code for free upon request. Feels like they did this one right, and it is great to be able to keep an old flagship device for 5+ years and travel with it or move services around as needed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You've had that for 6 years? Holy damn, I'm envious. It's OEM or get fucked over here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Ah, we don't have anything like that here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In australia we have it too and really bad. Basically all phones are locked to the former nationalized carrier Telstra.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's free and instant to unlock, you just have to ask.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Word of advice, pixel is good for software, camera but that's it. Don't take it I less you can use esim with physical sim, as it has NO double SIM slot , that's a must have feature for me. So quite useless in most of ASIA.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed. I'm about to update to the new (to me) Google Pixel, probably the 6a. (I think they're on the 8 now?) The battery on my current pixel is not holding up. My last two phones were pixels and probably my next couple will be as well

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My whole family is on pixels, very reliable phones. My mother's pixel 2 was 6 years old and only failed because the battery began to swell.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can not recommend pixels anymore after owning my 7 pro for a year (been using google phones since the nexus 5x). Their own tensor chip is behind the competition by 2 years, but importantly they use a shitty modem which causes issues for a large portion of users.

Also pixels used to have a significantly better camera than others, but I feel that gap is so small now that it doesn’t matter at the high end, they’re trading blows now.
The only edge compared to the competition is getting access to google app features earlier than others, like magic eraser. Ain’t what it used to be anymore…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The single best feature and the only one that I looked for before buying my pixel was the custom ROM support. Installed grapheneos on day 1, nothing is the only other company in the market here that allows you to unlock bootloader without voiding the warranty so didn't really have much choice to go for tbh. Would be nice if other ones like fairphone would expand out soon.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Finally upgraded my MIL's Pixel 2 to a Pixel 4 5G for $150 on Amazon. It supports Android 14.