best Android Phone

I am considering getting an Android phone as my main work phone. Cost is not that big a concern (within reason). What do you think is, at present, the best Android phone?

Possibly a phablet since I really like the big screen (currently my main phone is a Lumia 1520, and I love that size), and no less than 64GB internal storage.

I am considering:

Nexus 6P
One+ 3
Asus Zenfone 2

But, for no particular reason.

What is your take, guys?

Well, I think you beat me to the punch. Those are the three phones I would have suggested.

My bias lies toward the Nexus devices and their plain vanilla Android, mostly because I've yet to see any of the third parties produce anything appealing. Others on this board like the Oneplus for its security features.

I'd probably say that the Zenfone 2 is a little outdated since the announcement of the 3.

So yeah, personally I'd go with the Nexus 6P because that's the one I wish I'd gotten instead of the 5X, which I just don't think is up to snuff (too slow).

I would hold off on the 1+3 until it the inevitable initial issues are discovered and sorted out.

If you wait 3 months or so, by then one should have an idea of whether/how-well it works, and the N6P might become cheaper with the announcement of the next Nexus in that timeframe.

Thanks guys. I've been recommended the Zenfone 3 as well, and it is really promising.

Yes, I can and will wait, if my current phone does not die sooner. My reason for looking into another phone is that my current one has very little battery capacity left and the touchscreen is occasionally malfunctioning. Otherwise, albeit 3 years old now, a superb phone (with a poor app store).

I'd go with the Nexus 5X or 6P, depending on your desired size. Among other things, you can have some confidence that they implemented USB-C correctly, which is emphatically not clear on some other USB-C gadgets.

Guys, is the 6P coming in 64MB storage top? I thought I heard of 128MB version, but I can't seem to find it on line.

6P is available with 128GB

https://store.google.com/config/nexus_6p

Right now, the Nexus 5X is being discounted and rumors are swirling about a new generation of Nexus phones, supposedly to be made by HTC. (Remember them? Not dead yet!) I don't buy into rumors much, but dropping prices on old gear are hard to ignore. Here one link to a Nexus 5X bargain.

Why wait? If you're looking for a higher-end phone, as in something with 128GB internally, then you might as well wait for the "VR-ready" phones that are coming soon. At Google IO, earlier this summer, Google spoke of a standardized minimum spec for phones meant to run VR applications. That will presumably include a 4K display and other GPU-related goodies, and if you want to get serious about VR, then you want to be downloading and caching lots of geometry and imagery, which would imply more Flash storage.

I looked everywhere except the very Google store.

Thanks.

I did not mention this before, but I really value a large screen, so 5X is not an option for me.

128GB storage is mostly for apps, music, video, and relative peace of mind over time. Admittedly 800 Euros is quite a high price, so I'll have to think about it and definitely a drop in price may be really interesting.

VR capable device are going to be VERY interesting, but that is not yet a requirement. Mostly, I am afraid my phone may die before VR becomes a viable option. I certainly hope not, though, so, we'll see.

I'm thinking of replacing my 1+1 with a Nexus 5X for better network compatibility.

What don't people here like about the 5X ?

Thanks

I've heard people complain about the dreaded old Android stuttery scrolling problems resurfacing on the 5X

Well, I've just finished trolling through the various threads here that discuss the 5X, and it sounds like the problems were all early-days issues thus far.

Quite likely the monthly updates from Google / Cyanogenmod have stabilized things well enough by now. I'm jumping.

cheers

Why not the One+ 3 , Mark?

1) Penta pixels:
I've gotten used to true 1080p on the display of my 1+1.

2) Lack of confidence in OnePlus:
My 1+1 radio has a tendency to suddenly "fall of the cliff" in areas of modest to weak signal strength. Something ain't right there, and lots of others have noticed the same issue. Generally, a reboot is required to reacquire signal again.

3) The Nexus 5X can be obtained cheaper than a 1+3 now.

B&H finally reopened for online orders a few minutes ago. Ordered. Plus a flip case for it from China.

Cheers.

The early problems I had with the 5X are mostly fixed, but it can still be a little slow for my taste. It used to slow down to a completely unusable point, but it seems those bugs are gone now. Now I'm just annoyed that the camera will take so long to get going, and I've missed a shot of my toddler doing something.

Otherwise I like the phone, but if I had to do it over again I'd probably get the 6P, and I'd definitely get more than 16GB.

Is there such a thing as 'the best' Android smartphone, or does every brand and model seem to have some downside in hardware or software, known limitations or future OS update/orphan/abandonment risk?

Between the customized OS overlays imposed by various phone manufacturers and the lengthy OS upgrade mechanisms for carrier 'supported' models it seems difficult to define what 'best' means, for Android hardware purchasing.

This is a little like asking what the best Windows laptop is. It's subjective. Similar advantages and disadvantages exist in this situation. Plus, Google has done a good job at separating a lot of the system functions from the OS so they can push updates to third party phones quicker. I don't like the third party overlays but given the sales figures it seems a lot of people like them or don't mind them.


(BTW, why use single quotes? I'm pretty sure you still use double quotes in those situations)

Sure.

I rephrase my question: what is your favorite high-end Android phone at present, and why?

Could you clarify this, Mark? Or even just a link? I am new to this issue with the One+ 3.

The subpixel layout for that type of PenTile AmoLED display is quite different than how most LCD displays do it. The result is that the effective resolution is much less than 1080p, making text less crisp than it could be.

See the Display portion of Anand's review:
http://www.anandtech.com/print/10411/the-oneplus-3-review




Now mind you, my old Galaxy Nexus had a 720p AmoLED display, and I didn't mind it a nit. But since replacing that with the 1+1, my eyes have gotten used to the crisp seamless fonts and icons of the 1+1's 1080p LCD display. No going back!

Edit: I just remembered something else that was bad about the Galaxy Nexus AmoLED: way, WAY too dim. Not usable outdoors. Anand suggests the 1+3 might have a similar issue.

My 1+1 is very usable even in direct sunlight though, and Anand suggests similar brightness from the 1+3.

That is really useful. Thank you.

I do, definitely, appreciate a good quality display.

I've had a Nexus 5X since they came out, and recently got another one for my daughter, taking advantage of the discount that comes when you sign up for Google Fi.

Screen: it's a traditional backlit screen. You don't get the deep black levels of an OLED but you do get very good color accuracy. The thing I hated about my old Galaxy Nexus was that they had the color saturation cranked up to ELEVEN, so everything looked garish. (The latest 1+1 news suggests they're releasing an SRGB mode. Android doesn't yet have support for multiple color spaces, so apps that want to take advantage of the wider color gamut of OLED displays would have a way to do it. I suppose this will come sooner or later.)

Lag: This was indeed a problem early on with the 5X. I'd previously reboot every morning. Now, the monthly security updates are pretty much it for my rebooting. That said, every once in a while, background tasks do drag the phone down. Misbehaving apps that don't know how to play nice (which seems to include TiVo, AT&T UVerse Voicemail, and sometimes others) can drag down the whole phone.

I am reading good things about the Huawei Mate 8, too.

I've had the phone for a day now, and it seems rather excellent. The RF subsystem is outperforming that of my 1+1 -- works fine in the heretofore dead spots.

That was priority one for me, and the only reason I wanted to replace the 1+1. Now I just have to decide which distro.. err.. "ROM".. to run on it. Stock is okay, but has very limited customization options, even with Xposed on top of that.

Okay, i have the Nexus 5X set up with CM13, similar to how my 1+1 is set up with CM12.1.

One MAJOR nit: there's no way to lock the homescreen to portrait mode independently of the apps. So it's either rolly-polly homescreen as I handle the phone, or my photos don't autorotate.

Or I must continuously go in and out of settings (or a quick..er..slow toggle) to enable/disable autorotate over and over and over..

Somebody thought that was a good design. Ugh.

Anyone else solved this one yet?

Yes, I bought an iPhone.

sorry, couldn't resist

This seems like it might do what you want

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.fameit.rotate&hl=en_GB

On a second reading of the blurb, probably not

Found it. CM13 has hidden the setting "Allow (Home Screen) Rotation" under their semi-secret Settings menu, separate from the rest of the rotation settings which are located in the normal (Android) Settings menu.

They are a bit schitzoid about settings, with most of them integrated into the Android menu, yet some (like that one) tucked away in their own menu which isn't discoverable from the main menu.

Yeah I was going to say. That's not how stock Android works at all. The home screen never rotates.


So ha! Try again!

Meanwhile, RF performance with the Nexus 5X is substantially better on the frequencies around here than it was with my 1+1. I can use the handset to check prices/stock etc. while inside the depths of Costco and Lowes, as well as on the back porch of our friends' home down the street. All places the 1+1 was useless.

Battery percentage seems to drop more quickly on the Nexus 5X, but probably just because it is getting more of a workout as I continue to set up and tweak things.

Pity MultiROM boot manager isn't available for it -- I really liked that for easy multi-generational backups and trying out new stuff with a safe fallback install. Oh well, the rest is pretty good thus far.

EDIT: Mind you, with only 32GB of internal flash, MultiROM wouldn't be quite so useful on the 5X as it has been with 64GB on the 1+1.

The rear camera on the Nexus 5X seems rather excellent. Very very good in low-light situations with those largish pixels and the High Dynamic Range feature of the Google Camera app.

The size and weight of the device are very nice -- a lot lighter in the pocket than the 1+1. Being about 1/4" narrower, it is easier to hold in the hand as well.

Definitely a very good upgrade except for the smaller amount of built-in flash. Thankfully, USB OTG works just fine with CM13, and the tiny little Sony USB-C/A stick I purchased works more than well enough for backups and file transfers.

The USB-C connector is a win, but also a nuisance given that the phone, charger (and aforementioned USB stick) are the only USB-C items in the house. I did also get a Belkin USB-C/A cable though for use with ADB and data transfers.

Pleased.

So, my battery worsens by the day. I think I am going with a Nexus 6P sooner than I thought.

I'll have to get soon some USB-C cables to keep here and there. Oh well.

Can you have the battery replaced for modest cost?

Just to extend the time you have to decide on a replacement phone?

Good advice, if it's possible. The cost of the battery replacement should be more than offset by savings when purchasing the 6P later in the summer (when it should be priced cheaper than now).

EDIT: But you said the screen was also going a bit wonky, so.. maybe sooner than later.

Glad to hear you like the 5X, Mark. I think I was a little soured on it because until recently it was just an awful experience using it. It would constantly slow to a halt and nothing would work at all. Rebooting didn't even work all that well.

But that's fixed now. I still have some minor annoyances with it, but overall I like the phone. I still think I would go for the 6P if I had to do it over again, but at that point there was a large price difference that I wouldn't have been able to cover.

Yeah, it's a nice phone, just right in the hand and all of that.

The battery life does still seem to be going down more quickly than I'm used to. Its around 45% right now, after coming off the charger at 100% this morning (8am).

The 1+1 takes 3-4 days to show that low of a percentage. Perhaps the 5X is just being more accurate about things, and really does work down to 5% or so. I don't think the 1+1 does.

My old Galaxy Nexus would just barely make it through a single day on a charge.. maybe it's a Nexus thing.

Ordered another charger from Google today -- free shipping promotion.

Cheers

Yes, actually. I've been considering it and watching tutorials.

It's a Lumia 1520, it's "sealed". Of course, you can replace the battery, and it would cost you just 30 Euros top, but the process of opening it and replacing it is a bit complicated (few people even damaged the phone in some way or another, having to spend more time to fix it).
Then, as I was saying, the phone touchscreen is also giving me issues: it randomly detects a "touch" at the bottom-right corner, with random effects - which also is a common problem with old 1520s -; it also can be fixed, with some time and work and some parts to find.

The real thing is, this is my work phone. If I start working on it to fix it, I will need another phone while I do that. So, I am thinking I may as well get a new one right away.

Anyway, yes, I will try to keep this through the summer. I am just not sure it will live through it.

To give you guys more details.
When i told you the battery was worsening by the day, I have not been accurate. While the battery is indeed old and near death, there may be something else going on to worsen the situation.

Since three or four days ago, if the phone dies completely, I can only charge it from the power socket. Not from my laptop, not from my "power bank", EVEN using the 2.1A USB connector - 2.1A is in theory as much as the phone can take, but clearly the wall power outlet is doing a better job here. When i try to charge it from anything else than the wall power socket, phone wakes up, starts, after few seconds it returns a "battery low" message, then dies again, and it keeps cycling like this indefinitely. Clearly, it started drawing more power at boot. This could be software-related, but there was no update since few months ago, and I did not install any new App - I may have uninstalled a couple, actually. At the same time, the phone also started to randomly die on me, as if task would suddenly start and draw a lot of power.
Notice that both when this happened, AND upon boot, the phone gets really hot. Again, AS IF some CPU intensive task was running, but nothing really is.

So, I am suspecting there's some more serious hardware issue here.

Ah well. Might as well get a replacement handset sooner than later then. You deserve a 6P, so go for it!

Yes, I'll keep you guys posted.

Battery life on the 5X has improved over the past week. Perhaps I'm not stressing it as much, or the calibration has collected enough data, or maybe it's the ElementalX kernel and battery tweaks I installed.

Things are definitely better now though.

Here is something I found that has turned out to be nearly indispensable with the new phone and it's USB-C port:

Sony (yuck) 16GB USB A/C Stick

The product photos surprisingly don't show the USB3 Type-A connector that comprises the fat end of the stick, but it's there. Nice and small, not terribly quick at writing, but not that slow either. Reads are very snappy (over 100MByte/sec).

Just checked sequential reads with hdparm running on the Nexus 5X:

230MByte/sec from internal flash.
23MByte/sec from the USB stick.

On my main desktop notebook machine:
110MByte/sec from the USB stick, constrained by the PCIe-x1 slot that the USB3 card uses.

And from the Dell X1 notebook (faster USB3 implementation):
120MB/sec read, close to Sony's quoted "up to 130MByte/sec".

http://www.xda-developers.com/oneplus-3-xda-review/

(A very thorough and balanced review; favourable overall, I think).

Very cool! I might have to pick one of those up. I don't do a tremendous amount of transferring files to/from my phone, but when I do it could be useful. What app are you using for file management?

My handset has CyanogenMod-13 on it. So I try mostly to use the included File Manager (from Cyanogenmod). It's not as capable as something like, say, ES File Manager, but also doesn't seem to have the same amount of bloat, adware, and spyware that others do.

There's also a different, far less capable, File Manager that pops up in the notification bar when I insert the USB stick. Not sure where that comes from, but I use its menu to "eject" the stick when done.

Mostly, I've been using the stick with TWRP for full flash backups, and for installing system apps like SuperSu.

Cheers

This is a really great phone running CM13.
I just had to say that. Again.

The non-official "NillKin" flip case arrived the other day from China. Fits the handset really well. Only bad thing, which I knew before ordering, was that it would not auto switch the screen on/off when opening/closing the flip cover.

Fixed that though with a tiny dab of hot-melt glue, a thin button sized circle of felt, and a small broken sliver of a hard disc's magnet.

My incredibly generous gf, and a bunch of equally generous friends, set together to give me a shiny Nexus 6P 128GB (!!) for my birthday.

Kind of speechless, at the moment. I am watching it as it updates after the first boot.

As I set it up, all I can say is that the screen is really good (I knew that), and build quality is actually really really impressive (very good surprise. I expected it to be good, but this is quite something!).

Very cool! I'm jealous of your storage space

Wow!

Ok, so far I am very happy with it.
I am still in the process of installing all I need, but I've been 90% operational since 1 hr after starting to setup the phone. That is good.

Greatest annoyance: I could not migrate WhatsApp chats to Android. Media was no problem.
In spite of all I've tried and read, there seem to be no way to migrate chats from WP to Android. I'll keep exploring this as I have time, but I am not sure it is worth spending time on it.


Surprisingly, the few apps I am failing to fully replace are... games! While fewer of course, Games in the Microsoft ecosystem are often really top quality. I just assumed EVERY game in the Microsoft store would exist in the Game Store, with the exception of some Microsoft xBox series ones. That does not seem to be the case.

There are few games I've always enjoyed to have in my phone in spite of my unfortunately little time to play. They do not exist in Android and replacements I've found are not so good.

So maybe you can recommend something?

1. Geo-defense
Best tower defense game I've played. What is an Android recommended equivalent?

2. Implode!
Best building demolition game I know. Any recommendation for Android?

3. Bridge constructor
Self explaining. What is the best in Android?

4. Risk!
The classic, original Risk! game from Hasboro. How can i NOT exist for Android?! Oh well...

Thanks guys!

Thought I had seen this one before:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.headupgames.bridgeconstructor ?

And I see Risk here.

Is this like your Implode?

There are a zillion tower defense games, but I've not played one in ages, so I don't have any to recommend, aside from something like Plants vs Zombies.

Now, if you can't see the apps that Christian and I have linked on your phone, it's possible that they aren't available for your phone, which is up to the developer. Games are usually the last things to see approval for new hardware (not that the 6P is new at this point), since there's more variables to look out for. Sometimes they only aim for the most popular phones, and other times I wonder if they forget about the Nexus devices.

Wells Fargo is the worst when it comes to writing their app for new phones. I can't remember exactly, but I believe it was four months before I could use it on my 5X, which is a huge problem when you earn your living from a series of checks and you don't want to go to the bank every time. Of course, their app is garbage in general but I still want it on my phone...

Or just not available yet.

Apparently this can be due to the game using bitmaps that are too tiny when applied to an ultra high DPI screen. But there are workarounds (Xposed Framework has a DPI faking module for this) to enable installing/running games that are otherwise not offered for a given DPI.

Cheers

The corrct Bridge Constructor! That's the one! Thank you Christian. Apparently i did not look well enough. I only found many clones.

Risk is apparently not available in my country. Why?

Implode! is actually exclusive to Microsoft Store so my question was, more precisely: any recommended Android similar one? I'll try the one you mentioned Matt, which IS available. Thanks!