Switching Phones

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Up until a few days ago, I was using an LG G4 as my day to day phone. At firt it was fine for browsing social media and playing some games.

However, soon after it started having some problems. At first, the fast charging feature stopped working properly, even with new cables and a different AC adaptor. Later on, it also stopped being recognized by my computer in both Windows and Linux. I’ve also grown tired of it overheating while playing some games and the lack of official updates and an unlock tool for the Canadian variant. Combined with the possibility of being vulnerable to the now imfamous bootloop issue I’ve decided I needed something better.

I has a few criteria in mind while looking for a new phone: - Specs that were at least on par with the G4 - Decent to long battery life - Either lots of storage or expandable storage - Has good support from the OEM when it comes to updates

LG was immediately off the list since they’ve proved to be pretty unreliable with production quality (see bootloop) and also tend to lag behind with updates to their older phones. Samsung would have ben fine, though I wanted something cheaper. A few others were also udner consideration like the Moto G6, Xiaomi, etc. I eventually settled with the OnePlus 6.

So far I’ve had it for a few days and it’s been a pretty good experience. The flagship-tier specs made games lag a lot less and it didn’t overheat unlike the G4. Battery life was pretty good due to the OLED screen and that it’s a 1080p pannel instead of the more common 1440p on other phones, plus the Dash charger is pretty fast. It does not have expandable storage, but I opted to get the 128 GB model which has twice the cpacity of my G4’s 32 Gb storage + 32 GB SD card. And OnePlus has demonstrated to be pretty good with supporting their older phones (the 3 and 3T got the Oreo update not long ago).

Of course it isn’t exactly perfect either. The built-in speaker is pretty bad, both in terms of placement and in quality. OnePlus does claim it’s water resistant but without an official IP rating, I’m a bit hessitant to let it near water. Also Dash charging is a proprietary standard, which means I can’t just use any cable and charger combo to get fast charging.

None of those are dealbreakers though, and overall I’m liking it.