EDIT: Getting a ton of great responses thanks everyone <3 Once this is up for 24 hours or so Iā€™ll make another edit summarizing everyoneā€™s recs for future reference. Keep ā€˜em coming!

TL;DR Have any recs for non-Apple phones/laptops that have lifespans of at least 5+ years?

Wanted to get everyoneā€™s opinion on want brands/products have worked for them. Iā€™m lightly techy and not afraid to put some effort in, but also donā€™t want to build everything from scratch. I think Appleā€™s products are often anti-consumer, anti-privacy, anti-yadda yadda yadda.

At the same time, with both phones and laptops, Iā€™ve found my Apple products to have double or even triple the lifespan of any other brand. I did my research and bought a $1000+ HP laptop with Ryzen7 a little over two years ago, and due to a flaw in the hinge which is now subject to a class action lawsuit, the screen has cracked and itā€™s mostly unusable. Other purchase havenā€™t failed quite that dramatically but donā€™t tend to last as long. On the other hand, my or my partnerā€™s old Macbooks and iPhones are easily seeing 5+ years of use in addition to software updates.

So let me know whatā€™s worked for you!

  • DarkwinDuck@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Okay iā€™m not sure how much + is in your 1000$ and obviously thereā€™s a manufacturing defect at olay here. But man a MacBook is 2000$+ I have heard this argument too often unfortunately:

    I tried Android once and it was horrible so i just went back to iPhoneĀ©ā„¢ and now everything is great again.

    Context: they bought a 300$ Samsung phone and expected it to perform the same as their previous 800$ iPhoneā€¦

    And this just sounds too similar. ā€œI previously had a 2000$+ device, now I bought a 1000$+ one and it doesnā€™t perform the same.ā€ Except for the part where itā€™s also a shitty brand and the device had a manufacturing defect.

    • NightAuthor@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Iā€™m no apple shill, but every Samsung Iā€™ve had felt great for a few months. And rapidly started to run like absolute shit. Then I swore off them for a couple of years, and came back when everyone was like ā€œthis oneā€™s different, itā€™s not like the ones beforeā€ and then I had the same issue. So I got a Pixel, and that was so much better software wise. But that pixel 2 had a design defect that saw lots of devices having GPS problems and that was annoying as hell when I was trying to do Uber.

      My past 2 phones have been iPhones. Not perfect, I miss lots of the customization and developer level control over stuffā€¦ but my phone works, reliably. I was pissed about throttlegate , I had one of those phones affected, but the phone was like 4/5 years oldā€¦ and I decided that my experience with other phones was worse, and got another iPhone.

      Iā€™m feeling the need to upgrade again, and while I canā€™t endorse a lot of the anti-consumer shit apple doesā€¦ I need a reliable phone. So, hopefully thereā€™s another option out there for me.

      • DarkwinDuck@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Honestly I had a OnePlus 6T for 4 years and after that started feeling slightly slow and i need it for testing at work, I now have a Pixel 7. Both the 6T and the pixel are great phones. My only regret is my own fault, i want to have a telephoto camera but thought that itā€™s not worth buying the pixel 7 pro forā€¦ Thereā€™s many good options out there. But i admit they are harder to find. Itā€™s not ā€œbuy iPhoneā€ and be done with it.

        But honestly every Apple device iā€™ve used in the past made me dislike Apples software more and more. Itā€™s fine as long as you arenā€™t used to anything else and arenā€™t a Poweruser i guess. But thereā€™s just so many weird decisions in the software. And itā€™s all locked down to hell.

        • NightAuthor@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Iā€™ll have to look into the latest androids, but Iā€™m sure the only one thatā€™s really a contender will be the latest Pixel. I love the option to use Graphene OS also.

        • NightAuthor@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Samsungs (at least the ones I had) donā€™t have unlockable bootloaders. And the pixel, well custom Roms donā€™t fix hardware issues.

          • yum13241@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Samsungs have unlockable bootloaders, hell, Iā€™m typing this from a SM-P610 running LineageOS 20.

            • NightAuthor@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              Idk all the particulars, I just know my S7 is still not bootloader unlockable, and pretty sure previous galaxy phones werenā€™t either. That was my last Samsung. Not sure if this was a US thing, a T-Mobile/Sprint think (who I had back then), or a Samsung thing. But HTC and Pixel phones seemed to always be unlockable.

              • yum13241@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Older devices are harder to bootloader unlock, but nowadays they make it easier. My Verizon Note 3ā€™s unlocked too. The carrier usually makes it harder.