The unlocked Galaxy S7 Edge that I bought last September is regularly pissing me off. I don’t care about its iridescent silver finish and curved screen when it’s less functional than my wife’s cheap Moto G5+ at basic smartphone tasks like Google Maps and streaming music. Fuck this phone.
On paper, the S7E ticked all my boxes, and even introduced me to the totally unnecessary but also lovely world of wireless charging. But no matter what I do, including a recent factory reset, it lags like crazy on Google Maps, and streaming music. Doing anything else when either of these things is in the background is unreasonably slow, and doing them together drags the phone to a crawl. Oh, and I use Google Maps and stream music together all the damn time. Plus there’s the little Samsung annoyances like their multitasking view and lock screen notifications sucking compared to regular Android. I’m not a stock Android purist but I just can’t take it any more.
I don’t want to spend new flagship phone money, and the need for Verizon compatibility limits my options in the unlocked world where more phones tend to only work on T-Mobile and AT&T. I just switched from T-Mobile back to Verizon because of coverage at my new office.
I’m looking at used examples of the OG Pixel XL. They’re now under $300. I’m also sorta kinda considering the Moto Z2 Force. It has a pretty good camera, I like Motorola software, the fingerprint sensor is on the front which I like, and in theory you can add a wireless charging Moto Style Shell to the back of it, but this particular item is no longer widely available. I could probably find one if I wanted. The downsides are it’s not unlocked, there’s no headphone jack, and its ShatterShield screen is so soft you can scratch it with your fingernails, requiring a screen protector on a supposedly shatter-proof screen.
I’m not moving on either of these right away, because Motorola has 3 other phones that may or may not all be announced at an event on June 6: the Z3, Z3 Play, and One Power. So far only the Z3 Play specs have leaked, and while its Snapdragon 636 is less powerful than I’d prefer, it could work. Much less is known about the other two.
More to come. Fucking Samsung. How the hell do they sell so many phones?
UPDATE: After writing this post I decided to play around with the phone more to see if I could make any options. I lowered the resolution from 1440p to 1080p, and turned on Force GPU Rendering in Developer Options. It’s made the phone generally decent to use although not jank-free. I don’t like that I’m not able to use the full resolution of the screen, but this has at least prevented me from hastily buying a used Pixel XL 1 before Motorola announces their new phones in a couple days.