Motorola's Moto G Stylus 5G (2023) sees notable feature improvements that go toe-to-toe with Samsung and Google's mid-rangers. This sale puts it at the top for me.
The Nokia XR21 also has a 3.5mm jack. It's likely weaker performance-wise but it has a battery life of approximately 3 days so it won't run out of juice as quickly.
Bought one for my kid because he's a little artist. Seems nice. I use a Pixel, but honestly I miss the moto "chop chop to turn on the flashlight" feature from my old Moto.
I miss that flashlight thing too. Also on Pixel now but I used an app called edge gestures to activate my flashlight. I just swipe up on the edge of my screen and hold to activate/deactivate. Not as awesome but very functional. If course I use edge gestures for everything, calling/texting certain contacts, activating apps I use regularly, it's such an awesome tool. Been using for years at this point and can't imagine using my phone without it.
If you go to Settings -> System -> Gestures, there's an option for "Quick tap to start actions", one of the options is to turn on the flashlight when you double tap the back of the phone.
That is not an adequate replacement for chop chop.
The screen needs to be on for the pixel gesture to work. Chop chop can be done with the screen off
Tapping the back of the phone to the beat of music will turn on the flashlight by accident all the time. Chop chop is a very deliberate gesture
Tapping does not always register. Sometimes I need to do it 2 or 3 times to get the flashlight to turn on/off, the moto gestures were almost 100% reliable for me
Motorolas are my favorite type of phone. I'm never going to use Apple and Samsung phones are bloated with garbage I don't want. It's not like there's another real option.
The third iteration of Nokia is back to building phones, and the smartphones they sell are part of the Android One program (stock Android, two years of updates guaranteed).
I'm not doubting the hardware, but software is a real issue. Carriers are now pushing 36 month plans... what good is that if your device is basically out of date after 18 months.
I've had a Galaxy Note 9 for a few years now and, at least in my use case, I rarely use the stylus. It's very convenient to have when I need to take notes in a meeting or something that I need to send a copy off somewhere, but day to day, I really only remember the stylus is there when I drop the phone and it pops out lol.
Some people like to make art on their phone.
Others like to use it for note taking.
I came across a TikTok creator that has the S23 Ultra and he uses the stylus to edit/make photos and videos.
Art, annotation, memos, hand drawn animation, business'y stuff of that nature
It kinda depends on the stylus though: Some are actual digitizers(pressure sensitivity for use as a paintbrush, some even recognize tilt and rotation for calligraphy) while others are just a rubber nib on a stick(rubber finger...on a stick..no electronics just rubber).
Even the biggest phones, imo, just donāt have the real estate for decent note taking. Tablets, esp with low aspect ratio screens, are the sweet spot.
Tablets make total sense to me because the use for a tablet is different. I would use a stylus on a tablet with a larger screen. I wouldnāt use a stylus on my phone.
It's great to quickly draw a diagram or something similar to explain something to someone. I could use pen and paper but I prefer doing it on my phone since it's already there. I don't do it daily but I enjoy having this option. When I was taking a break from the Galaxy Note lineup I was sorely missing it.
Sometimes I'm on the go and I need to highlight, underline and make comments on pdf files. A stylus makes these much easier. Other than that I've used it about once for taking a photo using the stylus when the camera was on a tripod.
I got the version with the stylus of this phone solely because the version without the stylus didn't have an NFC chip. The stylus is kinda neat though.
Is using the stylus really more efficient than typing your notes into your phone though? I guess itās likely a preference thing but Iām amazed thereās that big of a market for that.
I have the 2022 version of this phone, and it's great value for money in the USA. Adequate performance, lots of internal storage, headphone jack, MicroSD slot, and good battery life. I didn't buy it for the (crappy) stylus, I bought it for the good value for money.
The 2023 version most notably updates the SoC from SD695 to SD6g1, which is about 15-20% faster and more efficient. It also adds stereo speakers, which is nice. It seems like everything else is only a marginal change or the same from last year.
I would love to see comparison to the Poco F1 which at the time had the same price. I suspect its pretty close, despite the 6 years gap. That being said, the F1 was unreal value at the time.
Not a single phone has released their proprietory camera driver blobs in recent history. I wish that would happen. There will always be a loss of image quality in custom roms which don't use the stock version on the phone.
I've been getting the g power series for a while now. Battery life is important to me in my field of work. And for ~$200 it's hard to beat. No, it doesn't have a great display, or even true 5g. No OLED or high refresh rate.
It does have a 5000ma battery that can last two or three days of use. Head phone jack, SD card slot. Features somehow missing from premium offerings?