Help me pick a new "smart" phone!

If your employer is generous enough to provide you with a really good phone with nearly unlimited everything, don't drop it in a sink full of water.   ......twice.   .....in about 6 weeks.    I currently have a Samsung S5 which is so far dry and I'm very pleased with it.  Had a couple of Blackberries and I like the Samsung way better.

I'd recommend the Sony Xperia.   Very durable, you can get waterproof/shock resistant models, they are larger but not unreasonably so.    Android is far superior to Apple in my view, both in terms of reliability and ease of use.   The maps and voice recognition are better on Android as well.  Apple OS is intuitive and looks nice, but is very locked down and restrictive.   And if you use your phone to store or manage photos or music, you have to use their software.   Android phones can just be plugged into a computer and used like an external hard drive, and you can copy your media on and off in the same way.

I use a Samsung Note 4 now, which is huge but very functional -- I edit spreadsheets on it.   The newest models from Samsung have had screen and durability issues (apart from the whole exploding battery thing).   So I'm leery on getting another one when my contract is up.

I resisted getting a mobile phone for years.  I'd had a Fido "flip phone" back in the late 90's, but after I got sick of paying for something I wasn't really in need of, I didn't replace it.

But now I have this magnificent gadget:  Behold the Acer Liquid Z220.

Is its camera awe-inspiring?  No.

Is its display like seeing the Grand Canyon in HD?  No.

Did it basically cost me $40 at 7-11, do I own it outright and has it ever failed to do what I need of it (be a phone, send texts, browse over Wi-Fi, not catch on fire, support Android apps)?  No.

How's the battery life, you ask?  Good.  When it dips below 20% I plug it in and that fixes it, every time.

Is it small and light?  I guess so.  It's approximately exactly the same size and weight as any other similar phone, which is to say it's about 1/10th of the weight and 1/8th of the size of my first (212Mb) hard drive, but it holds several thousand times more than that, and it can be carried in a regular, un-reinforced pocket.

I don't watch movies on it, but I'm mindful that if I did they'd be in at least twice the resolution of VHS, which was sufficient for me for nearly two decades.

Does it have an FM radio?  You bet!  Free music before free music was cool!

Does it still have a headphone jack?  Yes, it's kind of a techno-progress holdout in that regard.

If I lose it, or step on it, or one day it just won't turn on, will I be devastated?  Nope, not at all.  Perfect phone!

From an end user freedom perspective, I would choose the Google Nexus devices. 

It's not because I like Google.   I don't.   It's because they're the easiest phones around to get rid of Android and install your own operating system should you ever choose to do so...like CopperheadOS for example.

I would avoid iThings.   The bootloader is locked and it is impossible to install your own OS.

Smartphones aren't "phones" in the traditional sense.   They're really just small form factor computers.  And, if you want to, you should have the freedom to control your computing.   It shouldn't be "forbidden".

Cyanogenmod, a much more commonly used alternative Android OS will run on these devices.

Usually, the Google Nexus devices are sort of the "reference devices" for anyone developing an alternative OS.

Anyway, I look at a computer's politics first

Hmmm...maybe that mythical babble car shopper should buy that 2002 Taurus.

Ford Tries to Shut Down Independent Repair Tool with Copyright 

Quote:

At EFF, we think people ought to be able to understand how their devices work and repair them without asking permission of the manufacturer. We also think independent repair companies should to be able to compete with manufacturers in the aftermarket. Simply put, you should be able to fix your stuff or choose someone you trust to do it for you.

The Ford Motor Company, however, takes a different view. It recently sued Autel, a manufacturer of third-party diagnostics for automobiles, for creating a diagnostic tool that includes a list of Ford car parts and their specifications. Ford claims that it owns a copyright on this list of parts, the "FFData file," and thus can keep competitors from including it in their diagnostic tools. It also claims that Autel violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by writing a program to defeat the "encryption technology and obfuscation" that Ford used to make the file difficult to read.