Samsung Galaxy S8

I've been holding on on my 6 years old Galaxy S8 for this reason. It's yet-another-battery-to-be-charged, it introduced lag in audio especially where it matters(think video playback or games), the battery degrades over time, can't be used with my laptop as seamlessly as unplug-here-plug-there, and I personally like to keep headphones ON all the time even when I'm not listening, in case something comes up. this would be impossible with the Bluetooth ones. sign such a crappy direction they all headed in.

What's the deal with USB-C charging for you? I can see the hypothetical benefit of interchangeable chargers, but I'd try to avoid it, having seen my S8 smartphone USB-C wear out in less than a year.

An official update hard (and permanently) bricked my S8 phone back when it was still the flagship. Samsung refused to fix or replace it because I had moved overseas meanwhile. While "technically" valid, this never happened with iPhones despite frequent travels. Don't buy Samsung consumer devices.

I still remember when my bank wanted me to run Android 9 instead of my Android 15 rom (without root) on my Samsung S8 because "muh security!!" Funnily enough, the only way to hide those detections was to Root my phone... And i still remember when i had an appointment there, they wanted to see something in my Bank app, i opened it (and i assume it had an update since i then last used it) and a big "THIS DEVICE IS NOT SUPPORTED. ROOT IS NOT SUPPORTED" poped up But was as simple as readding the bank app to my root hiders. but still, i hate this security theater

I have noticed with two 7 year old Snapdragon 835 devices that RAM and running a recent Android version makes a huge difference. I daily drive a OnePlus 5 running Android 14 through LineageOS and the user experience for non-gaming tasks is perfectly adequate. This phone has 6GB of ram, so it's still on par with most mid-range phones nowadays. My only gripe is that I had to replace the battery and disassembling phones is a pain. Meanwhile a Galaxy S8 with the same SoC, 4GB of memory and stock Android 9 with Samsung's modifications chugs like there's no tomorrow. I can understand that having two more gigabytes of memory can make a difference but there is a night and day difference between the phones. Perhaps Android 14 has way better memory management than Android 9? Or Samsung's slow and bloated software is hampering this device? Either way it's irritating to see that many companies don't test on old/low-end devices. Most people in the world aren't running modern flagships, especially if they target a world-wide audience.

I guess the OP should have said that the "perception" of speed is the killer feature. I find Android is now terrible on both my Samsung Tab 2 and my Galaxy S8. Sometimes I click something and it takes over a second to do any UI changes and looks like it hasn't responded. Just as you go to click it again, it comes up. I find the same in multiple apps where basic actions take too long even simple menu/view apps like email. I don't know what has happened but it does seem crazy that in 20 years with hardware that is 1000s of times more powerful, we still can't consistently solve click latency. Maybe it's just me.

Try out an iPhone for real world use. I did the opposite. Android is extraordinarily slow ("feels unresponsive") even on high end hardware compared with a comparable iPhone. I had to use a Galaxy S8 for a spell at work and every non-keyboard tap seems to generate a half-second-plus delayed response. I actually thought something was wrong (malware on a recycled company device?) and wiped the phone, installed all patches, and... still slow as hell despite the hardware that is 4x more powerful than my iPhone 6S. It's as if they somehow ported the as-yet-unfixed lagginess of all Linux desktop managers to the phone on purpose, because they didn't know the world could be better. And no, I'm not a fanboy, my phone is my only iThing. And no, there was no MDM or AV installed on the phone by my company that caused this lagginess.