Mobile Choice

Moving to Android

Finally, I decide to give up iOS, despite having using it for so many years. When I began to use iOS on 2011, it's still far less mature than today. People jailbroke it for better UI and more features. I can still remember some of the classic debian packages, i.e. SBSettings which iOS later introduced as Control Center. Good days back then. With Apple constructing its firewall taller and harder, jailbreaking is becoming much more difficult nowadays, not only for hackers, but also for common geeks. I'm not here to comment on the righteousness of Apple's action to promoting this. Objectively, fewer users means fewer developers, then fewer apps to serve even fewer users. To begin with, after iPhone 4s, iOS users can no longer freely downgrade their devices even one wants to enjoy fluency of earlier version. Year after year, the limits just became stronger and stronger. It finally leads to the collapse of jailbreaking community. A lot of cydia apps began to lose maintaince after iOS 9. I have my iPhone se locked at iOS 9.3.3 to keep it working fluently for 2 years. And after this only 2 years, with the screen malfunctioning, infra-red sensor no longer working, cameras poulluted by ashes and speakers making noises, it's high time I decided to move away from iOS, from Apple. (I'm a bit too objective here. What I am truly thinking, F**k Apple.) I choose to move on, and hope I can find some lost freedom from the Android world.

The Android Mobiles

Q3, 2018. Here is a list of Android device to choose from.

Pro Con Price Screen Width Root Screen
Pixel 2 xl Camera Screen Color 6888 6 76.2mm POLED
Stock Android No 3.5mm jack
BackFingerprints cpu,memory
Mi 8 BackFingerprints No 3.5mm jack 3299 6.21 74.8mm AMOLED
Potential ad-less OS
Mix 2s BackFingerprints No 3.5mm jack 3599 5.99 74.9mm LCD
Wireless Charge
Potential Stock Android
or ad-less OS
OnePlus 6 BackFingerprints Camera 3599 6.28 75.4mm AMOLED
Almost Stock Android
MEIZU 16th Screen Fing.P. Ads 3498 6 73.2mm x AMOLED
P20 GPU 3888 5.8 70.8mm LCD
P20 pro Camera GPU 4988 6.1 73.9mm POLED

About Stock Android

Pixel Series have their advantage of stock Android optimization. However, I believe the consequent gap between Pixel Series and other models can be compromized due to more powerful CPU (Snapdragon 845 against 835) and larger RAM (8g against 4g).

About Camera

The stronger the better, though not a major concern.

About Apperance

Pixel > mix2s > All others Still, not a major concern.

About Screen

AMOLED shares no big difference from POLED. And I can go with LCD, due to some untended drawbacks of OLED, i.e. burn-in, low refresh rate.


I choose Mix 2s.