Budget phones have come a long waaaaay.
I’d argue that those were different products for a different time. Those were gadgets more than they were tools.
You don’t have to go back that much, my Galaxy Ace 3 LTE (released in 2013) only received 1-2 updates which didn’t really change anything, but with custom ROMs it was really great phone. It made me to switch to Xiaomi (first to a Redmi 3S, ended up using custom ROMs as well, after that a Redmi Note 7, no custom ROMs, I also really liked them both, especially the latter), but now the tables have turned again, I’m back using a Galaxy A54.
It’s amazing to see that midrange phones can serve me for years now not only by hardware, but finally with decent software support too.
Same here. I went from Samsung (Galaxy Note 3, S5 and Note 3) to Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco (Redmi Note 4, Note 5, Poco F1, Poco X3, Poco M4 Pro tG), and now I’m back to Samsung with the Galaxy A53 and A54.
What happened to Samsung is a freakin’ miracle. Everything that’s wrong with TouchWhiz are pretty much gone in One UI, that and the new software update policy are what brought me back.
I went with Xiaomi before (in 2017) since they were offering same or better specs than Samsung at a lower price. The price different were as much as $100-200 for midrange and about $200-400 for higher end phones. Not to mention, they were offering 4K mAh batteries in their phones, while Samsung only offered 3K mAh.
Sadly Xiaomi has gone a bit downhill for me. Their hardware are getting more expensive and their software are getting buggier. Many of their phones were switching away from Snapdragon, meaning ROMs were now nonexistent. Not mention, I just want a phone that’s polished out of the box. Meaning, I shouldn’t need to custom ROM.
If I just wanted a cheap phone, I’d go with Tecno, Infinix, or Itel instead. Or if you’re in the US, Motorola. If I wanted stock Android, I’ll go with a Pixel.
I remember top phones being like this…got Androids since 1.6