I'm on my 2nd Motorola G series. Very good hardware value and the 1st was almost bloat free. I had to debloat the 2nd but it's mostly ok now. I keep hearing cringe things about Samsung. No idea about Xiaomi.

I’ll probably get flak for this due to being on Lemmy, but I’ll throw out the iPhone 16e. It’s priced really well against competition and you can often get them prepaid and unlocked at a decent discount.

And I’m sure someone will loudly tell me how wrong I am, but I’ve found the build quality to be best-in-show. I’ve dropped it with no case at least half a dozen times and you can’t even tell.

It’s not a power-user device so no, you don’t get all the fancy custom ROMs and such, but for doing all the normal phone things, I’ve not had a single issue.

I was a hardcore Android user for about 10 years, but now there’s so few real advantages over iOS that I just prefer the simplicity of iOS.

Been Samsung for about 5 years. It just works, although that wasn't always the case. I was Apple once upon a time, as their OS was rock solid, albeit insanely locked down. Everything else just seemed jankey and unreliable. S25 ultra is my current phone. It's decent, but I haven't been excited about a new phone in over a decade.

Motorolla is xcellent budget pick with strong battery life and smooth daily performance.

For the past decade plus I've just been buying the cheapest unlocked phone available. Last two have been Motorolas. They run all the games and do everything you want from a phone. Bonus, they let me delete x and Meta 's bloatware.

I'll never buy a Samsung precisely because you need to root them to uninstall meta's bullshit.

I prefer Samsung UI, but Xiaomi is very tough to beat on performance per dollar. Huawei if you trust em.

If you want top end, I'd say Samsung. If you don't need top end and are more concerned about value, I think a Pixel would be a good choice.

For me the pixel phones. I just really enjoy them and the possibility to load graphene.os make them even better

I have to deal with tons of app issues in work, from users of Samsung and Xiaomi. I would honestly never buy either brand.

They are both filled with proprietary garbage, you have to use workarounds to try and disable and even then, these two companies are some of the worst for simply ignoring the workarounds and overriding them.

https://dontkillmyapp.com/

https://dontkillmyapp.com/problem

I like my Oppo. It was a good price for the specs and the fast-charge battery is still going strong a couple of years on. Made in China.

Google Pixels only because GrapheneOS is the only mobile phone OS worth using currently.

Whatever last year's Google Pixel was, nab it on sale and install GrapheneOS. Its the best bang for your buck every time. Should last 5+ years unless something goes horribly wrong.