I am in the process of looking between repairing my phone or switching to a new one. And the no brainer evolution to the OnePlus 7 Pro I have is a Pixel phone. Pixel Phones are definitely not perfect, I know that the battery would fall faster than other phones but hey, that's ok, google chip in it, possibility to go GrapheneOs, all good.
But the A versions only having 128 GB, and needing to pay 100 extra Euro on the Normal and Pro phone for 256GB is ridiculous, and not allowing me to add a SD card for that! Is insane I restarted my phone in December fresh from zero, and in the last 9 months I used 163 GB of memory. 48GB of it is my music on Deezer, for which I pay to be able to download "HIFI" files which I am not willing to trade for using less space on my phone, I work in a place with no 4G, I've got a few playlist I switch between. The rest is 25 GB of Pictures, 7GB of games. 44GB of apps.
Now the answer to this is "Well now with your Pixel phone you can use the Google Cloud, Google Docs blablabla". Something insights by Google offering 3 month of Google one and 3 month of YouTube premium when you buy a Pixel phone. So much cloud that's soo cool! And you can just redownload things when you need it. Well I don't want to redownload my musics everyday when I listen to them, I don't want to trade and limit what I would call normal use. I know not everyone will resonate with this, but the carbon impact on bandwidth used from cloud in 4G is important.
Normalise SD cards, Normalise not using the Cloud as a solution for everything
Update 2 Days later
Hey, writting here because this post has brought a lot of people to talk about storage of data on phone, which is quite nice. I am writting here just because a lot of comments are repeating certain points and It wouldn't be useful answering to all of them if after their will be more comments saying the same thing.
I am not saying Cloud = Bad. It's great we have a place out there where we can Store Data in case anything happens. I simply wish either brand gave us more choice on data capacity, seeing a Pixel 7a only at 128 gb ain't cool, let me make a choice. Seing a Pixel & with 128gb or having to pay an extra 100β¬ for 256gb when a sd card is 30β¬ is not cool.
A personal server is in my plans, and it's one of the projects I'm the most impatient to have.
I understand that I have a different use of phones then the average, I simply want to be able to adapt the tools I use to my different use.
I have taken the step to take a look at the storage in my phone by curiosity and to look with a different eye my consomption of Storage, and have deleted 3gb of games, and 3gb of apps that where useless. I've also started looking into my photos and took out 3gb of photos I had which where useless. And I think there is more photos I'll delete, I am not done on that of course
My signal discussion are important to me, I am in a Long Distance Relationship, and discussions I have with my SO on Signal are the major part of my relationship, and I cherish them. I have set up signal so that it makes when charging at night a copy of my discussions, and when I have Sincthing, it loads the conv to a HDD Drive on my PC. That being said, in the floders I found bugged temp file from saves that did not end, for a total of 20 gb of Signal discussions (oof lol) which where deleted too. How ridiculus was it? Well in Storage>Files the weight of total files dropped from 20,68gb to 0,68gb
Anyway, I am now at 132gb :D! I'm not writting this because I am feeling attacked or to defend myself, just as a small update and because these are reocuring comment that's all, i'm still anwering here and there if you arrive a bit latter to the post, it's impressive from lemmy I feel to still be receiving comments and have a discussion that continues 2 day after a post. Usually on Reddit posts would die in 6 hours, and their where no dick's in the chat. I've read every single message, and answers other people did
What options are there that don't make a compromise on something like camera quality?
Every phone you buy these days is a compromise. The entire market went to shit around 2015.
With a headphone jack, Asus Zenphone, with an SD card slot? Good question.
Even the Zenfone is making some compromises since it doesn't have a telephoto.
And honestly I care more about an SD slot than a headphone jack since an adapter is not a big issue.
Telephoto is seen as more of an additional feature rather than a core thing phones should have imo, especially as the telephoto cost to add is likely significantly higher than a sd card or headphone jack.
Sony phones
But if you also want replaceable batteries, it's the Samsung industrial oriented smartphone range which is left standing with all the notable features still there
Whaaaaaat? A quick ddg search hasn't told me anything about Samsung industrial range phones
https://www.samsung.com/uk/business/mobile/rugged/
TIL about this line. Great hardware. Thank you for the link!
Looked around for LineageOS but there is none, although someone was able to root it. So it may actually be usable for non-corporate users too.
I really wish the Japanese camera companies have the ability to come up with a camera that can maintain a proper always-on connection to your phone, then auto-switch to the wifi connection to transfer photos (JPEG only) when needed. That way I'll just get a small compact and decouple the camera quality from my phone purchasing decision.
Sadly the Japanese are even more incompetent, so that's not happening anytime soon.
I have a smaller MILC that I love, but the reality is that nothing beats a camera that you always have with you.
The cameras I am saving for, the Fuji XT-4 allegedly offers this feature, over bluetooth though, I am hoping it is a smooth enough experience because what you describe really is the dream.
Take photos and have them instantly on my phone which auto uploads them to cloud storage.
Haven't seen a camera that can do that. The Canons can't, was trying in the showroom. The "Auto Transfer" feature shuts down when the app is not in the foreground, and has to be restarted manually each time. What rubbish. No wonder they've lost so much market share.