Ask Lemmy

In December I finally bought a phone to replace my 3a. I did it mostly for the battery life, although I did actually buy a replacement battery for the 3a and have all the necessary tools to install it. It wouldn't be my first time replacing a cellphone battery.

I was window shopping and the Oneplus 12 became fairly discounted at the end of last year.

Honestly, the overall experience really isn't that different than my old 3a. It's not like newer versions of Android are adding revolutionary features these days and if you're running a custom ROM, odds are you're on a newer version of Android anyway.

Nice things:

• Two days worth of battery life with my usage patterns. Even with a fresh battery, my 3a wouldn't last this long
• Something like 4x more RAM means that apps are usually in the state I left them in when I come back to them, whereas on the 3a they had usually been forced to free up resources and not all apps deal with that well
• The telephoto lens is nice to have, but none of the built in cameras are a substitute for my dedicated camera for things that are moving and/or things are far away
• The screen mounted fingerprint sensor is very convenient, but that's a placement thing. Some people liked the 3a location, but I didn't personally

Unless you are taxing your processor, an upgrade will be incremental. At least that was my experience.

I somewhat regret the larger phone in that it's a bit harder to handle one handed, but most on screen keyboards have a one handed mode to deal with this. I had a pop/ring type holder on my 3a, so gripping one handed isn't that big of a deal.