I think we can agree that most people will never need anything more than a midrange processor for average use and only overbuy due to marketing.

Speaking only for myself, I’ve become accustomed to the snappiness of higher end processors and high refresh screens. All the screens I use on a daily basis are 120hz+ and even though I don’t game on my phone, the benefits of having a high refresh rate screen has become a nice quality of life feature for me. I still have a 60hz phone that I test as a degoogled phone and the difference is quite noticeable.

A high-end processor helps drive apps at those higher refresh rates and also just as important, it can brute-force some of the less-than-well optimized open source apps I rely on to interact with my self-hosted infrastructure.

I can live with a lower-end phone but I’m willing to pay a bit more for features and performance that meet my standards.

If they stick with a Samsung manufactured 750G, it’ll be limited to the low end market. There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s not really an option for the western mid to high end market.

I don’t have any complaints with the 6 either other than the fingerprint reader being a downgrade compared to older models. I don’t plan to upgrade until the 10/10a with a TSMC tensor and hopefully major improvements in performance and efficiency. Would be nice to have more choices without sacrificing this admittedly obscure principle.

I feel like I’m limited to pixel phones since they’re the only widely available phone that doesn’t void the warranty for unlocking the bootloader. I haven’t tried roms in a few years but I like having that choice. Fairphones can be a little hard to get. Are there other options? Lineage support would be ideal.

We literally have wireshark and similar utilities available to all of us to inspect every packet of data coming in to and leaving our phones. You can install pcapdroid right now to see exactly what facebook is doing and where that data is going. This is not complicated stuff.

Now imagine the payday and notoriety that’ll go to the security research firm that is doing this kind of work on a regular basis and is able to definitively prove it’s happening. Why do you think that hasn’t happened yet?

Or how about not assuming either way and waiting for proof before believing narratives. Anything else occupies the same space as conspiracy theories.

The math on anyone always listening to everyone’s phones doesn’t add up and will not any time in the near future.