To give you a second opinion from the other guy, I’ve had quite a few Samsungs in a row at this point. From Galaxy S2 to S23Ultra skipping years between every purchase.
They are effectively the premium vendor of Android, at least for western audiences. The midrange has some good ones, but other companies do well there too. At the high end, Samsung might lose out a bit to google on images of people, but the phones Samsung sell are well built, have a long support life, have lots of features that usually end up being imported to AOSP and/or Google’s own version of Android. The last few generations are the Apple of Android. The AI features they’ve added can be run on device if you want, and idk what the other guy is talking about, but the AI features aren’t that obnoxiously pushed on my device, the S23 Ultra. I have some things on, most things off. Then again, I’ve used HTC for a few years and iPhone for two weeks, so except for helping my dad with his Pixel 6a while that device lasted, I’ve not really tried other brands. The added customization on Samsung is kind of a problem for me, because I don’t feel like changing brands after being able to customize so much out of the box.
And I’ve never had issues connecting to a simple Windows computer, given that the phone has always been able to use the normal Plug-and-play driver that is there already. If you have a macbook like I do, it’s a bit cringe, but that’s a macbook issue moreso.
In general, I agree that voting for a person isn’t going to bring about the change that I am sure we both wish to happen, but I would like to say that the choice for most blue MAGA people isn’t about that?
The choice for them is voting or staying at home, as for them, a third-party vote is akin to picking the couch. For a lot of them, the mask-off MAGA movement restricting abortion and further eroding minority rights is still too much to bear to not vote blue. In general, most people on the left I talk to still vote in spite of the fascist-adjacent rhetoric.
Yes, you’d be right to say that harm reduction is futile, and a line has to be drawn somewhere, but fuck me if I choose to live with the guilt of voting morally than picking the option I deem helpful to the most amount of people realistically.