Another year and another phone that's decided it's life has come to an end prematurely.
I have been rocking an Oppo A39 for the last year after my previous Oppo Find 7 hard pricked itself on a security update. The Find 7, while a good phone, it suffered from dead spots on the digitizer that caused a headache.
But non the less, my A39 started suffering performance issues earlier this year and now this past week, the phone has started suffering from digitizer issues like my last phone. This time random touches when left untouched and touches holding making keyboard use impossible.
I just switched to a Galaxy Note 5 that I have been using as a developer phone. Got it second hand for the purpose of development. Performance on it is amazing compared to my recent phones but battery life at 40 minutes and and atrocious burn in on the screen makes it not ideal for day to day use.
So since my daily driver has decided it doesn't want to work, I'm in the market for a new phone. I'm contemplating going through a plan to get something decent but I want to make sure it for fills the needs of being a development platform as well.
Phone needs/Wants
Snapdragon 800 series processor (Don't care for gpu)
5.2 inch+ screen (1080p, but can go higher. 5.5 inch+ preferable)
Bluetooth support (A given)
NFC (Not required but desirable)
Headphone jack (Maybe if they supply audio over usb-c but I need wired audio)
I want to avoid curved displays, glass backs, notches, mechanical cameras. (Adds cost and cuts from rigidity/reliability)
I don't mind if the phone is last years flagship
Vanilla android experience preferable.
Two phones I have looked at are the Google Pixel 2 XL and the Essential PH-1.
The Essential PH-1 pretty much fills all my needs, Except with the way that the company is going, I don't think software support is going to last which is leading me to hold off from it.
The Pixel 2 XL is great except it's overpriced for what it is and the screen calibration issues/burnin issues/reboot issue/digitizer issues/noisy audio has put me off.
So I'm looking for some recommendations. Essentially I'm just looking for vanilla android with good software support with basic features as listed and a good display with no easily repeatable issues.
If anyone has recommendations, that would be great!.