Looking for a recommendation for smartphones for power users

Sceptus

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Oct 16, 2009
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Hi,

I am looking to buy my first smartphone. I'll be honest -- I know little about smartphones at all. However, I am quite experienced with computers in general, and I'm looking for a smartphone that I can easily tinker with, tweak things under the hood, etc; I'm looking to learn a little about mobile computing, especially since it is now so prevalent. For example, I would enjoy testing out code that I could upload onto the mobile device to execute. Being able to communicate remotely and securely with a workstation would also be ideal.

Price and phone carrier is not an issue, the only restriction being that I live in the United States. I would prefer the best hardware quality possible. I do not care about "media" or consumer-oriented features such as photo/video capabilities or ways of sharing content on social sites.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure I'm looking for something awfully demanding, but I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you have to offer. Thanks!
 

raventerp

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Apr 21, 2012
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The three smartphones that come to mind for me, that I would point you to, are the following:

Nexus 5
Motorola Moto X Developer Edition
LG G2

The Nexus and Moto X D.E. are "developer friendly" which means they can be easily unlocked, rooted and virtually anything can be developed or loaded on them. This kind of flexibility is what power users love to have. I added the LG G2 because it has a more powerful processor, higher capacity battery, and it deserves an honorable mention based on that. It's not as simple to unlock and tinker with it, as the other 2 phones, but there are software hacks out there that should get you almost as much flexibility as the other 2 phones. I'm linking a quick comparison of the phones just to give a good overview. Keep in mind the link shows the ordinary Moto X and not the Developer Edition, but I believe they are the practically the same (as long as you are comparing comparable versions GSM to GSM, CDMA to CDMA). Hope this helps!

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/compare.php?p=4122,4216,4312
 

gman9669

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Jul 5, 2014
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If you are interested in creating ROMs and generally tinkering then the Nexus 5 has got to be the phone for you. Not only will you receive android updates before any other phone but it also runs stock android (does not have a skin/another layer of third party bloat-ware on top of the android OS like Samsung/HTC phones do)
This will allow for easier customisation of the OS.

Also being a Nexus device not only is it very cheap, but it's also got some killer specs.
 

HplusGaming

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Dec 11, 2013
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I can't help but agree with him on the LG G2. And also, rooting isn't that hard for the G2. For me, it was simply downloading a file, running the batch, and following what it told me. Phone was rooted in less than 2 minutes XD
 

Jfdude

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Jun 12, 2014
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You will probably be doing this anyway, but buy your phone unlocked. Do not risk buying your phone with the bootloader locked. Also, the Note 3 is great (that's what I have), but the Note 4 is supposed to have 4 gb of ram instead 3 gb. If you care, it also has an updated camera. Whatever phone you get, enjoy it!