I've been Samsung since S3, but recently picked up a cheap Motorola as a secondary. Been pretty satisfied with it, clearly not as fancy as the S23 I got, but decent enough. However they only get 2 years of Android updates, and I'm getting spammed by Motorola at least once a week of not more to install some silly game or whatnot.

I've also not been terribly impressed by the UX changes Samsung has made recently, lots of questionable decisions there.

What other decent options are out there?

https://www.androidauthority.com/phone-update-policies-16586... has summary of phone manufacturers update policy. It looks like for now the answer is: if you don't want an IPhone then grab Pixel and install GrapheneOS on it.

So no decent options for out-of-box experience.

They're cheap

If the flaws were just about missing premium features, that'd be one thing.

But it's not. It's petty and abusive. For example, you can't see (I think it was) heart rate if you have a Samsung smart watch, but don't have a Samsung phone. They've gone out of their way to just not provide that, if you instead have a Pixel phone. And you need like 5 gigantic apps installed to manage it. Why is it not just one single Samsung wear app? Because they are abusive.

I mean that people buy it cause it's cheap, not that it's a good idea. They don't even look at the rest. It's like an Altima.

Personally have no reason to consider anything but an iPhone, even if it has to be used.

They are the only ones that makes phones with usable stylus.