While it depends on a number of variables; such as your own personal preferences and quality of the audio hardware you’re using; FLAC is indeed better. Given appropriate tuning and hardware, you don’t need a trained ear to hear the difference.
It is however possible to prefer compressed music. In fact, I myself tend to be fine with anything down to 128kbps MP3 or comparable compression. That doesn’t mean I do not notice it; but it’s “tolerable” in quality. I grew up around the late stages of Analog FM radio; so anything that can manage to sound better than THAT is actually good! For reference you were lucky to pick up what is equivalent to a 96kbps MP3 if you had optimal signal strength and things very quickly devolved to a staticky 8kbps experience if you had very minimal signal.
For storing music on-the-go; I actually recommend considering 192kbps MP3 if you don’t mind the “Lossy” sound and just wanna cram as much music as possible onto storage without it sounding absolutely terrible.
If “Lossy” is just not an acceptable option for your tender ears; I recommend Ogg Vorbis (Android & all of it’s variants) at standard bitrates or AAC (Apple) depending on your mobile device OS.
If you’re willing to carry around a limited library/playlist and want to emphasize quality; I can’t recommend FLAC enough.