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Hate it like you want, but the effing pixels are still the best phones. Not by os, not by spec, but simply by being the most open android of them all. The easiest to de-google. Sounds stupid, but is not.
I hate google with all my heart (since they dropped their slogan “don’t be evil” and went… Well… Evil). But i will buy their fucking phones until a viable alternative comes along.
100%. I just bought a Pixel 8 so I could install Graphene OS. It was so damn easy too. I was amazed. This phone is great minus the lack of headphone jack and SD card slot.
same here. bought one 2 months ago
graphene pixel gang
hell yes. been using this combo for over a year now, won’t ever look back
Been using their phones since the Nexus 6. That thing was huge.
And I’m the one guy that uses Google Fi. My bill was $38 last month.
And I’m the one guy that uses Google Fi. My bill was $38 last month.
There are dozens of us, baker’s dozens.
I’m 13!
My bill was $38 last month.
Did you mean that this was a lot or dirt cheap? Sounds quite expensive to me.
Genuinely curious, what service are you comparing this to that makes it sound quite expensive? Asking for my wallet
A very basic phone plan from one of the top three ISPs where I live (Taiwan). Comes with 3 GB of data a month. (I’m on Wi-Fi most of the time.) Costs ~$6.1 a month. No 5G connection, only 4G. ~22 cents per minute of calltime.
$38 usd is considered low in the US because even though we all have a high median income the cost of everything is extraordinarily high, rendering most americans de facto impoverished
I’ve been on Fi for years, I think basically since the first year they started ProjectFi. So much cheaper than my old Verizon or sprint accounts…
Calyx pixel gang over here
Oh man, the lack of a headphone jack is still a killer for me. It’s one of the reasons why I stayed on OnePlus 6 for so long, and to be blunt, I don’t see the Pixel 8 as a huge jump outside of power and bullshit like AI photos. My kingdom for a high-end phone with a headphone jack and stock-ish Android!
It’s a real shame that OnePlus just became an Oppo rebranding, because the OP1 was a phenomenal phone, and up until OP6 they were both cheap and had a relatively clean Android install. To date, features like gestures are still better than what you get on the Pixel, and most of their stuff is less invasive than Google’s.
The Android market nowadays, especially for high end, is “which manufacturer is the least shit”, and that’s a real shame.
My 7t was the best phone I ever had when it was on Oxygen OS 10, but every upgrade was a downgrade. Features were dropped, ui got uglier, bloat was added. I have an 8t now, but I won’t be getting another OnePlus. Really sad
Totally. First thing i check is “can i debloat and root this piece of shit which is technically awesome but ruined software-side”. Which i most likely can’t as the hurdles became more and more annoying each year up to the point where i gave up and went google.
If they’d do the same with PCs, noone would buy that shit. Unless it’s a crapple…
I desperately want fair phone (and it’s parts) to be sold in my country. 8-10 years of android support for a self repairable phone? Yes please.
Those looked nice, yes… But hard to get here and technically not that interesting to me, last time i checked. But we need more alternatives than just fairphone.
I hate the smartphone-market and what samsung and crapple made out of it.
The call screener is a godsend and it’s the absolute most used feature I rely on. Many evenings I wake up for work and see that my phone stopped 5-10 spam calls that would have ruined my sleep.
Hehe, i have an awesome solution for that. I simply block everyone except wifey and friends. The rest of the world doesn’t need to reach me. I call back when i want to, or simply don’t 😁
Just because i CAN be reached mobile doesn’t mean i have to. Wasn’t before Smartphones and won’t be with…
But yes, the call-screening is cool. If you disregard privacy and the percentage of non tech-savy people who are totally overwhelmed by that.
Maps. There’s still unfortunately nothing better.
I mean, a lot of the points are valid, but the Pixel phones are pretty great, Android is pretty great and getting better, and the Chromebook gamble is playing a really long term game where they could end up uprooting Microsoft if they play their cards right. From my understanding, US kids now on average know Chromebook OS better than Windows by far, and will probably prefer to continue using it if they could. If Google makes the OS more viable for professional use and flexible and play their cards right, they’d have a really good chance at uppending Microsoft’s dominance, especially since Microsoft is seemingly trying to shoot itself in the foot with Windows.
https://xkcd.com/1361/
't was just a matter of time.Honestly Google Drive works great as free storage (Though for large storage there’s no guarantee they won’t accidentally delete it, it’s happened before).
And Google Suite is good enough if you can’t be bothered to get Microsoft Office. Though they’re forcing AI into it and have some weird quirks like being unable to copypaste external text with rightclick.
What exactly does Google have left that people like? Gmail?
Shhhh! Dammit. Now they are definitely going to realize they haven’t ruined it yet.
The way Gmail orders conversations/email chains makes it SO hard to figure who’s reply to what and what the latest email is. Each email in the chain contains the entire chain before it and you end up reading everything twice just to work out what the hell is going on.
I keep forgetting that Gmail is a website and not just an IMAP server.
I just sent a reply to an email I forwarded instead of the original email and it’s entirely the fault of how Gmail orders emails on Android. Unironically.
No further questions!
Gmail is already shit for anyone who wants to configure their own mail server.
Great for forwarding my mail server to my gmail
Too late. The promotions tab in the app is infested with ads. I use fairmail on my phone and do important stuff on my computer where I have adguard
Chromebooks are insanely locked down at schools. I got one on eBay for $40, installed linux, and now it can play Minecraft Java at 60 fps so that’s something.
I really don’t get the Chromebook complaint. It just needs to browse the internet, and a Chromebook is damn solid at that at a super reasonable price and are rugged as hell. Yeah I wish schools didn’t hook into the g suite but like what, you want em on a windows machine to do the same things as on chrome os?
My chromebook was so bloated with the schools proctoring software that it lagged on a Google doc
Which is like half of the things purpose
Okay yeah that’s very true the proctoring systems suck entire ass.
Android worse every year? How? Every update I’ve received (on a Samsung, mind you) has made my experience better.
Android 12 took up 700MB RAM, leaving some space for non-sytem apps on lower end smartphones.
Android 13 takes up easily 1.2GB, leaving almost nothing at the benefit of having a somewhat “snappier” interface
Lower end phones usually already have 8 GB RAM (example: Galaxy A54 5G, 300€ new).
I would consider the A-Series of Samsung “mid-range”. I know you said “lower” and “mid-range” is lower than “high-end”, but I suspect tetris11’s issue mostly applies to “low-end” phones. Something like a Motorola Moto G Play 2024
You consider that a good thing… Phones shouldn’t have this much RAM.
Why would higher RAM be a bad thing? That’s like saying phones shouldn’t have more storage, faster processors, better camera, …
Sure, they worked before that already. But isn’t technological advancement still good?
To a certain point.
There used to be tons of customization options which have been removed/limited under the guise of “personalization”. For example you used to be able to do things like choose system colors that weren’t from a selection of 5 pastel themes. For some reason Google believes that pastels and pastels alone accurately reflect the “personality” of every user and that users wasn’t their “personality” reflected.
There’s a ton of settings that have been removed over the years, volume button behavior changed, various privacy settings reset to default with random updates, privacy settings removed…
It’s still fairly functional but if it weren’t for certain apps i need i would be trying out graphene or whatever.
You could never officially choose system colors in AOSP. It was always white with teal accent. If you’re thinking of Substratum, that was kinda an unintended exploit when Google was working on adding native theming for OEMs.
Volume buttons are being made more customizable in Android 15, which is launching on Pixels soon.
Privacy settings have never been reset for me, maybe you’re confusing it with Windows 11.
Sorry i think i meant theme colors, not system colors. In any case it was better before the “you” thing that’s currently used which has restricted customization significantly.
I think it may be google account settings, which are not android I’m aware. Though i recall phone settings becoming default whenever a settings menu was overhauled instead of something reflecting the previous selection.
No I’m on windows 10 still. Well aware of the difference lol
More bloated and inefficient every release. That would be fine for Android but sadly, it affects the core and thus every custom ROM too.
Lots of proprietary google crap. Much harder to run a custom ROM with decent support and apps
OP technically isn’t wrong, there are many UI changes that have made android worse over the years.
Like what?
The drop down that shows the toggles and notifications. I remember when there used to be 6 or 7 toggles at the top before you had to swipe down again to get more, but now, there are 4 huge and frankly unnecessary toggles instead of the previous 6-7 small ones. Also, more and more of google shoving their unnecessary products down your throat that you cannot uninstall.
Yeah, I disliked that when I saw the announcement too. I think the disconnect here is my Android flavour. Since I’m on Samsung, I still have 6 small round buttons at the top (Android 13, OneUI 5.1).
Latest Samsung updates removed classic swipe controls for navigation. I had to do a hacky workaround including finding 2 random APKs just to preserve functionality. (S21U)
Really? D: That sucks, I use swipe navigation for everything. Not sure if it’s classic or not but losing an option is a bummer.
They used to have both the old school one where you swipe up on the three sections at the bottom, as well as the new Google one for years. The newest update to OneUI 6.1 removed the classic swipe controls for no reason, keeping only the Google one. I had to install Good Lock and NavStar to make some sort of custom settings configuration, which returned the navigation option. Thankfully I did get it working, but only after messing around and wasting 20 minutes of my time.
I really hate that they think they own my device, not me.
They’re the #1 in streaming. More people watch youtube on their TV’s than Netflix
Doesn’t Youtube famously bleed money?
No clue, but the question was what do they have that people like. People really really like youtube
Not anymore lol. It used to, but they make a lot of money on youtube now.
But they didn’t invent that. They bought YouTube after it was already popular. The only thing they’ve done to the platform is put in more ads.
YouTube launched in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006. It has been a Google service for 95% of its existence. I’m pretty sure Google did other stuff in that 18 years than “put in more ads.”
Was that a qualifier? “What exactly does google have left that people like?” Youtube, they have youtube
I dont like youtube, im being forced to use it if i want to wach content from my favorite creators, which by the way, also ain’t exactly happy with YT. Thats exactly the reason as to why so much people try it to migrate to twich and facebook gaming.
And destroying the rating system from points based, to thumps up and down relation, to thumps up only.
They are the IMO most supported Single-Sign-On provider. I think Facebook, which I don’t even have, was mostly for games, and then apple also isn’t an option, and that’s just it besides using firefox’ built in password manager for another email/password combination. What’s your opinion on log in providers?
The UI for GMail is awful. Can’t even follow conversations on my phone app. Just put that shit in order like Outlook does. Fuck.
Theres much much more… Smaller kills sometimes are the most effective. Think about Google RSS Reader the best rss reader to ever exist…
What did it do better than other RSS readers?
Yeah same thing I was wondering. There are still a lot of great RSS readers. Arguably even better than Google Reader was.
The UI imo
Fast, and easy to edit. It was a fantastic start page.
For me it was that all my friends used it. So we share and comment posts a lot there. Now we do not have an alternative.
What is a good RSS reader? I keep meaning to get into RSS at some point and make myself a feed. Is there a good guide or preferred software or however it works?
I ended up on Inoreader after Google Reader shut down. I’ve never needed more than the free tier and it works pretty well.
Depends on what you are looking for. I like Akregator but it’s quite old-school.
Bookmarking this as I’m in the same position, godspeed my brother.
Theoldreader.com is a good clone
the chromebook keyboard layout is stupid, especially if you like tiling wms
they removed capslock and moved super to where it would normally be, and renamed it to “search”
they put nonsensical function keys that don’t exist like “refresh” and “fullscreen”
and then the keys are mushy too
Even my 8yr old complains about how backwards the chromebooks at his school are.
I hate the capslock thing. I sometimes feel like I’m the only person who regularly uses capslock (for C macro names and SQL when programming, but also for typing acronyms).
I don’t mind the function key thing. Even from memory I can say that in a browser F5 = refresh and F11 = fullscreen. But kids probably are less likely to know those these days so a label could be helpful.
YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY PERSON WHO USES CAPSLOCK!
CapsLock is vital for my muscle memory when configured to act as an extra Ctrl key. I have other shit configured to my Super key so that sort of kb would definitely require a major config overhaul to be usable.
I think the general rule is anything google acquired was good and anything they built themselves was bad and ended up getting killed.
There are exceptions but some of the only decent parts of google; maps, YouTube, AdWords were all acquisitions. I think they even just got HTC to build the pixel exclusively for them
They used to have a nice clean usable web search back in 2000 or so.
And now they have a financial sheet with billions in the black.
What pisses me off is the fitfit app requiring i turn on my location to sync my flex 2 mere weeks after google buys them out.
It doesn’t even have a screen, why do you need a location?
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If/when they screw up gmail, I’m blacklisting Google for good, that’s gonna be such a goddamn pain to disentangle myself from.
You should start now.
Proton Mail FTW, until they are successful, then we move on.
Email hosting is pretty cheap. Ive paid for email for a couple years now and use gmail for almost nothing except junkier things.
It’s about the thousands of things you have your old gmail tied to. Yes I use forwarding to my new proton mail but sometimes it doesn’t work cause it went into spam or smh and I must open gmail.
Sometimes also the icloud aliases stuff stops working and I don’t want my proton mail to be associated with too much ads so I again type the old mail…
To be honest I was supposed to use proton but I use apple icloud aliases stuff most of the time because I don’t want to disclose my most important and secure email address on some trashy sites. So yeah that google switch didn’t work out all that good I guess I just changed the tech overlord. At least the new one didn’t want to monopolize the internet I guess
