How does everyone feel about Google Pixel phones?
Previously on Lemmy:
Past Discussions:
Sorry for the delay for the weekly. Server's not that stable right now, maybe we should start the thread on Sundays instead.
I always like to switch things up once in a while because it's fun. So, let's get back to the brand discussion this week for the Google Pixel. We'll do a discussion on repairability next week. Again, ideas are always welcome here.
I've never used a Pixel, but people around here should know that I've been very critical of Google's product decisions over the years, and the Pixel is no exception. In my point of view, discontinuing the Nexus series, buying out the talents from the remains of HTC and starting an official "made by Google" phone is the equivalent of reddit buying out Alien Blue to make the official reddit app. I think it's the event that scared big Android manufacturers like Samsung enough to start making their own ecosystem away from Google, as they are concerned that Google may start locking software features to their own phones instead of improving Android overall (rightfully so, I might add).
It really makes no business sense at all to turn your manufacturing partners into your competitors, but then again, it's Google.
With that being said, the first years of the Pixels has been marred with growing pains. Whereas the Nexus line has always been barebones, no frills development devices, it seemed to me that the people who made Pixels don't even use Android and are insistent on turning Pixel into iPhones, removing the headphone jack on the Pixel 2 despite the antagonistic ad from the original Pixel, Pixel exclusive software features like Google camera that necessitating the need of rom mods, as well as the quality issues that seems to be inherited from the Nexus days just really soured me from considering Pixels, as I think it's against the spirit of openness that made Android great.
But it seems like in recent years, they finally figured out that a large percentage of people who bought Androids not because they can't afford iPhones, but because they like Android, and I see the introduction of the "a" series as progress. The recent Pixel ad campaign also made me think that they finally figuring it out: people want different things, trying to turn Android into worse versions of iPhones was not going to work, so they should be trying to make the best Android for Android users instead.
(It's also the reason I think all the previous reddit clones failed, but Lemmy will be the one that finally succeeds.)
I like pixel from a price to hardware performance ratio, but fuck the software side. Need a custom launcher coz the official one forces google calender to cover a whole line in your homescreen, and google search takes up a whole line on EVERY PAGE ON YOUR APPS HOME (why the bloody hell do i need this google search icon? It opens up some weird browser that is even worse than chrome). A million and one google product "suggestions" are being thrown at you for the first month of usage, official music app is youtube music, so literally everytime you open ot you need to tell it "yes im sure i want to use my offline music and not subscribe to youtube music", the customizable shortcuts are basically "this can either activate google assistent or do nothing", the worst 3 button navigation bar i have ever seen - You cant even swap the back button from left to right and jt hides itself at random occasions, evetytime you open your SMS you need to tell it you dont want to use google's weird internet based sms feature (yes, it never stops suggesting it until you agree, 6 months already). The automatic adjustable brightness is terrible and already blinded me randomly when i tried to browse the internet before going to bed, the automatic screen wqkeup is junky at best, it has a weird feature that every time you.lay your phone over the screen it locks with no way to turn that off. Call recording apps barely work, closing all open apps it purposely innefficient (you have to scroll all the way left instead of it being immediatly available), the permission option of "ask every time" is broken because every third time it stops asking you to enable it and you have to enable the permission constantly and later remove it again.
Fuck google's OSes.