"Just jailbreak your phone and install <blank>!" they said.
I did that for a while, depending on some random guy in a forum to maintain a working image for my device. He bought a new phone, and that was the end of the updates.
With Play Integrity / SafetyNet this is also an uphill battle without doing even more work to spoof your Integrity status, if you want mobile banking and finance apps to work.
I bought a brand new flagship phone for $1100, couldn't jailbreak it, then the manufacturer got bored, forced an update that bricked it, then got bored and never published an update again.
I feel like most devices have bugs affecting a tiny subset of users and that it’s not usually a reason to choose or not choose a particular device.
From what I can tell following links on your article, this issue hasn’t been reported on after the Pixel 7, so someone buying a Pixel 10 today probably has no reason to have that as a purchase consideration.
Like I said, not to excuse them, but these issues tend to affect an incredibly small amount of people. If you have a double digit number of users on Reddit complaining for a phone that represents 7% of all US smartphone sales, that’s not a widespread bug as a percentage of userbase.
Google currently sells more than half of the smartphone volume of Samsung in the US.
I don’t know why you want to downplay this issue. Google should be held accountable for this. It affects multiple users over multiple models and has caused real world harm.
I’d be saying the same thing. Apple sells tens of millions of phones per year and in this hypothetical scenario a double digit number of Reddit users couldn’t call 911.
This is obviously a big recurring issue which is statistically significant given the number of times that a user might call emergency services in their entire lifetime.
If the reason you want to dismiss it is because you have a pixel then you don’t have to convince me that it’s safe - you need to convince yourself.
I've never had a pixel phone survive through its support period. The hardware always dies first.
Tbf some pixel models have proven reliable, my mom's pixel 4 lasted long enough to be out of support and then it got owned and her bank accounts got taken over.
I had a perfectly functional Galaxy A71 this time last year, still had great battery life, etc.
I had to replace it because it only has 5 years of support. Samsung offers 7 years of support but only on their top tier phones.
Google offer 7 years, even on their A series phones so I chose a pixel 9a. It's fine, I don't love it or hate it, but it's not doing anything I care about better than my last phone.
After the battery problems that the Pixel 4a, 6a, and 7a have had, I'll stick to the regular Pixel phones (well - who knows far this sideloading clampdown will go).
I know people have had battery problems with non-a Pixel phones, but the number of 'a' phones with battery problems caused Google to publicly respond.
I, like most people I know, buy Android devices around the 300 euro limit, use them until they break for whatever reason, which is measured in years.
The only apps that get installed nowadays are the ones that must be for a specific service, or gaming.
Many people even turn updates off due to the way companies get creative changing the application on every update.
In the old days before the iOS/Android duopoly there were no updates at all, and the few times they happened to be supported, it required the developer SDK to update the firmware.
Outside communities like HN, regular people hardly care about updates.
> In the old days before the iOS/Android duopoly there were no updates at all, and the few times they happened to be supported, it required the developer SDK to update the firmware.
Not quite. The phones I had for the four years before the iPhone came out were Treo devices running PalmOS, which got software updates installable via the host computer without any developer tools.
GrapheneOS only updates Pixels for as long as Google does. All their supported devices currently receive the stock OS updates from Google. LineageOS is different in that regard.
Pixels are pretty weak hardware wise in the areas people care about (heavy, relatively slow charging, big, etc.); I'd probably recommend people buy Samsungs which also get long term software updates nowadays.
I'm glad you had a good experience with it, but I had the Pixel 7 Pro and it was the single worst phone I have ever used. Utterly dogshit, to a point where I swore a blood oath to never purchase another Pixel ever again. I've heard that the later Pixels are better but I guess I'll never know.
It's possible that I had a defective unit, but regardless of the reason it was a laggy mess, that got terrible battery life, and sometimes simply wouldn't finish turning on (it would just stay on a black screen indefinitely). I bought it in July of 2023 and I ended up giving it to a family member and buying a refurb iPhone 13 Pro Max, which I still have and it has been considerably better.
It's not like I'm this huge Apple fanboy (feel free to look at my history complaining about my time working there), but if the Pixel 7 was 2023's flagship Android phone, then I have very little interest in using Android anymore.
Same here with a Pixel 10 Pro. Having seen issues that others have been struggling with, I’m shocked at the poor quality controls. It’s not only hardware, the software breaks every now and then. Looks like every patch introduces some bugs or bricks some Pixels. According to Gemini, it’s all known and has been discussed for a long time. I checked Pixel bug reports, some of them closed with wont-implement states, while users still struggling.
This was the first time in two decades that my smartphone broke, and it could only be replaced.
In the end, to me it’s really too much maintenance with Pixels and Android devices in general. Really don’t get it why people prefer Android. It’s like desktop Linux. Not there yet.
Sure, it just annoys me that people seem to have amnesia with all the bullshit associated with desktop Windows, I guess because they’re used to it.
The recent updates breaking Notepad and Calculator and Outlook and the Shutdown feature are rare in that they have gotten press, but there are hundreds of other bits of bullshit associated with Windows, like the fact that Windows Update just routinely breaks your computer and the Windows recovery and repair tools do not work, and as far as I can tell they have never worked for anyone.
Linux has its share of bullshit, but at least the backup and recovery tools actually work.
I haven’t had an issue with hibernate in a few years on the more normy-friendly distros like Mint or Ubuntu or Suse, but I acknowledge that some people still do. I still don’t accept that it’s less ready that desktop Windows.
That is terrible. I’ve been out of the loop with consumer Windows for like 20 years and enterprise Windows for a decade, last time was at a .NET shop. Two years ago or so, after watching a couple Microsoft folks give their talks, I tried one of the Microsoft Surfaces at a store and got quickly frustrated with it.
What you’re describing about Windows is very reminiscent of what Pixel users describe on Reddit.
I’m totally with you, I wouldn’t use Windows voluntarily. I’m not in a position to tell whether it’s more or less ready though, just no recent experience with it.
Yeah, if you’re comparing it to macOS, then I would broadly agree that desktop Linux is less-ready.
I do think it has improved considerably, especially on AMD hardware, and I think it’s better than Windows at this point. macOS is arguably better, but Macs are considerably more pricey, so they can be a bit difficult to recommend to people.
When they ask me what Android phones to get, I always say a Pixel, because they will at least get the latest OS support in a timely fashion.
They are also excellent phones.