The repeated negligence around the handling of Android bugs related to emergency calls should result in criminal prosecution. It's unlikely that actual people weren't hurt because of these bugs. They have known about these issues for years, and they continue to give them the importance of an unresponsive button in Gmail settings.
I got a Pixel6 in July. Aside from the camera, it is by far the worst phone I've ever owned. I probably experience at least 4 or 5 major crashes every day where the phone becomes unresponsive for a few seconds.
Up until now, I've been able to live with the bugs as a moderate inconvenience, but now that I know I could potentially die because of Google's complete lack of QA, I'm going to ditch the phone right away. I'll never buy a Google device again. What a waste of money
Counter-anecdote: I got a Pixel 6 pro at launch. With the very notable exception of multi week delays in some security updates, it has been the best phone I have ever owned. Great camera, great screen, great battery life, no stability problems, and most importantly, no overheating after which plagued older Pixels under heavy usage.
But YMMV - based on a perusal of forum posts, it seems that one's experience, among other things, depends on one's geographic region (which may be a proxy for the exact firmware model of your device). Mine is a US model, intended for Google Fi. A disproportionate number of complaints seem to be from users in certain EU countries.
I've one from EU distribution for over half a year now. There were some very minor issues with the interface at the beginning(removed with updates later). Apart from that all is great. If there are multiple crashes per day I would get it replaced, because it's clearly faulty unit.
That's a cool idea. Using the telemetry to find (unusually) faulty hardware and reaching out to the customers to proactively offer a replacement could be some next level customer service.
Yes and no. The big issue with me is the fingerprint reader behind the screen doesn't always work, and am resorting to punching in my pin about half the time.
The Pixel 2 fingerprint reader on the back was the fastest. The Pixel 4 face recognition was often faster than the Pixel 6.
Also I use google assistant for driving to get navigation, and when it screws up the destination instead of one step to fix it, it's usually two more steps or more. (e.g. "1201 Eighth St" vs "1201 State St" and others)
I increased my screen brightness till it would work most of the time. Hopefully that will help your fingerprint reader at least. I have a Pixel 6 Pro for reference.
My P6P is also the worst phone I can remember, but unlike you, I also really dislike (main) camera. It oversharpens people's faces to absurd degree in anything but optimal light. Faces are discolored (often gray), wrinkles come up, hair often looks kind of greasy. (for landscapes the camera is pretty good though)
I don't dislike Pixel hardware because it's the only phone supported by GrapheneOS, which makes Android tolerable.
But the software is ridiculous in some regards. I bought an Pixel sometime ago, new in a box from Google, and it took two battery charges to go through a gazillion of OTA updates to get it to the latest Android. I know I could have plugged it in and flashed the latest ROM directly, but is a normal user supposed to do that? It seems that nobody cares at Google.
Aside from this, if you look into the network dump of a brand new Pixel it is scary / amazing how many connections it is doing every day. And nobody knows why it's connecting...
I wish SailfishOS became a bit more polished to be a viable alternative to iOS and Android. It's almost there. It passes the above test with flying colors, it's completely silent. Just an NTP connection every 12 h. The UI is a joy to use, reminiscent of the N9, and a few great indie developers.
My dystopian response is that they know if you're going 'all in' on their branded phone you are either geeky enough to deal with it, or drank too much kool-aid to care.
This inference doesn't make any sense. The Pixel isn't some weird niche project. The Pixel and the Galaxy SXX are perennials on the lists you find from a cursory "best android phone" Google query. This is about as casual as it gets, beyond walking into a Best Buy or Verizon and asking for an Android phone (which will also steer you to these two phones pretty often, assuming they're in-budget)
As casual as it gets ... in 11 countries out of 195. And even in countries where it is sold, it's usually online-only with no physical stores or service centers.
Why would Google “care” about a phone that sells only an inconsequential 2 million a quarter? If they make 4 billion a year in revenue on selling Pixel phones, that is around a quarter of how much Google reportedly pays Apple to be the default search engine on iOS devices.
In other words, Apple makes more from Google in mobile than Google makes from selling Pixels.
Because their logo is on the device. If it’s so inconsequential as to not care about quality, then perhaps they shouldn’t bother.
They’re up against Apple. Criticize all you want, but Apple cares about customer experience and quality. Pixel is supposed to be representing their competing operating system. It should be a quality product, even if volume is low. They should accept it as a loss leader if they have to.
I was happy with GrapheneOS on Pixel 3, and would still use it except it's EOL for some firmware security updates.
The Pixel 4a hardware I then got (didn't want a 4) is fine with GrapheneOS, though an "a", and I prefer the 3.
The Pixel 5 seems OK so far, though the display colors on this particular unit (don't know about the model) are noticeably less vibrant than the 3.
I hope GrapheneOS keeps going on a good path, and that there's an appealing option for hardware after the Pixel 5. (I can't yet justify the cost of a non-backordered Librem 5, for how little I use a smartphone, and I have mixed feelings about the PinePhones.)
I highly doubt that. I'm sure the people that wrote the code know exactly what it is doing. Does the number of knowledgable coders vs the poplulation of the planet approach nobody when rounding?
Mine doesn't crash (anymore, it did when v12 came out), but my cell/data goes offline randomly and I get worse service than my peers in many places. It also overheats when exposed to almost any sunlight at all no matter the ambient temperature (it's overheated in my car with the ac on and no case) or when charging and doing a video call at the same time.
My Nexus 4 and Note 5 were solid phones, but every android phone I've had after that has been awful in one way or another.
The final straw for me has been android auto on this phone. Completely unusable and unsafe. So many crashes and lockups and touching any cable causes it to disconnect (but my wifes iphone doesn't do this so it's not just the cables). At this point I'm looking at an iPhone for my next phone. Something like android would be nice, but I also want a premium phone that works.
My Note 5 is actually still going strong and is smooth and responsive (except for lack of updates). The battery hasn't swelled or anything.
I totally agree with that.
Got the pixel 6 after a Pixel 2 and Pixel 4a.
The first thing I didnt like was the size. I find it VERY uncomfortable to handle, and also very heavy!
I also had many problems with it. Heating, unresponsiveness, and after getting the latest upgrade to Android 13 it got even worse.
That was my last Pixel phone and probably my last Android.
I went through a similar process. I ended up getting a Pixel 5, they are still being sold new-in-box on Amazon. I really liked the size and weight of the 4a but wanted something that had 5G support. The 5 is actually smaller and lighter than both the 4a 5G and 5a 5G. Very thankful to the folks who run gsmarena.com, it's extremely helpful for this sort of thing.
Welcome to the club. The 3a was the best phone I ever owned. Then it broke (my fault) and after going through 3 bunk replacements in a row, I realized that Google literally does zero QA and stopped trying.
Maybe the Pixel 3 was better, but I still have a Pixel 2 XL which came with a USB-C-to-headphone adapter which simply does not work, and also it's very picky about which USB ports it will connect to - it seems to prefer USB-C. Once you get over these issues though, it's an Ok phone...
I would recommend trying GrapheneOS. Easy to install on Pixels and have heard great things. The OS focus is on Privacy and Security which can come with some cutbacks but still might be worth it to you
I don’t understand how could you pay such a vast amount of money for a phone that is not even subpar… it is unusable by your own testimony. Not trying to be snarky or anything, but why didn’t you return it?
You only get 15 days to return it and a lot of us wait until the next patch to see if that fixes issues which are on a monthly cadence now. Unfortunately after buying so many Google devices unless some major changes happen I won't be buying another one.
I've now got quite a few phones on my desk (6 right now) plus all the other historical ones. It's surprising to see the differences, quirks, and little gems. My main phone has now become an 13 Pro Max, it's solid, reliable and smooth (but my main reason was the camera/video quality). While features might be hidden via gestures I don't think I've ever seen a problem or bug with anything - certainly nothing that is repeated or sticks out in my mind.
But that said the functionality of Android is much wider in scope, which is a blessing and a curse.
For my startup one of the core features is uploading photos/videos, and lots of them.. getting to know how each platform deals with background processes has been very eye opening. Apple : there's a couple of ways, it's on our terms, maybe, if we feel up to the task - but you know what you're getting. Android : here's the kazillion different changing API's on how to do it... you'll get there with better performance of what you want (maybe) but good luck navigating the landscape !
I suspect Androids eco system problems is just keeping up with ever changing APIs, or learning what worked fine on your Sony xperia 1 ii, fails miserably on your first customers Samsung S20.... then realising you're doing it wrong on the apis, then re-writing it, then the api's change....
So the chance of app bugs is far, far higher in Android.
As a person that has been dealing with Android programming since version 1.6 I have to say that things got very stable since version 4.4 Kitkat. That's 9 years ago...
The ecosystem has improved, and added a bunch of new optional stuff, a new language, a new way of making UIs, etc. Retrocompatibility is still very good.
The "stability" of Android Studio stable releases, how much Android build system requires as developer workstation (Google employees must all use gaming rigs), the artisanal tooling on the NDK front, lack of easier JNI integration after 10+ years,...
Across several android and iOS phones (including some of the first android phones in the US market), I have not personally experienced issues anything close to what I’ve read about from the Pixel line.
We need to push manufacturers to be better, especially about providing timely and stable OS updates.
People are pushing them. That's why the iPhone passed all Android devices combined in US market share last week. That's the pushing. A lot of longtime Android users have obviously finally gotten tired enough of the quality issues and have fled to iPhone.
None of them had glaring problems I had to live with or work around.
The battery life up until the LG G2 was a problem -- I usually needed to recharge mid-day if I was doing anything active. The G2 had the best form factor ever -- honestly, they should have kept the external dimensions the same and just improved the internals each year. 5.2" screen, 460 ppi. 138.5 x 70.9 x 8.9 mm. 143g. Eventually it developed a touchscreen fault that slowly spread.
The Nexus 6P was a great phone, but big. It developed battery problems after about a year. Up until then, fine.
The Pixel XL was a little disappointing because it didn't really feel like much of an advance, but it didn't have the battery problem.
I'm still using the 7 Pro, which, for a bigphone, is not bad. It has the excellent motorized pop-up selfie cam, which I like because I hardly ever use it. When I do use it, it deploys quickly. Battery life is starting to degrade (2.5 years in) and I'm thinking about either a Pixel 7 or an Asus Zenphone 9 this fall.
As a fairly long time Android user (Android 2.2 -> 12 from various manufacturers), the iPhone 13 Mini in my pocket works really well.
I honestly can't even say one is better than the other, just different, and they've mostly stolen the good ideas from each other over the years anyway.
Ha, that’s pretty much the entire history, minus the HTC Dream.
Same run for me. Started with Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S1). Jumped to iPhone 12/13 mini when Google designers hired Buffalo Bill and pushed his skin-lampshade-inspired-design in Android 12 (Material You Will Put The Lotion On Its Skin).
I have two exceptions that come to mind... My Galaxy J7 (Original version) was a lovely little device that still works, aside from lack of updates from the mfg. It wasn't fancy or fast, but it was cheap and has been able to do what I needed it to.
I bring that one up specifically because it wasn't a 'flagship' phone which tend to be as polished as possible (although often wind up with quirks on/related to new features), but a cheapish low to midrange (which often see problems around hardware choices and/or bugs around software for said hardware choices [^0])
I'm also going to give the 'WTF' shout-out to the Original Nexus 7 with HSPA+, you had to jump through some hilarious hoops to make it a device usable as a 'phone', and talking on it was something that became a meme among my colleagues... yet sadly was more 'reliable' than most of the HTC/LG shitshows of the day.
For a number of years, I was on a 'tiered' setup where my phones were WinPho, and I had either the aforementioned Nexus, or later a Samsung Galaxy Tab for my android 'needs'. The WinPhos sucked from an app standpoint but were otherwise the best 'smart phones' IMO between 2012-2016 [^1][^2]
[^0] I often wonder how many problems are related to firmware bugs versus a problem with the underlying hardware. As an example from another semi-related sector, consider the Intel Puma 6. You can try to mask some/most of the problems in firmware, but at the end of the day the design has a problem. Sometimes I wonder whether the extremely aggressive release cycle of phones is/was a way to 'mask' the problem.
[^1] Here! was far superior to Google navigation IMO, even had offline map downloading before it was cool. Call quality was always good, none of the weird drops/bugs I'd see on android, SMS was good except dual sim support on the late models.
[^2] I'll admit I don't really use iPhone. I buy them for my dad (he loved his WinPho for the simplicity and tile interface, but 'I like this too!' so that is what he sticks with now).
Phone quality is uneven with some OEMs consistently producing crap and others sometimes laying eggs. Your sample size is likely small. Many people don't buy a new phone until the old one doesn't work anymore. So you could trivially have only experienced 2-3 phones total. It would be trivial then to conclude all phones have these problems even though its not so.
Try a Motorola or a well reviewed model from another manufacture paying attention especially to people's complaints and whether or not they represent legit flaws. Spend at least 30 minutes reading reviews before you buy.
Oh they know. I've had call issues (that included ability to make emergency calls) since the G1 days. Oftentimes it is a diceroll between the firmware of the MFG and the version of android.
One of the things I miss most about WinPho is the reliability of their phone/sms stack (well, except for near the end of WP10, things got weird)
Yesterday I was reading it is because Google pay such a low salary. If they increase it to like 3x-4x of current, all bugs will disappear on their own.
Well, I am reminded on this forum very often that any poor software product is most likely because developers are not compensated fairly for their work.
Why should software companies, developers, product managers and executives remain immune from consequences of willful negligence, when that negligence results in real harm?
In college I took an Engineering Ethics class, where we studied engineering mistakes resulting in deaths, and learned about the investigation and prosecution of the engineers involved when there was negligence.
I especially like the Therac-25 [0] as a good example for software engineers. A literal concurrency bug between the UI and radiation emitter caused at least 6 people to get massive overdoses of radiation. Think about that next time you're using a multi-thread/multi-process library!
I want that. I think that refusing to fix a life-or-death bug for 8 months is criminally negligent. Especially when millions of Pixel 6s are out in the wild, as an essential utility for millions of people.
I don't know the specific law, but FCC does expect a phone to be able to reach 911 (e.g., 911 Act). There must already be a penalizing process or fines in place for manufacturers who fail to meet basic standards.
I'm not sure what criminal liability would look like, though. Who do we put in jail? The dev? QA? People who CR'd the bug? The TPM who proposed the feature? The manager who allocated time? The skip who initiated the whole project? Should they share blame and multithread a 7 month sentence together and do 1 month together?
I agree w/ you though. My company needs to alert me if any LOC I'm working on could land me in prison and I'll gladly switch projects. I definitely don't want that burden.
I know it was rhetorical but Googlers aren't pad so much because the quality of the SW coming out of Google matches the pay, but because they work for the number one data scraping and advertising company in the world.
Yo can have the best leetcoders in the world, but if QA is not part of the company culture, then ...
Does anybody know at what point the FCC can revoke the radio license of these devices? Reaching emergency services seems a prerequisite for transmitting on the telephony part of the spectrum, so it might be surprisingly clear.
It's abundantly clear from the replies in this thread that people are thinking emotionally, not rationally.
They're pissed off at their phone, and reaching for the biggest stick they can find -- not to fix the problem, but to punish whoever caused it. Likely, they wouldn't even punish the right person, it would just be a scapegoat sacrificed to appease their wrath.
Your comment is right on the nose when it comes to thinking rationally, and not emotionally.
A smart phone is not like the flight computers on a 747. If you want guaranteed 911 access with the threat of criminal prosecution if it fails, I'll happily design you a device. It will cost $50k, and will have a monthly service fee of $1000 per user. It won't have any other features besides 911. But it will work!
I would argue that you’re the one who’s having the emotional reaction , not the rational one, when it comes to involving authorities and legally mandated access to emergency services.
You are clearly unaware of the legal requirements here.
> You are clearly unaware of the legal requirements here.
I am definitely unaware. If you do know the specific law/infraction, please link to it as that would help the discussion.
It doesn't help to vaguely hand-wave (emotionally I would argue) "Someone should go to jail!!". As I asked above, which people? How much jail? And what are the clearly defined laws?
There are engineers that deal directly with code critical to public safety and the amount of verification, compliance, testing, authorization, permits, processes, legal reviews, etc involved in that pipeline increase costs and delays 10-fold, but they are extremely safe and reliable.
Not saying we shouldn't do this for an emergency device, but it most certainly will not be cost-free, few engineers would want to be involved and consumers will not want to buy it.
First of all…did you change to an alt account? I don’t see libria anywhere in my reply chain above but you’re responding as if you’re bjt2n3904
Secondly nobody mentioned jail. Criminal investigation doesn’t mean jail time especially for corporations. Criminal negligence can just mean fines and a requirement to resolve the issue
You’re also acting as if people are saying the whole device and all software should be infallible. That’s not the requirement. Legally any cellular device needs to be able to contact emergency services as long as there are no extenuating circumstances (dead battery, no connectivity).
This is federally mandated in many countries. That Google has repeated failures to do so, across multiple countries and across a long period of time means that they are in violation of government rules.
You’re being intentionally obtuse on these points.
All phones likely have bugs which could lead to crashes which means it could in theory just happen to experience an issue concurrently with the users attempting to call 911 resulting in a failure. However your base image should have few to zero such bugs and such failures just happening to coincide with an emergency call are or ought to be statistically very unlikely.
The issue is not that a crash could happen its that a specific crash happens specifically when the user tries to place an emergency call triggered by the code that is supposed to run when the user makes such a call making failure statistically much more likely. Worse this has been a known issue since 2021.
People aren't asking for space shuttle quality engineering they are asking for the same statistical probability of failure as any other good quality phone. It is deeply ironic that while you insist others don't know what they are demanding you clearly have no idea what they are demanding.
There is a difference between initial product design (also needs to follow regulations, but not the main topic of discussion), and failure to act on repeated bug reports spanning years that clearly describe software bugs which disrupt emergency calls on Android phones. There is not much to defend in their conduct.
It's really disgusting to see someone argue that people don't want to pay for quality, when old phones worked. Now, the pilpul here will be to claim that those old phones totally didn't actually work, they just appeared to basically always work, so it's totally the same thing; it's not.
The fact of the matter is that old phones may not have been formally-proven to work, but basically worked. The new phones aren't formally-proven to work, and basically don't.
> People just don't know what they're demanding.
As a programmer, I want the cretins claiming to be programmers to face justice for their disgusting work, about which they're so smug and condescending.
After reading their other comments I think they’re more of the mindset of “regulations mean higher cost and I don’t want to pay more to meet standards I don’t immediately care about“
You're speaking in generalities that can hardly even be mapped to the situation at hand. What, specifically, are you saying is the correct recourse here? What are you saying would go wrong if Google were prosecuted for intentionally shipping a nonfunctional emergency feature?
As a developer, I worry about this. However, I also don't work on systems that could cause anyone a level of harm resulting in criminal damage. If I did, I'd like to think I'd increase the care I put into my craft 1000x. I realize that's not doable in many companies, and that's the problem. Too many companies taking the "move fast and break things" attitude towards people's lives and safety. This is how you invite the big foot of government regulation.
I am reminded of this article [0] on how NASA develops software. For things that absolutely must work, standard development practices do not apply. Real Engineers do not get to leave off testing for the big red emergency shut off button.
It highly probable that you are incapable of increasing the care you put into your craft by 1000x as you no matter your intentions because there isn't 1000x more of you to give.
In anything better processes and consistency beats try harder 7 days a week and twice on Sunday.
By care I'm thinking more disciplined approaches and moving very slowly with a significant increase in QA and verification. Most of us, regardless of the framework, time in the industry, or what letter we put in our xDD methodology of choice, are flying by the seat of our pants compared to most disciplines.
Why not? I like the laws that have been passed to ensure that people are able to contact emergency services. I think enforcing those laws is logical, given that they exist and imho they exist for good reason.
I got a Pixel 6 Pro a few months ago, and it's without question the worst phone I've ever had the displeasure to own.
- It crashes constantly.
- Bluetooth is even buggier than usual.
- Fingerprint unlock is very finicky.
- The touchscreen isn't designed/calibrated well and leads to constant fat finger presses.
- The hotspot is buggy to connect and randomly drops once it does connect.
- The phone is so slick (ie low friction) that it will randomly slide and fall off of slightly off-level surfaces.
- It feels like this was released without anyone living with the phone for even a couple weeks and trying normal use cases...
Anyway - I've been really disappointed there haven't been updates to fix some of this stuff. I've heard this may be because of hardware issues, but I haven't looked that deeply. I've owned Pixel phones before and like the no BS + Google Apps-centric approach, but this phone really soured me on Google phones. :-(
I have a Samsung Galaxy S9 at the moment, but Samsung's typo-filled changelogs don't exactly inspire confidence. It has also been bugging me to accept the new Samsung Account terms, which I don't want to do.
Chinese brands (Huawei, Xiaomi, Motorola, etc.) don't inspire confidence for me either.
Apple had the CSAM scanning controversy. I have an iPad, but a bunch of features I didn't want were turned on by default, and the walled garden approach is obviously a downside.
I would prefer to run a privacy-focused Android distribution, but I have a lot of apps and I don't know how much they depend on Google Play Services, so I don't really want to switch over 'cold turkey'. Also, they're still built on the same AOSP base, so who's to say they don't have the same bugs?
Just look for a phone on which you can easily install a stable custom ROM. I previously had a Samsung device and installed Lineage OS and was happy-ish. It was clean and free of bloatware, fast, and had a good battery life. The downside was that it wasn't stable (probably never got an uptime above 48h) and the major updates were too buggy and too late.
I recently bought a Xiaomi device. The moment you turn it on you notice it's filled with spyware and bloatware. I thought I couldn't be more surprised after seeing the clock app ask for permission for "personalized experience", but they got me, in the calculator app. Other than that, the hardware is great, the themes look good, and overall it's a good experience. It's a pity I'd have to switch to a custom ROM because of this "personalized experience" MIUI nonsense.
The problem is that anyone who wants to use Google Pay or banking apps, or anything that requires the phone to pass SafetyNet, will not be able to use an alternative ROM. Right now that's the only thing stopping me from getting a phone with a shitty "skinned" version of Android, as I can't replace the factory OS without losing a ton of functionality I rely on.
I think that's outdated information in many regards. Most apps seem to have turned off the SafetyNet requirement; I suspect that may be due to a larger amount of Chinese Android phones that don't have it.
I'm using a Play-Store-less microG LineageOS on a Google Pixel 1, and all my banking apps work (Revolut UK, German Post Bank authenticator), as well as a Swiss online health care app.
I haven't found an application yet that I couldn't use on LineageOS due to lack of SafetyNet.
The answer to "I can't do X because I use Y and Z" is not "You're wrong to want to use Y and Z". Understand that not everyone prioritizes the same things you do.
Regardless, Google already has enough information on me to profile me quite well; avoiding Google Pay will not meaningfully change that, and I get enough value out of it that the trade off is worth it to me, at least for now.
Of course everyone is free to have their own priorities when it comes to privacy.
However, for people who want to use Google Pay despite the privacy implications, I'm not sure running a privacy-preserving Android distribution is even meaningful. At that point, why not just run stock Google Android?
Huh I've not experienced much instability with Lineage OS, other than a nasty bug that was fixed in the next update. Certainly not to the point that I couldn't get an uptime >48h. Actually I don't think the phone has crashed at all, maybe an app might have crashed at some point.
Just get an iPhone. They are for better or worse the BlackBerry of the 2020s.
Samsung is the only rival in terms of hardware. Google lacks the attention span to execute. Everything else is even less baked.
I’d experiment with nerdy Android distros with a tablet. I used to have a Linux smartphone (whose name escapes me, which is driving me nuts) back in like 2006/7, it was fun but not a “daily driver”.
I was an inch away from buying an iPhone, even though I disapprove of their curation model, because Android is such a garbage fire. (Not one modern Android phone has in-kernel-tree drivers? Not one?)
And the forced curation is dumb but if they're approving everything I'd want to use anyway, Android can eat it until they sort out their problems. What do I even need? Signal and Firefox with uBlock, that's really it.
On iOS, Signal can't do SMS and there's no uBlock. Of course.
>Not one modern Android phone has in-kernel-tree drivers? Not one
That's up to Qualcomm, not Android. And Qualcomm needs to sell new chips every year, therefore planned obsolescence by tying the drivers to a version of Android works in their favor.
Google has the leverage to fix this if they wanted to.
Samsung is also leaving a competitive advantage on the table by not doing this with Exynos.
And the planned obsolescence is pointless. Even if you could run the latest Linux kernel on a phone you bought ten years ago, a phone from that year might have a 3G radio and less than a GB of memory. Which can still make phone calls, or be used in place of a Raspberry Pi, but it's hardly competition for anything currently commanding significant margins.
>Google has the leverage to fix this if they wanted to.
How?
>Samsung is also leaving a competitive advantage on the table by not doing this with Exynos.
How is Samsung different than the rest? They also make their money from selling as much hardware as possible as often as possible. They don't have a way to monetize users post-sale through subscriptions, services and AppStore cuts. All that infrastructure is owned by Google and that's where the money goes to.
In general the same way they get ~every Android phone to ship with Google Play.
The most aggressive way would be to design their own chips like Apple does and put the drivers in the kernel tree, make the chips available to other phone makers and then require satisfactory open source drivers from everyone as a condition of using Google services. Qualcomm publishes the drivers or loses all their hardware customers to Google's chips.
> How is Samsung different than the rest?
Qualcomm has been a near monopoly. The next phone you buy will likely be one of theirs even if you're dissatisfied with the existing one, so they can screw you and still get your business.
Samsung is the underdog here, and hardware brand loyalty is weak. If they could sell more phones by giving the people what they want, their overall sales go up even if people keep them longer, because the latter is more at the expense of their competitors.
Yeah it's generally fine by just using a Content Blocker app, but your argument about web extensions and adblocker is wrong. "I don’t see any ads" is handwavy response.
If the purpose of an ad blocker is to not see any ads and unless you can show me a web page that shows ads when I’m running 1Blocker that doesn’t with a supposedly superior solution then how is 1Blocker on iOS inferior?
I'm also fine with a Content Blocker app (I use local made one) like you. It rarely miss some ads (I don't know is it due to missed rules or API) but ignorable. So I'm not against for Apple/Google to introduce rule based API for efficiency. I just say Web Extensions on Safari seems to irrelevant for this topic. You can say "Content blocker is fine" instead. Technically it's less capable than what webRequests API can do, but it's almost fine for most users except like HNers.
Motorola makes good phones. I'm not sure why everyone is fixated on Samsung. Seems to me the Motorola G line is fantastic and even relatively cheap with the Moto G 5G being not but $300
I can say, after 6+ months with samsung s22 ultra i am very happy with it. Camera delivers more than any apple device can right now (since 10x zoom is surprisingly useful for me in normal light), battery is fine, screen is amazing and I think still best on the market today.
People bash androids for privacy like all are from china, but Korea (and Japan and US) makes some fine devices too and as european I prefer them to US (and obviously China).
I even have european exynos crap version, which is slower but some claim exynos models on previous models were much more stable/reliable after few months compared to snapdragons. Can't say, what I want works, there is absolute 0 broken/annoying things for me, no bloatware, no ads etc.
That being said, when wife was looking for smaller phone few weeks back, I went through reviews and opinions and suggested iphone 13 mini. She always loved iphone photos of other folks and I think she will enjoy phone UI smoothness and long term reliability/security. It will be an interesting experiment.
My Galaxy S21 is the best phone I've ever had. I didn't install any new firmware or anything that requires rooting and I never had a problem not accepting Samsung's terms.
Everything that matters works: the phone is fast, never crashes, and you can install browsers with AdBlock.
I don't really care about 'stock', tbh. It just needs to run the apps I want to run, and it's nice if it can also take decent photos. I would also strongly prefer for it to preserve my privacy, but I realize that's kind of a wash between Google and Apple.
How so? Google collects more data in absolute terms, but Apple collects quite a lot of data too. Neither of them can be said to be a truly privacy-conscious choice.
You originally said "it's kind of a wash between [them]".
I think most enquiring minds would disagree that there isn't much between them on this matter. You're staking out a fairly extreme stance on this topic. Nothing wrong with that - but don't sound surprised when people disagree.
Well, which one of the two do you consider particularly privacy-preserving?
Referencing the paper I linked, they both collect IMEIs, hardware serial numbers, SIM serial numbers, phone numbers, device IDs, telemetry, cookies, and MAC addresses of nearby devices. iOS additionally collects your location and local IP address. All this data is transmitted even when opted out of telemetry.
If you want a premium phone, Apple is pretty much unchallenged.
I'm not a fan of expensive phones though - I'm scared I will break it and lose $700+ in the blink of an eye. Been using cheap Motorolas for the past 10 years, no complains.
For the iPhone, you can always buy two generations back to save a few bucks. I bought an iPhone 11 a couple months ago for $499 plus tax and it’s a perfectly good phone.
If you're really on a budget you can probably go back even more generations and get both an acceptable phone and one that'll get updates for some time. Which are probably more important for iOS because it's such a single big target compared to the fragmented Android world. I'm currently using an iPhone 6s I got in February 2020 for $200 from my Consumer Cellular MVNO which unlocks it after 6 months.
One thing you'll lose with the older phones sooner than iOS updates is AppleCare support, but if you get a good bargain to begin with....
When you do that you're also buying into a phone that will stop receiving security updates sooner since iPhones receive updates for ~5 years after they're released.
I wouldn’t really worry about that. Apple has been very good at giving security patches to old devices. Just a few days ago they pushed a security patch for iPhones as old as the 5S
>I'm not a fan of expensive phones though - I'm scared I will break it and lose $700+ in the blink of an eye.
Phones over 200 bucks are a serious liability, I agree.
Fortunately, that also happens to be the price of the fourth-fastest phone on the market, that being the iPhone SE (Gen 2).
The fastest phone on the market (that being the Gen 3) is twice that price, but I have an easier time accepting a premium for that that's closer to 100 than the 1000 you'd have to pay to get the most capable Android phones... and they're still 4 years behind the iPhone technology-wise.
I would argue the value add of the Pixel 6 is the proprietary Google SW. I was considering the Pixel 6 only for its photo abilities, and a lot of those are via Google SW - not fantastic lenses/processors. If I replace it with a custom ROM, the OnePlus is probably a better device (faster processor, etc).
If the Google SW is so buggy, there's no compelling reason to buy one just because of the HW.
Would I get access to the proprietary camera features with these? If not, what's the point of getting a Pixel 6 and putting a custom ROM on it when there is better HW out there?
I lost my confidence in OnePlus when one of their OTA updates soft-bricked my OnePlus 5 on Christmas Eve. Lost all of the data that wasn't backed up, since I had to perform a complete wipe and the phone was encrypted.
Repairability is super high, it's easily flashed to eg LineagOS and has been promised software updates for many years if you want to stay with Android.
Due diligence and personal responsibility for what is likely your most important computing device, instead of contracting that out to firms who would stab their grandmother to improve their quarterly numbers.
If Google, with their army of engineers, hasn’t been able to track this bug down, why would I expect a team of volunteers to have done so? They do their own customizations, but it’s still based on AOSP.
To be clear, this is not meant to disparage the GrapheneOS devs, but there’s an obvious difference in available resources, so I don’t really expect them to fix hard-to-find bugs in AOSP.
Samsung A52s 5g. There is a variant with 8GB ram / 256GB storage with dual sim support. Enough features, headphone jack and 2 days battery life easily.
A53 is worse.
You mean like Google’s recent CSAM controversy? At least Apple never proposed using ML to find new CSAM and report you to the police with a single violation…
It was a controversy created by a poorly written Apple press release that unveiled two distinct features, and subsequently ginned up by an even worse EFF blog post.
CSAM scanning was all about iCloud, just like every other vendor, and the benefit was a roadmap to E2E storage.
The more confusing thing was the explicit content notifications for parents for their minor children in family plans.
So instead, just like everyone else, you almost certainly have CSAM scanning happening in iCloud directly. All of your content is just a subpoena away. Thanks EFF.
Running this kind of stuff is already leg in the door. Next they can decide to scan your device even, if you don't upload anything anywhere. For your safety, of course, you might be in a possession of an objectionable material, like photos of MAGA hats or other extremist paraphernalia.
So this is a big red line. If you want to upload to iCloud, ok, scanning there is a fair game and you can always not upload to iCloud. But your device should be your device, respecting your privacy.
As a parent, I may want to opt into a service on my managed, family device so I know my child’s fellow 9th grader girlfriend is sending pictures that may be a crime to possess, or vice versa. That is exactly what Apple did.
Like I said, you’re conflating two things that are not the same, because you’ve been fed a steady diet of bad information stemming from Apples unusually poor communications and the EFFs inaccurate blog post.
Apple’s proposal means that your data will never leave your device unencrypted - they can’t scan it on their servers due to inherently having quite good privacy in the first place.
The feature Apple proposed would only apply to files you were uploading to iCloud. Turning off iCloud photos prevented scanning.
The whole point of the Apple system was to enable end to end encryption so Apple couldn’t view your data on their servers. The only way they could get access is when a threshold of CSAM likely files were met. e.g the keys are sharded.
With the Apple approach you have considerably more privacy.
Why would they care about getting a foot in a door that they have the keys to and is wide open?
Modern SoCs have security domains that are invisible to the main CPUs. Apple can run just about anything it wants on the security coprocessor and users will be none the wiser.
The American DOJ, FBI etc do not want end-to-end encryption
and use ‘think of the children’ as an excuse. This gives Apple the plausible pushback to say ‘We have thought of the children…’
Apple only wanted to scan files on your device once you decide to upload it. In other words, if you don't ever actually upload anything nothing would ever be scanned.
Nobody is mad about cloud providers scanning for objectionable content. Everyone is mad because Apple is using the hardware you payed for to perform an operation you're paying them to provide. It's like paying for an API that gives you the weather, and all the endpoint returns is a system call for your phone's thermometer.
It goes to show that Apple isn't afraid to undermine their own experience to implement adversarial software services. Combined with the way they "respect" the privacy of Chinese citizens, I don't think Apple actually cares about our privacy. It would seem that instead they're testing the waters for more radical changes[0], like using on-device machine learning to detect suicidal users or terrorists. And who's going to object when that happens, right?
[0] Source: the past century of US political discourse.
The guy who had his Google account deleted for sending pictures of his children to his doctor is definitely upset about cloud providers scanning his content!
I'm sure he is, but rules are rules. Google cannot store that content for any purpose whatsoever: there are very specific regulatory standards in place for storing medical data, and Google Drive/iCloud doesn't comply with those standards. They (both!) go as far as to tell you that in the EULA, so the context of the situation doesn't even matter in the first place.
The more bothersome thing (to me) is client-side scanning. Apple is setting a precedent that allows any first-party manufacturer to work against the user's interests as long as there's a large enough common enemy. It should go without saying, but that's a horrible idea!
If Google were doing the same thing on their Pixel phones, I'd be slamming them equally as hard. It's simply depressing to watch a company claim they know best, while proceeding to use your phone to run their regulatory compliance code.
Taking a picture of something on your own phone is not "medical data" and they weren't doing ToS compliance, they were scanning for novel CSAM in a way they're not required to, reported it to the police, and now are refusing to undelete his account because of their never give anyone customer service policy.
(Even if you took a picture to send to your doctor through an encrypted app, it just has to end up in the photo library to be cloud synced, unless you remember to hand delete it.)
Not sure what the distinction is. Either Apple uses the hardware you paid for to scan [before uploading] or uses the service you paid for [during upload] to scan.
The practical difference is nil. The fact of the matter is, either way, if you don't upload you won't be scanned, if you do upload you will be. End result is the same regardless of whether you use OneDrive, Box, Dropbox or Google Drive (who all implement CSAM scanning)
The practical difference is that I pay for the electricity they use, now. The wear-and-tear of their service is now imparted onto my phone.
If Apple wants to run that code, they're welcome to do it on their own servers; they pay for the hardware, they decide what software it runs. I shouldn't have to waste my storage space on their NeuralHash model though. I shouldn't waste my CPU cycles on their regulatory compliance. Arguing anything else is paramount to saying that Apple owned your phone from the start, and if that's the case, then antitrust legislation can't come soon enough.
seems like a dumb thing to argue about. everything you're saying is moot as you can just plug in your phone to your computer and upload photos without scanning, or use a self-hosted file upload service, etc.
your compute and phone resources are already used for analytics and other things that you didn't explicitly tell the phone to do.
you also greatly overestimate how much CPU it takes to compare a hash, lol
fact of the matter is, you're only scanned when you're using apple services.
> your compute and phone resources are already used for analytics and other things that you didn't explicitly tell the phone to do.
I didn't know LineageOS sent analytics, it never showed up on Netguard. Curious!
If you think this is a dumb thing to argue about, then by all means; don't argue about it! If you're satisfied with your iPhone and convinced that Apple can do no wrong, then certainly don't let me get in your way. We're talking about the largest company in the world, though, and if you're unwilling to offer them a little criticism for objectively degrading the iPhone experience, then I don't see the point in discussing this.
> you also greatly overestimate how much CPU it takes to compare a hash, lol
Do I? If it's not such a big hassle, then Apple can just run it on their own servers. They own your iCloud decryption keys anyways, it shouldn't be too big of a deal.
We're talking about Apple devices here so LineageOS is irrelevant. Please keep up.
> Do I? If it's not such a big hassle, then Apple can just run it on their own servers. They own your iCloud decryption keys anyways, it shouldn't be too big of a deal.
Privacy is better preserved doing it on device compared to on their servers.
You might think that it's silly to complain about having to directly pay for an adversarial program to run, but try to imagine how it could bother other people.
That upload that is the only way to load data onto your phone for many apps, that the phone is auto-opted into and that only Apple can offer? That one? The one that literally no competitor can replace since it uses special Apple entitlements?
I'm not sure what you're talking about? iOS has implemented interfaces to use things like Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, etc, baked into the file system.
1. There is no filesystem (exposed), there are per-app sandboxes with the ability to move files from another sandbox
2. It only allows single file actions, no sync/offline cache/etc. Most apps don't meaningfully work well with this - there is no "sync these ten comics to this device at all times"
Most apps still only use their local file sandbox.
I was checking out the Android competition ahead of the iPhone 14 announcement and I was shocked that all of the flagships seem to have major usability complaints. I always thought that the UX might be a little worse, but Android would be ahead on hardware (battery, camera, etc). I thought the whole carriers doing updates and all that would have been fixed by now, but it seems like only Pixel has. What is keeping people still on Android if the flagships have so many issues?
>What is keeping people still on Android if the flagships have so many issues?
Many things boil down to research I'd have to do to convince myself of feature parity for things important to me. Micro SD cards are mostly gone from Android and also not so important to me as they once we're, so that reason is effectively gone. In no particular order:
1. You're stuck with iMessager, which at least means I can't keep Signal as my default messaging app, and probably means other downsides.
2. Old ipods and my iPad don't seem to even allow file transfer with my computer via USB. I don't know if you can transfer files directly to/from external hard drives.
3. Lightning cables (maybe iPhones don't have these anymore?)
4. I suspect that there are missing features if you don't have a MacBook, but I haven't looked into it.
5. I have apps I know and like. For starters, I would have to find a podcast app that I liked. AFAIK you still can't use FF with ublock origin on iPhones, which means I would have to migrate all my browser activity to something else.
6. Keeping my Android phone at least lets me pretend that I'll migrate over to GrapheneOS like I should.
7. I like having access to FDroid. AFAIK, iPhones have no analogue.
8. It seems like the iPhone mini is missing a fingerprint reader, which means only the SE is appealing.
Anyway, I thought pretty hard about it with my last phone because 2 of 4 Apple phones are the best 2 smaller phones, but it would be a lot of inconvenience just to have a smaller phone.
>What is keeping people still on Android if the flagships have so many issues?
Not much, apparently. In the US at least, iPhone usage has been steadily eroding Android usage; indeed, as of this summer, the US iPhone userbase became larger than the Android userbase [0].
Personally I find Apple UX inferior in many areas - eg. notification management sucks a lot. Customization is poor - no sideloading, no alternative launchers, even icons cannot be moved freely. Device looks bad due to huge noth. That's just a few from the top of my head.
Also giving more control over the market to company, that is almost definition of walled garden is bad for everyone.
I have both an Android (personal primary device) and an iPhone (work phone).
For me by far the number one reason I use my Android device is the Internet browsing differences.
Firefox Nightly with all the add-ons I use (first of all uBlock Origin, but so many more) and the sync to desktop Firefox is night and day compared to Safari (with an adblocker).
If you calibrate that with the iPhone also having major usability complaints, it seems par for the course.
Overall the current landscape is pretty grim to me. Is it the covid effect we're seeing through poor quality and a lot of stagnation for the last 2 years ?
I apparently have been living in my own bubble. Has the pixel 6 been a bad phone in general? I haven't had a single issue with mine and I bought it day one.
Same here, it's actually very weird seeing the endless posts of users in places like reddit (and here now) complaining about things that just never happen on my phone.
I've had Android phones since 1.5 and the pixel 6 has been flawless for me.
6 Pro here as well. I've generally had a solid experience with some minor quirks - I have had issues with inaccurate GPS/compass needing constant calibration and Chrome freezing up every now and then.
Same here, have a pixel 6 pro and the only think I can relate with is the somewhat janky fingerprint sensor. Have not had a single crash, everything works smoothly.
I don't have any of the crashing issues others seem to, but I absolutely agree the Pixel 6 Pro was a large regression - the Pixel 3 Pro was probably the best phone I've owned.
Fingerprint reader is inexcusably bad. I tried to just get used to it, but from a form factor and implementation standpoint it's a huge step back in useability.
Battery life is also pretty bad for the size of battery in the phone. Runs hot doing anything remotely CPU intensive.
I'm hopeful the Pixel 7 fixes most of these regressions. If not, it may be time to look at an iphone after nearly two decades of resistance.
I got on the Pixel rollercoaster at 1 (a great device), and got off after 4. 2, 3,and (especially) 4 all either had a common feature missing, or did some annoying shit. Seems like I made the right choice.
Unfortunately, it looks like OnePlus was a poor choice. Guess I'm turning to Nothing next.
After owning many Google phones since the Nexus era I think Google should really focus on making good mid-range phones and simply give up on the high-end entirely. It's not like they're really trying to sell hardware anyway (you can't buy them in most of the world) so I doubt it makes any real money. The fact the Pixel line looks like a hobby project year after year is just sad at this point.
I'm still using a Pixel 1, but it's starting to die at even 30% battery, and hasn't had software updates for to long. Wish devices weren't designed / destined to fail.
Huh. I wonder where are all the Android/Pixel apologists that say that to taste "real" Android you have to use Pixel. (And I say that as an Android developer, before downvotes come my way)
Pixel 6 (non-pro) user here. The fingerprint unlock is a bit finicky at some odd angles but none of these other issue. Replaced a Pixel 3a and just feels a bit faster, 5g, and bigger screen.
As an anecdote point, I didn't have any of these issues, I think standby battery drain was a bit high but after a few updates it got better, still not ideal though.
> It feels like this was released without anyone living with the phone for even a couple weeks and trying normal use cases...
Google used to have a very robust dogfooding in program internally. Back in 2012 - 2015. Everybody inside the android org was using the latest devices before release. This is not nearly the case anymore.
I have a non-pro version, but I can definitely relate to the "too slick, it randomly slides" problem - especially bad because the back camera protrudes. It's pretty ridiculous, my phone ends up on the floor multiple times a day despite me being the careful kind when it comes to electronics.
I don’t know enough about the emergency service requirements but it sounds like the issue is in the data Google are trying to query before connecting the call.
They likely have a blocking function somewhere that they should be running concurrently or falling back to a cache after a timeout.
Given how widespread this is in the comments on Reddit , I’m sure they must have enough user logs to pinpoint it.
This is making me furious. I do not think I have ever called 911, but it is one of those safety features I thought I could fully expect to work when needed.
I have only ever used Android, but this is going to be my final such device. I have accepted a lot of rough edges over the years, but this wilful negligence regarding safety features is where I am drawing the line. At least with Apple I will not have to hope that maintaining Emergency Services will get someone promoted.
It also is very weird that this bug even made it to production once because the standards explicitly require phone to call emergency services even if no SIM card is present.
Interesting, this is why I switched from android to apple ~ 5 years ago.
I was expecting a very important phone call for the outcome of the surgery of a person very close to me.
The smartphone, the Samsung galaxy S7 edge, finally rang, and I was trying to answer the the call, but no, android was doing something more important in the background, the whole UI was frozen and the phone call banner was not responding to touch. Finally, the phone rebooted by itself, and then it was back to normal. But my call was missed.
I did not get to listen to my person, because my android smartphone, was more smart and less phone.
After using Android for 10 years, a similar experience made me switch. I'd just bought a Pixel 5, and I received a call from a pizza delivery driver. I say I received a call because the phone rang. Otherwise I'd never have known. The UI didn't show it at all, even though it was responsive, and the missed call log section never populated. Nothing except the ringer sound.
The next day I switched to iPhone and have never regretted it. Like, if my phone can't receive calls or even capture that a call was missed, none of its other features matter.
Do you not remember the iPhone 4, which couldn't be held in your hand while taking a phone call?
The iPhone 8 I was given by a client wasn't perfect either. It would regularly miss notifications - even direct pings in messaging apps - then spam many at once 3-4 hours later. I was never able to fix it, so the phone was just a paperweight with a 2FA app on it.
I've certainly had more problems with Apple devices (Macbooks & iPhones) in my experience, and I'm glad I now work somewhere where we all get Linux laptops and are not forced into dealing with Apple's locked down and underwhelming software.
I have similar issues sometimes with the dialer app on my Pixel 2. I can't have a phone that doesn't prioritize being a phone over everything else that might be competing for cpu resources so my next phone is definitely going to be an iPhone.
So much this. The idea of being unable to call 911 when you need it is absolutely horrifying. I'd argue that one of the main reasons for owning a phone is to protect you. I think Android's entire company needs to be shut down and taken over.
Remember when Microsoft Teams on Android, a userland application, would block emergency calls? [1] Guess the asinine emergency call system still isn't properly fixed after that incident.
The Pixel 6 is an overhyped disappointment. I replaced my old super-cheap Android One phone with a Pixel 6 and it's full of hardware / software bugs: GPS has problems, I see graphics artefacts (GPU problems?) and Google doesn't care.
I've been a happy pixel user for years after getting burned with some cheap Android phones, most notably One Plus.
The Pixel 6 is an unmitigated clusterfuck. GPS/Maps locking up is the worst. Either wont load or will lock up during a trip and you will miss a turn. Try rebooting a phone while you're alone on a motorway, then having to type in your route again - super dangerous.
I've had the camera (video) lock up mid scene. Focus locks up. Fingerprint recognition is a fail 25-50% of the time.
These have been known issues since release, I made the now incorrect assumption these were natural bugs that would be fixed over time.
Pixel 6 is the last phone from Google I will own. Not sure I want to jump to iOS yet but things are looking increasingly bleak in the Android garden
Same got scammed by all the reviews saying best Pixel yet and a good price for flagship. Terrible software issues, I was unable to make calls without 10s of a high pitch beep interrupting within the first 5s, I'm glad I don't rely on my phone for work calls but some people do. I had to enroll in to the Beta early release to resolve it. Bluetooth dropping for seconds in the car. Random extreme battery drain even now. Fingerprint works about 50% of the time which is a pain because I have an 8 digit pin enforced by MS Teams for work.
Around the time of the Pixel 3 Android seemed to have all the momentum and Apple seemed to be flailing around trying to find ways to sell even more expensive and gimmicky hardware to their existing users. Since then Android seems to have really stagnated and Apple has fixed most of the shortcomings of their OS and introduced some good models at lower price points. There are still some things I prefer about Android's UX and I strongly dislike how locked down iOS is but most people are probably better off buying an iPhone now.
There are TONS of ad-blockers, and a very sophisticated and comprehensive ad blocking API available on iOS. What’s stopping one single ad blocker from running on it?
These tons of ad blockers do a very poor job actually blocking ads in Safari, unfortunately. I run AdGuard and any time I’m out of my PiHole’s range it’s all a crapfest of ads.
Similar here. Have 1Blocker, Better, Purify, and the Firefox Focus Safari extension and between those I rarely see ads. Compared to Firefox with uBlock Origin on my Windows machines I’d say the experience is about 98-99% as good.
"Vinegar - Tube Cleaner" blocks all YouTube ads in Safari.
It also replaces YouTube's video player with the native HTML5 player, so you can play videos in the background or watch them in picture-in-picture mode.
Vinegar can also be used together with Sponsorblock for a completely ad-free experience. It's a difference as night and day.
Thank you for this recommendation - I'm planning to switch platforms in a few weeks, and blocking YT ads was one of the big open questions I still had.
I’m using Musi (which is designed to stream songs off youtube). Behind the scenes, it likely uses mechanisms akin to popular youtube downloaders, and is finicky where age-restricted videos are concerned.
But with it, I’ve yet to see a single ad and it can play audio from youtube in the background.
It can find and play playlists but has a poor story of following channels. You cannot navigate to a channel with it and binge on videos from it.
I am so disappointed to hear that. The Pixel 3 was the best phone ever made as far as I'm concerned, and the 5 is not too shabby. Now I'm worried I'll have to look for another non-Samsung phone line when this phone needs to be replaced.
There is a lot of complaints against the 6 in this post so maybe it sucks but I've been super pleased with mine after upgrading from the 3a. I am running GrapheneOS but that shouldn't shield me from hardware issues which I haven't noticed any. My wife just got a 6a and so far so good with it as well.
Anecdotal but ever since I started using the pixel line (a pixel 2 and now in pixel 4a) from the previous Nexus 5x it has just been a Smorgasburg of quality control issues. The pixel 4a GPS constantly has conflict issues with Bluetooth and loses signal, and recently the SIM card reader disconnects intermittently.
The only reason I haven't switched to iPhone is because the speech recognition on android is light years ahead of Siri. So frustrating....
Whoa. My spouse was unable to dial 911 in the US once (probably the only time it was tried on that phone). Thankfully it wasn't a life-or-death, get-me-to-the-ER emergency and we just used my phone (Pixel 3). We thought it was an isolated bug on just that phone but this sounds super dangerous now.
I own a pixel 6 (not the pro model), and I also regret it. I've never needed to call the emergency services but I do find relatively frequent network drops: one moment it has a 5G or LTE connection, the next it is unable to find access to the network.
This is in Switzerland on the 'flagship' carrier Swisscom. Swisscom are generally regarded as having the best overall coverage in Switzerland, helped by the fact they used to be the "PTT" i.e. a national enterprise as part of the Swiss Post. They operate Ericsson hardware, and Switzerland has lower power maximums for mobile operators compared to many European countries, resulting in a higher density of antennae. I'm also not talking about challenging environments like the mountains: I'm saying my Pixel 6 routinely drops 5G in the centre of cities like Geneva, Bern or Zürich. One of which happens to host a reasonably large Google office, so you'd figure they'd notice issues like this.
I've tried reflashing the OS from scratch, upgrading to beta versions of 'Carrier Services' etc. The issue appears to have improved over time and happens less frequently, but it still certainly happens.
My original plan was to eventually move to GrapheneOS but I'm now unsure, as I can't tell if this is the quality of stock android and the pixel hardware, and I'm rethinking my options.
I also live in Switzerland and using Swisscom network. I have a pixel 4a, so I don't use 5g but the phone is really bad with finding network. I also experiment weird bugs like today it was impossible to watch tv online (rts) on my pixel but it was working on my friend iPhone. I hate to be trapped in Apple ecosystem but Google products are so buggy... I bought a Nest Google assistant last week and it can't understand the most basic queries... I spent hours trying to configure it and reseting, always failed at some point.
I think Google doesn't care about other language than English and doesn't care about Swiss market (they don't even sell their phone on the Swiss google shop).
I thought about going Samsung but Exynos, privacy issue, and their stupid marketing doesn't help...
GrapheneOS and other privacy focus OS seems nice on paper but a lot of time spent to make it work.
I guess I'll wait iPhone 14 keynote and Pixel 7 before making a choice.
I was biking and noticed a fire so I called the emergency number. I didn't notice that I had my Bluetooth headset connected to the phone, since I was listening to a podcast maybe half an hour earlier during the ride but never use it for talking on the phone.
So I didn't even hear the ringing an nothing, I was wondering if something was broken, until I realized that it was using the headset for the call.
In the end this was no problem because I noticed fast enough, but what became a problem was notifying my location.
I started passing him the Plus Code which was the first thing shown on the emergency screen: the call center person got annoyed asking me what I was reading to him. So I opted to read him the full GPS coordinates, where he then told me that this appears to be a completely different location from what I described him before resorting to the Plus Code.
Then there is a map on the screen which you have to tap on in order to get a full map view with street names, which finally helped passing the location.
It was a horrible experience in the sense that this technology seemed to make it more complicated while under stress.
Why show Plus Codes if they are not an agreed upon standard? Why not show me the nearest street names, which in my case was a bit problematic because I was on a field, but highlight and name some well known POI's, after all, Google has a huge database of ranked POIs. Something like "One third between POI 1 and POI 2".
It's pretty frustrating, Google Maps doesn't even show the GPS code for allot of locations, like your GPS blue bubble or places, you have to select an empty space on the map, then it'll tell you the GPS cords of that spot (as well as plus code).
It's pretty frustrating, I've called 911 once, and was way more frustrating then I'd have liked it to be just to get my GPS location.
Like you say, no one knows what this plus code is, (personally I do like the plus code, but it's useless if the receiver doesn't know what to do with it)
High-end Samsung phones are the only reason I'm still on Android.
Google (Pixel), One Plus, Huawei, and most other Android phone designers/manufacturers have not been able to reach Samsung/Apple quality for the past five or more years.
It’s hilarious that internally googlers always used to poo poo vendors in private conversations but imo you’re absolutely right - samsung essentially holds the whole brand afloat. Although not by choice - they tried replacing android and failed miserably
The way you wrote it makes it sound like most vendors sell secure software but not Samsung, which isn't true at all: all vendors sell insecure software except very few exceptions.
The fact that Samsung cannot build secure software doesn't mean they're bad at it. It means they're not better than the others, which is very different from calling then the most insecure software company.
Application security in information security is what climate change is in politics: an underdog, strongly opposed, and massively misunderstood. The simple fact that you are aware that Samsung produces code, which contains many security vulnerabilities, is an indicator that it is probably doing much better than a lot of other companies ;)
Same, but I'm so done with the uninstallable facebook apps.
When I got my galaxy 10 I went in and disabled all the facebook apps since you can't uninstall them. I went an checked the status a year later, and the original ones were still disabled, but they had pushed additional facebook apps to me behind the scenes without me knowing.
I don't get why samsung needs facebook money this badly to invade their customer's privacy.
Now it's time to upgrade and I'm reluctant to buy Samsung, Pixel seems to be garbage .. not sure where to turn next.
In my opinion newer Sony Xperia androids are okay-ish too, I am happy. They are closer to stock android though and may look less fancy. Samsung is very polished and consistent even during major Android version changes.
Same and just wanted to echo it amid the Android hate that's bombarded this thread. Sure it has its warts, but the amount of hyperbole here about it being "the worst phone ever" is unwarranted.
Yeah, me too. Zero problems. I've also successfully dialed 911 with it. Though it was in Seattle so I got put on hold for 5 minutes ^_^. I guess the linked thread says the issue is in Australia.
Intensely unhappy with my Nokia 5.4 for about a month now, after a system update conscripted it and me into recurring DDoS attacks upon the public 911 system:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32526819
The only reason I carry a cellphone with me in many situations is just in case of an emergency. I wouldn’t take it for walks, to the store, out to eat, and definitely not while driving, but only for the safety of myself and others around me, it could save someone’s life. It’s the only feature of a cellphone that I need, everything else is secondary.
That they can’t care enough to address this issue is reason enough to swear off google completely. They must be so very cold-hearted, fish stinks from the head and all that.
I have the pixel 6 Pro. By far the worse phone I've ever had. It's unable to hold a consistent phone conversation and I'll often cut out so the person on the other end can't hear me. Did a RMA and the new phone has the same problem. Support is also difficult to deal with. Ive been a loyal pixel owner until now, but can no longer recommend anyone buy a pixel phone.
The fact that this has stuck around so long feels like a consequence of triaging your bugs purely by the number of affected users. After all, likely less than 0.1% of users ever run into this bug, it can't be that big of an issue right?
My wife and I recently upgraded from Pixel 4 and we found that both the 5 and 6 overheat during normal use. After browsing the internet for a half hour, either phone will be too hot to hold in your hand. How do phones like that get shipped?
Does anyone have details on the internals of Google's customer support orgs? They seem to have taken to heart compliance with only bare minimum legal requirements over the past four or five years.
And given that it's now also impossible to engage support on Facebook to fix account issues (I was locked out of my Oculus Quest 2 after attempting to merge my Oculus dev account with the Facebook account I closed in 2006), I wonder if it's time again to legislate higher standards for "support".
I switched to pixel 6 from pixel 4 and it was buggy to the point that I had to give away my pixel 6. Then I bought new still in box pixel 3 and I'm happy again.
And the more relevant date: not even 2.5 years between the Pixel 3 being the actively promoted flagship device and being declared obsolete by virtue of dropping security updates.
Yes, if you install LineageOS... I like my Pixel 3 except for one thing, the fingerprint sensor appears to be defective, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't (bought it used on https://swappa.com/)... it gained 30% in value since I bought it more then a year ago.
I'm currently using a 6 year old phone. Now that I don't take many photos and use it lightly - it actually performs far better than the previous 3 new phones I had - 2 of which were flagships.
The S22 I sent back had worse battery-life than my current phone - it was doing heavy background-work, despite having all the battery-optimal settings enabled.
To the point:
New phones are way too big, too power-hungry, the newer they get the more 'features' they have that I didn't ask for and don't want - not least is the data mining by everybody under the sun at the firmware level.
I've given up buying new phones. When this one cunks-out I'll buy an old-used one. That is unless there comes a real alternative to increasingly crappy android & the above issues are resolved.
This is the first phone running a Google chipset, and Google CPU. And a Google modem I believe. Their previous phones were Qualcomm based. I imagine a lot of the issues people are seeing are related to that, a mix of hardware flaws and driver bugs.
Isn’t the “Google CPU” just rebranded Exynos? In which is case it’s almost always worse than same generation Qualcomm in performance. One of the reasons why I couldn’t stomach purchasing a Samsung phone here in Europe was that their Exynos processor was worse across the board than what the North American benchmarks on YouTube would have you believe.
How do we know that it's Google's fault ? There are so many variables here. We should ask for automated testing numbers. At least in the US, there isn't one. It requires special manual work to make a test call to 911.
Reminds me of how my Windows Mobile phone over 20 years ago would sometimes bring up the dialpad without the "9" available, which was the last straw for me and got me to switch.
My pixel 6 misses to dial regular numbers a lot of times. The app just stays on dialing and then quits. There is no error, nothing. It should at least throw an error.
A phone without basic emergency service access should be recalled. Google has no intention on fixing it, they might as well save themselves further liability
I'm basically locked into Pixels because of GrapheneOS/CalyxOS, the best experience you can get for a privacy friendly phone.
The software is great, the camera is amazing, and the battery is good too, the only problem is the display on my Pixel 4XL.
IOS is a hot garbage prison, to the point its users dream of something like newpipe, and the FOSS scene is basically nonexistent, also Apple doesn't care about your privacy, I will never switch.
All other phones are either filled with gimicky things, have crappy designs(one ui isn't great compared to stock android) and nothing is private like CalyxOS/GrapheneOS.
And yes payment apps/SafetyNet works on Calyx!
Since Pixel 6 doesn't seem to be great, I will probably upgrade to PXL7/8, though there are some enticing deals on the normal Pixel 6.
On the side note I thought Android has very few bugs probably because I don't use my Android phone a lot but I encountered one pretty annoying bug last week and I was unpleasantly surprised.
they can be sued for this right? i'm surprised that no one has done this already. this is life and death situation from a trillion dollar company, how are they still getting away with this is just amazing.
Like where's the ticket sitting on the jira board right now? what priority is it? does the product team know about this and just ignores it? they should be held accountable
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29492884
https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/rfld6m/pixel_p...