I am planning to make the switch this year. As a long time Pixel user, Google's support of its own hardware has been subpar. My phone was only officially supported for 3 years.
They will increase support for new phones, probably because Apple does the same. It is too little, too late for me.
I've had every htc g1/nexus/pixel. 3 years hasn't been too big a deal, we have 3 phones in the household and the phones trickle down based on preferences for camera, phone size, and us. Did run up against the 3 year limit a few times. Fortunately the pixel 6 and 7 switched to 5 years of support.
I was considering switching to iPhone, but then I tried GrapheneOS. It's only for pixels, is easy to install, and focuses on privacy and security. Suddenly it feels like it's my phone. Zero crapware, something pixels have been pretty good at. I can remove any app I want, even the play store. It ships with a de-googled chrome. I'm impressed.
Is there any hope of getting these operating systems (grapheneos/leaniageos) to run on anything other than the pixel phone?
I've been using Samsung all my life (tablets, phones, watches, TVs) since they've been providing consistent quality, but after samsungs silently leaking my keyboard input to grammarly and not providing me the features I paid for on their galexy watch, I decided to move out of the samsung echosystem for good.
The thing is that I still really like their hardware. I just want to change the software running on it to something more sane and less shady.
Long time Android user here (since 1.5 on G1), had all the Nexuses and Pixels as well. Give the OnePlus phones a try. My family's switched to using them and I've been impressed with the battery life and hardware. The software is closer in spirit to the Nexus line.
Don't. Older OnePlus devices (1-3) were great, but the newer ones are pure trash, basically e-waste phones due to how poor the SW support is: good up to date HW, but buggy SW and poor SW update cycles with late updates which often add more bugs and remove features and don't address older bugs leading to never ending frustrations (just read their forums).
They even did bait-and-switch where they promised X update was coming in the future for your phone, and later axing that update completely while quietly removing all mentions of their promile from their webpage and forums. Stay away from them, there are more pleasurable ways to burn your money away.
My mother asked me for a phone recommendation and I told her to try OnePlus. It is a beautiful phone (for an Android) but very buggy. It often fails, at random, at it most basic job of making phone calls without needing a restart. I regret making that recommendation.
I had an early pixel and the Pixel 4 coming out and being ass was what drove me to iPhone. I wanted a phone with clean software, instant updates, and face unlock. The Pixel 4 being bad made me realize that the iPhone had all of those things for a long time.
They will increase support for new phones, probably because Apple does the same. It is too little, too late for me.