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Comment by jahabrewer | Hacker News Reader

I'm really excited to see Google return to this price point. I was distraught when they discontinued the Nexus line.

Motorola continues to carry this torch with it's G-series, near-stock, sub-$300 phones.

True, but my G5 Plus lags a lot at this point. It has always been noticeably slower than other higher-end phones. I am really tempted to get the new Pixel 3a.

I'm replacing my G4 with a 3a. The new G7 is $300 so the extra $100 for a better camera and slightly faster seems pretty worth it.

I would wait a little bit for more reviews, because it seems 3a has poor front speaker. Most of the phones have different problems with front speakers however (poor stereo balance). But I desperately need one with good stereo.

I've had the same issue with my G5 plus... Apps, multitasking, camera, keyboard etc. are all significantly laggier than they used to be

> Motorola continues to carry this torch with it's G-series, near-stock, sub-$300 phones.

They also come with almost non existent Android upgrades.

Really? My wife has been getting very regular security upgrades on hers, and I'd been pleasantly surprised. (I'm almost always the one to trigger off any upgrade on her phone when I notice she's got one queued up waiting to install)

Meh. The latest available security patch for the Android 8.0.0 on my Moto Z Play which I purchased 2 years ago is the one of August 2018. Yes, I didn't purchase the phone directly at release date, but just a bit more than 1 year of security patches isn't great. It hurts even more because the hardware is incredibly sturdy and with the battery pack mod, charging woes have been a thing of the past.

EDIT: Wow, apparently they are still advertising and selling this model for which they haven't released a security update in almost a year!

My G4 Plus has been a tank. It survived a motorcycle trip through the Yukon mounted to the bars of my bike without any more protection from the elements than my windscreen.

I unlocked the bootloader but then never installed a ROM because the stock one is close enough to vanilla Android to keep me happy.

The audio on my G4 plus died last year. It sounded like a common problem with no clear resolution. Plus they haven't updated it to Android 8.0.

GPS died on my G4 play after a year. Loved the phone otherwise.

The Moto x4 (no longer available, but it was until recently) is really nice. I hope there's an x5, in the future.

As long as you don't want to root it. Nothing but trouble there.

I want to use Google Pay, so rooting isn't an option for me. And, I don't want to spend all the time that a rooted device requires (when updates are available).

You can pretty well solve both of those with systemless root... if it works. It just crashed horribly for me.

I would also consider Nokia (HMD global).

> near-stock

I have now got a Nokia 7+ which has "Android One" (very close to AOSP) and it has been a great piece of hardware which gets updates. I think HMD Global dealt brilliantly with the security issue that affected some phones.

I agree about Moto though, in the past I have bought four Moto phones (G1, G3, G3, G4 - two were presents) and I had zero hardware faults (although they all stopped getting updates far earlier than I like). A G3 and G4 are still in daily use. One G3 broke a screen (teenager), and I can't remember who I gave the G1 to when I upgraded.

Multiple previous experiences with Nexus line have left me disappointed, and so far the Pixel's have been too expensive for me to want to learn the same mistakes again.

Hopefully the 3a will be better!

Nokias are bootlocked(nonstarter for me) and I'm not clear how reliable they are going to be on updates either.

The Nokia phones are part of the Android One program which means the are guaranteed software updates for two years and monthly security updates for three years which is the same as the Pixel phones.

Now older Motorola phones (e.g. G3) can no longer be unlocked: https://support.motorola.com/us/en/solution/MS87215

I also used to use your rule: if it was bootlocked then I wouldn't buy it.

However that rule has never helped me use CyanogenMod/LineageOS etc because:

Galaxy Nexus: Screen burn in (OLED blue) and obsoleted OMAP processor so didn't update, then gave to friend's kid.

Nexus 10: Kept at factory 5.1.1 for testing at work. Then tried updating this year but flash partition was too small to install gApps.

Nexus 7: Gave to family member who updated it, but it then died from slow flash hardware issue.

Nexus 5: broken frame (leading to common hardware faults) - no point updating.

Nexus 5X: Never used much - can't use as daily driver due to perceived risk of boot looping - so it is sitting in drawer at work.

Moto G1: Gave away a long time ago

Moto G3: Broken by teenager

Moto G3: Gave to friend (still in use - but can't unlock G3 any more)

Moto G4: Was a present to a friend (still in use by them, they not likely to update or want update)

Edit: Some of the devices were bought cheaply (second hand) and more than one device was paid for by work as we always need recent Android devices to test App releases on.

> I have now got a Nokia 7+ which has "Android One" (very close to AOSP) and it has been a great piece of hardware which gets updates.

My nokia 3 get's updates, shame they won't install. Then again the android one updates have been breaking enough random stuff that it might be a blessing.

> Motorola continues to carry this torch with it's G-series, near-stock, sub-$300 phones.

Except that they seem to have wholeheartedly jumped on the "I need a phone so big it won't fit in my hand" bandwagon. As far as I could tell last I checked, they don't sell anything in this size range.

Too bad they haven't gone back to the size of the Nexus 4/5 though :/

Which is funny, because the Nexus 5 had a more pixel dense screen and supported wireless charging at a lower price point.

Same here. I ended up buying an iPhone SE two years ago to replace my Nexus 5 because I did not want to spend $650 for a Pixel phone. While unfortunately it would be difficult for me to switch back to Android since I have an Apple Watch that I love using, I am very happy that Google has decided to return to the Nexus-style price point. I loved my Nexus 5, including its stock Android and its two years of updates from Google.

> it would be difficult for me to switch back to Android since I have an Apple Watch that I love

Vendor ecosystem lock-in triumphs again.

I'll be honest though, for a long time I resisted the Apple ecosystem because I used linux heavily and was an early adopter of Android... but in the general non-running smartwatch world, the competition from Android Wear is bleak. Pebble stood a chance, but we all know how that ended up.

It felt a little weird paying more for my Apple Watch than I did the iPhone SE it is paired with, but I've grown to really love them both. Sometimes the lockin enables cool stuff.

They can pry my iPhone SE from my cold, dead hands though. I could suffer through buying a nice Bluetooth adapter for my custom IEMs if I had to, but I won't get a phone that can't physically fit into a pocket - and I own pants that can't fit an iPhone X sized device.

I don't think it enables cool stuff. There's no reason why it has to be tied to be good. But if it is good, there's no reason for Apple not to tie them to squeeze the most out of it.

Well, lets look at Bluetooth itself as an example - an open standard that tries to enable cool stuff, but which is widely loathed as unreliable and a mess to develop for because all of the vendors got involved and tried to add their own special use cases / protocol variations / etc...

I'm not saying a closed ecosystem is somehow "right" by design, but Apple's proprietary augmentation of Bluetooth sure makes me forget that the watch is using it to talk to my phone or laptop. Maybe its less that closed ecosystems enable cool stuff and more that end-to-end control makes it easier to ensure your cool stuff works properly most of the time.

not once have I noticed my samsung watch using bluetooth, it connects magically when its near the phone and disconnects when you leave it. Doesn't even matter what phone you use, you could get an iphone. Can't speak for android wear but bluetooth is a pretty invisible protocol, especially when it comes to wearables.

apple does absolutely nothing to make bluetooth invisible and force you to pair it using an iphone based app just like any smart "thing" including apple watch, fitbit, etc.

> closed ecosystems

Closed ecosystems make money very directly by locking in the customer. The vendors will invest heavily in it and it will pay off, hence the "proprietary augmentation of Bluetooth sure makes me forget that the watch is using it". They will not share the tech, by working on an open standards or open tech, because that way the competition profits as well. This is just greed, anti-competitive market abuse, it's not more complicated than that.

I think this is more a case of design-by-committee going haywire. It's orthogonal to whether the protocol itself is open or closed, though.

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