People love to hate (which seems justified on the surface) on Apple's high prices, but the unparalleled years of support makes it worth it for me. Especially for phones like the SE.
Based on support period, one can easily justify the most costly iPhone over the seemingly temporarily supported Google/Samsung etc. flagship.
Unfortunately I still wouldn't be happy with an iPhone as I'm just not a fan of iOS
Also not a fan of face unlock and wish they'd implement a fingerprint into the screen. I usually block out the front camera and any sensors that I don't use.
Non-professional developers support Android Q on the original Pixel, but Google is too resource-starved, apparently.
The irony is that early Android phones were built to last, but quickly got obsoleted by more recent models. Now, progress is much slower, but the thing that kept devices alive (removable batteries and community ROMs) are dying. Real obsolescence is replaced by planned obsolescence.
how long is "way beyond OEM updates"? one year? two years? three years? five years? The main problem is that third party roms can only update so much. Without OEM support, you're not going to be getting updates for the proprietary bits of your phone. This includes blobs, baseband, and even the kernel (technically it's open source, but all android phones run off a customized kernel that's specific to that SoC. When that SOC gets EOLed, the updates stop coming).
I have far less trust in a random community. Plus, their EOL could be completely unexpected.
I do not want my phone to be reliant on community updates, personally.
The Android phone market is distributed. You can get almost anything there you can get from Apple, in particular wherever the competition regulators had done their work.
The stuff Google itself is participating in is a different matter. Honestly, with respect to consumer products and UX Google is generally a failure. It's like Google is full of engineers and analysts but lacks talent in every other profession. Even Microsoft which has been so often a late-comer and the death for so many brands seems to be better at it.
When you see "guaranteed support" by a manufacturer, you can be sure that it actually means "guaranteed end of support" timeline. Which Google follows exactly.
While Google may end support as soon as they can, not all manufacturers do.
This is sort of true.
It is true that Apple dropped support for older devices much faster in the past. But it is also true that the older devices were way underpowered.
As an example: when Apple introduced home screen backgrounds on the iPod Touch, they released the same software upgrade for all iPods. However, since the older generation didn't have enough compute power (most likely GPU), they disabled the feature for older generations. I thought they were trying to force people to upgrade, but after a jailbreak and force enabling the feature, I realized that it was not the case. It was not smooth, so this is why they disabled it.
Same goes for, say, iPads. The first iPad quickly got obsoleted, but it was also very underpowered compared to subsequent devices.
They will not hesitate to drop hardware if it turns out to be insufficient, but they are just as likely to disable a feature if there is insufficient hardware support and allow the OS upgrade anyway.
https://www.statista.com/chart/5824/ios-iphone-compatibility...
The performance of my personal Pixel 2 on the other hand has not held up nearly as well by comparison and my next personal phone will likely be an iPhone even though I'm not a great fan of Apple.
It's kind of a drag that once they finally got the fundamental hardware and OS good enough to really last for a few years, they also made it nearly impossible to do what should be simple maintenance.
Did you leave in plugged into the AC adapter overnight? anecdotally that killed my previous phones and there's also (anecdotal?) evidence that it isn't great for it.
Have you checked what apps are eating all the battery? On older phones, newer versions of certain apps seemed to turn them into pocket warmers, getting stuck in a tight CPU loop and efficiently turning 3000mAh into heat at about 5 watts
Don’t most people do exactly that with their phones? If that’s something that actually breaks a phone, that’s ridiculous and they should fix it.
Google's attitude to customer support and brand loyalty, on the other hand, is a different story...
My girlfriend's Pixel 4 screen cracked and was a huge PITA to fix even though we paid a ton for extra warranty. Trying to get that fixed was far more painful than any experience I've had with other brands.
Worse than that, there is a software bug that can / will irreversibly brick your Pixel 2 rear camera. You can find a ton of info on it by searching. It doesn't seem to affect everyone, but I was unlucky enough to hit it last week, presumably from a recent update. Google has been absolutely silent on this issue. Unethical at best, and probably worse.
There was a time where I would have scoffed at paying a premium for Apple or other brands that sell an experience more than just a device. That's completely changed now. I don't have the patience or energy in my life to deal with what I perceive to be Google's cold / impersonal / numbers oriented approach to customers. It's just not worth the stress. If anything, I'm willing to pay a pretty big premium for the opposite. If that means switching our household to Apple products, so be it and good riddance.
After it was stolen, I bought another Pixel 2 used and while the battery life is worse, it still runs perfectly well as far as I can tell.
But what I'm saying is that my iPhone 6 is still running mostly fine as well.
If Apple didn’t throttle, the phone would restart every time it’s power requirements outstripped the batteries declining capacity.
I think it’s pretty clear which use case is better.
Apple gives performance beyond what you would expect for a similar phone, in terms of battery life and responsiveness. Then, as you burn through your battery's age beyond what even other phone manufacturers would warrant, the OS slows down the CPU to let you continue using it. So it's actually giving you more than you would've gotten otherwise.
But all the complaints are that iPhone sucks, I guess.
Your standards are in the basement.
>the past couple of months have seen a sudden increase in Nexus 6P battery complaints, with many users reporting that their phones suddenly shut down, even though there was plenty of battery life remaining
It's not a simple system crash, because your phone will stay dead until you connect it to a charger.
https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/nexus-6p-battery-random...
That seems especially problematic if you are on the go and need to make an emergency call to summon help.
A working phone seems preferable.
This isn't an "Apple vs Android" discussion. Maybe that's where you got confused.
When users complained that their phones died while showing a 50% charge and would not work again until connected to a charger, Google did nothing to fix the problem.
>The processor easily overheated, a bootloop bug made quite a few units die prematurely, and lastly, a battery problem surfaced that led to early shutdowns anywhere between 50 and 0 percent. At least the remaining owners of this Nexus device don't have to worry about the latter issue anymore — according to Google, that is. An engineer just marked the early shutdown entry in the company's issue tracker as "fixed."
I don't know about you, but when I just retrieved my Nexus 6P from my junk drawer a minute ago, it didn't have an update pending.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/11/16/nexus-6p-early-shut...
I'm not an Apple hater by any means. I understand they had their technical reasons, I was just pointing out the dichotomy between their perceived willingness to support older models and the lawsuit that says they are slowing them down.
>This seems like an odd thing to say about a company that was caught purposefully slowing down older models <END>
That is a half truth and considered lying through omission. It's misleading because as written it implies that they slowed down phones without a valid reason, AKA to force upgrades.
1: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-x-environmental-repor...
2: https://sustainability.google/reports
3: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-ways-smartphone-environment.ht...