Hacker News Reader

For another data point here's my anecdote. My wife and I had Pixel 2s and then we upgraded to Pixel 3s. The only issues we've had were self-inflicted. I dropped both my 2 and 3 causing the screens to crack, but they've been fine otherwise. I also still have a Nexus 5 that's currently running LineageOS.

The nexus devices were designed and manufactured by another company. Both my Nexus 5 and Nexus 5X experienced boot loops due to hardware.

Same here for both phones after 1 year...

I have a nexus 5 that bootlooped, and fixed it.

Disassembled the phone, and took off the power button from the main board. Turned out the soldering job inside the power button was badly done, and the looping was due to a piece of solder that had come loose and was shorting the connection.

So now I have a totally functional nexus 5, but to use the power button I have to stick a piece of tin foil down inside where the power button used to be. I have a mod on there that added a 4th home row button which covers all but the 'on' functions of that button.

FYI, I had an Android phone where the power button stopped working. I was able to turn it on by plugging it in and quickly unplugging it.

May be easier than finding tin foil (or aluminum foil).

Thanks, I'll try that.

I got my N5X working long enough to copy off the pictures by disassembling it and using a heat gun. Some people have used their kitchen ovens and supposedly permanently fixed it.

Yeah, that's why I figure it's the bit of loose solder that's the ultimate cause. My solution was to remove the whole mechanism and the solder with it.

Nexus 6P, no bootloops, but the phone would start shutting down once the battery reached about 32% reliably (i.e., with 100% certainty, not just sometimes).

Barely 1.5 years after being purchased new. Combined with the fact that the battery on it was already shoddy and only degraded significantly with time, I legitimately would have to keep my charger always on me, or I might get stuck with a dead phone.

2 of my friends who bought Nexus 6P around the same time also had issues, with one hitting the infamous bootloop issue, and another one experiencing battery issues and automatic shutdown similar to mine.

As another data point I've replaced the camera lens and the glass backplate on my 2. The lens went fine. The glass is something like 0.25mm off in basically all dimensions (height, width, thickness). I can feel the transition when I miss the fingerprint sensor. So 3rd party replacements are "okay." This isn't a huge issue, just annoying since I recently replaced it.

Other than that, which I'd call self inflicted since I've had the phone for years and dropped it a few times and hike a lot, I've had no issues. Maybe the 2 had better QC?

My wife and I were the same. We've had Nexus before, and then Pixels. No problems with any. Wife's currently on a 3, and I was on a Pixel 2.

I had originally planned to upgrade to the 5, but decided to switch to the OnePlus 8 as I was pretty underwhelmed by the 5's specs.

Google doesn't have the expertise or ship enough volume to make good hardware. If I could get a pure Google experience on Samsung-quality hardware, I'd go for that every time.

I have a one plus phone and it is exactly what you describe. I'm very happy with it

> If I could get a pure Google experience on Samsung-quality hardware, I'd go for that every time.

"I'm always here when you need me", moped the lonely Sony Xperia in a distant corner of the room.

The annoying thing is - the Pixel software experience is just really good. I love the call interception feature, the photos are uniformly great, all the Google-y AI stuff is somewhat useful.

I can't get that on any other Android phone, and this year's Pixel seems good but not top-of-line. Honestly I wouldn't upgrade unless otherwise incentivized, but I'm making the switch to iPhone for the first time. This is a bummer since Android is finally a great platform.

I just think Google is making the baseline phones to remove worse phones out of the market. If you want better experience, there are other Android phones.

Your Pixel 3 wireless charging issue is likely the bloating of the battery. https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/10/increasing-reports-...

I actually had this happen and made Google replace it out of warranty (they sent a refurb).

I bought a second hand Pixel 2XL and was initially thrilled until I tried plugging it in and realised it was immediately turning itself off - hard and fast. A quick search came across multiple large threads which never had a single reliable "it's because of X" reason - all sort of cargo cult solutions posted but really the device charging port seems to be somewhat fried but no official acknowledgement that's the case from Google.

* https://support.google.com/pixelphone/forum/AAAAb4-OgUsBZo6t...?

* https://support.google.com/pixelphone/forum/AAAAb4-OgUs4rkbD...

In the end I ended up returning the CEX (2nd hand store) phone to Google who then sent a new device to me. Though I was glad to get it sorted in that way (and do love the device itself - when it works, it works great) it really put me off ever wanting to buy new their hardware fresh. Just seems to have way too many problems.

* https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/cm9dt9/cex_bou...

Google's tech support had my wife factory reset her Pixel 2 for charging problems. Big surprise it did not fix it. We ended up trading in for credit to upgrade to a Pixel 3a, which she still has.

The consistency of iPhones and Apple’s predictability really do play in to making the iPhone a easy recommendation.

They clearly understand that phones are now our digital lifelines, not a place to be playing around with weird features.

Apple doesn’t sell a slow phone, even for $399. People complain about Apple’s high prices but the real “secret” is that Apple’s previous generation phones that they continue to sell new are an excellent value.

Their manufacturing is basically perfect. Since the 8/X especially I haven’t heard of any persistent hardware flaw and even before then there was not much to write home about.

You don’t have to wonder when the next iPhone will come out or what it will be like.

iOS never changes based on what phone you have besides minor necessary differences between notch and non-notch phones. I once had to ship my my phone to be repaired, and I was able to restore my exact setup and all data to my backup iPhone 6S. Not only did it work flawlessly, the 6S was still surprisingly fast.

Overall, you really can’t get a phone that lasts longer. Even iPhones that don’t get iOS 14 are still getting security patches. You could feel pretty decently about connecting an iPhone 5S with iOS 12 to a network. Yep, an 8 year old phone - I am positive there are tens of thousands of people still daily driving that phone.

Not to mention app developers can target for newer iOS with newer features when Apple is the only manufacturer to support all the iPhone making them quick to provide updates across the devices. Android still has plenty of Android 5 around today.

Maybe you've had bad luck with devices? I've stuck with Google phones for a while, and mostly had good experiences. Nexus 5X, Pixel 2, Pixel 4a lately.

The Nexus 5X was great, until it bricked itself. Fortunately, freezing it (literally in a freezer) would get it running long enough to get a few critical bits off.

Pixel 2 was a great phone, no complaints. Only replaced it because the battery life was getting painfully low. And the charging connection got really finicky in the last 6 months or so.

Pixel 4a is also great. Only issue is that for some reason, like a quarter of my contacts names don't show up in the text messenger conversation list. Weird, but I can live with it.

Your definition of "good experiences" differs from mine.

Like "Oh I absolutely loved my new car, ran like a dream. Of course there was that one time it spontaneously set on fire on while I was driving it but other than that, it was excellent."

Well I chuckled at least. But yeah, a car spontaneously catching on fire is completely unacceptable and should never ever happen. A phone's battery life getting worse after 2.5 years of use is pretty normal and expected. The other one with the sudden hard bricking is pretty bad, but it worked perfectly up until then, and it lasted about the normal lifetime of a phone anyways. The parent to mine was complaining about day to day usage issues that I've never had.

The Google/Nexus/Pixel series phones never seem to be perfect. I just don't think Google has the hardware DNA.

On the other hand, pretty much every Samsung and Apple phone I've owned has been perfect hardware-wise.

Samsung hardware is indeed excellent, but there's still much room to improve around delivering updates. Samsung's current commitment is to deliver 3 major OS updates after device launch [1], which is still not enough for a flagship that will work fine even after 5 years.

[1] https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-raises-the-bar-for-m...

The Nexus S was made by Samsung. It'd be nice to see that happen again.

On an unrelated note, my Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 both failed in different ways, but the Nexus S, from the year before the 4, still hasn't.

These days when Google itself doesn't even support a phone for longer than 3 years, you get to think phones are disposable assets and not something you're supposed to love keeping like in the old days hardware.

Makes you think less of trying to buy expensive ones when they get obsoleted real fast.

The Pixel 1 was perfect for me. It's showing its age though, I use it as a semi-permanent hotspot and it needs to be rebooted every 3 days or so.

On paper it was pretty good. For my experience specifically, my partner had to replace her Pixel 1 multiple times for a broken microphone, and they gave her a refurb which she wasn't happy about. Obviously most people weren't affected but it was common enough to result in a class action settlement.

I thought google actually did a great job with the nexus phones. the hardware wasn't perfect, but they were pretty good (and even attractive imo) for the price point.

I have a pixel 2 now. it's good enough for everything I use it for, but it really didn't justify its launch price. it's basically a nexus phone with a fancy chassis and nicer camera. just like my two nexus phones, the volume up button stopped working within a month or two of ownership. it still feels snappy and gets updates, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

> I have a pixel 2 now. it's good enough for everything I use it for, but it really didn't justify its launch price. it's basically a nexus phone with a fancy chassis and nicer camera.

I have a pixel 3a. The "a" series seems to be the same thing, but also at nexus prices.

I remember the Ars Technica review of the 3a saying something like "there were some worries that sales of the 3a might cannibalize sales from the flagship line, to which we can only say... yeah."

> and gets updates

Wife and I also have pixel 2's, and AFAIK October 2020 was the last month we got updates[1] :(.

(although it notes "Pixel 2 Preferred Care customers have telephone support until April 2021.")

Which makes this article all the more disappointing, as we're looking to upgrade for this and the usual reasons :).

[1] https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en

The final update comes in December 2020; they just skipped November. You'll have to upgrade or switch to a custom ROM after that for continued support — it's still a fairly solid phone if not for the lack of updates.

ha, I guess I spoke too soon. any idea what you'll replace your pixel 2's with? pixel 4a looks decent this cycle.

I got a Pixel in the hopes of running LineageOS.

No dice; I was never able to get the Pixel's USB port to do anything other than draw power from my computer. Apparently this wasn't even an unusual problem.

I have experienced a flaky connection for an iPhone as well - plug it in and Catalina would spin endlessly, and when it did manage to connect, it'd fail soon after. Yet other devices were fine. Sometimes QA can't catch every failure, assuming it was hardware and not software.

I believe it was software. I got different behavior depending on (a) which USB port I tried to connect it to (OK, that looks like hardware), but also (b) what mode the phone was booted into.

There are 2 flavors of pixel phones the Verizon and Google, both are carrier unlocked but the Verizon has a locked bootloader. There are work arounds for some of the devices but last time I checked none for the pixel 2xl. If your buying a used one for Lineage good idea to check.

I've been a long time Linux/android guy but I was thinking of trying my first iphone now.

I got lucky and my work bought everyone iPhone SE due to covid. So far I love it. The camera on the SE isn't as good as the Pixel 4, but other than that the iPhone seems better.

Another anecdote: Two pixel 3as in the family. Both have been flawless. Great value for the price.

It sounds like you go through a lot of phones. Any particular reason for that? Do you just like to upgrade to the latest, or is it due to the dissatisfaction you're referring to?

TL;dr: Mostly hardware failure.

I didn't mention that my 5X flash died (after 18 months of ownership). Or at least I assume it was the flash...since the bootloader failed screen would loop.

That prompted me to buy pixel 1. My pixel 1 became non-functional because dust got in the microphone...and no replacement parts were available. So I got a moto g7 as an interim.

The pixel 3 is my wife's.

The pixel 4 is my current and replaced moto g7 because it's slow as molasses with newer android.

So basically all my replacements were because of a HW failure or SW slowdown.

This compares to my mom's iPhone 6s that still runs snappy. My brother had a 6 that worked fine until he replaced it for the SE recently.

My kids have used our ipads as skateboards across the tile and they still work fine. I drop them regularly... No problem.

My experience with Google HW is that it is sub par.

that's weird, i have a pixel 2 with latest android and the speed is fine.

that being said, i do have weird issues where the phone reboots when doing video-intensive tasks (recording video, on a vid call)

for apple, iPhone is literally half their income; i think the phone business is a few percentage points for google. not a surprise that you see more attention to detail w/ apple

The 5x's had some serious issues leading to bootlooping for lots of users. You could get it repaired by LG (often free, even after warranty), but you'd still be out a phone for about 10 days and it came back wiped (IIRC), and then you're still going to worry about it.

I'd consider another Google phone, but I just don't trust them to have designed and implemented a phone that's going to last as long as a phone of that price should last. From the latest round of phones though, motorola seems good enough, except the vibration is very hard to miss unless it's on a table; nokia has bluetooth problems with one of my cars and isn't pushing a fix worldwide, even though some countries have had the fix for months; ugh.

Your Nexus 5x failure was likely what the sibling comment indicated, the infamous 5x boot loop. If you had rooted your phone previously, it was possible to work around it by modifying the device-tree and limiting it to only using some cores of the CPU.

LG would fix it for free if you were lucky, they did for me. I think you had a 50/50 chance of them refusing to fix it for free by claiming the failure was due to water damage, even if that was definitely not true. The prevalence of the failure makes me think that every single 5x failed eventually. The timing of the boot-loop failure was such that your alternate Google options were probably Pixel 1 or 2 at the time.

After the 5x failure, I purchased a Pixel 2. It is very fast to this day, but the lack of a microphone jack has been a real thorn to me. My car does not support the bluetooth a2dp profile, I use the USB-C adapter to stream music, and it has put a lot of extra wear on the USB-C connector. It has lasted a long time, and everything else works fine, but it's only a matter of time before I can no longer charge it.

I'm not sure Apple is any better, you have safari and apples ecosystem.

Dangerous games you are playing when you give into Apple.

There are a lot of high-quality phones in the Android ecosystem now that run a stock OS. You don't have to stick to the Nexus/Pixel line anymore. Samsung, LG, Moto, etc etc etc.

Not really any reason in switching to iPhones on the weakness of the Pixel line, unless you're trying to make some other political point.