https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29492884
https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/rfld6m/pixel_p...
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
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.
>Android 2.2 -> 12
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).
"All phones have these problems" is just false.
No?
Palm Treo 700
Motorola Droid
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
LG G2
Google Nexus 6P
Google Pixel XL
OnePlus 7Pro
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.
So, no. Not every phone has glaring problems.
We need to push manufacturers to be better, especially about providing timely and stable OS updates.
I can only think of one phone i have used that has what I would characterize as “glaring problems”.
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.
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.
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,...
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).
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.
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?
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.
This is the same company that was all in on bringing high speed internet to cities and left city streets in ruin in the process.
https://www.tellusventure.com/microtrenching-fail-drives-goo...
If the same trend is maintained, it will soon become the fourth biggest manufacturer, right after Apple, Samsung and Lenovo.
Not huge, but not serving a small niche either.
“We started out at .01% of the market and we doubled in size to .02% of the market in a year doubling in size! We saw faster growth than the leader”
It's no longer a fringe device such as Jolla in the EU market.
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.
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.
If it were crashing multiple times per day, you'd hope that Google would proactively contact the user and offer a replacement.
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 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.
https://reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/wpirx8/had_an_emer...
The Australian government really needs to get involved and force Google to fix their shit
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)
Steady now. I don't think you want that.
Do you want criminal prosecution for actual harm, or for potential harm?
America has this habit of reaching for the biggest gun it has to solve problems, or make a statement.
It always backfires.
Pray tell, how would it backfire to make sure emergency services are always available ?
Do you only want DUI to be illegal if it results in an accident?
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.
They need to do their damn job.
As a pixel 6 owner, I'm disgusted.
Yo can have the best leetcoders in the world, but if QA is not part of the company culture, then ...
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!
People just don't know what they're demanding.
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.
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.
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.
The mental gymnastics required to turn this into something other than criminal negligence are ... olympic.
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.
You're right. They're about as reliable as the flight computers on a 737 Max instead
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.
The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse in particular will always stay with me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse.
In anything better processes and consistency beats try harder 7 days a week and twice on Sunday.
[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff