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I used to love Apple because they were so far ahead of the game in terms of UX and hardware. They have dropped the ball so much recently with all these UX mishaps from Apple Glass to most of the bugs in the post that affect me. I am more than willing to switch to Android or some other device regardless of price, but haven't found one that is close to equivalent yet. I worry it'll be a few years before something comes close to the battery life + screen quality + camera quality + decent software/security of iOS.

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In the context of laptops, I would agree (MBP's hardware just outclasses everything else, even if I prefer Fedora over macOS).

However, for phones, this just doesn't shake out. The Pixel 10 Pro for instance, has:

* A battery that outlasts the iPhone 16 Pro by an hour

* A slightly better display (higher brightness for outdoor use, higher PPI, higher color accuracy, same refresh rate)

* A better camera for still photography, especially HDR and low-light (although admittedly worse for video)

How's the OS security of the Pixel 10 Pro?

I think "Airpods" and "iCloud" for Photo Storage are the only parts of the Apple ecosystem I use, so those will be missed.

Great if you install Graphene!

With Graphene, something financial won’t work anymore. I believe either banking apps or Google Wallet, a known issue. Graphene didn’t support Pixel 10 yet last time I checked. That said, I’ve been just too occupied with reading on how to fix the Pixel bugs that bit me that I couldn’t get to the point of reading on Graphene and I don’t exactly remember anymore what was wrong with it.

Google wallet doesn't work which is imho a very tiny issue with contactless payment working with cards but most banking apps do. There is a forum thread I believe that you can check if your bank's app work before commiting to migrate.

It might be a very tiny issue for you, but for others it's huge.

As a single datapoint: it has been years since I used a physical card. both payment or public transport. Always use contactless payments using my phone.

I mean I used it in the past but the difference is minor in my experience.

It is a case of grabbing your card vs grabbing your smartphone and fiddling with it. That card could even be carried in one of those phones cases with a card holder.

The only major difference is in case of stolen phone vs stolen card. But every system has its drawback. It could be super annoying if you get your account suspended unexpectedly while you are away from home.

In my particular case I don't want a google account anymore and would hate relying on google to manage my payments so it is a no go for a start.

Why not just get an iPhone then?

Because:

- I prefer running FOSS apps on my smartphone

- I want to be able to install anything I want on it without relying on what is accepted by a "store"

- I don't want an Apple account

- I want to own and be able to have the shit I want running in the background (like syncthing)

- I want to be able to access my file the way I want, including using a shell

- I want to be able to run any linux app

- and more inportantly I want to be the owner of my phone, not merely the user of a license to use it following the term set by a company from an hostile nation

I’ve been down that road, was fun, but growingly felt to me like too much maintenance that wasn’t worth the effort, distracting from more important things. Like desktop Linux.

Now I’m at a point where Android itself, even Pixels feel that way. I really tried to make the Pixel my daily driver. In hindsight, it was just too naive of me.

I don't really see the maintenance issue. My grapheneOS has OTA updates, I can install and update apps using fdroid and aurora and not having contactless payment option via google wallet is the only small limitation I have found and it is not a big loss as I can still pay easily without carrying cash. Carrying a plastic card is not a burden.

What kind of apps do you get from F-Droid that are useful to you that aren’t available on Play? I mean, to me most of the F-Droid apps are WIP with legacy UI and I need to trust the publisher and that their handle isn’t hijacked.

What are all the use cases that let you avoid Play?

same for me; its too bad though we cant have some kind of foss shell, and bank/contactless payment apps can run in some secure vm/box so we can have the best of both

Or just a standard protocol that can be implemented with FOSS apps.

I rooted my phone for years but the lack of contactless and trying to stay one step ahead of Google trying to stop you using it (frequent messing with shamiko, lsposed and all the rest, delicately doing updates, only for it to eventually fail randomly).

Being able to pay with your phone is just too useful.

Admittedly the hardware of the pixel 10 pro is very nice, but it still runs android which is the main issue for me. Also I love magsafe

You can actually buy MagSafe cases for pixels. And GrapheneOS makes it very nice

Pixel 10 pro has "pixel snap" which works with most mag safe attachments.

The hardware is far behind in terms of benchmark performance. That wasn’t important to me, but it’s noticeable when you edit videos.

That’s a good point

Why are you comparing the latest Google flagship phone with a previous generation iPhone? The iPhone 17 is better than a Pixel 10 on most if not all fronts.

There’s little hardware improvement in iPhone 17 over iPhone 16. Arguably only the move from titanium to aluminum in the casing is a tangible performance enhancement (better cooling).

The software is the same.

The iPhone 17 delivers significant display, battery, camera, and memory improvements. The aluminum switch does enhance thermal performance, but calling it the "only tangible" upgrade requires ignoring ProMotion displays, 36% longer battery life, 4x camera resolution boosts, and doubled storage.

The standard iPhone 17, in particular, received upgrades substantial enough that upgrading from an iPhone 15 or earlier makes strong practical sense. Hardly the profile of a phone with "little hardware improvement".

Thanks, you’re likely right, but significance is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t attribute much value to the marketing fluff and on-paper changes.

It’s great the battery improved but does it really matter? You still will charge every day.

The camera resolution, well, it’s still just a smartphone camera with some AI post-processing, which Xiaomi can do better with their Leica or Oppo with their Zeiss lenses. And either one is still bad compared to a proper camera.

ProMotion display, Pixel’s still better.

Your point about storage made me laugh, but let’s maybe leave it for another time.

That all is very minor and not noticeable to me. If you go from 10 to 15 it’s a 50% improvement, but if your competitors have been at 20 and won’t regress, you’re still behind.

So yes, to me, the aluminum case is the only tangible. My palms don’t burn anymore. And I’m grateful to Apple for letting me pay more again for this noticeable improvement.

I loved my Pixel 10 Pro until it broke just a week after purchase (screen went unresponsive all of a sudden and I needed to learn to factory reset it).

Pixel Android doesn’t support disabling the control center when locked in lock screen, and widgets are also available.

I saw all of that reported just recently too, so obviously not a single issue. The screen issues are known across several Pixel generations. The screen lock since 2013.

I don’t know whether I’m going to touch anything Pixel in the next couple of years, it’s not mature enough yet.

The problem (for me) isn't the hardware. The Pixel 10 Pro is arguably a great phone, and I had a 9 Pro Xl for a short time before going back to iOS and I enjoyed it while I had it.

But what I found was I was just trading Apple's quirks for even worse Android quirks, all while losing all the nice ecosystem integrations with my macbook and iPad.

App quality on Android is still hit and miss. Companies still don't put nearly as much effort into their Android apps as they do their iOS apps. Even my banking app was a laggy, buggy mess on Android compared to the iOS version. Heck, even Google's own apps are better on iOS.

Plus, until Google decides to offer E2EE for their cloud services like Apple with advanced data protection, it's a non-starter for me and I really don't feel like going full self-hosted just so I can run Android.

I want to like Android again, but there's just nothing there right now that definitively makes it a better experience for me despite Apple's flaws.

>MBP's hardware just outclasses everything else

No it doesn't. Battery life isn't that much greater when you use the laptop. Meanwhile, if all you are doing is browsing web or watching youtube, an android phone with the same size battery lasts longer.

We're on the iPhone 17 pro though?

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