When they ask me what Android phones to get, I always say a Pixel, because they will at least get the latest OS support in a timely fashion.
They are also excellent phones.
I did that for a while, depending on some random guy in a forum to maintain a working image for my device. He bought a new phone, and that was the end of the updates.
Given the emergency call issue that has plagued the series for years and are seemingly still unresolved I would think twice about this.
From what I can tell following links on your article, this issue hasn’t been reported on after the Pixel 7, so someone buying a Pixel 10 today probably has no reason to have that as a purchase consideration.
https://www.phonearena.com/news/this-wild-bug-is-still-plagu...
> I had this problem when trying to call 999 (the UK equivalent of 911) about a year ago.
> Fortunately I managed to free myself from the situation I was in by breaking (crushing) my finger.
Ouch!
https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1oeiqop/pixel_...
Like I said, not to excuse them, but these issues tend to affect an incredibly small amount of people. If you have a double digit number of users on Reddit complaining for a phone that represents 7% of all US smartphone sales, that’s not a widespread bug as a percentage of userbase.
Google currently sells more than half of the smartphone volume of Samsung in the US.
Imagine it was Apple. Now apply the same outrage.
If the reason you want to dismiss it is because you have a pixel then you don’t have to convince me that it’s safe - you need to convince yourself.
Tbf some pixel models have proven reliable, my mom's pixel 4 lasted long enough to be out of support and then it got owned and her bank accounts got taken over.
The downside of reliable HW I guess.
I also had a Nexus 5 (boot looped of course).
I had to replace it because it only has 5 years of support. Samsung offers 7 years of support but only on their top tier phones.
Google offer 7 years, even on their A series phones so I chose a pixel 9a. It's fine, I don't love it or hate it, but it's not doing anything I care about better than my last phone.
I know people have had battery problems with non-a Pixel phones, but the number of 'a' phones with battery problems caused Google to publicly respond.
The only apps that get installed nowadays are the ones that must be for a specific service, or gaming.
Many people even turn updates off due to the way companies get creative changing the application on every update.
In the old days before the iOS/Android duopoly there were no updates at all, and the few times they happened to be supported, it required the developer SDK to update the firmware.
Outside communities like HN, regular people hardly care about updates.
Last time I had a "flagship" phone it got stolen out my hand.
The screen was also expensive to replace.
If I drop this its no big deal (the back is plastic anyway).
It also comes in a fun colour so its not just another black rectangle.
I'll replace it with the Jolla phone when that arrives.
Not quite. The phones I had for the four years before the iPhone came out were Treo devices running PalmOS, which got software updates installable via the host computer without any developer tools.
You can also install e.g. GrapheneOS after Google stops supporting them. https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Both were abandoned within two years of me buying… never buying a phone from Google again
I'm glad you had a good experience with it, but I had the Pixel 7 Pro and it was the single worst phone I have ever used. Utterly dogshit, to a point where I swore a blood oath to never purchase another Pixel ever again. I've heard that the later Pixels are better but I guess I'll never know.
It's possible that I had a defective unit, but regardless of the reason it was a laggy mess, that got terrible battery life, and sometimes simply wouldn't finish turning on (it would just stay on a black screen indefinitely). I bought it in July of 2023 and I ended up giving it to a family member and buying a refurb iPhone 13 Pro Max, which I still have and it has been considerably better.
It's not like I'm this huge Apple fanboy (feel free to look at my history complaining about my time working there), but if the Pixel 7 was 2023's flagship Android phone, then I have very little interest in using Android anymore.
This was the first time in two decades that my smartphone broke, and it could only be replaced.
In the end, to me it’s really too much maintenance with Pixels and Android devices in general. Really don’t get it why people prefer Android. It’s like desktop Linux. Not there yet.
The recent updates breaking Notepad and Calculator and Outlook and the Shutdown feature are rare in that they have gotten press, but there are hundreds of other bits of bullshit associated with Windows, like the fact that Windows Update just routinely breaks your computer and the Windows recovery and repair tools do not work, and as far as I can tell they have never worked for anyone.
Linux has its share of bullshit, but at least the backup and recovery tools actually work.
I haven’t had an issue with hibernate in a few years on the more normy-friendly distros like Mint or Ubuntu or Suse, but I acknowledge that some people still do. I still don’t accept that it’s less ready that desktop Windows.
What you’re describing about Windows is very reminiscent of what Pixel users describe on Reddit.
I’m totally with you, I wouldn’t use Windows voluntarily. I’m not in a position to tell whether it’s more or less ready though, just no recent experience with it.
I do think it has improved considerably, especially on AMD hardware, and I think it’s better than Windows at this point. macOS is arguably better, but Macs are considerably more pricey, so they can be a bit difficult to recommend to people.