[ndneighbor]

The number one issue I have with Android is that while this looks cool, because of the fragmentation of the OS delivery between vendors- I have no idea which phone or timeframe when I could see the rollout of Material 3 Expressive.

More than 10 years later, shopping for an Android phone with the latest OS is a nightmare. Android leadership keeps on getting shuffled around, Google changes priorities every 6 months it seems. Despite Apple flubbing the ball on AI, at least I know that the phone will be supported for at least 4 years.

They will need to improve on their ecosystem commitments if they'd like people like me to switch back.

[Ajedi32]

If you care about always having the latest software with the latest Google features just get a Pixel. 7 years of OS and security updates: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en

Google doesn't control what other vendors do; that's the beauty of open source. (You can argue how open Android really is these days but it's still more open than iOS.)

[aucisson_masque]

Pixel have other issue, quality control and run on Samsung exynos hardware with bad performance and connectivity.

I'd argue that Android is technically more open than iOS but in practice it isn't. Google have dark pattern and elaborated ways to get Android user to stay in the 'walled Google play service garden'.

Like when you install a third party store and Google play protect warns you it may be insecure.

Or having to press install for every app installed outside of the store, over and over.

The fact you can't get push notification without enabling the Google play services, which is the core framework of the Google data collection happening on every Android.

[int0x29]

I have fdroid installed on a pixel and I didn't hit any warnings beyond needing to enable side loading. As for push notifications, if you are developing an app, you can build your own infrastructure for that or rent it from someone else. If you are concerned about google software you can, with effort, reflash with another OS.

All of the above either don't exist on iOS or only exists in the EU.

Personally I've never had issues with Samsung modems and I am honestly confused what people are doing with their phones that require high power CPUs.

[aucisson_masque]

The issue with push notification isn't for the app you build yourself but all the other like your bank app, it won't be able to send you a message when you got to validate something or when my Xiaomi cleaning robot is done cleaning for instance. They all require Google play services.

Reflashing another os ? What issue does it solves ? It's less secure, they still need the Google play services to push notifications.

Grapheneos may be a bit better but it locks you to only one Android device : pixel. They are overpriced, have quality control issue and run poorly.

900€ for a pixel 9 that use Samsung hardware, overheat when I can get a s25 for the same price, that funnily enough don't use Samsung hardware but Qualcomm :)

I believe 900€ is enough even for an iphone that will run much better than pixel.

> Personally I've never had issues with Samsung modems and I am honestly confused what people are doing with their phones that require high power CPUs.

I couldn't care less too about CPU power, but cpu energy usage and the phone being able to make and receive call is what's been the issue with pixel since the 6.

[II2II]

> Pixel have other issue

Every product is going to have issues in one form or another. The question is which issues affect your personal use of the product. I'm too new to Pixel to comment on whether switching to it is a good or a bad thing in my case, but I have been happy with the trade-offs so far. Ironically, one of the reasons why I went with a Pixel was to avoid much of the Google software ecosystem.

[attendant3446]

I switched to a Pixel for the same reason. I'm on my second Pixel and the GrapheneOS is fantastic

[microtonal]

People have been very positive about the Pixel 9's modem. The Tensor G4 is fast enough for most people. Maybe not for heavy gaming, but it's great for all daily use.

[kcb]

It's been years since the performance of any high-end phone SoC has felt like a bottleneck and the Pixel 9 modem has been very good.

[ranger_danger]

> that's the beauty of open source

Many would argue that that kind of fragmentation is also its biggest downfall.

[malfist]

What happens when one of those updates bricks your battery so it only lasts an hour or so off charger?

[QuarterReptile]

Hate to say it, but everyone does this. My dad replaced his iPhone back in December when an update killed it. No acknowledgment of the problem from Apple.

Hell, my car has a stupid system that shakes motor mounts apart and burns through ignition coils and spark plugs. Honda won't admit fault because, among other things, it was a fuel-saving boondoggle and they won't back down from lying to customers if it means stepping into the path of an oncoming EPA train.

[FreakyT]

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, considering that this actually happened:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/google-pixel-4as-rui...

[microtonal]

Yes, and Google offers a free battery replacement for affected users:

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15701861

Last time Apple pushed a battery-related software update that avoided shutdowns (good), people had to sue them to get a compensation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate

[malfist]

You had to pick battery or strings attached cash, before the update arrived. And the battery replacement required you to send your phone off for repair leaving you without one, and Google didn't offer an sla for turn around.

And let's be honest, inconveniencing me is hardly acceptable, even if the company makes a token effort to put things back to before they inconvenienced me.

[alright2565]

They replaced my battery free of charge when they did that.

[mvdtnz]

It's also not offered in my country, so your advice is worthless to me.

[Grimblewald]

My problem was that all the modern Samsung watches have a battery life that wont get you through the day without removing half it's features, and charging solutions that are unreliable. If half the time you want to use the watch it's dead, it stops being a product you place value on or even rely on. I found myself checking time on my phone, despite the watch being on the same hand I'd grab the phone with, because I could rely on my phone to show my something other than a dark mirror.

I used to have a gear sport, it was fine, held charge for 2-3 days, had more sensors, and was all around a good device, but all watches after were a massive step down, even if they moved from tizen to wear os.

I'll give wearables one more try if someone has a good device to recommend, but as it stands I'd prefer to just spend the extra second to pull out my phone, and for health metrics, wear a more discrete and longer battery life device.

[Kivern7]

That's odd. I have a Watch 6 Classic (I think?), it's my first smart watch, I have just about everything enabled, and on the rare occasion that I forget to charge it overnight it still just about gets through the next day too. In that situation, if I know I'll be sitting for a little while I can always top it up using my phone too (which, admittedly, is extremely fussy with charging placement). Initially I had a lot of frustration getting it to wake up to show me the time (rather than that "dark mirror") but I suppose I must have learned how to twist my wrist more recognisably for it now because it's very rare that I have that issue any more. I really like it.

[microtonal]

Same experience with the Watch 6 Classic. No issue of getting through the day with all features enabled. I stopped using it because I don't really like One UI (the Pixel Watch is so much cleaner).

[_mlbt]

Garmin has the best smartwatches if you’re looking for battery life.

[karlgkk]

> I have no idea which phone or timeframe when I could see the rollout of Material 3 Expressive.

Not a problem with a pixel

> More than 10 years later, shopping for an Android phone with the latest OS is a nightmare

Not a problem with a pixel

> They will need to improve on their ecosystem commitments

Not a problem with a pixel

[bigstrat2003]

A headphone jack is unfortunately a problem with a pixel. Otherwise I would still own one. I had a Pixel 1, then a pixel 3a, then Google decided to get rid of a basic feature that every phone should have. So I stopped buying them.

[vvillena]

For everyday use, wireless headphones offer a superior experience simply due to the lack of a cable, and for the cases where an audio output is desired, it should be easy to connect the phone to an audio interface. Is any of this a problem in the Android ecosystem?

[ngangaga]

> For everyday use, wireless headphones offer a superior experience simply due to the lack of a cable

Surely this is offset by a) having to charge it and b) not being able to replace the battery when it dies

Not to mention a cable can be debugged easily; i don't even know which device my bluetooth headphones is connected to let alone why it's not working as expected.

[microtonal]

So? Get the 10 Euro/Dollar Apple USB-C to stereo connector? Works with other phones as well and supposedly has an acceptable DAC. If you really want to charge at the same time and wireless charging is not acceptable, there are also some companies that make small connectors with USB-C power in and stereo out.

The reason the jack is gone is that the vast majority of people use wireless buds or headphones. It's the smartphone equivalent of complaining that MacBooks do not have DVD drives anymore.

(I like the stereo jack, but I have accepted that I'm a small minority.)

[ngangaga]

Nah, I've broken like three of those things and I just resent having another thing to carry around. I've just given up on using wired headphones for the most part with my phone. I just don't know why they thought it was desired to remove in the first place; I've had other waterproof headphones with a jack.

But, I also don't generally expect apple to make consumer-friendly decisions. The headphone jack invokes about 1/100th the rage that using the app store does.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Also no microSD slot. Decent internal storage, but the ability to expand, swap, and pull from a dead phone shouldn't be underestimated.

[microtonal]

Being able to pull it from a dead phone seems like a huge security issue? Shouldn't storage be encrypted using private material from a secure element? I understand that people here are tech-savvy enough to only store music, etc. on an SD card. But I think a lot of less technically-inclined users would set themselves up for losing private data.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Depends on your threat model and priorities. Historically the biggest thing I wanted to pull off the SD card was encrypted backups, which were in fact encrypted enough that an attacker getting them wouldn't be a serious problem, but which were rather handy to have. (And yes, I can completely push those off-device, but an SD card is a handy middle ground of local, fast, easy, safe from the things I tend to be worried about (mostly, bricking the device), and big enough that dumping 10s of GB on there is fine.)

[AndrewDucker]

Same here. Would still have a Pixel, but I'm not giving up my choice of headphones.

[ranger_danger]

You don't have to, you can still use headphones with a USB-C adapter.

[ryandrake]

I can’t believe, after so many YEARS, that people are still so hurt about the damn headphone jack. Even given the existence of adapters, some just won’t let it go and are willing to die on such a ridiculous hill. It’s like still being upset about computers not coming with CDROM drives anymore.

[alpaca128]

If so many people are still complaining about it after all this time, perhaps it's not because they're luddites but because many still use it despite you thinking it's obsolete.

And no, it's not comparable with CD drives at all, those are obsolete and gone even from desktops where space is not really a concern. It's more like complaining about the Macbook Pro 2016 not having USB-A ports. And Apple actually put those back, and I don't need to explain why they are incentivized to not do the same for headphones.

[AndrewDucker]

Can I buy headphones without headphone jacks that cost $5, can be transferred between devices near instantly with no registration, and allow me to charge my phone at the same time?

If not, then that is why I'm not shifting off of them.

[O-stevns]

It's not my hill to die on but I will say use wireless in-ear monitors myself to avoid ever having to deal with adapters because... Adapters are terrible, often wonky in one way or another, incredibly inconvenient for anything but having them lie on a desk. It's also something you easily forget to carry around, or you lose or break because of shoddy build quality.

It's a bad alternative to something that wasn't a problem except it took up space and people still talk about it because there's still a need for something better

[wstrange]

It all went to shit when they removed the floppy drive.

[doright]

I've gone through like 3 of those for one of my other devices. They're way too easy to lose and sometimes they outright don't work. It's a product that should not have to exist in 2025.

I use my built-in headphone jack daily and would buy another phone if it went out.

[ranger_danger]

I understand your frustration but I think the reality is that the vast majority of people simply do not use wired headphones, so it doesn't make financial sense for them to keep it.

[jsheard]

The problem with a Pixel is the hardware is always a step or two behind what other vendors are doing at the same price point, and they tend to be weirdly buggy for a first-party device. For example the bug where Pixel phones are randomly unable to call emergency services has been happening for years and keeps regressing again and again.

2021 https://www.vice.com/en/article/google-pixel-bug-prevented-u...

2022 https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/y039zn/i_compi...

2023 https://www.androidauthority.com/psa-google-pixel-911-emerge...

2024 https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1ano09x/pixel_...

[chris_pie]

I've been using Pixel 8 for nearly a year now and I agree that it's surprisingly buggy. Also, the chip is excessively power-hungry, especially for the performance it offers. In addition: the modem is bad and very power-hungry as well. And the cherry on top for me was the subpar fingerprint scanner. Can't recommend.

[microtonal]

Agree with Pixel < 9. Pixel 9 has an ultrasonic fingerprint reader. The modem is also upgraded to an Exynos 5400, which is much better. Even Pixel fans were complaining about the modems in Pixels, but pretty much everyone is positive about the modem in the Pixel 9.

Beware though that the Pixel 9a still uses the old modem and an optical fingerprint reader.

Until the 9a prices drop it probably doesn't make sense to get a 9a anyway, since the 9 is barely more expensive on a discount.

[karlgkk]

Not a problem with an iphone

[mrcsharp]

The walled garden is a problem with an iPhone. The OS treating me like a toddler is another.

[skybrian]

Buying a Pixel phone seems pretty easy? I rarely upgrade and stopped looking at the others.

[_old_dude_]

> at least I know that the phone will be supported for at least 4 years

It's 4 (mid) to 7 years (flagship) for Samsung.

https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-android-updates-114...

[theandrewbailey]

Buy a phone with an unlocked/unlockable bootloader, and use custom ROMs to stay up to date long after the manufacturer has stopped caring about support. Unlocked phones seem few and far between nowadays, but there's still some. Here's another not-so-subtle recommendation for the Google Pixel line.

I've been using a Moto X4 (8 years old!) with LineageOS for 6-7 years. I'll probably get an open box (for a discount) Pixel soon, and probably put GrapheneOS on it.

[mattlondon]

Just get the Google Pixel phones?

If you buy something from some other random manufacturer that is using the open source android code then yes you are going to have a different experience since they want to add their "special touch" which invariably is shite.