The model lifetime is too short. You can't get any idea of medium term reliability (as a proxy for long term reliability) until when the phones are discontinued.
Yes turns out dropping support entirely is less risky than bad updates tanking performances, because you’re not immediately and personally causing issues.
Those are real issues but that misses the point that iPhones have seven years of support which also decreases the TCO of the iPhone to around 62% less than the competition.
Technically they didn't lose it -- that's a settlement. This might sound like I'm being pedantic -- and I am -- but it's an important distinction! It means there was never some official legal determination that they did something wrong.
The specific thing they were sued over was "we slowed down your phone when the battery got old, because the alternative was it crashing, and we didn't tell you we were doing it". Not explaining it was bad, but they've since fixed that, and the underlying technical thing they did seems reasonable and, to the point of this discussion, actually prolonged the usable life of the phone.
Assuming you bought one on launch day, that's just-under 4 years of support. That only looks good by the awful standards of Android -- you can expect 50%+ more for Apple's phones, which you'd think Google could at least equal.
Supported means many different things. Ideally, I want to know if the device is going to last, or if it's going to end up bootlooping and being a big PITA like the Nexus 5X, before I buy it. That requires that it be on the market for a considerable amount of time. In this case, the 4a 5G is discontinued after less than a year in the market; it may continue to be sold, but likely not for very long.
Free repair if that happens is nice, but also not that helpful unless being out a phone for a week is fine, and losing your on device data is fine.
The Pixel 6/6 Pro are rumored to have a 5-year support lifetime (in exchange for costing a grand). If true, I'm getting one. The Pixel 2 XL has been a great phone, despite spending all of Android 10 with most of the sensors not working due to some widespread corruption issue that would have necessitated a hard reset.
Looks like external dimensions are different, so they’re mechanically incompatible. With iPhones, mechanical dimensions are so close together that cases are 1-2 generations backwards compatible.
The issue is that every new Google phone is available in less and less countries. 5a looks like a good option to replace my current 3a, but it is impossible to officially buy it here in Europe.
Specs like a 2013 smartphone, and an OS without any commercial app support to speak of. Can't read my work e-mail, can't access my bank...a computer without useful software is only a toy, and the same goes for a phone.
I'm considering the Fairphone as well, but could someone give me a reasonable idea of what to expect with running de-googled vs googled? Unfortunately I still need access to Gmail and Drive from my phone on occasion. Is that still available when de-Googled?
I'd love to have a full Android VM running on a de-Googled phone where I could sandbox all of the Google stuff.
I've run Android Degoogled for many years. Gmail can be accessed via K-9 Mail or another mail client via IMAP. Google Drive can be accessed via a browser such as Kiwi or Firefox.
I was just thinking, since Apple is supposedly going to make a car, wouldn’t it be interesting if Tesla decided to make a smartphone since Google gave up.
Because Tesla is becoming a luxury tech brand, like Apple.
Almost no one buys Apple products for the tech anymore. It's all about aesthetics and brand identity. They might have had the best products at one point, but that's become secondary to their continued success.
Who wants to be the scrub with yet another iPhone when all the cool kids have the new Tesla phone that matches their S3XY electric car?
The Pixel 5a is effectively an XL. And there's no non-XL version.
Now the Pixel 5 is discontinued, the only non-XL option is the 4a. I like the 4a a lot, but it's over 12 months old, with a mid-range SoC, so I wouldn't buy a new one now.
Pixel X = Flagship, most expensive with best hardware and most features
Pixel Xa = Cheaper version of Pixel X, often with one tier down processor, less RAM, and lacking some features like wireless charging
Pixel 4a 5G (marketed as a 4a with 5G support) is somewhat of a weird case where it's actually closer to what we'd expect from a Pixel 5a (which is likely why it was discontinued while the Pixel 4a was not)
The 4a 5G and 5a are separate phones, but target roughly the same price point and feature set (basically the mid tier "phone with 5G" market). When the 4a 5G launched years ago the 5a didn't exist. Now that it does the 4a 5G is being discontinued.
Yeah, the naming scheme sucks, google should have just called them the 5a and 5b or something.
Usually, the Pixel Xa is a newer, more budget-oriented version of the Pixel X. "5G" variants of phones seem to be totally different phones, not just a radio upgrade.
Wow, that lasted less than a year. Well done. At some point maybe all their stuff will be vaporware you have to preorder and then 9 months later they can return 40% of your money and cancel the order.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadhttps://www.theverge.com/2021/8/17/22627253/google-pixel-5a-...
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248408/apple-class-acti...
https://www.smartphoneperformancesettlement.com/
The specific thing they were sued over was "we slowed down your phone when the battery got old, because the alternative was it crashing, and we didn't tell you we were doing it". Not explaining it was bad, but they've since fixed that, and the underlying technical thing they did seems reasonable and, to the point of this discussion, actually prolonged the usable life of the phone.
Free repair if that happens is nice, but also not that helpful unless being out a phone for a week is fine, and losing your on device data is fine.
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
My next phone will be a Fairphone with LineageOS[1]. At least they're trying[2].
[1] https://forum.fairphone.com/t/official-lineageos-18-1-for-fa...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-fairphone-2-hits...
I'd love to have a full Android VM running on a de-Googled phone where I could sandbox all of the Google stuff.
This is a pre-beta version of software. If you run light and well-developed software on Pinephone, it's perfectly smooth: https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/
It would be like them starting an F1 team, sure they probably have the engineering know-how but so does every team on the F1 grid.
Almost no one buys Apple products for the tech anymore. It's all about aesthetics and brand identity. They might have had the best products at one point, but that's become secondary to their continued success.
Who wants to be the scrub with yet another iPhone when all the cool kids have the new Tesla phone that matches their S3XY electric car?
Now the Pixel 5 is discontinued, the only non-XL option is the 4a. I like the 4a a lot, but it's over 12 months old, with a mid-range SoC, so I wouldn't buy a new one now.
Pixel Xa = Cheaper version of Pixel X, often with one tier down processor, less RAM, and lacking some features like wireless charging
Pixel 4a 5G (marketed as a 4a with 5G support) is somewhat of a weird case where it's actually closer to what we'd expect from a Pixel 5a (which is likely why it was discontinued while the Pixel 4a was not)
4a is a cheaper version of 4, except 4a 5G, which is 5a? But 5a also exists?
I am really lost here
Yeah, the naming scheme sucks, google should have just called them the 5a and 5b or something.
… who makes those