> One challenge for the future, and those seven years of updates, will be the 8GB of RAM. Google is already calling devices with 8GB of RAM "hardware limited" when it comes to future AI features, so be prepared for that. It's a budget phone, though, so you have to make some trade-offs.
1) 8GB ram is hardware limited, 2) $499 is a budget phone???
I'm very happy with my recently acquired Moto G Stylus 5G 2023. It's $250 and has 256GB flash (vs 128GB for the 2x as expensive Pixel 8A), has an SD slot so I can put in another 1TB of flash (2TB soon), has a headphone jack (I still prefer wired headphones), actually has decent battery life, and the battery (per ifixit) is not all that hard to replace though I would still much prefer a swappable one.
I don't think of $250 as a budget phone either. More like midrange. The budget version is the G Play 2024 which is $129 or $149 depending on Moto's whims.
Also factor in how many years of SW updates are you getting on those cheap Motorolas and also the quality of the software.
Hardware bang for the buck ain't everything. If the software is full of ads on those cheap phones or is buggy(like it was on my OnePlus), then your $250 phone ain't worth shit in terms of frustration it's gonna cause you long term.
Cost is no guide on a crud-free experience.
I'm not noticing any ads from the software on my phone. I am still working on replacing the Google stuff though, since it is presumably spying even if it isn't spewing ads.
On a recent iphone setup I didn't notice ads per se, but instead there were constant pitches to buy subscriptions to Apple services. I found that just as bad as ads.
The Moto G's currently come with 3 years of security updates and 1 Android major version update. That is probably good enough. More than 3 years out, the phone hardware probably can't keep up with the increased levels of software bloat. My old phone had 2GB of ram which was fine when I got it, but near crippled now.
The line is (emphasis mine)
> Google is already calling devices with 8GB of RAM "hardware limited" when it comes to future AI features
which... yeah, I think that's true? You can run smaller LLMs in 8GB, for example, but it's a tight fit and you're going to be limited to really really small models.
Granted, I suspect this will result in the floor for "acceptable RAM" to go up considerably, which... we'll see if that's good or bad.
> $499 is a budget phone???
Yeah no that's nonsense. You can get a moto g for $99 (!) on sale at https://www.motorola.com/us/specials right now and that's... I mean, that's an old model, but it's perfectly serviceable yet.
So yeah, seen on the expected life time, it's a budget phone.
https://www.motorola.com/us/smartphones-moto-g-family
You can get them brick and mortar at Best Buy at usually the same prices as on Motorola's site.
I picked up a 7a pixel and fooled myself into thinking it "can't be that bad". But bluetooth is the worst technology to ever grace our airways, dongles fucking suck, and it's been a constant source of annoyance since I got it.
I guess I'll be picking up something other than a pixel when it comes time to upgrade. But there is an ever shrinking number of options that have both a headphone jack and allow bootloader unlocking/locking...
Can you expand on your issues with it? It has been very reliable for me.
It's absolutely insane trying to get exactly the one I want connected to my earphones. Basically, I have to make sure two of them have bluetooth off, so the third one reliably connects. Otherwise, sometimes left earphone will connect to one device, and right to other.
This is a deficiency of the protocol that there is no sane way to do this.
Why?
I recently replaced a screen on a Pixel 6a and it was okay. So far so good.
There hasn't been anything interesting in the field of smartphones in a very, very long time. Barely incremental progress.
also the month of yes review was fun
Read article: it’s 6.1 inches. Roughly halfway between iPhone SE 1 and iPad mini.
>Terrible in-house vendor locked Tensor CPU
>8GB RAM + 128GB combo in the EU
>Huge bezels
>8W wireless charging, are they for real
>Same camera setup on an "AI-powered Amazing Camera"
I don't know how to describe it, mediocre, I guess? Don't get me wrong, they surely did polish the phone, but apart from its out-of-the-box tuned camera, it has no value beyond actually mid-range phones in $300-400 range with a tuned GCam loaded on them.
That's like 5 years ago. Where is Qi2?
They still need to fix the modem issues and thereby increase battery life.
For a $1200 phone.
Had a bizarrely similar experience with the Pixel Watch.
The screen just failed to respond to touch. Wasted an hour figuring out how to get into fast boot mode. After a factory reset, it started working, but it doesn't get much more than 12-16 hours of battery time before needing a charge.
After losing a lot of money, time, and patience, I'm done with Google anything. Their hardware is garbage and they seem to have failed to address these issues with newer Pixel releases. Not sure what the point is of having 7 years of updates when the phone's hardware will barely last one of those years. And good luck with support.
Switched to a Samsung A54, and although it is slower and laggier in some aspects, the hardware is solid and I've been impressed at how clean OneUI is.
Tip: When your Pixel screen fails to respond to touch, you can at least plug in a USB mouse and recover what you can before tossing it into the dead gadget drawer.
I'm not paying a cent for it, until they sort this design mess out. Also, the android opsys' looks also needs some love.
I prefer AOSP, rather than all the shitty overlays, so I went with Pixels and just FML. Complete pieces of shit.
What kind of fucking clowns make a smartphone with a shitty, barely functional fingerprint reader, in this decade?
GL to anyone that uses them, and I sincerely hope YMMV.
I don't think that necessarily follows; GrapheneOS uses the Pixel line because it lets you install a custom ROM and relock the bootloader, and they're a security-focused ROM so that's a big deal to them.
My experience was, "overpriced garbage".
I can understand issues, but what I can't forgive is Google not taking responsibility for those issues.
My mother had a Pixel 3 that died an EDL-death at around 3 years old. She wasn't a heavy phone user, and this was obviously a defect, but yet Google would do nothing (Case ID [9-9224000032592] Google). They suggested paying $411 for a repair when second-hand phones were selling for $300.
My mom was planning on trading it in when the Pixel 6 was released, but it failed about a month before and as it wasn't working Google also wouldn't accept it towards an upgrade.
7-year software upgrades are great and all, but by not standing behind their hardware I really can't recommend buying them.
Are you sure? A growth from 1% of sold mobile phones in 2021Q4 to 3% in 2023Q4 doesn't seem too bad
https://9to5google.com/2024/02/29/googel-pixel-q4-2023-north...
Google makes money selling access to you/figments of your data.
But those damn ads they deliver as notifications! WTF. Why would they do that.
It just reaffirmed my allegiance to Apple.
It's possible you have some Google app running and that's what's doing it? I would look into which apps the notifications are coming from, you should be able to completely eliminate the problem.
I only keep notifications ON for apps that I really really care about, which are mostly communication apps like WhatsApp, Signal etc.
I don't miss a thing. I feel mobile notifications are a cesspit full of crap. Every fucking website or app or game wants to send you notifications, and they're almost always 100% useless.
I use a Samsung phone and I in fact put all the muted apps in "deep sleep" as well.
I get emails, popups, and banners on my iPhone. They're on my lock screen, in the Music app nav bar, and draped across the top of Settings. They repeatedly nag me to upgrade my iCloud storage, try Apple Music, see what's new in Apple TV, and check out their financial services. They hassle me on macOS too.
Windows 10 is tame in comparison. I just got a Pixel phone and it pesters me more than my iPhone did, but not by much.
Or apps that you pay for (Spotify Premium, Tidal) that will constantly bombard you with marketing in-app popups at random times. So instead of listening and enjoying my music, I can accidentally click on one of these landmines and get redirected to something I do not want.
I cancelled Spotify because of this. Will also cancel Tidal after my trial because they just copying the same ugly tactics as Spotify.
So I hope at least they solved this issue for the 8a
Hmm I feel like you missed something. Notifications should not be an issue.
I've used a lot of Androids over the years, but the Pixels, in my case, all had substantial issues that never should have been, which really is garbage, considering the price.
I don't even know how much ram my Maemo phones (N900 and later N9) had. They were dog slow though.
This is the list of requirements: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Also I have quite a few friends (many Android devs) who have had Pixels for years, and seem happy. My point was that I don't think Pixels are particularly bad. In fact, they are pretty good in some metrics. And very far from being "pieces of shit" like the original comment is saying.
I personally have a Fairphone, which I believe is very good in what it does. But very different from e.g. a Samsung flagship, of course.
I have: personal MacBook, work MacBook, personal iPad, personal iPhone, and an old personal iPhone I use as a lower-distraction music player. I also often connect to my Fire TV stick to listen to TV without disturbing others in the house.
With my AirPods, this is all pretty seamless these days. I never have to turn Bluetooth off on them.
If you wanna see spyware crud Try buying Chinese phones with Candy Crush and third party Chines apps and games you can't uninstall and show you ads in the menus.