I remain an irreductible fan of the one-hand theory, and therefore stick with an iPhone 13 mini. I might be late at the folding-phone revolution.
Alas it seems we won't see any such phone that fits in a pant's pocket and that can be operated single-handedly. I am afraid that the 13 mini is the last of its kind.
Yet many reports of people dropping their gigantic phones. Maybe that's a business model after all.
Also fan of the smaller phones. I dug up my Samsung Galaxy Ace from many years ago, and was so surprised at how tiny it was, with a replaceable battery as well!
My hope is that Unihertz ends up making a phone that I like enough, they seem to be pretty much the only ones making smaller phones. Their current offering doesn't really speak to me yet, but they're making quick progress.
> trapped in a shape everyone else seems to be moving on from.
Really not sure if we were ever there. Foldable phones still feel like a novelty that is expensive and fragile, among other tradeoffs. Also moving on to what, exactly? The regular slate form factor is what people buy, and have been for years at this point.
Folding phones aren't going away; they're becoming more mainstream. The initial versions of folding phones that came out five or six years ago had issues and some aspects that weren't addressed. But we are literally in the sixth or seventh generation of folding phones, and Samsung has basically perfected them. If you think the durability is bad, think again, because they are very, very durable. I use a Z Fold 6, and it is built like a tank. The next ones are even tougher.
In terms of usefulness, they are actually more useful than the bigass phones like the iPhone Max or S26 Ultra, and other comparable ones from various manufacturers. The outer screen is pretty small and very usable with one hand. There are a few multitasking options you can choose from once you unfold them. you can have two or four apps open at once if needed. They are also very good for watching videos. A huge number of smartphone users do spend a lot of time watching stuff on their screens.
The latest Samsung Z Fold 8 has become a huge success... its size appears to be even more ideal for one hand. the thinness and overall size of it once opened has essentially seemed like the perfect form factor for the latest generation of smartphone users.
I'm confused, what is everyone else moving away from, folding phones? The same article said Samsung is still making folding phones and Apple is about to release one.
Moving away from the tall narrow foldables that open to a square, to shorter, wider foldables that open to a rectangle, like the Galaxy Z fold 8 and the rumored iPhone foldable.
The biggest benefit of the passport-style foldable is it might actually fit in your hand. Modern phones haven’t been ergonomic since the iPhone 13 Mini.
This is likely a small side track that emerged recently..... but i'm afraid that's not really the situation. the younger generation utilizes a ton of social media, and they would need to rely on smartphones just for that.
Not really, there are a couple of new products like that but they are fairly uncommon and inconvenient.
I think there is a real movement to want to use social media and phones less, but I think it's is more likely to come from Apple implementing tools to help break social media addiction than buying a flip phone.
I've looked seriously into doing this, and there are just too many situations where I'm expected to have access to a particular app or website on my phone in day to day life. Maps are also a killer feature, and I use instagram messaging with some friends here (expats with unstable phone numbers).
The best I've had was to turn my phone greyscale, which really helped me cut back on any short form video consumption, but my endless reddit scrolling is still there.
I use a thing called Brick. It basically locks all the 'fun' stuff down using the phones built-in features, but you can unlock it by scanning an nfc tag thing.
I leave the brick in my car. I can still scroll if I want, but I have to intentionly get up and move to do it. Most of the time I decide it isn't worth it.
You could get a bad smartphone. For a while the iPhone 6 Batterygate Edition really made sure I'd only use it for essential stuff, cause even typing on the keyboard was a waiting game.
I tried switching to iphone briefly (lifelong nexus/pixel user) because I hate using iphones. I didn't end up holding out very long and I switched back to android after a couple of weeks, and in the switch back, apple screwed up my texting and I wasn't able to receive texts from iphone users for over a month.
Maybe I should go back and do that again. The typing experience on iphone is so poor that it made commenting on reddit (my main vice) painful.
Well it may work, cause at some point Apple permanently messed up how the iPhone keyboard works. I cannot spell anything on the iPhone 12 mini I use every day, but if I pick up my old 5 that's been sitting unused for years, it feels fine.
I doubt that very much. They will always be a lot more expansive than even large (~6.8") single screen devices. I don't see how folds will ever be easier/cheaper to produce than single screen displays.
I picked up a Z Fold 8 for a test device, in order to optimize my app for folding phones (also in anticipation of Apple's folding phone), and the squat form factor really seems like something out of the future (certainly something different), I like it way more than I thought I would, the front is convenient for a lot of quick scrolling, checking things, and the wide 4:3 inner screen is really great for content viewing and web surfing. Even the front screen alone is better for content viewing then the traditional slab phones.
I like it so much I'd consider a non folding phone in the squatter form factor as well.
Really depends on what you do with the open phone. I can understand it being a huge distraction when watching video with the seam right in the middle. EBook reading? Apps in tablet interface mode? Might as well complain that using two monitors on your desktop is unusable because of the bezels. Doesn't matter in practice.
I drop my phone a lot, I have a great case for it so not a scratch after 6 years. I am interested in getting the foldable but apparently the cases don't protect the hinge or let dirt get in? Anyone have experience with this? Maybe I'm not the right audience, too clumsy
At least for Samsung, when you first turn it on, you get a nice big warning that says the phone is not dust or water resistant, and that you can damage the screen with sharp objects, like your fingernail. [1]
I tried one and permanently dented it on accident with the stylus. Can't image what would happen if you did something crazy like go to a beach.
Among other manufacturers Spigen has cases that protect the hinge. I've owned a foldable for 3 years and never had anything get into the hinge thanks to that, though some amount of dust did gather inside the hinge cover over time.
But I would be nervous about spending that much on a phone if you expect to be dropping it a lot, honestly.
I'm tempted to get one to replace my very cracked Pixel 9 Pro XL. With all the incentives Google offers for Google Fi customers it's not all that expensive. Comes out to about $1100 after trade-in and includes a free Pixel Watch 5.
I'm foldable-curious and Samsung just includes too much overlapping bloat "features". Gemini is bad enough, I don't need Bixby and whatever else. Not to mention I would have to pay full price.
> Samsung just includes too much overlapping bloat "features"
Yep, that's a major drawback. My partner has a Samsung phone and seeing all of the included bloatware, plus the terrible updates and add even more, made me not even consider one of their devices last time I bought a phone.
At work we bought a used tablet off eBay to replace a customer device where they really wanted an identical (obsolete) model.
OMG the amount of extra crap that Verizon branded tablet had pre-installed was agonizing.
All system apps so you couldn't get rid of it.
It's worth mentioning that on most Android phones and tablets, you can uninstall apps from the user partition even when they are system apps with adb or a UI for it like UAD-ng.
i take the position that it's all dog shit and i dont care whos fault it is, all of these people need to be put in front of a tribunal and justice done
I'm on my last Samsung for this reason. Just way too much bloatware, need to agree to a new privacy policy once a week, and every time it updates I find a few new apps on my phone I didn't want.
Gonna hold out for the Motorola/Graphene phone though. One of the models is supposed to be a flagship foldable.
imo just get a pixel. unlockable bootloader and almost guaranteed support from pretty much every major privacy-related android fork. and many of them are building support for the titan chip if they dont have it already
I also have a Samsung phone besides a Pixel with GrapheneOS and I just ripped out Gemini, most of Bixby, etc. using UAD-ng. It's very clean now, but I still have all the customizability of OneUI, Good Lock, etc.
Unless you really have a large ethical problem with paying for any google product, I'd just recommend to get one of the previous-gen pixel devices. They are a lot cheaper than the Motorola smartphone coming out.
it's crazy how normalized spending 1k+ on a phone has become. I can't imagine paying that for a phone that is almost identical in features I care about to something 1/3 the price.
Just be careful about what your actual use case is.
For example, this form factor of foldable doesn’t give you significantly more screen real estate for 16:9 video content since it’s such a square aspect ratio.
They also generally aren’t large enough to take advantage of tablet layouts, while tri-fold designs fold out to be almost identical to a tablet size.
You have to really want to use two apps side by side in my opinion.
That’s in the eye of the beholder. Folding phones are unique devices and the best tri-fold designs can legitimately replace a tablet.
A whole lot of people use their phone as their primary and most-used device. I don’t think a high price is insane, it’s just that folks who consider them a utility and a side-device to a desktop computer tend not to feel that way. Many millennials and older who grew up with desktops and laptops probably can’t comprehend the idea of a phone being the only device or primary device.
My iPhone was something like $1300 and I feel like it was worth every penny, and that a cheaper model did not meet my needs and wants.
The other thing I would say is that Pixels are just not high end hardware and they masquerade like they are. They get these insane launch sale deals like we are seeing now and the whole reason for that is because they aren’t competitive with true flagships.
It’s just not really a flagship phone in terms of processor performance.
I know Samsung has a lot more of their garbage software on it but I think if I was in the Android market I’d probably be inclined for a Samsung device over a Pixel. If I lived in Europe or Asia I’d be looking at something Chinese that’s not sold in the US market. Companies like Xiaomi and Huawei make way better phones than Google.
> It’s just not really a flagship phone in terms of processor performance.
I'm curious to know which apps/use-cases you feel are hobbled by the non-flagship processors on Pixels. It feels like most peoples top 3 activities on phones are infinite scrolling inside apps or a browser, taking pictures, and playing games, which Pixels seem to be great at. It's been many years since I felt that a phone that is slow enough to notice - even the midrange ones, and I (used to) write and debug code on my phone.
Sure, 4 years later anything can run Genshin, but the point is that the next new hit game is just around the corner and gamers appreciate the extra performance.
My understanding is also that the pixel’s tensor chip series is not very “flagship” in terms of battery stamina/efficiency when you’re doing heavy tasks such as gaming.
So it’s not always about having the faster processor, you can also benefit by your processor being the most efficient on the market and making the most use of the battery in your chassis.
Video comparison of last year’s phones head to head where the Samsung phone lasts nearly 8 hours longer on video playback:
Samsung also has these kinds of sales. A bunch of people on a forum I frequent had some Z Fold 8 just north of 1000 Euro with a trade in and by stacking coupons.
Heck, even flagships like the S26 Ultra, which was introduced in March and still dominates the CPU, GPU, etc. charts are currently 500 Euro off in my country.
Even discounted, Pixel have pretty bad prices compared to the competition. The primary reason to buy a Pixel is to run GrapheneOS. Otherwise, just get an iPhone or if you are willing to remove the bloat with UAD some Samsung phone.
From Europe, at this point I don't even look at Pixels because of their sad excuse of a battery. Just buying directly from China better phones for half the price. Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi are all good, others probably too, Huawei has nice hardware but due to US ban no usable Android.
Huawei has their HarmonyOS but still releases Android phones too for international markets - but these can't use Google Services, so they have their own services. If it's possible to somehow install google services I have no idea.
Personally I would perhaps like to use or at least try Pixel's software (I've had some Google-software phones years ago, a Nexus I think? Maybe even some Pixel. And they were fine), but not on that HW.
I'm on fi and got the fold 8 through fi for a pretty steep discount. It was cash off immediately + fi credits. I can pull up exact details if you care but it was several hundred dollars off split pretty evenly between instant discount and fi credits. Coming from nearly 10 years of pixels/nexus the transition hasn't been that bad. I miss a couple pixel exclusives, but nearly all the samsung bloatware can be disabled or removed entirely. I haven't bumped into bixby once.
One genuine nice Samsung feature is DeX. Been using it + moonlight (when needed) to make the phone basically a secondary computer when hooked up to USB-C monitor. Honestly I think this phone may end up replacing several other devices - kindle, gaming portable (eg: steamdeck, replaced by phone + GameSir G8 + controller), laptop, tablet. I think it can only replace laptop in my use case because I can remote into my desktop from it if I need extra compute - so if you are laptop only I don't expect it to be a straight replacement.
Honestly, best phone I've ever used - but I hope next year either google gets off the sidelines and adopts passport form factor + gets its shit together on the crease, cpu and dex equivalent so I can get my pixel exclusives and vanilla OS back, or alternatively Samsung makes the wide form factor the "ultra" and gives us better cameras, speaker placement, s-pen and IP68.
They have been for years. Almost all smartphones have roughly the same set of features, with fashion-like differentiators. You pay more for a premium one and it lasts a bit longer before the never-ending app bloat inevitably renders it obsolete.
The real question these days is: how badly does the software stack screw you over?
Does anyone use one of foldables for more than a year? I know a couple of people who have them and the massive creases seem like they’d be really hard to get used to.
you get used to it almost instantly like within 1 hour of use. But I also have the OnePlus Open which has probably the best hidden crease you can buy besides Oppo which is just the company OnePlus came from
I have pixel 10 Pro Fold. Formfactor: for Pockets. The slim when folded is great for most pockets. I think it's great and I use it in folded and unfolded mode every day depending on what I want to do. Not sure how well the wider one would work with pockets when folded. It's an important feature for me at least.
I just don't see why you would spend more than double (almost 2K USD!) for the fold phones though. I have large screens in my home to watch high quality video content. I do like the Pixel Pro XL series with 6.8" screens though, but they are a lot cheaper.
Work on alternative input mechanisms and display options. This gimmicky, look we can fold the phone is a mess and just plain ridiculous. The manufacturers are on this very strange, bullshitty innovation trajectory, where everyone eyes the other and copies everything in an instant.
I hope Samsung (Royole) does a 180 and introduce something groundbreaking soon, of course, after everyone copied their shit.
Texting is the single most important feature on a phone.
Also it's not Apple's fault that MMS was terrible for years and now RCS is still terrible. Google also tried to make their own proprietary chat and failed... like 10 times. But more importantly, I don't care, this is not my battle. I'd use WhatsApp if that's what people did here, not that I like it any better.
The iMessage app does both SMS, and the iMessage protocol. Apple could have released an android app to let you have blue bubbles on android and communicate securely without any of the constraints of SMS by simply releasing "iMessage for Android".
Somehow Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram, Discord, WeChat, LINE, KakaoTalk, etc etc all manage to have both iOS and Android apps that can message each other, but for some reason the richest company in the world, Apple, cannot manage to port its chat app to one additional platform?
It is 100% Apple's fault that messaging between iOS and Android has had so much dumb "green bubble" friction.
Apple's conflation of the SMS and iMessage protocols has also made it harder for people to realize what's happening. Frankly, Apple should have had two apps from the start (Text Message and iMessage), one of which only spoke SMS, and the other of which only spoke iMessage.
Sure they could've provided a solution, but they didn't create the problem. And they're not a charity. It's like blaming Nvidia for not giving away CUDA for free/cheap.
Btw everyone knows whether they're using iMessage or SMS, that's the whole bubble color thing.
> Btw everyone knows whether they're using iMessage or SMS, that's the whole bubble color thing.
Everyone sorta knows, but because iMessage "feels" like it's just the native messaging app on the phone, it makes people feel like the issue is android (why don't android phones come with this super-sms built in?) rather than apple for not making the app available broadly.
If it were a separate app, then perhaps the EU would have regulated "when setting up iOS, you must get a default option between iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, etc, you must be able to change the default messaging app", and forcing people to install it would make it more obvious that this is Apple implementing a proprietary chat protocol, not Apple just doing SMS better than android.
> they didn't create the problem. And they're not a charity.
Apple did create the problem by creating a walled garden messaging app, banning beeper for implementing the iMessage protocol for android, and tying some of the phone's core functionality to this built-in app in an anti-competitive way.
A certain amount of industry interoperability should be expected. If you make a browser, it should be able to load competitors websites (which nice, safari can load google.com, good work). If you make a computer that can install arbitrary software, you should allow anyone to install software they wrote freely (oops, apple missed that one). And if you make a messaging app or social media app, you should make it support all major operating systems people use so that people can switch their operating systems and phones without losing touch with their friends. I should still be able to facetime my grandma even if I switch to linux because gosh knows she's not going to learn a new video call app.
Android users still go on WhatsApp for group chats instead of using RCS. I'm in an RCS group chat with some Android users, and they're always missing messages even between each other. So no I don't buy it. Same with MMS, other phonemakers always blamed Apple, but nobody actually wanted to use MMS even in a full Android group chat.
Maybe RCS between Pixel phones is ok, because that's not the same thing, it goes through Google's servers only. And that was also the only way you got E2EE in RCS until very recently.
I have zero interest in folding phones and only read to kill time while eating, but this review is incredibly irritating. "This isn't exactly like another phone, with a bunch of subjective design differences, therefore it's dated and bad!" I hate this way of thinking so much. Products should be different. There should be small phones and large phones, thin phones and thick phones, rather than scoring them all against the latest fad in order to try to force the market to conform. I hear small phones don't sell well and that's why nobody makes them anymore, but I can't help but wonder if small phone sales are artificially deflated by shitty reviews like this one that punish companies for manufacturing outside the media's anointed design trend.
Reviews like this like to exaggerate certain things in order to get a punchy headline ("feels like the end of an era") and to create a matching narrative for the article. To keep readers engaged. Pretty typical for The Verge.
But as far as reviews go, this one is just as bad as most. They didn't do any standardized measurements of the battery life including comparisons with similar phones, or performance benchmarks, or charging speed measurements, or any camera measurements that go beyond vibes. They are just reporting what anyone who bought the phone could also tell you: subjective impressions and a few out-of-context sample photos.
Listen to each person who says he wants a small phone. Is he the kind of person who would even buy the smaller phone if it got released, rather than holding onto an old working phone? Is he also going to spend more money on apps, AirPods, etc, maybe a iPad too? Sometimes yeah, usually not. I'm in that group, I understand why Apple doesn't cater to me.
Also don't think anyone makes buying decisions based on these reviews. It's more entertainment than anything else.
Well. I, for one, picked up Moto Z Fold, as soon as it has been out, and can't get enough of it. Won't be moving back to candybar phones. Content consumption feels so much more natural, and context window I'm able to see while reading is dramatically larger. And I'm not talking about Youtube etc; regular work or family chats, browsing sites, reading books with Kindle , that kind of stuff. When I was deciding to pick this formfactor, I wanted to read more books. I can't read on a regular phone, too small of a page being displayed is somehow a blocker for me. Not anymore; I'm unfolding my MoFo every now and then.
Sadly, I can't read this article due to the hard paywall. Is The Verge actively trying to shrink their readership? Why would I want to subscribe to yet another monthly subscription if I can't even get a taste of what this one is offering?
Even in this article, they repeat the same: what everyone always gives as the advantage of Pixel phones has nothing to do with form factor or even hardware in general. Presumably also because there's not much special about Pixel form factors, but the plusses are almost always the software, features, and "cleanest android" with occasionally the camera mentioned (mostly because people are repeating what phone reviewers say). With the iPhone people sometimes respond that the hardware is a plus, but for Pixel I have never even heard that. For Samsung it's the opposite. People buy Samsung phones for the new and powerful hardware, and on a hardware-capabilities-per-dollar they are fantastic, with occasional mention of the pen integration.
Pixel phones are "great software with a frankly boring phone built around it".
I think this even works for Google: if the hardware ceases to be the differentiating factor as we go on in time, it seems to me Google's position would keep improving over time, certainly over Samsung.
I kept hearing how Pixel is the clean Android software experience, then I got one as a work phone. It honestly felt pretty unintuitive, and I thought that was just how Android is, but then it broke and I got a Samsung replacement... The Samsung UI is surprisingly better. Down to the clock settings.
Idk, mine has it. You must have some kind of alarm/clock functionality somewhere. The time picker is normal scrollable hh-mm-ss, right? On a Pixel, it's something like an analog clock but also not.
I also can't look on the Pixel anymore, but I remember there were weirdly two different control centers that always got me.
Yes, but this a medium-length "I tested this phone a few days" article with the intention of getting affiliate revenue. That's the joke. What's next, "Look at this Amazon product listicle" behind a paywall?
This is the same site that ran a front page saying if you vote for Trump you are literally a racist. I liked it better when it was just headphone reviews and holiday gift guides to pump their affiliate revenue. XD
Alas it seems we won't see any such phone that fits in a pant's pocket and that can be operated single-handedly. I am afraid that the 13 mini is the last of its kind.
Yet many reports of people dropping their gigantic phones. Maybe that's a business model after all.
My hope is that Unihertz ends up making a phone that I like enough, they seem to be pretty much the only ones making smaller phones. Their current offering doesn't really speak to me yet, but they're making quick progress.
I'm curious what people need the huge screens for on phones? Is it mostly for watching videos?
Really not sure if we were ever there. Foldable phones still feel like a novelty that is expensive and fragile, among other tradeoffs. Also moving on to what, exactly? The regular slate form factor is what people buy, and have been for years at this point.
In terms of usefulness, they are actually more useful than the bigass phones like the iPhone Max or S26 Ultra, and other comparable ones from various manufacturers. The outer screen is pretty small and very usable with one hand. There are a few multitasking options you can choose from once you unfold them. you can have two or four apps open at once if needed. They are also very good for watching videos. A huge number of smartphone users do spend a lot of time watching stuff on their screens.
The latest Samsung Z Fold 8 has become a huge success... its size appears to be even more ideal for one hand. the thinness and overall size of it once opened has essentially seemed like the perfect form factor for the latest generation of smartphone users.
Which honestly I support. I still have my LG VX8100 and wish it would work on modern networks.
I think there is a real movement to want to use social media and phones less, but I think it's is more likely to come from Apple implementing tools to help break social media addiction than buying a flip phone.
The best I've had was to turn my phone greyscale, which really helped me cut back on any short form video consumption, but my endless reddit scrolling is still there.
I leave the brick in my car. I can still scroll if I want, but I have to intentionly get up and move to do it. Most of the time I decide it isn't worth it.
It cut back usage like 99%.
Maybe I should go back and do that again. The typing experience on iphone is so poor that it made commenting on reddit (my main vice) painful.
What have they implemented?
Foldables will slowly become the standard phones, probably over a decade or so.
I like it so much I'd consider a non folding phone in the squatter form factor as well.
I tried one and permanently dented it on accident with the stylus. Can't image what would happen if you did something crazy like go to a beach.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyFold/comments/1vhhow0/because...
But I would be nervous about spending that much on a phone if you expect to be dropping it a lot, honestly.
I'm foldable-curious and Samsung just includes too much overlapping bloat "features". Gemini is bad enough, I don't need Bixby and whatever else. Not to mention I would have to pay full price.
Yep, that's a major drawback. My partner has a Samsung phone and seeing all of the included bloatware, plus the terrible updates and add even more, made me not even consider one of their devices last time I bought a phone.
I have never seen anything like that on a flagship Samsung, nor our daughter's A series.
Gonna hold out for the Motorola/Graphene phone though. One of the models is supposed to be a flagship foldable.
Thats expensive :/
For example, this form factor of foldable doesn’t give you significantly more screen real estate for 16:9 video content since it’s such a square aspect ratio.
They also generally aren’t large enough to take advantage of tablet layouts, while tri-fold designs fold out to be almost identical to a tablet size.
You have to really want to use two apps side by side in my opinion.
I’ll never go back to tiny thin rectangle.
Otherwise, in no world is $1100 for a cell phone anything but expensive.
Yes, iPhones are also expensive.
Nearly $2000 after tax for a phone is fucking absurd.
A whole lot of people use their phone as their primary and most-used device. I don’t think a high price is insane, it’s just that folks who consider them a utility and a side-device to a desktop computer tend not to feel that way. Many millennials and older who grew up with desktops and laptops probably can’t comprehend the idea of a phone being the only device or primary device.
My iPhone was something like $1300 and I feel like it was worth every penny, and that a cheaper model did not meet my needs and wants.
It’s just not really a flagship phone in terms of processor performance.
I know Samsung has a lot more of their garbage software on it but I think if I was in the Android market I’d probably be inclined for a Samsung device over a Pixel. If I lived in Europe or Asia I’d be looking at something Chinese that’s not sold in the US market. Companies like Xiaomi and Huawei make way better phones than Google.
I'm curious to know which apps/use-cases you feel are hobbled by the non-flagship processors on Pixels. It feels like most peoples top 3 activities on phones are infinite scrolling inside apps or a browser, taking pictures, and playing games, which Pixels seem to be great at. It's been many years since I felt that a phone that is slow enough to notice - even the midrange ones, and I (used to) write and debug code on my phone.
4 year old video, but Genshin Impact ran better on the Exynos chip of the time compared to Tensor:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IG5eTHJfM5U
Sure, 4 years later anything can run Genshin, but the point is that the next new hit game is just around the corner and gamers appreciate the extra performance.
My understanding is also that the pixel’s tensor chip series is not very “flagship” in terms of battery stamina/efficiency when you’re doing heavy tasks such as gaming.
So it’s not always about having the faster processor, you can also benefit by your processor being the most efficient on the market and making the most use of the battery in your chassis.
Video comparison of last year’s phones head to head where the Samsung phone lasts nearly 8 hours longer on video playback:
https://youtube.com/shorts/R_zYmUkafew
Heck, even flagships like the S26 Ultra, which was introduced in March and still dominates the CPU, GPU, etc. charts are currently 500 Euro off in my country.
Even discounted, Pixel have pretty bad prices compared to the competition. The primary reason to buy a Pixel is to run GrapheneOS. Otherwise, just get an iPhone or if you are willing to remove the bloat with UAD some Samsung phone.
I’m now recalling that Huawei does have their own OS that is not based on Android.
In any event, your exact sentiment reflects my feelings. Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, etc etc, what is the Pixel really getting you over those options?
Personally I would perhaps like to use or at least try Pixel's software (I've had some Google-software phones years ago, a Nexus I think? Maybe even some Pixel. And they were fine), but not on that HW.
Personally, I find smart watches a gimmick but maybe I havnt looked into them enough.
One genuine nice Samsung feature is DeX. Been using it + moonlight (when needed) to make the phone basically a secondary computer when hooked up to USB-C monitor. Honestly I think this phone may end up replacing several other devices - kindle, gaming portable (eg: steamdeck, replaced by phone + GameSir G8 + controller), laptop, tablet. I think it can only replace laptop in my use case because I can remote into my desktop from it if I need extra compute - so if you are laptop only I don't expect it to be a straight replacement.
Honestly, best phone I've ever used - but I hope next year either google gets off the sidelines and adopts passport form factor + gets its shit together on the crease, cpu and dex equivalent so I can get my pixel exclusives and vanilla OS back, or alternatively Samsung makes the wide form factor the "ultra" and gives us better cameras, speaker placement, s-pen and IP68.
With google the added question though is, are they losing interest again?
The real question these days is: how badly does the software stack screw you over?
I never even considered buying a foldable phone, and they're already moving on from that shape.
I hope Samsung (Royole) does a 180 and introduce something groundbreaking soon, of course, after everyone copied their shit.
$1900?
Wow wth
Also it's not Apple's fault that MMS was terrible for years and now RCS is still terrible. Google also tried to make their own proprietary chat and failed... like 10 times. But more importantly, I don't care, this is not my battle. I'd use WhatsApp if that's what people did here, not that I like it any better.
The iMessage app does both SMS, and the iMessage protocol. Apple could have released an android app to let you have blue bubbles on android and communicate securely without any of the constraints of SMS by simply releasing "iMessage for Android".
Somehow Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram, Discord, WeChat, LINE, KakaoTalk, etc etc all manage to have both iOS and Android apps that can message each other, but for some reason the richest company in the world, Apple, cannot manage to port its chat app to one additional platform?
It is 100% Apple's fault that messaging between iOS and Android has had so much dumb "green bubble" friction.
Apple's conflation of the SMS and iMessage protocols has also made it harder for people to realize what's happening. Frankly, Apple should have had two apps from the start (Text Message and iMessage), one of which only spoke SMS, and the other of which only spoke iMessage.
Btw everyone knows whether they're using iMessage or SMS, that's the whole bubble color thing.
Everyone sorta knows, but because iMessage "feels" like it's just the native messaging app on the phone, it makes people feel like the issue is android (why don't android phones come with this super-sms built in?) rather than apple for not making the app available broadly.
If it were a separate app, then perhaps the EU would have regulated "when setting up iOS, you must get a default option between iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, etc, you must be able to change the default messaging app", and forcing people to install it would make it more obvious that this is Apple implementing a proprietary chat protocol, not Apple just doing SMS better than android.
> they didn't create the problem. And they're not a charity.
Apple did create the problem by creating a walled garden messaging app, banning beeper for implementing the iMessage protocol for android, and tying some of the phone's core functionality to this built-in app in an anti-competitive way.
A certain amount of industry interoperability should be expected. If you make a browser, it should be able to load competitors websites (which nice, safari can load google.com, good work). If you make a computer that can install arbitrary software, you should allow anyone to install software they wrote freely (oops, apple missed that one). And if you make a messaging app or social media app, you should make it support all major operating systems people use so that people can switch their operating systems and phones without losing touch with their friends. I should still be able to facetime my grandma even if I switch to linux because gosh knows she's not going to learn a new video call app.
Maybe RCS between Pixel phones is ok, because that's not the same thing, it goes through Google's servers only. And that was also the only way you got E2EE in RCS until very recently.
But as far as reviews go, this one is just as bad as most. They didn't do any standardized measurements of the battery life including comparisons with similar phones, or performance benchmarks, or charging speed measurements, or any camera measurements that go beyond vibes. They are just reporting what anyone who bought the phone could also tell you: subjective impressions and a few out-of-context sample photos.
Also don't think anyone makes buying decisions based on these reviews. It's more entertainment than anything else.
Pixel phones are "great software with a frankly boring phone built around it".
I think this even works for Google: if the hardware ceases to be the differentiating factor as we go on in time, it seems to me Google's position would keep improving over time, certainly over Samsung.
I also can't look on the Pixel anymore, but I remember there were weirdly two different control centers that always got me.
Is it time to bring Jony Ive back?? Have some backbone, Apple...
> that, rumor has it, includes all of the above and adds iOS too.
Ok, this snippy comment is for The Verge - what crack reporting got you the scoop that Apple would be releasing an iOS phone?