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100%. I just bought a Pixel 8 so I could install Graphene OS. It was so damn easy too. I was amazed. This phone is great minus the lack of headphone jack and SD card slot.
same here. bought one 2 months ago
Been using their phones since the Nexus 6. That thing was huge.
And I’m the one guy that uses Google Fi. My bill was $38 last month.
And I’m the one guy that uses Google Fi. My bill was $38 last month.
There are dozens of us, baker’s dozens.
I’ve been on Fi for years, I think basically since the first year they started ProjectFi. So much cheaper than my old Verizon or sprint accounts…
My bill was $38 last month.
Did you mean that this was a lot or dirt cheap? Sounds quite expensive to me.
Genuinely curious, what service are you comparing this to that makes it sound quite expensive? Asking for my wallet
A very basic phone plan from one of the top three ISPs where I live (Taiwan). Comes with 3 GB of data a month. (I’m on Wi-Fi most of the time.) Costs ~$6.1 a month. No 5G connection, only 4G. ~22 cents per minute of calltime.
$38 usd is considered low in the US because even though we all have a high median income the cost of everything is extraordinarily high, rendering most americans de facto impoverished
graphene pixel gang
hell yes. been using this combo for over a year now, won’t ever look back
What exactly does Google have left that people like? Gmail?
Shhhh! Dammit. Now they are definitely going to realize they haven’t ruined it yet.
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Great for forwarding my mail server to my gmail
Too late. The promotions tab in the app is infested with ads. I use fairmail on my phone and do important stuff on my computer where I have adguard
Android worse every year? How? Every update I’ve received (on a Samsung, mind you) has made my experience better.
Android 12 took up 700MB RAM, leaving some space for non-sytem apps on lower end smartphones.
Android 13 takes up easily 1.2GB, leaving almost nothing at the benefit of having a somewhat “snappier” interface
Lots of proprietary google crap. Much harder to run a custom ROM with decent support and apps
More bloated and inefficient every release. That would be fine for Android but sadly, it affects the core and thus every custom ROM too.
Latest Samsung updates removed classic swipe controls for navigation. I had to do a hacky workaround including finding 2 random APKs just to preserve functionality. (S21U)
Really? D: That sucks, I use swipe navigation for everything. Not sure if it’s classic or not but losing an option is a bummer.
They used to have both the old school one where you swipe up on the three sections at the bottom, as well as the new Google one for years. The newest update to OneUI 6.1 removed the classic swipe controls for no reason, keeping only the Google one. I had to install Good Lock and NavStar to make some sort of custom settings configuration, which returned the navigation option. Thankfully I did get it working, but only after messing around and wasting 20 minutes of my time.
I really hate that they think they own my device, not me.
lol…last update (like every other update) on my Samsung I have to restart to get it to charge, and now videos lag horribly (try watching anything live? nope.)
Worst phone ive ever had, hands down.
Maps. There’s still unfortunately nothing better.
Helping to contribute to OpenStreetMap using Street Complete has the potential to change that.
And they’ve been neglecting that. There are a couple of street names that they have wrong, and I’ve been using the edit feature fruitlessly for over 8 years. I’ve included links to local business web sites with the new name of one, links to municipal web sites with the new name, geo-tagged photos of the street signs, and even links to the municipal ordinance that changed the names in 2003. It all goes into the same black hole.
Maps also has gone to shit. Complex routing including public transport is pretty much the only thing it still is useful for. For using maps as maps openstreetmap has been better for a long time, even before Google decided to dumb down their maps. For bicycle routing osm also is better nowadays as Google is missing most of the small paths.
Maps was crowdsourced like wikipedia. Still is.
It will turn to shit as crowds migrate. And the crowds are migrating.deleted by creator
the chromebook keyboard layout is stupid, especially if you like tiling wms
they removed capslock and moved super to where it would normally be, and renamed it to “search”
they put nonsensical function keys that don’t exist like “refresh” and “fullscreen”
and then the keys are mushy too
I hate the capslock thing. I sometimes feel like I’m the only person who regularly uses capslock (for C macro names and SQL when programming, but also for typing acronyms).
I don’t mind the function key thing. Even from memory I can say that in a browser F5 = refresh and F11 = fullscreen. But kids probably are less likely to know those these days so a label could be helpful.
Theres much much more… Smaller kills sometimes are the most effective. Think about Google RSS Reader the best rss reader to ever exist…
What did it do better than other RSS readers?
Yeah same thing I was wondering. There are still a lot of great RSS readers. Arguably even better than Google Reader was.
The UI imo
Fast, and easy to edit. It was a fantastic start page.
Android is still great. The Pixel phone is the best Android phone by several metrics. Usability and Camera come to mind. Android TV is by far the best TV interface. Just because it’s sideloadable and decently usable. Low bar, but here we are.
Gboard is good. The pixel launcher is good enough to not bother switching off. The Google Home certainly turns my lights on and off. And as soon as Google opens RCS, I’m leaving Google Messages.
But that’s the only Google stuff I use. And I’m thinking of switching to Graphene OS.
I like my Pixel phones, so I dunno what about it is supposed to be a joke?
My 3a still works. Wish they wouldn’t have removed the headphone jack from later models but the 7a has been fine.
Yeah the pixel hardware is the only thing they make that I think is any good and I run graphene on mine
Gmail has ads in it. They’re stealing your data and training their D-tier AI on your emails and still showing you ads and you just take it.
Wow, Gmail has ads? I never knew, because I have adblock. It’s free, you know
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If you use a reputable adblocker, especially a well known FOSS one like uBlock Origin, you’re not the product. The way they block ads is by downloading static filter lists, not live checking by sending your queries to their servers.
I’m not saying all adblockers won’t track you, but acting as if people are “Adblock’s product” by using adblockers is simply a misinformed view of how most adblockers operate. (I do agree that marketing adblock as a solution for a legitimate issue doesn’t negate the initial problem or its critics, though.)
I’m not saying it’s not a bad thing, I’m just remarking it’s interesting you know in the first place. I didn’t know.
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What’s your social baby? What’s your favorite credit card number?
I’m an iPhone person because of reasons, but I honestly think Pixel phones are the best Android devices I’ve ever seen.
I think the general rule is anything google acquired was good and anything they built themselves was bad and ended up getting killed.
There are exceptions but some of the only decent parts of google; maps, YouTube, AdWords were all acquisitions. I think they even just got HTC to build the pixel exclusively for them
They used to have a nice clean usable web search back in 2000 or so.
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What pisses me off is the fitfit app requiring i turn on my location to sync my flex 2 mere weeks after google buys them out.
It doesn’t even have a screen, why do you need a location?
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My latest day-job employer has made the switch from Apples (and s20fe) to pixels. The staff - mainly nerds - is actually generally pleased with the switch.
If the embarrassment that is Purolator (our national postal service offshoot courier ‘service’) was adequate last week, not only would they break a 20-year streak but also I’d’ve had my shiny company pixel by now and could pepsi-challenge it against my wife’s shiny new company iphone.
Honestly Google Drive works great as free storage (Though for large storage there’s no guarantee they won’t accidentally delete it, it’s happened before).
And Google Suite is good enough if you can’t be bothered to get Microsoft Office. Though they’re forcing AI into it and have some weird quirks like being unable to copypaste external text with rightclick.
May I ask what Google Drive has that other free cloud storage things don’t? As in what makes it work great?
I’d say convenience and shareability. I come across far more dead Dropbox links than dead Google Drive links.
And Onedrive is further down in enshittification than Drive. Like windows relentlessly trying to reenable and reinstall without permission.
Overall I like it cause it’s just there and works. But I wholeheartedly would not recommend it for business applications (without backups at least). There have been instances of companies data just getting deleted or randomly banned from their google account.
In essence, I would not pay for upgraded storage.
They will enshitify it by forcing you to watch adds on YouTube to get an access code to retrieve your files
I think the reason they’re hostile to copy past I g is so that it doesn’t work on mobile.
They are the IMO most supported Single-Sign-On provider. I think Facebook, which I don’t even have, was mostly for games, and then apple also isn’t an option, and that’s just it besides using firefox’ built in password manager for another email/password combination. What’s your opinion on log in providers?
Google has one of the biggest data/ad empires on the planet and is doing just fine lol
I think that’s part of the reason they tend to fail in other areas: it’s just not important enough to them except for the data it generates for thier ads.
Honestly I think they just have so much money they can run projects that most companies wouldn’t take the risk on.
Not only that, all these failed/terminated google services collected huge amounts of data. They were able to analyze that data and make ridiculous conclusions about human behavior. Whether those services are functioning or not anymore, they still learned what they learned. For companies and governments that want to manipulate populations, that is the most valuable product that exists.
Kind of like Microsoft then. They buy up or spend money trying to break into all kinds of different areas but consistently take bad L’s and get pushed back to their core business time and again after face-planting and alienating those who gave them a shot.
