Dyskolos ( @Dyskolos@lemmy.zip ) 105•5 days agoHate it like you want, but the effing pixels are still the best phones. Not by os, not by spec, but simply by being the most open android of them all. The easiest to de-google. Sounds stupid, but is not.
I hate google with all my heart (since they dropped their slogan “don’t be evil” and went… Well… Evil). But i will buy their fucking phones until a viable alternative comes along.
AstralPath ( @AstralPath@lemmy.ca ) 36•5 days ago100%. 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.
randint ( @randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz ) English7•5 days agosame here. bought one 2 months ago
Match!! ( @match@pawb.social ) English5•4 days agographene pixel gang
alvanrahimli ( @alvanrahimli@lemmy.ml ) 2•1 day agohell yes. been using this combo for over a year now, won’t ever look back
Chef_Boyardee ( @Chef_Boyardee@lemm.ee ) 5•5 days agoBeen 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.
AbsentBird ( @absentbird@lemm.ee ) English2•5 days agoAnd I’m the one guy that uses Google Fi. My bill was $38 last month.
There are dozens of us, baker’s dozens.
randint ( @randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz ) English2•4 days agoMy bill was $38 last month.
Did you mean that this was a lot or dirt cheap? Sounds quite expensive to me.
Saurok ( @Saurok@lemm.ee ) 3•3 days agoGenuinely curious, what service are you comparing this to that makes it sound quite expensive? Asking for my wallet
randint ( @randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz ) English3•2 days agoA 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.
Match!! ( @match@pawb.social ) English2•23 hours ago$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
Crozekiel ( @Crozekiel@lemmy.zip ) 1•4 days agoI’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…
IronKrill ( @IronKrill@lemmy.ca ) 31•5 days agoAndroid worse every year? How? Every update I’ve received (on a Samsung, mind you) has made my experience better.
tetris11 ( @tetris11@lemmy.ml ) 11•5 days agoAndroid 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
LemmyHead ( @LemmyHead@lemmy.ml ) 4•4 days agoLots of proprietary google crap. Much harder to run a custom ROM with decent support and apps
MonkderDritte ( @MonkderDritte@feddit.de ) 3•4 days agoMore bloated and inefficient every release. That would be fine for Android but sadly, it affects the core and thus every custom ROM too.
Player2 ( @Player2@lemm.ee ) English1•4 days agoLatest 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)
IronKrill ( @IronKrill@lemmy.ca ) 1•4 days agoReally? D: That sucks, I use swipe navigation for everything. Not sure if it’s classic or not but losing an option is a bummer.
Player2 ( @Player2@lemm.ee ) English2•4 days agoThey 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.
joenforcer ( @joenforcer@midwest.social ) 29•4 days agoMaps. There’s still unfortunately nothing better.
ag_roberston_author ( @ag_roberston_author@beehaw.org ) English8•4 days agoHelping to contribute to OpenStreetMap using Street Complete has the potential to change that.
SwingingTheLamp ( @SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social ) English8•4 days agoAnd 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.
aard ( @aard@kyu.de ) 4•3 days agoMaps 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.
मुक्त ( @mukt@lemmy.ml ) 3•3 days agoMaps was crowdsourced like wikipedia. Still is.
It will turn to shit as crowds migrate. And the crowds are migrating. Beaver ( @Beaver@lemmy.ca ) English2•4 days agoI’m going to spend an hour happily contributing to openstreetmaps in response :P
Wirlocke ( @Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 11•4 days agoHonestly 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.
Bob ( @MadBob@feddit.nl ) 3•4 days agoMay I ask what Google Drive has that other free cloud storage things don’t? As in what makes it work great?
Wirlocke ( @Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 4•3 days agoI’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.
MisterD ( @MisterD@lemmy.ca ) 3•4 days agoThey will enshitify it by forcing you to watch adds on YouTube to get an access code to retrieve your files
Kairos ( @LodeMike@lemmy.today ) 2•3 days agoI think the reason they’re hostile to copy past I g is so that it doesn’t work on mobile.
Beaver ( @Beaver@lemmy.ca ) English6•4 days agoDon’t forget the investment into Israel despite the protests of the workers
Roopappy ( @Roopappy@lemmy.ml ) English35•5 days agoWhat exactly does Google have left that people like? Gmail?
Shhhh! Dammit. Now they are definitely going to realize they haven’t ruined it yet.
ssm ( @ssm@lemmy.sdf.org ) 15•5 days agoGmail is already shit for anyone who wants to configure their own mail server.
__ghost__ ( @__ghost__@lemmy.ml ) 2•5 days agoGreat for forwarding my mail server to my gmail
tombruzzo ( @tombruzzo@lemm.ee ) 3•5 days agoToo 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
0x2d ( @0x2d@lemmy.ml ) 29•5 days agothe 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
senkora ( @senkora@lemmy.zip ) 3•5 days agoI 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.
hardy ( @Hardy@lemmy.ml ) 24•5 days agoTheres much much more… Smaller kills sometimes are the most effective. Think about Google RSS Reader the best rss reader to ever exist…
Corroded ( @CorrodedCranium@leminal.space ) English7•5 days agoWhat did it do better than other RSS readers?
mark ( @mark@programming.dev ) 4•5 days agoYeah same thing I was wondering. There are still a lot of great RSS readers. Arguably even better than Google Reader was.
hardy ( @Hardy@lemmy.ml ) 2•5 days agoThe UI imo
corsicanguppy ( @corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ) English2•5 days agoFast, and easy to edit. It was a fantastic start page.
butter ( @butter@midwest.social ) English23•5 days agoAndroid 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.
CylustheVirus ( @CylustheVirus@beehaw.org ) English4•5 days agoI 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.
The Cuuuuube ( @Cube6392@beehaw.org ) English3•5 days agoYeah the pixel hardware is the only thing they make that I think is any good and I run graphene on mine
vzq ( @vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 22•5 days agoI’m an iPhone person because of reasons, but I honestly think Pixel phones are the best Android devices I’ve ever seen.
Bigoldmustard ( @Bigoldmustard@lemmy.zip ) 22•5 days agoGmail 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.
MindTraveller ( @MindTraveller@lemmy.ca ) English15•5 days agoWow, Gmail has ads? I never knew, because I have adblock. It’s free, you know
DragonTypeWyvern ( @DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ) 10•5 days agoHey
Don’t kink shame
Bigoldmustard ( @Bigoldmustard@lemmy.zip ) 4•5 days agoWhat’s your social baby? What’s your favorite credit card number?
tombruzzo ( @tombruzzo@lemm.ee ) 21•5 days agoI 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
oo1 ( @oo1@lemmings.world ) English8•5 days agoThey used to have a nice clean usable web search back in 2000 or so.
Tja ( @Tja@programming.dev ) 2•4 days agoAnd now they have a financial sheet with billions in the black.
Midnight1938 ( @Midnight1938@reddthat.com ) 3•5 days agoWhat 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?
corsicanguppy ( @corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ) English12•5 days agoMy 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.
jh29a ( @jh29a@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 10•4 days agoThey 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?
Viper_NZ ( @Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz ) 8•4 days agoWhat have Google developed inhouse that’s good since Gmail?
Android and YouTube were both acquisitions.
Eiim ( @Eiim@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 8•4 days agoHm, 8.8.8.8? That was 5 years after Gmail.
Docs, Sheets, and Slides were all acquisitions. I guess Drive and Forms are good.
Tinidril ( @Tinidril@midwest.social ) English2•4 days agoOnce upon a time, search. Those days are long past.