Got the wifey into the Pixel! Ordering 2 8s, with watch 2 asap.

[Reciever]

31 minutes ago, Etern4l said:

Sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but this is not your thread per se: it's a public discussion space you happened to initiate. You can't kick or even ask people you disagree with out, although you should strive to suppress any abrasive embellishments or remarks. If you are not clear on how to pull out of a thread you cannot or do not want to continue in a civilised manner, then you can do the following for example:

 

I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

 

 

It is unfortunate, but there will always be times where particular personalities dont mingle well together. I have my biases just as any other but I do make the attempt to understand others' position which can be quite difficult pending the circumstances.

 

22 minutes ago, kojack said:

Ok, now that is taken care of and I cannot see any comments from ai guy anymore.  My wife and I have been using our phones for 24 hours we are both blown away with the newfound capabilities of the pixels. They are miles ahead of the iphone now.  iPhones are stale and boring.  No new features for years and just meh now.  The pixel lineup is awesome with the AI assistant, recorder features, cameras which are second to none right now and overall fluidness of the phone we are 100 percent happy with our purchases. 

 

Hey happy to see you are satisfied with your recent purchases! 

 

My journey with the Pixel line started with the Pixel 6 then later 7 Pro. Both seem to have the same issue where they drop WiFi every 15 minutes or so and also lose connection to 5G requiring a restart, the latter being far less common. Between this and lack of a desktop mode for when I am in a bind at work its proven itself to be an unreliable tool so I will not be looking at these products for the next generation. 

 

That being said the camera works very well, SMS and Teams do quite well and the battery can last me about a day with an hour of video podcasts and bluetooth enabled I usually am around 40-50% by the time I go to bed (dont use my phone much at all at home).

[kojack]

52 minutes ago, Reciever said:

 

It is unfortunate, but there will always be times where particular personalities dont mingle well together. I have my biases just as any other but I do make the attempt to understand others' position which can be quite difficult pending the circumstances.

 

 

Hey happy to see you are satisfied with your recent purchases! 

 

My journey with the Pixel line started with the Pixel 6 then later 7 Pro. Both seem to have the same issue where they drop WiFi every 15 minutes or so and also lose connection to 5G requiring a restart, the latter being far less common. Between this and lack of a desktop mode for when I am in a bind at work its proven itself to be an unreliable tool so I will not be looking at these products for the next generation. 

 

That being said the camera works very well, SMS and Teams do quite well and the battery can last me about a day with an hour of video podcasts and bluetooth enabled I usually am around 40-50% by the time I go to bed (dont use my phone much at all at home).

We have no issues with ours at all dropping connections etc.  Our iphones were Constantly dropping Bluetooth, apps and lte signal. These are rock solid. 

[Etern4l]

Bizarre. What does it mean for a phone to “drop an app”? We’ll probably never know. No such issues with my iPhone 14 Pro Max. BTW MagSafe charging is pretty cool, in fact I forgot what it means to worry about battery life issues, lasts 2 days with lighter use.

[kojack]

Just tried my Ai phone assistant. It's awesome.. Thanks google for blocking unwanted calls. What a great feature 

[Reciever]

56 minutes ago, kojack said:

We have no issues with ours at all dropping connections etc.  Our iphones were Constantly dropping Bluetooth, apps and lte signal. These are rock solid. 

 

Its been an issue with the past couple generations of their product line. It looks like most people get around this by using static routing via MAC address but that only resolves things for at home. Just in case it happens in your case that might be a satisfactory resolution since it seems you work from home for the most part.

 

1 hour ago, Etern4l said:

Bizarre. What does it mean for a phone to “drop an app”? We’ll probably never know. No such issues with my iPhone 14 Pro Max. BTW MagSafe charging is pretty cool, in fact I forgot what it means to worry about battery life issues, lasts 2 days with lighter use.

 

If I had to guess, maybe a crashed app. This used to happen to me the last time I had an Apple device but mind you that was the Iphone 4 lol

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, kojack said:

Just tried my Ai phone assistant. It's awesome.. Thanks google for blocking unwanted calls. What a great feature 

 

Presumably a server-side feature provided in exchange for personal data, so would be a hard pass from me. Blocking calls from withheld numbers + a few manual bans on the the usual suspects resolved nuisance calls, plus apparently there are good 3rd party apps for those who somehow actually require a more sophisticated call blocking feature. A non-USP from Google here.  

[kojack]

3 hours ago, Reciever said:

 

Its been an issue with the past couple generations of their product line. It looks like most people get around this by using static routing via MAC address but that only resolves things for at home. Just in case it happens in your case that might be a satisfactory resolution since it seems you work from home for the most part.

 

 

If I had to guess, maybe a crashed app. This used to happen to me the last time I had an Apple device but mind you that was the Iphone 4 lol

I work both from home and the local bell store part time.  Soon home full time. We have our businesses up and running now, just a matter of time.  I have no issues with my phone connecting with any network etc since I have been using it.  

[Reciever]

1 hour ago, kojack said:

I work both from home and the local bell store part time.  Soon home full time. We have our businesses up and running now, just a matter of time.  I have no issues with my phone connecting with any network etc since I have been using it.  

Hopefully it stays that way :)

[ryan]

wrong thread

[kojack]

Lovin' the pixels. So nice to be out from the ecosystem.  Just throttled back our Apple one sub too. Screw giving them more money for less service.  Readly is cheaper and has 100 times the magazine publications than news plus.  We have no need for apple fitness anymore and moving to a free service available on Roku for workout routines and using fitbit and others for health metrics tracking.  Saving 25 bucks a month doing it this way now. 

[Etern4l]

Just a quick sanity check: Apple news subscriptions, Health etc are all optional, and Readly is available on iOS…

[Aaron44126]

I have found Apple One to be a good value, but you actually do have to make good use of it, I can see that it would not be a good value for that many people.

• Cloud storage is absolutely necessary if you want to keep photos/videos backed up and iCloud does a good, seamless job of this in iOS.  (With iCloud "Advanced Data Protection" turned on, you can actually back up your whole phone including passwords and health data with end-to-end encryption.  I understand that Android has something similar, but third-party apps have to specifically register with the backup service to have their data backed up and not all of them do it....?)
• My kids both have iPads and Apple Arcade is a good source for games for them to play.  Most "regular" games on the App Store are full of ads and/or constantly trying to get you to spend money on microtransactions; Apple Arcade games are pleasantly free of both.  There's a lot of fluff on there but some decent titles too.  (I don't play anything off of there myself, though I am mildly interested in Fantasian.)
• Wife and kids are both doing music all of the time as well, so Apple Music is beneficial to have and it means that I don't have to pay for Spotify or similar.  Plus, they offer lossless audio which Spotify has been teasing for years but still hasn't launched (to my knowledge)...
• I actually do workouts with Apple Watch + Apple TV, so Apple Fitness+ is beneficial to have.
• Apple TV+ actually has some decent shows too.  This is not a service that I would stay subscribed to it all of the time if it wasn't part of the bundle.  But, currently enjoying season 4 of For All Mankind for example, Foundation season 2 was also fun, and there are a few others that I want to try out like Extrapolations and Ted Lasso.
• Apple News+ is the least interesting of the bunch.  I've never found the need to pay for access to news (though I do support public media), but I do occasionally use Apple News+ to read something from a normally paywalled site like the The Wall Street Journal.

For each individual service, you can definitely find a cheaper non-Apple alternative.  However if you actually use several of them then Apple One is probably cheaper than a pile of alternatives added up.  Plus, the general benefit of not having them try to monetize my usage of their services with data tracking and targeted ads is something that I am willing to pay a little bit extra for.

[Etern4l]

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

(With iCloud "Advanced Data Protection" turned on, you can actually back up your whole phone including passwords and health data with end-to-end encryption.  I understand that Android has something similar

 

What similar feature would Google offer to the consumer product market and seriously hamper their "consumer-is-the-product" business model? The need to be able to access people's data in order to be able to exploit it.

 

A quick search suggested they do offer end-end encryption to the enterprise though, no surprise there: their Workspace stuff would get very limited uptake without this.

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, Etern4l said:

What similar feature would Google offer to the consumer product market and seriously hamper their "consumer-is-the-product" business model? The need to be able to access people's data in order to be able to exploit it.

 

Yeah, I haven't used it myself but I see the claim that "Google One" device backup feature has the data encrypted by your Google account password.

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Yeah, I haven't used it myself but I see the claim that "Google One" device backup feature has the data encrypted by your Google account password.

Have found no mention of this „password encryption” and the consensus seems to be the storage is not private. Their FAQ seems pretty opaque on this. Even if user password is used to encrypt the data at some point, they have a way of decrypting it. 

[Aaron44126]

3 minutes ago, kojack said:

 

Eh, I generally agree with @Etern4l.  My original assertion was based on a cursory web search.  If Google isn't being explicit about the level of privacy offered with this backup method, then you can assume that it is not private and they would be able to turn data over to i.e. law enforcement that comes in with a court order.

[Etern4l]

4 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Eh, I generally agree with @Etern4l.  My original assertion was based on a cursory web search.  If Google isn't being explicit about the level of privacy offered with this backup method, then you can assume that it is not private and they would be able to turn data over to i.e. law enforcement that comes in with a court order.

I would go a step further and assume they are  monetising any data they can access, with well documented consequences, including the funding of the catastrophic AI/AGI research.

 

 

 

[kojack]

Not a problem.  I have nothing to hide.  So it's all good with me.  Conspiracy theorists are a funny breed.  They latch on to every wackadoodle thought on the net.  Fun to read, not so much to interact with since they believe their bull.  Hence the ignore function. 

[Etern4l]

Well, we are more tech experts than conspiracy theorists, which makes you sir just a (fairly combative in defence of your naivety, as we all to well know based on the history  of postings going back to NBR, I might add) member of the ignorant masses. Of course the truth is often very unpleasant, and people just prefer to avoid it and numb themselves in various ways instead of facing it. 

 

Very mature (edit: the immature image posted earlier disappeared)
 

BTW one rather silly mistake people repeatedly make (often due to the lack of any sensible arguments) is the assumption is that pushback against big tech’s data harvesting, including through devices such as the Pixel, has something to do with a need to „hide something”, presumably illegal. It’s about privacy, as in the right of control over private data such as family photos, tax returns etc. so they may remain private instead of being used by virtually everyone able to afford the data to be able to profile people for various reasons, including political.

[Reciever]

• Image replies are not allowed (posting just an image in response to a question) @kojack

Posts merged and/or removed. @Etern4l

 

 

No vendor is beyond reproach in terms of criticism, each have their own pro's and con's further to the point its also what makes discussing them interesting since each have their own selling points juxtaposed against the needs individual consumer is looking to satisfy.

[Etern4l]

30 minutes ago, Reciever said:

• Image replies are not allowed (posting just an image in response to a question) @kojack

Posts merged and/or removed. @Etern4l

 

 

No vendor is beyond reproach in terms of criticism, each have their own pro's and con's further to the point its also what makes discussing them interesting since each have their own selling points juxtaposed against the needs individual consumer is looking to satisfy.

Speaking of which, I was actually looking at the Pixel 7 Pro at the time of last upgrade, with a view to install a reasonably well known degoogled pixel-only OS. Decided against that for the following reasons:

* Lack of trust in the custom OS, and the third party app store

* Instant and irrecoverable warranty loss

* Loss of camera functionality

* Strikingly lacklustre display compared to the Galaxy S and the iPhone Pro

* The camera was not actually in par with the above either, although that was perhaps in part due to the screen

 

They priced the device competitively though, so it’s interesting that Google decided to now remove that incentive. They are getting bolder, more desperate for the cash, or both - even of they improved the phone to the point where it is more technically competitive. Everything else being equal they make a lot of extra money on each unit through data monetisation.
 

Anyway, should Apple stray from their current path, the custom degoogled Android route would need to be revisited. 

 

[Reciever]

4 minutes ago, Etern4l said:

Speaking of which, I was actually looking at the Pixel 7 Pro at the time of last upgrade, with a view to install a well known degoogled pixel-only OS. Decided against that for the following reasons:

* Lack of trust in the custom OS, and the third party app store

* Instant and irrecoverable warranty loss

* Loss of camera functionality

* Strikingly lacklustre display compared to the flagship Samsungs and the iPhones

 

The main driver was of course the price, so it’s interesting that Google decided to now remove that incentive. They are getting bolder, more desperate for the cash, or both. 
 

Should Apple stray from their current path, the custom degoogled Android route would need to be revisited. 

 

I was basically conned into the 7 Pro really, was not happy about it but fighting it would've been cost prohibitive mentally.

 

Pixel 6 kept losing WiFi connection at home and on occasion would lose cellular requiring a reboot to get it back. Reaching out to Google support, they asked me to factory reset the phone which coming from an IT background annoys me. No diagnostic and straight to the nuclear option, probably shouldnt have expected any better. They were running a promo to get 600 off of the list price of a Pixel device and I did have an upgrade available so I figured why not try a different model. Instead they only gave me 120 and I have the same issues as before on the 7 Pro. For my home router I can now more or less resolve this with DHCP reservation (or Static IP) but on the go I still have to restart the device. No idea if that issue is Pixel or ATT, or some combination of both to lay blame.

 

Not really a pixel problem, more of a cell phone sales problem which is its own can of worms, but I digress. 

 

I do wish Custom ROMs didnt more or less die off :( Im thinking i'll try Samsung next time around as I can make good use of DEX which Google explicitly disables on their devices (Not Dex, but USB Alt mode's) in favor of chromecast.

[Etern4l]

23 minutes ago, Reciever said:

I was basically conned into the 7 Pro really, was not happy about it but fighting it would've been cost prohibitive mentally.

 

Pixel 6 kept losing WiFi connection at home and on occasion would lose cellular requiring a reboot to get it back. Reaching out to Google support, they asked me to factory reset the phone which coming from an IT background annoys me. No diagnostic and straight to the nuclear option, probably shouldnt have expected any better. They were running a promo to get 600 off of the list price of a Pixel device and I did have an upgrade available so I figured why not try a different model. Instead they only gave me 120 and I have the same issues as before on the 7 Pro. For my home router I can now more or less resolve this with DHCP reservation (or Static IP) but on the go I still have to restart the device. No idea if that issue is Pixel or ATT, or some combination of both to lay blame.

 

Not really a pixel problem, more of a cell phone sales problem which is its own can of worms, but I digress. 

 

I do wish Custom ROMs didnt more or less die off 😞 Im thinking i'll try Samsung next time around as I can make good use of DEX which Google explicitly disables on their devices (Not Dex, but USB Alt mode's) in favor of chromecast.

I can relate to that too well. Most salesmen are probably best approached as essentially conmen. Almost got tricked into an unwanted and, as it turned out, flawed purchase recently. The typical boiler room sales manoeuvres were a big red flag from the beginning, yet my inner idiot talked me into ignoring them. Managed to pull out eventually but lost the deposit and had to worry for weeks about potential further costs. Mentally taxing for sure.

 

Anyway, I have only had one or two brief aftersales experiences with Apple and would rate those reasonably high, other than that no issues with any Apple device we have had. The same cannot be said about Android, which I had been with since the beginning until last year. Literally every single one suffered from some issues (not even including the cessation of updates). Samsungs? Terrible battery life. LG? RMA, then fell apart. Nokia? Fell apart out of warranty. Sony? RMA, then screen split off. Etc.

 

On the iOS side there is of course Apple Care+.

[Reciever]

1 minute ago, Etern4l said:

I can relate to this very well. Most salesmen are probably best approached as essentially conmen. Almost got tricked into an unwanted and probably flawed purchase recently. The typical boiler room sales manoeuvres were a big red flag from the beginning, yet my inner idiot talked me into ignoring them. Managed to pull out eventually but lost the deposit and had to worry for weeks about potential further costs. Mentally taxing for sure.

 

Anyway, I only have had one or two brief aftersales experiences with Apple and would rate those reasonably high, other than that no issues with any Apple device we have had. The same cannot be said about Android, which I had been with since the beginning until last year. Literally every single one suffered from some issues (not even including the cessation of updates). Samsungs? Terrible battery life. LG? RMA, then fell apart. Nokia? Fell apart out of warranty. Sony? RMA, then screen split off. Etc.

LG's biggest problem is lack of support for their own devices. You might get 1, 2 updates before they move on to something else. I used the V20 for years despite that since the model I had worked in Korea as well (Dual SIM) but ATT's device cutoff did not allow that SKU even if that model was supported. Even proved it worked fine when the sales guy put in his SIM card, it wasnt that they couldnt, just that they wouldnt.

I really wanted the V60 but not supporting their own devices as well as exiting the market lead me away from it. I went without a phone for 5-6 months since it put a really bad taste in my mouth.

 

To be fair, I've had issues on Apple devices but I usually split that between iOS and User Error vs Android where its usually hardware / Carrier problems in my experience. Last Apple device was crashing apps but that was quite some time ago.

[Reciever]

Post removed @kojack

 

Needlessly inflammatory posts that serve no purpose will be removed. If certain points of conversation are not as valued to you personally then there is no harm in simply stating as such. Insulting members of the community does not serve the discussion.

 

Thanks for your continued understanding.

 

@aldarxt

 

If anyone would like to continue the discussion of mobile devices please feel free to do so.