• Sunshine (she/her)OP
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    6 days ago

    As an IPhone holder I’m happy Google is doing this to force the market to support devices for longer. Apple will be pushed to go further than 6-7 years of software support.

    • Avid Amoeba
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      6 days ago

      Yeah. Pixel 8 and 9 series have 7 years by spec. I think Samsung matched it with their latest Galaxy S series. It’s one of those rare and fleeting moments when competition works to our benefit.

      • @Mihies@programming.dev
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        126 days ago

        Indeed. However the root problem were CPU and other hw drivers AFAIK, not Google. Making their own SoC made it possible to bypass those greedy manufacturers and extend support.

        • Avid Amoeba
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          6 days ago

          100%. Qualcomm is the piece of shit you’re thinking of. They refused to provide more than 3 years of driver updates for their SoCs for more than decade, despite the heavy work Google did to make updates from vendors dramatically easier with Project Treble. Now that Google have their own SoC and began providing longer support, Qualcomm magically began offering longer support too. The Galaxy S24 that ships with QC in NA has 7 years of support. With all that said, Google is only doing this because they’re a minority player and offering support makes people like me buy their stuff for this. If they grow to a significant market share, you’ll see them stop extending the support or even shorten it, in order to increase sales. Just like Qualcomm.

      • @486@lemmy.world
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        76 days ago

        Samsung’s update policy for their lower end models is pretty atrocious. While on paper they offer updates for a couple of years, it you look more closely, you’ll notice that the update intervals get larger and larger as time goes on. You might not get important updates for half a year. Sure, still better than not updates at all, but a pretty awful policy for security updates.

        • Avid Amoeba
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          16 days ago

          Makes sense. I suspect they’re selling more of those overall so they like replacing them more often. The only reason they’re providing longer support for the S-series is because someone else does too. They have made their own SoC (Exynos) for more than a decade and there wasn’t anyone stopping them supporting the models with that SoC for longer. They didn’t.

      • Sunshine (she/her)OP
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        56 days ago

        It’s one of those rare and fleeting moments when competition works to our benefit.

        More competition is always better for the consumer.

  • SayCyberOnceMore
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    6 days ago

    Fairphone have been offering 5 years of support for years… and ethically sourced materials, replacable parts (inc. nokia style batteries that you can replace)

    Not to mention acceptance of alternative OS installations

    https://endoflife.date/fairphone

    • @486@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Fairphone is actually worse than Google when it comes to updates. Even their flagship phone is still on Android 13. Even the Pixel 6 runs Android 15 at this point and with this news it is guaranteed to get at least Android 17. Google has always been offering 5 years of support for the Pixel 6 and 7 series. What they didn’t promise until this announcement was additional feature/OS upgrades, but when it comes to that they were already ahead of Fairphone.

      When it comes to alternative OSes, Google actually makes it very easy to install them. That’s one reason why GrapheneOS and the likes chose Pixel phones as their primarily supported phones.

      • @rmuk@feddit.uk
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        146 days ago

        IMHO, security updates are more important than OS updates, and Fairphone is good in that regard. I’d be hard-pressed to even name a killer feature from the last few versions of Android (or iOS, for that matter).

        • @486@lemmy.world
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          36 days ago

          Absolutely, security updates are much more important than feature updates. Upgrading to newer Android versions is mostly useful to have access to newer Android APIs (apps eventually will require newer versions, although that usually takes quite a while). Another benefit of newer Android versions might be added security features.

        • @486@lemmy.world
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          126 days ago

          Ok, that endoflife.date site apparently isn’t quite up-to-date then. But even still, Android 14 was released in October 2023 and as far as I can tell, Fairphone released their Android 14 update only in July 2024. I’m not saying Fairphone’s update policy is terrible or anything. It certainly is better than that of many other vendors, but if you want updates as quickly as possible, you are probably better of with a Pixel phone. Of course repairability is an entirely different matter.

      • @hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz
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        66 days ago

        Fairphone has a great approach and I would love to buy an EU phone with replaceable parts, however I’ve read pretty underwhelming things about their software support. in that sense, paying 90€ every 3-4 years to get the battery replaced on a pixel,would be a better bet. That,plus the pixel a variants are very competitively prices and you get huge bang dor your buck.

        I wish fairphones were cheaper…

        • @ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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          25 days ago

          At its price point, it’s very underwhelming.

          I also did the math and I could get an average phone (used) every year for three years before I break even. And those average phones would be more powerful with each iteration.

          Unless you’re bought into eco-friendly minimal waste messaging, it’s really hard to choose fairphone.

          • SayCyberOnceMore
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            25 days ago

            Yeah, I admit they cost more, but I’m not playing high perf games on it, so it’s absolutely fine - no apps struggle.

            And the eco thing has to start somewhere and that’s not something Google’s aiming for (afaik)

            Plus, watching other’s expression when I swap a battery to be fully charged in 60 seconds is great.

      • Tywèle [she|her]
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        76 days ago

        Isn’t the main reason for GrapheneOS to choose Pixels that Pixels have the Titan security chip?

        • @486@lemmy.world
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          66 days ago

          Yes, there are multiple reasons, but that security chip was very important to them. An easy way to install the OS was also quite essential.

      • ÚwÙ-Passwort
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        36 days ago

        And wireless charging, the reason i own a pixel not an fairphone. Maybe next it will be a shiftphone, but thats hopefully far in the future.

    • Sunshine (she/her)OP
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      66 days ago

      You would like postmarket os as it is foss and software support is 10 years atleast.

      • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        45 days ago

        Huh, they support a lot more hardware than they used to, that’s pretty amazing! I may have to try it out.

        Any idea if MMS is supported properly yet? That has been my main hurdle, and it looks like my other issues (battery life and audio quality) may be resolved by picking other hardware than the PinePhone.

        • Sunshine (she/her)OP
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          15 days ago

          Any idea if MMS is supported properly yet? That has been my main hurdle, and it looks like my other issues (battery life and audio quality) may be resolved by picking other hardware than the PinePhone.

          Good news MMS has been functional since 2021.

          • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            15 days ago

            Really? I thought it got stuck and you had to run a script periodically to get it unstuck. If it’s truly reliable and supports pictures and group chats, I’ll have to find a compatible device and check it out.

            The PinePhone HW looks a bit rough, so hopefully one of the community supported devices works well and has better battery life and audio quality

  • @486@lemmy.world
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    206 days ago

    For the Pixel 6 and 7 series Google has promised 5 years of security updates right from the beginning. What’s new here is that they now also offer feature and OS upgrades for that same time period. Certainly nice to have, but not essential.

    • @Defaced@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      As a pixel 6a user I’m excited I’ll get a few more years of support and use out of this phone.

    • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼
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      116 days ago

      GrapheneOS would have received feature updates for the full duration of 5 years anyway, since they don’t separate feature updates from security updates.

  • Joanie Parker
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    75 days ago

    Good thing my pixel 6 battery is marshmallow now and I was forced to buy a new phone 2 weeks ago…

  • @philpo@feddit.org
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    126 days ago

    If only the fucking phone would work that long.

    My Pixel 6 Pro was replaced twice within the two year warranty. Always for display errors(Display crapped out partially or has sudden “green flashes” when in maximum low light setting). Each time was a customer service nightmare and took ages. The current arrived damaged (they send you refurbished phones which in theory would be okay if they would actually be refurbished - last one was still reeking of smoke) and the FP did not work, additional loading only works when the cable is pushed in to the maximum by hand. When contacted they refuse further customer service claiming their service period ended (it did not, legally they are obligated according to the laws here), but their customer service agents do not give a shit. “It’s written here” and “then sue us, lol!” are quotes.

    The problems with the screen are known and there are hundreds of posts about it online. Each listing similar troubles.

    I really loved the phone when it worked. Great camera, perfect size for me, clean OS, a lot of bang for the buck. But shit like that made me get a Samsung.

      • @ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        5 days ago

        Here’s some BS. My phone’s battery replacement cost $220. ($100 for battery, and $120 to be serviced) That was the same price as buying a refurbished version of the upgrade.

        I missed the days of just replacing the battery with a screwdriver.

    • tisktisk
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      15 days ago

      same. How long can we still use the device if we just never unplug from charger? Legit curious, seems weird to replace battery for a backup phone, but storage is storage

  • @chillinit@lemmynsfw.com
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    36 days ago

    While anecdotal, my family, friends, and co-workers have consistently seen them fail due to an unrecoverable software issue within 2-3 years. Extended support means very little when one expects failure within current support. Providing that support is cheap marketing.

      • @chillinit@lemmynsfw.com
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        6 days ago

        Coincidentally, that’s the almost exactly the longest life we had in our family. Then, one day my wife performed an update which immediately killed the screen. My Pixel failure was far more frustrating: After a system update I learned that if the screen wasn’t clean enough on post-update reboot, Google disabled multi-touch forever.

        Consider that an S23 FE (one model behind the flagship and with lesser CPU) is 70-75% the cost of a Pixel 9. The only differences that most users would notice is: The Samsung has a telephoto and Google an ultrawide; The Samsung won’t unexpectedly die due to a software issue.

        • @MonkRome@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          I’ll never buy a Samsung again absolutely irritating phones. I’ve had 2 nearly flawless pixel phones. Even if this doesn’t last 5 years, I’m not going back to endless bloatware programs that enshitify the Samsung. If I leave pixel it would be for something like fairphone.

          • @chillinit@lemmynsfw.com
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            16 days ago

            Samsung does indeed have a bunch of bloat. I think we’ve both made well-informed and reasoned choices, picked our poison. We likely share core ideology because we both would like to choose a fairphone.

    • @pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz
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      16 days ago

      My two year old Pixel 7 still feels like on day 1, and before that my Galaxy S8 worked flawlessly for 4 years (I just broke the display but it still worked fine when I replaced it with the pixel)

      • @chillinit@lemmynsfw.com
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        16 days ago

        My wife and I’d Pixels were rock solid until one day a Google update came along and killed them with an unrecoverable loss of critical functionality. The only way I’d recommend one of these is if one heavily values having the newest thing for cheap, or for the wide angle camera.

          • @chillinit@lemmynsfw.com
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            5 days ago

            If Google’s not the final say in driver QA then I think it’s fantastic. But, the last phone that I’ve rooted was an S5. I don’t know what’s up today.

  • @Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    I bought the Pixel 7 Pro and omg it was hot garbage, they had an unresolved bug open for like 3 months that caused scrolling to basically work only sometimes. It was impossible to use I had to return it within a week. Worse phone buy I’ve had in ~15 years.