This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The coordinated enshittification is rather disheartening.
I'm still daily driving a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 because all the phones thereafter felt like a downgrade, and the problems like the one referenced in this article have only convinced me further...
I miss 2014, when the note 4 was the flagship. Note 4 kicked ass.
Okay, I was thinking about my next phone being a pixel, ain't going to happen now.
One thing is fucking over your customers with an update like that, but then not fixing it and instead offering 50 bucks is just giving your customers a finger straightin the face
I had a couple 4a and now have an 8. Don't bother -- I'm convinced there are better phones for the $. Not to mention better companies to buy from, after this shit show
Hardware-wise there may be better phones, but from a software standpoint... hmm... I haven't been able to find any other phone with a stock-like experience, and no bloat.
I’m in a slightly similar boat. I was considering one of this foldable phones next…but what’s the point in leaving one big tech for another?
I'm seriously considering an open source phone now, one that has everything open source, no Google or Apple shit.
I do want one that has good cams, battery, and display, though
AFAIK as close as you can get is PinePhone or Librem5. But both have pretty poor battery life, an IPS display (technically could be OLED at the expense of even more battery consumption), and pretty jank camera (drivers for good cameras are proprietary, and a lot of modern smartphones rely on postprocessing for quality too).
Don't get me wrong, PinePhone made fantastic progress in 6 years, but your experience may vary (some people use it as a daily smartphone, some as a dumb phone, others are just turned off immediately)
Same.
I’ve looked at pics presumably posted using a FairPhone on Pixelfed (They have a FP hashtag.), and I think they look good.
From my conversations on Mastodon, it’s good in all other aspects although some do say the camera isn’t great. The battery is 4200mah, which is bigger than this iPhone 13. I’m going to look into trying one, somehow.
I gave my old 4a to my father who enjoyed it tremendously. This bullshit update ruined the phone for him. Battery replacement helped but I really don't see how such updates are okay to push for a company this big. They know there are two types of batteries and one of those can't handle the update, because they've sent a warning to those phones. Maybe just don't push the update to those phones instead?
Why do that when they can finally force people off their halfway-decent hardware in favor of their latest crap? I had a 4a and liked it, worked fine for my purposes. When it crapped out i just got another 4a. Eventually the newer one started boot-looping intermittently and i decided it was time to upgrade to something more "modern". After spending way too much time researching the current options and cornering myself into options paralysis, i decided maybe the best choice was to "double" my pixel and jump from a 4 to an 8. I figured that many generations difference should provide for a notably better/faster experience. It didn't. I liked the 4a just as much as my 8--only difference being some very small changes in options and menus. Performance-wise it's not opening pages with blazing speed, the 5G doesn't really seem to be any faster than the 4G i had been using on the Pixel 4a. Camera performance is a little better but nothing ground-breaking. I think it's possible i get worse telephone performance, i occasionally get dropped/static-y calls and sometimes can't call at all. Overall i was really disappointed to see my upgrade act more as a lateral move. I probably should have just gotten another 4a when my last one died. Of course, it would probably need a battery now, lol. Or have the boot-loop problem.
Welcome to the future, where the tech is cutting edge but built with the cheapest components possible 🙃
Yeah, I was disappointment when I bought a very expensive Galaxy S22 to replace my old Moto G whose charging port wore out,. The S22 had worse battery life, camera, and no noticeable performance improvements. Recently, my S22 stopped charging, and I just bought a "Mint"-grade used Pixel 6 and installed GrapheneOS on it. Happy so far, and it's nice to be able to block network access to all apps, including Google's.
Well I can't say that. I got an 8a and honestly it's been a solid upgrade in all regards. It is a little bit too big for me (4a was sized perfectly) but other than that, I enjoy 8a more.
What improvements do you like? Maybe there's something I'm overlooking. I also agree on size, i really didn't want anything larger than the 4a and the 8 was the closest i could find.
The metal frame makes the phone feel much more solid. The 120 Hz screen is an incredible improvement, 60 Hz screens feel laggy now. The camera is noticeably better, I've always considered 4a's camera to be way above its price range in terms of quality but 8a beats it. And also I like that 8a comes in mint, that's always been my favorite color.
It’s all about companies making profit, not you and I getting a decent and useable product.
My pixel 4a was affected by that update. I ended up buying a new phone. I don't even want to install something like Graphene os. So many privacy-based limitations I don't really need. And I have no desire to try Lineage OS. All I wanted is to have a functional phone. I can't trust google long-term hardware reliability. They don't even gave an explanation. I don't think that I will consider any Google hardware in nearest future.
For all people reading this: there are zero privacy-based limitations with GrapheneOS.
Yeah, i think its awesome and liberating to be more in control of my phone. I am rocking it for over a year now and haven't had any major issues yet (I had more issues with the stock software of my Xiaomi I had previously). Except for some nasty apps (like some banking apps) everything works flawlessly for me!
I love the additional freedom too.
For me there weren't even problems with nasty banking apps, all apps from three german banks are working normal.
And not android either. My phone is different and lately the battery is just not lasting like even a 4th of what it was new.
This really is just an ad for a third party OS, isn't it?
And flashing a new OS to a phone isn't even that difficult to do.
After 16 years of iPhones I switched to a Pixel 9 two days ago so I could run GrapheneOS. It took me ten minutes to install. Shit’s remakably easy to do. Assuming your phone isn't carrier locked, of course.
Do you still need a computer to do it?
I managed to flash an IPhone to an older version of the OS back in the day, it took a few hours, most of which was finding the image and working out what to do.
No, there's a web installer than is run entirely on device.
That sounds like the level of difficulty I can be bothered to deal with.
Can't run graphene on a pixel 4a.
Are you sure about that? There are builds for it on their site: https://grapheneos.org/releases#sunfish
Sorry I think I'm a generation ahead? Whenever Google stops updates graphene discontinues support.
Not quite. Graphene provides 'legacy extended support' which means they'll patch any vulnerabilities they become aware of for the OS, but because they don't have baseband source they won't be able to address any vulnerabilities in the baseband unless Google releases an update.
The most recent release of grapheneos for 4a is less than a week old.
You just saved me some trouble, lol
I might be won't actually, double check.
I didn't say it could, just that it's easy to do (assuming your hardware is supported of course).
Recently had a Pixel 5 and sold it after Google stopped support after just 3 years. Ghoulish company. Very happy with my new iPhone.
Ironically, that iPhone will (now) have a shorter support window than the new Pixel.
Uh we are currently on Google Pixel 9.
Google Pixel 4 is kind of old. I am unfortunately a victim of the 4a battery.
My solution after 3 years was upgrade to pixel 5a, which was a free upgrade because I had that Google Fi bonus. Google 7 was out, but I didn't care.
I mean I'm glad they're still head accountable. But this is like finally giving people who hated Windows 7 a coupon?
I opted for the battery replacement, but the $50 is an attractive option as well. Apparently the $100 credit won't work if the device you're buying is on sale. I had graphene on mine so I had to flash it back to stock.
Wait, if you had graphene I didn't think you'd get the battery crippling update right? Or are you saying that, even though you had graphene, you decided to get a free battery by reverting to stock, then (I guess) put graphene back?
It's my wifes old phone, she had been complaining about battery life since about a year ago, so we bought her an 8a as an upgrade. I only recently within the past month or so pulled it out and put Graphene on it to see if the battery life was any better (it wasn't) it's possible that the battery update made it into Graphene. I figured I would still get a free brand new battery and use the phone. My current phone is a very cheap Motorola which doesn't have enough ram to keep pages from reloading when you switch between apps.
LMAO I bet you can't name one single feature/product Google released where "transparency" of how it works is a thing, it's almost like anti-transparancy UX design is something they love on a philosophical level, even for features or products that have absolutely nothing to do with advertising lol
I'm living through this. It sucks. Ive been eyeing s new phone for about six months, but since my wife is still rocking an iPhone 8, I felt it wrong to get one before her. With this, I feel justified getting a new one. Figured I'd get a pixel 9a when it comes out.
Why go with another Pixel after they’ve fucked you over?
Probably to flash it with grapheneOS? The $100, I believe is reserved for a purchase of a Pixel though.
I have a still working updated 4a which I use for a second phone account I have because it is so pleasant to carry around. I bought it late in the 4a production cycle and I think it must therefore have a battery that is different in some way to that included with earlier models and that is the reason the update did not brick my phone. I think what happened here is Google knew of a flash bang fault in those batteries which touch on wood later ones did not have so sent a targeted update to hash those specific early devices for safety. The question is not did Google intentionally scupper those phones but when did it know about the fault. My guess is it discovered it during production and that is why later models are altered and now remain usable after the update. The upshot of that is Google had some idea they were faulty very early on but chose not to recall them then but instead only disable them very late in their life. This is just speculation of course, I could just have been lucky and Google could have just recently found some fault with aging batteries.
If there's an issue, explain the issue. Don't brick phones and say "Oh no! Here, pay us money to get a brand new one! We'll cover some cost...after fees are subtracted, of course."
There isn't really an upshot here
