I’ve got a 4a (bought on release) and it has been my favorite phone. Not a huge power user so it’s a good small device that has the features I want (fingerprint, 3.5 Jack). My biggest gripe is something I think Google changed sometime before the 4a, and that’s their is no HDMI over USB possible with Pixel devices. From what I can tell the only reason they did this was to sell Chromecasts. The main issue is I watch horror movies on a projector with some friends while camping(no Wi-Fi or data so Chromecast doesn’t work). The software on the projector has poor support for different codecs so ideally I’d use VLC on my phone and have no issue, but I cant. Pretty niche scenario there but I think it’s a sign of how modern phones have slowly been taking away useful features for seemingly no reason. Makes me not want to get a Google phone again.

I have one with grapheneos for privacy, and it’s good.

Initially i bought nexus/pixel phones for clean android experience and no bloat.

Staying with pixel mainly for camera quality and free storage on Google Photos.

Its not ideal, but I’m used to it. They never try to do something too gimmicky and it feels like phone made by Google will work best with the os made by google so my experience will be most consistent, but i haven’t tried other phones in a while.

Using pixel 6 pro. It’s fine. I’m happy not to have all the bloated janky apps that come on other phones.

Quite happy user of Pixel 6a. The only few annoying things are:

• Under-the-screen fingerprint sensor works less than half of the time. At night and in bed, it blinds me.
• Battery, despite adaptive battery, still feels surprisingly draining fast from time to time. The battery merely just hold for the day whereas I don’t even have that much screen time or background running apps.

I got a Pixel 6 Pro second hand from the US recently for GrapheneOS.

Here’s what I like:

• Fingerprint sensor is fast and reliable
• Phone is buttery smooth, no weird slowdowns, I’ve been very satisfied
• Excellent hardware: beautiful, premium, unqiue. It feels heavy but in a well - balanced, premium way .The curved back, screen and sides makes it so comfortable to hold. And I love the camera bar which because the phone doesn’t rock back and forth on the table.
• No parallel for customization, well maintained custom ROMs (I came from a Xiaomi, I swear Google Pixels are way better in this regard.), GrapheneOS is awesome.

What I don’t like:

• Phone gets hot on cellular, probably an inefficient Exynos modem
• Battery is just okay. Charging is not an issue, takes about an hour to reach 80%, which is what I usually keep my phone at anyway for better battery health.
• Screen not quite bright enough on brutal summer days.

So yeah overall I’m a happy camper. When this one loses support for GrapheneOS, I’ll be upgrading to another Pixel.

I’ve been using a Pixel 3 for about 5 years and I love it. I actually got a pixel 7 for work earlier this year and honestly prefer the pixel 3 lol. I’ve had some charging issues because lint gets stuck in the charge port, but I’ve been able to mostly solve those by cleaning out the port with a toothpick.

I currently use a Pixel 6. Before that, I had the 4XL, 3, and 1XL.

I like:

The camera and camera software, having the option of using Beta versions of Android before they are fully released, being able to unlock the bootloader, and relatively quick security and OS updates.

I don’t like:

How the camera section of the back of the phone protrudes. Makes holding the phone unpleasant ergonomically. I also don’t like how Google isn’t including Android version updates and only security patch updates near the end of life of the phone. They should do both.

I’m on my first non Google phone, starting with the Nexus 5. I currently have the Z Fold 3, bought used for about half MSRP. It has so many good things that Google failed to do, while also missing a lot of things I loved about the Google phones. The Pixel folder may bring me back if it gets cheap enough.

I love Pixels, they’re easily my favorite option. I’m currently on a Pixel Fold (yes I’m an idiot, but that’s beside the point), and I also enjoy my Pixel Watch and Buds Pro and A series.

I carried an iPhone for work for 3 years and just don’t care for iOS in a personal daily carry capacity. It’s fine for a work phone though, but I also enjoy the way that Android handles work profiles. I do own an iPad though, and that’s fine. I would consider replacing it with a Pixel tablet someday when it’s time though, especially if there’s a 120hz display option by then.

I’m not a big fan of Samsung’s design choices or bloatware tendencies. The kitchen sink approach isn’t for me when the majority of it is stuff that I won’t use, and it feels sloppy to me switching between apps and one uses Samsung’s design language, and then the other uses Material You. I like the consistency you get on a Pixel.

I use my camera a ton, so Pixel is an obvious choice there. Software features like call screening are indispensable for me too. I have been seeing daily spam calls again recently, and watching my phone silently discard them is always enjoyable. I also enjoy getting updates as soon as they are released, which is something that always bothered me with other manufacturers. I have made quite a few people happy by recommending the A-series to them. Wonderful budget-midrange value options.

Where would I go if Pixel went away? Tough question. The Nothing phone seems alright, I could see that working. The Zenphone 10 looks nice as well. I think I would explore one of those options before considering Samsung or Apple again.

I sold my Pixel 6 pro to get a Samsung S23. Unfortunately the main issues I had with the pixel were hardware-related and recurring, and while samsung isn’t ideal, most of their issues could be solved with a one-time fix.

Main issues I had with the Pixel:

• Fingerprint sensor doesn’t work with privacy screens. Period. It’s not a question of buying cheap privacy screens, the Pixel fingerprint reader is optical and is just not compatible with privacy screens. Samsung uses an ultrasonic reader which is compatible with privacy screens.
• The 6 Pro was unwieldy and ridiculously large, the smaller 6 doesn’t have the triple camera setup. Samsung is one of the few that doesn’t sacrifice phototaking ability in a smaller form factor.
• That godawful new quick toggles UI is horrible. The quick toggles are ridiculously large, and who decided it would be a good idea to merge the wifi and internet toggles?! I managed to use adb commands to split the toggles in 12, but that broke with 13.

Issues I had with the Samsung:

• Bloat - this was mainly in the form of some preinstalled software, but unlike in the early days of Samsung, I could uninstall most of the bloat easily without resorting to root, adb, etc. No bloat (pixel) is still better than bloat that can be uninstalled (samsung), but this problem was permanently solved after about 10 minutes.
• Some Samsung native apps have horrible permission settings - eg Samsung Pay requires access to your contacts, and if you deny it any one permission, the app just force closes. I got around this by uninstalling the offending apps and using alternatives (e.g. google pay) - again, a one-time issue. fuck the intrusive permissions.

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Had a Pixel 3 where the screen died exactly two days after the warranty ends.

Loved the picture it took (even compared to my S23 now) and the fluidity.

Hate the Google quality control. Seeing pixel 6 modem issues and pixel 7 camera glasses, it never improves.

I’ve always been a Stock Android fanboy, so I loved the Pixel phones. However, for reasons, I got myself a Galaxy Fold 4 last year, which I fell in love with. I can’t see myself going back to a regular phone now, and for me to get a Pixel Fold, Google would really have to improve Android’s multitasking capabilities. On my Galaxy Fold for instance, I can have three tiled windows in a split-screen layout, or can have several floating windows of regular apps, which can be minimized into floating chatheads. With these floating windows, I can freely resize them, hide the header and even change their transparency levels. Which is great if you want to keep an eye out on some chat or Uber Eats or something whilst you are reading a book in full-screen. Having gotten used to these multitasking features, I can’t see myself going back to stock Android, until these are implemented.

I moved from HTC to Nexus, and stuck with Nexus until it died, then picked up a pixel and never looked back. Pixel is what I buy/use, and it’s not been an issue for me, which is why I keep going back.

From Nexus: I owned the Nexus 4, 5, 6 (I still have this one), 7 LTE tablet, and 5X. On the pixel line, the pixel “1”, 4, and now 7. Haven’t owned a pixel “a” series. I skipped the pixel 5, since the processor was significantly less powerful than the 4, despite being a newer chip, and I skipped the 6, because it was the first gen tensor, and I wanted it to prove itself. Early pixel days didn’t see a lot of improvement IMO between pixel 1/2/3, so I stuck with the 1, mainly because of the RAM: pixel 4 was the first pixel to have more than 4GB RAM… (It had 6). I would have jumped from the P4 about a year after getting it, simply due to it not having a fingerprint reader, and the pandemic (specifically masks) making it impossible to use the face id or whatever they called it, but I didn’t want to lose performance with the lower powered chip in the 5, and my 4 was good enough to not wager on whether the first tensor had any major hardware defects… So I’m on the 7 now, and I’m pretty happy.

I miss the fingerprint reader being on the back. I’ve found ways around the headphone jack problem: I have two devices for this… A combo headphone jack/changing cable dongle, and a fiio BTR 5 (though other BTR units from fiio will work similarly), which allows me to use wired headphones over bt, while charging my phone and Bluetooth device (fiio), allowing for a near infinite amount of time where I can use my phone with headphones if I choose.

I’m not big on the optical fingerprint reader, but it’s better than the face id stuff on the 4, so I guess I’m happier overall.

My key factors for using and keeping with pixel are pretty basic: prior to me going Nexus/pixel, to remove the bs added to my phone (like it shipping with FB apps), I would need to load custom ROMs which was a massive pita. I enjoyed the custom ROMs, mainly the AOSP versions. I wanted clean, no frills android with Google services (which I use extensively). Everything else I could obtain from the Android app store, aka the play store. For the most part, the Nexus/pixel was the only device I could get that kind of thing going right out of the box, pretty much everything else would require a custom ROM. That’s the root of why I switched and what keeps me on pixel. I know others have stepped up in this regard, but not many. I’ve already had success with pixel and to me, the historical experience with pixel keeps me coming back because so far, they’ve had what I want and nothing that I don’t want. If that changes, I’ll probably start considering other options.

As long as Google is using the pixel as a dev platform, bringing new features to pixel first, and eventually allowing third parties to use those features, I’m ok with what they’re doing. Some get abandoned long before they get that far, and I understand that, but there’s now a short list of features that the pixel has that other phones may never get where those features seem to be pixel exclusive, which is where my support of Google on this, starts to waiver.

Tensor had proven itself to be a decent platform, and the features of tensor, which are above and beyond the base RISC instructions, should be made available in some way to other manufacturing partners. Like having a tensor specific processing core that can be paired with a different ARM CPU to provide similar functionality to the full tensor CPU… Like a coprocessor. The AI benefits to the Google camera, et al, being made available to third parties.

Instead of going with the Microsoft model, offering first party devices, but continuing to support all features on all devices, they’re trending more towards the Apple model, where you use our hardware, or get fucked. Which, I’m not a fan of… Many industries are taking that page from Apple and honestly IMO, it’s anti-consumer activity. John Deere comes to mind…

I don’t think Google is too far gone in this respect, not yet, they can choose to open things up for third parties as time goes on.

Build quality, at least on the devices I’ve owned has been good. Not excellent but good. Few, if any issues, and support is generally good. I’m happy for the most part. I don’t subscribe to the brand wars, and I’ll happily jump ship if that changes. For now, I don’t have significant cause for concern.

I’ll continue with pixel for a while and see how it goes. I’m constantly evaluating my stance to see if there’s sufficient reason to consider other options. I almost got to that point over the headphone jack, but everyone else seemingly followed suit, and once I found a workable solution, I didn’t really care anymore. Bluntly, with the headphone issue, unless a device can charge, and allow the phone to charge, while you’re actively using it, it’s not a solution; having to stop listening/enjoying content while waiting for your pixel buds (or airpods, or whatever) to charge in their case… that’s not a replacement for a headphone jack, since you can enjoy content with a headphone jack indefinitely while charging your phone. So unless it can satisfy the original use case, it’s not a good solution. I have the wired charge/listen dongle for any situation where bt isn’t viable (like a high RF noise environment, or any time bt needs to be off, like a plane, though many allow bt to be on now), and the fiio for everything else. If I have to choose either headphones or charging, I’m going to find another way.

I have bt headphones that won’t play and charge, but I almost always have either the fiio or dongle with a set of IEMs as a backup. I use my phone for entertainment often enough that this can be a deal breaker for me.

That’s just me POV. I like the line, for now, and if things change, that may change. I don’t have any negative feelings towards new features being pixel only while they’re still being tested and proven, as long as they eventually end up in everyone’s hands in whatever form that takes.