Comment by FirmwareBurner
9 months ago
I went today to a carrier showroom where they have the Pixel 8 on display to mess around with, and I though the reviewers were exaggerating, but that damn visor is nearly as thick as the phone itself. It almost doubles in height of the phone at that spot. The Pixel 7a next to it had a much much thinner visor despite sharing a similar design.
What the hell did Google put in that thing, lenses from the Hubble space telescope? It's not like they have a 100x zoom lens in that thing or a camera sensor so large it makes a Hasselblad wet itself. And that's before we get to the visible PCB screw heads poking through the OLED panel. On a phone that costs 600+ Euros.
I feel like Google is at least 5 years behind the competition when it comes to HW and industrial design. Or they just culturally as a company don't give a shit about HW, thinking their SW is gonna be the main selling point and the HW is treated like some last minute "who cares, just ship it, it's gonna sell anyway" afterthought.
It's still the only real option, all of the Chinese brands lock their bootloaders, and so does Samsung.
Samsung phones can still be rooted, at least outside of the US (the only place I see complaints about is when people buy Samsung phones in the US from a carrier). It is a bit annoying though that you have to link your phone to a Google and a Samsung account and keep it active and connected to the Internet for at least 7 consecutive days because of Samsung's anti-theft system.
It's quite difficult to obtain EU SKUs for Samsung phones in the US, even without buying through a carrier. (If anyone knows an easy way to get them, let me know!)
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