Comment by Pfhortune
12 hours ago
Feeling like my Pixel 9 Pro was the best timed hardware buy I've made in recent years.
The 10 dropped the physical SIM slot and Google started with their device tree shenanigans that year, with little to no improvements in exchange.
I've got 16GB of RAM and 512GB in an ecosystem that shows every sign of regressing in capacities due to component price inflation.
Very interested to see what Motorola does next year, however.
Pixel 10 was so bad I had to trade it in after using for a month. The version I got was 128GB for a whopping $600. This was my first Google device after Nexus days and I was bitterly disappointed with weird performance bugs and battery drain issues. The software does little to make up for the issues.
The replacement I got is a Motorola razr ultra folding phone.. similar perf point with 16G RAM and 512G storage. This phone is legit.
We plan to support future versions of the Motorola Signature, Razr Fold and Razr Ultra. We'll have at least a non-folding Signature successor in 2027 but aren't yet sure if the folding devices will provide what we need.
We're confident it's going to be much better hardware than Pixels and that our users will be happy with it. Our initial goal was only providing competitive security with Pixels but it's now clear we can do better in most areas. Google will likely have a significantly better secure element for a while but that can change too.
What's the point of the Pixel 11 and later now that they aren't supported by AOSP and are no longer going to be best in class for security? The updates and security features are why GrapheneOS uses them. We have ~500k users on the Pixel 6 through Pixel 10a and many of those users had multiple previous Pixel and Nexus devices for GrapheneOS. Our userbase is rapidly growing at an increasing rate and was already significant for Pixels.
Does this mean we might finally get a phone with 3.5mm jack, microSD slot and GrapheneOS support? I believe I've been asking for that for 10 years now.
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Graphene on Razr Ultra - YES! Can't come soon enough.
Ahm… phones have as much memory as my laptop? Man, here was I thinking a Pixel 7 would make a good Graphene device.
I have multiple Pixel 7 phones GrapheneOS in my family with close to zero issues. It's a good choice for GrapheneOS IMO, except that support ends in Oct 2027. The Pixel 8 is still great also but has a more fragile screen.
I haven't used any newer devices with it yet.
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32GB is pretty common for new laptops, especially if you’re looking to utilize your integrated graphics (shared memory). Also keep in mind that modern integrated graphics can be really good, and therefore play games that demand more memory (e.g., Panther Lake X7).
The 24GB MacBook Air is the sweet spot of that model lineup in my opinion. Even if you’re a true “web browsing only” user, you can definitely find a sale or refurbished model with 24GB and that’s a much more wise purchase for long term ownership than being stuck with 16GB.
Especially considering most laptops have soldered memory, I’d have a hard time recommending a new laptop purchase with 16GB if your intention is to keep it many years.
Even though RAM is expensive, there are deals and sales out there.
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Definitely. This is great considering our family Google One plan has 100GB storage which is more than 60% full, but I don't really need to sweat it because I can back up most things on this phone and ignore Google photos backup alerts.
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With a BT keyboard, and a decent USB-C/HDMI screen, such a phone may be an acceptable laptop. Both Samsung and Google support desktop mode now.
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At what point do we blame google for going the route of regressive and damaging business tacitcs to earn a penny while burning a dollar?
The 11 is a complete turd. Less RAM than the 10.
Sticking with a 9 Pro or 10 Pro is the smart move right now. I’m actually considering spending $400 to get a broken 9 Pro XL fixed…
Yes but all phones coming out now are going to be complete turds really. They're all going to cut corners to offset the exploding cost of storage and ram.
"The 10 dropped the physical SIM slot"
I'm assuming that's a country specific/dependent thing?
(My pixel 10 does have a physical sim slot).
It was removed from the non-Fold devices in the US. They kept it for other countries due to only considering the US carriers to be ready for eSIM-only.
True, here in Europe they're definitely not. Especially on prepaid. I wouldn't buy a phone without dual physical sim. eSIM is nice for travelling but I want physical for my daily numbers. This way I can stick them in any phone I want and even in my 4G backup modem.
> The 10 dropped the physical SIM slot
Not sure about the 10, but at least the 10 Pro still has one.
It was removed from the whole non-folding Pixel 10 series in the US. It still has the SIM card slot elsewhere. We had to return a Pixel 10 bricked due to a firmware bug and it was the US model since we'd bought it in the US and sent it overseas with a forwarding service. Google's repair partner shop was quite confused about the lack of a SIM card slot to get the IMEI and we only had a serial number but they figured out using the serial number instead.
There's still dual SIM support either way and you can store dozens of inactive eSIMs. The main downside of eSIMs is widespread lack of transfer support by carriers.
After switching providers with a recent phone with eSIM, I would say I’d never want to go back to physical SIMs ever again.
They’re going to go away worldwide eventually, they’re just more easily removed in the US where the carriers are more bleeding edge on features and there are only 3 providers to think about in a very large homogenous market.
The difference between waiting for a SIM card to arrive in the mail or traveling to a store, fiddling with a paperclip, tray, and impossibly tiny nano-SIM versus switching providers in 10 minutes via an app is night and day.
Most SIM/dual SIM solutions also involve removing both SIM cards at once even to swap out one of two, and they tend to require device restarts.
In the past I’ve also had network problems as a result of bad/damaged SIM cards.
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it might be worth considering that for many Phones different hardware is sold _under the same marketing name_.
The most common versions (in the "west) are AFIK:
- US version vs. international version
(just the most common divide of Phones you will see "in the west", e.g. if a brand sell to China, that also is normally it's own sub-versions.)
the most common differences include:
- different modems
- US phones being carrier locked (which is not normal outside of the US and a few other countries)
- US phones not having sim card slots, the international version of the same (Android) Phones, often still has a physical sim card slot
Can confirm, pixel 10 is esim only.
It was removed from the non-Fold devices in the US. They kept it for other countries due to only considering the US carriers to be ready for eSIM-only.
Not in the United States. Only the Fold still has a physical SIM slot.
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