Comment by aftbit
9 hours ago
The Pixel 11 is the first Pixel phone to be released after the RAMpocolypse. It has made a lot of compromises in the name of lowering cost. I am definitely going to skip that generation. I tend to upgrade every 3 years, but there really isn't a big driver to do so right now. My Pixel 8 is holding up great. If I broke it and needed to buy a new phone today, I'd probably get a used Pixel 10 instead of a new 11.
Just be careful with the 8 because their motherboards tend to randomly fry themselves - both me and a friend had this happen around 2 years into owning ours and there are a decent number of people online with the same issue. Switched to the 10a on sale right before the price hike and man I'm glad I did. It'll probably be the last great Pixel if hardware costs keep getting worse and Google keeps shoving Gemini down everyone's throats.
My Pixel 8 failed with the exact failure mode (supposedly) covered by an extended warranty [0] program after owning it for 18 months. I had a very frustrating back and forth with Google support and in the end they refused to fix it under warranty because it wasn't manufactured in a specific batch.
Flagship phone turned into a useless device after 18 months of ownership due to a manufacturing issue and I've got no recourse. I'm done with Pixel and Google in general.
[0] https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15009955?hl=en
I had this happen twice with pixel 5a's as well. Older, but just to say I'm not sure this is limited to the 8 line. One of them literally just died in my hand and was unfixable.
I swear every Pixel model people write "well it's a good smartphone minus the 'kills itself for no reason' bug".
Is this still an issue? I left android after my Pixel 2 killed itself randomly.
Yep, I got a 10 and the fingerprint sensor broke after a day. Pretty fortunately I got a refund with no return so I can't complain.
My 9 has had no hardware issues besides the designed ones.
So just use it until the motherboard dies, why switch before it dies?
Just off the dome:
- Suddenly being without a phone while you're travelling or dealing with something important is generally not fun
- Anything stored locally that isn't backed up is gone
- You can't transfer over your eSIM yourself
- Probably going to be a pain in the ass to get into accounts where the now brick was set up for 2FA
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I fried my 8 pro wifi but I attributed it to listening to it inside my shower where it would get the full force of steam damage. So at least on my part I can admit that was a mistake.
> Just be careful with the 8
Don't forget the notorious vertical pink line issue! Luckily that had (has?) an extended warranty programme.
My Pixel 8 failed with the exact failure mode (supposedly) covered by that extended warranty [0] program after owning it for 18 months. I had a very frustrating back and forth with Google support and in the end they refused to fix it under warranty because it wasn't manufactured in a specific batch.
Flagship phone turned into a useless device after 18 months of ownership due to a manufacturing issue and I've got no recourse. I'm done with Pixel and Google in general.
[0] https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15009955?hl=en
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I had an 8 Pro and it had a fantastic run, and it was probably the best phone I ever had until I upgraded to the 10 Pro.
Sadly I never, ever put the 8 Pro in any case or protective shell, and the damage of repeated minor drops took its toll. The screen was just cracked a tiny bit around the corners, but eventually the upper-right corner began a creeping black amoeba of darkness, and finally the entire touchscreen became unreliable, I suppose due to that damage, so I decided to bail out. Repairs were exorbitant so I decided to take Google's own trade-in deal.
I have Pixel 9a and considered Pixel 10 for a while, but seeing Pixel 11 show up with absurdly microscopic improvements over 10 made me realize, that this smartphone line is just a solved problem since years ago.
Is there a point in changing a phone so often if it's not broken?
I know it's not really an argument, but I tend to change my devices also every 2-3 years, just so I can pass the "old" one to my less technical family.
Att offered such good trade in rates for my phone that it’s been effectively free to upgrade to the last two generations.
I hear people say things like this about phones, laptops and cars, but anecdotally I have never once seen any sort of trade-in offer, and only rarely and arguably on any kind of lease or lease-to-buy arrangement, where I would consider that even remotely true.
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it's not free because it's priced into the phone plan (phone plan price is jacked up), unless you got grandfathered in w/ a good rate.
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Or even Google itself. I got a 150€ trade in rebate for an iPhone 8 with a cracked screen.
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Same thing here, I will keep my 10a for the foreseeable figure. It's unclear if future Pixels will support GOS at all, and the new Motorola is almost certainly going to be a $1000+ phone. Hopefully mid-range models will follow. I don't need a huge, expensive phone with five cameras.
Yeah, I've got a 10 Pro, jumped up from an 8. Looked briefly at upgrading to the 11 but it's clearly not worth it.
Huh, good point. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end of constant phone upgrades. It used to be that new phones had much better hardware, so software that was only tested on new phones would make an older phone grind to a halt. But if the upgrades are much more incremental, perhaps a phone will last a lot longer?
The people who I knew that upgraded every 2 years stopped doing that nearly ten years ago now. Smartphones barely get better, why get a 49€/month contract when you can get one for 15€ instead and not have to migrate phones every two years upon contract renewal when the new phones aren't significantly better anyway?
My Pixel 3 is still going strong! :)
I loved my 4a, but broke a couple due to water infiltration in rainy conditions. Modern phones are resistant to water which is a nice improvement.
I tend to "upgrade" to the previous release, I always got them as their stocks dwindle and their prices are low. Did this with the last nexus, pixel 6, 7, and now I got a pixel 9 from work so the pattern is broken.
The Pixel 10 Pro is even fairly cheap in many countries if you can live with 128GB storage and the base model still has 16GB RAM.
The only reason to update from my pixel 7 is to get more storage. Otherwise a perfect phone
To be fair, the trade in offers are larger this year than during P10 release window, at least where I live. So I was able to go from 10 Pro 16/256 to 11P 16/512 for something like 650 eur. It's a great deal IMHO as the SoC + modem combo is at least 30 to 40% more efficient. The phone runs faster, cooler and I don't have the battery anxiety that I got after 10 Pro.
I used the OP15 in the meantime and its ram management and (ironically enough) performance in day to day apps was somehow much worse. It unloaded apps, skipped notifications, apps took longer to open. Google have put in a lot of work into software ahead of the rampocalipse.
I'm not wanting to dispute or tell somebody what to spend their money on. I see this take a lot on reddit especially.
You bought arguably the same phone with marginal gains to CPU score and a little better battery. Paying €650 for that privaledge doesn't seem like a great deal to me...
Summed over all phones I've ever bought, I don't think I've spent €650.
why upgrade every 3 years when there are 7 years of updates?
I get new phones and computers from my company every 3 years, I don't even bother upgrading so often. The improvements aren't even worth me spending a few hours to set up and migrate data.
photos
I never thought about it like that, damn.
I dropped my Pixel 8 and replaced it with a Pixel 10a. I'm perfectly happy and the lack of a camera bump is awesome. I don't intend to upgrade for quite some time.