https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/113603951027289464
Android doesn’t have any long term support branches for older versions of the mobile OS.
It was clear they’d likely provide 5 years of OS updates for 6th/7th gen Pixels rather than 3 from the start. Documentation clearly hinted at it by saying they’d provide 5 years of security AND features updates.
My Pixel 6’s batterie is already pretty weak :/
Replace the battery :)
Here’s some BS. My phone’s battery replacement cost $220. ($100 for battery, and $120 to be serviced) That was the same price as buying a refurbished version of the upgrade.
I missed the days of just replacing the battery with a screwdriver.
Im looking forward for “User replaceable batteries” 2027 in EU.
For the Pixel 6 and 7 series Google has promised 5 years of security updates right from the beginning. What’s new here is that they now also offer feature and OS upgrades for that same time period. Certainly nice to have, but not essential.
If only the fucking phone would work that long.
My Pixel 6 Pro was replaced twice within the two year warranty. Always for display errors(Display crapped out partially or has sudden “green flashes” when in maximum low light setting). Each time was a customer service nightmare and took ages. The current arrived damaged (they send you refurbished phones which in theory would be okay if they would actually be refurbished - last one was still reeking of smoke) and the FP did not work, additional loading only works when the cable is pushed in to the maximum by hand. When contacted they refuse further customer service claiming their service period ended (it did not, legally they are obligated according to the laws here), but their customer service agents do not give a shit. “It’s written here” and “then sue us, lol!” are quotes.
The problems with the screen are known and there are hundreds of posts about it online. Each listing similar troubles.
I really loved the phone when it worked. Great camera, perfect size for me, clean OS, a lot of bang for the buck. But shit like that made me get a Samsung.
still happily using a pixel 4a, your mileage may vary
The 4a was beast tbh. Loved that one.
My Pixel 7 Pro worked very good so far.
The Pixel 8 I bought for my mother was faulty but after the RMA everything was honky dory for her and she seems happy.My Pixel 6 pro needed one replacement, for a dead green circle in the corner.
They insisted it was my fault, and I loaded unapproved software that did it (I didn’t, I’m boring with my phones these days).
It got replaced, I had to pay to get it replaced (25USD)…
The phone was a disappointment, though, from day 1.
I had my Pixel 2 for 4 years, now my Pixel 6 is 3 years old. You just got unlucky.
Exactly the same here. I went Nexus->Pixel 2->Pixel 6
Works flawlessly, except of course that I only get like ~28h of battery life instead of the ~48h in the beginning
Well, I guess P10 is our next purchase :)
My old Nokia easily outlasted those.
Were you Nokia able to create this comment you just made?
While anecdotal, my family, friends, and co-workers have consistently seen them fail due to an unrecoverable software issue within 2-3 years. Extended support means very little when one expects failure within current support. Providing that support is cheap marketing.
My two year old Pixel 7 still feels like on day 1, and before that my Galaxy S8 worked flawlessly for 4 years (I just broke the display but it still worked fine when I replaced it with the pixel)
My wife and I’d Pixels were rock solid until one day a Google update came along and killed them with an unrecoverable loss of critical functionality. The only way I’d recommend one of these is if one heavily values having the newest thing for cheap, or for the wide angle camera.
I like Pixels cause of the great custom rom/alternative os support
If Google’s not the final say in driver QA then I think it’s fantastic. But, the last phone that I’ve rooted was an S5. I don’t know what’s up today.
As an IPhone holder I’m happy Google is doing this to force the market to support devices for longer. Apple will be pushed to go further than 6-7 years of software support.
Yeah. Pixel 8 and 9 series have 7 years by spec. I think Samsung matched it with their latest Galaxy S series. It’s one of those rare and fleeting moments when competition works to our benefit.
Samsung’s update policy for their lower end models is pretty atrocious. While on paper they offer updates for a couple of years, it you look more closely, you’ll notice that the update intervals get larger and larger as time goes on. You might not get important updates for half a year. Sure, still better than not updates at all, but a pretty awful policy for security updates.
It’s one of those rare and fleeting moments when competition works to our benefit.
More competition is always better for the consumer.
Indeed. However the root problem were CPU and other hw drivers AFAIK, not Google. Making their own SoC made it possible to bypass those greedy manufacturers and extend support.
100%. Qualcomm is the piece of shit you’re thinking of. They refused to provide more than 3 years of driver updates for their SoCs for more than decade, despite the heavy work Google did to make updates from vendors dramatically easier with Project Treble. Now that Google have their own SoC and began providing longer support, Qualcomm magically began offering longer support too. The Galaxy S24 that ships with QC in NA has 7 years of support. With all that said, Google is only doing this because they’re a minority player and offering support makes people like me buy their stuff for this. If they grow to a significant market share, you’ll see them stop extending the support or even shorten it, in order to increase sales. Just like Qualcomm.
Qualcomm announced that they will provide driver support for Snapdragon 8 Elite for 8 years iirc.
So, the competition (from Google in this case) really works miracles.
Fairphone have been offering 5 years of support for years… and ethically sourced materials, replacable parts (inc. nokia style batteries that you can replace)
Not to mention acceptance of alternative OS installations
Fairphone is actually worse than Google when it comes to updates. Even their flagship phone is still on Android 13. Even the Pixel 6 runs Android 15 at this point and with this news it is guaranteed to get at least Android 17. Google has always been offering 5 years of support for the Pixel 6 and 7 series, what they didn’t promise until this announcement was additional feature/OS upgrades, but when it comes to that they were already ahead of Fairphone.
When it comes to alternative OSes, Google actually makes it very easy to install them. That’s one reason why GrapheneOS and the likes chose Pixel phones as their primarily supported phones.
Isn’t the main reason for GrapheneOS to choose Pixels that Pixels have the Titan security chip?
Yes, there are multiple reasons, but that security chip was very important to them. An easy way to install the OS was also quite essential.
IMHO, security updates are more important than OS updates, and Fairphone is good in that regard. I’d be hard-pressed to even name a killer feature from the last few versions of Android (or iOS, for that matter).
Absolutely, security updates are much more important than feature updates. Upgrading to newer Android versions is mostly useful to have access to newer Android APIs (apps eventually will require newer versions, although that usually takes quite a while). Another benefit of newer Android versions might be added security features.
The fairphone 5 is on android 14 and android 15 has only started to be deployed 2 months ago.
Ok, that endoflife.date site apparently isn’t quite up-to-date then. But even still, Android 14 was released in October 2023 and as far as I can tell, Fairphone released their Android 14 update only in July 2024. I’m not saying Fairphone’s update policy is terrible or anything. It certainly is better than that of many other vendors, but if you want updates as quickly as possible, you are probably better of with a Pixel phone. Of course repairability is an entirely different matter.
Fairphone has a great approach and I would love to buy an EU phone with replaceable parts, however I’ve read pretty underwhelming things about their software support. in that sense, paying 90€ every 3-4 years to get the battery replaced on a pixel,would be a better bet. That,plus the pixel a variants are very competitively prices and you get huge bang dor your buck.
I wish fairphones were cheaper…
At its price point, it’s very underwhelming.
I also did the math and I could get an average phone (used) every year for three years before I break even. And those average phones would be more powerful with each iteration.
Unless you’re bought into eco-friendly minimal waste messaging, it’s really hard to choose fairphone.
Yeah, I admit they cost more, but I’m not playing high perf games on it, so it’s absolutely fine - no apps struggle.
And the eco thing has to start somewhere and that’s not something Google’s aiming for (afaik)
Plus, watching other’s expression when I swap a battery to be fully charged in 60 seconds is great.
