> (Owner of Pixel 3a) Yeah, that's a bummer. There's not something else I'd rather own right now, so I'll likely keep running it for a while.
I have the 3a and 4a (non-5G), if you can find a 4a someone is trying to give away on the cheap it's basically a nicer version of the 3a IMHO. It's going to EOL in a year so I wouldn't spend much on it, but if one crosses your path for $100, well...
> With the nexus 5 at $350 right now, not sure why I would bother with either.
Well this is almost half the price... so there's that. This is more of a competitor for the Nexus 4, if Google was still selling that (not sure why they chose not to).
> It was a huge disappointment when I heard about the price at launch. It could not compete on price with the Nexus line.
Sigh. The nexus line is sold AT COST. If you expected a retail phone to compete against a phone that is not trying to make any money you will always be disappointed.
> what does this have that the year-old Nexus 6P and 5X don't, other than incremental hardware improvements?
As someone who owns a 5X:
- The Pixel is a premium 5" phone, not a budget one. It has a flagship SoC rather than a mid-tier SoC.
- The camera is better and more responsive (the camera on the N5X is slow and annoying).
- The body isn't plastic, which means there will be less issues with heat and CPU throttling than on the N5X.
- I can finally get a phone with a reasonable amount of storage and no bloat. The 5X only went up to 32GB and had no expansion. Alternatives from Samsung etc. are mostly carrier locked, unrootable and stuffed with OEM overlays.
- There's no camera bump, so it can sit on flat surfaces less awkwardly.
- They actually mentioned this phone during the announcement, unlike the 5X last year. They might actually pay it some attention in the future.
>The Pixel is a premium 5" phone, not a budget one.
what makes it premium other than the fact that they're charging lots of money for it? i can't find a real differentiator over something like the oneplus 3, which costs half as much.
i agree with you that it's better than the 5X, but comparing it to this year's competition, it doesn't look so good.
> people who need phones will still buy something even if reluctantly
I'll be blunt: no I won't. I reluctantly bought the phone I still use (a moto X4) back in 2019, at which point it was already getting old. It was one of the smaller Android phones available at the time; I measured it diagonally corner to corner (including bezel) at 159 mm (6.26 inches). The screen size is 130 mm (5.2 in) according to Wikipedia. This phone is in fact much too big for me, and I'm not happy with it.
But I will be sticking with this phone into the indefinite future: until it breaks, becomes unusable, or a worthy replacement arises (a phone the size of the Nexus 5X or preferably smaller, with my must-have features). In the event I can't get this I will switch to a cheap feature phone since I need something for emergency use. I'll look into the mp3 player market to see if there's something I can use for playing music and audio books, maybe if I'm lucky there's something with a nice screen and an e-reader.
I'm sure you're right and some people are more willing to compromise than me. However, what also seems likely is that many people are somewhere in between and will wait until their current phone is unusable before reluctantly downgrading to whatever the latest model is. Surely plenty of sales are lost due to this.
> Honestly the most appealing thing for me is the seven years of software support
Yup. I've been clinging to my Pixel 4, but it hasn't gotten security updates in a year, which I'm not particularly comfortable with (been lucky so far, knock on wood). I might pick up the Pixel 8 (not Pro, god that thing is huge) mainly due to the support lifetime. And it does seem like their non-Pro releases are actually decreasing in physical size for the past few years. Still a couple/few mm larger than the Pixel 4, but that's doable, I think.
There were a few strange stand out benchmarks, though to me they seemed more like bugs than a pattern. I haven't had any performance issues in every day usage.
> I thought they cared about small size
That's fair, I assumed they were just avoiding premium prices. Still, some people really care about wireless charging and waterproofing and if so, I think P5 is a great option.
This is totally subjective, but I don't get why anyone would buy a Pixel. It's overpriced, and one of the ugliest phones in the market. Sure the camera is the best available, but I just can't get past the looks.
> the Pixel needs a few releases before I would trust it staying around
Genuinely honest: Android's been out there for a long while. Even if the Pixel was the last Pixel ever, why would that be a problem from me as a user? When it's time to replace, I'm going to look at the other Android phones too anyway.
> The subtitle captures how out of touch I am with regular phone users. I'll be upgrading from a Pixel 2, and had a Nexus 7 before that. My purchase cadence seems different than what I perceive to be typical for iPhone users in particular.
I think the point is, why not just get the much cheaper 4a?
> If true, this would mean the old Nexus line is well and truly dead and Google is taking the Apple approach to pricing.
What old Nexus line are you talking about?
Most[1] Nexus phones have been priced high at launch with fairly average specs, if not disappointing.
I believe the 6P is the one truly high-end Nexus, and then there's the 5X that was grossly overpriced everywhere but in the US, and finally the Nexus 4 and 5 which were very good deals from the get-go.
> However, I think it's very likely I'll wait for the next gen of the phone.
This is definitely my instinct too, but I worry that there may not be a next gen version if we don't buy the first. Would hate to see it abandoned because initial sales were so dismal and they took such a loss.
This is a big bet, but based on history Pixel 2, 3 and 4. It was better to wait for either Black Friday or Xmas sales.
I didn't look at Pixel 5 (wasn't interested in it).
(This ignores US based promos from service providers)
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