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It was more of a question to see your rational honestly. If you're saying the only quality feature of the Pixel 3a is the camera I wanted to see what you valued

It was more of a question to see your rational honestly. If you're saying the only quality feature of the Pixel 3a is the camera I wanted to see what you valued in smartphones to make that comment. For me: ease of use/configuration. I don't want Samsung bloat, I'd prefer to buy direct from manufacturer to avoid mobile carrier shit. I don't want to deal with rooting and have been happy with Google's smartphone offer since the Nexus line. I'd prefer wireless charging, not an overly large phone, and a fingerprint reader on the back, but after that I'm flexible.

JohnFen 7y ago
> I wanted to see what you valued in smartphones to make that comment. Ah, I see -- then you should have asked that! For anything, what I recommend is not tightly correlated to what I would use myself, because the best solution is very context-dependent. In order to recommend something, I need to know what the requirements are. In any case, I say that about the Pixel because the camera is really the only significant feature of the Pixels that comes close to justifying the asking price. My existing (6 year old) smartphone only has another couple of years in it, though, so I've been giving a lot of thought about how to replace it. I've looked hard at the offerings on the market currently, and to be honest, there isn't a single one that appeals to me at all (there are a couple, such as the PinePhone, that look interesting but aren't in production yet). I've spent a year developing a prototype of a home-built smartphone that does meet my needs, but I've recently decided against going that route at all. Instead, I'm just building a pocket computer (running plain old Linux) and will use a feature phone for my communication needs. Not having to use Android is hugely attractive to me.
sg47 7y ago
Pixel 3a does not support wireless charging. I've never had a phone that supported it so I don't know what I'm missing. After using Samsung phones in the past, I've sworn that I'll never buy a phone with that much bloat. Coming from Pixel 1, I have not had any loss in functionality. Only thing I can think of is that the battery seems to drain slightly faster than Pixel 1 but I don't have the data to prove it.

JohnFen 7y ago

> I wanted to see what you valued in smartphones to make that comment. Ah, I see -- then you should have asked that! For anything, what I recommend is not tightly correlated to what I would use myself, because the best solution is very context-dependent. In order to recommend something, I need to know what the requirements are. In any case, I say that about the Pixel because the camera is really the only significant feature of the Pixels that comes close to justifying the asking price. My existing (6 year old) smartphone only has another couple of years in it, though, so I've been giving a lot of thought about how to replace it. I've looked hard at the offerings on the market currently, and to be honest, there isn't a single one that appeals to me at all (there are a couple, such as the PinePhone, that look interesting but aren't in production yet). I've spent a year developing a prototype of a home-built smartphone that does meet my needs, but I've recently decided against going that route at all. Instead, I'm just building a pocket computer (running plain old Linux) and will use a feature phone for my communication needs. Not having to use Android is hugely attractive to me.

sg47 7y ago

Pixel 3a does not support wireless charging. I've never had a phone that supported it so I don't know what I'm missing. After using Samsung phones in the past, I've sworn that I'll never buy a phone with that much bloat. Coming from Pixel 1, I have not had any loss in functionality. Only thing I can think of is that the battery seems to drain slightly faster than Pixel 1 but I don't have the data to prove it.