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I really appreciate seeing people committed to the open source or free software causes so much that they accept very clearly inferior experiences. I also reall

I really appreciate seeing people committed to the open source or free software causes so much that they accept very clearly inferior experiences. I also really appreciate seeing that for some people, there are limits to just how inferior they are willing for those experiences to be. Very relatable. Thank you. from my closed-source iPhone 14 Pro

mellosouls 4y ago
To test your hypothesis I just googled the articles Pixel 2 vs it's competitor iPhone 8. In both the top two search results the Pixel (narrowly) bested the iPhone, so looks like maybe a bit of rose-tinted brand-owners perspective in your case?
- pwinnski 4y ago
  When I spoke of inferior experiences, I was referring to the Pine Phone, not the Pixel 2. I'm sorry that wasn't clear! That said, the iPhone 8 is still supported by Apple (probably for the last year), while the Pixel 2, like the Pixels 3, 4, and 5, are no longer supported by Google. This likely doesn't matter to someone not running standard Google-supplied AndroidOS, though! My use of the closed-source iPhone is not solely based on feature quality, and I've got no illusions that every feature is the best in class. P.S. Just before clicking the reply button, I decided to do the search myself, curious. The iPhone 8 was a weird model; that was the year they released both the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, because (IMO) they lacked the courage to switch things up in their flagship product so much in one year. (Okay, and maybe also supply issues?) Still, when I DDG'd "pixel 2 iphone 8", I got results[0] that seem to not be the same as yours. The first doesn't really make any determination, the second is mealy-mouthed but seems to give an edge to Pixel 2 based primarily on price ("the Pixel 2 is a better value, starting out at about $50 and £70 cheaper than the iPhone 8" vs "you'll actually get more bang for your buck with the iPhone 8"), and the third, well, it's right in the title: "iPhone 8 vs. Pixel 2: Why Apple Beats Google." So I don't know, I bought an iPhone X that year rather than an iPhone 8, and just replaced that with an iPhone 14 Pro this year after five years of faithful service. But choosing a 2017 phone today, either one, while very clearly a step up from Pinephone for all the of the reasons mentioned in the article, maybe still reflects a but of compromise in service of wanting to run LineageOS. In 2017, was photo quality the same when running LineageOS rather than Google's own camera software? Maybe it was after that they started to apply more and more AI to the photo-taking process, I'm not sure. 0. https://www.techradar.com/news/google-pixel-2-vs-iphone-8 https://www.techradar.com/news/google-pixel-2-vs-iphone-8 https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/iphone-8-vs-pixel-2-phone-comparison/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/iphone-8-vs-pixel-2-phone-c... https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-8-vs-pixel-2,review-4779.html https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-8-vs-pixel-2,review-4779...
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    > This likely doesn't matter to someone not running standard Google-supplied AndroidOS, though! It does a bit, actually. While we get many updates through generic Android, some are vendor patches which stop after support stops.
  - hnuser123456 4y ago
    The pixel 4 is only losing support this month. Pixel 5 is supported til Oct 2023, and 5a til Aug 2024. Pixel 6 gets feature updates til Oct 2024 and security updates til Oct 2026.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      So you realize how bad it is that a phone made by Google introduced in November of 2019 is losing support in 3 years? iOS 16 supports the iPhone 8/iPhone 10 from 2017 and the iPhone 5s from 2013 just got a security update August of this year.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        It is indeed, terrible. That's probably why people want a phone running Linux, since it supports hardware even longer than the XNU kernel does.
        prange 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  And now fast forward 5 years and the iPhone 8 is still getting full OS updates and the Pixel 2 stopped getting basic security patches 2 years ago. At this point I think I qualify as a career Android developer (did other stuff but just a lot of time on Android) and my joking reply to anyone who asks why I use an iPhone is: > I'll switch back when Android can handle a screen rotation without blanking the screen. The thing is, the fact there's no smooth rotation isn't literally a blocker, but it's what such a subtle thing represents: Android apps are still living with the complexity of a situation that showed up because of the limitations of the 256 MB of RAM the Android G1 had in 2008. - They're still doing this messy state restoration stuff where the OS essentially has to kill part of your app to support a basic rotation, they never went back and fixed it as phones matured, bad configuration change handling easily causes hundreds of thousands of crashes a day for end users, constantly throws a wrench in development that Google has had to invent many different catcher's mitts for, drains resources that would be better used on improving the user-facing functionality of these apps. And this isn't the only feature like that. There are so many basic sharp edges of the OS UX-wise that will just seemingly never get fixed, and even if were fixed tomorrow, it'd be at least 6 years before those improvements represented even 90% of the Android userbase (something iOS tends to achieve within 12 months...) [and before the nitpickers show up, yes you can override configuration changes and manage that for your own app... no it doesn't scale for any "normal" app]
  - gbil 4y ago
    > I'll switch back when Android can handle a screen rotation without blanking the screen. hm, I don't have this experience, maybe last time you checked in an old android device or something ?
    - drewzero1 4y ago
      I've seen it on older apps and ones I've tried to make myself. The app where it's caused me the most grief is in AndFTP where rotating the screen will kill any in-progress file transfers. I've learned to just lock the screen rotation when I'm using that one, which definitely shouldn't be necessary but also isn't the end of the world.
pathartl 4y ago
Some people are willing to make that sacrifice because their limited feature set doesn't impede on their day-to-day use. I know quite a few people who use their phone for nothing but texting, a camera, and two factor auth. Hell, I, who would be considered a power user, spend 99% of the time on my phone browsing the web, Reddit, some Facebook, using a calculator, or taking photos. Most of my computing is done on an actual computer because the form factor of a phone just doesn't satisfy my needs.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  The reason why I'm on Android instead of a iOS 1200 euro Apple device with fancy sensors is because I don't give a shit about making pictures or videos.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    For me, that is also why my phone was 200€
    - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
      Exactly, Android has phones in the under 400 euro range. I'm just not a cool person flashing expensive iPhone taking Instagram pictures. Drop the camera suite and image processing and you can cut half the cost of a smartphone!
      - Semaphor 4y ago
        What I actually want is mediocre camera, high build quality, small form factor. But I’m pretty sure there are not enough of us, so I have to go with medium cam, build, and size.

mellosouls 4y ago

To test your hypothesis I just googled the articles Pixel 2 vs it's competitor iPhone 8. In both the top two search results the Pixel (narrowly) bested the iPhone, so looks like maybe a bit of rose-tinted brand-owners perspective in your case?

pwinnski 4y ago
When I spoke of inferior experiences, I was referring to the Pine Phone, not the Pixel 2. I'm sorry that wasn't clear! That said, the iPhone 8 is still supported by Apple (probably for the last year), while the Pixel 2, like the Pixels 3, 4, and 5, are no longer supported by Google. This likely doesn't matter to someone not running standard Google-supplied AndroidOS, though! My use of the closed-source iPhone is not solely based on feature quality, and I've got no illusions that every feature is the best in class. P.S. Just before clicking the reply button, I decided to do the search myself, curious. The iPhone 8 was a weird model; that was the year they released both the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, because (IMO) they lacked the courage to switch things up in their flagship product so much in one year. (Okay, and maybe also supply issues?) Still, when I DDG'd "pixel 2 iphone 8", I got results[0] that seem to not be the same as yours. The first doesn't really make any determination, the second is mealy-mouthed but seems to give an edge to Pixel 2 based primarily on price ("the Pixel 2 is a better value, starting out at about $50 and £70 cheaper than the iPhone 8" vs "you'll actually get more bang for your buck with the iPhone 8"), and the third, well, it's right in the title: "iPhone 8 vs. Pixel 2: Why Apple Beats Google." So I don't know, I bought an iPhone X that year rather than an iPhone 8, and just replaced that with an iPhone 14 Pro this year after five years of faithful service. But choosing a 2017 phone today, either one, while very clearly a step up from Pinephone for all the of the reasons mentioned in the article, maybe still reflects a but of compromise in service of wanting to run LineageOS. In 2017, was photo quality the same when running LineageOS rather than Google's own camera software? Maybe it was after that they started to apply more and more AI to the photo-taking process, I'm not sure. 0. https://www.techradar.com/news/google-pixel-2-vs-iphone-8 https://www.techradar.com/news/google-pixel-2-vs-iphone-8 https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/iphone-8-vs-pixel-2-phone-comparison/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/iphone-8-vs-pixel-2-phone-c... https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-8-vs-pixel-2,review-4779.html https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-8-vs-pixel-2,review-4779...
- Semaphor 4y ago
  > This likely doesn't matter to someone not running standard Google-supplied AndroidOS, though! It does a bit, actually. While we get many updates through generic Android, some are vendor patches which stop after support stops.
- hnuser123456 4y ago
  The pixel 4 is only losing support this month. Pixel 5 is supported til Oct 2023, and 5a til Aug 2024. Pixel 6 gets feature updates til Oct 2024 and security updates til Oct 2026.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    So you realize how bad it is that a phone made by Google introduced in November of 2019 is losing support in 3 years? iOS 16 supports the iPhone 8/iPhone 10 from 2017 and the iPhone 5s from 2013 just got a security update August of this year.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      It is indeed, terrible. That's probably why people want a phone running Linux, since it supports hardware even longer than the XNU kernel does.
      - prange 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
BoorishBears 4y ago
And now fast forward 5 years and the iPhone 8 is still getting full OS updates and the Pixel 2 stopped getting basic security patches 2 years ago. At this point I think I qualify as a career Android developer (did other stuff but just a lot of time on Android) and my joking reply to anyone who asks why I use an iPhone is: > I'll switch back when Android can handle a screen rotation without blanking the screen. The thing is, the fact there's no smooth rotation isn't literally a blocker, but it's what such a subtle thing represents: Android apps are still living with the complexity of a situation that showed up because of the limitations of the 256 MB of RAM the Android G1 had in 2008. - They're still doing this messy state restoration stuff where the OS essentially has to kill part of your app to support a basic rotation, they never went back and fixed it as phones matured, bad configuration change handling easily causes hundreds of thousands of crashes a day for end users, constantly throws a wrench in development that Google has had to invent many different catcher's mitts for, drains resources that would be better used on improving the user-facing functionality of these apps. And this isn't the only feature like that. There are so many basic sharp edges of the OS UX-wise that will just seemingly never get fixed, and even if were fixed tomorrow, it'd be at least 6 years before those improvements represented even 90% of the Android userbase (something iOS tends to achieve within 12 months...) [and before the nitpickers show up, yes you can override configuration changes and manage that for your own app... no it doesn't scale for any "normal" app]
- gbil 4y ago
  > I'll switch back when Android can handle a screen rotation without blanking the screen. hm, I don't have this experience, maybe last time you checked in an old android device or something ?
  - drewzero1 4y ago
    I've seen it on older apps and ones I've tried to make myself. The app where it's caused me the most grief is in AndFTP where rotating the screen will kill any in-progress file transfers. I've learned to just lock the screen rotation when I'm using that one, which definitely shouldn't be necessary but also isn't the end of the world.

pathartl 4y ago

Some people are willing to make that sacrifice because their limited feature set doesn't impede on their day-to-day use. I know quite a few people who use their phone for nothing but texting, a camera, and two factor auth. Hell, I, who would be considered a power user, spend 99% of the time on my phone browsing the web, Reddit, some Facebook, using a calculator, or taking photos. Most of my computing is done on an actual computer because the form factor of a phone just doesn't satisfy my needs.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago
The reason why I'm on Android instead of a iOS 1200 euro Apple device with fancy sensors is because I don't give a shit about making pictures or videos.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  For me, that is also why my phone was 200€
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    Exactly, Android has phones in the under 400 euro range. I'm just not a cool person flashing expensive iPhone taking Instagram pictures. Drop the camera suite and image processing and you can cut half the cost of a smartphone!
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      What I actually want is mediocre camera, high build quality, small form factor. But I’m pretty sure there are not enough of us, so I have to go with medium cam, build, and size.