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A $350 Pixel 6a would be as fast for any tasks as any current iPhone and would feel faster due to really slow iOS animation and scroll speed. It would also have

A $350 Pixel 6a would be as fast for any tasks as any current iPhone and would feel faster due to really slow iOS animation and scroll speed. It would also have a better camera than any current iPhone according to mass consensus in MKBHD blind tests (it won the first place). After Apple stops supporting the iPhone, Pixel will chug along on GrapheneOS or similar.

justsomeadvice0 4y ago
I am looking for such a phone so I looked into this. To make a comparison to the 6A: the Pixel 3A was released in May 2019. Just over 3 years later: it is no longer supported (no updates available) by Google in any way [1]. GrapheneOS lists it as "obsolete" [2]. 1. https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#zippy=%2Cpixel-a-xl-earlier https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#z... 2. https://grapheneos.org/releases#bluejay-stable https://grapheneos.org/releases#bluejay-stable
- karolist 4y ago
  That's a valid point, I have no idea why it's marked obsolete so soon, although latest build is from this month as well. I stand corrected though.
  - justsomeadvice0 4y ago
    I did look a bit more and it does appear LineageOS could work as a long-term alternative OS. I'm a bit hesitant after reading about some of the difficulties imposed by missing google's Playstore and "Safetynet" (sounds like my banking app won't work) but will explore using this on the 6A.
acdha 4y ago
Look, it's okay to have a side you root for due to emotional reasons but this is just silly. When the Pixel 6a was introduced in 2022, its performance was somewhere in between the 2017 iPhone 7 and the 2018 iPhone XS. No magical thinking about "scroll speed" is going to make up for that underlying performance gap. Since this is a technical forum, I am going to plug the blog post Alex Russell (not usually described as an Apple fanboy) made about real-world performance for web developers. One of the challenges we have is that normal people hang on to phones for a while and that's especially true for people who buy cheap phones since they often can't afford to buy a new one every year. When a developer testing on an “old” iPhone has a browser which runs code faster than the current flagship Android phone (iPhone XS ~= Galaxy S22), that means that they effectively have no idea what the web is like for a person using a $200 phone which they've had for a few years. There's a great chart here: https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/#devices-1 https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/#... Now, the Pixel line does have a decent camera so that's potentially a plus but it's not really relevant to the device's capabilities or long-term support situation. It's also unlikely that a single test is telling you that such an old sensor is really the best thing in the world rather than Google's ML pipeline is good at adjusting images to make them appealing to phone users.
- karolist 4y ago
  CPU doesn't matter, all the users do these days is consume content using native apps, what "heavy" web sites do you use on daily basis on your phone? I wasn't talking about specs at all, but it's nice to see iPhone users using specs to defend their choice for once (but remember, it still doesn't matter how much memory iPhone has). Yes animation and scroll speed does indeed make modern Androids feel significantly faster, that's a very common complaint for people switching to iOS on Reddit and same reason I couldn't do it. Also, sensor doesn't matter, what matters is millions of people watching MKBHD channel think Pixel 6a makes better photos than 14 Pro Max, regardless of sensor. For $400 you can buy a touch ID SE with 60Hz screen and camera that is ages behind what $350 Pixel 6a will give you. Ultimately it doesn't matter what you use I just hate the Kool aid "Apple has no competition" thinking, it's not like that and never was since at least 2016. Even price alone there are more expensive android flagmans than iPhones and some people go that way, so it's not just poor people choice or whatever Apple elitists tend to think.
  - acdha 4y ago
    CPU does matter, as even a little research will show: having a CPU which is twice as fast means that the most common thing people do - use the web & “native” apps which use web views - is noticeably faster. It also makes your battery last longer. > Also, sensor doesn't matter, what matters is millions of people watching MKBHD channel think Pixel 6a makes better photos than 14 Pro Max, regardless of sensor. The number of views doesn’t mean that everyone voted (at 5-15 minutes per test, I’d be surprised if it was anywhere near), and it especially doesn’t tell you that a camera is better in absolute terms. His test methodology is randomized, which is good, but it shows small images side by side and they’re not perfectly consistent on composition. That favors certain types of image: higher contrast, brighter colors get the quick wow, very few people are likely to zoom in enough to notice noise or loss of detail, and that last part is especially important as ML processing becomes the norm - one thing people have commented on are the subtle processing artifacts (often described as smudging) that can produce which aren’t obvious at first glance. That doesn’t mean that this is wrong: a ton of photos are never viewed at larger than the Facebook/Instagram default thumbnail size, and punchier photos stand out in those galleries, but it says that a single test giving a single ranking is incomplete. There’s also a selection bias concern: his audience skews towards Android users who are going to be accustomed to the camera, processing, and color matching of those devices. Familiarity matters a lot when you’re making a ton of rapid comparisons. > For $400 you can buy a touch ID SE with 60Hz screen and camera that is ages behind what $350 Pixel 6a will give you Ah, yes, through my amazing power of getting data rather than assuming that my preferred brand is best, I can see the iPhone SE’s 60Hz screen pales before what Google calls “up to 60Hz”: https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_6a_specs?hl=en-US https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_6a_specs?hl=en-US

justsomeadvice0 4y ago

I am looking for such a phone so I looked into this. To make a comparison to the 6A: the Pixel 3A was released in May 2019. Just over 3 years later: it is no longer supported (no updates available) by Google in any way [1]. GrapheneOS lists it as "obsolete" [2]. 1. https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#zippy=%2Cpixel-a-xl-earlier https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#z... 2. https://grapheneos.org/releases#bluejay-stable https://grapheneos.org/releases#bluejay-stable

karolist 4y ago
That's a valid point, I have no idea why it's marked obsolete so soon, although latest build is from this month as well. I stand corrected though.
- justsomeadvice0 4y ago
  I did look a bit more and it does appear LineageOS could work as a long-term alternative OS. I'm a bit hesitant after reading about some of the difficulties imposed by missing google's Playstore and "Safetynet" (sounds like my banking app won't work) but will explore using this on the 6A.

acdha 4y ago

Look, it's okay to have a side you root for due to emotional reasons but this is just silly. When the Pixel 6a was introduced in 2022, its performance was somewhere in between the 2017 iPhone 7 and the 2018 iPhone XS. No magical thinking about "scroll speed" is going to make up for that underlying performance gap. Since this is a technical forum, I am going to plug the blog post Alex Russell (not usually described as an Apple fanboy) made about real-world performance for web developers. One of the challenges we have is that normal people hang on to phones for a while and that's especially true for people who buy cheap phones since they often can't afford to buy a new one every year. When a developer testing on an “old” iPhone has a browser which runs code faster than the current flagship Android phone (iPhone XS ~= Galaxy S22), that means that they effectively have no idea what the web is like for a person using a $200 phone which they've had for a few years. There's a great chart here: https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/#devices-1 https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/#... Now, the Pixel line does have a decent camera so that's potentially a plus but it's not really relevant to the device's capabilities or long-term support situation. It's also unlikely that a single test is telling you that such an old sensor is really the best thing in the world rather than Google's ML pipeline is good at adjusting images to make them appealing to phone users.

karolist 4y ago
CPU doesn't matter, all the users do these days is consume content using native apps, what "heavy" web sites do you use on daily basis on your phone? I wasn't talking about specs at all, but it's nice to see iPhone users using specs to defend their choice for once (but remember, it still doesn't matter how much memory iPhone has). Yes animation and scroll speed does indeed make modern Androids feel significantly faster, that's a very common complaint for people switching to iOS on Reddit and same reason I couldn't do it. Also, sensor doesn't matter, what matters is millions of people watching MKBHD channel think Pixel 6a makes better photos than 14 Pro Max, regardless of sensor. For $400 you can buy a touch ID SE with 60Hz screen and camera that is ages behind what $350 Pixel 6a will give you. Ultimately it doesn't matter what you use I just hate the Kool aid "Apple has no competition" thinking, it's not like that and never was since at least 2016. Even price alone there are more expensive android flagmans than iPhones and some people go that way, so it's not just poor people choice or whatever Apple elitists tend to think.
- acdha 4y ago
  CPU does matter, as even a little research will show: having a CPU which is twice as fast means that the most common thing people do - use the web & “native” apps which use web views - is noticeably faster. It also makes your battery last longer. > Also, sensor doesn't matter, what matters is millions of people watching MKBHD channel think Pixel 6a makes better photos than 14 Pro Max, regardless of sensor. The number of views doesn’t mean that everyone voted (at 5-15 minutes per test, I’d be surprised if it was anywhere near), and it especially doesn’t tell you that a camera is better in absolute terms. His test methodology is randomized, which is good, but it shows small images side by side and they’re not perfectly consistent on composition. That favors certain types of image: higher contrast, brighter colors get the quick wow, very few people are likely to zoom in enough to notice noise or loss of detail, and that last part is especially important as ML processing becomes the norm - one thing people have commented on are the subtle processing artifacts (often described as smudging) that can produce which aren’t obvious at first glance. That doesn’t mean that this is wrong: a ton of photos are never viewed at larger than the Facebook/Instagram default thumbnail size, and punchier photos stand out in those galleries, but it says that a single test giving a single ranking is incomplete. There’s also a selection bias concern: his audience skews towards Android users who are going to be accustomed to the camera, processing, and color matching of those devices. Familiarity matters a lot when you’re making a ton of rapid comparisons. > For $400 you can buy a touch ID SE with 60Hz screen and camera that is ages behind what $350 Pixel 6a will give you Ah, yes, through my amazing power of getting data rather than assuming that my preferred brand is best, I can see the iPhone SE’s 60Hz screen pales before what Google calls “up to 60Hz”: https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_6a_specs?hl=en-US https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_6a_specs?hl=en-US