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I'm tempted to get one to replace my very cracked Pixel 9 Pro XL. With all the incentives Google offers for Google Fi customers it's not all that expensive. Com

by cpeth 2mo ago

I'm tempted to get one to replace my very cracked Pixel 9 Pro XL. With all the incentives Google offers for Google Fi customers it's not all that expensive. Comes out to about $1100 after trade-in and includes a free Pixel Watch 5. I'm foldable-curious and Samsung just includes too much overlapping bloat "features". Gemini is bad enough, I don't need Bixby and whatever else. Not to mention I would have to pay full price.

drop_star 2mo ago
> free Pixel Watch 5. Personally, I find smart watches a gimmick but maybe I havnt looked into them enough.
- dominojab 2mo ago
  [dead]
daoboy 2mo ago
I'm on my last Samsung for this reason. Just way too much bloatware, need to agree to a new privacy policy once a week, and every time it updates I find a few new apps on my phone I didn't want. Gonna hold out for the Motorola/Graphene phone though. One of the models is supposed to be a flagship foldable.
- microtonal 2mo ago
  I also have a Samsung phone besides a Pixel with GrapheneOS and I just ripped out Gemini, most of Bixby, etc. using UAD-ng. It's very clean now, but I still have all the customizability of OneUI, Good Lock, etc.
- parl_match 2mo ago
  imo just get a pixel. unlockable bootloader and almost guaranteed support from pretty much every major privacy-related android fork. and many of them are building support for the titan chip if they dont have it already
- preisschild 2mo ago
  Unless you really have a large ethical problem with paying for any google product, I'd just recommend to get one of the previous-gen pixel devices. They are a lot cheaper than the Motorola smartphone coming out.
DANmode 2mo ago
If you run GrapeheneOS on it and use it as your full machine while wired to a display or three, sure. Otherwise, in no world is $1100 for a cell phone anything but expensive. Yes, iPhones are also expensive.
- garciasn 2mo ago
  It’s $1800; they are applying trade-in and some sort of GoogleFi discount to get it down to $1100. Nearly $2000 after tax for a phone is fucking absurd.
  - Grombobulous 2mo ago
    That’s in the eye of the beholder. Folding phones are unique devices and the best tri-fold designs can legitimately replace a tablet. A whole lot of people use their phone as their primary and most-used device. I don’t think a high price is insane, it’s just that folks who consider them a utility and a side-device to a desktop computer tend not to feel that way. Many millennials and older who grew up with desktops and laptops probably can’t comprehend the idea of a phone being the only device or primary device. My iPhone was something like $1300 and I feel like it was worth every penny, and that a cheaper model did not meet my needs and wants.
- Grombobulous 2mo ago
  The other thing I would say is that Pixels are just not high end hardware and they masquerade like they are. They get these insane launch sale deals like we are seeing now and the whole reason for that is because they aren’t competitive with true flagships. It’s just not really a flagship phone in terms of processor performance. I know Samsung has a lot more of their garbage software on it but I think if I was in the Android market I’d probably be inclined for a Samsung device over a Pixel. If I lived in Europe or Asia I’d be looking at something Chinese that’s not sold in the US market. Companies like Xiaomi and Huawei make way better phones than Google.
  - microtonal 2mo ago
    Samsung also has these kinds of sales. A bunch of people on a forum I frequent had some Z Fold 8 just north of 1000 Euro with a trade in and by stacking coupons. Heck, even flagships like the S26 Ultra, which was introduced in March and still dominates the CPU, GPU, etc. charts are currently 500 Euro off in my country. Even discounted, Pixel have pretty bad prices compared to the competition. The primary reason to buy a Pixel is to run GrapheneOS. Otherwise, just get an iPhone or if you are willing to remove the bloat with UAD some Samsung phone.
rurp 2mo ago
> Samsung just includes too much overlapping bloat "features" Yep, that's a major drawback. My partner has a Samsung phone and seeing all of the included bloatware, plus the terrible updates and add even more, made me not even consider one of their devices last time I bought a phone.
- calvinmorrison 2mo ago
  how about any time the system updates it automatically installs gambling apps on my phone?
  - microtonal 2mo ago
    Are you sure it's not some carrier install? (Which are apparently a thing in the US.) I have never seen anything like that on a flagship Samsung, nor our daughter's A series.
    - TaLiTr 2mo ago
      At work we bought a used tablet off eBay to replace a customer device where they really wanted an identical (obsolete) model. OMG the amount of extra crap that Verizon branded tablet had pre-installed was agonizing. All system apps so you couldn't get rid of it.
      - microtonal 2mo ago
        It's worth mentioning that on most Android phones and tablets, you can uninstall apps from the user partition even when they are system apps with adb or a UI for it like UAD-ng.
    - calvinmorrison 2mo ago
      i take the position that it's all dog shit and i dont care whos fault it is, all of these people need to be put in front of a tribunal and justice done
Grombobulous 2mo ago
Just be careful about what your actual use case is. For example, this form factor of foldable doesn’t give you significantly more screen real estate for 16:9 video content since it’s such a square aspect ratio. They also generally aren’t large enough to take advantage of tablet layouts, while tri-fold designs fold out to be almost identical to a tablet size. You have to really want to use two apps side by side in my opinion.
- DANmode 2mo ago
  The ability to get server-side checks to clear me for tablet mode of PWAs is worth any price, honestly. I’ll never go back to tiny thin rectangle.
krisroadruck 2mo ago
I'm on fi and got the fold 8 through fi for a pretty steep discount. It was cash off immediately + fi credits. I can pull up exact details if you care but it was several hundred dollars off split pretty evenly between instant discount and fi credits. Coming from nearly 10 years of pixels/nexus the transition hasn't been that bad. I miss a couple pixel exclusives, but nearly all the samsung bloatware can be disabled or removed entirely. I haven't bumped into bixby once. One genuine nice Samsung feature is DeX. Been using it + moonlight (when needed) to make the phone basically a secondary computer when hooked up to USB-C monitor. Honestly I think this phone may end up replacing several other devices - kindle, gaming portable (eg: steamdeck, replaced by phone + GameSir G8 + controller), laptop, tablet. I think it can only replace laptop in my use case because I can remote into my desktop from it if I need extra compute - so if you are laptop only I don't expect it to be a straight replacement. Honestly, best phone I've ever used - but I hope next year either google gets off the sidelines and adopts passport form factor + gets its shit together on the crease, cpu and dex equivalent so I can get my pixel exclusives and vanilla OS back, or alternatively Samsung makes the wide form factor the "ultra" and gives us better cameras, speaker placement, s-pen and IP68.
free652 2mo ago
>Comes out to about $1100 after trade-in and includes a free Pixel Watch 5. Thats expensive :/
- shlant 2mo ago
  it's crazy how normalized spending 1k+ on a phone has become. I can't imagine paying that for a phone that is almost identical in features I care about to something 1/3 the price.
  - dominojab 2mo ago
    [dead]
nicman23 2mo ago
just a heads up, the gpu is actually terrible. it is not even the actual gpu that is the issue but the software

by cpeth 2mo ago

drop_star 2mo ago

> free Pixel Watch 5. Personally, I find smart watches a gimmick but maybe I havnt looked into them enough.

dominojab 2mo ago
[dead]

daoboy 2mo ago

I'm on my last Samsung for this reason. Just way too much bloatware, need to agree to a new privacy policy once a week, and every time it updates I find a few new apps on my phone I didn't want. Gonna hold out for the Motorola/Graphene phone though. One of the models is supposed to be a flagship foldable.

microtonal 2mo ago
I also have a Samsung phone besides a Pixel with GrapheneOS and I just ripped out Gemini, most of Bixby, etc. using UAD-ng. It's very clean now, but I still have all the customizability of OneUI, Good Lock, etc.
parl_match 2mo ago
imo just get a pixel. unlockable bootloader and almost guaranteed support from pretty much every major privacy-related android fork. and many of them are building support for the titan chip if they dont have it already
preisschild 2mo ago
Unless you really have a large ethical problem with paying for any google product, I'd just recommend to get one of the previous-gen pixel devices. They are a lot cheaper than the Motorola smartphone coming out.

DANmode 2mo ago

If you run GrapeheneOS on it and use it as your full machine while wired to a display or three, sure. Otherwise, in no world is $1100 for a cell phone anything but expensive. Yes, iPhones are also expensive.

garciasn 2mo ago
It’s $1800; they are applying trade-in and some sort of GoogleFi discount to get it down to $1100. Nearly $2000 after tax for a phone is fucking absurd.
- Grombobulous 2mo ago
  That’s in the eye of the beholder. Folding phones are unique devices and the best tri-fold designs can legitimately replace a tablet. A whole lot of people use their phone as their primary and most-used device. I don’t think a high price is insane, it’s just that folks who consider them a utility and a side-device to a desktop computer tend not to feel that way. Many millennials and older who grew up with desktops and laptops probably can’t comprehend the idea of a phone being the only device or primary device. My iPhone was something like $1300 and I feel like it was worth every penny, and that a cheaper model did not meet my needs and wants.
Grombobulous 2mo ago
The other thing I would say is that Pixels are just not high end hardware and they masquerade like they are. They get these insane launch sale deals like we are seeing now and the whole reason for that is because they aren’t competitive with true flagships. It’s just not really a flagship phone in terms of processor performance. I know Samsung has a lot more of their garbage software on it but I think if I was in the Android market I’d probably be inclined for a Samsung device over a Pixel. If I lived in Europe or Asia I’d be looking at something Chinese that’s not sold in the US market. Companies like Xiaomi and Huawei make way better phones than Google.
- microtonal 2mo ago
  Samsung also has these kinds of sales. A bunch of people on a forum I frequent had some Z Fold 8 just north of 1000 Euro with a trade in and by stacking coupons. Heck, even flagships like the S26 Ultra, which was introduced in March and still dominates the CPU, GPU, etc. charts are currently 500 Euro off in my country. Even discounted, Pixel have pretty bad prices compared to the competition. The primary reason to buy a Pixel is to run GrapheneOS. Otherwise, just get an iPhone or if you are willing to remove the bloat with UAD some Samsung phone.

rurp 2mo ago

> Samsung just includes too much overlapping bloat "features" Yep, that's a major drawback. My partner has a Samsung phone and seeing all of the included bloatware, plus the terrible updates and add even more, made me not even consider one of their devices last time I bought a phone.

calvinmorrison 2mo ago
how about any time the system updates it automatically installs gambling apps on my phone?
- microtonal 2mo ago
  Are you sure it's not some carrier install? (Which are apparently a thing in the US.) I have never seen anything like that on a flagship Samsung, nor our daughter's A series.
  - TaLiTr 2mo ago
    At work we bought a used tablet off eBay to replace a customer device where they really wanted an identical (obsolete) model. OMG the amount of extra crap that Verizon branded tablet had pre-installed was agonizing. All system apps so you couldn't get rid of it.
    - microtonal 2mo ago
      It's worth mentioning that on most Android phones and tablets, you can uninstall apps from the user partition even when they are system apps with adb or a UI for it like UAD-ng.
  - calvinmorrison 2mo ago
    i take the position that it's all dog shit and i dont care whos fault it is, all of these people need to be put in front of a tribunal and justice done

Grombobulous 2mo ago

Just be careful about what your actual use case is. For example, this form factor of foldable doesn’t give you significantly more screen real estate for 16:9 video content since it’s such a square aspect ratio. They also generally aren’t large enough to take advantage of tablet layouts, while tri-fold designs fold out to be almost identical to a tablet size. You have to really want to use two apps side by side in my opinion.

DANmode 2mo ago
The ability to get server-side checks to clear me for tablet mode of PWAs is worth any price, honestly. I’ll never go back to tiny thin rectangle.

krisroadruck 2mo ago

I'm on fi and got the fold 8 through fi for a pretty steep discount. It was cash off immediately + fi credits. I can pull up exact details if you care but it was several hundred dollars off split pretty evenly between instant discount and fi credits. Coming from nearly 10 years of pixels/nexus the transition hasn't been that bad. I miss a couple pixel exclusives, but nearly all the samsung bloatware can be disabled or removed entirely. I haven't bumped into bixby once. One genuine nice Samsung feature is DeX. Been using it + moonlight (when needed) to make the phone basically a secondary computer when hooked up to USB-C monitor. Honestly I think this phone may end up replacing several other devices - kindle, gaming portable (eg: steamdeck, replaced by phone + GameSir G8 + controller), laptop, tablet. I think it can only replace laptop in my use case because I can remote into my desktop from it if I need extra compute - so if you are laptop only I don't expect it to be a straight replacement. Honestly, best phone I've ever used - but I hope next year either google gets off the sidelines and adopts passport form factor + gets its shit together on the crease, cpu and dex equivalent so I can get my pixel exclusives and vanilla OS back, or alternatively Samsung makes the wide form factor the "ultra" and gives us better cameras, speaker placement, s-pen and IP68.

free652 2mo ago

>Comes out to about $1100 after trade-in and includes a free Pixel Watch 5. Thats expensive :/

shlant 2mo ago
it's crazy how normalized spending 1k+ on a phone has become. I can't imagine paying that for a phone that is almost identical in features I care about to something 1/3 the price.
- dominojab 2mo ago
  [dead]

nicman23 2mo ago

just a heads up, the gpu is actually terrible. it is not even the actual gpu that is the issue but the software