I feel like a broken record saying this, but stop buying Google products. They make nice passion projects but don’t support them long-term.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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My Google Pixel is great. Best phone around, gets updates before everyone else, takes better video and photos than any other Android phone, doesn't have any ads baked into the OS (Samsung), doesn't come with any pre-installed malware like Facebook and Amazon (Samsung).
I'll keep buying Google devices if they make sense. Thanks.
Enjoy your phone. I've been burned by buying/using:
- LG G Watch (WearOS 2.0 killed support for smart watches without buttons for no reason. WearOS 1.x worked fine without a button)
- Google OnHub (Google moved on to Google WiFi and ignored this so-called "future-roof" router 1 year later)
- Google Home Max (EOL'd just a few months after I bought two brand new ones for my wife to have video calls with her family)
- Android phones with Google Play Edition (also killed off)
- Google Wave (RIP)
- Google+ (RIP. I pushed a bunch of people to join too)
- Google Nexus
- Google Duo (I tried to get others to use it to no avail)
- Google Allo (I really pushed people to use this as the "next" message platform. SMS support never came)
- Google Hangouts (Google messed with this application/service constantly)
I might just be really unlucky with the above, but Gmail, Google Search, and ChromeOS are the only things I have some trust in using long-term. I personally believe Google will kill the Pixel line entirely at some point. My hope is that they DO continue to make and support the pixel line because more competition is good, I'm just jaded and don't trust them enough to support their endeavors going forward.
The reason those three products are safe is because they can use them to protect their ad business. No other reason.
They've had the Pixel line and the previous Nexus line for nearly all of Android's existence. I don't see any reason to believe they'll just stop it suddenly. On the other hand, it also wouldn't surprise me at all if they did. I loved the Nexus line, but every time I've tried the Pixel line it was just a fancy hand warmer. My Pixel 2, 5, 6, and 7 all had terrible battery life. I had some OnePlus phones in between that were much better and now I traded in my Pixel 7 for an S23 Ultra.
And it sends you location data to google a few hundred times a day, nice features.
To be fair, there probably isn't a phone out there that isn't tracking you, and even if you found one, your carrier is tracking your location and selling that data too.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Google makes a big deal out of its partnership with iFixit and the availability of replacement parts for its products, but one Google product that doesn't seem fixable is the Pixel Watch.
After spotting some posts from Pixel Watch users seeking a remedy after cracking the glass and coming up with no clear answers, The Verge got Google to confirm that, even 11 months after launch, there is no repair plan right now.
Google can't fix your watch.
The whole top half of the watch is one big glass hemisphere, so it's not difficult to bang one of the glass corners into something and shatter the watch.
This might all seem like it's against the spirit of Google's big repairability announcement in 2022, but that blog post says the program is for Pixel phones, not any of the other stuff Google sells.
With the Pixel Watch 2 coming out soon, we'll be sure to ask Google if there are any repair plans this time.
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