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Google pixel 9 pro do
- Thread starter kstewart61
- Start date
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Ah… good luck. I made an account specifically because I thought this is interesting. I did the extract same experiment for a month. My Pixel 9 is currently up for sale, I guess that says enough.
Background - iPhone 13 Pro, had it since launch. At 3 years of use I was just getting bored. I used to be an Android fanboy when I was younger having owned and modified (custom ROMs, root, bootloader unlock etc) a number of Android phones. Using loads of Google apps on iPhone, not locked in any way other than Car Play.
I was really excited, switched the SIM cards and the first hurdle was my older car that only has Apple car play. Quickly resolved by buying a burner SIM and sticking the iPhone in the glovebox, Waze and Spotify were restored.
Everything else was from the Android. The software is just not polished 10 years into “material” design (a few will remember Android 5 and the major changes and foundations it laid). The space at the top and bottom of the very nice display are often completely dead space on 3rd party apps.
And herein lies the issue that is still plaguing Android, all the first party apps and most Google apps are fine. Once you branch out to other stuff, like social media or baking it’s a design disaster. I don’t blame the developers as they have 100 different DPIs and display sizes they have to consider but you’d think the flagship Google phone would be priority.
Google Pay would work temperamentally, at one point my card not being accepted at a vendor. Unacceptable from any point of view, I took the card out and it worked just fine. On another note, I see this on a daily basis at my work. I process hundreds of contactless transactions a day and the number of times a PDQ declines Android/Samsung Pay is usually 50%. It works on the second try right enough, but cmon, it’s not that hard. Also, embarrassing for the user in some cases.
Bitwarden, my password manager, did not want to play ball with Android even though it had any and every permission under the sun allowed. Funny when you think about it, Android is meant to be less secure, more open to apps integrating within each other. Well Bitwarden would frequently not suggest the password when I’m on a login page so I had to waste time and go and copy and paste from the vault in the app. Never ever has this been an issue on iPhone.
Last niggle was the calculator app, I use it daily and for some unknown reason when the status bar menu was dropped it would say “unavailable” under the calculator. Pretty funny, but also a bug. One of many, just feels like a rough unpolished version, just like it did 6 years ago.
The things I loved about the Pixel - keyboard. Wayyyyy better and more responsive than iPhones one. The camera and the AI processing or whatever it does resulted in better photos in my opinion than 13P.
It deals with public open WiFi networks a lot better than iPhone, it will notify you that you need to login in the notifications and with a click it will connect to. iPhone has a ridiculous flaw where you connect to the WiFi and you just wait on the WiFi page until the login prompt comes up, shall you accidentally swipe it away you start from the beginning… annoying. Also, it held on to the network. My iPhone seems to forget the network after some time.
That’s about it. It’s a phone, it will work. Whether you can deal with certain bugs and annoyances over what I assume you had on iOS is up to you. For me, after 4 weeks I called the experiment done.
My life is busy enough to have to deal with bugs and “look after” my phone. It needs to be there, ready to pay for example, right away.
Don’t get me started on value retention. I bought my Pixel for the price that my 3 year old 13P would go on the second hand market for. That’s embarrassing slashing of the RRP when the Pixel was only released 3 months ago.
Good luck on your journey, let us know if you get used to it.
Background - iPhone 13 Pro, had it since launch. At 3 years of use I was just getting bored. I used to be an Android fanboy when I was younger having owned and modified (custom ROMs, root, bootloader unlock etc) a number of Android phones. Using loads of Google apps on iPhone, not locked in any way other than Car Play.
I was really excited, switched the SIM cards and the first hurdle was my older car that only has Apple car play. Quickly resolved by buying a burner SIM and sticking the iPhone in the glovebox, Waze and Spotify were restored.
Everything else was from the Android. The software is just not polished 10 years into “material” design (a few will remember Android 5 and the major changes and foundations it laid). The space at the top and bottom of the very nice display are often completely dead space on 3rd party apps.
And herein lies the issue that is still plaguing Android, all the first party apps and most Google apps are fine. Once you branch out to other stuff, like social media or baking it’s a design disaster. I don’t blame the developers as they have 100 different DPIs and display sizes they have to consider but you’d think the flagship Google phone would be priority.
Google Pay would work temperamentally, at one point my card not being accepted at a vendor. Unacceptable from any point of view, I took the card out and it worked just fine. On another note, I see this on a daily basis at my work. I process hundreds of contactless transactions a day and the number of times a PDQ declines Android/Samsung Pay is usually 50%. It works on the second try right enough, but cmon, it’s not that hard. Also, embarrassing for the user in some cases.
Bitwarden, my password manager, did not want to play ball with Android even though it had any and every permission under the sun allowed. Funny when you think about it, Android is meant to be less secure, more open to apps integrating within each other. Well Bitwarden would frequently not suggest the password when I’m on a login page so I had to waste time and go and copy and paste from the vault in the app. Never ever has this been an issue on iPhone.
Last niggle was the calculator app, I use it daily and for some unknown reason when the status bar menu was dropped it would say “unavailable” under the calculator. Pretty funny, but also a bug. One of many, just feels like a rough unpolished version, just like it did 6 years ago.
The things I loved about the Pixel - keyboard. Wayyyyy better and more responsive than iPhones one. The camera and the AI processing or whatever it does resulted in better photos in my opinion than 13P.
It deals with public open WiFi networks a lot better than iPhone, it will notify you that you need to login in the notifications and with a click it will connect to. iPhone has a ridiculous flaw where you connect to the WiFi and you just wait on the WiFi page until the login prompt comes up, shall you accidentally swipe it away you start from the beginning… annoying. Also, it held on to the network. My iPhone seems to forget the network after some time.
That’s about it. It’s a phone, it will work. Whether you can deal with certain bugs and annoyances over what I assume you had on iOS is up to you. For me, after 4 weeks I called the experiment done.
My life is busy enough to have to deal with bugs and “look after” my phone. It needs to be there, ready to pay for example, right away.
Don’t get me started on value retention. I bought my Pixel for the price that my 3 year old 13P would go on the second hand market for. That’s embarrassing slashing of the RRP when the Pixel was only released 3 months ago.
Good luck on your journey, let us know if you get used to it.