fuck google. fuck the pixel. and fuck grapheneos.
imposing an artificial entry barrier of hundreds of dollars/euros for not getting assraped on the reg gets a well deserved fuck you and die. the vast percentage of gos functionality can be had with lineageOS and a few tweaks, for a tenth of the price.
$500 for a phone is not fucking “reasonable”! shit’s supposed to get better and cheaper at the same time. but if your easily breakable slab of glass costed $99, that’s not hella much profit for their gaping assholes.
and miss me with the “refurbished” (isn’t) - $200 for a used phone that was spat on and rubbed and used in the shitter and now has a bad battery is not reasonable.
my sincerest apologies to the huge population beset by nation-state actors, who got no alternative to locked bootloaders and are exposed to evil-maid scenarios. the rest of us can get two $50 used phones, run lineageos on one (while that’s still a thing), postmarketOS on the other, and accelerate the latter’s progress by shipping like a quarter of the remaining balance to its developers.
You know what? Good. Endless increases in speed/soc is unsustainable. I would much rather have increases in QoL things, like a larger battery (or in the case here, a brighter screen). Make the only change from the previous year adding back in a Micro SD card tray, something like that. And a $499 price tag seems reasonable for 7 years of software support. Now if we could get the wild form factors from the non-smartphone era…
They could also just quit the yearly refresh cycle. Apple went several years between SE updates. Google could do the same. With changes this minor, why bother? It’s just a marketing gimmick to trick uninformed consumers.
Buy a 9a for cheaper. You can probably even get a regular Pixel 9 for cheaper.
Google fi is running it for preorder at 249 for 128gb and 349 for 256gb.
But I agree unless there are some major upgrades the yearly releases in most of the phones are no longer needed. Until we have holographic screens or direct to brain support or something else that is ground breaking I doubt there are going to be much more than incremental changes.
Micro SD card tray
removed for profit motive pushing you to cloud ongoing revenue (much as I want it, wierdly Sony XPeria is the holdout of the mains here, I guess for music). A script or two can fix that by cycling content through what you have.
Love the low price. I’ve been buying the pixel A out of pocket for years. Hate having to pay things off installments. Just give me a cheap phone
No jack? Send it back.
Meanwhile Fairphone exists
Does Fairphone run Graphene?
That’s the sad part, unfortunately not atm. But they announced a possibility of their own phone with enough security features: https://www.androidauthority.com/graphene-os-major-android-oem-partnership-3606853/
I think they should drop the a series. The used phone market can fill the gap.
The a series phones have been the best bang for your buck android phones since they have released imo. Plus they support GrapheneOS.
I’ve had several from the a series and I’ve liked them. I currently have the 9a and I hate it. The corners are very round, and important real estate (e.g. buttons, text fields) are regularly cut off and unreachable. There’s no way to fix this that I’ve found.
At 299 or 399, but at 499?? That’s a hard pass. You can get a used pixel for less and better specs. I get it that people like new, but phone innovation has mostly stalled.
If you’re buying an a series phone, you’re probably not buying it for the features. You’re buying it for the simplicity, long support life, and sturdiness. That phone will last 7+ years.
Will this hardware support grapheneOS? Keeping a reasonably modern hardware updated with degoogled OS would be my next device.
The 10 series is supported. It may take a few months to add support, but I do not see a reason why it wouldn’t get it. If you are buying it for Graphene, I would wait until they announce it is supported before jumping.
It will probably be faster because it is essentially the same device as the 9a the only differences that might affect software are that the screen has a slightly higher brightness and it has slightly higher charging speed. Everything else is the same even the soc
Likely the last, likely there’s a rugpull (they can chose to stop providing security updates), but as advertised good for 7 years! gOS is a worthy aspiration, I’m thinking of updating, don’t want anything else until, and if, linux phone happens.
I’ve been using the A series since pixel 2. I want something new and cheap. I don’t trust used battery life
You can get a new battery for an older phone installed. I’m just saying this is getting like the car market where buying used is the value leader.
I love a budget phone. At this point the lower end specs are good enough for me. I want all makers to have a low spec budget phone
In this case though the 9a is the exact same as the 10a except the 10a has a slightly higher brightness screen and you can get a refurbished excellent 9a for $160 less than a 10a
I’m not going to buy one because I have a Pixel 9a but it’s good they are making one
