Google's Pixel smartphones are continuing to grow in the US, as shipments in the US grew in Q2 2023 while everyone else dropped.
Android is struggling to keep its market share in the United States, as Apple continues to take over in the market. But, despite Android as a whole losing ground, Google Pixel phones are becoming a bigger slice of the US market.
Counterpoint Research reports that, in Q2 2023, US smartphone shipments dropped by 24% year-over-year. That includes both iPhones and Android phones, and virtually every brand saw a drop in shipments. Samsung saw US shipments drop by 37% while Motorola saw a 17% drop. TCL saw the biggest decline at just shy of 70% year-over-year, and even Apple saw a 6% drop.
I use a pixel and I have a hard time justifying a different phone.
Maybe things have changed but the last Samsung I had was an S7 and I didn't like it. It suffered from bloat and didn't last all that long. Battery issues and the screen started to lose sensitivity.
I've used iphones and they aren't bad, but I really dislike apple's app store and effort to control everything on my phone. Also everytime a new phone came out my old phone became next to unusable for a month.
I got a pixel 3 and loved it, now I have a pixel 6 and don't see changing my phone any time soon or going to a non-pixel phone. They last a long time, they work well with everything and the camera is excellent.
I'm looking to switch from Samsung to a non-Google phone, It's too bad no networks seem to carry the Xperia in Canada. Really don't want to shell out $2000 up front for a phone.
You know I used to be with you on the SD card slot thing because phones used to have barely any internal storage. But now we're seeing phones with hundreds of GB of onboard storage and having an SD card expansion on top of that feels wholly unnecessary.
I've used https://shop.fairphone.com/ for a while now, a bit less slick and more expensive, but I'm very satisfied. I already degoogled completely, can't have a Google phone now :D
The maddening thing is how much effort Samsung wastes duplicating basic gapps. Their contacts manager, calendar, etc has no real advantages over the Google ones. Just focus on the hardware and overall experience? Stop wasting time reinventing the wheel. Same with their app store. I've had an S20 for the last 4 years. Used Samsung since the S2 which I still have. And am looking at a pixel to replace it since my security updates are running out.
I don't know what OP is talking about, by the time the S7 came around the bloat was already heavily reduced, I'm on an S10E still and think it's one of the best phones ever, apart from the lackluster battery maybe. But current day Samsung Android I don't consider bloated.
Google keeps locking tons of Android features away behind their own privatized software stack.
Better for Google, but they are cutting their nose to spite their face here, as Android as a whole suffers for it.
Stuff like call screening in the android dialer would be possible on any brand of device. But no, pixel only.
The pixels have the very best android experience. It comes close to iPhone. But pixels aren't the whole market. Overall Google is trying to claw back control of the entire platform and I hate it.
Stuff like call screening in the android dialer would be possible on any brand of device. But no, pixel only.
Other OEMs also have their own features that are exclusive to their own phones. They can also implement them into AOSP, but they don't. Instead, they keep the features to their own devices. A lot of times when there's a new feature on Android in general, more often than not you'll see comments like "Samsung had this since years ago".
So if other OEMs are allowed to have platform specific features, Google is allowed to have theirs too. Or in other words, if you want to hold Google responsible for holding back Android, you have to also hold other OEMs responsible too.
Google owns the platform. You're not really comparing like to like.
It's like saying since Google can modify some files in Windows that Microsoft doesn't control the platform.
Sony upstreams many of its changes, but you're right that Samsung does not. This is both because of differentiation, but also because often the changes are in defiance of the "official" Google spec in android and merging is refused.
One plus for example offers further customization on gesture input that is missing in Android 13, allowing corner bottom swipes, hiding the little nav line, etc. But this cannot merge.
Google has decided a "solution", to hell with if your features are better. I would love to see these features in android mainline. But Google won't allow it. Sony made a theme system years ago, but Android wouldn't fully merge it, and took another 5 or so years to make something.
I think it's beneficial for Google to distance itself from Android. By default, it's way too entangled with Google services. It would be nice to have Google call screening on every Android device, but is it really that far fetched to expect manufacturers to develop their own suite of features? I wouldn't expect iOS to have Android's features of vice versa.
One of the Lemmy developers appears to be a militant communist who denies the Uyghur genocide, yet here we are. Quite a few open source developers are insane and trying to avoid software with problematic contributors is an easy path to follow them into madness. It might stop me from donating money or getting heavily involved with development, but it's not going to stop me from using the software.
I didn't immediately reformat my ReiserFS partitions when Hans Reiser was arrested for murdering his wife either.
I apply the rule of separating the Art from the Artist in this case. No doubt he is insane but Graphene OS is the most secure+private OS that he has build
It's still 45% marketshare Android vs 55% iOS. With the way the title reads, you'd think Android was down in the single digits and barely hanging on.
Personally I just don't see how anyone uses iOS. The iPhone I have is just awful. The UI is clunky and I'm absolutely baffled why this stupid phone weighs so much. That's not a good thing, damn it. My Samsung is infinitely better device in my opinion. But I'd still love to see a third player come in. I was sad when Microsoft killed off their phone OS. It might not have been great at the time, but more competition is always better. And then if course there's also PalmOS. So sad to see such a cool OS die off.
iOS seems to be meant for simplicity and ease of use. I mean, not that Android is confusing at all, but it seems that the less tech focused you are the more you gravitate toward iOS. I would never want an iPhone, but they seem to really kill it in the battery and camera departments.
Samsung and major carriers are shooting android in the foot with the bloatware. There are less and less viable android models that aren't half filled with carrier or manufacturer specific apps that can't be deleted. The pixel might be a tool of the Google devil but at least it provides the illustration of customization. iPhones are still Iphones. People they phone is pretty much the same butvthe hardware gets slightly better. Combine all that with messaging on Iphones essentially excluding android and ut becomes though to stick with anything but a Pixel or iphone. If I didn't have lots of Google stuff setup for work I might reconsider iphones, but the pixel really has made my life easier via Google big brother. If work used apple big brother I would switch.
At this point google is pretty much the only company providing an Android experience that isn't shit
Anyone I've met that hasn't liked it has used a Samsung. They try so hard to be apple but they don't understand the parts that work and just create an overall bloated and shitty experience
I feel like Google really hit their stride with the Pixel 6/7 series. The 7 series especially is just such a nice phone to use and doesn't feel as cheap as previous iterations of the Pixel. It's also great value for the money. I went with the Pro and would recommend against it honestly, because while I like the extra camera and the bigger screen it really doesn't fit great in the average persons hand and the features don't really justify the cost. If I had to do it over again I would get the 7 or 7a.
That camera was just 5 years ahead of everything else, fruit included.
Got a 5 after that, but the selfie cam was crap. And to some extent, it still is on current models. I wish Google did something about it, I can't be the only one noticing.
Respectfully disagree. I've been with Google phones since the Nexus 6p. Upgraded to the Pixel 2 which I still have and still works, then to the 5a which I hated, and now the 7pro. I didn't think it would ever get better than the 2, but the telephoto lens on the 7 pro plus pretty much everything else still amazes me now over a year later. It's perfect and I'm happy I didn't go cheaper.
Don't get me wrong, I love the telephoto lens, but I have a strong feeling I would sacrifice the extra lens for a smaller screen. Then again I do watch a lot of videos so who knows. I think the biggest problem is there isn't really a way to test the two side by side to see.
I love the size and feel of the 7a. It was an adjustment to get used to a small screen again but honestly, so happy with that element of the phone.
The battery life, on the other hand, feels worse than my 4 year old OnePlus 7 Pro's is. I am not sure if it's a me problem or a Pixel problem, but that aspect has me seriously worried about the longevity of the device. I guess you get what you pay for, but I'd expect a bit better for a mid-range phone.
It's, unfortunately, a Pixel problem. The Tensor G2 is notoriously bad with battery life, and the fact that every manufacturer thinks we want paper thin phones doesn't help.
As someone who switched to a Pixel from an iPhone, I'll tell ya that I think the Pixel is a better phone. The only things iOS has going for it that are better is tap to scroll up, swipe to go forward, and a slightly better camera. Everything else works better on my Pixel.
The camera is a bit subjective and varies by generation. The tech and algo on the backend has more effect on the pictures than the camera on most pictures these days. I think the pixel does much better wide angle and scenic type photos.
For me, it's the lack of a replaceable battery and the lack of an SD card slot. Otherwise, it would be a perfect phone to tinker with software-wise with all the custom ROMs that are available for Pixels.
I think the sweet spot is somewhere around the 300€ range. Below that you definitely already get perfectly reasonable phones, but you still have to make compromises. But at that price point you get most things and the missing features are not as important.
Past that diminishing returns are hitting hard.
The one thing that usually scales the most past that point is the camera. But a phone like the pixel 6a already takes amazing photos. And the only real difference you usually find are extra lenses (particularly zoom).
The only time i could ever see those 1k top phones start to make sense is, if we ever get to the point where phones can replace our personal computers and you just slot them into a dock at home.
Is there an Android phone that supports dual boot? I would like to have that so can use Lineage or something similar and only boot into Google android when I need to use banking app or government ID that requires the safetynet antifeture. This would free me from carrying two phones. But I suppose a locked down bootloader can not support dual boot and an unlocked will not support the safetynet antifeature.
There's risk in that. Unless you go through a bunch of other steps to hide magisk, there's quite a few apps that will stop working or flag you just for having magisk, and some games may even ban you from playing. Namely Pokémon go.
My Android phone fucking blows. The one I had prior was great but I lost it. I hate the constant alerts from the apps I can't delete, I can't take up close photos anymore without it looking like shit and not focusing, the screen will flip horizontal at random times when it's got the lock screen option turned on. I don't want a Google phone, though.
I used to have a Samsung Galaxy S6, I rooted it so I could remove the facebook app... turned out they built a custom circuit in a little chip that permanently breaks NFC if you rooted it. Ridiculous.
I've done that before but after updates it seems to reset for some reason? Having to do it over and over is frustrating, unless I'm missing something which is not outside the realm of possibility
I'm biased but I like my Pixel 7 Pro quite a bit, though the Pixel 7 is also good.
Doesn't really matter if it's a Google phone or not though: They track you the exact same unless you fully rip out all Google Services, which also means ripping out all banking apps and the Play store.
Yeah, that's a good point. I feel like in terms of tracking you have to unplug completely to be successful. No Square card readers, no social media, no Google anything, not to mention having to vet every service you use which doesn't feel like it would be worth it.
I've been using oneplus phones for years and theyre awesome but I'm not running the oxygenOS that it comes with, I'm running lineageOS or other AOSP type of roms.
Haven't messed with the stock oxygen (I think it's called ColorOS now?) in a while, but maybe will check it out. Far as I knew it didn't really come with any bloat ware?
oneplus has its own sort of problems
I've heard ram management sucks on oneplus 11 with 12 GB ram because they keep killing apps in background to preserve battery(even after using the phone for weeks so it should've adapted)
I had a Xperia 1III I really enjoyed using it, but my fingerprint sensor just quit work on it on day. Outside of the warranty too so it doesn't help. So I upgraded to a Pixel 7 Pro as I had a 4XL prior to it and liked that.
Would've gone with the 1V, but the 1III was my first Sony phone and that happening sketched me out. Might get another though once it's time to upgrade this one or it craps out. Sony is doing what a lot of other companies aren't and I respect that.
Everyone wants to adopt the Apple model of hardware+software as one (because it's the most profitable). Microsoft is trying with their Surface line, Google with the Pixel, Samsung with their fully custom Android-based OS.
Not really, the company is called HMD Global, Nokia has an investment in it and there are probably a lot of former Nokia employees working there, but it's not a subsidiary.
Yep, they sure do! They target the budget market and therefore are competing mainly with Moto in that area, and even still make feature phones too.
I do wish I saw more marketing for them. The only reason why I even bought my original Nokia 3.1 and then my 5.4 is because I deliberately go out of my way to keep an eye on their products.
The a line of pixel phones is great too. Unlike other brands that gimp the shit out of everything below their $1100 option, the pixel a just makes the full fat ones feel like a worse deal
I have a Pixel myself and I have to say, it's a good phone. It has a coherent experience and I've been able to customize it to my needs.
I also had a couple of phones from other OEMs (not Apple, lol) and they had more useless bloatware that was a pain, and an overall less coherent UX. I think the UX is what gets users to stay (obviously), so I do hope that more Android OEMs will focus in more on that so they can break Apple's market domination in the US.
it's hard to recommend the pixels when my own 7Pro has dust on the selfie camera but also it's under the screen!!
I also suggested the phone to my friend when I got mine and she constantly keeps complaining about the battery. I should had told her to stick with the iPhone and be done. Thanks Google for the shitty hardware! and thanks to the Government for keeping Huawei, ZTE and Xiaomi out of the US market.
Okay your post was pretty good until you went off on the China rant at the end. Chinese phones like Huawei, ZTE and Xiaomi have far worse quality control issues than something like the Google Pixel has.
Not to mention empower a hostile foreign power. We shouldn't be sending tons of money to China. We definitely shouldn't be sending tons of money to China so that they can send us technology which they could remotely brick or watch on large swaths of the population.
I'm not advocating for Chinese phones in particular, but there are no other alternatives as far as I know. Samsung & Google seems to be stagnating and the only valid alternative is just Apple for us.