Surely cost relative to income is more relevant than cost relative to the rest of the market? Something doesn't magically become cheap just because everything else is ridiculously expensive.

I just can’t wrap my head around sinking that much into a phone when you replace it every year

Usually the people who replace their flagship phone every 1 - 2 years aren't paying full price for it, or at least not upfront. They are receiving trade-in and pre-order discounts, or spreading the cost out over a 12 - 24 month period through a plan with their telco.

> be me
> buy new phone, chose android cause I can install anything on it
> get free iphone from work
> sell iphone on ebay cause I can install anything I want on my android
> google doesnt want me to install anything I want

Fuck me. I kept the wrong phone.

not necessarily. the developer needs to sign the APK with a key issued by Google. the main issue here is that developers will be forced to identify themselves.

I’m just saying Apple doesn’t make anything close to a cheap stripped down $200 model.

Yes, I think that's exactly the point people are trying to make to you.

Sideloading being so easy on iphones

Is it easy? Apple has only made that change in the EU AFAIK, it's still a closed system all around the world.

Banking Apps in my country doesn't even install on Android version of previous 2 version, because "security" reasons...not because of their incompetence to make their app more secure. I had to buy new phone to use my own money.

I liked being able to accidentally brush up against my headphones or putting them down for a moment without them turning off my music.

You might say their words are like farts in the wind

So the users will have to get their own key and give it to the patcher/manager?

Yeah I agree. I've used PMOS as well as Lineage and Graphene.
The latter was the best experience and PMOS was the one that needed the most work, at least to reach any sort of side adoption.

I'm actually looking at something running SailfishOS as my potential happy mid-point, but currently the Jolla phone - which would be my preferred device for this - doesn't seem to shop outside Europe yet.

The EU is no longer an ally in such matters but a bad actor.

In all fairness to smart watches, mine is what turned me on to regularly checking the UV index.

Can't you just do that on your phone? Surely if the UV is high, you just plan accordingly for the day? Sunscreen, wide brim hat, stick to the shade where possible, etc. I can't imagine what benefit constantly checking the UV on your watch gives you. Even if it did happen to fluctuate for some reason, you would be wasting so much time constantly ducking in and out depending on what your watch says at any given moment.

I use GrapheneOS on a Pixel tablet without any Google Play so that doesn't affect me. On my Pixel phone Google Play is sandboxed.
I expect however that Google will disable bootloader unlocking on future Pixel hardware.

You can use F-Droid and other install sources on alternative ROMs.

I find it very strange how many people in the comments here think the solution is to buy an iPhone. Maybe you are all just rich and can afford to spend $1000+ based on vibes, but considering the Android market still has a massive value advantage I'm not really sure what the point of switching is. This all feels very similar to how some Westerners decided Chinese tech and even the Chinese government were suddenly problem-free just because Americans elected Trump for a second time.

I bought a Pixel recently and for 2 days I tried to make it work. 2 whole days of fumbling pain! And I felt fucking horrible. Almost nothing is customizable and everything coated in a thick layer of AI. Every google app has dark patterns. Don't like it? Well too bad, apps like goog photos keep on asking if you want to upload your life with a recurring popup that tries to trick you. Don't want Google Search Bar? Well... you don't get to say no bitch, don't make me hurt you. It is not a healthy relationship.

So. I just took the plunge and flashed GrapheneOS. Graphene will take a bit of work getting replacements for some of my needed apps like mail and map. But there are lots of neat options and I'm having fun with it. Problem fixed.

I used the graphene web install. I booted up my Pi 4B+ and used gnome-disks to flash a MicroSD with Ubuntu 24.10 then installed the two packages in the web install instructions then I got Brave (I went to the Brave homepage and they have some curl option to download. I needed to install curl, did that then got Brave installed. Once brave is installed you have to disable browser fingerprinting memory reduction and disable the "brave shield" (the little shield near the address bar) for the web installer GrapheneOS page. (It's a fresh install, on a Pi, and I know the site, no real risk)

After this you can just press the big buttons on the page and follow the instructions on the page.

There are many ways to do this. They have lists of compatible browsers and operating systems. I picked (eww) Ubuntu and (eww) Brave because they seemed easiest on the list and I did not virtualize or use containers in any way cause it messes up the webUSB magic the website uses. I like to play it safe as possible when firmware is involved so I didnt speed up the instructions. And also when you buy a Pixel, big thing! Turn on dev tools and toggle your oem bootloader setting off and on again. If it can't do that you need to return the phone because it's locked down by carrier.

Well... I hope my long sleep deprived ramblings help someone else break their chains. Read a bunch about it before starting! Good Luck!

That’s keeps the used price for pixels high, which encourages people to buy new pixels cause they know it has a good resale market.

Plus their mission to try to make a phone with fair materials and compensation in their entire production chain. Is it perfect, of course not, but a lot better than all other brands.

This is about Revanced, isn't it? They failed to kill it via the YouTube backend so now it's down to lock down the os and browsers as much as possible to keep feeding people the juicy ads.