Google has been tastefully integrating AI into phones for a while now using opt-ins. The now-many-years old phone screening feature ensures the fear of spam won't lead to unintentionally missing calls from the doctor/dentist who call from unknown numbers. Screening suspicious calls instead of declining them is a massive quality of life improvement, and having an AI assistant answer your phone and do a live transcription is straight from the Jetsons.

And there is a feature now to show you how busy a customer service line is at a particular time, and to give you a text transcript with clickable buttons for the phone tree.

If an annoying phone tree is going to take 3 minutes to navigate by listening to the prompts, then it will also take 3 minutes to navigate by letting the AI listen and write little buttons for me.

I didn't really save any time.

If on the other hand it could say "other users have seen this phone tree before, so here is the whole searchable tree with no waiting", that would be a noteworthy feature.

There are probably only ~10,000 phone trees that cover the vast majority of calls in the USA.

If a phone tree is seen by many users and is identical, there is probably no privacy reason not to publish it. Even moreso if the total number of digits typed in quick succession is < 4 (ie. user hasn't entered some password to get in). A human operator could be the final check.

Also, it often prevents me from having to listen to the tree twice, if I am looking for a better option and then decide a previous one was actually the better fit.

Probably because it's just bolting more shit on the ends of a shitty, outdated relic of a system. Like, we have two different computers, one of which is playing back a pre-recorded voice, to a computer which is transcribing that voice into text and buttons, so it can play a generated voice back to the other computer, which will then interpret that voice into text, then perform an action based on that text. The action probably being repeating that process a few more times.

This is remarkably bad. I'm remembering the last time I had to deal with Apple Support. I didn't sit on hold for hours, I told them I needed a call, told them what the issue was, gave a brief summary, and then their support person called me, I was immediately on the phone with a human, she sorted out my problem, and the entire thing took probably 10 minutes tops, including filling out the form.

It feels like these legitimate challenges to businesses to manage their customer service lines, support lines, etc. have actual solutions that:

a) don't require two different damn computers talking over a shitty low-baud connection to one another, and

b) result in a better experience for all parties involved

If they'd just be willing to spend a little goddamn money, like they actually care to provide good service, rather than just paying lip service to it while offering the same garbage system they've offered since the fucking 1970's.

Wrong. These are not challenges. The customer service lines work exactly as designed: as cheap as possible to operate, as effective as possible in preventing majority of the callers from engaging support staff and starting any kind of support process. And the magic, most people who try and fail to get support believe it's their own fault - they're not being patient enough, or persistent enough, or maybe the problem isn't that big a deal, etc.

The companies don't want you to work around the phone tree and hold time. And once most people have tools that are able to, the companies will adjust their support channels to compensate.

i googled this; looks like it means "Interactive Voice Response" menu, describing automated phone systems where the user navigates a series of options using either their phone buttons or their voice.

If it's a common number for a support line it actually shows you the options before they're stated by the robot. Say for example if I call bank of america's support line, it will show the not-yet-said options as greyed out, but selectable. If the call robot accepts early inputs you can actually navigate a phone menu quite rapidly. Pair that with the estimated wait times or "hold for me" you can save yourself the headache of "actively" waiting.

Tastefully integrating AI involves not uploading all of my photos and speech and text to the cloud and doing who knows what with that personal data.

The majority of this data should never leave my device and that's why on-device LLMs/AI are much more tasteful.

Heck, Google is removing Location History storage from their side and making it device side only. Users in the past few weeks are getting notified to trigger the migration to device storage or all data is deleted.

And with every new phone I always power on it without an account, update, reset and only then add an account; I had my share of 'I did disable that thing'

EDIT:

[0] and they claimed what there is not enough storage for it. On a fresh phone with 128Gb on board. For the small array of ~30-100 letters. Fuckers.

In the world of laptops, we have a wonderful situation. I can select the hardware that I like, then wipe the whole disk and install the software I like. Which in my case is a Linux distribution and then exactly the applications I prefer.

I wish the world of phones was like that.

… they would enable swapping button order.

… they would remove gestures.

… they would improve OS stability.

… they would add a hardware do not disturb switch.

… they would add hardware camera and microphone switches.

… they would add a headphone jack.

Their phones are still preferable to iPhones, because at least with a Pixel one owns one’s own phone.

But on the positive side i like the new 9 pro because of its smaller size + hardware improvements (better ultrawide, ultra sonic finger print sensor, 16GB RAM...)

I'm surprised Pixels don't; small things like this area each QoL wins.

I have the Pixel "a" devices, and hope they can stay at that price point.

Mostly just curious as to why there are ~0 positive comments here. I suspect could be:

1) anti-google HN bias - perhaps deserved? 2) it's simply more tempting/satisfying/rewarding to complain about rather than to praise big companies 3) any other ideas?

I'm guessing the 95% negative comment proportion isn't representative though so I was curious if anyone had any explanations for the HN skew

It's not really Google specific either - if you look at any other topic, even Linux or OSS related, there's going to be bunch of highly upvoted people ranting and raving. That pushes out any kind of positive discussion and normal people leave.

I see a lot of resentment and projection in people’s comments.

And most of the time the ,comments are useless and don’t represent the general consumer/citizen opinion.

This is specially true for anonymous profiles

Mental health is notoriously declining and I myself feel the difference when there are days where I don’t touch social media.

I also found that some social media affect me more than others, namely X.

Before the acquisition I remember feeling like I was under an authoritarian regime censoring everything and that made me feel bitter.

After Elon there were short periods where there were no bots, and the algo was actually adapting to me, I didn’t feel bad using it.

But right now its so toxic and full of fear mongering posts, making it unbearable.

I hope society figures this out quickly because AI is only quickening the decline.

20 yrs ago, most of the Internet users were teenagers and very young adults.

Most of these people are in their late 30s to 40s now. Did new kids join too? Sure! But if you look at the birth rates of our societies, you'll notice that it's a bell curve. Consequently, the average age is going up.

Furthermore, there is a strong selection bias with this demographic: the happier they're, the less likely they're going to be on these platforms, because they'll prioritize family, hobbies or whatever else over ... Well... "shit posting with random strangers".

Ultimately you're left with a significant chunk of people that are often disgruntled, jaded or outright mentally unwell.

It takes curated communities in order to overcome. Some places do better than others. It's also all to easy for biases to become policy in some of these communities/sites which can wind up almost worse than the shit posting to begin with.

The only thing I like is the possible better camera sensors, but that won't make me shed thousands of dollars for it. If I have the choice I'd rather have a more compact model with the camera quality of the previous iteration which was already great.

I can understand it will sell because a lot of people have the feeling they live a crappy life and wants to cheat by taking crappy pictures and videos and have a some magic inventing a better imaginary life that they can share on instagram and tiktok but I am not one of them. If I take a picture, I want to get the moment, with all its imperfections including the sad face of a stranger or dog peeing leg up against a wall in the background.

And yes I understand I am not everyone, but I really don't care what everyone want because I am not the one trying to sell that phone.

The next killer-feature in the race to the bottom is probably software, not hardware, and is near realtime translation. Samsung is airing an advert for that right now, but it's not real time.

Better "AI" with a faster CPU and everyone has their own Babel fish.

Which phone are you using then? I presume your usage is totally non-representative of the average normal user, but curious nonetheless.

I've tended to like the close to stock experience, but I do turn off all. the assistant features that I can.

I do the usual stuff, navigation, whatsapp, music, video...except I tend to avoid installing apps when the corresponding website works well (but I still have lots of different apps) and the only social media I am connecting to is the fediverse through the browser.

On paper, it’s largely the same as prior years for the SoC at least. I think the fold has the most obvious upgrade but nothing I’d consider really major. Other than that, it seems like mostly a camera bump year?

Beyond that https://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Google-Pixel-9-vs-Pixel-8... shows:

- Much brighter screen - Next gen tensor chip - 50% ram upgrade - Better camera + battery - SOS functionality - Better ultrasonic fingerprint sensor

Holistically felt like meaningful improvements across the board to me, but I understand where you're coming from. I think maybe I have lower expectations for improvements year to year

I think perhaps one of the reasons for the negativity here is that the price is approaching flagship from other companies, but that Tensor G4 performs like chips from four years ago.

I think that overshadows a lot of the improvements. Perhaps if the whole package was significantly cheaper, the reception would be more balanced.

Not even the same. The 9P screen has lower PPI than my 7P, the camera has worse field of view and the battery has lower capacity.

First sentence of the current top voted comment. What's constructive about that?

You could argue the rest of the comment makes up for it, but I don't agree. It reads like a standard negative rant against change to me. I don't see much constructive here.

> I just hate modern phones, all of them. I want an adequate one-hand screen size (~6"), a headphone jack, and an even camera bump (just so it lies flat on the table). I love the pixel 8a, the size, curvature and camera bump seems ideal. Ofc they removed a freaking 3.5mm jack, but I can make a compromise here and buy 100 type-c to 3.5mm adapters, but I'm super disappointed with the new 9x series, they are now even more blocky and square-ish which i really don't like, plus no "a" model which is usually looking much better for me than the main one.

> Does anyone know the phone which is small, has a headphone jack, even camera bump and is still buyable to this day?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41242944

Essentially get the same product with improvements that are only another iteration. The Pixel 9 might be a good device comparatively, but I would be more surprised if people were too hyped about it. The larger context of hype and Google is relevant here as well.

First question I had when hearing about a Google phone is, if they try to make it harder to block advertising. I don't believe the thought is too unreasonable, is it?

Would you be surprised if a post about the new iPhone would look like this looks here?

The killer-app (that isn't porn) is going to be asking your phone to order food and it guesses correctly what you want while cross-checking availability, pricing, and discounts. Then a Waymo or Wing Drone delivers it.

AI has been totally useless to me in my life. Give me a headphone jack and better SMS spam filtering. No new phone has better features than my Pixel6a and it isn't even that great.

The only thing I’d like is a better integration with ALL actions possible on my phone.

„Top“ in the sense that a lot of people watch them. Please don’t take seriously what they say. Luise Rossman did an excellent video on marques apple propaganda.

If we were getting opinions on the latest PhD paper on attention mechanisms than I’d trust someone with a PhD versus a random person, but for getting opinions on the new Google phone? Think for yourself.

Two things:

1. He's held / seen the phone live, I buy online so won't get a chance to before I decide.

2. He's also held hundreds (thousands?) of phones which I haven't.

While he does have preferences that differ from mine, his perspective is still interesting.

>what qualifies them?

19.3m subscribers on yt

Valuing someone by reach makes no sense at all. Most professors at MIT have no social media reach at all, I still value their opinions extremely highly.

In fact, valuing someone's opinion purely based on the size of their megaphone is partly why we're the world is in such a bad state politically (and in other ways) these days. E.g. people listening to social media influencers opinions on vaccines.

Call it disappointment I guess. No phone from any manufacturer has felt totally “right” to me in years in the way that phones from a decade ago did. It makes sense from a business perspective since smartphones were effectively complete way back then. The business needs a way to justify selling me a new one so it's been a long slow downhill of shit-I-don't-care-about ever since. I especially miss the era of HTC flagships. HIGH TECH COMPUTER!

The software is disappointing too even though today was not really a software announcement. To me it feels like since they're both from Google the Pixel hardware direction also signals what Android itself will prioritize. I used to be a huge Android-the-OS fan but found that my enjoyment of the platform peaked at 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Version 4.3 was the first version to remove something I loved (the “Phablet” UI layouts that were great on my Galaxy NoteⅡ). Announcements like today's push that point of Peak Android even further away in my mind, and I'm sad about it.

Not because it's particularly great (it's not), but because it's the only somewhat mainstream manufacturer to retain the headphone jack on their flagships as well as microSD card slot.

My only gripe is that it's mostly likely going to be a 180+ gram brick.

on an average, HN crowd is pretty clueless about

a) running a profitable business

b) foreseeing technological progress -- say two iterations down the line.

c) mass adoption of features

On an average, they tend to be elitist and don't represent the average brand popularity (e.g Google, Meta, Amazon). They only mildly upvote technology that helps their extremely privileged life.

E.g Current AI / Metaverse features helps plenty of poor, underprivileged people around the world, especially non-english speaking. But HN is the first to mock such features.

Because of this, they tend to be poor individual stock pickers. They are highly risk-averse and typically bring an SRE mentality to the world.

Your bias is heavily US centric. HN is not SF or SV. Plenty of users in Serbia, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, Vietnam, in war thorn Ukraine.

Arguably the average user is above average for their area's COL but to claim everyone is swimming in VC money is as dilusion as the people you want to portrait in your comment.

AI features in phones from Google are English only or maybe a few languages, even if you know English try to use "AI" to set a route using your voice when the locations are not english words. Sure, some free AIs on the web will help poor people but the best ones are under payment wall and not only that you need a specific way to pay, what I mean for example is Netflix, Steam do not need my credit card, they have alternative ways to pay like PayPal but Google, Microsoft, OpenAI they only allow credit card , so I conclude they do not care for my money they really need that credit card for some reason.

Some days HN feels like an echo chamber, where thinking outside the box is heavily downvoted.

How harvest sensors, cams, thingamathings and have a new cadre of people who can build plans to take sensor THING from PHONEA and CAMERA from PHONEB and etc... and build a thing where these already known devices can be harvested and incorporated into projects, products, etc... and not landfil.?

6.3” is still huge. 5.8” is workable. And it’s not like there’s no precedent, the Zenfone 10 is also 5.8” and is adored for it.

What's extra annoying is I never felt the need to use a case when phones were smaller, but one-handed corner reaching upsets the balance of the phone in my hand now to the point where it feels like a necessity—making the phone even bigger and bulkier.

Then they released the enormous 6.8" Zenfone 11 Ultra this March, with still no indication that there will be a smaller variant. The small Zenfone 10 might not have sold well enough to justify doing another one.

Not for lack of trying, since both Apple and Samsung tried in 2019 with their mini iPhones and Galaxy S10e respectively which were both smaller versions of their normal phones. Neither line continues today.

Apple has some precedent with their premium iPad Mini which costs more than their normal iPad and gets irregularly updated, but it might be hard to market an "iPhone Mini SE Pro".

It's actually the opposite - big screens inevitably mean "expensive", and phones are status symbols. Unfortunately, vain people outnumber practical people by various orders of magnitude, so the market goes where the money is.

The only way to correct this trend would be to coopt an inordinate amount of celebrities, and make them advocate for smaller phones. That's the only group that vain people will blindly follow.

I suspect in practice we're stuck with big phones until the phone concept actually manages to disappear entirely (turning into wearables or lenses).

Adoration alone does not pay salaries. At the end of the day the manufacturers are businesses looking to generate as large a profit as possible (some even want to build the best tech possible while doing so), so as much as any of us may adore one feature or another, the only thing that really matters is sales volume and the resulting profits.

Everyone keeps talking about wanting small phones, but when the time to pull the wallet comes, there's always an excuse.

On top of that you've got the same earbuds form factor, smart watches, etc.

You should go watch the Flossy Carter videos he's done on the Pixel watch. Dude has huge arms and the Pixel watch looks like a Barbie watch on his wrist. He normally rocks the Apple Watch Ultra or the Samsung Galaxy watch which look more normal on his wrist.

I think Google has a ways to go before they're competing with Apple and Samsung in the watch department.

Seems like a decent choice, given that the average person has average arms by definition.

Whilst true, it's a bit misleading in the sense it's only best selling by a very slim margin. It's iphone and then everything else (by a huge margin).

I think it is more complicated, and nuanced, than this.

I have a theory that the world can only support a maximum of 2 consumer computing platforms at a time, due to the cost of writing and porting software. Therefore causing a natural tendency towards either a monopoly (seen in the 90s and early 2000s) or a duopoly (the current smartphone era).

The fact is writing software is expensive. Developing cross platform frameworks is also incredibly difficult and in the case of Mobile, has taken a massive 3rd party entity (Facebook) the better part of a decade (React Native) to get even close to "working well" (with other solutions also being decade long projects). One can argue that during the first decade of Android vs iPhone, (2007 to 2017) that the cross platform solutions were all pretty terrible, thus the massive shakeup that React Native (for all its warts) caused.

Then there is the fact that developing a consumer OS is hard and expensive. Very few companies have the resources needed to make a consumer OS. Not just writing software, but localization, documentation, SDKs, UX work, security, update infrastructure, and so on and so forth.

Honestly I'd say today's current duopoly may even be a bad thing for small software companies, basically doubling development costs. Compare this to the 90s when releasing consumer software just meant compiling for a Microsoft OS and never worrying again because Microsoft handled forwards compatibility for you!

Contrast that to now days where you see applications to control smart appliances apps being discontinued left and right because companies cannot justify keeping 2 dev teams staffed so they can patch an app once every couple years when app store guidelines force changes.

Any market that has an extremely high barrier of entry will and ends up only supporting one or two company. ASML and TSMC being a prime example.

HTML

If we adopted standards instead of making walled gardens, things would work. If the onus was on Apple and Google to make their platforms standards compliant, and that the egg would be on their face if they didn't, they would be the ones doing the rigorous testing, bug fixing, and optimization.

If Microsoft can make their platform work for 20+ years of software, Apple and Google can be on the hook for HTML, WASM, and a standardized UI and hardware abstraction layer.

There's frankly not much of a technical reason why Android phones and iPhones can't run each others' apps except for the malignant IP enforcement of both Google and Apple.

This is a business problem - take away Apple's 30% cut and see how quickly they change their tune on "security."

There's also no good reason why you should have to distribute your software on iOS through a monopoly app store or why Android should hide the ability to install software from non-Google app stores or the internet behind a scary "security" warning. That "security" warning, while better than what Apple does, is itself a monopolistic practice that should be illegal.

I got the original Airpods about a year before I switched to iPhone, and they worked pretty much flawlessly with my Galaxy S8+. I assume they missed Siri-specific features (which I don’t care for even after switching to iPhone), and the newer ones probably miss some other more advanced/iOS-specific features (like Apple’s implementation of spatial audio and speech awareness). But all the actual main functionality was there, and I never felt like I was missing out by not using Airpods with iOS.

Apple Watch is a different story though, but it kinda makes sense, given how tightly integrated into iOS it is with quite a bit of private health data (that I would never trust Android with managing properly).

Only the couple of first generations of Beats products after the acquisition have used the Apple-branded SoCs.

The current line-up uses unnamed Beats-specific chip that has ~most (but not all!) of the same features as the W1/W2 on iOS.

From the current line-up, only Powerbeats Pro (2019) and Beats Flex (2020) use Apple branded-chip, and I'm under the impression that the newer models have more Android-specific niceties.

I would expect next refreshes of those Beats model to lose H1/W1/W2.

To change settings and to update the firmware. There are no standards for these operations, so you'd have to resort to an an OEM specific app (stand-alone, or integrated into a the OS, like Mac OS) to manage these.

You'd be right that there'd be a lot of new ideas floated and a lot of competition, but it's hard to see how that plays out in a way that benefits the consumer and make smart phones a better value. I'm no fan of the duopoly, but it's hard to imagine how forcing them to break their services apart winds up anywhere other than the services becoming noticeably shittier and only like 5% of people bothering to change from the defaults anyway. I also think that the innovation around smartphones has all but died, and if there was some killer innovation to be had, it would probably be worth much more in this market than an open market. The market is harder to make distinctions in than even electric cars are, and a distinguishing innovation would surely trigger a bidding war between Apple and Google at this point.

It's a rough case of what I want philosophically (break them up with great prejudice) and what I think is best for the user experience itself being directly at odds.

Do their moderation/review processes meaningfully improve the situation for users?

Both app stores are replete with scam/spam/spy/malware apps. I'm not convinced that the app stores are able to materially affect the quality of apps that go through.

- an SoC made on TSMC's latest process node, with a humongous die, and all the associated power/performance benefits

- because of how many phones apple can sell, they can divide the cost of R&D over more units, and can design things like their own CPU cores

- "Ask app not to track" that works, because of the app store monopoly

- I don't have to use 12342342345234 payment apps for each bank's credit card, Apple Wallet works with all of them (the EU wants to ruin this for Europeans)

As a consumer, I'm a huge fan of US antitrust law, where the test is harm to consumers

All of the antitrust shit Apple does largely benefits its consumers _for the moment_. It's worth acknowledging that, but it's also worth acknowledging that this is necessarily a temporary state, and under different leadership, Apple will make different decisions.

As if you're benefitting from that with apples margins.

It looks like it's coming "later this year". Lots of chatter about it, see a few details at https://www.androidauthority.com/pixel-9-satellite-sos-34676...

* apparently coming with android 15, but they are shipping android 14

* turning on satellite sos later, but this year

* us only

* free for 2 years on pixel 9 phone, but probably would cost more later?

If you go on a lot of backcountry trips, maybe you already have something like a Garmin device with paid in-reach service with texting and emergency service button - no voice support. I have this, it works well. You can do 2 way texting, also you can have your location uploaded as you travel if you wish.

It wasn’t in the initial release. Needed a software update 2 months later or so.

You were only supposed to get 1 year (?) of service. But they extended that by a year.

Because of that everyone with a qualifying phone is still in the “free” stage so we still don’t know what it will cost. Or when that will start.

If ever.

I’ve never used it but I like that my iPhone has it. I would never carry a Garmin (city/suburb life, no point) but I know the satellite is there if needed.

I think Apple is expanding it to iMessage this year (text only) though for all we know that will cost extra.

“A man got lost in the woods and died because he didn’t pay Apple two dollars a month“ is probably not a headline they want to see.

It’s also possible they didn’t know how often it would end up getting used and so they said that is a hedge in case it ended up too expensive on their end. Now that they know it’s not they don’t really worry about it.

They could just leave it enabled for everyone, and then retroactively charge them for a (moderately hefty) 1 year subscription if they end up using it.

That's why in New Zealand, at least, there is no fee for a rescue callouts in general.

I suspect they wanted to gauge what the usage (and therefore cost to them) would be like before making any promises.

I would not be surprised if satellite messaging ends up costing after the first year, but that satellite SOS remains free forever. After all, who wants the reputation hit when someone ends up dying in the wilderness because they didn't keep up their satellite payments?

But I suspect their actual business model will be to charge for non-emergency messaging, which might just be able to subsidize the emergency use case.

Generally, SAR teams would rather the R continue to stand for Rescue rather than Recovery (of a body).

But “iPhone saves man’s life after he fell down a mountain” sounds a whole lot better than “worlds richest company charges man who nearly died $25 to save his life”.

Thanks.

While I never needed the satellite SOS it’s fun that there is a demo in settings that shows you how to find the satellite and everything just as if you used the feature for real.

Apple has also been adding new ground stations as part of their agreement with Globalstar, which has, among other things, added coverage to Hawaii. I'm pretty sure they have much larger plans for this than just emergency texting.

Personally, I'd stick with the better known option, and like another commenter said - the battery life on the Garmins are pretty amazing, and it doesn't weight much.

No subscription required either. You simply register the beacon with a government agency (in the US, its via the NOAA, and distress signals are handled by the coast guard or air force receivers)

IIRC that's also available in some EU countries, the issue in this specific case isn't google but the fact that devices which could be construed to offer medical info tend to require certification varying by country

I believe they currently only use Terrestar-1 and Terrestar-2, with Inmarsat to follow some time this year for almost global coverage.

Terrestar-1 covers the lower 48 US states with one spot beam, and Alaska and Hawaii with another one each, but I believe the latter two ones are relatively new, so maybe Google isn't using these yet?

I suspect this because I've used a Motorola Defy Satellite Link for the past year, which uses IoT-NTN just like the Pixel's baseband, and it's only been available in Europe and the lower 48 at launch (i.e. also with Hawaii and Alaska missing).

[1] https://www.satbeams.com/satellites?norad=35496

And this really does seem to be largely due to regulations (and probably also integration with local emergency services), as there is no geographic pattern to availability.

Whereas, in contrast, the Garmin inReach devices need "only" a clear sky view.

If you use it a lot, you'll start to increase your fees, I'm on the next higher plan which I think is $35/m. I should revisit that, it's a lot over a year ;-)

They have the basic devices (connect with phone, or emergency button), I have the one with maps built in. That one is awesome, it has worldwide city and trail maps. Maps works without a subscription, but I do use it for trips where there is no phone service more to get text messages.

You are supposed to register it with the local government org. In the US, that is the NOAA. When the PLB activates, the receiver which is either the Coast Guard or Air Force will attempt to contact you before they send the distress call to whatever local S&R there is. Obviously if they can't reach you, they will send help anyway.

I have been using Pixel 7 for almost the past 2 years. But the amount of basic core issues are crazy. Recently,since the July update, every place where the phone cannot catch network signal, it shutdowns. And with the update, somehow i feel it cannot catch network signal as strongly. That is such a crazy thing. Last year, my friend got locked out of all his valuable pictures with Android 14 upgrade on Pixel 6.

My experience of Google is so bad with hardware that it has finally pushed me towards buying an iPhone for the very first time in my life after having been exclusive with Android OS for over 10 years.

The battery was quite bad from the very beginning, barely lasting a day of normal usage, but I thought "well, at least they seem to have taken lots of care to avoid battery aging - slower charging than other phones, intelligent charging speed, etc. - so it won't degrade much". Two years later it wasn't even making it to 6 PM, or 3-4 PM on heavy use days (such as trips). OTOH my previous phone (Huawei P30 Pro), with much faster charge and no "intelligent" anything, still has amazing battery after more than 5 years of use (now in my wife's hands).

That was my first and last Pixel. A pity because the software was amazing, but that's no use if you operate under constant battery anxiety and can't even use Google Maps and camera on a trip without spending hours charging at the hotel.

As for customization, that's sort of Apple's main feature set: It will always work the same everywhere on every device.

I can't even remember the last time I used the actual voice calling function on my phone. It's probably been a couple of years now.

While the phone app remains important for some, it’s no longer the primary means of communication for most folks, especially with the rise of messaging apps and social media.

Your comment is one of few where people report unrelated problems with their Google Phone. Different versions, different problems, no problems, all kinds of things. Open talk.

You've however brought up an Apple device and the comments under your comment are all Apple customers telling you that you either don't use your device properly since using your phone as a phone is "no longer the primary means of communication" or that it might be your fault (perhaps you have too many contacts in your phone book).

So while problems with the Google device are something normal, problems with the Apple device seem to be something extraordinary.