if you take care of it and are fine with not having the latest and greatest.
Also as long as they can get a battery replacement, it should go the distance. I would source them now, rather than in a few years when they may be hard to find.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S5. (with 3 more replacement batteries in the desk draw)
Eh, charging twice a day isn't such a hassle. As long as the phone isn't losing significant charge when its in sleep mode, it's still a good daily driver.
Sounds great until you get that battery out and realize it's dead because it was slowly discharging over the years and has gone below the recovery level.
Although not having security updates on your phone is a good enough reason for me to upgrade a phone. I recently used a ROG Phone II for four years before switching to a Fold5 to get a better software update policy. I simply didn't have the time anymore to fiddle with all my apps and fighting SafetyNet to use my banking apps because I used a custom ROM to keep my device updated.
It's kind of fucked that we just accept that as an argument though isn't it? Your desktop PC goes "out of support" when something physically requires hardware features or performance that isn't present on the chip. Up until windows 11, you could essentially put a fully up to date and secure windows 10 on a 15 year old computer if it was beefy enough.
Now we put up with "my manufacturer doesn't want to give me drivers for the device I bought but clearly don't actually own, so it's reasonable to pony up another $800 in 3 years to buy something new.
Android in the like 1.0 days installed and managed itself like a desktop is that could be installed on anything you could feed it drivers to. Why we as a society put up with anything less is beyond me.
I still have my S8 sitting a drawer. That phone was the first phone to jump to modern smartphones imo. The form factor is still the standard today and likely won't go away.
I dusted off my old iPhone 6s recently and did some quick plays of Badlands and Infinity Blade II... I'm amazed at how fast the phone is yet, even when the battery is thrash (it was never stellar) I will keep it as a backup device in case my main one fails.
Mobile phone might, but battery will go bad in 3-4 years and if it's OLED screen it will show ghosting for sure after same period of time. Earbuds no chance. They will die much sooner, at least battery will.
The good news is any phone repair shop will be able to replace your battery for a reasonable price. Same with the screen but obviously that is a lot more expensive. My pixel 3 and pixel 1 hasn't shown any ghosting in the screen yet but I don't think I use apps with persistent UI often. Word of advice is use gesture navigation instead of the 3 buttons because the 3 buttons will burn in.
My SO watches a lot of YouTube so his 3a had burn in where the video usually is (like the top 1/3 of the device).
Yea, my 2nd gen Airpods are cooked after 4½ years of use. I get maybe 45min to an hour of battery and they’re tinny and quiet and the microphones speed working. A far cry from their performance when they were new but for listening to podcasts on the go they’re still good enough…
I'd consider 4.5 years quite good to be honest. I still dislike the idea of built-in expiration date, but it's still a good time. Average is probably lower and closer to 2 years. LiIon batteries usually survive around 600-1000 charge cycles, more if you don't use top 20% of the voltage range but no one is doing that these days. Maximum capacity starts dropping really fast, after some 2-3 months of use, as it's frequently noticed with laptop batteries. So I'd say 4.5 years is about at the tail end of that expected maximum life. Wish they made batteries replaceable. But soon they will be thanks to EU.
Always online displays are more prone to this. Manufacturers mitigate this by moving numbers around, like screen saver. Simply put OLED screens emit light, instead of filtering it like LCD. Am not quite sure why they degrade over time, but they do... especially blue diodes. But how fast this forms really depends on usage patterns. Whether you like bright screen or not, whether you have AOD, whether there's elements always visible on screen (back button, clock, etc). With my own devices at 3 years of use there wasn't any signs but they start showing after that. My mom who uses the same device, after changing the screen, has this happen to her not even a year in.
Some of those nexus phones were duds. Bought my wife a Nexus 5X when they came out, it was already acting up that Christmas. We've all had hooptie phones somewhere along the line, but pretty much everyone I talked to that had a 5X or a 6P at the time seemed to be having major issues with them.
I use my pixel xl every day for two years and now it has a 10 min battery life. It's no longer a working phone and just a extra screen that's permanently plugged in.
8 years would be the Nexus 6P. I booted mine up last year and aside from the faulty SoC it's still a perfectly usable phone. Those dual front facing speakers are still great. Battery life is poor, but then it was poor to begin with.
I think we've also plateaued in terms of features. A phone in 2030 will probably have a brighter screen and slightly better camera, but outside of synthetic benchmarks I doubt it's going to look or feel any different than the Pixel 8 will in day to day use.
Not even sure we will have phones by then, they probably will more or less be fully handheld computers. I mean they are pretty much already that, but you get some good storage and flexibility in operating systems, some sort of keyboard config, and I don't even think laptops will be very common. My point is, I don't think a phone from today will even be relevant in 2030.
To be completely fair, I am extremely salty towards Google’s hardware division. I had a Pixel 3’s storage get corrupted and stopped booting about 7 months after purchase, and they refused to repair it or replace it (under warranty!) because I couldn’t prove I was the original owner. I was, but I couldn’t find the receipt. They eventually just stopped responding to me.
I tried again with the Pixel 6 recently and ran into so many weird OS glitches that my wife’s Samsung S20 didn’t have, and that resetting / updating didn’t fix that I eventually just sold it and washed my hands of ever buying Google hardware again.
I have a Pixel4A bought on launch and its holding up well. It lost about 10% maximum charge since then and with fast charging it got so hot that my screen protector fell off after 6 months. So I had to switch screen protector brand.
I'm in the same boat. Pixel 2 XL with a custom ROM. Battery life isn't great but it works. The biggest pain is multitasking as apps have to reload when switching sometimes.
That was why I got rid of the pixel 2. The newer ones are soooo much better without the reloading issue. I got a pixel 5 for $150 on back market. Totally worth it and an amazing deal really.
I don’t think you’ll have a problem. Google’s phones are usually among the most supported by custom ROM developers. Even if GrapheneOS ceases to exist, you’ll likely find a replacement that supports the Pixel 8.
With how awful my P6 is ageing I wouldn't count on it...
Me not trusting pixel phones toast more than 2-4 years is the reason I still won't buy another one. If I see people actually still use the p8 by 2030 I might buy one again.
Network connectivity is barely functional, I did look into having it replaced but I was told I couldn't since it's appearently not a manufacturing issue.
The battery lasts maybe 2 hours of screen on time, when I commute to work I have to charge before I get on the train home. It also overheats like crazy. It gets really uncomfortable in my hands...
The camera takes awfully oversharpened images, overuses HDR and everything comes out looking like digital noise.
The fingerprint scanner is awful. It is always faster to use a pattern to unlock my device. Often it doesn't work at all and I've just disabled it now cause it failing to work kept locking me out of important apps.
Bluetooth connectivity keeps failing, and other basic functions like the led flashlight go unresponsive very frequently
People are right to worry about the phone's battery. If you want to keep it that long, get a 500mA charger and slow charge it every night and avoid deep discharge.
Charging above a certain speed, does degrade the battery faster. Thinking that by slow charging your battery will last any noticeable time longer is where this all falls apart.
Adaptive charging just charges at full speed until it gets to 80%. It then maintains that level until 2-3 hours before the time the alarm is set for, and then it charges to 100%. A 500ma charger likely wouldn't be able to fully charge the phone while a normal person sleeps (depends on the starting charge level of course), but the worst that adaptive charging wouldn't do anything that would lead to the battery being dead
Get a thick 2 piece rubber/plastic case. Make sure the edge of the case sticks out significantly from the screen, so when you drop it, it will hit the case before the phone. (Provided you don't drop it on gravel or something pointy)
My pixel 3a has survived years of this. And I haven't needed to replace it yet. Sure the plastic is scuffed to hell and back, and it ads significant thickness. but it's yet to fail in protecting my phone. And I've never bought a screen protector for it.
For me the screen protector is one of the most important things. I use an insulin pump, which is always in my pocket, and that means my keys are in the other pocket because they otherwise get impossibly tangled in the pump cord. The phone is also going in one front pocket or the other, because I don't like sitting on phones or keys. I've only had my Pixel 8 Pro for 4 or 5 days at this point, and there's already small scuffs on the screen protector. I usually have to change them every 5-6 months because they get so bad. Your mileage may vary, but it's absolutely essential for me, ain't no Gorilla Glass strong enough for the war my phones go through.
Wild that a battery charged daily would lose its charge quicker after years of use and apps will evolve to be more powerful and require more resources thereby draining more battery. Just an insane thought, really.
My first-gen Pixel still works just fine. The battery is shit and doesn't stay on for more than an hour or so, but replacing the battery is a trivial matter. But while the battery has juice, it runs just as smoothly as it always has. Same experience with my Pixel 3, and likely to be the same experience with my Pixel 6. The Pixel line seem to withstand aging quite well, in my experience.
My tablet works and works well, but practically every site and game related app will crash. I can use discord, reddit/lemmy but thats about all my tablet can handle. It seems to handle YouTube fine, but i don't use it on mobile because of the 50million ads.
My tablet isn't 10 years old, yet. Again it still works its just...most things don't work with it.
Maybe, but as a rule I don't care for watching videos on my tablet, anyway. I prefer my computer.
My phone is newer and can handle everything that my tablet can't, but with it being a 2020 model, its probably only a matter of time where I stsrtseeing the crashing issue (despite technically being compatible with the app). The crashing issue has happened with every one of my devices over the years eventually. It's one of the ways they keep us buying new devices.
Again, my tablet works and it works well. But outside of discord and lemmy/reddit, it's become largely useless. Yet, because the mobile tech moves so quickly, they would have me see it send it to a landfill already.
🙄 I'm sure having a removable battery is going to make me want to spend $700 on a wasteful new phone and definitely not spend $90 to have the current one replaced.
Maybe Google knows what's coming and they want everyone to buy and keep a lot of the last 'optional privacy' phone before EU laws shut down future phones.
As a point of comparison, we just got rid of an iPhone X that was in use in the family for 6 years. It had battery replaced once, but admittedly due, if we kept it. We got rid of because Apple dropped support, plus there was a lot of physical damage from a teen carrying it, and repeatedly removing the case.
However discounting the physical damage, it worked reasonably well. If there were fewer drops, it would still have been a useful phone
If it exceeds your expectation right now, then it should last 8 years with a battery replacement when the battery health goes bad.
Because in my experience pixels never get worse than they were on day 1 over the years (except for the battery health).
If it's below your expectation, you are going to want to sell it in 1 or 2 years looking for that thing you are lacking at the moment.
I had a Moto G4 plus until two years ago. It lasted me 6 years, stuck at Android 8. It worked slow but it was functional. Replaced battery only once. If you take care of your device it can last even longer. I would probably still have the phone if it wasn't that it was becoming too slow and a hassle to do even simple tasks
Since those earbuds are not repair friendly (I love you, buds+) the battery will be the first to go in about 1-2 years depending on use and with minimal care (cleaning and whatnot). The phone software wise very likely maybe even more so depending on third party support. Hardware wise depending on use and care the battery, the screen and maybe the usb c port will need replacement with time. Get a good case, save up like 200-300$ as an emergency fund and about 150$ for a future battery and you should be golden and have fun with the time you have with the earbuds.
Edit: I say the screen since thats the most fragile part of the phone and people tend to drop stuff hence the 200-300$ emergency fund. The usb c port probably might not need replacing (my og pixel xl's still works) but I'm not sure how op will abuse it, again emergence fund. The battery fund is basically a guarantee though since lithium batteries dont last
7 years of support, plus I can always play around with GrapheneOS and CalyxOS if I fancy tinkering with it... Just need Graphene to be released for the 8 now.