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Comment by mkozlows | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty obvious that Covid supply chains have affected Google's hardware strongly. The Pixel 4a was delayed months (and the Pixel 3a ran out of stock before the 4a was introduced), the Pixel 4 is out of stock before the Pixel 5 is introduced.

They're not the only ones, though; Apple has announced already that the new iPhone is going to be delayed.

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Even in the Nexus days, a gap of several months between the last generation going out of stock and the next generation becoming available was normal.

I think Google is just bad at inventory management (that, and selling a previous generation Android phone is probably much harder than it is for iPhones, where even Apple routinely continues selling models for years after introducing their successor.

> I think Google is just bad at inventory management

Or they have different goals. No big sales on the Pixel 4, and they sold all the units they made. Of course, nobody is overproducing flagships and then firesaling them anymore, it was a nice run between the Nexus 5x, the Nextbit Robin, and the Essential PH-1.

> No big sales on the Pixel 4

Not from Google itself, but for the past months third party resellers can't seem to lower the price enough to get rid of their stocks.

Also the Nexus 5X was not a flagship, and was plagued by LG's mainboard/bootloop issues.

I'm sure they don't want to sit on a warehouse of unsold phones while introducing a new model. Running out of model A before model B drops is prudent :P

Apple does this almost every year, the older model just gets a little cheaper.

Yeah, but Apple is in a slightly different market. Quite a few people only want iOS, and in that market they don't have competition.

An old Android phone will have to compete with newer ones at the same price point.

I switched from iPhone 6 to Redmi Note 8 Pro recently as I lost my iPhone. I have been an Android user before the iPhone.

I really can not overstate how happy I was with how long Apple supported that device - I used it from end of 2014 to early 2020 - yep! Every single day, new iOS supported till late 2019.

Google - well they are famous for killing things.

edit: typo

Even I use the RN8P. I unlocked the bootloader and flashed pure android to get away from MiUI's ads and constant tracking. Due to COVID, I didn't have anything else to do at home, so finished the whole unlock/flash process in a couple of hours.

It connects to Mi servers every 4 seconds and just constantly sends logs. I noticed it and immediately switched.

Can you recommend a guide to do this?

Yeah sure. It's extremely easy. Where did you get the phone from?

That is do you have the EU version, Indian model or the Chinese version?

If you have trouble finding it, look for MIUI version in settings.In the 'About' section of your phone.

I don't see how that's in any way comparable.

Apple actually has custom SoCs that they build, so they very much depend on TSMC.

Whereas the 865 was already happily producing last year. Not only that, the Pixel 4 sony camera sensor was actually in 2018s flagships. Pixels are kinda old, overpriced and outdated. The 4a seems okay for the price.

The Face ID like thing they replaced the fingerprint scanner with in the Pixel 4 actually caused a lot of people to skip it.

That Face ID like thing is actually one of my favorite features. It's on par with Apple's implementation. Unfortunately, battery life, accessory integration (e.g., WearOS), and app support all suck relative to the offerings on iOS. I REALLY want to use an Android phone if only for the Microsoft integration, but having spent the last three weeks trying to make a Pixel 4 XL work, I'm back on iPhone. I may be an outlier, but god damn I love my Apple Watch.

Exactly. If you're constrained by production, there isn't much sense in making more of the old version when you need all the capacity for the new version.

Supposedly the iPhone 12 delay will only be a few weeks. (We’ll see.)

Delayed by a month

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