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Comment by jacooper | Hacker News Reader

At this point I really don't care about what is the latest and greatest in phones

They are all the same at this point, we are way past when Specs actually mattered(outside of JS performance on mobile, thank you Snapdragon!), they are just too small for anything useful, at least for me personally.

I just buy a pixel and install GrapheneOS/CalyxOS on it, and call it a day.

Its a phone that works, and I can relatively trust it, certainly more than other spyware, even if sandboxed google services are installed.

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Why buy a Pixel only to replace the OS? Pixels are basically minimum viable hardware to deliver Google software. Without the Google software, its just a mid-range phone at high-end prices.

That's just plain not true. It's at least $100 below market average and performance is great. Not mentioning camera which is easily one of the best on the market, if not the best one.

In the few European countries where Pixel is on sale, it is more like 100 euros above the average price of 300 euros for mid-range phones.

A pixel isn't a mid range phone.

OP thinks it is.

"It's at least $100 below market average and performance is great"

=> market average

He meant Market average as in average flagship prices.

Pixel 6 pro and 7 pro prices are cheap compared to any other phone from the same tier.

This exactly. Regular Pixel 6 and 7 were also often mentioned as great value.

Regular Pixel 6 has crazy value, you get an absolute steal for around 300$.

Do you get the same camera experience with Graphene installed as with vanilla software?

Yes, you can just install the google camera app

Pixels are one of the few Android phones that actually have some decent security features in hardware (that’s why they are the only supported grapheneOS targets).

Nonetheless, iPhones are also great from a security perspective out of the box, and the hardware is superior so I just couldn’t switch to a pixel, even though I wanted to at every version. They are unfortunately simply riddled with some stupid mistakes, like that emergency call one.

the a series are well priced/supported and do more than enough for me, you can pick one up for $300 and be good for years.. all while there are people making monthly payments for 1,200 iphones

I find it interesting that you’re comparing an old, low-end Pixel phone to the most expensive current generation iPhone. If your phone budget is $300 you’d be comparing it to the similarly priced iPhone 11 or SE; if you wanted a prestige flagship phone you’d be comparing it to a high-end Android device costing about the same.

> all while there are people making monthly payments for 1,200 iphones

A lot of the carrier /manufacturer incentives (in the USA) have been fantastic lately, especially if you had an older device which could be traded in.

Right now, through Google, you can trade a Pixel 5a in when buying a Pixel 6a and pay $50 for the upgrade.

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