The only reason we have $2k flagships is because they have more premium features which people with lots of disposable income would want to buy. But where are these features now? Provided you aren’t shoving extra displays in your device for kicks, everything is ubiquitous (or you’re just paying extra for a SaaS unlock). If Tensor G3 sucks like G2 sucks, that impacts all Pixel 8’s, not just the A.
There’s no more space in the market for an A model and a flagship model. In terms of being the appropriate option for the average person looking for a new phone (i.e what a flagship actually is in principle), the A model is the flagship now.
That’s why the price is increasing - it’s too popular, they’ve realised price is once again the driving factor behind most purchase decisions and are now acting to try and preserve the status quo of people buying needlessly expensive handsets for no reason.
I bought a Pixel a because it has a headphone jack. I only cared about one thing. When mine dies, I’ll buy whatever still has a headphone jack.
I’m not sure about pixel 8/8a, but I’m typing this on a pixel 7 and it sure ain’t got no headphone jack, Jack. If that was my prerogative I’d be using a budget Xiaomi device
Yeah, so no Pixel 8a? What the hell will I buy when the last half-tolerable Pixel (6a) gets no updates anymore?
Stick divestos or calyxos on that and you’re good for more years
No youre not. Calyx is a joke, sorry. DivestOS may be okay but its still very different from GrapheneOS.
And no tiny custom Android can fix the issue that hardware manifacturers will not supply a single byte of firmware updates after their contract is done.
True discontinued firmware updates…, but look at the actual threat model. Why is calyx a joke?
(Feddit just started working again)
CalyxOS implements many random 3rd party stuff as if that was their own.
Apart from 2 (QKSMS and Bromite) being unmaintained, installing random apps as system apps (if this is what they do) means a system update may cause data loss for users, when removing those apps. And it has the problem of a way too high goal that can not be reached. They simply dont maintain those apps, so dont ship them.
How much maintenance does a simple SMS app need? What random apps are system apps? Beomite is not installed, not even sure qksms is, but I always use it. Never had a single issue removing any apps. Seems like you’re just very uninformed
They had this on their homepage, advertizing QKSMS and Bromite as if they were project apps. Which they are not.
So either A: they preinstall apps as system apps or B: they have some form of installer that installs them as normal user apps.
You should have as many apps as user apps as possible.
Maybe they changes this idk. But QKSMS is not a simple SMS app like the one that GrapheneOS implements (the old and hardly maintained AOSP one) and Bromite is an unmaintained Browser which is a huge problem. Cromite and Quik are maintained forks.
Some Archive when they still had Bromite on their page
Could not find QKSMS but that was somewhere
Chromium BASED on chromite, which appears to be actively developed. I use mull which works well. Default SMS is “messaging” app.
