I currently have a Nexus 6P. It was the flagship before the Pixel series. I use Bluetooth headphones daily on my commute using the Philly subway system (SEPTA). In center city and around suburban station I experience sound cutting in and out all the time on two different wireless bluetooth headphones. It seems to work just fine in my apartment when I don't need it but is never reliable when there's a ton of other signals around.
I can't stand the current state of the industry. New phones cost more but offer little in terms of value. They also look like trash. Who actually thought it was a good idea to make a flag ship phone have a two tone plastic case?
I'll be sticking to my aluminum cased 6P for a while. I'm also likely to get it again when this one finally dies. There's absolutely nothing that makes me want a Samsung or a Google branded Android phone right now.
I used the 6P for a fair amount of time, but I think the Nexus 5 was still the high water mark for Nexus phones. Cheap, great hardware, durable, and perfectly sized.
That said, I would have kept my 6P if I had known how disappointing the Pixel 1 was going to be. Double the price without any useful changes just feels like a rip off. No chance I'm going to throw more money at Google for another mediocre product.
Google just dropped support for the Nexus 5X and 6P, for unknown reasons. I hate it. Now I have no options left. (I need a device that will get android developer previews)
Some of my users are on Pixel devices and will get Android 9.0 the day it is released, while in best case, the source code only drops a week later. So assuming it takes me 10 minutes to fix all bugs, my app might crash for a week.
Realistically, my apps would be at least a month unusable.
I had every Nexus through to the 6P, and then moved to a Galaxy S8. With the Pixel Google has been overcome with profound me-tooism trying to ape every choice of Apple. It's humorous that the new iPhone offers wireless charging.
Coincidentally I just caught their cringe-inducing intro of the new Google Clips that captures live photos. Groan.
I can't bring myself to buy a Samsung device. The bloatware is cringy as fuck. Maaaybe if it was unlocked right away and someone on XDA put together a Google only rom but short of that I'll never willingly buy a Samsung device.
For sure, Samsung's desperate attempt to fork off users is annoying. From Bixby to their own little app store, to duplicate versions of all of the basics like the clock and the calculator. But overall my experience has been extremely positive.
And it's only fair to note that what we know as the pure Android was Google essentially sweeping in all of the cool things from Samsung, HTC and others.
I don't agree with that assessment. I've been using Android since 1.0.
The default experience is simply just that. No frills. No skins. Just Google apps. What exactly did they pull from HTC or Samsung that is now in the Gapps package?
Android comes without Google apps as well.
Gapps package installs Gmail, Maps, etc but not much in the way of frills.
I've used maybe 15 Android devices since it's inception. HTC, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, and "Google" (two Nexus devices and 1 Pixel).
If I had to choose I would take stock Android in terms of aesthetics, ten times out of ten.
However, over time Android has indeed taken MANY features from HTC, Motrola, Samsung and other OEMS and added them to vanilla android.
I know I'm forgetting a lot more but off the top of my head:
- multi-app support
- always on displays
- readibility
- night mode
- smart gestures
- Stamina mode which is now Doze on stock Android
- voice commands
- even things like Google Now (minus the smart assistant) to the left of the home screen, were actually provided earlier by OEMs (as a method to differentiate) like HTC's blinkfeed
- heck, the first stock Android devices, didn't even have smart dialers (HTC added that as part of their Sense dialer)
Samsung's Touchwiz looked terrible until the most recent incarnation (it's now called the Samsung Experience) and it did contain some bloat, namely with duplicate apps but it's always been much more feature packed than stock Android. Some of the features were not so great but a lot of them were and eventually Google copied them. You can say the same to a lesser extent for HTC, Sony and Motorola.
None of them? There is absolutely no question that these vendors tried some novel things that were later integrated within Android.
And if we need to talk about experience, I started with a G1 on Android 1.0, then G2, HTC Hero, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Glide, GS2, Nexus 4, GS3, Nexus 5, one other HTC that I can't remember the name of, Nexus 6p, GS8. I've tried a lot of devices, and I've rocked them all.
And through those with unique vendor additions, it was always a mix of ups and downs, and later to see many of those innovations being swept into the Android base.
I also question any claim that Android is "without frills, without skins". Android is 98% frills. With each iteration we have a new laundry list of frills. At the same time the core OS took until about version 7 to finally get basics like smooth scrolling down (something that vendor skins got to a much better state much earlier).
What headphones do you have? I've found that your experience varies wildly depending on your headset. Can you try a different set of Bluetooth headphones and report back?
I can't stand the current state of the industry. New phones cost more but offer little in terms of value. They also look like trash. Who actually thought it was a good idea to make a flag ship phone have a two tone plastic case?
I'll be sticking to my aluminum cased 6P for a while. I'm also likely to get it again when this one finally dies. There's absolutely nothing that makes me want a Samsung or a Google branded Android phone right now.