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It's easy to double sales from 1 to 2, and it's only by that measure that Google is fastest growing.
In marketshare percentage Huawei and Xiaomi grew more.
Also I'm not sure Pixel actually counts as a premium phone.
When I bought my current phone 2 years ago, Pixel was absolutely a sub premium phone with pretty mediocre stats.
I'd count it at most as an upper midrange phone.
The cameras have always been high end, everything else is upper midrange. The latest one has atrocious throttling.
The cameras aren't really high end either, they are decent mid range cameras with a lot of AI post processing to make pictures look better.
Most of the time it works really well, but at other times, they don't really capture the actual picture.
I've seen pictures taken in fog, where the AI treatment completely removes the fog, impressive if that's what you wanted, but if you actually wanted the "real" picture, you were fucked because you couldn't disable the AI post processing.
IDK if they have changed that, but personally I prefer more moderate post processing.
Sorry, I should clarify that I meant the images produced by the cameras, not the hardware itself. In any case, there is no such thing as a "real" picture that is a 1:1 recreation of what the human eye sees, so it's really just a matter of whether or not you like the images produced. I think the widespread consensus since the Pixel 2 has been that the images produced by Pixel phones are among the best.
No phone camera is going to be impressive with hardware. The sensors are just to small.
1 inch sensors are no joke, my phone has a 0.8" sensor, which is also quite respectable.
IDK if you are under 16, but compared to cameras just 2 decades ago, modern phones have amazing camera hardware. My own phone can in many ways beat a multi thousand dollar camera from back then.
The light sensitivity alone is insane compared to older cameras.
Also Iβm not sure Pixel actually counts as a premium phone.
As far as msrp price goes i'd say they are in the premium segment price wise, but at least here in Germany they pretty much immediately are available at great discounts at least in combination with mobile plans.
You are right that hardware wise they aren't necessarily at the top, especially when compared to some of the chinese brands. But in return you get clean software and very long support. And even though the camera might not have the greatest specs the immediate results (which is what matters to most consumers) are consistenly ranked among the best.
I agree except for this:
But in return you get clean software
Vanilla Android sucks now IMO, it gets a little bit worse with every update, other vendors are actually batter at maintaining sanity IMO.
It's like vanilla has changes for changes sake, and all the new stupid AI feature they try to push on everything is extremely annoying IMO.
Vanilla Android used to be a feature, but not anymore IMO.
I admittedly don't have enough comparison, since my last phones were all pretty much stock android (2x pixel and before that a nokia/hmd with android one. I do have a Samsung tablet, but only a lower one without Samsung dex, which i assume would be the most interesting vendor feature? What special features am i missing out on?
What i do however like is that they don't come with google apps and another set of vendor specific ones by default. Some of them might be better than the default, but when i am unsatisfied by that i rather just choose a replacement myself and download it e.g. from fdroid store.
Google android really isn't vanilla at this point.
You get Google apps for like everything now
Vanilla means the original unmodified.
And the Pixel version of Android is per definition the vanilla version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanilla_software
Vanilla software refers to applications and systems used in their unmodified, original state, as distributed by their vendors.
I always figure, any smart phone I buy is going to spy on me. I have no interest in an iPhone, so my options are either let Google spy on me or let Google + the phone manufacturer spy on me. It's a case of minimizing damage.
Plus Pixels are the only ones that support Graphene.
Same with the bloat. Do I want Cortana, Bixby, AND Gemini lurking in the shadows?
We are in accord.
Then don't use your phone and pay attention to the road. π‘
Er ... Is this a joke about an Accord being a kind of car? Because I don't use my phone while on the road.
Yes
If it helps, while I wouldn't swear to this, I'm pretty sure I've never been in an Accord.
I hate how people at Pixels have no bloat they are a bloated piece of crap. And you can't remove any of it. Well you can disable it but not uninstall.
Any other phone is going to have that bloat and more
The Pixels can be boot loader unlocked and a different OS can be installed securely. Fairphone and some motos have this as well. GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, and iodeOS are all AOSP based privacy focused OSs. PostMarketOS and Ubuntu touch are based on alpine and Ubuntu respectively, also available for some Pixel, Fairphone and OnePlus devices.
I installed GrapheneOS on my Pixel 9, and the whole process was amazingly well polished. I was definitely suprised by how well it went. Awesome bit of software.
This is the same experience I had ... After I found a reliable USB cable. To be fair, the Graphene docs do mention this as a potential issue, but I've never had the USB cable be an issue before. As such, I wanted to mention that that warning is legit.
literally every generation has a major hardware flaw.
I knew of all the a versions having issues, but not the flagships
My Pixel 6 was great until it wasn't. They never support customers. Guess who bought Samsung ever since, those phones get handed down in my family for >6 years.
https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile
They jumped from 1.5-3% in a year, this is not a big leap. They also have no presence in Africa, India, or Asia in general.
The most notable trends we're seeing is apple and samsung starting their downward trends, and losing out to Oppo, Realme, Oneplus, and other ppl making better phones.
Go baaaack