No, I got a pixel 7 and put calyx on it. Better than any samsung I’ve had. I don’t plan on going back to a closed system ever again.
Here here. After years of Nexuses and Pixels, I flirted with the iPhone for a couple of years. I finally grabbed a Pixel 5 earlier last year, and eventually a Pixel 8 to run Graphene. No play services, and I’m getting 3-5 days of battery life for a phone that I don’t feel constantly attached to.
That’s how I feel with my Pixel 7 Pro. I opted for GrapheneOS though. I did dabble with LineageOS with root and Play Integrity Fix, LSposed, and various other magisk modules but ultimately decided GrapheneOS was the route for me. I left GOS for LineageOS due to no Android Auto support, but it has been brought to GOS luckily.
Calyx is amazing for me, I love it. BUT android auto doesn’t work on it, which is lame. I’ve learned to deal with it and use waze instead.
Does Android Auto in Graphene still require Google Maps to be installed, or is there a shim? If not, I wouldn’t be surprised if Calyx writes one, once they implement whatever black magic Graphene devs came up with to make AA work.
As a related example, Calyx has a Google Photos shim, so you can use other galleries with gcam. I just added Calyx’s f-droid repository, and use that with my Graphene install.
For now, I’m happy using my Mazda CX-5’s built in navigation with bluetooth audio. It’s nice enough to tile both side by side, and it’s less fiddly than AA. But my next car might not be as favorable, so I’m glad to have AA as an option.
With AA on GOS you have to use the sandboxed google play services, and it will use Google maps. There however may be a way to use a shim for other navigation platforms. I admittedly don’t have much further knowledge of how all of the AA, Play Services, or other services are integrated.
No, Samsung has lost the plot for the origins of their success - hardware supremacy and overwhelming features (e.g. SD card slot, headphone jacks). As I mentioned in another post discussing Apple overtaking Samsung for the first time in a decade in volume of sales, they removed everything that made their phones a compelling device, and decided to be an equally expensive iPhone clone. In an era where consumers are so starved for hardware features that Nothing Phone made a living out of glowing back plates, and iPhone got applauded for an action button, Samsung’s leadership has seriously miscalculated and failed.
100% this. The Note 4 from 2014 has a higher resolution Display than the S24 and if you go by Pixels per Inch it even beats the S24 Ultra! Not that Resolution is the most important thing ever but still just crazy they only went backwards from the S6 onwards in that regard.
Its this shift in mentality that I despise. From “how much tech CAN we put in” to “how much tech do WE NEED to put in”. Clearly Samsung’s phone devision is being run by bunch of beancounters instead of tech enthusiasts.
The Note 4 from 2014 has a higher resolution Display than the S24 and if you go by Pixels per Inch it even beats the S24 Ultra!
TIL, that’s crazy
Personally, the main interest I have in this thing is how much lower it will put the S23 price.
Take a shot every time someone mentions AI
Honestly I really don’t care. Even new Android versions are pretty boring nowadays. The whole environment has settled down and Google now just pushes updates every now and then but nothing changes.
Same with Samsung. They have a good idea on how to create modern devices - but they have this idea since a few years now. Nothing really surprises me anymore in their devices.
Android’s restriction is getting tighter with every update thats the change they push.
