captainsiscold

Unlocked, brand new direct from the Google Store. They emailed me a coupon code for being on the Google Assistant mailing list that gave me an extra $150 off, and it stacked with a $100 discount they were already running (so $250 off total). I’m a self-admitted headphone jack enthusiast, but the price was just too good to pass up.

Just got a Pixel 8 (256 GB) for $510 a few weeks ago. I’m good with that, thanks.

I have to say, I was really impressed by how well the Pixel 7a did. At $400 now, that’s a great (somewhat) cheap option for folks, though I do wish its battery life was a bit better…

I’ve got a Pixel 8 non-Pro on the way, so I’m excited to see how it performs compared to my old Galaxy S9 :P

At this point, I’d honestly be fine with that too. Unfortunately it looks like one of the only ones around that has two USB-C ports is the Asus ROG Phone 7 & 7 Ultimate, which both already have a headphone jack too, lol.

I’d love to see those features in phones today; all of those are basically dead in the US market (Xperia 1 V gets two out of three, Zenfone 10 at least gets the 3.5mm jack…might be some cheap Motorola something that still has a jack, as well?).

Me personally, I could even live with just the 3.5mm jack. The whole argument of “it’s for waterproofing/making the phone thinner/insert BS excuse here” falls flat when my Galaxy S9 has a 3.5mm jack and the same IP68 rating as the Pixel 8, yet manages to be thinner.

You might be on to something there; I’ll have to give that a look!

Yeah, that seems to be a common theme. Creating timers from Assistant still works fine, but anything with Assistant that has to go through Tasks is basically broken :(

Have you ever found a way to make reminders in Tasks through Google Assistant actually work? When they switched from the Assistant reminders to Tasks, they became so unreliable at showing at the specified time (i.e. “remind me to do ___ at 3pm”) that I can’t use them anymore.

Pixels don’t support display out over USB-C? Well, that’s dumb. Surprised I’ve never heard about that being a missing feature before.

Fair enough, adapters do exist, but as you point out, there are situations where that is not ideal. On a long flight, for example, where I might want to charge my phone and also listen to something, or (in my case) someone who does some amateur audio engineering work on the side, where having the ability to simply wire in a device to play some audio is a big plus. My biggest problem is that phones from five years ago could do both wireless and wired headphones just fine, no adapters needed. What have we gained as consumers by the loss of one of those options?

Galaxy S9, and most likely a Sony Xperia 5 IV (or 5 V, since that’s supposed to release in a few days). Honestly I’m using the S9 until it completely gives out on me.

My thoughts on it: cool, now give it a headphone jack again and I might buy it.

I’m not buying a phone that requires $100 wireless earbud DLC (which honestly feel like just another thing to become e-waste in a few years when the battery gives out).

Still on my Galaxy S9 for now, but I’ll be watching for the release of this one. I flatly refuse to buy any phone that does not have a 3.5mm jack, and so far it seems Sony and Asus are the only two players left in that space.