waiting for new phone to be delivered
Oct. 10th, 2024 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frandroidIt's the third most expensive thing I've ever bought in my life by just a few hundred dollars! I mean all of you who have bought your own home can laugh at me. Here I am, a grown man with some white beard hairs complaining about the price of a phone. I mean I've spent more on any of a number of return flights, let alone vacations. But I'm still shocked. I could have gone for a cheaper model (last year's had a serious discount) but I like to buy top of the line with extra RAM and storage, and then keep it for a long time. Even some reviewers said this model is overpriced. My current phone is 6 years old, and if the screen wasn't lifting (thanks to 3 battery replacements and glue-dependent manufacturing, thanks planned obsolescence) I could potentially keep using it for 1 or 3 more years, save for the lack of OS updates. This new one comes with 7 years of software updates, which really pleases me.
The one thing that sucks a bit about hanging on to my old phone for so long is that there are many trade-in programs to get a serious discount on the new phone, but even with generous timelines, my old phone is just too old.
(The new phone is a Pixel 9 Pro, which fiiiinally ships here from Google after months (...2) of delay).
The one thing that sucks a bit about hanging on to my old phone for so long is that there are many trade-in programs to get a serious discount on the new phone, but even with generous timelines, my old phone is just too old.
(The new phone is a Pixel 9 Pro, which fiiiinally ships here from Google after months (...2) of delay).
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Date: 2024-10-10 05:52 pm (UTC)Good luck with the new phone.
My algorithm is to pick whatever cell phone is at the price sweet spot, rather than the newest-and-most-expensive. (Not the cheapest; the place where the price curve changes.) I then keep it as long as possible. The lack of OS updates is, to me, a plus rather than a minus - it reduces the number of times I have to figure out the latest way of doing something I already knew how to do, or how to disable the latest in unwanted features. It's a pity I generally have to buy them while updates are still happening.
Sadly, 5G seems to already be crowding out 4G in my area. My 4G phone is getting less and less accurate position fixes, due to a reduction in 4G cells, with the result that using it for directions is getting increasingly chancy. At least, I think that's what is happening; this is the second time an older phone that used to be reliable for directions started fairly routinely telling me to turn half a block *after* the relevant intersection.
Perhaps I'll buy a Pixel 9 Pro next year, when its price comes down, even though I'm otherwise happy with my Pixel 3a. OTOH, 6 (remaining) years of software updates would be a bit much for my tastes.
Or maybe not. Even the smaller one is 2mm wider than the Pixel 3a - which I selected in part for its form factor - the pixel 9 pro may be too wide for my hands. The 9 Pro XL certainly is.
In fact, it seems that Google hasn't ever produced a 5th Gen Pixel as narrow as their 3a - 70.1 mm. There was one around 70.6, and the rest are all 72 mm or worse.
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Date: 2024-10-10 06:45 pm (UTC)Your product picking algorithm is the better one for the best price/longevity ratio, of course. Right now the Pixel 8's are getting great sales from Google, it'll be really cheap from Amazon during the next Prime day. But I can afford to splurge more and it's a device that I'll be using every day, so I feel like I'll be amortizing the cost over many years.
Interesting about the 5G. I've also noticed that accuracy has decreased on my phone. I'm a bit surprised at what you're saying though because 5G is an extension of the 4G protocol; I would think that 4G phones would still work "at 4G" on 5G endpoints. But of course many of the 5G endpoints use higher frequencies that our old 4G phones weren't made for, in most areas.
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Date: 2024-10-10 07:02 pm (UTC)As for improved cameras - cell phone cameras haven't been bad enough for years for me to dislike even the lowest end ones available. This is the same principle that caused me to buy a decent ghetto blaster, many years ago, rather than an expensive stereo system - I couldn't hear the difference, with the music I preferred. So no need to spend more to get what would only be a status symbol ;-) Obviously YMMV.
I also know, from my time at Apple, that the cameras with the best stats often use an extreme amount of phone resources, especially memory. The result was (usually minor) performance issues, often in other apps, when you'd used the camera recently. My job was to fix performance issues, so I got to see a lot of them.
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