Android is struggling to keep its market share in the United States, as Apple continues to take over in the market. But, despite Android as a whole losing ground, Google Pixel phones are becoming a bigger slice of the US market.
Counterpoint Research reports that, in Q2 2023, US smartphone shipments dropped by 24% year-over-year. That includes both iPhones and Android phones, and virtually every brand saw a drop in shipments. Samsung saw US shipments drop by 37% while Motorola saw a 17% drop. TCL saw the biggest decline at just shy of 70% year-over-year, and even Apple saw a 6% drop.
Samsung and major carriers are shooting android in the foot with the bloatware. There are less and less viable android models that aren’t half filled with carrier or manufacturer specific apps that can’t be deleted. The pixel might be a tool of the Google devil but at least it provides the illustration of customization. iPhones are still Iphones. People they phone is pretty much the same butvthe hardware gets slightly better. Combine all that with messaging on Iphones essentially excluding android and ut becomes though to stick with anything but a Pixel or iphone. If I didn’t have lots of Google stuff setup for work I might reconsider iphones, but the pixel really has made my life easier via Google big brother. If work used apple big brother I would switch.
At this point google is pretty much the only company providing an Android experience that isn’t shit
Anyone I’ve met that hasn’t liked it has used a Samsung. They try so hard to be apple but they don’t understand the parts that work and just create an overall bloated and shitty experience
Doesn’t help that they have overpriced everything
Fairphone provides stock Android.
At this point google is pretty much the only company providing an Android experience that isn’t shit
They try so hard to be apple but they don’t understand the parts that work and just create an overall bloated and shitty experience
These 2 sentences are the complete opposites of each other. Google are the ones trying to be apple, removing customisation and dumbing everything down. Samsung are the ones that are providing the android experience that most people want, which is why they outsell Google 100 to 1 or more.
Yeah to be fair I’ve always had a Samsung, either flagship or midrange and never had an issue.
Samsung has gone way overboard with their pricing for flagships recently but their midranges are pretty decent on that score and I guess I just go with them because I’m happy with what I’m getting now. The A52s is what I have now, upgraded from an S10+ which had pretty much the same specs.
In terms of bloatware, I just disable it or uninstall it, same as I do with any software which comes on a work phone or home PC that I don’t use. Is this a big deal?
As for pixels - it’s great that they get regular updates. But they’re also expensive. They seem to look nice. Generally speaking though I agree they are the attempt to do an iPhone version of Android which probably only really matters in the US market
If Google’s custom soc is good I’d love to finally own a pixel. Hate having to use chinese phones to get non bloated android at a reasonable price.
The Pixel has been the only non bloated Android phone I have used.
I think he’s talking about using custom Roms
Chinese phones are popular for that
Yep.
The Pixels are some of the most heavily bloated phones around though. They have 25+ google apps installed by default that you can’t remove.
You can just install a different operating system on Pixels
Doesn’t change what I said. Most people aren’t doing that, and the constant talk of pixels having “no bloat” couldn’t be further from the truth.
The a line of pixel phones is great too. Unlike other brands that gimp the shit out of everything below their $1100 option, the pixel a just makes the full fat ones feel like a worse deal
When you’ve got a miniscule market share it’s much easier to increase it than it is when you have a much larger market share.
This. People that can afford a higher-end phone still can. Everyone else doesn’t have the money right now due to inflation and the income gap widening etc. IPhone and Pixel are the most well-known higher-end phone brands.
Feel free to correct me if it gets more complicated than that.
IPhone and Pixel are the most well-known higher-end phone brands.
iPhone and Galaxy. Pixels aren’t well known (or if they are, they’re not desired), hence the teeny tiny market share.
or if they are, they’re not desired
I couldnt say. They are at least the ones most advertised where i live.
Yuck why do people continue to buy Apple products?
I feel like a bit of a unicorn for using a Nokia 5.4. Never met another person that uses any of Nokia’s recent smartphones. 😭
Is it bloatware free like pixel and Motorola or it has some nokia cloud/store preinstalled?
Bloatware free. =)
I don’t consider HMD Global phones, because they don’t allow unlocking the bootloader.
Nokia still makes smartphones!?!?!?!?!?
(Well at least now you know what the problem is. Why aren’t they advertising this?)
Not really, the company is called HMD Global, Nokia has an investment in it and there are probably a lot of former Nokia employees working there, but it’s not a subsidiary.
Ah okay, thanks for explaining it. Guess I should just stick with Pixel devices, then. (I miss the old OnePlus; they used to be such a good alternative to Pixels.)
Yep, they sure do! They target the budget market and therefore are competing mainly with Moto in that area, and even still make feature phones too.
I do wish I saw more marketing for them. The only reason why I even bought my original Nokia 3.1 and then my 5.4 is because I deliberately go out of my way to keep an eye on their products.
I had the X20 and then the XR20. Not bad phones but it never received timely updates and it really needed help in the camera department. The camera on both devices was just so bad. Like 2012 bad.
The camera on my 5.4 isn’t horrible but it’s not great either. But I knew that before buying it; I’m not picky about the camera.
I remember my 6.1 bought in 2018 at a Best Buy, it was a really cool phone, solid and all, I like Nokia phones.
I had a Xperia 1III I really enjoyed using it, but my fingerprint sensor just quit work on it on day. Outside of the warranty too so it doesn’t help. So I upgraded to a Pixel 7 Pro as I had a 4XL prior to it and liked that.
Would’ve gone with the 1V, but the 1III was my first Sony phone and that happening sketched me out. Might get another though once it’s time to upgrade this one or it craps out. Sony is doing what a lot of other companies aren’t and I respect that.
It’s still 45% marketshare Android vs 55% iOS. With the way the title reads, you’d think Android was down in the single digits and barely hanging on.
Personally I just don’t see how anyone uses iOS. The iPhone I have is just awful. The UI is clunky and I’m absolutely baffled why this stupid phone weighs so much. That’s not a good thing, damn it. My Samsung is infinitely better device in my opinion. But I’d still love to see a third player come in. I was sad when Microsoft killed off their phone OS. It might not have been great at the time, but more competition is always better. And then if course there’s also PalmOS. So sad to see such a cool OS die off.
The UI is clunky
What do you mean by this? Is this just another “snappy” type thing that is meaningless?
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iOS seems to be meant for simplicity and ease of use. I mean, not that Android is confusing at all, but it seems that the less tech focused you are the more you gravitate toward iOS. I would never want an iPhone, but they seem to really kill it in the battery and camera departments.
I got a pixel 7a about 6 months ago. It’s a brilliant phone, once you remove all the google shit / bloat and block all the trackers.
For me, it’s the lack of a replaceable battery and the lack of an SD card slot. Otherwise, it would be a perfect phone to tinker with software-wise with all the custom ROMs that are available for Pixels.
GrapheneOS on my Pixel 7.
GrapheneOS on my Pixel 5.
I wanted to try it out today. The install looked intimidatingly-complex to me, is there an ‘easy mode’ installation method?
The web installer is pretty simple.
It may seem intimidating because they’re being super cautious. (Stuff like “You should avoid using a USB hub” is bordering paranoia.) But that’s not because they need to be cautious. The GrapheneOS installer is very safe. The reason they’re being so cautious is because they want to be more than 99% sure it works.
If something goes wrong, like you use the wrong browser or fail to install the driver/package, it won’t break your phone; the install just stops and you can try again.
The one thing that may break something is if during install the cable gets disconnected or the power goes out. That’s unlikely by itself, but even if it does happen, you phone will most likely be fine.
Thanks for the encouragement & advice. I’ll give the web installer a go once I’ve had some sleep.
iturned
I was shocked how damn simple the whole thing was. You just click a few times, and before you notice, the phone is rebooting and installing the full OS. Takes almost no time and it’s all super automatized. That was the easiest “custom” OS I’ve ever installed.
Can’t wait for the entire cell phone market to be a monopoly…
I bought my phone for £150 and it’s great. I don’t understand why people spend £600+ on a phone.
Take a look at how the median income in America compares to your country.
I bought my phone for £150 and it’s great. I don’t understand why people spend £600+ on a phone.
Compared to a 600 dollar phone, the camera on your phone is garbage, the build quality is garbage, the performance is garbage, as are most other things. People like good things.
I think the sweet spot is somewhere around the 300€ range. Below that you definitely already get perfectly reasonable phones, but you still have to make compromises. But at that price point you get most things and the missing features are not as important.
Past that diminishing returns are hitting hard.
The one thing that usually scales the most past that point is the camera. But a phone like the pixel 6a already takes amazing photos. And the only real difference you usually find are extra lenses (particularly zoom).
The only time i could ever see those 1k top phones start to make sense is, if we ever get to the point where phones can replace our personal computers and you just slot them into a dock at home.
You can dock a Samsung phone and it become like a personal computer
Is samsung dex any good? I think my S6 lite actually got it with an update at some point, but i’ve not tried it out yet. Also not sure if the USB 2.0 would hold it back a lot.
Honestly yeah! It’s compatible with the majority of apps, you can use it to game (emulator or native Android games), there’s also a lot of productive apps compatible with it, like Microsoft Office (don’t know if there’s open source alternative compatible) and the majority of video and photo editing software. Personally it doesn’t remplace my computer, but while travelling it’s really pratical
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I FUCKING LOVE FLASHING CUSTOM ROMS WITHOUT VOIDING MY WARRENTY
As an iOS user the bloat on android is a huge turnoff for me.
I’d potentially switch to a Samsung if it didn’t have all that stuff pre installed on it.
It may be the second biggest reason I’m sticking with iOS. Of fact, if they got rid of bloat and iMessage was available on Android, I’d jump over in a second.
Can you explain what you mean by bloatware? Do you mean all the apps the phones come installed with, or do you mean something else? Would it be simple to uninstall what you don’t want? Curious bc I have a Samsung phone.
Well here are a few examples.
I don’t like having Facebook and stuff on the phone. If I want the app, ill download it.
Secondly, I do not want multiple calendar apps and browsers on the phone by default.
I don’t need chrome and the Samsung browser.
I also do not think I need to setup a samsung account and a google account and have backups in both places.
I guess it’s just a little overwhelming.
I think this is a big part of why Android is losing popularity but the Pixel is gaining it.
Every manufacturer’s excessive need to fill their phones with as many sponsored apps is getting to a point where people simply don’t buy them anymore.
At least the Pixel sticks to their own Google ecosystem, much like the iPhone and is at least a bit less locked down than others.
If Pixel was available in my country in an official capacity that would be the one I would choose. But if I were in the market for an Android, I would go this route for sure. The bloat is more annoying than anything else.
Plus with a Pixel, its just google snooping. With anyone else, it is google and the oem snooping. It would be nice is google pushed using your phone as a desktop more. It could be their way into the desktop space.
But it still installs so many apps I don’t want. I mean iOS allows you to remove almost any app that is preinstalled. Why doesn’t google? I don’t want drive, YTMusic. Their phones have alot of bloat installed.
Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense. I’ve been less aware of that and on recently, after having the phone for a while, have I been deleting many of the pre-installed apps.
You do know that is up to the OEM right? Just like buying a PC. Of course if you buy a laptop from Wal-Mart from some weird company it’s going to come with a bunch of nonsense on it.
We’re talking about pixel, googles phone. It’s going to come with the standard Google products installed.
Difference is that on a PC m you’re free to remove all of that bloat. On android you can’t, not without fucking around with external tools like ADB.
I got a Samsung just because I like the phones the best, but otherwise I don’t use any of the pre-installed apps that came with it and disabled/installed all of it.
I honestly think samsung has the best looking phones by far.
If iMessage game to android, I’d switch to a galaxy in a heartbeat, even with the preinstalled stuff. I figure a lot of that can be removed or at least hidden to an extent.
I’d potentially switch to a Samsung if it didn’t have all that stuff pre installed on it.
Samsung makes it incredibly easy to just disable all the “bloat” that you don’t like - you can do it through the battery settings. Simply set the apps you don’t want to be disabled and never let them start by themselves or run in the background. Problem solved.
Well there’s your problem. You’re looking at Samsung phones.
Honestly, they’re one of the worst when it comes to bloatware. They do it because their devices are so popular that they can get away with it. Stick with a Pixel, and you can’t go wrong.
(BTW, what’s with iPhone users’ obsession with iMessage? Google Messages has the same capabilities. Not trying to hate; genuinely curious. If your only experience with texting on Android is with using whatever came with your device, then I understand why you’d prefer Apple’s implementation. That’s the whole appeal of Android: if you don’t like how a component works, you can swap it out.)
To answer the iMessage thing.
I’m from the states but live in a different country. It’s the easiest free way to stay in touch with family and friends.
A number of people have been like “just move to X and if they don’t follow, then forget about them.”
But it’s not really realistic to ask all the people I might contact throughout the year to switch to a new app in case I contact them.
So I truly feel locked in because of that.
You don’t really have to choose. I have WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and Threema installed all at the same time. I don’t like Apple and since there’s no iMessage for Android (I guess), I can’t use that. But that’s not really my choice, it’s Apple’s choice. I won’t let them lock me down into their ecosystem. Just send SMSes to the people you only have on iMessage and that don’t understand why they are implicitly forcing their opinion on others.
99% of my contacts are iMessage only. It would be cheaper to just buy a second phone than to pay international calling and sms rates.
I have like 10 chat apps installed for local contacts. It’s just US contacts that don’t understand his to get off iMessage.
Please elaborate further. What’s so special about iMessage that it can be used in other countries, but every single messaging app for Android can’t? Google Messages is free too. Again, not trying to hate. Just trying to understand.
One thing about iMessage is that you can reply and send messages from all your Apple devices. I know the https://messages.google.com/ but the you need to keep it open on your computer for notification to come. Then there is the Facetime video/audio quality, it’s miles better than Whatsapp, Google Meet or any other video calling app. You can easily share your screens, you can even start a call on iPhone and transfer the call easily to a Mac or iPad seamlessly without even cutting the call. Also the Whatsapp and Google Meet video call quality is like 140p vs 1080p on Facetime. For the average the user who has never used iMessage and Facetime they will never understand what they are missing but for others it’s different case.
I don’t know anyone who uses google messages and I’m not going to convince the 20 people on my group chat to switch to it since we only catch up a few times per year.
Random acquaintances that I contact a few times per year will also not bother to figure it out as it will just idle 9 months of the year.
It’s just a real roadblock that locked people into the platform.
I use Google Messages to chat with my family who mostly use iMessage. I can see all the reactions and stuff so there aren’t really any compatibility issues. You don’t need an iphone or iMessage to communicate with people on iMessage.
But if I use google messages, it will be sent as an sms. So suddenly I have to pay for every international text and call made.
I’m from the states, but I do not live there at the moment.
It’s much easier for me to keep iOS instead of trying to convert 100 people to use some other messaging app.
Where I live, no one uses iMessage and I have all the major chat apps installed. So it’s not a problem for me, but even my parents struggled to understand what WhatsApp was and they are decently tech savvy.
I have a Pixel 3 and I hate it, I had to go through 4 warranty replacements and this one still has issues. I gave up because they were ones I could live with.
I feel like Google really hit their stride with the Pixel 6/7 series. The 7 series especially is just such a nice phone to use and doesn’t feel as cheap as previous iterations of the Pixel. It’s also great value for the money. I went with the Pro and would recommend against it honestly, because while I like the extra camera and the bigger screen it really doesn’t fit great in the average persons hand and the features don’t really justify the cost. If I had to do it over again I would get the 7 or 7a.
Respectfully disagree. I’ve been with Google phones since the Nexus 6p. Upgraded to the Pixel 2 which I still have and still works, then to the 5a which I hated, and now the 7pro. I didn’t think it would ever get better than the 2, but the telephoto lens on the 7 pro plus pretty much everything else still amazes me now over a year later. It’s perfect and I’m happy I didn’t go cheaper.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the telephoto lens, but I have a strong feeling I would sacrifice the extra lens for a smaller screen. Then again I do watch a lot of videos so who knows. I think the biggest problem is there isn’t really a way to test the two side by side to see.
That’s pretty cool. I’ll give it a try.
Should’ve mentioned to you that this app is probably low-key the most valuable one I own. It took about a week to get used to, now I wouldn’t have a phone with a big screen without it.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quickcursor
I honestly think the Pixel 5 is the best phone I have ever used. I have the P7 and I kind of wish I had stuck with the P5.
I’m riding 5 until it dies. Love it
Pixel 5 user here and I have to say I am going to make it last as long as I can! Battery still keeps its charge all day even as a fairly big user too!
My 5 had a screen issue so I had to replace it. Gone for a 6a for now. The pixel 8 looks nice as it’s smaller than previous years. Although it’s still slightly bigger than the Pixel 5. The 5 had a perfect one handed form factor.
I bought the s22 because Google abandoned this size phone
My problem with Android phones other than the Pixel line is all the bloatware they have installed that you can’t get rid of. I’ve been a user of the more “pure” Google phones since the start, from the Nexus to the Pixel.
The Nexus 6P was so good.
For me it was the 2XL.
That camera was just 5 years ahead of everything else, fruit included.
Got a 5 after that, but the selfie cam was crap. And to some extent, it still is on current models. I wish Google did something about it, I can’t be the only one noticing.
It is even worse on the Pixel 7, as its front camera is fixed focus. The Pixel 5 has a great front-facing camera in comparison!
I actually returned the Pixel 7 earlier this year, because of its size, weight, awful display (rainbow effects when viewing it at a slight angle) and fingerprint reader.
I also found the camera to be noticeably worse when doing closeup shots (which is what I do the most with my phone’s camera). All the pictures I took from the battery replacement of my Pixel 5 are slightly unsharp because of the 7’s camera. I later learned that you can use 2x zoom to workaround the problematic lens, but for the price of the phone I consider this to be unacceptable.
I got it at a discount and still found the phone to be too expensive for what it is.
I preordered the Pixel 5 (the only preorder I’ve ever done) to receive the Bose QC35 headphones as well. It was a great and well-priced package and I use both products to this day. The Pixel 5 is just right in my opinion. It has the right size, weight and hardware and its fingerprint reader is reliable (as long as it is dry). The vibrator is terrible in comparison to the Pixel 7, but everything else is better in my opinion.
I am really not sure what phone will be the replacement for my Pixel 5 … I either want a phone with GrapheneOS or mobile Linux. It has to be more compact and lighter than the Pixel 7 though.
I love all the input in this thread. I’m currently a Pixel 2 user, so it’s interesting seeing different perspectives
Don’t be fooled. The 7pro is an incredible phone. I have nothing but positive things to say about it 1+ year later. And I also had a pixel 2.
You might like something from the a series, although the fingerprint reader on the 6a is still awful and the cameras are not amazing. The size and weight feel right though, closest ive come to a Nexus 5.
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I love the size and feel of the 7a. It was an adjustment to get used to a small screen again but honestly, so happy with that element of the phone.
The battery life, on the other hand, feels worse than my 4 year old OnePlus 7 Pro’s is. I am not sure if it’s a me problem or a Pixel problem, but that aspect has me seriously worried about the longevity of the device. I guess you get what you pay for, but I’d expect a bit better for a mid-range phone.
It’s, unfortunately, a Pixel problem. The Tensor G2 is notoriously bad with battery life, and the fact that every manufacturer thinks we want paper thin phones doesn’t help.
The 7a is not a thin phone though, it’s noticeably thicker than my S9+, I think the 7a has a 4385mAh battery? A phone with such a large battery capacity should be better. You can tell the inefficient SoC is to blame because it gets hot easily.
Just makes me appreciate how amazing the S9+ was for it’s time that the 7a doesn’t completely blow it away when it’s much newer and nearly as expensive.
GrapheneOS is what keeps me from switching from Pixel.
Watch the Louis Rossman video on YouTube about Graphene OS developer.
That developer stepped down
You should watch it again. He said that GrapheneOS is great, but the Developer isn’t.
This one?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/4To-F6W1NT0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
One of the Lemmy developers appears to be a militant communist who denies the Uyghur genocide, yet here we are. Quite a few open source developers are insane and trying to avoid software with problematic contributors is an easy path to follow them into madness. It might stop me from donating money or getting heavily involved with development, but it’s not going to stop me from using the software.
I didn’t immediately reformat my ReiserFS partitions when Hans Reiser was arrested for murdering his wife either.
People defend capitalism too. Not that one justifies the other. People tend to cling blindly to ideals rather than compromise for the good of everyone.
I apply the rule of separating the Art from the Artist in this case. No doubt he is insane but Graphene OS is the most secure+private OS that he has build
