These are more expensive than the budget pixel a-series (which are priced at $499, which is still very expensive and should never be bought new) but Pixel’s manufacturing quality is subpar compared to other OEMs and rarely do they make serious improvements between generations (and have a long track history of hardware defects, one of which was battery swelling that I personally had to deal with).

Definitely a far better deal than the non a-series pixels. Seriously the only reason pixels are relevant in the smartphone marketplace is for Graphene OS or you’re completely bought into Google. They are such terrible phones otherwise.

I’m not interested in flagship premium phones but at least there’s now alternatives to Google’s incompetence.

Nice will buy in a few years used. Unless we see some real progress on Linux phones.

It’s a good move right now especially since the part shortage (and price fixing) makes it even more pointless to upgrade phones frequently.

Is this Embrace or Extend?

Given how hard Google is locking shit down, I’ll take any win at this point. Though seems unlikely I’ll afford such a thing this decade.

neat

Capitalism 101