I initially hoped it would have a hub specific interface that looks similar to the Nest Hub. Instead though, the dock basically puts it into screensaver mode and the home icon pulls up the basic Google Home like if you were to tap the quick settings icon.
As a tablet, it’s decent but I wouldn’t get it if you’re mostly planning to use it with Google Home as I think the current experience is disappointing.
I think it’d be nice if they offered an option without the base for $400 especially since the hub experience on it as it is currently isn’t very good. All hub mode does currently is turn it into a glorified digital picture frame with the home controls button in the bottom corner and the Google Home experience isn’t as good as a Nest Hub.
As it is right now, I wouldn’t consider the Pixel Tablet as a replacement for the Nest Hub.
I have a Pixel Tablet and I really only used the speaker to charge it, but I’m probably going to stop because the base is becoming very flakey with my experience. The speaker randomly loses power and I’ll have to unplug and plug it back in about a dozen times before it’ll start getting power again and this problem started a week after getting it. The charger is not damaged in any way which leads me to think it’s probably defective.
I haven’t been rooted for a while since my last rooted device was an HTC 10 back in 2018, but at least back then I didn’t have issues with my banking apps. For that though, your milage may vary depending on if your bank’s app uses the safetynet API.
For Google Pay, I gave up on that while rooted because even with Magisk Hide I couldn’t get it to work reliably and that’s unlikely to change since the Magisk dev went to work for Google and stopped working on Magisk Hide due to it being a conflict of interest.
Other than that, apps that use Widevine DRM may not work properly on rooted devices. For example, Netflix incorporates both safetynet and Widevine so you have to sideload it since it won’t allow you to install directly from the Play Store and once you do have it installed, the Widevine issue keeps video playback at 480p regardless of network quality.
As much as I am for supporting rooted devices since you should be able to do what you want on a device that you own, unfortunately it isn’t really viable to run on a device that you daily. Companies want full control rather than giving you control and many of the restrictions that rooting causes has more drawbacks than pros IMO. I’d probably still root if I’m rooting a secondary device, but I wouldn’t root my main phone anymore.
I’m still not sold on the durability and the last thing I want is the screen to become a wear item. Even with most of them pretty much all switching from plastic to ultra thin glass, bending glass like that is asking for it to eventually break and replacement internal screens aren’t cheap.
Secondly, a lot of foldables sacrifice battery capacity as the Flip 5 has a 3700 MAh battery and the Fold 5 has a 4400 MAh and powering a 2nd, larger screen is going to consume more battery. A normal smartphone you can typically find with at least 5000 MAh batteries in them.
The tech is cool and all, but it just seems more like an engineering flex rather than something that’s practical.
I get ads may be a necessary evil if you’re using a website or service you aren’t directly paying for, but 9/10 times it’s because of how they’re implemented and behave and advertisers and large publishers are out of touch with users and never learned or they simply just don’t care.
First off, it seems that ads always have to be presented in the most obnoxious ways and this is a problem that’s almost as old as the internet. I remember going online back in the late 90s and early 2000s, you’d get those extremely obnoxious and seizure inducing “YOU’RE OUR 1’000’000 VISITOR” or “YOU WON A FREE IPOD” ads. Today though, ads are still as annoying or even worse to an extent since every website now insists having autoplaying videos with sound or if you’re using a phone and trying to read an article, 3/4 of the page will be taken up by an ad and you have little room to view the actual content.
Secondly, ads have been increasingly becoming a privacy issue. Advertisers want to know every little thing about us and have the ability to track us around the web. I really want advertisers especially to know as little as possible about me because they clearly can’t be trusted with data wether they keep it internally or sell it to data brokers because some of the data they’re able to collect is alarming.
I’m all for trying to find ways to cut down on e-waste, but I don’t think this is it and it being water soluble could potentially shorten lifespan of devices because they could unintentionally disintegrate when it comes in contact with water.
This also doesn’t really fix the problem if electronics end up in a landfill as there’s still plastic, glass and batteries that’ll sit there plus lead is still a problem if it does use lead solder.
At best, it only helps if a device is properly recycled and it doesn’t really do much if it isn’t. The best solution is still to not needlessly buy new devices and use what you have for a bit longer and companies should support their devices longer. I doubt the latter will happen though because pretty much every company will favor profits over the environment and they’ll continue to greenwash to say how they’re carbon neutral. Unless you go with something super cheap, most smartphones should easily last 5+ years and then not providing software or security updates after a couple of years is purely a business decision.
I don’t have a current one as I have a Moto 360 2020 that’s stuck on Wear OS 2. I’m thinking about replacing it with the 2nd gen Pixel Watch since it’s rumored to be a big improvement to the 1st gen.
From what I heard though, Wear OS 3 and 3.5 is a step in the right direction and gives OEMs more control of the UI, which is I believe why Samsung is using it now over Tizen. Really the only regression I can think of between Wear OS 2 and 3 is that Google Assistant is only available on Samsung and the Pixel Watch. If you go with any other watch, its not going to have it.
Before I deleted my account, I did give it a try and it’s truly terrible and it’s a shame they expect you to use that when basically every 3rd party app is better in every way. It’s buggy, riddled with ads and doesn’t have proper tablet support while both Sync and Boost did.
I know Revanced will fix some of the issues, but I’m done with Reddit out of principle of them throwing 3rd party devs to the curb when it’s been fine for them to develop apps for years.
There’s a learning curve with using federated platforms wether it’s Lemmy, kbin or Mastodon. Things will definitely improve as these platforms get more fleshed out but as is, it’ll probably come off confusing to a casual user.
To give Reddit and Twitter credit, they made it convenient to join communities as you just need a single account to interact with hundreds of thousands of communities and millions of people. It’s convenient as a user that you only need one account as opposed to 30.
If anything, we might end up reverting back to using smaller forums until the fediverse has time to catch up. I think it’s unsustainable as a business model and we’re seeing this with the self-destruction of both Reddit and Twitter where they’re leaning too far to try and make a profit where it’s affecting user choice and experience. Most people that ran web forums back in the day didn’t do it for the money but instead they wanted to foster a community. Yes going back to that might cause the internet to get a bit more fragmented, but I think it’ll work out for the best as both forums and the fediverse puts users first.
I left and deleted my account after Elon changed the algorithm to show nothing but his posts. With this decision and the many other bad decisions he’s made since buying Twitter, I’m glad I left and I frankly don’t miss it.
This will absolutely be abused and people will be harassed, but I feel this is intentional as he continues turning Twitter into a far-right echo chamber.