Here comes the endless e-mails.
We've been getting our fair share of e-mails from our carrier trying really fucking hard to get up to upgrade our phone. This may come as a shock to some of you out there in FOSS land. Because we actually have two phones. One on an Iphone 12. The other phone is the Google Pixel 8 Pro. Now we never really focused much on the phone review tech blogger scene, as we feel the majority of the bloggers out there are either AI-generated or shilling really fucking hard so they can get free swag and product. Not only that. But we're not sure if we can nerd out hard on mobile technology, as it feels the entire ecosystem is kinda shitty with paying thousands for a device that is used against you to blast even more ads.
Read onward for our diatribes.
Corporate shill.
Hey S, why are you such a corperate shill when it comes to your phones?
There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Underneath the Otterbox Defender Shell and the protective glass, which I've not had to replace four times (the last time, the protective camera glass shattered, as well as the internal glass). Can't even tell you how many times we've dropped it or how it gets banged and beaten up at the airport. At the time, this cost us about $600 with the rebate and the 2-year contract. As of last month, the contract is paid. Which means guess what? The carrier we used (GoogleFI comes at us fucking hard every day, asking us to upgrade our phone.)
Okay! Jumping from a Pixel 8 to a Pixel 10. Has to be some big upgrades, right guys? Right?
Well, you could check comparisons, and quickly find out that in many cases you're getting a phone with 10 percent 'possible' more processing power. A weaker battery, weaker camera, fewer storage options, less resolution, all for roughly the same price as two years ago, because the value that's added is the shit Logitech wants to pull, but instead it's Google Gemini AI.
Afterall:
- Why would you want a 105MP camera lens when you can just let Google Gemini hallucinate the fuck out of your pictures? Your reality is pointless! Purchase our assistant now!
- Why would you want 1TB of storage when you can just buy more Google Drive space, eating bandwidth like a motherfucker? Better hope you got the $90/unlimited plan..
- Why would you want a bigger battery? Just keep charging the tiny one over and over again until the elements burn out inside and buy ANOTHER $1,000 phone!
But hey, at least you get Bluetooth 6.0 compliant. That's all that matters, right? There haven't been many points in technological history where a salesperson sells you a worse product in exchange for what you got. But here comes Google trying to revolutionize selling you shit by sidestepping the topic, saying:
Lookit what AI can do for you!!!! Only $200/year!
I swear it feels like all of these tech-bros went to the same conference and decided this is how we're going to sell product from now on. By giving you, effectively, a software solution that does nothing for you. And by selling you nothing, they can make fortunes on a technology that has an unproven return on investment. Google could barely get Google Home working, and now you expect people to actually pay you for Gemini? A bag of dicks awaits you at the end of this website's rainbow!
Where's the quality?
If you told a person from 20 years ago that you need to purchase an extra shell and protective glass to save your $600(USD) investment that is almost unrepairable. That person would've flipped shit. Rightfully so. Of course we're also showing our age with talking about "Pindrop Quality" that Sprint used to tout which is now quietly shelved by the entire cel-phone industrys lack of motivation to actually provide a clear signal and instead compressing all voice to 32khz GSM band meaning that despite us having phones that cost more then computers we still need to to use the NATO phoenetic alphabet invested in the mid 1950's in order give details to people.
Despite our technology being so advanced, our vocal communication has been crippled. The 'Cellular Phone' part of your smart device is total shit because we let it turn to total shit.
Own a pixel? Google wins no matter what.
This is a Nokia 2860 series flip phone that is NOT given out by Google Fi. We blogged about it when we were not thinking with Google and checking out the site with other OS's. KaiOS, which is loaded on this phone, is one of them. Even though it looks like something that came out of the mid-2000s. This phone was manufactured in 2021 and is generally given to the elderly and low-income communities as a means of staying in touch with their doctor, family, and friends. Because it's based around mid-2000s concepts of a phone you just talk on.. And since the towers beyond 3G are being terminated in the states really haven't improved their quality. It remains the same cell phone for well below 100 dollars. And it will probably outlast my Google Pixel 8 Pro phone. Why do you ask?
Eventually, even when you say "Fuck No!"(They would prefer you to say "No thanks." But why thank people who are trying to screw you?) for the "exclusive offer" to upgrade to a Pixel 10. Our Pixel 8 Pro will eventually break. Because it lacks the features that the most affordable flip-phone has. That is, replacing one of the most volatile parts of the phone, which is the battery itself.
Replacing the battery on the Pixel 8 Pro means removing the LCD screen with a heat gun and plastic pick (Which BTW has an incredibly good chance of shattering your screen), removing screws, and graphite tape. Then Google applied an extra level of difficulty by adding double-sided tape that is fucking impossible.
We've seen phone places that do this type of work for a living botch a pixel repair.
Now we could sit down and ask "why be monsters? There's plenty of room below the camera of the Google Pixel 8 to put a trap door. Why not be somewhat environmentally responsible and do what Nokia has done? It is simple..
Shut up. And pay for a Google Pixel 10. - Google
There is zero motivation for any major cell-phone company to, at the very least, make their battery replaceable. They would get into excuses like Apple has done.
Replacing the battery leads to third party vendors making batteries for our phones which voids the warranty..
Uhh, that would be great if you got the warranty directly from Apple or Google. With Apple, you have to actually pay extra for Apple Care. With most Android devices, however, if you did get some kind of warranty on your phone, it usually gets shuttled off to a third-party vendor like "Assurant" in the United States to handle. So despite paying almost a thousand US dollars for a phone. These companies are very quick to back away from the warranty aspect.
The reality is, most of the major cell phone companies know what they're doing. Because someone with that Nokia flip-phone above can keep their phone going another two, three, or even five years before replacing it. Why do that? That sounds like revenue loss! Fuck the environment. Just keep pumping out phones until we're all dead.
You know there's repairable phones out there right 'S'? Pinephone?!? FairPhone?!?!
You're right. There are alternatives out there. Let's look at each one.
Pinephone.
Alright, first up is the PinePhone. which is a phone that you could load open-source software onto. We trashed the Pine64 in our first article, but gave the Pinecil a solid review. Why haven't we purchased a PinePhone?
The processor specs really haven't changed a lot since the Pine64 review. Back then, it was painfully slow to get Linux going. People reviewing the PinePhone can indeed make phone calls on it. Just not sure how we feel about waiting 3-5 seconds to launch Notepad. One of the reasons why we have the Pixel 8 Pro and an iPhone 12 is that we tend to do a lot of gorilla video work. The PinePhone, sporting a 5MP camera, is simply not up for the job.
It's one of those devices that seems great for people who want to tinker. And perhaps if they offered higher spec camera modules and the means to record at those resolutions. It would be promising. But we doubt the product is going to be that modular in the future.
And yes, we know about the Pinephone pro.. That still is not cutting it. Sorry.
Fairphone.
Okay, at the time of this post, the version 6 Fairphone is actually super promising! When we purchased the Pixel Pro 8, they were on FairPhone 4. Video work was sub-par on that model of Fairphone, and on top of that, we were not entirely sure if the Fairphone could be bought in the States. It seems they fixed that issue by going through a reseller, Murena. It took a while for the Fairphone to catch up, but it seems like they did it! Also, some people were freaking out about using Google Fi on the Fairphone. Looking at later reviews, those problems seem to have resolved by themselves.
So, when my Pixel 8 Pro finally nukes itself, which we know will happen. We at least have somewhere to go. For all we know, by the time our Pixel 8 dies. Fairphone 7 would be released with even more options, rivaling those of Samsung phones and surpassing the Pixel together.
And here you thought it was all going to be depressing ass news about the mobile industry, huh?
I guess the only downside of the Fairphone is that we can't reflexively get an Otterbox defender and reinforced glass like all of our other phones. But would we really need it if the Fairphone is indeed repairable? With those cameras sticking out stupidly from the case like an iPhone 13. Probably! We do like the recessed effect the OtterBox gives us, especially when placing it on tables.
iPhone time.
WTF S, you never even talked about why you have an IPhone. - Anonymous
Ohh right! We gave it the same Otterbox Defender and extra screen treatment that we did to our Google Pixel. To be honest, the only reason why we have this iPhone is that it USED to be our work phone until they realized how expensive it was to keep buying us iPhones, and eventually sold it to employees for $100 USD. I could use this as a temporary backup in case my Google Fi Pixel 8 dies. The iPhone does, however, suck with international, which is why we totally deactivated all cell phone service on the thing.
It's been pretty much demoted into taking pictures for this blog and being a WiFi walkie-talkie on company conference calls, burning up the battery on this phone instead. When you've demoted the iPhone to simple tasks, it actually does a great job at them! Now, because of the phone stipend we get from the wonders of RL. Both of these phones are paid off, and now the money is being stacked into a savings account for a future phone. Although camera work and video work are easier on the iPhone, the entire process of transferring it off of the iPhone and over to anything other than an Apple product is a fucking nightmare. 
Apple has this bizarre obsession with wanting to re-process your video into a far inferior copy of that video before allowing it to be uploaded to any 3rd party app, by it NextCloud, OwnCloud, Google Drive, or Teams. Unlike Android, which gives zero fucks about compatibility and simply uploads the video in its entirety to you. We also had to disable all power saving functionality on the iPhone 12, or else it would 'process' videos and never finish because the iPhone would simply go to sleep. The same happened when we broke out the data cable and just downloaded the video file directly to our Linux or Windows box. Although we got the -real- version recorded, sometimes the transfers would die on long videos with the phone going to sleep. Although certain applications on iPhone are more elegant than on Android. Being stuck inside Apple's gated community isn't entirely for us either. We suppose the good news is that it at least allows us to perform website tests with a legit Apple product.
Final thoughts.
When it comes to Google or Apple. As they start playing stupid games with AI. They don't even deserve stupid prizes. They realistically should get nothing until they realize that is not how you sell a phone. But unfortunately, we know how society goes. New version equals better phone! Fuck the spec ratings. Now, we're fairly certain that with the tariffs coming to the states, things are going to get interesting when it comes to electronics. Not really in a good way either.
Honestly, when we wrote this review, we thought we had reached a dead end. Some of the DIY phone fixing is coming around, getting slowly better and better. Kinda wish PinePhone followed suit, as they were supposedly ex-Apple engineers. But it seems they're getting kinda left behind. So it's good to at least know there are products out there that deliver high-end hardware while still allowing you to load whatever the hell you want.
But to answer the question of whether I'll be buying a new phone in 2025. No.. We don't think we will. If what we got is really better than what is selling. Then we'll see about taking it until either the battery shits itself. Or the screen explodes. And instead, just keep the savings account growing. And if Google wants to start shutting down sideloading and blacklist APK markets like F-Droid. Then I'll either flash the phone or find an alternative method.
That's what server said.
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