this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025

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Which Pixel to get? (mander.xyz)

submitted 11 months ago by acockworkorange@mander.xyz to c/graphene_os@lemmy.sdf.org

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My current phone (iPhone 13 mini) is telling me to retire it, and I want to get into Graphene. I really dislike that my phone sometimes will just hang while I’m swipe typing and don’t want to buy a new one that has these latency issues. I also don’t want to spend a ton of money.

I was looking at the Pixel 8a which is being sold for $500. Anyone else use it with Graphene? Do you use a swipe keyboard? Any responsiveness issues?

What about storage? Coming from Apple, I can see my current phone using about 64GB with OS + apps. Anyone recently made the transition and can tell me if I can expect this number to grow or shrink?

Thanks a bunch!

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[–] Maiq@lemy.lol 6 points 11 months ago

I cant speak to the storage or specifically the 8a as I went with the 8.

GrapheneOS is snappy though. Never had a hang or experienced any lag outside of a segfault one time that crashed the phone. There was an update pushed out the next day and haven't had any issues since.

GOS is under constant development and fixes for things seem to be fixed pretty damn quick.

GOS also tells you when an application has memory issues like buffer overflow which could be a security risk.

GOS puts you in control of your device in so many ways, sandboxing apps and user profiles, installing google play services to a user or not, restricting app permissions.

It is hands down the best phone OS i have ever used and i have done a fair bit of custom rom installs on my galaxyS4 back in the day. The best part is you dont even have to root it.

[+] 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] philycheeze@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Was the banking stuff easy to get working? I’m looking to ditch my iPhone but I also don’t want to spend more than a weekend getting my basics swapped over.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 4 points 11 months ago

My banking app works, but I stopped using it because it's bloated garbage (100mb!?)

Instead I use Hermit or Native Alpha to create shortcuts to websites like bank, Amazon, etc. These make websites function like apps, so I don't need the crappy apps from these places, and have a single app install instead of multiple crappy apps.

[–] fnie@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

I can second this. Picked up an 8a a few months ago. Read up on installing GOS and had no issues putting it on for the first time. Spent a few weeks reading the GOS docs/forum, exploring, and experimenting to figure out how I wanted it set up. Been so happy that my only regret is not splurging on a pro model.

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 11 months ago

I'm still on the 7a with no plans of upgrading until it breaks, or is no longer supported.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Pixel 5 is cheap. It really depends on your use case. I like the 7 for the cost point and size.

As for storage, there's not really an easy comparison as they do things differently. I hammer on phones, move a lot of files around all the time, take music and movies with me, and find 128gb is fine. But I also use Media Monkey as an iTunes-like media sync (you can use iTunes, I just don't like it). I also use Syncthing and Resilio to access my own media.

Edit: Also Android handles storage a little differently, by having dedicated partitions for things like system and user. For example, my "128 GB" phone actually has 117 GB usable space due to formatting, native apps/user config data and such (apps and config data are stored in the user partition). The space used for the operating system is a different partition, inaccessible to us users so not worth worrying about.

[–] SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

running fine on my 7a as of last night!

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you got money get 9 series. They have better battery and charging.

Consider used, open box renewed route.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Twice the price though. Looking at GSMArena the difference doesn’t seem striking.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 2 points 11 months ago

Any pixel will do, I wouldn't go below 6 though at this point.

Just get something that fits the budget

[–] superweeniehutjrs@lemmy.world -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I've had the pixel 3a, 6, and 8. The default OS is not worth the constant glitches. Get a Samsung if you were an iPhone person

[–] gid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 11 months ago

Considering this is a GrapheneOS community I'm assuming OP intends to replace the default OS with that.