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0 pointseterm2y ago0 comments

It's hard to describe what exactly I don't like. Initially I thought it was just a muscle memory thing but I've had it long enough now that I've got used to the different UI for everyday things and try to use it's shortcuts on my old phone.

But overall I don't like it.

I don't like how it handles notifications, it seems to hide most of them, and the ones it does show it doesn't show in a useful way compared to my old phone. What exactly is different I can't say, but it's weird.

It also handles permissions differently. Some apps when I disable certain permissons get stuck in a permission loop because they can't cope with the idea of only having a particular permission denied. I never had this problem with my old phone despite it also having granular permissions. Seems to be related to a change in how notification permissions are handled exactly.

I don't like how I can't quickly change the ringer volume. It used to be a separate slider when I hit the volume on my old phone. Changing now is a gamble and finding how to get it to vibrate mode seems beyond me.

1Password used to allow biometric unlock on my old phone. I can't get that to work on my new phone so have to type the master password (extremely long password) on a mobile device, which makes it useless to me. I'm not going to type my master password on a phone keypad in public, that's asking for it to leak.

The fingerprint sensor is okay, but I preferred the below-screen sensor on my old phone.

It's fiddly to get back to the home screen. On my old phone if I scanned my thumbprint it would go back to home. On the pixel it's a finicky swipe-up-from-the-bottom thing which sometimes goes home and sometimes goes to an app-switcher.

Setting up the phone required giving google rather more permissions than I was comfortable with, but denying them locked out key features of the phone so I felt forced to accept.

The pixel 8 is also slightly smaller than my old phone, though of course I knew that when I bought it. I didn't realise how much 0.1inches was going to feel like a major loss. I didn't want to go over-sized with the pixel 8 pro though.

Overall a downgrade and really horrible experience compared to my old phone, which I only replaced because it was so old and stopped getting regular updates. It was a Huawei P20 pro and in terms of general use still feels just as fast as it did when it was new.

The only feature I like that the pixel 8 has which my old phone doesn't is the wireless charging. That's a game changer when it comes to preventing wires wearing out.

0 comments

disillusioned2y ago

>I don't like how it handles notifications, it seems to hide most of them, and the ones it does show it doesn't show in a useful way compared to my old phone.

If an app's notification is set to "silent", it'll push it below a certain divider line, and some notifications may be hidden while in DND mode, and then revealed when out of DND, which is a disjointed experience and not the best, but _is_ configurable.

>I don't like how I can't quickly change the ringer volume. It used to be a separate slider when I hit the volume on my old phone. Changing now is a gamble and

Yeah, this used to be easier. Now you have to click the ellipsis at the bottom of the volume slider to open up the other volumes, but it's clearly labeled.

>finding how to get it to vibrate mode seems beyond me.

This is simple: it's the phone icon at the top of the volume interface when you change volume.

>1Password used to allow biometric unlock on my old phone.

This seems to work for me on my P8Pro

>It's fiddly to get back to the home screen. On my old phone if I scanned my thumbprint it would go back to home. On the pixel it's a finicky swipe-up-from-the-bottom thing which sometimes goes home and sometimes goes to an app-switcher.

I absolutely hate the gesture navigation but I solved this by sticking with the old school 3-button navigation, which you can change in settings.

romanows2y ago

Ah, totally fair, I was thinking more about hardware than the OS stuff. On my side, I prefered the rear fingerprint sensor and plastic (lighter, less slippery) on some earlier pixels. Nexus 5 was my favorite, I think I'd be happy with new guts in that phone (although waterproofing is nice).

On the OS side of things, when switching between activities, very rarely my last activity is to the right in the carousel rather than to the left. Because I can't predict when it happens, I can't mindlessly switch to my previous activity, which is surprisingly annoying.

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