I was thinking about using graphene OS, but I’ve read some lemmy users dislike this OS due to perceived misleading advertising and the pixel 7a you’re supposed to install graphene on because it’s from google (an advertising company).
Another option would be lineage OS, but there is so much false information about this OS, namely compatible phones that simply don’t work with this OS and no support.
what works for you? I want a phone with no google, that doesn’t force me to use the manufacturer’s ecosystem and that won’t show the apps I don’t want or need (on an asus I own you cannot neither get rid nor hide bloatware)
If you don’t live in the EU. Here you get a better new phone from xiaomi/motorola/oneplus than a pixel for the same price. Yes, I get grapheneos and relockable bootloader, but used things are too expensive here. If you need a cheap phone, buy a cheap phone (fuck EU’s import regulations).
I don’t know what you are on about, but if brand-new Pixels are too expensive for you (although their price is uniformed to the US one), you can easily find them second-hand.
For example at a time where my Pixel 7 was available for 500$ (466€) in the USA + 100$ trade in (93€) for my Galaxy S8 = 400$ = 373€ it still was 620€ in Austria on Amazon, the only way to buy it because Google did not offer it through their Google store here and normal stores didn’t go below 650€. I could’ve gotten 20€ trade in for my old phone = 600€. 60% more than in the USA at the same time.
Used market basically didn’t exist because Pixels generally were a bit overpriced
Doesn’t it seem that this problem is caused by Google not operating the markets in the same way?
Yes, but Persen’s point still stands.
(And Pixels also have way less features here, the only advantage they give is access to GrapheneOS, great camera and AI photo editing)
Which features do the lack?
US-only:
Call screening
Hold for me
Direct my call
Wait times
Call transcription
Answering calls with text to speech
Emergency calls on crash
English-only:
Speaker labels for Google recorder transcripts
Google recorder transcripts generally don’t work well in other languages, but at least the option to get a subpar transcript exists
Probably missed some
That’s the point. You can’t import anything to EU without paying a 20% import tax ±5€ depending on the import. This makes the used device market prices in EU inflated.
Why would you import used devices from the US in the first place? People sell them in Europe too.
Most of the market was from UK (where we all know what happened) plus taxing imports inflated the EU market.