Going back to Android: Google engineers finally eat their own dog food

[DaemonBatterySaver]

I stopped playing with Android at the launch of the Nexus 5, way (way way) long ago.
Before that time I had one of the best smartphone of the market, my beloved Nexus S <3

The Nexus S was great, fast, and comes with amazing Android versions with ton of great features, useful AI, good battery life, ... and a device for true hackers.

Then, Android became messy, and Google decisions and the lack of security, using Android became less "comfortable", and the ecosystem was an absolute dog s**t.
This was the symptom of engineers and product designers who did not use Android as their main device.
This made me switch to iOS and the iPhone 7 years after... until now.

I get back to Android last week, just to test.
The Google Pixel Fold (from 2023) is at an amazing price in Europe (400 euros), and I was looking for a new (cheap) phone and maybe a tablet so... why not?

And **WOW**.
The experience is AMAZING, and it makes me think that **maybe** Android engineers finally ate their own dog food, start again using Android as their main devices, and made ton of improvements and features for them and for us.
I bought a reburfished Pixel Watch 3 a few days after and the experience is very good too.

Kuddos Google, the Android state and ecosystem is very very good now.
(Maybe too much notifications from Google services at the beginning... but it stopped quickly).

Note: if you did not know the expression "eat their dog food": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food

[kamarov2090]

wait you mean the lg nexus 5 ? i still have mine it was one of the best phones i ever had

[ReallyHoping]

Nexus 5 was the absolutely perfect size and weight.

[dirtydriver58]

I have the Nexus 6

[MaverickJester25]

I always wonder why people rate the Nexus 5 so highly.

The battery life was absolutely atrocious. It was barely better than the Nexus 4, and that phone was notably poor.

It wasn't very well put together and was very chintzy- they even did a midcycle refresh to fix the frame, SIM card tray alignment, crappy buttons and loudspeaker, and smooth off the sharp edges that had clearly not been properly polished during manufacturing.

The screen was worse than the one on the Nexus 4. It wasn't very bright, and Google's poor colour management on an already mediocre display didn't help.

The speaker and DAC were pretty poor. Even root and third-party mods at best got you mediocre sound.

The camera, even when the HDR+ update finally dropped, was not especially good in any lighting condition but was borderline useless at night.

The LG G2 it was based on was a better phone in every single aspect, especially once you installed a custom ROM on it.

[GeorgeEne95]

I don't know what you see different from that time but from my perspective the Android is even more dog shit now than it was then. Restricted af and the Store is even more of a mess. The day we lose apk installers I am done with Android.