Why I Won’t Switch to a Google Pixel Phone

Google’s Nexus phones once offered the best taste of pure Android. Today’s Pixel phones are not—at least in my honest opinion. If you’re not all in on Google’s ecosystem, you’re left with a phone that doesn’t quite match the competition.

1 Pixel Hardware Hasn’t Been as Refined

From the beginning, Pixel phones weren’t intended to be quite as nice as the best from Samsung and Apple. Pixel phones didn’t cost as much and were made with cheaper materials.

The gap has narrowed over time; you could say it has disappeared entirely with the Pixel 9 series. The screens are now both as bright and as pixel-dense. The way Google put together the Pixel’s metal and glass frame leads to a similar premium feel. The use of an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor means the phone can now unlock just as fast as a Samsung phone.

It’s these little details that didn’t translate to a spec sheet that you missed out on when choosing a Pixel in the past. Still, it’s too soon to take this attention to detail for granted.

The Pixel Watch still doesn’t use Gorilla Glass and is far more prone to scratches than the Apple Watch or other comparably priced Android Wear watches. The Pixel Tablet remains a plasticky, mid-range slate. Google remains a software-first company that is still figuring out how to put out top-notch hardware.

2 You’re Sacrificing Power

Apple’s in-house mobile processors are no slouch, and most flagship Android phones compete by using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. These fall slightly below Apple on benchmarks, but that’s a difference few people actually perceive in day-to-day use.

Instead of using a Snapdragon CPU, Pixels use Google’s Tensor chip. This CPU is really a modified Samsung Exynos chip. Samsung ships Exynos in many of its international phones, but it sticks to Snapdragon in the US since its CPU doesn’t quite match Qualcomm’s in performance.

As a result, while Pixel phones can still play just about any game available for Android, they’re more likely to drop frames or overheat. They have unpredictable battery life and are more prone to getting buggy over time.

The experience is inconsistent, with many Pixel users having a great experience for years while others are left baffled as to why their device has become a hot mess in only a couple of years. I’d rather have the more reliable Snapdragon chip, as it has served me well in all of my recent phones.

3 I Ignore Most of Google’s Ecosystem (Including Gemini)

I love Android, but I don’t love the Google ecosystem. On any Android device I get, I decline most Google features during setup and uninstall Google’s pre-installed apps. On Pixels, this means I’m left with pages of Google apps to uninstall, and there are few quality pre-installed apps left behind when I’m done.

Of the twenty pre-installed apps visible in the photo above, there are only seven that I wouldn’t get rid of, and only four of them are Google apps (Google Maps, Google Messages, YouTube, and the Play Store). I went years as an Android user without using any Google apps at all.

I’m even less interested in Gemini. Google refers to the Pixel 9 series as Gemini phones, flashing the Gemini logo as these phones boot rather than the Android one. That, for me, isn’t a reason to buy Google’s 2024 flagships. Instead, it repels me away from what is otherwise Google’s best hardware yet.

4 Stock Android Has Fewer Features

Some people have a hard time switching away from Pixel phones because of the features they might have to give up. Yet, more often than not, these aren’t features built into stock Android. They’re Google features that you wouldn’t get access to if you were to set up a Pixel phone without signing in to a Google account. The stock Android version that ships with Pixel phones is actually pretty basic.

In contrast, Samsung offers the most powerful Android implementation. You can configure more things out of the box and tweak just about anything else using Samsung’s Good Lock app. S Pen features also significantly impact how productive I am on my phone. Many of Samsung’s apps are so well-thought-out and feature-rich that I don’t seek alternatives.

For example, if my wife and I want to watch a video on my phone without disturbing the kids, we can connect two Bluetooth headphones to my phone and listen together. You need to buy adapters to manage something similar on a Pixel. And as important to me as all of these features are, I still haven’t gotten to my biggest deal-breaker.

5 Google Has No Samsung DeX Alternative

Samsung DeX is the one feature that convinced me to buy a Samsung phone. It is the ability to connect a monitor, TV, or any type of external display and have a desktop setup with a Samsung phone.

This means I don’t need to reach for a computer when my phone’s screen is too small for a task. This way, I have not only been able to use my phone as a PC but also connect my phone to AR glasses to enjoy games and movies in my own private theater. I can plug my phone into a projector for family movie nights, giving a presentation, or sharing photos.

Samsung phones have had DeX for the better part of a decade. High-end Motorola phones now offer something similar in a feature currently called Smart Connect (previously Motorola Ready For). Yet before the Pixel 8, connecting a Pixel phone to an external display did nothing at all. Even with the Pixel 8 and Pixel 9, you can only mirror the built-in display to the external one—well, at least until Google rolls out its experimental desktop mode.

6 Pixels Have the Worst Foldable Experience

While I thought I would use Samsung DeX a great deal, I actually don’t fire it up nearly as much as I expected. Even though I work remotely entirely off my phone, I still primarily use my phone’s screen. That’s because a folding phone like the Galaxy Z Fold 5 is far more capable of a productivity device than I expected.

It’s not just the size of the interior screen that makes foldables great, it’s the software. On a Samsung foldable, I can multitask using split-screen with up to three apps, access a built-in taskbar, pop any app into a floating window, shrink any app into a floating app bubble, or minimize any app into a window that I tuck away into the corner of the screen.

Samsung has done the work to force any app to stretch to the desired size, regardless of whether the app developer supports tablet formats or app windows.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s split-screen view is limited to two apps at once. There’s no support for floating windows at all. You’ll likely see black bars if an app doesn’t have a tablet version. So, while I can juggle between five apps easily on my Z Fold 5, I would have to stop at two on a Pixel.

There’s nothing innovative like the Open Canvas feature on the OnePlus Open, though, which is arguably an even more seamless way to manage multiple apps on a small tablet-sized screen.

My Android phone workflow may be far from mainstream phone usage, but a Pixel simply can’t do what I expect it to do. It’s a shame that what is often thought of as the best representation of Android can’t better showcase everything the operating system is capable of. This gives even long-time Pixel users a reason to ditch their Pixel phones for Samsung’s offerings.