Android is struggling to keep its market share in the United States, as Apple continues to take over in the market. But, despite Android as a whole losing ground, Google Pixel phones are becoming a bigger slice of the US market.
Counterpoint Research reports that, in Q2 2023, US smartphone shipments dropped by 24% year-over-year. That includes both iPhones and Android phones, and virtually every brand saw a drop in shipments. Samsung saw US shipments drop by 37% while Motorola saw a 17% drop. TCL saw the biggest decline at just shy of 70% year-over-year, and even Apple saw a 6% drop.
Thanks grapheneOS!
When you’ve got a miniscule market share it’s much easier to increase it than it is when you have a much larger market share.
This. People that can afford a higher-end phone still can. Everyone else doesn’t have the money right now due to inflation and the income gap widening etc. IPhone and Pixel are the most well-known higher-end phone brands.
Feel free to correct me if it gets more complicated than that.
IPhone and Pixel are the most well-known higher-end phone brands.
iPhone and Galaxy. Pixels aren’t well known (or if they are, they’re not desired), hence the teeny tiny market share.
or if they are, they’re not desired
I couldnt say. They are at least the ones most advertised where i live.
I had a Xperia 1III I really enjoyed using it, but my fingerprint sensor just quit work on it on day. Outside of the warranty too so it doesn’t help. So I upgraded to a Pixel 7 Pro as I had a 4XL prior to it and liked that.
Would’ve gone with the 1V, but the 1III was my first Sony phone and that happening sketched me out. Might get another though once it’s time to upgrade this one or it craps out. Sony is doing what a lot of other companies aren’t and I respect that.
Is there an Android phone that supports dual boot? I would like to have that so can use Lineage or something similar and only boot into Google android when I need to use banking app or government ID that requires the safetynet antifeture. This would free me from carrying two phones. But I suppose a locked down bootloader can not support dual boot and an unlocked will not support the safetynet antifeature.
Use Magisk, it bypasses SafetyNet. No need for dual boot https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk
You must install the Universal SafetyNet Fix afterwards https://github.com/kdrag0n/safetynet-fix
Tkank you. I already had magisk. I tried installing the safetynet-fix, bit unfortunately it did not resolve the issue on my Xiaomi Mi A2 phone.
Try Shelter https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/. I had one app that refused to launch no matter what I did but this fixed it.
On more exotic devices, you have to spoof your device ID as well https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Repo/MagiskHidePropsConf
Tried that, but the banking apps still claims that the security check failed.
You also need to hide the Magisk app and change its package name and block the banking apps in the Magisk settings.
There’s risk in that. Unless you go through a bunch of other steps to hide magisk, there’s quite a few apps that will stop working or flag you just for having magisk, and some games may even ban you from playing. Namely Pokémon go.
Hiding Magisk is just 1 click in the settings
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almost every good android phones have locked bootloaders.
Get a pixel and install GrapheneOS. The whole install process is painless and easy.
There is also this about SafetyNet Attestation
With a partially broken screen and weak battery it may be time for a new phone anyway. I will look into pixel and GrapheneOS. Thank you for the suggestion.
I love my pixel 6a. Fantastic phone for the money.
To add to this: In GrapheneOS you can install sandboxed Google Play in a secondary profile for banking etc. This way you can keep your main profile Google free and totally isolated from their preying eyes.
This, although the vast majority of users just use the one profile and just enjoy the benefits of a sandboxed and de-privileged Google.
Just be warned if your work uses Google Chat that will not work on GrapheneOS even with sandboxed Google Play.
Any phone without an sd card slot is a direct skip to me
I used to feel this way too, but now that phones are starting to come with 128GB or 256GB of storage by default, I’m finding I just don’t need it.
It’s plenty for most people but not for me
I’m curious so this is a legitimate question. What are you doing on your phone that needs more than hundreds upon hundreds of GB?
Mostly music and breakdance videos
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Pixel with CalyxOS checking in
However, in the first quarter, Apple was at 17% of market share in sales globally (still huge).
If Google’s custom soc is good I’d love to finally own a pixel. Hate having to use chinese phones to get non bloated android at a reasonable price.
The a line of pixel phones is great too. Unlike other brands that gimp the shit out of everything below their $1100 option, the pixel a just makes the full fat ones feel like a worse deal
The Pixel has been the only non bloated Android phone I have used.
The Pixels are some of the most heavily bloated phones around though. They have 25+ google apps installed by default that you can’t remove.
You can just install a different operating system on Pixels
Doesn’t change what I said. Most people aren’t doing that, and the constant talk of pixels having “no bloat” couldn’t be further from the truth.
I think he’s talking about using custom Roms
Chinese phones are popular for that
Yep.
If everyone is dropping in market shares, who’s gaining?
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Is that the power of iMessage in the US? Peer pressure?
I personally can’t stand iPhones because their back navigation is so inconsistent across apps. In Android with gestures on, you can swipe from either side of the screen to go back nearly anywhere. On an iPhone sometimes there is a back button up top, sometimes you use the left swipe, but the right swipe still doesn’t work last I tried. I switched between the platform in the early days, but since the 5s I’ve not been back.
The only thing I’m definitely getting on my next phone is a flag ship chip. My OnePlus Nord is perfect for me except it’s not quite as quick as I want it to be (to render Gran Turismo 4 in native resolution at stable framerate).
It’s still 45% marketshare Android vs 55% iOS. With the way the title reads, you’d think Android was down in the single digits and barely hanging on.
Personally I just don’t see how anyone uses iOS. The iPhone I have is just awful. The UI is clunky and I’m absolutely baffled why this stupid phone weighs so much. That’s not a good thing, damn it. My Samsung is infinitely better device in my opinion. But I’d still love to see a third player come in. I was sad when Microsoft killed off their phone OS. It might not have been great at the time, but more competition is always better. And then if course there’s also PalmOS. So sad to see such a cool OS die off.
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iOS seems to be meant for simplicity and ease of use. I mean, not that Android is confusing at all, but it seems that the less tech focused you are the more you gravitate toward iOS. I would never want an iPhone, but they seem to really kill it in the battery and camera departments.
The UI is clunky
What do you mean by this? Is this just another “snappy” type thing that is meaningless?
I have a Pixel 3 and I hate it, I had to go through 4 warranty replacements and this one still has issues. I gave up because they were ones I could live with.
I have a Pixel myself and I have to say, it’s a good phone. It has a coherent experience and I’ve been able to customize it to my needs.
I also had a couple of phones from other OEMs (not Apple, lol) and they had more useless bloatware that was a pain, and an overall less coherent UX. I think the UX is what gets users to stay (obviously), so I do hope that more Android OEMs will focus in more on that so they can break Apple’s market domination in the US.
Everyone wants to adopt the Apple model of hardware+software as one (because it’s the most profitable). Microsoft is trying with their Surface line, Google with the Pixel, Samsung with their fully custom Android-based OS.
I got a pixel 7a about 6 months ago. It’s a brilliant phone, once you remove all the google shit / bloat and block all the trackers.
For me, it’s the lack of a replaceable battery and the lack of an SD card slot. Otherwise, it would be a perfect phone to tinker with software-wise with all the custom ROMs that are available for Pixels.
GrapheneOS on my Pixel 7.
I wanted to try it out today. The install looked intimidatingly-complex to me, is there an ‘easy mode’ installation method?
The web installer is pretty simple.
It may seem intimidating because they’re being super cautious. (Stuff like “You should avoid using a USB hub” is bordering paranoia.) But that’s not because they need to be cautious. The GrapheneOS installer is very safe. The reason they’re being so cautious is because they want to be more than 99% sure it works.
If something goes wrong, like you use the wrong browser or fail to install the driver/package, it won’t break your phone; the install just stops and you can try again.
The one thing that may break something is if during install the cable gets disconnected or the power goes out. That’s unlikely by itself, but even if it does happen, you phone will most likely be fine.
Thanks for the encouragement & advice. I’ll give the web installer a go once I’ve had some sleep.
iturned
I was shocked how damn simple the whole thing was. You just click a few times, and before you notice, the phone is rebooting and installing the full OS. Takes almost no time and it’s all super automatized. That was the easiest “custom” OS I’ve ever installed.
GrapheneOS on my Pixel 5.
