With the introduction of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro back in 2021, Google also announced a new subscription service called Pixel Pass. This Pixel Pass would allow you to pay a monthly fee to cover the newest Pixel phone, your YouTube Premium subscription, storage with Google One, and Google Play Pass. Today, Google quietly discontinued the Pixel Pass (effective August 29), so I hope you weren’t expecting to take advantage with the Pixel 8 series in a couple of months.
So, Google launches a subscription service for Pixel phones, and cancels it right before their new Pixel phone launches. Scummy, and potentially scammy.
I am getting a new phone this October. I’m incredibly hesitant to spend any money on the Pixel 8 because what if Google gets bored of it and just cancels the whole thing two months from now? Samsung has been doing a great job keeping recent Galaxy devices up to date, so I’m not entirely sure what the Pixel even offers anymore at this point.
From Google’s own support page: https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en-GB#zippy=%2Cpixel-and-later-including-fold :
Pixel 6 and later phones, including Fold, will get updates for at least five years from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the US. These updates include security, software and may also include feature drops.
So, you get support for at least five years, so your worry you could be left without support in two months is unfounded.
Or was it an attempt to shoehorn an irrelevant complain that I missed?
Stock Android and Google’s proprietary camera app (which is not available on the Play Store for non-Pixel devices, even Nexus devices have to make do with older versions). BTW Google’s proprietary camera app comes with Google’s proprietary processing algorithms.
Right, because companies never lie their way out of commitments or just flat-out stop supporting things out of the blue. Especially not Google, who has an absolutely outstanding track record of keeping its word, not dropping support for services and products out of the blue, and generally really sticking to its products through thick and thin. Google’s rock-solid commitment to its products and customers has even led to dedicated fan websites to honour the company!
https://killedbygoogle.com/
Makes me feel all warm and reassured!
Google hardware always gets the support Google announced for it, if anything to avoid legal troubles leading to costly refunds. Much like Microsoft had to support Windows 8.x until January 2023 (10 years from first release), because again, they had committed to it and lots of PCs had been sold with Windows 8.x.
But when it comes to “software as a service”, it could be gone the next minute. Even if you pay a subscription fee for it, they can always refund you without loss (since there is no hardware cost involved) and kill it. But that’s an irrelevant complaint when tucked next to a sentence about the Pixel 8, isn’t it?
TheRegister called, they want their sarcasm back 🙂
As you keep pointing out, Thom, you live in the EU, and under EU consumer laws a publicly advertised commitment to provide five years of support is binding. As you also repeatedly point out, tech companies comply with their obligations to EU citizens even if they do not do so anywhere else.
Heaven knows, there are plenty of reasons to avoid Google products, but the reason you cite in your post isn’t one of them if you’re in the EU.
The concerns about Google have solid basis. kurkosdr’s comment is also sensible.
Anyway, Samsung and its horrible skin on top of Android, its boatloads of stupid apps imposed on the user… isn’t an alternative. Nope. It isn’t.
I don’t get the economics of this industry. Building those irrelevant apps no one asks for must cost a lot in development and support. Why do phone makers still go for that route? Why don’t Samsung or Huawei or whatever just put stock android on top of quality hardware, and carve a market share out of there? What’s the benefit of touchwiz or oneui over stock android or a lean nova launcher? Why do they spend millions in building those sluggish interfaces when there’s no need or demand?
What about simply the reason that they’re solid phones, for decent prices, with good cameras, great update policy and at least for me very importantly, vanilla Android UI (with a bit of Pixel magic dust sprinkled in a few places). Samsung makes good hardware, but I don’t want the Samsung version of every app and the Samsung custom skin.
On another note they did something kind of similar right before I purchased my Pixel 4 XL – they discontinued the policy of unlimited full-resolution Google Photos storage, instead limiting the unlimited feature to “high”-res photos while counting full-res photos against the cloud storage quota. I ended up biting the bullet and signed up for Google One because hey, it’s only 30 Euros for 200GB of storage, not a big deal. I do think Thom’s take is a bit overreacting on the whole – just because they discontinued a Pixel-exclusive *bundle plan* doesn’t mean anything regarding support for Pixel phones in general.. AFAIK Pixel Pass only available in the U.S. in the first place, and considering it still cost a whopping $45/$55 depending on the phone model, I’m guessing the actual user base was only a small percent of Pixel owners, which themselves constitute a rather small minority of Android phone users… Thom’s comments strike me as making a mountain out of a molehill.
I should clarify, I pay 30 Euros *a year* for Google One. 45/55 dollars *per month* for the Pixel Pass subscription (RIP) strikes me as insane.
Well, with everything you got with it, you’d save about $250 over the course of a couple of years. It wasn’t a bad deal if you wanted Play Pass and YouTube Premium aleady