I Do Not Recommend Google Hardware
I’ve been a GrapheneOS user for years now. Back in 2022 I switched away from /e/OS on a Samsung Galaxy S10 to a Google Pixel 6a that I had bought, because at the time it happened to be one of the cheapest devices on the short list of officially supported Pixels . However, my history with Google phones goes way past the 6a and ever since I got my first Nexus , every single piece of Google (branded and manufactured) hardware that has passed through my hands has eventually broken on a hardware level, way quicker than expected. At this point I have run out of patience with Google ’s consumer electronics and have decided to stop giving the company any more of my money. This post is part personal post-mortem, part survey of the wider Pixel landscape, and part forward-looking note on what I’m going to do instead. Disclosure: The opinions in here are entirely my own, formed from years of using Google hardware as a paying customer. To be very clear up-front, I have never been a fan of Google as a company, and I have certainly never been a fan of their hardware design language. I normally do not run Google ’s software on any of my devices , I avoid Google services , and I would prefer not to give the company a single cent. The only reason I have nevertheless ended up with a stack of Pixel devices on my desk is GrapheneOS . Graphene , to this day, requires Pixel hardware because Google ’s phones are essentially the only consumer Android devices that ship with a verified-boot chain, a relockable bootloader after flashing, and a security coprocessor ( Titan M2 ) that the project considers sufficient for its threat model. There is no other Android manufacturer in this market that offers a comparable hardware security surface for an alternative OS. So if you want the strongest privacy- and security-hardened Android, you buy a Pixel . That’s literally the only reason. In my original write-up of the switch to GrapheneOS I went into the why in much more detail. The short version is that, I no longer trusted any stock smartphone OS, and after years of bouncing between CyanogenMod , LineageOS , and /e/OS , GrapheneOS was the first ROM that felt like actual engineering rather than a community paint-job over a vendor blob. In my follow-up post about the Pixel 8 I went so far as to call the Pixel 8 “a solid piece of hardware, if you happen to find a fully functional device” . In hindsight, I have to admit that I was wrong. Let me start with the actual Google devices that I have owned, in chronological order. The Nexus 5 was the first Google -branded phone I bought, back when the device was still being manufactured by LG and GrapheneOS was not yet a thing. I ran it for a while on Google ’s stock Android and, after the initial honeymoon period, switched it over to CyanogenMod , the project that, years later , would be reborn as LineageOS . For its first year or so, the Nexus 5 was actually a likeable phone, as it was compact, light, with a clean software experience that, at the time, felt refreshing compared to the bloated OEM skins on competing Android devices. Then the hardware started giving up. The battery, which had been mediocre to begin with, became unreliable and the phone would report 40% charge one moment and shut off entirely the next, and over time it began to randomly reboot and power off without any obvious trigger. The decline was not gradual either and once the battery started misbehaving, the device was effectively unusable within a matter of weeks. Combined with a charging port that became increasingly finicky about which cables it would accept, the phone went from likeable to unusable in well under two years of moderate use. The Nexus 6 , which, ironically given where this post is heading, was actually built by Motorola rather than by Google itself, replaced the Nexus 5 once the latter had given up on life. As with its predecessor, GrapheneOS was still years away, so I alternated between Google ’s stock firmware, CyanogenMod , and eventually LineageOS over the course of owning it. What made the Nexus 6 particularly memorable was the way in which its internals seemed to fail one component at a time , almost like a series of unfortunate but separate events. First, the microphone began cutting out during calls, with the other end of the line hearing nothing or only a faint, crackling signal. Then the loudspeaker and earpiece started developing distortion, eventually to the point where music and call audio were barely intelligible. Finally, true to the pattern that would later repeat on every subsequent Google / Pixel device I owned, the battery rapidly lost capacity and started misbehaving, with the phone shutting off at high reported charge levels and refusing to hold a charge during light use. All of this happened within the first few years of ownership, well before any reasonable expectation of obsolescence. In retrospect, the Nexus 6 also gave me my first real taste of what Motorola hardware can feel like. It’s worth keeping that in mind for the later section on Motorola ’s planned GrapheneOS -compatible devices . The Pixel 2 XL was my first phone branded purely as a Google device, with all the responsibility for design, hardware integration, and support sitting with Google itself. GrapheneOS still didn’t exist as it does today (the project’s early predecessor, CopperheadOS , was in the middle of its very public implosion right around this time), so the device once again spent its life running Google ’s stock firmware as well as LineageOS . The Pixel 2 XL disappointed me from essentially day one, and only got worse from there. The two main themes were performance, which, even fresh out of the box, felt sluggish for a flagship that was supposed to be competing with the Galaxy S8 and the iPhone 8 , as well as battery, which, as with every Google device before, deteriorated rapidly. The Pixel 2 XL was a particularly bad, with animations stuttered, app launches being inconsistent, and the whole experience feeling half a generation behind what Samsung and Apple were shipping that year. As the device aged, this only got worse. Within the first year I was already noticing significant drops in standby and active runtime, and by the second year I was forced to carry a power bank everywhere and even basic tasks like opening the camera app or switching between recent apps became noticeably slow. In addition, the Pixel 2 XL shipped with a notoriously bad display that suffered from blue-tint shifting, screen burn-in within months of light use, and uneven color rendering. All of which were defects that Google , in classic form, partially acknowledged with software workarounds rather than hardware replacements for most affected owners. The Pixel 2 XL was the phone that, at the time, made me seriously question whether I wanted to keep buying Google hardware at all. The answer, sadly, turned out to be yes , but only because of the eventual emergence of GrapheneOS and the absence of viable alternatives on comparable hardware. The Pixel 6a was purchased on sale for $299 in late 2022. It came with the Tensor G1 , served as my primary GrapheneOS device for roughly a year and a half, and was eventually relegated to “spyware phone” duty after I upgraded to the Pixel 8 . As with every Google phone prior, the Pixel 6a battery life declined noticeably and the device eventually became part of Google ’s Battery Performance Program , which, depending on how you look at it, was either a voluntary repair offer or an opaque battery nerf forced on owners via a mandatory update. In addition, the the charging port developed an unstable connection , which made charging frustrating and unreliable. After roughly two years of daily use, the device became unusable enough for me to downgrade it to a backup device, only to finally toss it after only two more years. Note: Google ’s entire A-series has a documented track record of battery problems. The Pixel 4a has been the subject of a UK Office for Product Safety and Standards alert for overheating and fire risk, the Pixel 6a has been the subject of multiple melted-device reports and was pulled from Google ’s refurbished store after fire incidents, and the Pixel 7a has had its own battery swelling repair program . Google has not initiated a proper recall in any of these cases. The Pixel 8 replaced the Pixel 6a in mid-2024 after I came across an unusually good tax-refunded deal . I have been running GrapheneOS on it from day one. Within less than two years of moderate, careful use, this phone developed the now-infamous Pixel 8 green-screen-of-death , a display defect that causes the screen to glitch with vertical green lines and flicker until you physically squeeze the lower part of the chassis . Google has, in a rare admission, extended the warranty on Pixel 8 displays to three years specifically because of how widespread this defect is, while pointedly not extending it to the Pixel 8 Pro despite reports of the same problem on that model. However, because my device suffered a drop and hence has its backside glass shattered, as well as the adjacent corner scratched open, Google will blame the screen issue (in my case) on the impact and won’t grant me a free repair. It’s also important to note that the lower portion of the device gets noticeably and uncomfortably hot under normal load, which is a known issue with the Tensor G3 SoC and its Samsung Exynos 5300 modem . In addition, the Pixel suffers from the family’s connectivity issues , that had plagued the Pixel 7 series already. When I sat down to research a possible replacement (a Pixel 9 or Pixel 10 ), the picture only got bleaker, but more on this in a moment. Note: Probably the most maddening pet peeve that I have with the Pixel 8 is its slippery surface. It is the only phone that I ever had that, no matter on what surface I put it, will eventually slide down without me interacting with it. Without stickers or protectors on its back the phone is so slippery that it will glide away from virtually any surface material. Put the Pixel 8 on a smooth wooden table and it will move by itself over time. Put it on a rough wooden speaker box and it will fall over the edge halfway through the first song that’s playing. Put it on top of another smartphone and it will fall off sideways. Whenever I hear a hollow knock I already know that it was the Pixel 8 randomly falling off of whatever surface I had put it on. The Pixel Tablet joined the line-up in late 2024 specifically because it is the only tablet that GrapheneOS supports. I wrote a relatively positive review of it at the time, with the significant caveat that it’s “underpowered” and not really suitable for anything more demanding than media consumption and light note-taking. A year and a half later, that already-modest assessment has aged poorly. The device’s Tensor G2 , which was already two generations old at the point Google shipped the tablet, has become noticeably sluggish as apps have continued to grow heavier. Lightroom Mobile , which was one of my primary reasons for buying it, runs with random glitches, crashes and odd behaviour , to the point where I’m looking to migrate my photography workflow once again to something else. Also, it seems like the device developed some WiFi connectivity issue leading to specifically streamed content pausing/stuttering for around half a second before resuming for maybe another half a minute, only to then repeat this behavior. I don’t know whether this is a hardware issue or a GrapheneOS bug, but I’ve noticed this issue for now over a year. Additionally, the battery life has degraded faster than anticipated, with editing workloads draining a full charge in under three hours even with the screen way below maximum brightness, and overall the tablet has aged significantly faster than anticipated , rendering it largely useless for any of the things I originally bought it for. In short, Google shipped a 2023 tablet with a 2021 chip and a sealed battery, and in 2026 this has become very noticeable. Note: These were only the Google -branded and -made devices that I owned, alongside a long list of other Android devices from HTC , Sony , Samsung , OnePlus , and even OPPO , that in all honesty weren’t exponentially better with regard to reliability and longevity. It would be easy to write all of the above off as bad luck, so let me back up the personal experience with what is documented elsewhere. Google ’s A-series phones in particular have, by now, a multi-generation track record of batteries that swell, overheat, or catch fire. The Pixel 4a was included in the UK Office for Product Safety and Standards alert for fire risk. Google ’s Battery Performance Program nerfed the device’s battery via a mandatory update rather than acknowledging a hardware defect. The Pixel 6 had reports of battery swelling and off-gassing , with some users describing flame and smoke incidents. The Pixel 6a saw multiple fire incidents , was pulled from the refurbished store , and was subjected to the same Battery Performance Program as the 4a . Google restricted charge rate and capacity after 400 cycles via forced OTA on July 8, 2025. The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro had widespread swelling reports less than three years post-launch. Google ’s response has been described as “inconsistent” by Android Central , with some users receiving free replacements and others being told to pay out of pocket. Oh, and the Pixel 7a has its own repair program for swollen batteries. When the same failure mode shows up across five consecutive versions/generations of phones from the same vendor, and the vendor’s first response is to throttle charging rather than replace the cells, you’re no longer looking at bad luck but at a structural problem with battery sourcing, cell qualification, or thermal design. I’ve mentioned my own Pixel 8 display dying above. The Extended Repair Program that Google published in response covers Pixel 8 devices that exhibit “a vertical line running from the bottom of the display to the top or a display flicker” , with coverage extended to three years post-purchase. Pixel 8 Pro owners with the same vertical line defect have not been so lucky and are largely on their own. Manufacturers don’t extend warranties on a whim. Google extending warranties on the Pixel 8 display by a factor of three is, in itself, the admission-of-a-defect that the company has otherwise tried to avoid in public. Since the Tensor G2 , Google ’s Pixel flagships have been using a Samsung Exynos 5300 modem (and its successors) for cellular connectivity. This is the same modem family that has, generation after generation, been criticised for worse signal stability than the Qualcomm modems used by competitors, as well as significantly higher power consumption, especially on 5G, and battery drain bugs that essentially trade-off endurance for modem efficiency. Google ’s answer in the Pixel 10 generation has been to switch to a MediaTek T900 , which according to early benchmarks is an improvement, but does not retroactively help any of the millions of Pixel 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 owners who paid flagship prices for what was, by industry standards, a sub-par modem. Google ’s Tensor chips were seemingly never designed to compete head-to-head with Qualcomm or Apple on raw CPU or GPU throughput, despite the pricing being in a similar range. For example, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is roughly 68% faster than the Tensor G3 in Geekbench 6 multi-core, and about 32% faster in single-core. In some graphics workloads, it’s roughly twice as fast. The Apple A17 Pro is nearly 50% faster than the Tensor G4 in multi-core, and the Pixel 9 Pro XL ’s Tensor G4 loses up to 50% of its sustained CPU performance under thermal throttling, with the throttling kicking in within three to four minutes of full load . The Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro , powered by the Tensor G5 , score 3,707 in the Vulkan GPU benchmark , compared to 26,333 for the Samsung Galaxy S25+ , which is a difference of roughly 7x . Even the Pixel 9 Pro ’s outgoing chip outperforms its successor at 9,023 points. In 3DMark Wild Life Extreme , neither the Pixel 10 nor the Pixel 10 Pro break 20 FPS, while a Snapdragon 8 Elite device comfortably clocks 38 FPS. Hence, the Snapdragon 8 Elite -based Galaxy S25 comfortably outscores the Pixel 10 in both single- and multi-core CPU performance , with the S25 posting roughly 75% higher multi-core scores. If you want a single chart that summarises this, Geekbench ’s Android benchmarks page is a good overview and shows that Pixel flagships do not appear anywhere near the top. What this means in practice is that when you buy a Pixel , you are paying roughly the same money as you would for a Samsung , OnePlus , Xiaomi , or Apple flagship, but you are getting an SoC that is one and a half to two generations behind on raw compute, and even further behind on graphics. The phone feels snappy because Android is optimized for these chips and because Google ’s AI use cases are accelerated by the TPU , but once you actually push the device, e.g. with raw photo editing, gaming, prolonged camera use, or pretty much anything that requires sustained performance, it falls behind quickly. Beyond the flagship failures, Pixel devices have, generation after generation, shipped with a steady stream of quality-control issues that read more like early-access hardware than flagship . E.g. with the Pixel 8 , Google shipped a batch of factory-unlocked phones without the ability to relock the bootloader, requiring a return. Then we had the Pixel 8 green screen recall , which had been the precursor to the extended-warranty program, as well as the phantom touches issue, where intermittent ghost- touches were frequently dismissed by support as user error before being diagnosed as actual hardware problems. The Pixel 9 Pro XL had its infamous camera tilt issue, where some users reported the 5x telephoto lens shipping physically tilted out of the box, and the Pixel Tablet had the “check charging accessory” issue, where the charging dock dies surprisingly often , with troubleshooting steps that boil down to “clean the contacts and hope for the best” . You can find an essentially endless stream of similar reports on and the official Pixel Phone Community forums and the pattern is always the same: A defect is reported, Google ’s official support insists on app-uninstalls and factory resets, and after enough public outcry the defect is eventually quietly acknowledged via a support page, hidden so deep that probably won’t people won’t bother to look. Honestly, in my circle of people who care about privacy, the answer is almost always the same as mine, namely because of GrapheneOS . For everyone else, the answer is the camera and the “AI features” , plus a vague brand-loyalty to Google that exists for reasons I truly struggle to understand. The camera is, to be fair, very good. Google ’s computational photography pipeline is one of the few areas where the company’s ML-first approach to silicon pays off in a way the user actually notices. If you primarily care about point-and-shoot photography out of a phone, the Pixel camera is still near the top of the pile, even on the cheaper A-series . Everything else, in my view, is not competitive with what Samsung , Xiaomi , OnePlus , Nothing , or Apple ship for the same money or, in some cases, less. You can verify that for yourself. After my Pixel 8 green-screened on me, my initial instinct was to do what I’ve always done and just replace it with the next Pixel . I spent a few weeks looking at deals on the Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 , reading through their respective issue threads on Reddit , looking at the benchmarks above, and decided that I simply don’t want to give Google any more of my money for what is, charitably put, garbage hardware sold at flagship prices. The interesting development that makes this decision possible is that, on March 2, 2026 , at MWC 2026 , Motorola officially announced a partnership with the GrapheneOS Foundation . This is the first time GrapheneOS will officially support a non- Pixel vendor, with availability expected to begin in 2027. There is some uncertainty in all of this, though, as hardware schedules often slip and partnerships sometimes dissolve, and there’s no guarantee that the eventual Motorola device will meet Graphene ’s requirements (verified boot, relockable bootloader, etc.) at a price point that’ll be remotely interesting to the average GrapheneOS user. There is also the risk that Android 17 turns into more of an Intelligence System launcher than an actual OS. However, I’d rather wait six to twelve months and roll the dice on Motorola than spend another $800-$1000 on a phone that, by all available evidence, is statistically likely to develop a hardware defect shortly past its warranty window. The obvious follow-up question is whether existing Motorola hardware, like the Edge series, or the current razr line-up, is any good to begin with, since these broadly resemble what the eventual GrapheneOS -compatible devices are likely to be. Frankly, I have no idea. The reviews of the Motorola Razr Ultra (2025) seem relatively positive on durability. Android Central ’s one-year follow-up describes the display still looking “like the day it was received” after a year of regular use, with the major caveat that the vegan leather on the back has been peeling. Reviewers have called it “Motorola’s best and most popular flagship phone thus far” . The Motorola Edge 60 is even more interesting from a durability perspective. It carries an IP69 rating , which is above the IP68 on the latest Pixels and means the device is certified against high-pressure, high-temperature water jets in addition to sustained submersion. Motorola also commits to three OS updates and four years of security updates , which is a little behind Google ’s nominal seven years on the Pixel , but in line with the rest of the Android industry, and arguably more honest given that Google ’s seven years are seemingly predicated on the device not physically falling apart in years two and three. Note: I’ve started to believe that Google ’s 7 years of updates is simply a marketing stunt and that the company knows that most of its hardware will fail well before users get even close to the seventh year. If you look up (used) offers for e.g. the now almost 7-year-old Pixel 4a on marketplaces like eBay you’ll find the offer to be surprisingly thin. Similarly, the slightly younger 5a is also relatively hard to come by in good shape. Older smartphones sustained above 80% of their original battery capacity for up to 500 charging cycles, which amounts to less than 3 years if you assume a full charge every two days, which is unrealistically generous especially for an Android device. Even if we assume that modern smartphones sustain 80% capacity for up to 1000 recharges and we use the generous two-day cycle, the phone will likely drop below 80% battery capacity within 5 and a half years. Again, that’s a very positive calculation that doesn’t take into account prolonged charging cycles (over night), environmental impacts (high heat or freezing cold) and arbitrary battery deterioration. A more realistic outlook is a drop below 80% within the device’s first three years. It is also worth noting that at some point past the 80% mark degradation speeds up sharply and becomes roughly exponential, as Lithium plating, electrolyte depletion, and loss of active material compound on each other. This means that the drop from 80% capacity to 60% will happen significantly faster than the initial drop from 100% to 80%. The 80% mark was deliberately chosen by manufacturers as it kind of marks the practical end of the stable region of the battery. Past that point, the phone will become less stable and show effects like sudden reboots, or at some point even shutdowns at around 30% indicated charge. Compared to the Pixel line, Motorola ’s 2025 hardware appears to have notably better water- and dust-ingress protection ( IP69 vs IP68 ), use Qualcomm Snapdragon silicon, which means, per the benchmarks above, meaningfully better raw performance and meaningfully better modem efficiency, have a build quality that holds up better through year-one stress tests, even on the foldable form factors that are notoriously hard to engineer, and are priced lower than the equivalent Pixel Pro , with the obvious caveat that the razr ultra at $1,300 is, in fact, a tough pill to swallow . What it doesn’t appear to offer, at least yet, is the Pixel ’s camera quality. Reviews of the Edge 60 and Edge 50 Ultra are competent but not class-leading on the photography front. For someone who uses a dedicated camera for serious photography and reserves the phone for documentary snapshots, this is a perfectly acceptable trade-off, but your mileage may vary. Until GrapheneOS -compatible Motorola hardware is actually on shelves, I’m going to keep using the Pixel 8 with its hardware workaround (yes, I’m literally squeezing the lower part of the chassis whenever the screen starts glitching) and avoid spending any more money on Google hardware. Unless the Pixel 8 will completely die or become otherwise unusable I won’t be purchasing another Google device. For anyone in a similar situation, my recommendation is to not upgrade if your current Pixel still works, and instead hold on to it . Pixel to Pixel generational improvements are marginal at best, and you’re almost certainly going to inherit a fresh set of defects with each new model. Also, E-waste is a real concern , especially with repairability scores below most Apple devices, particularly because of the extensive use of adhesives within Pixel phones. If you have to get a replacement in the meantime, buy used or discounted. The Pixel 8a is occasionally available below $300 refurbished, the Pixel 9 is now in the same price band as the Pixel 8 was a year ago, and the Pixel 9a is probably the best affordable entry point. Keep in mind that none of the historical hardware-defect patterns have spared the Pro models, but the Pro pricing has consistently included an Apple -level markup for what amounts to a bigger screen and one extra camera sensor. Hence I would avoid those variants. If you can hold off on a phone purchase for another year or so, see how the Motorola / GrapheneOS situation develops. If the first compatible devices land at a reasonable price with an acceptable build quality, that will be the first competitive alternative to the Pixel line for privacy-conscious users. If you’re a tech power-user, however, maybe consider Linux on mobile as a more radical alternative. I’ve been eyeing postmarketOS on the Fairphone 6 for a while, as it appears to be making meaningful progress, but it is not yet a daily-driver experience and probably won’t be for another year or two. The Pinephone is a dead end , imho, but it seems like Ubuntu Touch is coming along nicely. Google ’s consumer hardware is, in my unscientific but consistent personal experience, garbage. The A-series has a multi-generation track record of batteries that swell or catch fire. The Pixel 8 has a display defect serious enough to introduce an extended warranty program. The Pixel Tablet shipped with a chip that was already two generations old. Tensor -based flagships are routinely outperformed by competitors at the same price point, and thermal-throttle hard enough under sustained load that the silicon is barely delivering half of its rated performance for any task longer than a few minutes. I have given Google enough of my money over the past years. The only reason I have kept doing so is because of the community ROMs and, in the recent past, because of GrapheneOS , which I consider one of the most important pieces of consumer software in the privacy and security space today, that has been Pixel -only by hardware necessity. As of MWC 2026 , that constraint has an end date however. Until either GrapheneOS -compatible Motorola hardware actually ships, or Linux on Mobile becomes actually usable on a halfway modern device like the Fairphone (with replaceable battery), I am holding on to my squeezable Pixel 8 and not buying anything else from Google . After that, I expect to never own another Pixel ever again. Note: I deliberately picked the same title format as my I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden and I Do Not Recommend Proton Mail posts. The reason is the same in all three cases, which is that I used the product, in many cases over the course of years, recommended it to others in writing on this site, and have since come to a different conclusion. If your own experience has been different and you’re happily using a Pixel without issues, that’s great. This post is, in part, an updated honest disclosure of where I personally landed, and a counterweight to my own earlier, more positive reviews of these devices.
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