Any Pixel 3 users holding off until the 6?

[swampbaby]

Like the title says. I was still in the middle of paying my 3 off when the 4 came out. This month I will be finished paying it off and can get the 5 if I choose to do so. However the 5 is.....meh they don't use the latest Qualcomm processors....the camera is the same as the 3...I see that they brought back the fingerprint scanner... (I have face unlock on a tablet and HATE IT) and they have reverse wireless charging....all in all the 5 is.......meh. Will anyone else be waiting for the 6 or am I the only one?

 

[IMANUT46]

I don't plan on upgrading my Pixel 3 until I find a good reason. I love my Pixel 3.

 

[B. Diddy]

I'll probably hang onto my 3 XL since I don't want to lose the unlimited Original Quality Google Photos backup. That ends in Feb 2022, so I'll probably aim for the 6 late next year.

 

[mustang7757]

I'll probably hang onto my 3 XL since I don't want to lose the unlimited Original Quality Google Photos backup. That ends in Feb 2022, so I'll probably aim for the 6 late next year.

What about free high resolution? You don't think it's good enough

 

[B. Diddy]

What about free high resolution? You don't think it's good enough

High Quality is fine, but it's always nice to have Original Quality if I want to crop the photo significantly and retain as much detail as possible.

 

[mustang7757]

High Quality is fine, but it's always nice to have Original Quality if I want to crop the photo significantly and retain as much detail as possible.

Gotcha, it was easier for me to switch high quality between my devices.

 

[FF22]

High Quality is fine, but it's always nice to have Original Quality if I want to crop the photo significantly and retain as much detail as possible.

I've got a Pixel 3 that I purchased Sept 2019. I have to be honest, I know nothing about the "photo storage" aspects of this phone. I believe I turned off what I'll term "sharing" with Google the first time I got a prompt showing a photo I took and it showed where it was taken and if it could be shared with the world!!!! I was aghast that Google was identifying where I was and offering that share option. Color me old fashioned (maybe just OLD) and a bit more private. I found where to stop the upload but I've not considered it since. So have I been giving up a great feature for storing, at this point, a year's worth of full quality or ORIGINAL quality photos including trips to China and the Dolomites as well as other more routine hiking pictures, etc?

Thanks for any info including pointing me to the backup options and a way to backup but keep Google from identifying what/where and offering to share them. Or is the backup tied to being willing to share?

 

[reb0957]

I'll probably go 4a 5g. Not worth the extra price or the need to carry insurance for a top of line phone. Plus the battery of this thing needs to be changed and doesn't last!

 

[B. Diddy]

I've got a Pixel 3 that I purchased Sept 2019. I have to be honest, I know nothing about the "photo storage" aspects of this phone. I believe I turned off what I'll term "sharing" with Google the first time I got a prompt showing a photo I took and it showed where it was taken and if it could be shared with the world!!!! I was aghast that Google was identifying where I was and offering that share option. Color me old fashioned (maybe just OLD) and a bit more private. I found where to stop the upload but I've not considered it since. So have I been giving up a great feature for storing, at this point, a year's worth of full quality or ORIGINAL quality photos including trips to China and the Dolomites as well as other more routine hiking pictures, etc?

Thanks for any info including pointing me to the backup options and a way to backup but keep Google from identifying what/where and offering to share them. Or is the backup tied to being willing to share?

I think Google Photos is Google's best service. With all of the fantastic pics that you take, it's a great way to store them safely. If you turn on the backup setting in Google Photos, it'll start backing up ALL of them (which would probably take more than a day, since none of them have been backed up). I'd definitely do it over wi-fi, especially if you don't have unlimited mobile data (there's a setting to allow uploads only over wi-fi, if you want to make sure you don't use mobile data for backups).

Once the backups are done, there's an option in Google Photos to Free Up Space -- this will locally delete all photos that Google Photos knows have already been backed up. Since you automatically get Original Quality backups for free, the backed up photo will be exactly the same quality as the one you saved to the phone.

I'm not worried about saving my photos to Google, just like I'm not worried about my emails in Gmail. I don't have any pics that might be considered inappropriate, salacious, incriminating, or anything else bad , and I don't worry about location information. There's an option in the Google Photos settings not to include location information if you share the photo with anyone else (although I think the location information will always be available to you in your own Google Photos library). Also, on the Google Photos website (not the app), there's an option to turn off Sharing Suggestions.

 

[IMANUT46]

Wonderful post.

 

[FF22]

Thanks for the full explanation. One more question - what's this about a time limit or lapse in the future? Will it affect already stored images or will the Pixel 3 "run out of storage service" at some future date?

 

[B. Diddy]

The time limit is how long a given Pixel model will be able to back up Original Quality photos in an unlimited manner. After January 2022, a Pixel 3 owner would then have to decide if they still want to back up new photos as Original Quality (which would then count against their total Google Drive space) or as High Quality (which would still be unlimited). All previously backed up Original Quality photos will be unchanged and still will NOT ever count against your total Google Drive space.

 

[Morty2264]

I may jump on the Pixel 5 sometime next year, if something happens to my S10. Not sure if I'd get the 6 - the 5 looks pretty sweet. But I'm not in a hurry to upgrade anytime soon.

 

[jlarkins08]

I'm waiting it out. I purchased my Pixel 3 back in Fed 2019 and it's still chugging along. I have 89% battery health as of today. With my usage, I can get about 1 day and 6 hours out of one charge. So, I'll hang around to see what Google will cook up next year regarding the Pixel 6.

The 5 is gorgeous (love that sorta sage) but I don't trust it. The cheap build materials, the processor, and the speaker choice on this phone has me bothered. I'm curious to see how the 5 will hold up during the 1st year of launch.

 

[Morty2264]

I'm waiting it out. I purchased my Pixel 3 back in Fed 2019 and it's still chugging along. I have 89% battery health as of today. With my usage, I can get about 1 day and 6 hours out of one charge. So, I'll hang around to see what Google will cook up next year regarding the Pixel 6.

The 5 is gorgeous (love that sorta sage) but I don't trust it. The cheap build materials, the processor, and the speaker choice on this phone has me bothered. I'm curious to see how the 5 will hold up during the 1st year of launch.

That's really good battery life on your Pixel 3! You know, I don't blame you for hanging onto it a little bit longer. The Pixel 3 was an amazing device and better than the 4, IMO.

 

[J Dubbs]

Google's tried from the beginning to sell flagship phones at flagship prices, and they continuously bombed. Then they brought out their "a" line and they sold like hotcakes. I highly doubt they're going to reverse that trend and go back to $1000 flagships for the 6, especially if the 5 sells well. The 6 will probably be a slightly improved 5, which I think could be a very good thing ;-)

 

[Jeremy8000]

I couldn't bear with my Pixel 3 XL's dying battery any longer - it was down to less than 2 hours SOT. As per usual, not much value offered by Google in trade, so it would've cost me almost $600 to switch to the 5. I ended up going to the S20 FE as I was able to trade it in in tandem with other promotions (no new service requirement) to a net cost of about $100, and I figure I'll be able to get far, far greater trade-in value on the Samsung when I next upgrade.

Having had the S20 FE for a week now, I'll say that it's a great piece of equipment with a fantastic display, but given the option at the same price I'd certainly opt for the Pixel 5. The gains I'm enjoying from the hardware of the S20 FE in terms of performance (noticeably but not substantially faster than 3 XL, vastly brighter display (though evidently the 5 will have that as well), and ability to maintain multiple apps running (likely to be even better with the 5, which features 1/3 more RAM than the S20 FE) are nice but due not overcome the large drop in camera quality for stills, or, most importantly, the simple IT-JUST-WORKS mentality of the Pixels that makes them so effortless. Also, in-display FPS works well enough, but I still have to consciously place a finger on it to unlock; the rear FPS is still faster, more reliable, and essentially subconscious in operation.


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With regards to the 'other' conversation in this thread, I'll chime in briefly on the concern over losing unlimited original quality photo storage as there's an alternative that may well work for you.

To anyone who uses Amazon Prime, Amazon Photos offers unlimited original resolution photo storage (including RAW), with automatic backup. They don't explicitly define whether there is or is not any compression anywhere that I could find, but in looking through reviews of the service I found several stating that they do not apply any compression, and none saying that they did, so it seems like a good alternative.

A couple of things to note that aren't quite as nice would be that: (1) Unlimited is for photos only, as video files count towards a laughable 5GB cap of free storage; and (2) Amazon's storage isn't as insanely easy to search as Google's (though you could still have everything upload at the still-free supported level for Google Photos and double-dip, plus enjoy added reassurance that even if one of the two were to have a catastrophic event where storage were lost, the other would be there - if going this route, I would definitely encourage setting at least one of the two services to only back up over WiFi, or you'll chew through your battery and data that much more swiftly).

 

[B. Diddy]

@Jeremy8000, thanks for the reminder about Amazon Photos! It's definitely a good option for Prime subscribers. But do you know how tightly integrated it is into the system if you want to share or attach a photo? One nice thing about Google Photos is how I can treat the photos backed up in that cloud as if they're actually saved locally on my Chromebook when I want to attach them to an email.

(I actually did sign up for Amazon Photos when they offered a few bucks credit to my Prime account for uploading my first photo, but I'm not using it on a regular basis.)

 

[patruns]

While I use Google's photo backup with my Pixel 3, it was never a concern when I bought the phone. I have a Flickr Pro account and I save all of my most precious photos there to share with others. It used to be $44.95 for 2 years. Last year they raised it to $65.16 for 1 year. No doubt because Yahoo sold it off. Still, I consider it worth it. I have a lot of travel photos and photos of my granddaughter that I share with family and friends and there is no limit on photos or video. You can also join groups to share photos and ideas. I belong to a few Nikon groups just to see what they can do with their cameras and get ideas.

 

[mrpackerguy]

My first Pixel phone was the 3XL I currently have. There are a lot of things I like about it. There are several things I hate about it, most notably that my sensors failed in the past year with no fix or warranty to take advantage of, even through multiple monthly updates and 2 system updates since the senors failed with no help for those of us with no sensors and therefore no gestures, no screen rotate and some camera features like panorama nonfunctional without a gyroscope functioning. On the plus side, it works well with my work's interface as a 50/50 work/personal phone and I still have 95% battery health since Feb 2019 (I'm a battery geek). So it works for most of what I do. not having sensors function is a major annoyance, but one I can still function without. It's like buying a car with all the bells and whistles only to find a bunch of them you bought the car for, don't work and it seems given Googles absolute lack of acknowledgment of the issue, will never work.

In terms of battery, I've followed the recommendations of charging only to 75 or 80% (vs 100% every time) and not letting it get below 30-40%, done daily topping off while at work or home, and utilized battery optimization settings. Really pretty incredible that having owned the phone 20 months now, I've got 95% battery remaining and I'm a VERY heavy user. I'm a believer in the charging strategy for sure. If you have a cable or a wireless charger stand handy, it works well.

I might look at a 6, but not sure. Going to have to have some assurances my sensors won't fail again if that's even possible.