Leaked docs hint at Pixel Pass: a Google smartphone subscription

[HEXUS]

Monthly fee gets you new phone every year, Google One, Play Pass, YouTube Premium.

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[CooperA]

I'd subscribe to this. As many have become with Apple, I seem to be locked to Google's walled garden. For me it just works - I know I'm naive.

[Jonj1611]

I'd subscribe to this. As many have become with Apple, I seem to be locked to Google's walled garden. For me it just works - I know I'm naive.

You aren't naive. If something works for you then nothing wrong with that. I bounce between android phones and iphones all the time. Currently I am in the Apple ecosystem with a Mac and an iPhone. Why? Because for me it works just like I want it to. Next year I might be back with Android and a PC.

Do what's right for you, if it works for you then all good

[jnutt]

I'd subscribe to this. As many have become with Apple, I seem to be locked to Google's walled garden. For me it just works - I know I'm naive.

I'm in the same garden. Love my Pixel phones. Like you I'd probably join up.

[philehidiot]

This would be something I'd investigate as an option. But I'm leaning more and more towards keeping what I have for as long as I can. Because it works and there's nothing new and interesting aside from "we've not borked our newer phones with intentionally poorly made updates!"

[Gentle Viking]

I would not pay to get a new phone just cuz there is a new phone out, what if the new phone was garbage andf you wanted to keep the old one, can you do that and then just sell the new one ?
And while i am on google phones and have never been elsewhere cuz that other alternative i have never wanted to get near, and this go back to before they even made a phone.
Sadly there are no real alternatives to the 2 death traps in smartphones.

The other things in the bundle, well also not something i would be interested in, even if it was things that had nothing to do with google.

Being without a phone, is probably where i have to go, and thats also just fine been there before and it was just fine.

[Rubarb]

I've not had a phone in 8 or 9 years now and really don't miss it at all.

[philehidiot]

Thinking about this, what this potentially does is advertise to consumers "Google phones are now made only to last a year to make this subscription service viable".

I do my level best to make use of my older phones, by either giving them away (to people I trust to not data recover them and well use them so my data disappears) or lending them to people who need a stop gap. This has real utility and helps get my friends and neighbours out of the occasional bind.

It worries me that these phones will be "recycled" into landfill by either giving them to a company to "recycle" and them ending up on a Chinese tip or, worse, a phone I've used for banking and so on being returned to circulation without any chance to low level cryptoscrub it before it leave my possession.

I'd only be happy doing this if a) there was proof that year-old phones weren't being dumped or wasted and b) I was given the software and access to perform a low level wipe and cryptographic scrub of any storage before it left my possession.

I understand it's NAND memory rather than a HDD but all that means is I am unaware of the methods used to recover data, not that those methods don't exist. Just like HDDs, the chips get smashed before phones are sent for component level recycling or disposal.

[Friesiansam]

Even if the new phone is an improvement, every year, I cannot think of any good reason for changing my phone after just a year. Well, unless I break it but, I have had various mobile phones since 1999 and, never broken one.