Since there's no self posts here yet, I thought I'd bring up a question for those that decided to settle into Lemmy. Welcome to those here so far!
There's a ton of reasons to choose the a Pixel, but what's one or two major points that keep you hooked?
For me, I'm in love with the speed of the UI, and of course the ability to sideload apps if I want. Being in control of a device you spend a lot of money on makes a lot of sense.
Every other phone is full of garbage bloatware that is not easily uninstalled from the worse companies, like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft.
Other companies promise updates, but you're waiting months if not years (or even never) for them.
and most importantly, every other phone I have used is super laggy or stuttery. Even though the Pixel 6/7 have lesser specs than the S22 Ultra, the S22 Ultra performed terribly compared to my 6 Pro (I now have a 7 Pro).
I posted a comment on Lemmy about my experience with my S22 Ultra and how it was filled with ads, despite it costing $2000 CAD ($700 MORE than the Pixel 6/7 Pro) and being an unlocked model.
I've loved clean Android since the Nexus 5 days, so the Pixel line was the natural place for me to end up. The cameras have been a nice bonus, and the call filtering alone would be enough to keep me in the Pixel camp.
They're just fluid and uncluttered, plus they can be tinkered with without voiding the warranty (unlike the Motorola I owned a while back). Helps that there's always great ROM support as well once they fall off of official support.
I literally bought it just to install GrapheneOS because I was tired of Apple's ecosystem. I have no idea what the experience on a stock Pixel is like.
I have no love for Google either, but at least they give me freedom over my phone OS and the Graphene team offers security updates for five years from release. Not as long a support window as Apple, but the experience on Graphene is better. This is mainly due to having sandboxed Google Play and Fdroid access.
For me, I love Android and to me Pixel is the "iPhone" of the Android world. I prefer software to hardware as well and I think they get the combo right.