The anti-climax of a new phone

I got a new phone yesterday. I wish I could say that was great, but meh, it doesn't have the excitement that it did ten years ago, when at the very least you knew the cameras were going to be better than the year before.

This time I'm retiring a Pixel 8 Pro with a Pixel 11 Pro XL (same size, but there's a smaller "pro" now as well). Three years seems to be the distance I get, made obvious by how yellow the case gets. I really thought I'd be able to get to four years, but the battery has been really suboptimal the last few months. I especially noticed it on our last cruise, despite being on it less but not getting a midday charge boost in the car. And it kinda sucks because when you take it out of the case, it's basically pristine and performs as well as ever.

The other problem is that, in the case of Google Fi, they'll give you basically half-price for the phone, and money on a trade. At three years, mine was still worth $165, so the $1,300 phone, which is totally ridiculous (also, the RAM crisis is real), was effectively $484. That still feels like a lot, but better than the insane full price. The trade value only gets smaller over time.

When I'm not testing my software a ton, I've got my screen time down to around three hours a day. Most of that is playing the NYT Games, texting and Slacking. My social media usage is way, way down, thanks to Facebook banishing me. I was already headed for the exit, but so glad it gave me the push. Only three or four people in my circle really use it, but I post stuff to TogetherLoop and it's a satisfying way to log for myself what isn't blog-worthy.

The cameras are better in the new phone, with wider apertures and bigger sensors, so night stuff in particular should turn out better. It was pretty good to start though. Real-time language translation, and astonishingly even ASL to voice, are on this one, too. Neat.

Let's see if I can get four years out of this one.