WEBVTT

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what these guys are thinking I can't hold to quickly uninstall apps the

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search bar is where I want my time and weather to be and I can't move the

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navigation buttons what those are all stock Android

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features man right I guess I have been kind of

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faithful to the Samsung ecosystem for a while maybe I don't know what stock

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Android truly is quick somebody get me a

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phone with a stock AOSP image ah perfect

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a pi pixel 8 Pro with GSI I'm going to

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use this for a month then I'm going to come back here and talk about what I

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learned that's it I'm out how can anyone

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use this I don't know when or how this happened but it happened crappy vendor

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skins that's the good Android now and stock Android it's a broken mess and

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wait wait wait before you shoot the messenger give me a chance to explain and a chance

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link in the video description

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my first gamebreaking issue hit me almost immediately I wanted to take some

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pictures at one of my kids birthday parties and I was like oh this is great

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timing I can use the fancy pixel camera instead of my old note 9 but then I

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launched the camera and I'm like what even is this not only is the app

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shockingly Bare Bones I'm talking timer grid lines Flash and O you can switch to

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the front camera if you want to get fancy but it's also super unintuitive

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after I'd recorded some video I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get

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back to photo mode without closing and completely restarting the app I did

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eventually figure out that there's a gesture a dang it this is exactly what

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I'm talking about there we go there's a gesture to bring up the mode select or

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to see your gallery but if you start that gesture anywhere near the edge of

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the phone as you guys just saw it it just closes the app and things like that

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just kept happening let's look at something even more basic a phone call I

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can start a call just fine dial a number bring up a contact the Wes but once the

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call is started I am completely at the mercy of whoever I called because for

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the life of me I could not figure out how to hang up a phone call there's no

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gesture and even pressing the power button to end the call is not enabled by

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default as it turns out there isn't any

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default app configured for phone calls so when you make or receive a call

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you're initiating some kind of dark ritual then that links you directly to

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the phone's brain stem and okay sure no one talks on the phone anymore lus you

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dinosaur but come on the app is there

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why aren't we using it uh what else Bluetooth was weird I could pair devices

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pretty reliably but then actually making audio playback go through my airpods Pro

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twos whole other story and the Bluetooth settings even crashed pretty often when

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I tried to open them uh while I was in the settings menu I tried to switch the

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Wi-Fi hotspot to 5 GHz and it would

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acknowledge I was touching the screen and even refresh the page but would not

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register the change 2.4 GHz worked fine though uh wireless emergency alerts

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appear to be totally missing when you click the entry in the menu it just

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drops you back a menu level and screen saver was enabled but without a screen

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saver selected so my screen was not saved okay that last one's pretty minor

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but one that really irked me was needing to hit enter after my pin I hear this is

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finally changeable on Pixel devices with Android 14 but it's not changeable on

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this one which brings us to the surprising Revelation that this

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experiment brought us to there isn't really a functional stock Android

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anymore there is stock Android and

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getting it is pretty straightforward we used a pixel 8 Pro thinking well I mean

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Google's own phone should surely be a good starting point for Google's own

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operating system and we downloaded a GSI or generic system image of Android 15

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that's built from the Android open source project or AOSP we picked up one

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with GMS or Google mobile services because I need Play store apps and that

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was it we got stock Android it just

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sucks so much that we kind of didn't even trust the results so as a sanity

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check we also loaded up a pixel 8 nonpr with the same image so that the team

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could confirm that my problems were not user ER without me having to give them

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my phone all the time and they weren't

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I'm speaking of pixels by the way have you checked out our dead pixel collection LTT Store.com but hold on a

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second let's back up AOSP is the fundamental code that all manufacturers

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of Android phones build upon it's a pillar of open- source Purity how could

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it be bad well whatever it may have been in

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the past these days AOSP is less of an

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operating system and it's more of a starting point all manufacturers yes

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even Google themselves adds their own drivers UI customizations and apps that

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give their devices a unique flavor and as this practice has become more common

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it's clear that less and less effort has gone into maintaining stock apps and

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functions that no one's going to use anyway now I've mostly been a Samsung

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boy in recent years so I'm most familiar with their oneui and I've seen your

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comments that it's clear that lius CES one UI as kind of a base line for

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Android and you know what there's probably some truth to that maybe you

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have used Sony's xeria UI for years and you think of that is normal we're both

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wrong there is no normal Android even

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the Android that you get with a pixel device is not stock Google's pixel UI

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may be their vision for what Android should be but there's no money importing

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all of their pixel exclusive Visions back into AOSP though of course in some

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cases that could be considered a good thing Google does not generally include

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micro SD slots for expanded storage in their devices but Android still has

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support for external storage in AOSP I

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think the funniest thing about this for me is that while we still see people

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evangelizing the stock Android experience it's actually been dead for a

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lot longer than most people realize even Google's older Nexus line of phones got

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progressively less stock as time went on

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with apps for things like calendar messages web browsing gradually being

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replaced with similar Google Apps and

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they even started using their own custom launcher that wasn't available for other

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phones luckily though if you're not happy with the skin used on your phone

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you might be able to switch it up with a custom rom that is a version of Android

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that's made by someone other than one of the major phone

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manufacturers I wouldn't really recommend this on a device that's still

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being supported by the manufacturer but if your device is no longer supported

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custom roms can get give you access to the latest security patches or even

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entirely new versions of Android and help keep an old phone viable well past

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the manufacturers end of support before you get too excited though you will need

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a device with an unlockable bootloader in order to do this thankfully these

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days that's many devices with some notable exceptions like ASUS where there

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isn't currently an official unlock method and it's worth noting that even

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if your phone works certain features like Samsung's S Pen for example or

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especially secure features like NFC payments and Bank apps might not work

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the way you would expect out of the box once you've got your bootloader unlocked

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though you can choose a custom rom none of which are stock Android and if

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anything gives me more appreciation for the incredible work that these teams

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have done over the years it is the experience of using stock Android uh

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some of the notable examples of custom roms include lineage OS which is lightly

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customized quite stable and often used as a base for other custom roms a pixel

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OS is one that aims to bring a pixel likee experience to devices from

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non-google manufacturers graphine OS and calx Os both aimed to prevent Google

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from tracking your location and other data but take kind of different

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approaches Paranoid Android has been around almost forever and I think is

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pretty self-explanatory and of course there's that one that you're screaming

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at your screen right now because I'm a terrible terrible person who's ignoring what is clearly the best custom ROM so

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I'll tell you what I'm going to leave it out so you can be the one to write it in

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the comments and collect your precious up votes you're welcome with that out of

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the way I dropped my fold in the pool almost a year ago and after letting you

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guys pick one attempting unsuccessfully to switch to the fair phone 5 the phone

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I wanted and then going through this bloody mess I still don't have a new

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phone so you know what [ __ ] it I'm

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getting an iPhone yes finally but man

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they're expensive how am I going to afford one

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maybe with some help from our sponsor rocket money it can be hard to take

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with premium if you guys liked this video why not relive how we got here

00:10:15.839 --> 00:10:21.519
from dunking the phone in the pool to getting trolled by Reddit and the

00:10:19.560 --> 00:10:26.959
disappointment of a phone I wanted so badly to love uh we're going to link a

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playlist down below