Pixel owners, what are your first impressions of Android 14?
I've been using the Android 14 Beta for a while now so nothing really new to me for now, but what I liked since the beta is that the battery life got better.
The ability to give apps permissions on a per-file basis is also cool, although it made some apps unusable probably because they aren't supporting that right now (but maybe that changed or will change soon now that the stable release is out).
So what are the changes you noticed the most and which ones do you like or hate so far?
Switched a month or two ago. Pretty good, no really complaints, setting up the Google services I need is easy to do. Battery life took a hit but still a full day, some hiccups like one bank app that just doesn't work. Overall I'm happy with it.
I feel like they have tweaked the haptics, could just be my imagination. There are a few little visual things like the change to the numbers when inputting your PIN.
Ok I'm glad someone said it because the haptics, to me, feel even better than before. Pixel 7a checking in.. Transitions using gestures feel better as well.
I also haven't noticed much. I am surprised with how little the platform updates change from the users perspective. Everything major has been mostly app updates
Is there any good reason why they flipped the camera switcher and photo library around? I've been constantly hitting the camera switcher by accident since the update to the camera app. Minor gripe, but I can't see the point of the switch.
Regular P7 here, and yeah, I noticed the camera update too which actually annoyed me a bit at first. I do like how they moved the camera and video buttons from the slidey menu down to dedicated toggles at the bottom though, but I was on a photo spree yesterday and the amount of times I clicked the photo button instead of the shutter button is astounding.
Also I have noticed some apps are a lot slower now. I was reading a long Wikipedia page yesterday and about halfway through it started jittering a lot and would take a few seconds to scroll after I actually scrolled, which isn't something that was happening in even longer pages than that one before the update
My news app now crashes on launch, making it useless. Goes to show what happens when you ignore repeated warnings about making your app compatible with the new OS update.
At a glance can finally show both weather information and a notification at the same time. We finally have the technology!
The back gesture indicator looks a little bit different. I have no strong opinions on it, maybe slightly better looking.
The color scheme seems a little bit darker, maybe? Again, no strong opinions.
But yeah, as others pointed out in the comments, the visual changes are rare, it's mostly incremental QoL improvements, battery optimizations (mostly for Pixel phones as there were lots of those in the Beta changelogs), and a few security features (e.g. you can choose to let an app only see the image you're about to upload, but I found that it breaks uploading on the Tumblr app, so gotta wait for apps to fully support that).
Where's the Easter egg ? I liked when it was dessert themed. I used to look forward to new updates. Watch the show. Now it's just not worth it. I'm less than interested.
Without dealing with side loading, is there a trick to force a pixel 6 to update OTA on Google Fi?
I know in the past you could clear the storage for certain Google services on the device and it would magically find an update that it claimed wasn't available 10 seconds prior.
But I've been out of the game for a bit. Do those tricks still work? My Google Fi pixel 6 doesn't show an update is available and I'm still on 13.
I've only tried rebooting and trying again so far.
OnePlus had an app called oxygen updater that you could use OTA files with. sad that Google doesn't have something similar because it was really useful
I've also been on the beta. Overall Android doesn't seem to have really change though, aside from maybe better battery life and minor aesthetic changes.
Webcam feature depends on someone implementing it in an app right? So yeah I'm looking forward to this usecase but it's not something anyone can use today unless some app already supports?
Nothing I hate. I'm on a Pixel 5, so super outdated but will be making a leap for the Pixel 8 Pro. I think it's quick and snappy though. No real complaints here.
In developer options you can enable "Predictive back animations" buried towards the bottom. It doesn't work anywhere except the settings app (yet) and some Google apps when back would take you to the launcher.
From everything I could gather, there was some sort of issue that broke the pixel stand in Android 13 for some users. It would still connect, but not charge. All other wireless chargers I had worked fine. I did the usual delete data and cache, pair and setup again, reboot, etc. Once Android 14 installed, it's been back to normal functionality for me.
I hope they keep this trend of releasing android updates with fixes / polish more than new functionalities. Especially the functionalities that put extra background services like when they released digital wellbeing.
In the battery menu It would have been nice if they added the standby time next to the screen on time. "Standby time since last full charge" something like that.
Now you need to calculate it and it sucks.