I have been in the Android ecosystem since 2009 or 2010, I can’t remember the exact date. Yes, I know how I started, going from my Nokia N81 to the HTC Hero, a phone with a very interesting and revolutionary design concept that the evolution of telephony has ended up burying under tons of glass prisms and of metal.
With the HTC Hero, I arrived at a system that I have not abandoned in mobile phones (on tablets, that’s another story) and which has taken me through many brands that I remember, and I’m not just talking about the phones that I have scanned but about the ones that I have owned. From my personal phones. And in the end what seemed inevitable happened, given my latest experiences: I have fallen into the realm of pixels.
I tried all the cooks’ diapers
I guess I wasn’t the only one He had an uncontrollable fever while testing ROMs of all kinds in its debut on Android. Maybe it’s because I got into a point, with the switch from Android Eclair to Android Froyo, in which the culinary communities were in full swing. With my HTC Hero, I quickly grew bored of stock Android and lived browsing the forums, downloading and flashed
It’s possible that this was due to the fact that Android was very green at the time and its graphic appearance left a lot to be desired. Switching from Sense to stock Android was quite a drama so I experimented and experimented, never finding what I found. And over time, I went from brand to brand.
From HTC Hero, I switched to Nexus One (also HTC) and from there to Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy S2, Sony Xperia T, LG G3, Nexus 5, HTC One M8, Xiaomi Mi A1, a Mi 9 and now a Pixel 5. By layers and models it will not be. It probably leaves me with models along the way that I don’t remember that will come to mind when this article is already published, and probably some are messed up. This is not very important, because the classy of all this is the journey through the personalization layer market, some seasoned with cooked ROMs and the rest of the original images.
Each layer gave me something special and unique, but it was time to come “home”
During this time I also went through an infinite number of launchers to obtain this or that aesthetic, or this or that functionality. In the end, as I think this may have happened to a lot of users by looking at the download volume of the Google Play Store, I ended up hitting my bones in Nova Launcher, and I stuck with it until to which I decide that maybe I was a little tired of experimenting and I stayed on a MIUI 12 without customizing until I decided to go back to the origins
The Pixel 5: the taste of the simplest
It can’t be said that my entry into Android happened through pure Android, because the HTC Hero had Sense. But I tried a few stock ROMs and my next step was with the Nexus One. Since then my journey has always been layer after layer as Android has matured at a good rate, and the purest version was only intended for certain models that I analyzed for work. I wanted pure Android for myself, and I finally did.
To detail me, while I was clear that I wanted to buy a Pixel, Google decided that it would not sell the Pixel 5 in Europe. Solution: Import it through eBay. From Germany to my pocket. Another return to pure Android from the hand of a phone which, until now, He gave me everything I needed and more.
With the Pixel 5 I landed straight on Android 11 although after the beta I’m already on Android 12L, and day to day with it showed me something I was already thinking when I got it tried with small strokes: the “customization” of the Pixel has little to envy the more powerful layers, and its fluidity even compensates for not having a high-end processor
Away from launchers and layers, in the Pixel 5 I found the most mature Android to date with an increasingly useful assistant tucked away even inside cabinets and with details of the software that Google gives uniquely and exclusively to their phones. Pure Android today is very far from its origins and the truth is that at the moment I don’t plan to abandon it in the short or medium term. I have to turn that around and try on diapers for work instead of living with them in my personal environment.
After many years of “biting” here and there, I decided to go back to basics and go back to Pixels and pure Android.
And as an added gift, getting the Pixel 5 is having it in my pocket one of the best cameras on the market so i have everything i need. Fluidity and power, simple aesthetics, good photography and good autonomy. Hopefully the Pixel 5 will be my home for at least a few years until it’s time for a change, we’ll see where my fate will be. But once I return to simplicity, it will be difficult for me to want to “make my life difficult” again in the future. Who knows.
This has been my trip, it doesn’t have to coincide with yours. Fortunately, there are almost as many user types as there are customization levels and we all have our favorites. Mine, fortunately or unfortunately, have changed, evolved. And now I want simplicity.
