They don’t use stock Android. They use their software on top just as Samsung does with OneUI. Their software just doesn’t have a name: https://www.androidpolice.com/google-needs-to-give-its-android-skin-a-public-name/

The “custom” chip that they use is just a past generation Exynos. Google designs and adds just a tiny chiplet for machine learning and the like. Otherwise it’s basically a Samsung Exynos chip.

Also, a lot of the hardware components in Pixels are pretty poor. For instance, their batteries are sourced from a Chinese OEM that otherwise sells replacement batteries you’d buy at a knock-off market.

Google does the exact same thing with the Pixels. Except their software isn’t quite as polished or reliable as OneUI. It’s no longer the Nexus line that used stock Android.

Yeah it’s confusing why people would still use text in North America. That would be a bigger concern to me than the color of a bubble.

The actual answer is that batteries are like two halves of a soccer field, except filled with thousands of players. You want your players to be spread evenly between the two sides of the field or things get crowded and they start damaging the boundaries of the stadium.

Also, crossing the center is what generates/consumes power, depending on which way each of the players go.

Well, not the actual answer, but an analogy.

It’s still a lovely and beautiful phone. Imho the best design and most balanced smartphone that Samsung ever put together at its time.

I’d definitely be able to still use it today. Indeed the lack of security updates is likely the main pain as eventually vulnerabilities may emerge, the longer it goes unpatched. It still got updated earlier this year for a critical Exynos vulnerability though, and I wouldn’t say it’s in the same “unsafe” class yet as some of the older models that have been going for years without updates now.

But going forward it will be slowly joining them. And it’s a shame that it didn’t make it for the extended support that kicked in for the later phones. As otherwise, it’s still very capable.