Google Pixel Fold

Google has forcefully updated everyone's Pixel 4a with their new battery of death update, which destroys the phone's battery life to near zero. Now it looks like they are preparing to factory reset and wipe people's phones who are not cooperating. In my case and many others, they are refusing to replace batteries, and most batteries are out of stock worldwide. They are telling people to buy a new Pixel with a tiny credit. Many haven't got their small perks at all. Google is not compensating as they said they would be Here is my experience where they permanently destroyed my phone and offered no help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42871613 Here is a recent Hacker News post about the battery update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42865619 All Pixel 4a factory images have been wiped (except the battery of death): https://developers.google.com/android/images#sunfish Note: This has not been officially confirmed by Google yet, but with the Pixel 4a battery update fiasco that kills the battery, it may be true and this was not supposed to be leaked. Everyone please back up your phones!

Even if that was more accurate (I don't think it is), it's certainly not the way users see it. In fact that's NOT the way Apple describes it, either (see the Apple article cited above), because Apple doesn't actually want to enable E2EE -- it only wants to be able to say it offers it. In practice, ensuring that other users are pressured into choosing iMessage on iPhone is the only thing that matters to Apple. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241443505/green-bubble-shami... And, this very simple trick works extremely well: at least 87% of teenagers in the U.S. ( https://mashable.com/article/apple-messages-green-doj ) are pre-programmed to buy an iPhone, even though they have the lowest disposable income of all. Meanwhile, less than a third of the overall global population owns an iPhone. Is that because iPhones are better? As an owner of both a recent Pro Max and Pixel Pro, I can unequivocally answer, "no", but I do find all of the annoyances between cross-device communication accrue to the point of just wanting to switch to my iPhone full-time, even though it's arguably a worse experience in many ways.

That wouldn't cause me to panic yet. What caused me to panic was that Find My Device triggered itself on my phone (while I was silent, in my room, phone in the pocket) today, and I have no idea why. Google activity history does not say I've triggered it (It didn't interpret dog barking somewhere as "OK Google, where's my phone" apparently). So, is it a misclick when releasing a forced feature, or am I already hacked? :) (Pixel Fold)