Google Pixel 3 (XL) bricking out of nothing

This matches my experience. I've got a Pixel 3A here which I've owned since July of 2020. I take good care of it, my previous phones have all lasted on the order of 6 years.

This phone has its charging port failing where it will not charge 80% of attempts until I manipulate the cord enough to make it happy. I've tried multiple cables as well as cleaning out the charging port, hasn't helped. I went with the phone to save some money, but in retrospect if it fails after a year I'll come out behind.

Did you get either problem fixed? Surely the first one at least should have been covered under the warranty.

On the USB-C, not saying this was your issue but really every USB-C phone I've had I've eventually needed to use a needle or pin and clear junk out of the bottom of the port to keep a good, solid connection. I don't know if that says more about the amount of lint in my pockets or the design of the USB-C port.

Mine too like 4 months ago

As a long-time Android user, it is a little ridiculous how short Google's timeframe for even security support is, on their own hardware. Updates to Android that were supposed to help remedy this problem haven't seemed to make a dent.

I'm sure, being Google, they've done all sorts of data analysis and cost-benefit and shown that it's a small group that keep phones that long and that people don't care that much about the support period... but it's just another seemingly penny-pinching situation from them that I think hurts their brand more than it could possibly be saving.

I like my 3a a lot, and bought it cheap later in its lifecycle, and it's a little galling to check and see that the support "guarantee" only goes up to next May, and the security timeframe is the same! If they stick to that schedule I'll have only basically their dead minimum of 18 months of support from when they stopped selling a device, or close to it. Is there really that much upside to these cutoffs?

If anything, they should be using the Pixel line as a cudgel (or let's be nicer, example) to encourage longer support timeframes from other Android manufacturers.

Samsung has hardware issues over time the same as the rest, heck it was only 5 years ago their premium model had quality issues so bad they had 2 rounds of recalls and cancelled the model completely.

I still went with OnePlus again with the 9 Pro even though the initial (or maybe all, I stopped checking after I heard the initial reports) 8's were troublesome. OnePlus isn't half as good as what they use to be but at least you can get a decent phone without overdone software. That they actually let you just unlock the bootloader on new devices says a lot to me even though I don't think I'd deal with custom ROMs anymore.

The main thing I've found when getting an Android phone is more than which brand is reliable wait a couple of months for the first batch of common users (not reviewers) to see how it actually is before going for it. Yeah you're eating into the short update lifecycle Android phones have but you know it's not bad out of the gate and there is no crystal ball telling you which phone models this generation are going to have unforeseen issues in 2 years (though I guarantee it will be some).

If only the iPhone let me install apps from 3rd party sources... I'd jump on that hardware in a heartbeat.