Pixel 5 isn't a great phone. You should go for pixel 4a which is $349 at retail or iphone 12 mini.
Safari ad blockers are severely crippled and you won't have any choice in browsers. Ublock origin is available on android with firefox which is something to consider if you browse on your phone often.
IMHO, that's probably a good thing as long as Apple stays small. If a Chromium-based browser took over iOS as well, it would be the only rendering engine anybody targets.
What I was trying to say is that ad blocking cannot really be a lot better than Safari? You would have to block on the network level and not the content level.
If you read my comment again you'll note the only claim I make about adblocking is that all browsers must use the same runtime.
I don't claim that it's broken, but the ability to switch browsers (finally!) doesn't seem terribly relevant given that they're all required to essentially be safari skins.
> But all of them are safari core, Apple does not allow other browser runtimes, they're only the custom UI around the webview. [1]
You’re mixing up Safari and WebKit. This gives a misleading impression. Safari is Apple’s web browser. WebKit is Apple’s rendering engine. There’s much more to a browser than its rendering engine. Apple requires browsers to use WebKit, not Safari. Everything else – add-ons, syncing, UI, homepage, etc. – can be completely custom.
I’d be pretty pissed off if I were a developer working on a browser for iOS and everybody treated all of my hard work as if it were nothing. Alternative browsers aren’t just reskinned Safari. They are entire applications of their own.
In this context they're more or less the same, because the relevant networking / adblocking bits are in webkit, AIUI.
It's true that safari and webkit are not the same, this comment is imprecise. But switching browsers won't net you different adblocking capability due to the restriction to use apples webkit core.
Edit: that is "safari core" is a very lazy shorthand for the webkit framework here. The impact to the user is pretty much the same in this context.
Many third party browsers actually implement their own networking bits. Firefox Mobile used to be based on Alamofire (but recently switched to NSURLSession). Chrome iOS uses the same stack as its desktop browser (Cronet). Third party browsers can implement adblocking any way they want, for example iCab 10 on iOS supports the AdBlock Plus format used by uBlock Origin.
> switching browsers won't net you different adblocking capability due to the restriction to use apples webkit core.
That depends on what you mean by “different adblocking capability”. It’s absolutely possible for alternative browsers to block different things to Safari. I can think of three ways to do it off the top of my head: add a content rule list; inject JavaScript to remove elements from the DOM; inject CSS to hide elements.
On top of the limited, static lists, you cannot both use content blockers and sync your bookmarks and history with MS Windows or GNU/Linux at the same time. That's pretty broken.
It's really easy to do this on Android—Firefox with uBlock Origin is brilliant.
On the contrary, a Pixel 5 is actually a fantastic phone. It's the smoothest-feeling phone I've ever used -- the 90Hz screen makes a huge difference. Tip: go to the developer options and change the animation durations to .5x to make the phone feel blazing fast.
Plus a Pixel integrates a lot better with non-Apple operating systems, both MS Windows and GNU/Linux. MS's "Your Phone" and KDE Connect are both great.
The most popular blocker named 1Blocker is adding multiple rule lists, one for each of it’s categories (ads, trackers, regional rules, ...) to circumvent this limit. Its not a real problem.
I think the better way to put it is it is a real problem, but with a well known workaround. AFAIK, these slots needs to be pre-defined so you're still limited to number of lists that were defined at installation time.
This limitation prevent the model with traditional adblocker where extension and block lists are independently maintained by different parties (e.g. uBlock Origin/ABP + EasyList) so you're stuck with relying on extension maintainer to update their list or download another blocker app when the blocker become unmaintained (where in traditional model you could just subscribe to another list)
Pixel 5 is a great phone, albeit a bit overpriced in the US due to the extra mmWave chip. So is the 4a, depends on your needs.
Pixel 5 has 2GB more ram, 50% more battery, wireless charging, 90hz display and waterproofing. Now that may or may not be features you need, both they're both great deals.
Pixel 5 has bunch of issues which make the performance worse than pixel 4a 5g and comparable to pixel 4a. OP talked about iphone 12 mini so I thought they cared about small size which pixel 4a rocks.
There were a few strange stand out benchmarks, though to me they seemed more like bugs than a pattern. I haven't had any performance issues in every day usage.
> I thought they cared about small size
That's fair, I assumed they were just avoiding premium prices. Still, some people really care about wireless charging and waterproofing and if so, I think P5 is a great option.
Safari ad blockers are severely crippled and you won't have any choice in browsers. Ublock origin is available on android with firefox which is something to consider if you browse on your phone often.