I currently have an iPhone 14 Pro Max and I want to switch to an Android phone.
First of all, I eliminated all Chinese phones. Since Samsung has limited custom rom support, I gave up on that too. At the end, I decided to get a Pixel because of its GrapheneOS support.
But right now I'm stuck between Pixel 8 and 9. There's a big price difference with small improvements. I can afford both but not sure if Pixel 9 is worth it. What do you think?
Btw if you miss some performance, as far as I grasp it, you can disable "secure app spawning". Again, afaigi it is for a pretty high threat model (apps trying to attack others, with their memory layout as attack surface).
This will reduce RAM need a ton, speed up app spawning and can reduce many issues like
OSMAnd crashing or running slowly
apps being killed in the background, increasing the issue of...
... slow app spawning (the app performance is normal, except from low memory edge cases)
The only thing you're really getting with the 9 over the 8 is better hardware design. Personally I miss the full visor, but not enough to look over the 9. If hardware doesn't really matter as much to you the 8 is cheaper and will most likely reach feature parity with the 9.