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Comment by Fej | Hacker News Reader

What is the draw here?

I have been running my Nexus 5 into the ground (soldered on a new power button when the original broke) in anticipation of the next Nexus phone. Pixel is no Nexus.

Seriously, what does this have that the year-old Nexus 6P and 5X don't, other than incremental hardware improvements? And a massive price hike? Why should I buy this?

(Seriously, Google? You want $650 for a phone with a 1080p screen? I know there's benefits to a lower resolution but then why not drop the price? It's ridiculous.)

My perception is that Google no longer knows what it's doing. Reference Allo for an even better example. The company can coast on their existing products but only for so long.

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> what does this have that the year-old Nexus 6P and 5X don't, other than incremental hardware improvements?

As someone who owns a 5X:

- The Pixel is a premium 5" phone, not a budget one. It has a flagship SoC rather than a mid-tier SoC.

- The camera is better and more responsive (the camera on the N5X is slow and annoying).

- The body isn't plastic, which means there will be less issues with heat and CPU throttling than on the N5X.

- I can finally get a phone with a reasonable amount of storage and no bloat. The 5X only went up to 32GB and had no expansion. Alternatives from Samsung etc. are mostly carrier locked, unrootable and stuffed with OEM overlays.

- There's no camera bump, so it can sit on flat surfaces less awkwardly.

- They actually mentioned this phone during the announcement, unlike the 5X last year. They might actually pay it some attention in the future.

As always the most compelling thing about the phone is Google's support - fast releases and minimal carrier bloat. You have a nice list of positives and I'm not disputing them.

But the feature list for what is now Googles top phone is underwhelming. 4 GB of RAM is barely adequate - it should be 6 GB like the other Snapdragon 821 flagship. No water proofing? That's the new black. Bottom-facing speakers? Complete regression from the Nexus 6. Including a smoking camera but no optical image stabilization? Make up your mind - is it a digital camera competitor or not?

And frankly since there's no waterproofing there's no excuse for a fixed battery and no sd-card slot. Even some waterproof phones offer those features now. Google needs to blow Apple away with features rather than aping the latest iphone.

> 4 GB of RAM is barely adequate

I'm not disagreeing with you but what makes you say this? I've never owned a phone with more than 2GB of RAM and I'm not sure what I'm missing out on.

> no optical image stabilization

I trust a software company like Google with EIS, particularly given their work with HDR+. I owned an iPhone 7 for about a week and loved the stabilisation Google's app did on my Motion Stills.

> Google needs to blow Apple away with features rather than aping the latest iphone.

The impression I got from the announcement is that that's what they see their assistant being. Personally that doesn't win me over at all but we'll see how it goes. I could see my mother and her friends all wanting the phone that can talk to them (and it looks more impressive than Siri).

> I've never owned a phone with more than 2GB of RAM and I'm not sure what I'm missing out on.

It's Linux under the hood which will always make use of more memory, but our phones are slowly migrating towards service platforms. When my phone is fully kitted out playing Ingress with friends I'm running Slack, Glympse, Zello, team-specific app(s), Ingress and maps. I want the device snappily switching between and/or giving cycles to all those apps as needed without being forced to save state off to my flash storage which is a wasting asset.

I would imagine VR apps will be even more hungry with the large and complex objects and interactions modeled and displayed.

On EIS yup if that replaces OIS I'm fine with it. The assistant may be really cool but it won't remain a google-exclusive for long and it doesn't justify a (in my mind) $200-$300 premium for the phone.

I'll probably pick up the pixel XL when the sales start but as someone who has been an Android acolyte since my developer's edition G1 came in the mail this is not a compelling upgrade for me from the Nexus 6, particularly at this price.

>> I've never owned a phone with more than 2GB of RAM and I'm not sure what I'm missing out on.

> It's Linux under the hood which will always make use of more memory,

Linux won't really be the beneficiary of all the extra RAM in this case. The motivation behind the extra RAM is Java.

It is well known (i.e. researched) that garbage collection system performance is heavily dependent on free RAM. You typically want around 4x the amount of your peak memory usage to keep the garbage collector speed reasonable. The more free RAM, the better the performance.

http://sealedabstract.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Screen-...

But having 4x has been a real challenge for mobile and Android over the years, especially as people want to do more and more with the phones. It also didn't help that Dalvik and ART are new ground-up implementations of the Java VM which means a lot of optimizations for garbage collection needed to be reimplemented from scratch.

The lack of needing to support a garbage collector is a big reason Apple can get away with shipping far less RAM in their phones which in turn helps keep their profit margins high.

I would be shocked if RAM and not GPU were the limiting issue in a phone running VR.

Its October and you are still playing anything from Niantic?

Are your recent 2GB phones iDevices?

> Including a smoking camera but no optical image stabilization? Make up your mind - is it a digital camera competitor or not?

Why does it need OIS if its EIS produces a stabilized image better than anyone else's image stabilization?

The feature is image stabilization - whether or not it's done optically or electronically is irrelevant, all that matters is how good the end product is. And DXO's review claims that the image stabilization in Pixel is superb.

https://www.dxomark.com/Mobiles/Pixel-smartphone-camera-revi...

Your link only talks about video stabilisation, it doesn't appear to even try and examine still image stabilisation and if it is superior to OIS as you claim.

Do you have a link that supports the claims made above? That one simply does not.

> it doesn't appear to even try and examine still image stabilisation and if it is superior to OIS as you claim.

Yes it does, but it'd be under "blurry photos" description rather than stabilization because stabilization is more inherently a video issue than a photo one.

In the case of OIS and photos you want to look at the low-light performance, which DXO did test and the Pixel did do very well on.

>Why does it need OIS if its EIS produces a stabilized image better than anyone else's image stabilization?

That's a fair point. If it indeed does produce a great image I have no complaint.

But DXOMARK! The camera metric we've been relying on to buy our phones! Its the highest score ever! Think about how relevant the incrementally better lens will be. Wait till your friends read the EXIF data on your Facebook and FOMO at the mouth. "I saw the DXOMark for that lens" immediately escalating your life from the mundane to the exciting.

Innovations in photon capturing technology like light field be damned. This is the best.camera.ever.

Did this not factor into your decision?

> As always the most compelling thing about the phone is Google's support

You mean support for the OS, not for the hardware, which is probably more of a concern for phone users.

"4GB RAM in a phone is barely adequate"

You know, I knew the day would come that we'd be saying this unironically, but in still surprised it's here.

The only other Snapdragon 821 is the Mi5s Plus, and that has either 3 or 5 GB of RAM.

Doesn't the iPhone 7 have only 3 GB of RAM? If 4 GB is "barely adequate" then the iPhone 7 must be pretty bad. /s

Comparing specs between iPhones and Androids is far from simple.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/12/12886058/iphone-7-specs-co...

Not having to support Java means the iPhone can get away with less https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12641590

>The Pixel is a premium 5" phone, not a budget one.

what makes it premium other than the fact that they're charging lots of money for it? i can't find a real differentiator over something like the oneplus 3, which costs half as much.

i agree with you that it's better than the 5X, but comparing it to this year's competition, it doesn't look so good.

More memory, faster CPU, better GPU, and most important to me - best camera on the market.

The Oneplus 3 is four times the size, the firmware running on it tends to be buggy, and the battery life is nothing close to the same.

I get it - if you're on a budget you can probably do better with the Oneplus 3. But there are a MILLION options in the budget space. Pixel is about showcasing a high end Android phone WITHOUT all the bloat that Samsung adds. I can just about guarantee if Samsung would relent and just run stock android, Google would end the nexus/Pixel program overnight.

It has 2GB less ram, and the same processor (slightly higher clock speed) and same gpu, vs the oneplus 3

> the same processor (slightly higher clock speed)

So... not the same. Also the GPU is faster too.

I'll agree with you that it's silly that they're still trying to pass a 1080p screen and lack of SD card as high end though.

The phone vendor always sets the frequency the snapdragon processors run at - some vendors choose to run their processors at higher clock speeds than others because they have better cooling, some get a better binning, but it's the same processor.

That's my problem with the phone - premium price but not premium feature set.

Flagship SoC (SD821 vs SD808) and a metal body are the main things that make it worth the price to me.

yeah, i understand that it's better than the $300 nexus 5X that's a year old. that goes without saying.

but since the Nexus 5X was released, there's been a bunch of metal bodied phones with the SD820 released that only cost $399 - the oneplus 3, zte axon, honor 5x, xaoimi mi5... and there's nothing to differentiate the pixel from those phones, other than a 40% higher price.

Oneplus 3 not available on verizon

That's a problem for you, not for most people; therefore not google's problem.

Verizon has 140 million subscribers in the US, or about 35% market share. So you're right, that's not most people.

4GB RAM

If I'm in the market for a premium phone (and I am) then I either go with Apple which is known to deliver quality (I can buy a products without prior research because they are rarely bad) or I go with something innovative that is high quality.

The Samsung Note 7 comes to mind with its phenomenal build (except for the explosions), display and some unusual features like a stylus and microSD slot.

But what does the Pixel offer here for a premium price in comparison?

The CPU is premium but weaker than current iPhone processors. Nexus cameras have always been crap even though Google always claimed that with the new generation and some revolutionary changes they have finally "fixed" it. And they always drop support rather quickly, although they always claim otherwise when they launch a new product.

The Nexus devices were at least cheap and so I could overlook this stuff, but I'm not going to spend that kind of money on a device that will probably be a Nexus device with a metal case.

Pixel isn't a huge annoying brick to carry around for one.

There's a Note 7 and an iPhone 7 that isn't brick size, just as there's a Pixel XL that is brick sized.

These options exist because many people do prefer larger smartphones. In fact this is the first year where there's higher demand for the iPhone 7 Plus than there is for the iPhone 7.

Nexus 6P and 5X have the same camera, and it's one of the best smartphone cameras out there.

DxO rated them 84, while iPhone 7's is 86. While Pixel's is ranked 89, it's not that far ahead. And 5X is a really cheap phone, I routinely see deals under $200.

>It has a flagship SoC rather than a mid-tier SoC.

What is "SoC" an abbreviation for?

System-on-Chip

I'm pretty sure this was supposed to be a Nexus phone, everything points to a change of strategy late in the development. They claim that it's designed and developed by Google, but everyone that has been paying attention to the leaks knows it's made by HTC, and it shows. It looks nothing like the other Pixel devices, but it look's exactly like a Nexus phone by HTC. The Pixel launcher was named the Nexus launcher until recently. Next year's Pixel phone will probably be much closer to Google's own vision, if they make one. This years model have a premium price tag and might have good build quality and an expensive SoC, but otherwise it's underwhelming, especially at that price point. I prefer Android over iOS, but I don't think the Pixel can even match the iPhone 7 hardware for a lot of key specs, like CPU/GPU performance, camera, battery life, etc. The Pixel XL 128 GB costs over €1000 and they still only promise software updates for two years, that's inexcusable.

This reminds me of the Pixel C that allegedly was supposed to run Chrome OS until a change late in the development, and the Nexus 6 that allegedly was supposed to be an Android Silver device by Motorola until the Android Silver program was scrapped late in the development process. Will Google follow through on any hardware project from start to finish without interference from above?

Do you really think that last year's Nexus 6P was designed by Huawei?

I'm not saying that Google didn't have any input, I'm sure they do the exterior design to some degree and choose which components are in the phones. And while they're not exactly identical, the 6P does have some similarities with the Huawei P8, like the black band on the back. Not as many as the Pixel have with the HTC 10 though.

> Not as many as the Pixel have with the HTC 10 though.

The pixel's similarities are towards the htc one A9, not the htc 10.

Yes but with probably some Google collaboration. Huawei has multiple phones before and after the Nexus 6P that look pretty similar.

Nice (best in class) camera is one of the highlight features.

I can't compare without trying the others out but the camera on a Nexus 6P is amazing. I am not sure how big a difference would the camera be on the Pixel over the 6P.

> Seriously, Google? You want $650 for a phone with a 1080p screen?

Apple wants $650 for a phone with a ~720p screen.

Why do you bring up screen resolution? Both phones have 400+ ppi screens. You want more? Why?

VR headsets greatly benefit from a higher resolution. Even the 2K display on the late model Samsung phones produce low resolution when paired with a Gear VR. Supposedly this won't be resolved until 8k or even 16k mobile displays.

Why would you use a phone for vr? Seems hugely expensive to upgrade the screen for the sake of a niche hobby. Most people wouldn't even use it.

This is not what Google is betting on, hence the DayDream VR.

Sure, but you don't need anything more than 1080p for an $80 vr headset. It's a value purchase, not a quality purchase.

Its not an $80 VR headset. The thing that goes around your head is $80, but the expensive part is that phone which you put in the front, which needs a 1440p display (minimum) to avoid the screen-door effect.

If we reject the $80 VR thing lets make it $880 or so, including the cost of a phone. That's still a lot less than the ~$3000 it costs to get a legitimate VR headset plus a gaming PC. Add onto that the fact that virtually everyone is going to own a smartphone anyway, and you can basically eliminate the cost of the phone in there. It's definitely value VR.

Agreed, the only other item that reaches the phone VR price point is Sony's Playstation VR (PSVR). Oculus Rift OC1 and HTC vive is still targeted to developers and high end PC users. The price point is still too high for general consumers when the PC cost is factored in.

Mobile has to lead the way, which Samsung and Oculus did very successfuly with GearVR.

Cardboard was seen as a gimmick and now it has graduated to become a daydream.

This is a positive step for VR.

2016 year of VR.

$3000 is enough to get you two gaming pcs along with a rift.

then they probably should not advertise it together with their new mobile VR platform

You still notice it. One of the reasons I moved from a 1080p to 1440p phone (~440ppi to ~560ppi) was how on the new one I actually can't see the pixelation, which I could in the other one. I imagine there are very few gains at 5 inches from going past 1440p though, except for VR. Larger sizes will probably still benefit from an even higher resolution though.

If you like the hardware but don't like the prices, just wait a year.

>You want $650 for a phone with a 1080p screen? I know there's benefits to a lower resolution but then why not drop the price? It's ridiculous.

Are you serious? Did you know that the larger iPhone 6S Plus and 7 Plus are 1920x1080? Or that the iPhone 7 is 1334 x 750? And you're complaining that Google's 5 inch phone is only 1920x1080 and have the nerve to question what they're doing? Ridiculous, indeed.

my nexus 5 camera is absolute garbage.

I have a Nexus 5X and the camera on it is terrible as well.

If my next phone is an iPhone, it will likely be because of the camera.

I have a 5x and the pictures it produces are great. Main problem is with slow starting time.

My wife has an iPhone and the pictures on that are far better in every way.

For the Pixel phone, I kind of wish Google had focused on the phone to make something far better than the iPhone camera.

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