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Comment by EZ-E | Hacker News Reader

I'm gonna get down voted but that's why I buy Apple phones. Comparing processors, ram, test scores means nothing compared to the actual experience

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I switched to Apple after my Nexus 5 stopped getting updates about a year after I bought it.

Bought an iPhone 6S second hand for $320. Still getting updates now, and looks like I will for the foreseeable future.

The core feature iPhones are missing is USB Type C- I won't upgrade to a new iPhone if I cant use the same headphones on my laptop and phone (either 3.5mm or TypeC)

And that's why I buy Google phones. The processor being slightly slower doesn't matter to me if I prefer the overall experience

Google phones tend to use whatever the current high end SoC is. So when you see the same SoC scoring lower in a Google phone than on everyone else's phone is it really that the processor is slower, or is it just that Google/AOSP doesn't engage in benchmark detection and you're seeing the true performance of the SoC as a result?

If you don't mind being stuck storage-wise with no SD card slot... 4k videos fill up internal storage pretty quickly.

When you buy a Google phone you get unlimited backup storage in Google Photos. You never think again about things like that.

Unlimited backup storage for low-quality, highly-compressed photos. If you want to store photos the way they were shot, you'll quickly run out of space and will have to pay up.

(That's what made me pay Google directly for the first time; extra storage for backing up photos.)

Google's phones (ie: Pixels and their XL variants) get full size photo and video backups included. Even if you don't have a Google phone, the free-of-charge backup only compresses photos over 16MP which is still pretty adequate for most people taking snapshots on their cell phones.

For the hobbyist or pro photographer backing up their full frame RAWs, sure, you want a more professional (read: paid) backup solution but that doesn't seem unfair to me. For the 95% of users who want to free up space taken up by vacation snaps and selfies, compressing photos over 16MP is often acceptable when it doesn't cost extra.

The photos are neither low-quality nor highly-compressed. I personally can't tell much of a difference 95% of the time and I'm a technical person. Here´s a comparison and a closeup, left image is the original, right one compressed with the Unlimited Storage setting:

full picture https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-01-01-1451631423-7665...

cropped detail https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-01-01-1451631515-2060...

Also, I believe Photos storage is unlimited even in Original quality if you own a Pixel phone, which may or not may be the case, but still.

The first picture has a very noticeable color shift (left is warmer, right is colder) - I am looking at it on a professional 10-bit 4k display which might be a factor, but I would run away from any storage that would cause that :-O Detail looks horrible on both, difficult to say which one is worse and how well do they match. On better photos that would probably be noticeable (my color vision is 100%).

I'm looking at it on a Dell U2715H, which is not a professional display, just a consumer one with above-average color quality and good calibration out-of-the-box, and I could spot the temperature shift immediately as well. Also, as you say, the details are bad.

I'm wary of services that auto-compress images, because a) I want my bits to stay the way they were originally captured, and b) every now and then I have to print a photo I make, and then suddenly all those details matter for the print quality.

It's a non-issue with a Google phone (a Pixel) in any case, as you have unlimited storage of photos in their original quality.

I personally can't tell the difference between the compressed versions and the originals (I don't take RAW photos). Here's an analysis of this: https://www.phonearena.com/news/Google-Photos-High-quality-v...

Nice analysis and I admit I'm surprised by how good their compression is. I was expecting much worse, and that's why I immediately started paying for storage, so that I don't have to worry about bad-quality photos later.

You can use unlim google photo backup on your iPhone as well.

Yea I kind of agree. I think most people, myself included, just don't really recognize minor performance differences, only relatively large ones. And I've always thought that these things improve so fast year-to-year, that it's kind of pointless to try and keep up. So, i shoot for a phone I like that performs pretty well, and just leave it at that (hello iPhone SE).

Apple does the same thing when they introduce new models. They pretend it runs x times faster than the previous flagship one. Same thing really.

They actually do run x times faster. They almost always have faster chips than the previous model. So they’ll pretty much always be faster. Who would release a slower phone as a new model? It doesn’t make any sense.

The point is that it may be such a minor difference that most consumers would never know the difference, not that it's worse.

Maybe if it tripled battery or something

Can I have this please. It can be thicker and heavier if that helps.

Yes please.

point is its not as fast as they claim it to be, because they take edge cases as always. I never said the new models are slower, no need to strawman my argument.

  People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware

I never get tired of this quote, and I will always point to it when people compare iOS/Android or macOS/Windows.

By your logic then Apple does not seem to take much about macOS and their latest pro offering then.

Many would argue that the logic is correct then.

> Comparing processors, ram, test scores means nothing compared to the actual experience

But Apple brags endlessly about their A11 "Bionic" chip and similar[0].

Arguing that Apple values experience over specs might have been a valid argument back with Steven Jobs, but Apple's presentations spend significant amounts of time talking about hardware specs these days.

I don't specifically mind that Apple does, but people need to stop pretending like Apple hasn't changed as a company with the shift in leadership.

[0] https://youtu.be/M4Pc1eQtWmQ?t=11m43s

Apple has always tailored their marketing to whatever their advantage is at that moment. If they have the best tech, they'll talk about speeds and feeds - if they don't, they'll talk about the experience or some other aspect. This is almost as reliable a tick-tock cycle as Intel's.

> Apple has always tailored their marketing to whatever their advantage is at that moment.

What's Option B? Advertise based on what they're not good at? "Snapple: Made from the Fifth or Sixth Best Stuff on Earth"

I'm just noting for GP that this has been SOP at Apple for a long time, not something new.

Of course it is. It’s the only useful thing you can do when advertising.

The A11 chip's CV module is the reason FaceID works as well as it does. And FaceID was their one of their major marketing points of the X and likely the phones being announced this month.

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