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Comment by _hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

Uhh, is it just me or did Google just take Apple's tablet and phone lines and do straight up copies of both? Because the Pixel 3 looks awfully like the iPhone X and the Pixel Slate has some similarity to the iPad Pro. I know companies copy each other, but this is quite literally notch for notch.

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I think people give Apple way more credit for their "innovations" than it should be due. For example, the people in this thread who think that Apple came out with the notch first.

Even if they didn't do it first, at least Apple has a plausible claim for why they did it -- the iPhone screen goes all the way to the bottom edge. The Pixel doesn't have that restriction, so why do a notch?

The thing that really irritates me about a notch on the Pixel (or any other Android phone) is that it's much more intrusive. Not just taller (though it is), but on iOS notifications are not handled the same way, so you're not really giving much of anything up with the notch. But on Android, notifications frequently take the entire top of the screen -- right where that notch is. Seems unnecessarily clumsy.

Regardless of what happens on the bottom, without the top notch the total screen area is smaller; with it it is larger. Isn't having more total screen area a plausible enough reason to do it?

> (or any other Android phone)

The first phone to have the notch was the Essential Phone, and the notch is much smaller than the iPhone (https://www.essential.com/#introduction). The pixel does have a dual camera that the iPhone does not have. And it's deeper, where the iPhone is wider. They seem to almost have the same footprint, but I could be wrong.

Apple has definitely copied features, and even a few design elements (see Palm Pre UI), but they always tweak them to make the product appear unique and "innovative". With the Pixel 3 and the Pixel Slate, even the most oblivious customer can see the resemblance with Apple's products. That, combined with the lower price points, kind of gives the impression that Google's trying to make cheaper versions of Apple's products. I know, not logical, but people don't always like cheaper.

Except, is the Pixel actually cheaper? Maybe this year with the bump up in prices for the iPhone, but as I recall the Pixel 2 was actually more expensive than the iPhone (in particular, priced the same but with less flash storage).

They started pretty similar, and have traded in expensiveness depending on the year and which size phone you're comparing. These are all base storage size prices in USD, ordered from cheapest to most expensive.

2016: Pixel -> $649; iPhone 7 -> $649; iPhone 7 Plus -> $749; Pixel XL -> $769

2017: Pixel 2 -> $649; iPhone 8 -> $649; iPhone 8 Plus -> $749; Pixel 2 XL -> $849; iPhone X -> $999

2018: iPhone XR -> $749; Pixel 3 -> $799; Pixel 3 XL -> $899; iPhone X -> $999; iPhone X Max -> $1099

There's not much in it really. Looking at UK prices, the Pixel 3 is £11 cheaper than the iPhone XR which is basically nothing when you're talking about a £700+ phone. The XL is a hundred quid or so cheaper than the iPhone XS which is a bit more meaningful.

To balance that, they only promise three years of software updates. It'd be treated as an absolute scandal if an iPhone was dropped that quickly.

Right so Google was actually aping someone else and hadn't even noticed that iphones have that notch.

Be real here, it isn't a big deal, but they clearly set out to mimic the Apple counterparts.

> the people in this thread who think that Apple came out with the notch first.

I thought they did too. Which phone/manufacturer did it before?

I think Essential did it like a year before Apple.

The Essential phone came out on August 25, 2017, and the iPhone X came out in November of the same year...

Correct. And since the time between the two phones was so short, there's no way Apple copied Essential here. It's just a case of two companies trying to tackle a new problem and coming up with similar solutions. But it would be fair to say that Apple popularized the notch.

> And since the time between the two phones was so short, there's no way Apple copied Essential here.

It's quite possible, since such copying does not have to start at the public introduction.

It may be coincidence, but you absolutely can't rule out copying just because the time from one public release to the other is too short for copying which started with the earlier release.

I guess it's possible if Apple got a hold of pre-release materials on the Essential phone. But a company the size of Apple gets the design ready months, possibly a year, before release. The Essential Phone was officially shown off May 30, 2017 [0], so that's the earliest Apple could have seen the design without getting pre-release renders. The iPhone X was announced on September 12 of that same year. That means that, if Apple were to copy them, they would have to completely pivot their design, change manufacturing plans, get new displays, etc, in just over 3 months. I find that unbelievable personally, especially considering things Apple did to make the display work even better, like eliminating the chin by folding the OLED panel in on itself [1]. I don't believe it's possible that they got that working in 3 months. And I guess it is possible Apple obtained pre-release renders of the Essential, but even if they got it, say, 2 months before Essential's announcement, 5 months is still not a lot of time to pivot a phone's design.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/30/15711170/essential-phone-...

[1] https://www.redmondpie.com/why-most-2018-smartphones-have-ch...

Yes, but Essential was teasing the notch for months at least.

I am 100% sure that the two things are completely independent. Apple's R&D is probably between 12-18 months out on new products.

They copied everything except the distribution network.

You can buy Apple products in the EU, the pixel slate? Not so much.

Here in NZ, if it isn't a Chromecast, it isn't on their store.

Everyone is doing the notch now, there were notch androids out there before the pixel 3 photos leaked.

Essential showed their notch what, one and a half years ago?

Apple is good at making features user-friendly, but rarely are breaking completely new ground. Perhaps it's easy to miss that if one doesn't follow tech that closely.

Apple's notch came out like 3 months after the Essential phone had one? I don't think it's possible for them to have seen the notch, and then reengineered the phone in that short of a time.

Yes, they were likely developed simultaneously. Point stays though, that was the trend phones were going to adapt and Apple was just one of the devices doing the same thing.

"Nokia had that ten years ago" is a common quip during all Apple launch events for a reason. And there's also a good reason why Nokia's phones didn't survive the market pressure despite that.

That's one of the reasons why Apple is still one of the most innovative in the phone market. Every time they add something to the iPhone, it eventually becomes the new standard in the industry.

I notice this more and more with software as well.

The other day I had to double check what map app I was using because the latest google maps completely rips off the nicer elements of apple maps.

More and more I develop a dislike for google that harkens back to the dislike people had for microsoft a while back.

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