Hacker News Reader

Comment by commoner | Hacker News Reader

> It is a crazy strategy of Apple to put the “brains” of its most expensive phone, the iPhone 13 Pro Max (+USD 1.099), in its entry model, low cost (USD 429). No other company does this.

The $449 Pixel 6a, which was released today, has the same Tensor chip as the $899 Pixel 6 Pro. This is advertised prominently on the product page:

https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_6a

View on HN

Though if the iPhone SE 2016 and the Pixel 3a are anything to go by, the new iPhone SE will probably have software support for 2x or longer than the Pixel 6a.

Even on the latest model Pixel phones Google still refuses to commit to more than 3 years of Android updates... They have at least lengthened the security update timeline to a whole 5 years.

I bought an iphone around the launch of the Pixel 4, which is now nearing it's end of support. Meanwhile Apple has provided the latest updates to devices that launched 7 years ago.

I could be wrong but I think qualcomm is the biggest obstacle for google in supporting older phone versions.

they won't ship updated drivers for new android versions for old phones.

And they will charge OEMs quite a big sum for every new Android versions on an old phone.

But given that Google now uses their own SOCs, rather than Qualcomms, they can provide updates for their phones for a lot longer.

The difference being that since every app dev expects iphones to be on the latest ios version, as soon as your phone goes out of support it will become obsolete quickly. Android has a larger install base of users on old os versions, so you can expect support even if you aren't on the latest one. New ios versions usually have the disadvantage of being poorly optimized for older models, and I personally have never cared much about the new features. So staying on the old os version indefinitely might be a better option as long as apps still support it.

The pixel 3a is still supported by AOSP distros like CalyxOS:

https://calyxos.org/install/

While I appreciate that some phones can be supported by the community, I think it's unreasonable to expect that the community continue support in place of OEMs. Especially ones like Google, that can set the tenor for the entire Android ecosystem.

No SafetyNet, so useless for some of us.

As of May 2022, SafetyNet basic attestation works on CalyxOS by default for the Pixel 3a and later:

https://calyxos.org/news/2022/05/07/location-safetynet-fix/

I don't think it's crazy though; I think it reflects that in software / OS development you save a lot of dev & qa time by minimising your hardware fragmentation.

Also that if you have special sauce (eg a tensor chip), you want to give it to all users if you can, or developers won't bother optimising for it.

It's also true for hardware. I think this is primary reason rather than software because bleeding edge SoC R&D fixed cost should be higher.

But that chip is not as good as the apple one. In fact not even close.

The battery life on that one is atrocious compared to the apple one.

On the other hand it can do live voice translation without an internet connection. Can Apple do that?

Yep.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/translate-text-voice-...

I feel Apple actually does more on device ML stuff than Google devices.

True, although that Tensor chip is around 24 months behind Apple's chips, and the gap is getting wider and wider.

yeah, but they screwed up everything else about the 6a. it's clear it was just a dump on the bang per value sector. I would have jumped to a 6a if they designed it for the sector but they clearly did not.

Yeah but it's Google, it's probably Naive, but I just hate the company and the business model.

That also makes them wrong, which is still true regardless about how you feel about the companies. Besides, it's a ridiculous statement anyways: for example, Nothing's first phone is coming out soon, which means their most expensive and cheapest phones will be running the same chip. Failing that, there's dozens of Android companies that made lines of handsets using the exact same SOC (like ZTE) because it's cheap to develop. Regardless of the companies involved, saying they're the "only one that does this" is like saying your local diner is the only one making you a real cheesesteak.

Did you mean to respond to my comment? Beause if so, I have no idea how to interpret it or what your point is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com