Google Pixel 9 Pro
store.google.com
store.google.com
Google has been tastefully integrating AI into phones for a while now using opt-ins. The now-many-years old phone screening feature ensures the fear of spam won't lead to unintentionally missing calls from the doctor/dentist who call from unknown numbers. Screening suspicious calls instead of declining them is a massive quality of life improvement, and having an AI assistant answer your phone and do a live transcription is straight from the Jetsons.
And there is a feature now to show you how busy a customer service line is at a particular time, and to give you a text transcript with clickable buttons for the phone tree.
If an annoying phone tree is going to take 3 minutes to navigate by listening to the prompts, then it will also take 3 minutes to navigate by letting the AI listen and write little buttons for me.
I didn't really save any time.
If on the other hand it could say "other users have seen this phone tree before, so here is the whole searchable tree with no waiting", that would be a noteworthy feature.
There are probably only ~10,000 phone trees that cover the vast majority of calls in the USA.
If a phone tree is seen by many users and is identical, there is probably no privacy reason not to publish it. Even moreso if the total number of digits typed in quick succession is < 4 (ie. user hasn't entered some password to get in). A human operator could be the final check.
Also, it often prevents me from having to listen to the tree twice, if I am looking for a better option and then decide a previous one was actually the better fit.
If it's a common number for a support line it actually shows you the options before they're stated by the robot. Say for example if I call bank of america's support line, it will show the not-yet-said options as greyed out, but selectable. If the call robot accepts early inputs you can actually navigate a phone menu quite rapidly. Pair that with the estimated wait times or "hold for me" you can save yourself the headache of "actively" waiting.
i Googled that term
looks like it's another name for an IVR menu.
i googled this; looks like it means "Interactive Voice Response" menu, describing automated phone systems where the user navigates a series of options using either their phone buttons or their voice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_voice_response
That's what they are called in India, at least, where I live, and where I am from, although the term would not have originated in India, since it would have been brought in by mobile phone companies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_voice_response
Although I have a good amount of exposure to, and familiarity, with US terms and slang, due to older relatives up to grandfather level having visited the US for more than short periods, having visited the US myself, and having worked in US-based companies (but in India), the exposure is not complete, that's why I was not familiar with the term phone tree.
That should not be surprising to anyone.
>I'm on the east coast in case its a regional thing,
everyone does not live in the US.
see another reply by me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41251430
Probably because it's just bolting more shit on the ends of a shitty, outdated relic of a system. Like, we have two different computers, one of which is playing back a pre-recorded voice, to a computer which is transcribing that voice into text and buttons, so it can play a generated voice back to the other computer, which will then interpret that voice into text, then perform an action based on that text. The action probably being repeating that process a few more times.
This is remarkably bad. I'm remembering the last time I had to deal with Apple Support. I didn't sit on hold for hours, I told them I needed a call, told them what the issue was, gave a brief summary, and then their support person called me, I was immediately on the phone with a human, she sorted out my problem, and the entire thing took probably 10 minutes tops, including filling out the form.
It feels like these legitimate challenges to businesses to manage their customer service lines, support lines, etc. have actual solutions that:
a) don't require two different damn computers talking over a shitty low-baud connection to one another, and
b) result in a better experience for all parties involved
If they'd just be willing to spend a little goddamn money, like they actually care to provide good service, rather than just paying lip service to it while offering the same garbage system they've offered since the fucking 1970's.
Wrong. These are not challenges. The customer service lines work exactly as designed: as cheap as possible to operate, as effective as possible in preventing majority of the callers from engaging support staff and starting any kind of support process. And the magic, most people who try and fail to get support believe it's their own fault - they're not being patient enough, or persistent enough, or maybe the problem isn't that big a deal, etc.
The companies don't want you to work around the phone tree and hold time. And once most people have tools that are able to, the companies will adjust their support channels to compensate.
Yu are mistaken in assuming businesses want better experiences for everyone, including workflows that may lose them revenue (like cancelations).
The friction is intentional and part of a wider dark pattern strategy employed for "retention" - even Apple does this when one tries to get them to stop an unexpected recurring Apple Music subscription that only shows on ones credit card and nowhere else (apple.com or the Music app). The support number is not provided on amy of the support pages, and ine has to get their bank to stop the outgoing payments. Guess how I know this...
In light of this, I'll gladly take any client-side agent assistance I can get to make to reduce my cognitive burden; the "hold for me" emulates the support agent calling you as you described. , and the experience is more important than implementation details.
I could not understand all the Adobe hate before, but they made a neutral person negative with that experience.
Tastefully integrating AI involves not uploading all of my photos and speech and text to the cloud and doing who knows what with that personal data.
The majority of this data should never leave my device and that's why on-device LLMs/AI are much more tasteful.
Heck, Google is removing Location History storage from their side and making it device side only. Users in the past few weeks are getting notified to trigger the migration to device storage or all data is deleted.
And with every new phone I always power on it without an account, update, reset and only then add an account; I had my share of 'I did disable that thing'
EDIT:
[0] and they claimed what there is not enough storage for it. On a fresh phone with 128Gb on board. For the small array of ~30-100 letters. Fuckers.
I declined the first request that interrupted my task, then tried to select a photo to continue my work, but the "Yes" button for uploading recent photos appeared over top of the photo just as I clicked. Google Photos immediately began uploading my photos without my true consent.
I hate google so much for doing this.
> per-app volume mixer
I have the Pixel "a" devices, and hope they can stay at that price point.
Adding per app volume control is IMHO a really bad UX. It means there's a master volume and then per app volume is like a coefficient the app volume is multiplied by.
My car has its own volume control separate from the phone bluetooth volume and I hate the experience of having two volume knobs interacting with each other when all I want to do is to increase or decrese volume
I really prefer it for having different things set at different volumes. Like presets.
I'm surprised Pixels don't; small things like this area each QoL wins.
Samsung/OneUI has a good few addons like this. Ability for multiple apps to play sound is good too (same addon) and the ability to output different apps from different sound devices at the same time (built in)
But on the positive side i like the new 9 pro because of its smaller size + hardware improvements (better ultrawide, ultra sonic finger print sensor, 16GB RAM...)
In the world of laptops, we have a wonderful situation. I can select the hardware that I like, then wipe the whole disk and install the software I like. Which in my case is a Linux distribution and then exactly the applications I prefer.
I wish the world of phones was like that.
I mostly live in the Plasma desktop, Konsole and Firefox. And life is good.
What are you missing?
Certainly they're much more complex. More susceptible to malware, too.
But they're also much more powerful. I can get tasks done 10x as fast. They're much more open, too. They have well-defined interfaces for most things, which means I can automate tasks. Can't do that on a phone.
From a security and freedom perspective, I actually like the restrictions of the Android platform if implemented as Google intended, which means allowing you to roll your own ROM and relock the bootloader with your own keys. Android itself has among the strongest security models for a consumer platform, again if implemented as Google intended (which is why GrapheneOS only supports Pixels). You're actually not supposed to root your phone because that opens up a large attack surface.
It's inconvenient for customization, sure, but you can still wipe the phone and roll your own system. It's a matter of the workflow to do it.
Why do you don't like it?
And there are other use cases like running your own LLM offline or using it with home assistant.
… they would enable swapping button order.
… they would remove gestures.
… they would improve OS stability.
… they would add a hardware do not disturb switch.
… they would add hardware camera and microphone switches.
… they would add a headphone jack.
Their phones are still preferable to iPhones, because at least with a Pixel one owns one’s own phone.
I will likely pay a premium for the Pixel convenience when it's time to get a new phone. Will run this 6a until support ends.
https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_9
https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_9_pro_fold
Usually the Pro is bigger than the non-Pro but this time they're exactly the same size, and they've added a bigger Pro XL variant.
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Google-Pixel-9,Google...
The Pro and Pro XL appear to have identical specs aside from the screen size/resolution and a slightly bigger battery in the XL.
How harvest sensors, cams, thingamathings and have a new cadre of people who can build plans to take sensor THING from PHONEA and CAMERA from PHONEB and etc... and build a thing where these already known devices can be harvested and incorporated into projects, products, etc... and not landfil.?
I've moved to FairPhone anyway because there are concerns more important than compactness.
6.3” is still huge. 5.8” is workable. And it’s not like there’s no precedent, the Zenfone 10 is also 5.8” and is adored for it.
Then they released the enormous 6.8" Zenfone 11 Ultra this March, with still no indication that there will be a smaller variant. The small Zenfone 10 might not have sold well enough to justify doing another one.
What's extra annoying is I never felt the need to use a case when phones were smaller, but one-handed corner reaching upsets the balance of the phone in my hand now to the point where it feels like a necessity—making the phone even bigger and bulkier.
Nexus 7: 198.5 x 120 x 10.5 mm, 340 g
Pixel 9 XL: 162.8 x 76.6 x 8.5 mm, 221 g
Not for lack of trying, since both Apple and Samsung tried in 2019 with their mini iPhones and Galaxy S10e respectively which were both smaller versions of their normal phones. Neither line continues today.
Apple has some precedent with their premium iPad Mini which costs more than their normal iPad and gets irregularly updated, but it might be hard to market an "iPhone Mini SE Pro".
It'll never happen but I'll keep dreaming.
It's actually the opposite - big screens inevitably mean "expensive", and phones are status symbols. Unfortunately, vain people outnumber practical people by various orders of magnitude, so the market goes where the money is.
The only way to correct this trend would be to coopt an inordinate amount of celebrities, and make them advocate for smaller phones. That's the only group that vain people will blindly follow.
I suspect in practice we're stuck with big phones until the phone concept actually manages to disappear entirely (turning into wearables or lenses).
My wife inherits my phones, and when I first switched to the iPhone "Max" size, she thought they were ridiculously, impractically large and was reluctant to switch. But after she had used it for a month or two, she couldn't go back, having that big screen is just too nice. For watching video, looking at photos, reading text, etc.
If they hadn't disabled the ability to root the device, I would've bought one.
Everyone keeps talking about wanting small phones, but when the time to pull the wallet comes, there's always an excuse.
Adoration alone does not pay salaries. At the end of the day the manufacturers are businesses looking to generate as large a profit as possible (some even want to build the best tech possible while doing so), so as much as any of us may adore one feature or another, the only thing that really matters is sales volume and the resulting profits.
When I close mine, my dog immediately jumps up because he knows I'm done sitting down messing with my phone.
On top of that you've got the same earbuds form factor, smart watches, etc.
Unfortunately due to their market dominance and muddling of (hardware, OS, software distribution, and platform ecosystem), it's almost impossible to disentangle.
It'd be amazing if the DOJ made these companies only offer one slice of those four things. There would be so much competition and a wild variety of new things being tried.
Whilst true, it's a bit misleading in the sense it's only best selling by a very slim margin. It's iphone and then everything else (by a huge margin).
https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/us-smartphone-market-share
The two big phone giants in the US are Apple and Samsung. Of which Samsung isn't muddling the hardware, OS, software distribution. Maybe platform ecosystem, but generally a Samsung smartwatch or headphones will work with any other Android phone just fine.
I got the original Airpods about a year before I switched to iPhone, and they worked pretty much flawlessly with my Galaxy S8+. I assume they missed Siri-specific features (which I don’t care for even after switching to iPhone), and the newer ones probably miss some other more advanced/iOS-specific features (like Apple’s implementation of spatial audio and speech awareness). But all the actual main functionality was there, and I never felt like I was missing out by not using Airpods with iOS.
Apple Watch is a different story though, but it kinda makes sense, given how tightly integrated into iOS it is with quite a bit of private health data (that I would never trust Android with managing properly).
https://blogs.gnome.org/jdressler/2024/06/26/do-a-firmware-u...
To change settings and to update the firmware. There are no standards for these operations, so you'd have to resort to an an OEM specific app (stand-alone, or integrated into a the OS, like Mac OS) to manage these.
Only the couple of first generations of Beats products after the acquisition have used the Apple-branded SoCs.
The current line-up uses unnamed Beats-specific chip that has ~most (but not all!) of the same features as the W1/W2 on iOS.
From the current line-up, only Powerbeats Pro (2019) and Beats Flex (2020) use Apple branded-chip, and I'm under the impression that the newer models have more Android-specific niceties.
I would expect next refreshes of those Beats model to lose H1/W1/W2.
- an SoC made on TSMC's latest process node, with a humongous die, and all the associated power/performance benefits
- because of how many phones apple can sell, they can divide the cost of R&D over more units, and can design things like their own CPU cores
- "Ask app not to track" that works, because of the app store monopoly
- I don't have to use 12342342345234 payment apps for each bank's credit card, Apple Wallet works with all of them (the EU wants to ruin this for Europeans)
As a consumer, I'm a huge fan of US antitrust law, where the test is harm to consumers
All of the antitrust shit Apple does largely benefits its consumers _for the moment_. It's worth acknowledging that, but it's also worth acknowledging that this is necessarily a temporary state, and under different leadership, Apple will make different decisions.
EU-style antitrust regulation foists shitty products on customers for the sake of ~~extracting their pound of flesh from US big tech~~ allowing businesses to compete
Sorry, are you an EU citizen?
Because I am, and despite the fact that I work in tech, am absurdly happy that they are actually doing antitrust (even if I dislike some of the specific actions).
Big, monopolistic companies are problematic (from my perspective) and I welcome all and any actions that make markets more competitive, both as a citizen and as a capitalist.
As if you're benefitting from that with apples margins.
For now. If Apple suddenly take a 20bn hit to services revenue, then I'd expect them to dial their advertising way, way up.
So yeah, FB won't track you but Apple definitely will.
You'd be right that there'd be a lot of new ideas floated and a lot of competition, but it's hard to see how that plays out in a way that benefits the consumer and make smart phones a better value. I'm no fan of the duopoly, but it's hard to imagine how forcing them to break their services apart winds up anywhere other than the services becoming noticeably shittier and only like 5% of people bothering to change from the defaults anyway. I also think that the innovation around smartphones has all but died, and if there was some killer innovation to be had, it would probably be worth much more in this market than an open market. The market is harder to make distinctions in than even electric cars are, and a distinguishing innovation would surely trigger a bidding war between Apple and Google at this point.
It's a rough case of what I want philosophically (break them up with great prejudice) and what I think is best for the user experience itself being directly at odds.
Do their moderation/review processes meaningfully improve the situation for users?
Both app stores are replete with scam/spam/spy/malware apps. I'm not convinced that the app stores are able to materially affect the quality of apps that go through.
I think it is more complicated, and nuanced, than this.
I have a theory that the world can only support a maximum of 2 consumer computing platforms at a time, due to the cost of writing and porting software. Therefore causing a natural tendency towards either a monopoly (seen in the 90s and early 2000s) or a duopoly (the current smartphone era).
The fact is writing software is expensive. Developing cross platform frameworks is also incredibly difficult and in the case of Mobile, has taken a massive 3rd party entity (Facebook) the better part of a decade (React Native) to get even close to "working well" (with other solutions also being decade long projects). One can argue that during the first decade of Android vs iPhone, (2007 to 2017) that the cross platform solutions were all pretty terrible, thus the massive shakeup that React Native (for all its warts) caused.
Then there is the fact that developing a consumer OS is hard and expensive. Very few companies have the resources needed to make a consumer OS. Not just writing software, but localization, documentation, SDKs, UX work, security, update infrastructure, and so on and so forth.
Honestly I'd say today's current duopoly may even be a bad thing for small software companies, basically doubling development costs. Compare this to the 90s when releasing consumer software just meant compiling for a Microsoft OS and never worrying again because Microsoft handled forwards compatibility for you!
Contrast that to now days where you see applications to control smart appliances apps being discontinued left and right because companies cannot justify keeping 2 dev teams staffed so they can patch an app once every couple years when app store guidelines force changes.
HTML
If we adopted standards instead of making walled gardens, things would work. If the onus was on Apple and Google to make their platforms standards compliant, and that the egg would be on their face if they didn't, they would be the ones doing the rigorous testing, bug fixing, and optimization.
If Microsoft can make their platform work for 20+ years of software, Apple and Google can be on the hook for HTML, WASM, and a standardized UI and hardware abstraction layer.
There's frankly not much of a technical reason why Android phones and iPhones can't run each others' apps except for the malignant IP enforcement of both Google and Apple.
This is a business problem - take away Apple's 30% cut and see how quickly they change their tune on "security."
There's also no good reason why you should have to distribute your software on iOS through a monopoly app store or why Android should hide the ability to install software from non-Google app stores or the internet behind a scary "security" warning. That "security" warning, while better than what Apple does, is itself a monopolistic practice that should be illegal.
Honestly, even outside of gaming, we could probably go back to web apps again, now that hardware is better. Zuck's famous quote about the company's biggest mistake being going with HTML5 instead of native for mobile is 12 years old.
Any market that has an extremely high barrier of entry will and ends up only supporting one or two company. ASML and TSMC being a prime example.
It is how many platform ecosystems a market can support problem. Creating a platform ecosystem creates higher costs and lowers profits for everyone building in the market (the market in this case being "all smartphone users").
1 more platform is going to be at least a 30% increase in dev costs (if not a full on 50% increase, and for large complex apps it can be even worse), and now if that platform gains market share, that is less sales on the other 2 platforms for anyone who doesn't support all three.
So to make the same money as before, a company now needs to spend 30%-50% more on development expenses.
There is a natural limit to the number of platforms that can exist when the cost of building across multiple platforms is non-trivial.
This by the way was why even the tiny European market was able to support so many different 8-bit platforms back in the day. Porting costs were minimal, one or two people for a couple of months, and developer costs were much lower back then. Jump to the 90s and now suddenly you have just 2 consoles, and with Xbox losing market share year over year, we may soon be down to just one in another decade or so.
You should go watch the Flossy Carter videos he's done on the Pixel watch. Dude has huge arms and the Pixel watch looks like a Barbie watch on his wrist. He normally rocks the Apple Watch Ultra or the Samsung Galaxy watch which look more normal on his wrist.
I think Google has a ways to go before they're competing with Apple and Samsung in the watch department.
Seems like a decent choice, given that the average person has average arms by definition.
Mostly just curious as to why there are ~0 positive comments here. I suspect could be:
1) anti-google HN bias - perhaps deserved? 2) it's simply more tempting/satisfying/rewarding to complain about rather than to praise big companies 3) any other ideas?
I'm guessing the 95% negative comment proportion isn't representative though so I was curious if anyone had any explanations for the HN skew
First sentence of the current top voted comment. What's constructive about that?
You could argue the rest of the comment makes up for it, but I don't agree. It reads like a standard negative rant against change to me. I don't see much constructive here.
> I just hate modern phones, all of them. I want an adequate one-hand screen size (~6"), a headphone jack, and an even camera bump (just so it lies flat on the table). I love the pixel 8a, the size, curvature and camera bump seems ideal. Ofc they removed a freaking 3.5mm jack, but I can make a compromise here and buy 100 type-c to 3.5mm adapters, but I'm super disappointed with the new 9x series, they are now even more blocky and square-ish which i really don't like, plus no "a" model which is usually looking much better for me than the main one.
> Does anyone know the phone which is small, has a headphone jack, even camera bump and is still buyable to this day?
Essentially get the same product with improvements that are only another iteration. The Pixel 9 might be a good device comparatively, but I would be more surprised if people were too hyped about it. The larger context of hype and Google is relevant here as well.
First question I had when hearing about a Google phone is, if they try to make it harder to block advertising. I don't believe the thought is too unreasonable, is it?
Would you be surprised if a post about the new iPhone would look like this looks here?
Call it disappointment I guess. No phone from any manufacturer has felt totally “right” to me in years in the way that phones from a decade ago did. It makes sense from a business perspective since smartphones were effectively complete way back then. The business needs a way to justify selling me a new one so it's been a long slow downhill of shit-I-don't-care-about ever since. I especially miss the era of HTC flagships. HIGH TECH COMPUTER!
The software is disappointing too even though today was not really a software announcement. To me it feels like since they're both from Google the Pixel hardware direction also signals what Android itself will prioritize. I used to be a huge Android-the-OS fan but found that my enjoyment of the platform peaked at 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Version 4.3 was the first version to remove something I loved (the “Phablet” UI layouts that were great on my Galaxy NoteⅡ). Announcements like today's push that point of Peak Android even further away in my mind, and I'm sad about it.
* excellent battery life - can't complain about it. I'm not streaming YouTube on 5G on the phone, and I've found out that it can last about two days per charge with light use - messenger apps, phone calls, emails. YMMV of course. * a great OLED screen - it's bright & crisp. I haven't seen a better screen in person yet. * a great camera - it's a very good camera IMO. Takes good shots of people and nature and shoots impressive videos of music shows in dark basements. * durable/rugged - not sure about 15, but my SE2 was abused and dropped. The metal sides were dinged, the screen had a few nasty scratches, but the phone held up together very well. * fast enough to feel snappy and not laggy - iOS is much nicer and snappier that any of the Android phones (HTC Desire S, Galaxy Note II, Xperia Z3, Xiaomi Mi6) I've had. * don't want to buy a brand-new $1000 phone every year or two - I think iPhones do last a few years, given the fact that my wife uses 13 and has zero desire (or reasons, really) to upgrade.
The only requirement the iPhone doesn't fit is the storage - Apple charges an absurd price for storage upgrades on all of their devices. I went with the cheapest option and pay for a large iCloud subscription, and it seems to work well - the photo and file sync between the phone, Macbook & even my Windows machine is seamless and quick.
It also feels nice to give my money to a company that doesn't shove ads down my throat. Apple are not saints, they collect a lot of data and telemetry that I'm not a fan of, but at least they are not a corporation that is built on advertising.
Not listed on software, is the ability to install whatever I want, not what Apple decides I'm allowed to install.
>It also feels nice to give my money to a company that doesn't shove ads down my throat.
That's funny, because you're giving money to a company that actively wants to prevent you from blocking ads on, for instance YouTube, by restricting your app and browser choices. Meanwhile I can install any app I want on my Android phone, including apps Google won't allow on the Play store such as SmartTube.
Not because it's particularly great (it's not), but because it's the only somewhat mainstream manufacturer to retain the headphone jack on their flagships as well as microSD card slot.
My only gripe is that it's mostly likely going to be a 180+ gram brick.
On paper, it’s largely the same as prior years for the SoC at least. I think the fold has the most obvious upgrade but nothing I’d consider really major. Other than that, it seems like mostly a camera bump year?
Not even the same. The 9P screen has lower PPI than my 7P, the camera has worse field of view and the battery has lower capacity.
Beyond that https://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Google-Pixel-9-vs-Pixel-8... shows:
- Much brighter screen - Next gen tensor chip - 50% ram upgrade - Better camera + battery - SOS functionality - Better ultrasonic fingerprint sensor
Holistically felt like meaningful improvements across the board to me, but I understand where you're coming from. I think maybe I have lower expectations for improvements year to year
I think perhaps one of the reasons for the negativity here is that the price is approaching flagship from other companies, but that Tensor G4 performs like chips from four years ago.
I think that overshadows a lot of the improvements. Perhaps if the whole package was significantly cheaper, the reception would be more balanced.
on an average, HN crowd is pretty clueless about
a) running a profitable business
b) foreseeing technological progress -- say two iterations down the line.
c) mass adoption of features
On an average, they tend to be elitist and don't represent the average brand popularity (e.g Google, Meta, Amazon). They only mildly upvote technology that helps their extremely privileged life.
E.g Current AI / Metaverse features helps plenty of poor, underprivileged people around the world, especially non-english speaking. But HN is the first to mock such features.
Because of this, they tend to be poor individual stock pickers. They are highly risk-averse and typically bring an SRE mentality to the world.
Your bias is heavily US centric. HN is not SF or SV. Plenty of users in Serbia, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, Vietnam, in war thorn Ukraine.
Arguably the average user is above average for their area's COL but to claim everyone is swimming in VC money is as dilusion as the people you want to portrait in your comment.
Some days HN feels like an echo chamber, where thinking outside the box is heavily downvoted.
No quicker way to signal how little you know about technology than to promote something niche that doesn't function well on most cheap electronics.
You are personally invested in those technologies being game changers. It couldn't be more clear given your aggressive, substance-less posts.
AI features in phones from Google are English only or maybe a few languages, even if you know English try to use "AI" to set a route using your voice when the locations are not english words. Sure, some free AIs on the web will help poor people but the best ones are under payment wall and not only that you need a specific way to pay, what I mean for example is Netflix, Steam do not need my credit card, they have alternative ways to pay like PayPal but Google, Microsoft, OpenAI they only allow credit card , so I conclude they do not care for my money they really need that credit card for some reason.
If we were getting opinions on the latest PhD paper on attention mechanisms than I’d trust someone with a PhD versus a random person, but for getting opinions on the new Google phone? Think for yourself.
Two things:
1. He's held / seen the phone live, I buy online so won't get a chance to before I decide.
2. He's also held hundreds (thousands?) of phones which I haven't.
While he does have preferences that differ from mine, his perspective is still interesting.
>what qualifies them?
19.3m subscribers on yt
Valuing someone by reach makes no sense at all. Most professors at MIT have no social media reach at all, I still value their opinions extremely highly.
In fact, valuing someone's opinion purely based on the size of their megaphone is partly why we're the world is in such a bad state politically (and in other ways) these days. E.g. people listening to social media influencers opinions on vaccines.
The killer-app (that isn't porn) is going to be asking your phone to order food and it guesses correctly what you want while cross-checking availability, pricing, and discounts. Then a Waymo or Wing Drone delivers it.
The only thing I’d like is a better integration with ALL actions possible on my phone.
If this were a "killer-app", then Amazon would still be selling those quick-buy Amazon Dash[1] buttons, and Alexa would be making a profit[2]
[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47416440
[2]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/alexa-had-no-profit-...
AI has been totally useless to me in my life. Give me a headphone jack and better SMS spam filtering. No new phone has better features than my Pixel6a and it isn't even that great.
That was Assistant right up until they killed it for a new thing.
> The killer-app (that isn't porn) is going to be asking your phone to order food and it guesses correctly what you want while cross-checking availability, pricing, and discounts. Then a Waymo or Wing Drone delivers it.
This killer app of yours can be stealthily enshittified, you aren't privy to its decision-making process.
What you're actually going to get is a None pizza with left beef from a ghost kitchen at the least competitive price you've ever seen with the branding of a YouTuber.
„Top“ in the sense that a lot of people watch them. Please don’t take seriously what they say. Luise Rossman did an excellent video on marques apple propaganda.
It's not really Google specific either - if you look at any other topic, even Linux or OSS related, there's going to be bunch of highly upvoted people ranting and raving. That pushes out any kind of positive discussion and normal people leave.
I see a lot of resentment and projection in people’s comments.
And most of the time the ,comments are useless and don’t represent the general consumer/citizen opinion.
This is specially true for anonymous profiles
Mental health is notoriously declining and I myself feel the difference when there are days where I don’t touch social media.
I also found that some social media affect me more than others, namely X.
Before the acquisition I remember feeling like I was under an authoritarian regime censoring everything and that made me feel bitter.
After Elon there were short periods where there were no bots, and the algo was actually adapting to me, I didn’t feel bad using it.
But right now its so toxic and full of fear mongering posts, making it unbearable.
I hope society figures this out quickly because AI is only quickening the decline.
20 yrs ago, most of the Internet users were teenagers and very young adults.
Most of these people are in their late 30s to 40s now. Did new kids join too? Sure! But if you look at the birth rates of our societies, you'll notice that it's a bell curve. Consequently, the average age is going up.
Furthermore, there is a strong selection bias with this demographic: the happier they're, the less likely they're going to be on these platforms, because they'll prioritize family, hobbies or whatever else over ... Well... "shit posting with random strangers".
Ultimately you're left with a significant chunk of people that are often disgruntled, jaded or outright mentally unwell.
It takes curated communities in order to overcome. Some places do better than others. It's also all to easy for biases to become policy in some of these communities/sites which can wind up almost worse than the shit posting to begin with.
The only thing I like is the possible better camera sensors, but that won't make me shed thousands of dollars for it. If I have the choice I'd rather have a more compact model with the camera quality of the previous iteration which was already great.
I can understand it will sell because a lot of people have the feeling they live a crappy life and wants to cheat by taking crappy pictures and videos and have a some magic inventing a better imaginary life that they can share on instagram and tiktok but I am not one of them. If I take a picture, I want to get the moment, with all its imperfections including the sad face of a stranger or dog peeing leg up against a wall in the background.
And yes I understand I am not everyone, but I really don't care what everyone want because I am not the one trying to sell that phone.
Which phone are you using then? I presume your usage is totally non-representative of the average normal user, but curious nonetheless.
I do the usual stuff, navigation, whatsapp, music, video...except I tend to avoid installing apps when the corresponding website works well (but I still have lots of different apps) and the only social media I am connecting to is the fediverse through the browser.
I've tended to like the close to stock experience, but I do turn off all. the assistant features that I can.
The next killer-feature in the race to the bottom is probably software, not hardware, and is near realtime translation. Samsung is airing an advert for that right now, but it's not real time.
Better "AI" with a faster CPU and everyone has their own Babel fish.
I own a Pixel 8 Pro and it is without a doubt the worst phone I have owned in at least a decade. The amount of bugs for such an expensive product is mind boggling.
One of main features is the camera but I've found myself taking far fewer photos with the phone than I expected I would, mainly because the camera UX just kind of sucks in a 100 small to medium ways that add up to an unpleasant experience. Just for example: you need to reenable the manual focus slider after ever picture, focus peaking is flawed and impossible to disable, there's a very noticeable lag with the telephoto mode when adjusting the camera, setting are buried in several different menus, and more.
The only reason I would even consider another Google phone after this one is that the phone landscape has gotten pretty bad as a whole. Samsung phones have their own list of flaws and I won't buy a phone that Apple dictates what I can do with; and those are the alternatives for buying a nice phone that I'm aware of, but if anyone has other suggestions I'm all ears. I loved LG phones and wish those were still around.
I found this useful https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/
Using a Xiaomi now, but Android Auto doesn't work for me (other brands on the same car work fine)
It looks like it's coming "later this year". Lots of chatter about it, see a few details at https://www.androidauthority.com/pixel-9-satellite-sos-34676...
* apparently coming with android 15, but they are shipping android 14
* turning on satellite sos later, but this year
* us only
* free for 2 years on pixel 9 phone, but probably would cost more later?
If you go on a lot of backcountry trips, maybe you already have something like a Garmin device with paid in-reach service with texting and emergency service button - no voice support. I have this, it works well. You can do 2 way texting, also you can have your location uploaded as you travel if you wish.
Apple has also been adding new ground stations as part of their agreement with Globalstar, which has, among other things, added coverage to Hawaii. I'm pretty sure they have much larger plans for this than just emergency texting.
Personally, I'd stick with the better known option, and like another commenter said - the battery life on the Garmins are pretty amazing, and it doesn't weight much.
No subscription required either. You simply register the beacon with a government agency (in the US, its via the NOAA, and distress signals are handled by the coast guard or air force receivers)
If you use it a lot, you'll start to increase your fees, I'm on the next higher plan which I think is $35/m. I should revisit that, it's a lot over a year ;-)
They have the basic devices (connect with phone, or emergency button), I have the one with maps built in. That one is awesome, it has worldwide city and trail maps. Maps works without a subscription, but I do use it for trips where there is no phone service more to get text messages.
Whereas, in contrast, the Garmin inReach devices need "only" a clear sky view.
You are supposed to register it with the local government org. In the US, that is the NOAA. When the PLB activates, the receiver which is either the Coast Guard or Air Force will attempt to contact you before they send the distress call to whatever local S&R there is. Obviously if they can't reach you, they will send help anyway.
It wasn’t in the initial release. Needed a software update 2 months later or so.
You were only supposed to get 1 year (?) of service. But they extended that by a year.
Because of that everyone with a qualifying phone is still in the “free” stage so we still don’t know what it will cost. Or when that will start.
If ever.
I’ve never used it but I like that my iPhone has it. I would never carry a Garmin (city/suburb life, no point) but I know the satellite is there if needed.
I think Apple is expanding it to iMessage this year (text only) though for all we know that will cost extra.
“A man got lost in the woods and died because he didn’t pay Apple two dollars a month“ is probably not a headline they want to see.
It’s also possible they didn’t know how often it would end up getting used and so they said that is a hedge in case it ended up too expensive on their end. Now that they know it’s not they don’t really worry about it.
They could just leave it enabled for everyone, and then retroactively charge them for a (moderately hefty) 1 year subscription if they end up using it.
That's why in New Zealand, at least, there is no fee for a rescue callouts in general.
I suspect they wanted to gauge what the usage (and therefore cost to them) would be like before making any promises.
I would not be surprised if satellite messaging ends up costing after the first year, but that satellite SOS remains free forever. After all, who wants the reputation hit when someone ends up dying in the wilderness because they didn't keep up their satellite payments?
But I suspect their actual business model will be to charge for non-emergency messaging, which might just be able to subsidize the emergency use case.
Generally, SAR teams would rather the R continue to stand for Rescue rather than Recovery (of a body).
Outside of the US all bets are off. Plenty of rescue services that charge.
But “iPhone saves man’s life after he fell down a mountain” sounds a whole lot better than “worlds richest company charges man who nearly died $25 to save his life”.
Thanks.
While I never needed the satellite SOS it’s fun that there is a demo in settings that shows you how to find the satellite and everything just as if you used the feature for real.
https://www.businessinsider.com/stranded-man-alaska-rescued-...
I believe they currently only use Terrestar-1 and Terrestar-2, with Inmarsat to follow some time this year for almost global coverage.
Terrestar-1 covers the lower 48 US states with one spot beam, and Alaska and Hawaii with another one each, but I believe the latter two ones are relatively new, so maybe Google isn't using these yet?
I suspect this because I've used a Motorola Defy Satellite Link for the past year, which uses IoT-NTN just like the Pixel's baseband, and it's only been available in Europe and the lower 48 at launch (i.e. also with Hawaii and Alaska missing).
And this really does seem to be largely due to regulations (and probably also integration with local emergency services), as there is no geographic pattern to availability.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_Sout...
IIRC that's also available in some EU countries, the issue in this specific case isn't google but the fact that devices which could be construed to offer medical info tend to require certification varying by country
I have been using Pixel 7 for almost the past 2 years. But the amount of basic core issues are crazy. Recently,since the July update, every place where the phone cannot catch network signal, it shutdowns. And with the update, somehow i feel it cannot catch network signal as strongly. That is such a crazy thing. Last year, my friend got locked out of all his valuable pictures with Android 14 upgrade on Pixel 6.
My experience of Google is so bad with hardware that it has finally pushed me towards buying an iPhone for the very first time in my life after having been exclusive with Android OS for over 10 years.
While the phone app remains important for some, it’s no longer the primary means of communication for most folks, especially with the rise of messaging apps and social media.
As for customization, that's sort of Apple's main feature set: It will always work the same everywhere on every device.
I can't even remember the last time I used the actual voice calling function on my phone. It's probably been a couple of years now.
Your comment is one of few where people report unrelated problems with their Google Phone. Different versions, different problems, no problems, all kinds of things. Open talk.
You've however brought up an Apple device and the comments under your comment are all Apple customers telling you that you either don't use your device properly since using your phone as a phone is "no longer the primary means of communication" or that it might be your fault (perhaps you have too many contacts in your phone book).
So while problems with the Google device are something normal, problems with the Apple device seem to be something extraordinary.
The battery was quite bad from the very beginning, barely lasting a day of normal usage, but I thought "well, at least they seem to have taken lots of care to avoid battery aging - slower charging than other phones, intelligent charging speed, etc. - so it won't degrade much". Two years later it wasn't even making it to 6 PM, or 3-4 PM on heavy use days (such as trips). OTOH my previous phone (Huawei P30 Pro), with much faster charge and no "intelligent" anything, still has amazing battery after more than 5 years of use (now in my wife's hands).
That was my first and last Pixel. A pity because the software was amazing, but that's no use if you operate under constant battery anxiety and can't even use Google Maps and camera on a trip without spending hours charging at the hotel.
Google: takes deep breath AI AI AI AI AI
I could replace it with another mini but have been holding out hope for another updated version. I love the small form factor, even at the expense of battery life and camera quality. I just want a reasonable phone with solid hardware that fits in my pocket.
15 Pro has been dropped many more times, can’t be operated with one hand at all. It’s the first time I had to have a replacement screen actually- after owning iPhones for 15 years.
Anyway… I’m considering going back to the 5s. I would only miss wireless charging and apple wallet I think. (and apps are now made for the larger screen and will have elements that are inaccessible due to going passed the edges of the display).
Then there was a huge, neverending push to make phones as large as possible, or larger. Sometimes smaller phones have been offered as an unpopular option, but more often "enormous" is the minimum size.
And as long as that's been going on, people have been complaining that they want their phone to fit in their hand.
Stipulate that a majority seems to feel that there's no need for a phone to fit in your hand. Why are the manufacturers so insistent on not providing small phones? Shirts come in all different sizes. How much does it cost to design an additional size of phone?
(Related: ever since the switch to 16:9 laptop screens, everyone has been complaining to no avail about the inferior dimensions of the screen. Why are manufacturers still cramming them down our throats? This one isn't even a case where people prefer 16:9 to 16:10.)
The best form factor of any smartphone I've owned is the first one, the Nexus S: 63mm wide, 124mm tall, and the back popped off to make replacing the battery convenient.
Phones have gotten steadily worse, as far as usability goes, ever since. There's more computing power, but I have trouble believing that's what's driving the shape.
They don't sell.
Apple killed the iPhone mini due to low sales. Asus replaced the universally lauded Zenfone 10 with a very large Zenfone 11. Google increased the size of the Pixel 6 when compared to its predecessor. Sales also increased.
I wonder if to some extent they're not different enough. The iPhone mini has a 5.4" screen. Not so long ago we managed well enough with 4" iPhone screens. I wonder how a 4.5" version would sell - call it the iPhone Nano.
Unfortunately a lot of apps don't support those smaller screen sizes so well anymore. But people who want a small phone that's easy to carry around, who won't be using it for hours a day, don't always need many apps.
Somewhere there's gotta be numbers that show "there are people who buy minis, but they only buy a phone every few years, so let's make a mini every third model year" or something.
This isn't an answer, unless you believe it's impossible to make more than one size of phone at a time.
I specifically asked what might be pushing manufacturers toward such a viewpoint. How does the existence of an iPhone mini reduce total iPhone sales?
If you're an Apple user, would you switch to Android just to get a smaller phone? Or would you just bite the bullet and get the larger iPhone after the mini is discontinued? Apple knows that 99.99% of Apple users are in the second group.
I would never be an Apple user.
And that's relevant here, because this argument doesn't apply to Android users, and yet Android phone manufacturers are just as insistent on not making smaller phones.
> It costs a lot of money to make multiple versions of something, compared to having just one version.
Oh? Ballpark it for me.
> In 2011, Bennie Budler, product manager of IT products at Samsung South Africa, confirmed that monitors with a native resolution of 1920 × 1200 were not being manufactured anymore. "It is all about reducing manufacturing costs. The new 16:9 aspect ratio panels are more cost-effective to manufacture locally than the previous 16:10 panels".
> since a 16:9 is narrower than a 16:10 panel of the same length, more panels can be created per sheet of glass
This is why people complain. "We've decided to charge the same amount for a worse product" isn't a winning message.
It also does some weird editorializing:
> By July 2022, 16:9 resolutions are preferred by 77% of users (1920 × 1080 with 67%; 2560 × 1440 with 10%). [In the Steam Hardware Survey]
Steam's hardware survey, of course, doesn't even address the question of what users prefer.
Shipping with new battery for extra (...unsure if I'd trust that battery though).
That one I can still use for phonecalls and occasional practical things I need when away from desk and computer.
And the irony about decent hardware is that all have decent hardware from the past 10-15 years, only the software that is crap on garbage and can't use hardware that could have been excellent mainframes some decades ago in some secret nuclear research laboratory. Need a powerstation now to present and scroll bitmaps and some text.
I read that they need to use gigantic manly man hands for the gigantic phones, because otherwise people would realize that it's a "two-handed" phone for most of us mere mortals, that's impossible to use with one hand for anything but the most basic tasks.
And note that this was a serious criticism a few years ago where it was a complaint that all things are designed for 6' men by default. I don't know if that is still the general belief, but it got a ton of traction for at least a short while. I would be surprised if there aren't a fair number of folks that still think that.
How can that be true when there's only 2 phone OSes of note and one single company sells half the phones in the US? There's not enough diversity in the market to create the conditions for diverse marketing.
If anything it's a race to the middle. When there are 2 shops in town, they tend to become more similar not more diverse.
Marketing for phones is forcibly (over) diverse and carefully not balanced but constructed than for any other product category.
They do not market objectively to the customers. They market by emotion and political correctness.
Just try to find a straight, white male, dare I say, two white male friends in a Google ad.
They're catering to people liking big and shiny.
I will say that the folding screen seems like a gimmick on the "2.5 phones taped together" size. For compact flip phones it makes sense tho.
Tap enough sacrificial indulgences on a neutered iPad or Watch, and it will software-unlock obvious convergence functionality, whose artificial absence now proliferates physical devices and environmental expense.
I agree, we should only talk about individual anecdotes. After all, we are special little snowflakes, each and one of us.
Based on that, I would expect half the men to be able to use even the biggest non-fold phones one handed without any problem.
Looks like they've gotten the Pixel 9 a bit smaller than the 7 but still the same weight. It's still larger than the Pixel 5 too.
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Google-Pixel-9,Google...
The iPhone, to be fair, is closer to the Pixel 9 in size/weight than the Pixel 5 too.
Just set up a new Android with 6.5" size and I am in a particularly bad mood now. Wasting my hours on ...this! The process itself is infuriating, zillions of 'features' just wasting my time reading how über-user-focused are so set it up NOW! while tap-tap-tap-tap-tap for seemingly into eternity, beyond comfortable by an ocean plus a half, but watch for this and accept that and log in and register here and connect that and you will be amazed, allow us to take your data, don't worry, we care, we say it repeatedly so it must be like that, right?, here are two dozens of icons be amazed about, wow how many icons are there it is amazing, amazing multiplied, word-editor-assistant-presentation-maker-tv-communication-console-education-news-pretty-sleepwithme-and-tap-me-tap-me-day-and-nigh-oh-yes, into eternity, but first allow this and allow that, just one more, read that, we improve your experience so do it do it, do it again and again, soon we get there, oh wait, camera MUST have discovery of nerby devices otherwise closes itself, hmmm, not something on my old Pentax, that's new kind of development in the history of photography, watching for nearby bicycle or toaster or whatever...
Users have no self respect nowadays, none!, and swallow whatever manufacturers stomp down their throats in the dozen, repeatedly. It is good this thing was the cheapest, I did not dare discovering past 8 years' development on high price, and will only be used as a small tablet at home apart from being a guinea pig, not good for anything else (without satisfying its attention hungry distracting barrage of time wasting functional nothingness). Maybe navigation from time to time, but unsure, heavier than some travel books!
I guess only Apple can pull that, but they're not interested either. Their latest "Mini" model is still huge.
I understand that we have found some kind of an optimum, that it is the form that sells the best and what most people want, but with so many manufacturers and models, there should be room for some niches. Where is the craziness from the early days? All the gadgets Samsung was known for, the physical keyboards, the small phones, the huge phones, the styluses, etc...
It seems the only exceptions you can find are overpriced folding phones, and some rugged phones. You may get a few more options from brands most people never heard of, usually only available online, often directly from China. But even with that, if you want something that doesn't have the iPhone form factor, your options are very limited.
If 100 different phones are available, it would be nice if one of them was for 1% of the people who want something different.
At 309 CAD on Amazon, I'm tempted to give it a try.
Who thinks they are booking phone sales as AI revenue to juice the numbers?
They're making the mistake of optimizing for general case users (who don't care about model version) when they need to attract power users so that they can find product-market fit.
Edit: I found the answer on Reddit, as usual. You need to go to your plan settings and only then is the plan available under one.google.com/settings. That's the only way to downgrade.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet and ChatGPT-4o are roughly the same with the former pipping it for me and then out there is this shitty Google product that is worse than Llama-3 running on my own laptop. Even Llama-3 is better at remembering what's going on.
Fortunately, this time I managed to look it up and I have it for free because I have Google One 5TB, apparently. And there's no way to spend more money so that's what I have. It's so bad that when Claude and ChatGPT run out of messages for me I just use local Llama rather than use Gemini. Atrocious product.
In my experience they are at similar level for most tasks.
I'm sure some benchmarks are decent but when Google finally shutters the chatbot I'll be glad because then I won't constantly be wondering if I'm paying for it.
It's a shame because Google's AI features otherwise are incredible. Google Photos has fantastic facial recognition, and I can search it with descriptions of photos and it finds them. Their keyboard is pretty good. But Gemini Advanced is better off not existing. If it's the same team, I suppose they can't keep making hits. If it's a different team, then they're two orders of magnitude less capable.
...
This is very lame (and the sad part is that it's a real story).
Gemini Advanced has 1M context window. If this is low, I am not sure anything else on the market will satisfy you.
This feels a lot like when people would tell me how the HP laptop had more gigahertz and stuff and it would inevitably suck compared to a Mac.
Where it truly stands out is the 2M context window. That's game-changing for things like analyzing publications and books.
But recently I asked Gemini "Bill Clinton is famous for his charisma and ability to talk with people. Did he ever share tips on how he does it?" and Gemini responded with some generic "can't talk about politics" answer, which was a real turn-off.
You must not have ever used GPT-2 if you think it is comparable to any commonly used chatbot today
I signed up, but I have no idea if I am being charged for it. Hope not.
It feels like Google's marketing has gone full dark side.
And it's lazy marketing. Nothing feels genuinely positive for the consumer.
It's depressing.
Why let everyone in earshot know what you're up to? Sure, it's easier than typing all that text given crappy feedback of these smartphone onscreen keyboards.
If you show a pic to Google Lens app, the app will proceed to identify text and highlight those text passages.
In the AI-verse, Lens could detect the concert tour.
- if the tour was in the past, Lens could look up in Photos any media with GPS locations at those concert locations/dates and show them.
- if the tour is now/in the future, Lens could detect the dates and locations, and look up in your calendar to find when you are available. If you are available when the tour comes to your town, Lens would show a big green checkmark next to that date/location pair or highlight that date/location. Otherwise, it goes into search mode and crosses out dates/location when you aren't available. For out-of-town locations when you are available, Lens could start up Maps to search for flights to those locations. Perhaps a search of your contacts to see if you have friends/relatives in/near those out-of-town locations. or look in your calendar to see if you've been to any of those out-of-town locations before, etc. etc.
That'd impress me.
Can't stand the iPhone either. At least it has a good camera and audio, but most of the apps are either junk or you have to pay for Apple rent seeking. A lot of shady Chinese apps. I spent hours trying to find a decent calculator like the stock one on Android. And the on screen keyboard is outright annoying. Couldn't turn off haptics either.
So I'm still using my Pixel 4a until it dies. The iPhone is garthering dust on my nightstand.
On-device inference improves not just its latency, this also removes a huge chunk of LLM's economical constraints from software companies. The biggest advantage of software is its marginal cost being nearly zero. LLM hasn't enjoyed this luxuries but the dynamic is going to change.
I'm not going to get carried away with technical announcements.
"Play <local radio station x> on living room stereo" has been hit and miss for my parents to the point where I regret setting them up with a Chromecast-supporting AV receiver and Google Nest speaker. They now just use the regular remote and listen to the station via FM.
It could help millions of elderly people stay independent a little longer. But no instead, they were trying to sell us generative AI and photo filter.
Yep, it's just pain :D I'm native portuguese speaker but I navigate the english web.
Hey siri, read notifications (portuguese name bad written) sent message <random portuguese read as english>.
or:
E aí siri, lê notificações (read notifications in portuguese) Notificação de Twitter, <english post read as portuguese>
Thanks :)
I travel a lot and often find myself in areas with poor or no connectivity, and things "get a little freaky" in those scenarios. Even things like Google Maps (which has downloaded/offline mode) often fail or spin for 30 seconds. I think Google/Android engineers don't test these scenarios enough (or at all), and they're usually bathed in perfect connections.
Also, I'd disagree with it going to change the economics behind it. Sure, offloading the hardware and power cost of inference on the consumer is going to make it cheaper for the AI companies, but they're still going to have to spend an absolute fortune on training. And how are they going to sell it if it runs on your device? The tech industry has been trying to push everything away from on-device code in order to sell subscription-based cloud services! Who's going to pay a subscription or per-query fee simply for the right to run a pretty mediocre app?
They’ve over promised and under delivered on AI for years, and that is now their reputation.
Going back and watching the Google Duplex demo versus what shipped and what it is today - that was 2018 and it still doesn’t perform as demonstrated.
Source: knew folks on the team.
Some random examples I just came up with:
* Podcast app does STT for transcriptions/"subtitles" as well as episode summarization (Even cooler if the podcast provides chapter markers)
* Games getting new and interesting types of NPC's, level generation, etc
* Filters that do more than keyword matching (for news/social apps). I can technically filter out political Spam SMS messages but only with regex/keyword matching.
* Catch-up on 3rd party chat app conversations
I know LLMs will make plenty of mistakes and are far from perfect but there are things they can do very well that are very hard or expensive to do (sometimes just for indie-level devs but also for small/medium businesses). To be able to do those for free and offline would be a gamechanger.
They actively call out only a few areas that run locally.
Almost all their summary features are in the cloud for example. Unlike Apple, they haven’t figured out API to let apps vend data to their AI system.
this is a nuanced thing. sure you save the network hop, but you are running inference on a much more underpowered model on an underpowered device. at the end of the day you want to get the lowest time to first token and highest tokens per second. on-device optimizes TTFT at the expense of Tok/s. i think there are many usecases where Tok/s dominates in overall latency considerations.
My Consumer Report: Do not fall for hardware backed by software that costs the seller money to keep running.
Wish I went with a TP-Link solution instead
I used it as wired until I moved, and my current house I started using it wireless. That's when I discovered a bug in the wireless mesh that requires me to basically restart the network every couple days.
I also wish I didn't need to app to connect to it. I really don't understand why I can't manage it directly from my PC or phone via IP Address like every other system I've used. I regret it, but it is better than having an upstairs and downstairs network I needed to keep switching between with my netgear routers I had before.
After all these years, my devices still are split across the Nest and Home apps, and the Home app is still missing features Nest had from day one. Oh yeah and presence sensing doesn’t work since switching to the Google app [0].
I bought an iPhone last year and have been de-Googling since.
So even the very simple use cases that we know work, aren't solid.
Then there's the massive disappointment when you just have a quick think about the types of interactions that it could do very well if google cared at all. Honestly, the failure to follow through on what could have been a house hold changing device is just sad to ponder.
Why they haven't rigged it up to gemini yet baffles me.
The idea that I can't work out because of an internet outage upsets me greatly. Also their recent updates have added more ads into the gym interface which I am not a fan of, so I might just never have it connect to their servers ever again if I get my workaround working.
but those shouldn't be mandatory features that prevent you from working out.
I saw a lot of humble and dedicated engineers get laid off in the first round and it was a lot of people who put systems stability over their own promo. There used to be a place for those people, which is part of what made Google a decent place. That’s gone now, things will continue to break as long as fixers take the brunt of lay offs.
Over time, the value given to maintenance and smooth operations decreased in reviews, esp for 'non core' services, which inevitably led to engineers doing the rational thing and prioritizing launching features, getting credit and moving on before they got saddled with pesky things like maintenance.
This also had the unintended consequence of politicizing work assignments quite a bit with more savvy political operators getting the most opportunities to launch featu ... er 'deliver impact'.
Also, their AI photo effects never really worked any good for me but I do not own a pro model.
I'm still rocking a Pixel 5, which is actually my second Pixel 5. I really like using it without a case. It's light, small, can handle a fall without the back shattering, and I like the matte finish.
All I want is a version with more modern specs, but every manufacturer keeps optimizing for the advertising shots, and people keep falling for this. Right now the camera is the only thing tempting me to upgrade, but I'll probably wait another year.
Obviously there's some luck involved but the only time I put a case on a (in that case, Samsung) phone it shattered the first time I dropped it. So, I figured I might as well go without again. I've yet to have an iPhone break from a fall, only from leaning up against something with it in my pocket.
I'm mostly lamenting on how durability is a niche value for one of the most widely used objects in our lives.
Cases prevent scratches but, meh, I wouldn’t mind a few scratches on the back of my phone.
However the main attraction of a case to me is: grip. My iPhone 15 Pro Max feels more slippery than a bar of soap. Unless I exert a lot of force, it just slips out of my hand while using it.
Not even a scratch on it either, titanium turns out to be a pretty fantastic frame material.
Why can't make phones thicker, to match the camera bumps, filling the extra space with battery, is beyond me.
"feels cheap"
buys iPhone
- average userBTW, for those talking about issues: I bought my Pixel 6 at release, and yes, I had some strange Bluetooth issues during a few months. Not anymore, and for a while the phone is solid.
Also, this is probably the first phone that I have that I don't feel the battery got worse after 2+ years of usage, maybe thanks to the Adaptive Battery. My wife iPhone 12 (that she bought around at the same time as me) already had a ok-ish battery when she bought, but nowadays the battery is just plain sucks (battery health is 87%, that doesn't explain the whole story), one of the reason that she may switch to a Pixel too. Another thing I like from my Pixel is after those 2 years, the phone still feels snappy. I know people like to say that Tensor CPUs are bad, but I never had any issues with them.
I don't like the fact that Google increased the prices though: Pixel 6 was an amazing value for EUR649, but at EUR919 the Pro looks a more interesting choice since the gap reduced between the two. I think the reason is because the Pixel a series is such an amazing value that nobody care about the normal Pixel anymore, but if anything this is Google's fault.
I don't care much about photos so the 9 really just doesn't have anything that would make me want to buy it. I'll probably be holding on to my 6 until it reaches the end of its security updates.
It was a good deal at the time with the free Pixel Buds Pro, but I surprisingly liked my previous phone better (One Plus 5).
My experience in that respect was just the opposite of yours: just barely OK at the beginning, and quick degradation in spite of the adaptive battery. In 2 years it wouldn't even make it to 3 PM in days of heavy usage. Definitely much worse than the batteries in my friends' iPhones, and of course also than all the other Android phones I've had, some of which lasted (or are still lasting) for more than 5 years with battery being a complete non-issue.
I wonder if it's a 6 vs 6 Pro issue or I just got a bad unit (I'm not the only one I know with the complaint, though, so if it's the latter, bad units were rather common).
How is generally the signal in your region? Because here in Dublin it is generally pretty good, being in 5G most of the time and generally with high speeds. And I think signal is the most important thing in Pixel phones, because of their bad Exynos modem. So if your overall signal is bad I can see the battery draining faster and your experience being much worse than mine.
Discounted pixel 9 pro xl by $350 by being subscribed to Google Fi.
Cheap-ish.
When Google bought HTC the idea was the best of Google software and the best of HTC hardware, but we have Google level hardware and HTC level software. The glory days of the HTC One were a decade ago.
I had three HTC flagships back in the glory days and they were amazing machines, their only problem was that most people preferred to buy the likes of Samsung despite being much worse in almost every respect (software, camera, design, durability, etc.). I don't know if due to bad marketing by HTC or just because they bought reviewers less (they used to have a blatant pro-Samsung bias).
Then of course quality actually degraded when they had to make huge personnel cuts due to bad sales.
In the end, none of the two companies fixed the problem, and my 6P eventually died randomly one day.
So, this Google software and X hardware story is very similar to yours w/ HTC, except that if they don't buy the company it's better for them as they can just throw the problem over the fence to the other company. What a clown show
Should I try the Pixel Fold, might I like it? (looking for opinions from people who recognize my story; no need to tell me things like "nobody can answer that for you")
As for the pixels, my advice is to hold off buying the latest until like Feb or even May. Google pretty aggressively drops the prices after release so waiting just a little bit will save you several hundred dollars. By Feb, generally the phones have been pretty stable.
I think I've never had this few issues with a phone. (I only had Samsung phones before this)
It feels even better than the Android that the Pixels ship with, I used it for a day before I flashed GrapheneOS, and I can completely understand why one would not buy a Pixel again if they only experienced the Stock OS.
(running it since 9mo on my Pixel 8)
Relevant recent submission:
One caveat: Unlocking the bootloader deletes the disk. This is a reasonable security measure, but it means you don't want to use the phone for anything important before installing Graphene.
It also has very frequent updates, and my phone will get them for a long time (also true for the Stock Android on Pixels, but that one really sucks), which was also very important for me, as I want to be able to use my phone as long as possible.
What made this even more appeling is the possibility to install sandboxed google play in a seperate profile/user for apps that really need it, which works surprisingly well, and even then the google play services don't run with elevated permissions like they normally do, but with the same permissions like other apps.
And the battery life is insane, if I don't use my phone it basically does not loose any battery, and even with heavy usage I don't need to charge it daily.
So GrapheneOS was the easiest way to start degoogling (kind of ironic using Google Hardware) my mobile phone, while still being able to run nearly all of the Apps I need.
Many of those are appealing
I had the Nexus 5, Pixel 1, 3a, and now 7a, with a couple other phones in between which each time drove me back to Google hardware and their flavor of Android. If you didn't like the software in the early days of Pixel, or even in the Nexus days before, you probably still wouldn't.
a hypothetical answer to my question could be: "yes, worth trying the Pixel experience again, but stay away from the Fold." my question had two dimensions.
but thank you! very informative. yes, I had most of the Nexuses, then into the Pixels
I can learn any system, but I want one and done. I don't want to keep having to learn all the time when it comes to things like muscle memory.
i hate gestures, for example. If I could configure/control them, alright, but I don't like when some touch that used to be unnoticed or neutral suddenly starts wiping out what I'm doing. my mantra when it comes to coding UIs: job number one is never ever lose anything the user has typed
Samsung's experience is objectively more customizable (you can have custom color schemes, custom keyboard layouts, macros and more).
At the same time, samsung defaults have neutral design, while google screams at You "this is a google app" almost everywhere.
I guess the only downside is that samsung's UIX is heavier on the performance side, but in context of flagships it doesn't matter much.
So again, what makes you say pixels experience is better?
the problem mostly come from the tensor chip where apps/games are not optimized for it. can't imagine using a top flag phone (pixel 8 pro) at the time with sub-optimal performance.
There are still very few apps that support the full screen properly and while you can force apps to run full screen on the big screen, their automatic UI layout will simply blow up the lower and upper portions of their interface so that you don't see that much more.
Most Google app, obviously, have proper support and YouTube is definitely the primary use case for the big screen. Insanely, Google Maps loses features when viewed unfolded (WTF?). But even among the Google apps, though, most don't really use the space in a useful way. They often just put some hamburger menu permanently on the screen. Nice, I guess, but you won't bother unfolding the phone just for that.
Web browsing/reading is great on the unfolded screen. That's where the near-rectangular aspect ratio works best.
Honestly though, while I'm keeping an eye on what's happening in the foldable space, I think my next phone will be a boring old slab phone again.
https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/2...
Its breathtaking how many phones just go nuts on their backside, stuff Id be ashamed to pull out in public (oneplus 12, oneplus open, xiaomi 14 ultra). When theres finally some normal lens housing that isnt protruding on a side making the phone wobble while laid flat on a table (like almost every remaining phone), it almost doubles the phone width.
And then when theres finally a phone Id like to buy thanks to its big battery, sleek design and no front camera cutout (Nubia Redmagic 9 Pro), the must fuck it up by adding a freaking fan to it. And ofc their Z60 Ultra has again huge and uneven camera housing with red accent around main camera.
Its as if every manufacturer is either conforming to herd, or going batshit crazy.
The reason people are buying those phone is because theres no choice. Not that theres no choice because people are buying it.
Woah that is a nice looking phone. Too bad the thing is massive.
That said, I just want a phone with a modernized 5 way switch rocker to scroll with thumb.
Everyone is converging to the same design, Apple like the others. They all borrow from each other until they all look the same.
Apple calling back to what was considered their most iconic design language for the iPhone (and now iPads) long before others imitated it, doesn't mean Apple is now copying the imitators.
https://www.core77.com/posts/16817/core77-speaks-with-jonath...
This remains widely regarded as the most significant design since dropping the keyboard.
The plot on that design thickens, Samsung claimed Apple copied Sony:
https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone...
But those were Apple having fun with Sony fanfiction applied to an earlier Apple design ... turns out the iPhone 4 language was in their design repertoire in 2005, before even the original iphone shipped:
https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/30/3201162/apple-refutes-cla...
I seem to recall they couldn't do the design earlier due to fabrication and materials constraints.
I would bet every dollar in my pocket that Apple is intending to convert back to a more rounded design with the iPhone 17, and the S26 and Pixel 11 will follow suit.
Begging+pleading for the googung corpodrones to have just one original idea, even if its only "we're gonna do it this way simply to spite Apple" (they won't).
The front of the phones are all screen and the back looks nothing like an iPhone but somehow people think they copied Apple. Go figure.
The issue is now described in the Google Pixel T&C, and I hope Google will eventually offer a way to buy a Google Pixel phone and Google Fi that offers full functionality for longer trips.
Here's a link about it:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tech-tips/goog...
My main complaint is once you go over your data limit and opt into the $10/GB there's no way to restrict your speed. It may sound silly, but I was hesitant to click some links as they may start loading tons of pictures and videos below the fold and cost me a dollar or two per click. So I pretty much limited my browsing to HN!
Also, defrauding ... what, exactly? If it's a US phone number, there are a bazillion ways to get an SMS enabled US phone number that is either anonymous or pseudoanonymous due to people not wanting to get sexting or pig butchering spam when Yet Another Breach leaks every marketing db in the world
The local data plans are typically more broadly useable and cheaper than the $10/GB that Fi offers.
When it comes to Europe (and this might apply to other destinations as well) Fi is a bad deal.
Often, eSims get significantly better latency too, since you get an IP from close to where you are instead of your data having to cross one or more oceans. A VoIP call between two US SIMs/phones roaming in Asia is not a great experience.
If you read the reviews of some of the eSIMs there are quite a few mentions of this happening.
Some, like Truphone, even have multiple gateways that are dynamically selected for lower latency, which is very neat (but they're generally more expensive).
Honestly, why is this important? Aside from all the AI hype, I don't see why the event should be so focused on features that are purely software updates that will most likely propagate to other non Pixel devices.
It's just a bummer that the event focused so much on the AI features instead of the HW capabilities: probably they don't have much to show this year.
I just hope they fixed the numerous HW issues the previous Pixel devices had (e.g: overheating, radio, ...)
Phones are like laptops now, most phones regardless of make or model will do what you need it to.
Right now basically you are forced to buy a Pixel phone, because if you don't buy an iOS or Android device you don't have apps, if you buy an iOS device you lose your freedom, and if you don't buy a Pixel phone you don't have timely updates and GrapheneOS and thus don't have an open source, frequently updated and well-engineered OS.
Pixel Fold (256/512): $760
Pixel 8 Pro (128/256/512/1TB): $699
Pixel 8 (128/256): $490
Pixel 7a: $300
Pixel 7 Pro (128/256/512): $540
Pixel 7 (128/256): $360
Edit: there's a complete overview of all trade in estimates in this post: https://slickdeals.net/f/17689866-buy-pixel-9-pro-or-pixel-9...
The main downside is that store credit expires in 1 year. Also I hate buying new phone cases.
Even so I'm not sure the Pixel 8 -> Pixel 9 upgrade is worth $799 - $490 = $309 (plus tax) to me when the Pixel 8 is brand new and working well.
Like sometimes you want to take something in picture with a difficult angle or small opening. Or for example being in the middle means that there will not be space for fingers when holding the phone for a picture.
https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/google-explains-pixel-...
So I'm not sure why the author tried to measure body temperature by using "Object temperature" mode with "default" setting and measuring the temperature under the tongue. The Body Temperature test has always been accurate for me and matches my higher end forehead thermometer.
(You can work around this by spoofing your location, but it's not obvious to do.)
People put a lot more weight on the Android security updates than they perhaps should. Unless you're installing random crap, there are very few OS vulnerabilities that you need to be concerned about if you have an up-to-date browser. Things like StageFright are very uncommon (and I can't find evidence of that actually being exploited in the wild)
My reason is that I never sell phones anyway, after 2 years I get a new one and give the old one to a cousin or something like that.
1. https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1303285181/leather-google-pi...
You've got to specifically look for one that has raised corners or something to compensate.
These devices are already rather heavy.
I wish there were more options for people who don’t care that much about the camera in their smartphone. I remember the non-bump camera in the 7.6 mm thin 2016 iPhone SE was perfectly fine for many situations, I took some impressive vacation photos with it.
Just get a cheap phone? If you're paying $500+ for a phone, I'd estimate most of that money is going into the camera. Judging by the marketing, anyway.
Alternatively it's just exploiting "everyone uses a case" to get a mm or two of space for the camera lens that can very productively use it. Thickening the whole device only makes sense for people who don't use a case, which is basically no one (well, me, but most people love their cases).
Never used a case for any phone I've owned.
1: Using the wet moulding technique.
I was hoping they'd chamfer the edge in future models but it doesn't look like that's happening.
Using a case solves this, but it shouldn't be required.
The alternative is Samsung, the company that doesn't understand privacy nor consent, or Apple, whose phones lack uBlock support.
It’s a bit wonky and on iPhones there’s a lack of configurability, for example there’s no way that I know of to bring up a dialog to block elements in ublock, or adjust the settings in dark reader, but they do seem to work well enough in their default flavor.
The reading list functionality is less ergonomic, but tabs/pages are more ergonomic imo, and it seems to work better with webpages that safari spins it’s wheels on.
Unfortunately it doesn’t help the forced zoom that Apple forces on everything when a text box is loaded, that is then compounded when giving it focus with a cursor for writing (yes, I’ve already tried all system systems that could potentially disable that. Nothing works, Apple’s text input continues to be straight up burning garbage on multiple levels)
I’d say it’s worth trying, and sending feedback to.
That browser should be something like a fully opensource de-googled chrome browser, but it doesn't seem to exist on mobile.
2. It is a browser with a users paying for it business model
These mean that it is easy to verify any 'spying', and that there is no incentive to do that.
Having said that, if the camera bar is an issue for you, the case wouldn't make a difference one way another. There are cases that are flush with the camera bar to mask the protrusion, but those obviously extend the total thickness to be at least as thick as the section of the device with the camera bar, whereas the aramid cases are more like a few sheets of standard office paper.
No thanks to anything else coming from Google (Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix ...). Have you noticed how they improved their Youtube recommendations in the last year? Creepy, how well it works. Unfortunately, all this tech paired with state of the art psychological research is not used to help people, but to make them media junkies. Everything AI follows the same pattern. The tech is amazing and can be indeed helpful used the right way, but at the end of the day it's used to gather data to make us using their services more and more and to than extract money from us (mostly still via ads). Decades ago, this industry was kind of innocent. Today, they all know exactly what they do and what damage they cause in esp. younger peoples brains. Healthy kids and young people need to be creative, explore the real world, be proactive. Not muted screen zombies. The extend of emotional and general mental illness in young people is heart breaking. We all see it. They don't care.
I hate you, Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, TicToc ... the world was a better place without you.
Maybe it's the One Plus 12 I'm holding, but this is a hard pass by me.
All I want is a flagship chip, Esim support and a headphone jack. But since earbuds are almost all profit we won't see jacks coming back.
Just use a USB-C adapter. No, it's not as good as if it was built in. Yes, it's good enough. Yes, they make charge+headphone adapters.
Hard. Pass.
Sucks they removed the port :(
I think the OnePlus 12 is the best Android phone for the money.
The Red Magic 9S is very close to perfect, but lacks Esim.
And it was awesome! Super-fast, tactile feeling, right under the finger, doesn't blind you at night. Cannot understand why they removed it, cost-cutting?
I'm not saying that's a good reason to make the other 99.9% of my life terrible pushing on the glass like I'm trying to suffocate it, but I did notice the one tiny UX improvement with the front reader
Now that Google is offering 5-6 years of updates, you can get a 7 or 8 loaded with Graphene OS and be good for the long haul at about half the price as when they came out.
Pixel 7 and 8 used the Samsung 5300 which wasnt very good so the new 5400 might be better but we will have to wait for reviews and what not.
Google is switching from Samsung to TSMC for chip fab next gen, so the Pixel 10 might end up with a significantly better modem.
[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Google-Pixel-9-successor-First...
Genuinely, you gotta love those altOS nerds. 'Giving you stuff you didn't even know you needed.
The gestures are so frustrating to use I can't believe they were devised by a human being, but at least I don't have to look at a nav bar all day
If I'm paying 500+ for a device it needs to you know... last more than a few years.
I was very hesitant to spend $1000 on my first smartphone but if it can easily last 5 years, I'm impressed.
Even now, I can't think of a reason to upgrade aside from wanting a new, shiny gadget.
The S7 Edge was the last time I experienced slowdowns after 1-2 years.
Shouldn't mobile phones require much less RAM?
A huge chunk of the OS runs native stuff. Add to it that android is less strict at putting apps/processes to sleep, it’s become a much less black and white question.
Would one percent be responsible for a system’s bad performance if that is “slow”?
Honestly, Apple Intelligence is looking much better than this. But I suppose it’s no wonder, I don’t think Pixels are a large market for Google, while iPhones kind of are for Apple.
I do remember a lot of other typical "AI" stuff being done locally and well when I had a pixel a couple years ago.
So much for supporting Open Source AV1...
I love the pixel 8a, the size, curvature and camera bump seems ideal. Ofc they removed a freaking 3.5mm jack, but I can make a compromise here and buy 100 type-c to 3.5mm adapters, but I'm super disappointed with the new 9x series, they are now even more blocky and square-ish which i really don't like, plus no "a" model which is usually looking much better for me than the main one.
Does anyone know the phone which is small, has a headphone jack, even camera bump and is still buyable to this day?
My Pixel 5a also had some shenanigans and my dad's pixel 6 as well
No idea why they don't do proper Q&A. Looks like a good phone but yet fails in ways my work iphone never has.
Fwiw, I haven't had either issue with my P8 Pro and it's definitely the best phone I've ever used, both on Android 14 and running the Android 15 betas.
I had similar bad issues with the fingerprint tech and would assume that the issue has at least 20% prevalence among the affected Pixel models.
My current Android phone was free from the provider in exchange for buying around 3 months of service in advance. It is no speed demon but certainly does all of your average phone stuff just fine.
Me? I will happily take a slightly outdated phone with a new provider/contract where I don't pay anything on top of the expected monthly fee. I have 8 months left on my iPhone13 mini (128GB) w/VZW and will happily change to one of the other Big Threes to make it happen again.
But sure, the phone was "free".
$2,880 for a Verizon plan with a "free" phone (3 year commitment after all), $720 for three years of my current Mint plan. I could spend $2k on a phone over those three years and I'd still have spent less money.
The "free" phone only applies to Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Ultimate. At a single line for Plus that's $80/mo. $960/yr. $2,880 over that three-year commitment.
But either way, I don't bother with the "unlimited" plans. You're going to get de-rated after 30-40gigs anyways on Verizon.
> Unlimited data is restricted to on-device smartphone usage. After exceeding 30 GB/mo of 5G Ultra Wideband, 5G, or 4G LTE mobile hotspot data, mobile hotspot data reduced to speeds up to 3 Mbps when on 5G Ultra Wideband and 600 Kbps when on 5G / 4G LTE for the rest of your monthly billing cycle.
https://www.verizon.com/support/important-plan-information/
"Unlimited" plan you're paying $80/mo for that you're going to get 600Kbps if you really treat it as "unlimited".
I personally don't even use all of my 15GB a month. I get lots of people live different lifestyles, but a lot of people don't need "unlimited". So really, I'm not even spending $360/yr, I'm spending $240/yr. $444/yr cheaper than your plan. $1,332 cheaper after three years.
And honestly that's a lot better than most throttles. Though it seems silly they even bother to throttle 5G Ultra Wideband. Are those antennas ever going to be heavily loaded with how short their range is?
That is an important distinction. Those plans together only represent a $17/month value.
And that value is assuming you actually watch both of them regularly.
You would almost certainly save money using an MVNO and a not-brand-new-super-pro phone.
But that $80/mo plan I quoted doesn't even include the streaming services. That's just the regular data plan rate for a single line. Adding Max + Netflix (With Ads) is another $10/mo, so $90/mo compared to the $20/mo I'm paying now.
Note, when looking at Verizon's website, the big advertized rate numbers show the per-line rate with four lines.
But I'm now regretting it especially because I'm getting tired of constantly missing notifications on my iPhone being so used to persistent notification indicators on Android. Planning to use T-Mobile to buy me out of my device payment plan once I get around to 800 dollars owned on my 15 Pro because being I hate how I'm locked in to a premium plan I don't come close to making full use of. I still have an unlocked S23 Ultra I can switch back to as my main phone if I decide to.
The trade-in and switching deals are all done as bill credits so that you are locked in for 2 or 3 years.
If you are using a big three cell carriers with the unlimited postpaid plans and aren't getting a brand new latest model Pro phone for free you are throwing your money out the window, because you're still paying for the phone in your higher plan price.
You will almost certainly save money if you buy the device yourself and use an MVNO instead of the big three postpaid plans. Especially if you buy the device used after it depreciates for a year or two.
At least for Android, the main issue you'll face is the lack of Android updates. Which eventually leads to apps no longer working because they don't support your Android version.
My phone (2017) still runs everything fast, but I can't install several apps merely because they don't claim to support my old Android version. I have to go online and find apks of the app's version that last supported my Android version.
Phones "free" with a contract are just disguised loans. The loan is hidden in your monthly sub, which is why you have to be locked from anywhere from 1 to 2 years.
Also I don't want to have carrier bloatware on my phones, and I don't want my phones to be locked to a carrier.
I pay my carrier only for the network. I pay for my phones.
You're crazy if you spend $1k for Pixel's build quality.
1. Taking good photos. I like my DSLR, but for memories a phone is handier. And cheap phones take crappy photos in low light (i.e. indoor) conditions. I don't want to look at family photos 20 years from now and say "Boy, I wish I paid $200 extra".
2. Lasting longer. My current phone was launched in 2017 (bought in 2019). It had a powerful CPU and a lot of RAM. It's still running fine.
I could then use my phone as a thin-client for work or gaming, perhaps even experimenting with proton locally.
Apple already demonstrated that mobile hardware is capable of workstation workloads so I'd see this as a natural step forward.
Beyond that, there isn't any compelling reason to upgrade my Pixel 6a.
If I broke my 6a, I'd probably upgrade to the 7a for the better screen.
It would be perfect if I could run a Linux DE with full hardware acceleration (within a container or VM?) that replaces the Android desktop mode
You are 1/7th of the way of your total support period. If you can say you have no problems in 2030, that would be much stronger evidence.
Mid tier Android makers that couldn't secure chipset support beyond 3 years began to realize they have to exit the market a couple years ago, a guaranteed outcome of Apple fixing their story long enough for resale values to impact purchase decisions.
The rental companies typically buy vehicles from the manufacturer at such a volume discount, that they're able to flip them onto the used market a few years later and come out even with taxes benefits factored in.
Looks at their 2010 Honda Fit in the parking lot
Umm, yeah, some people do.
Guess where the trade-in value ultimately comes from.
Something tells me it's a factor in how many people are able to trade their car in every three years or so.
Phones stopped having any meaningful reason to update since a decade.
My 2019 Xiaomi Note 8 Pro is still perfect and capable of answering posts on HN like this, going on YouTube or answering WhatsApp. Pics are also great and battery life is too.
"As of 2023, the global average replacement cycle length for a smartphone is 3.6 years."
I'm not disagreing on a technical level. I agree. I use a pretty cheap ass phone myself that I bought off the rack.
I think it's clear though that phone makers and telecom companies are more than happy to sell people a new one every few years and intend to continue doing that.
https://store.google.com/intl/en_uk/ideas/articles/newest-pi...
- As of 2023, the global average replacement cycle length for a smartphone is 3.6 years.
- 40.4% of people upgrade their smartphone every two to three years.
- The majority of people (75.0%) upgrade their handset due to issues with their battery life shortening over time.
Upgrading a phone also doesn't mean that the old phone goes to the bin or the new phone wasn't used before. Lots of people upgrade from one hand-me-down phone to another, others buy on the secondary market. Longer software support also extends the lifetime and viability of that market.
Sure, eventually the battery dies and the screen breaks. For many devices it's cost-effective to have somebody repair it. Having user serviceable batteries would make it much easier still.
I've had an iPhone XS since 2018/09 (equidistant to 2030 from today), and have had no significant issues – my upgrade cycle is ~6 years, there is at least one of us!
My Nexus phones were described as "designed to fail and impossible to fix" by a repair guy.
My theory was iPhone probably got tested on most 3rd party accessories. However, the fragmentation in the Android space meant I’d have no idea what devices they actually tested with.
This is further compounded by the fact that Android isn’t really an open platform, at least in a practical sense. I can’t just load up a patch for something (assuming it exists) without fully switching to some open source ROM that’s going to come with its own issues.
Bluetooth is so old that it was coming into use when Computer Shopper was still published. It's been a dumpster fire of compatibility since its inception.
There's one of two culprits on the Android side: either its the device drivers, or the OS itself. Device drivers should be capable of being subjected to stringent acceptance standards in order to advertise "Bluetooth". If it's the OS, that's even worse since it is higher up the abstraction stack. At least the device drivers being closer to hardware have an excuse.
Bluetooth is 26 years old. A 26 year old industry standard should be better than a coinflip as to whether some bluetooth thingamajig will work with a mobile OS. It's just sad.
Ballpark as old as USB if not mistaken, and that's saying lots ...
Saying it's not fair to compare them is like saying it's not fair to compare a minivan to an SUV when making a car purchase. They're different, but similar enough.
According to https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en pixel 5a is getting eol this month, with the next security update dropping for pixel 6 starting in October 2026
"Last gen" pixel 8 is going to get android and security updates through October 2030
The common security issues (app can get permissions it shouldn't have) are nowhere near as important if you don't download random APK's from dodgy sites.
Overall, my fully patched linux laptop has far bigger security holes than a 2-years-unpatched android.
Personally, I navigate the Android fragmentation mess to avoid Apple's control-freak tendencies. One is annoying, the other is offensive. But I totally see why you might prefer the opposite.
> IMHO all Pixel phones are just developer devices and you can't seriously use them as daily drivers.
Is ridiculously hyperbolic.
OnePlus phones are also really good when new, although updates often introduce new bugs. When OnePlus was more affordable it was less of an issue, but with current prices I expect several years out of a device that expensive.
Just get a Pixel.
For some reason, HN and Reddit just hates this company, and I don't understand why. People talk about "bloat", because Samsung ships with their own apps for things like phone, clock, calculator, etc. But it's trivial to uninstall those, and/or set the Google stock Android counterparts as your system defaults.
People get all weird about One UI, but my son has a Pixel and I have a Galaxy and I honestly don't see much meaningful difference between the two (other than his phone getting hot as hell because Google's own Tensor silicon sucks). I just recently switched back to Android from Apple, perhaps these UI skins were further apart in the past?
I think a lot of contrarians just hate Samsung because it's the market leader, simple as that.
https://i.imgur.com/9uUJLaz.jpeg
I've never seen any kind of UI where the "Home" button wouldn't be in the center. And you have the option of placing the "Back" button on the left and the "Open Apps" button on the right, or vice-versa.
Recent android versions have put more of this in the the hands of the app, for better or worse. So it's not especially material nowadays.
My point is just that it's an example of Samsung making design decisions which leverage the fragmentation to create confusion among the users.
I noticed it when my boss said that non-galaxy devices feel awkward. I ended up using his phone later and realized why: vendor lock in through muscle memory. It's the kind of monopolistic move that only the largest fragment can benefit from--anyone else puts themselves at a disadvantage by departing from Android defaults. But Samsung, since they control the majority, can bias the market in a way that makes the defaults feel weird. It's rather Apple-like if you ask me.
... which is why I use a Pixel. I hate Google, but they're what I'm stuck with, so I might as well not be messed with by anyone else.
In fact, when I first setup this phone, I had to specifically choose to make the home bar visible at all. Because the current default setting on Samsungs is to use "gestures" only. The same as the default setting on a Pixel now. All Android manufacturers seem united in pushing this, to ape iOS.
There are plenty of reasons to choose a Google Pixel. And I wouldn't quibble with any of them. But it's absolutely bizarre to point to a default setting as a reason, when they are configurable and when both brands use the same default setting anyway.
So many of these discussion threads are like this. It's perfectly fine to prefer a Pixel over a Galaxy. But people so often seem to take umbrage against Samsung for some reason, and when you poke at a little it rarely makes much sense.
Once they got their yelling out, they would sometimes ask me why Samsung would bother recreating all of the Google stuff if it was indeed 95% identical. What's in that 5%, they'd ask.
How do you answer that question without seeing Google's influence on the software as a necessary evil and Samsung's as an unnecessary evil?
I must say that both Samsungs and iPhones have always been rock solid in terms of stability.
Especially BLE, a startup I worked at had a device that broadcast every 500ms for 375ms. We tested over 100 android devices and the best phone had a 40% chance of detecting the device within 5 seconds…
We didn’t test anything other than androids, my work laptop, and software defined radios.
Different brands, I recall Samsung devices being the worst on average. I believe the better Bluetooth devices were actually nexus/pixel phones… I think the top, by far, was the nexus 9, but it’s been a while.
The product was pretty cool that we built. It was essentially tile or Apple AirTags before both of those were around and ruggedized for usage in commercial usage to keep track of items (dumpsters, underwater diving equipment, mining equipment, portapotties, etc). You’d be surprised how easy it is for some of these companies to lose a dumpster or something else of considerable size and mass.
Building the mesh network and algorithms to determine if someone passed by, moved, etc the item the beacon was attached to was pretty cool stuff.
We also didn’t want to use data as much as possible, but the final determination of “what happened” to the item needed to be server side to ensure we took into account scenarios like 2 unrelated items traveled together for 2 miles, then went their separate ways. So we had to optimize for data, geo, temporal, spatial data, etc.
Given the speed a vehicle might travel and Bluetooth range, you could have 1-5 bbroadcasts to detect a beacons presence and update its location so missed detections were critical.
I've had Pixel 3XL, Pixel 5, Pixel 8, and Pixel Tablet all without issue. I realize that can't be everyone's experience, but the idea that you can't "seriously use" these devices is untrue.
One of my pet peeves is engineers making excuses for incompetence.
Data shows 100% reliability then?
Or do we just do that for brands we're not fanboys of like __true__ engineers?
They're not good data, they're some of the worst. Your idiosyncratic one-off experience should be addressed, but not necessarily generalized from. I feel like this is an important, perhaps even the most fundamental prerequisite for information literacy.
An anecdote is "I forgot to pray before bed last night and now I have a headache. See God is punishing me." and other people agreeing with this happening to them.
Saying, "here is a documented pixel bug that was released on day x but wasn't fixed until day y" is evidence and data.
Once its documented as a real bug then its no longer in the land of weird anecdotes.
How you categorize that is up to you. You can be dismissive of what that bug broke as an "unimportant feature" but its no longer an anecdote.
you can pretend it doesn't matter, but bad word of mouth is all it takes for me.
Battery started discharging rapidly, I got it replaced, barely a year later it’s dying again.
The screen is eating up the battery like me drinking water on a hot California weather.
That's fine, but it's also entirely different from saying that the phones are objectively unstable and bad for everyday use.
The firm that has an interest in everyone thinking there's no data, and that we should withhold judgement.
There's not a lot of good choices here, either you assume that because there's no info, everything is fine, or you assume that the one guy complaining is one of many.
Is it enough data so that, as a consumer looking to purchase one, I would be concerned? Probably.
Is it enough data that I'd expect some engineer at Google (or wherever) to pay attention and address? Certainly, I would expect some engineering team to pay attention to public forums and address issues as they arise. It doesn't seem to be happening. If these phones are supposed to be a flagship items, and I think it's reasonable to claim that they are, it's also reasonable to expect flagship support.
They lost the batterygate lawsuits, right? Guess you missed that fiasco that resulted in Apple paying out over half a billion. In this case Apple deliberately degraded previous user experiences on older phones, which means previous behavior (in this case performance) stopped working, done deliberately by Apple.
yes, it didn't go to zero, but it didn't do what it once did as decided remotely by Apple).
Apple also promised user data security, sold user data, and got hauled before Congress in 2011 for that. But I guess your user data was safe in offshore data silos.
I could go on, but I think your recall on iPhone downsides stopped working.
Let’s not share this absolute misinterpretation of what happened.
Apple fcked up big time on communication, that’s for sure, but it was an absolutely well meaning feature for an old device, lengthening their lifespan. They saw a bunch of random poweroffs due to degrading batteries not being able to output enough power to the CPU, and pushed an update that decreased the CPU clock down a bit. This of course degraded performance, and not having informed the buyers, making it a choice, they lost a lawsuit. But if they would actually do the communication well, it could have been an excellent positive PR, them fixing a bug for a 4 or so years device!
Let's not spin what happened, which has concrete and irrefutable evidence. Here's all the court docs [1]. Apple got caught, most definitely did degrade performance without warning and on purpose, and certainly people at Apple knew some of those device owners would upgrade. That they spun it as a feature once caught is classic spin. Apple is no idiot at marketing - if they thought people would see this as positive PR, they would have announced it and touted it. They did not. The 7 million+ pages of Apple discovery made all this clear. This is why Apple settled for a half billion - they were certainly going to get hammered in court.
Read the court docs, not Apple PR.
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6431809/in-re-apple-inc...
The battery degraded because it was a battery, and the performance had to degrade along with it because of physics.
Apple didn't decide remotely to weaken performance. That performance was on borrowed time. What Apple did wrong was not making it clear upfront that the performance was on borrowed time and wasn't sustainable.
> Apple didn't decide remotely to weaken performance.
It's amazing when people just make crap up without even looking something as simple as this up. Apple lost the "batterygate" lawsuit because they specifically did slow down performance on old phone with an update.
A quote [1]: "Apple has agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the tech giant of slowing down older iPhones to encourage people to buy the latest model. Apple faced a wave of criticism -- and lawsuits -- after acknowledging in 2017 that its iOS software slowed down the performance of some older iPhones."
All the court docs [2]. Knock yourself out.
If you're going to shill, at least take a moment to google a claim before making up nonsense.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-to-pay-up-to-500m-to-...
[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6431809/in-re-apple-inc...
Apple lost because they did a bad thing, but I disagree with your characterization of what the bad thing was. In particular I will note that your quote says that they settled and what they were accused of, which is very different from a verdict.
They settled because discovery pulled out docs showing they knew full well what they did, on purpose, and they settled for a half billion dollars because they stood to lose far more in court if a jury saw that evidence. There is no "we were trying to be nice" defense that would counter their internal documents and discussions demonstrating otherwise.
Apply doesn't hand out half billion payouts for touchy feely reasons.
Of course they made the update on purpose and knowing what it would do, but that is not the bar for being malicious and causing truly unnecessary slowdowns.
(If it's unclear, when I wrote above "The only thing they did on purpose" I meant the only relevant problem they caused on purpose. Obviously they do a million things on purpose.)
I'm not going to read a thousand pages of documents to look for maliciousness, if you're not going to point to a specific one, and you're not linking to a news article that has any relevant quotes of those documents.
Reading all of that is not "simple".
Can't you show me the specific evidence that made you so sure? I'm not asking you to search through, just for the information you already had.
> Apply doesn't hand out half billion payouts for touchy feely reasons.
I keep saying they did a bad thing. That is not disputed.
I worked on Pixel, left Google in October. I agree vehemently with what you're saying, its just, you're barking up the wrong tree on a couple different levels, the easy one above, and a more difficult one below.
Management did what you wanted a few years back, #1 and #2 and #3 priorities were "stability above all else" since Pixel 6.
This unfortunately didn't do anything in practice, other than enable newly minted middle managers to punch down, hoard work[1], and hide poor decision making and lying easily.[2] Net negative effect on product of course.
What managers wanted to legislate was "care about your features", but I observed over years that you simply can't enforce that. Ironically, given the above behavior from the new management layer, people got more detached. Unit test coverage went up, I'd bet, which is also a lesson in unit tests have significantly diminishing returns. E2E tests are hard and flaky, but they pay 100x dividends in these situations.
What you want to legislate is the truffle hunting that lowest level management does is bad. i.e. say we can definitely do whatever pet thing some guy 3 levels up says we need to copy from iOS this year. Then, hold it back because it's not done, but still announce it. Then, layer on a special process to get you on the betas to get the feature you thought you were buying. All of this keeps each individual happy and yet, remarkably, leads us directly back to the initial situation we were trying to fix.
From all this, you can also derive why things only launch, and never improve (tl;dr: management has 0 incentive to do anything other than latch onto the latest vague ask / iOS copying from above)
[1] Estimate everything takes 3-5x engineers it did 3 years ago. it's a huge win: I'm managing this team because I did it myself 3 years ago, so this makes clear what a talented engineer I was/am. When I solely listen to the vague asks from people 3 steps above, they'll want to give me the headcount I need to get their pet project done, so this gives me more reports. My compensation scales with report count. And if the estimate is questioned in any depth, well, we're making sure we have enough to deliver this Priority™ at high Quality™. Also, no one is going to question it anyway, my manager made me a manager because they trust me.
[2] it's very easy to work around blatant irresponsibility by flipping it into "the guy lower on the totem pole is insufficiently committed to quality and collaboration [taking forever to do anything]"
I have never ever had a phone do that and I have used some really cheap phones.
So I don't think what OP is saying is far from the truth. I am resolved to never buying a Pixel again.
Back in September 2019, my Pixel 3XL had a problem doing an OTA update. I spent hours with Google support (both live and over email). Their only suggestion was to reset the phone and restore from backup.
The problem is... I had had the 'backup' option in settings enabled, the whole time I had the phone. I thought it was being backed up regularly. But I could not create a backup from my phone. I tried rebooting the phone, but the 'Backup Now' button was still greyed out. Based on some information from the web, I disabled my PIN. That caused my Google accounts to be logged out, but DID enable the 'Backup Now' button. However, the backup failed. I tried doing a backup via adb, which also failed.
IIRC this was before Google Authenticator had the ability to transfer 2FA codes from one device to another. So, without the ability to restore from backup, a reset would mean I needed to recreate 2FA codes for tens of services, which is pretty time-consuming.
I wasn't the only person with this problem: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/13519859?hl=en
I really like Pixel phones, and just ordered a Pixel 9. But for the foreseeable future my parents will continue getting iPhones.
Edit to clarify: constant problems with payments, bluetooth, eSIMs.
While there's a lot you said that I agree with, I find this statement quite an exaggeration. I've owned Pixel phones for the last 7 years, both with stock and custom ROMS, and as much as Pixel seems to always have weird quirks, it's been reliable enough for me that I don't see why it couldn't be a daily driver.
That said, I share your view on upgrading so far that I really hesitate to upgrade anything, whether it's my Pixel phone or something else. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been legit hacked, but I don't have enough fingers to count all the times that software bugs did things like get me stranded, cut me off from my finances, almost get me killed on the road, and so forth.
Although I've never been an iPhone user, Pixel is the best Android phone I've used. I'm a bit biased since it's developer-friendly I'm a software engineer, but I've had the least catastrophic issues (and less crapware) with them compared to other phones like Samsung's line. The strange thing about Pixel is that updates seem to always destabilize the UI, and I'll get weird things happening like the lockscreen coming up and remaining frozen for some time.
I hesitate to defend apple on Hackernews but I have never experienced anything like these issues with any iPhone. Major problem is battery life, other than that I can say the core features of every iPhone I've owned have 'just worked' pretty consistently.
These were the Nexus. Pixel phones are definitely consumer devices. Nexus phones were designed to be rather generic, meant to be used as a model for other manufacturers and as a test platform for developers. It was when Android really was open (or at least more than it is today). They were usable phones, even good ones, but without any "personality".
Pixel phones on the other hand advertises exclusive features, and is mostly picture-focused, hence the name, and also AI, but who isn't nowadays. Nexus advertisement was little more than its spec sheet.
It is inconceivable to me how a phone dialer bug can happen more than once, especially when it involves a life and death situation.
I've been using the Pixel/Nexus phones for over a decade, and I find this complaint bizarre. I've had issues with the phones (just like I have with my Apple hardware) at times, but nothing like what you're describing.
The real issue with Pixel phones is not that their software or hardware support is worse (it isn't) but the customer support. If my iPhone breaks under warranty, I can walk into an Apple store and get it fixed or replaced immediately. When my Pixel device breaks, even though I live near the flagship Google store, the best Google will do is send me a replacement phone "within 5-10 business days".
The customer support experience is a huge issue, and I wish Google would do something about it. But the other points don't resonate at all.
Just imagine, you are in a life or death scenario and your literal phone has a bug preventing you from calling help.
All other issues are minor. I cannot forgive a bug of this nature.
> All other issues are minor. I cannot forgive a bug of this nature.
Does that mean you will never use Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile, all of which have had carrier-wide 911 outages? Will you never visit the state of Massachusetts, which had a state-wide 911 outage, affecting all carriers, just six weeks ago?
This type of failure is bad, but it's unfortunately a lot more common than you think.
It randomly wants me to unlock the device to play music, but I'm using voice controls because I'm driving. It has my car's bluetooth device set as "trusted" so it shouldn't even require it to unlock to continue, and it's not like asking it to play something on Spotify would reveal any information about myself. Additionally, sometimes it just leaves the screen on in the off chance that it _does_ start to play music, and I feel my pocket getting warm but there's nothing that I can do because I'm driving and I don't want to mess with my phone.
If I knew that it was going to leave the screen on I would just queue up music before I leave, but it doesn't always do it and it drives me nuts. I don't think that my next phone will be a Pixel.
Sadly, due to my employer, only Apple and Google are options, so none of the other folding phones are options. I wish Apple would do a fold..
I bought a an iPhone 15 Pro Max few months ago and compared it to my S10+ which I bought in 2019 and still have. There's practically no difference for regular day to day stuff, except for the camera advancements which are notable (but not night & day either).
It was only the frustrating battery life, and desire to enter the superior iPhone camera ecosystem that forced me to upgrade.
It's more about the software than anything. Maybe the camera too
https://dev.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/s9wsHkNaq6sKCSAzKvfZKo.jpg
Maybe ask LG to make a cool looking phone. They have created a lot of brave designs.
This is why I love my pixel. They build stuff that affects my life day to day. My biggest vote of confidence: since buying my wife a pixel, I've had zero tech support requests. it really just works.
Snapping really? Your comment literally reads like a classic "I hate my wife" boomer meme and it comes off as kind of gross.
Spouses and partners treat each other with respect, and no that doesn't involve snapping.
When I was a kid, my mom would keep a cup of dead pens next to the phone just to annoy my father and I when we went looking for a pen :-)
Though seriously, just bought a pixel 8 pro for the camera as my cheap Samsung whatever camera took aeons to focus and had garbage image quality. Overall the default Google app experience is very unimpressive with frustrating quirks and pointless changes.
Though what do you expect from company where your work performance is based on feature visibility meaning useless feature creep is all that matters instead of a quality user experience. Google it's not at all about quality and will never be. AI bullshit being added is more feature visibility metrics so they will keep adding stupid crap and then turning it back on after you've disabled it because someone wants a promotion.
Very soon not having an AI integrated into a phone will be a very good positive differentiation for a phone or PC brand.
So far, looking at this, I can't find any differences between the 8 Pro and the 9 Pro XL that I think I'd actually notice. It would be kind of nice to get the smaller 9 Pro for the sake of my wrists, but not enough to pay an extra $400 for.
Am I missing anything? Or is this just a heavily hyped release of a tiny incremental upgrade?
*I'd be more inclined to hold this against Google and not get another Pixel if my previous phone, a Samsung flagship, hadn't died in approximately the same way after approximately the same lifespan.
I would like a phone with 7 years of updates, that's the reality. This is so annoying because I would go to LineageOS since it keeps getting updates, contrary to manufacturers roms.
I ABSOLUTELY need to be able to use a glass screen protector, because my phone falls a lot, so I'm really concerned about the fingerprint reader on the screen.
One criteria I won't be able to satisfy is: I like fingerprinting on the back. I don't think there are recent phones with that feature at all.
It's rumored that Apple's new SE will have the full suite of Apple AI features, and that might put some pressure on Google to match.
The phone was $200, and I got a pixel watch 2 LTE as well that I flipped for $250. The only thing I had to do was keep using the phone plan I have used for 8 years for another year.
Denmark does not have trade-in deals. But between my wife and I, we can get a whole phone free with the trade-ins in the US.
We can also do international shipping and such through forwarding services, and that would eat into the savings, but still do so.
Then there is bands. THey are almost identical, except a few here and there, and I can't find a concrete place to get info on Denmark bands (multiple sources have different info or lack of info).
Is it worth switching out and going through the hassle and getting US pixels, and just deal with the Denmark prices, and try to sell the Pixel 6s we have. It is annoying.
Maybe it's part of "multiple sources have different info", but have you tried https://www.kimovil.com/en/frequency-checker/DK?
Another avenue of inquiry: Use https://www.cellmapper.net/ to see what bands users have actually recorded in the wild in Denmark near wherever you're moving to.
But Cellmapper is not one I knew and it helped me a TON just now actually. Lots of great info and let me see all the bands currently in use, thanks for that.
Seems like a US phone will work mostly without issue in DK based on the 5G and 4G frequencies on Cellmapper.
Thanks again.
I don't even pretend to know what else I'm paying for at this point. I just scan reviews until it feels like I've found a phone that will reward my $1000 (or so) with a significantly better camera. Too soon to say if these Pixels will lore me away from my S23 Ultra. Though I will say I am beyond sick and tired of Samsung's bloatware and associated problems and miss the days when I had a Pixel (or, before that, a Nexus). That, plus the fact that my S23 is almost paid off, might compel me to upgrade.
How is it any different then google's bloatware?
I have google's apps included on literally every android phone out there - why do we pretend like somehow it's the samsung that is the only one forcing bloat on people?
From AndroidCentral review.
Minor rant: All of this powerful technology, and yet the examples they can come up with are always about e-commerce/shopping, photos, calendaring etc. Why can't they talk about something more fundamentally useful, like a feature that would reduce your phone usage or budget better, etc.? I guess I can dream.
Occasionally I'll use i.sh to ssh into a decent computer but it would be nice to be able to just run normal software on it.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/sundar-pichai-ai-first-world...
The Pixel 6 pro has had its screen break 4x and I have to pay every time despite having the insurance. Terrible, weak screen. The phone feels cheap too. Lots of software errors now. This is the result of Google moving away from merit based hiring.
I will never buy another Google phone.
The Fold 2, sorry Pixel 9 Pro Fold, is the most interesting one for me but the price is too high. I've been waiting for a while for these foldables to go down in price but they still haven't.
Other than that, it's all about the "AI". Which I don't have much interest in, plus, didn't they already said last year that the Pixel 8 was "all about AI". At this point, there's no use in buying a phone to have these features when the following year your phone that's supposedly made with AI in mind is phased for for a new phone that this time around for real is the one that's "made for AI".
Eh.
The rear wide camera looks the same, but the rear ultrawide seems like it has a small upgrade. Better aperture at least.
42MP???
Wouldn't that just rapidly fill up the storage for most of their users
with little if any other tangible benefit ... maybe that is part of the plan :-) ... the profit
Look at the marketing text on the Pixel Fold (https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_9_pro_fold?hl=en-U...):
“An epic display of Google AI. All the magic of Gemini on Pixel's largest screen.“
It is not only completely cringeworthy, but also nonsensical. How does having a bigger display affect AI at all? What sets it apart from other Pixels? Nothing.
I am honestly shocked that this company can keep putting out garbage like this. Any smaller company or startup would go bankrupt and cannot afford to be this sloppy and incompetent. This is only possible if your company has enormous cash reserves and monopolistic market position, where you can eat losses and fail repeatedly on epic scales.
Phone tech specs: both models have "Ultra-Wideband chip for accurate ranging and spatial orientation"
Tracking tag: ??
Any experiences with that?
I'm still using my Pixel 6a and will probably continue until it fails or the battery life gets really bad.
Way to go, the 7 years of updates was the reason I bought my Pixel 8 Pro
They went with the Samsung foundry so they could get a bespoke CPU design because Qualcomm doesn't have time for that type of stuff. Turns out that the Samsung ARM cores aren't as performant as the Qualcomm/Apple ARM cores. But at least Google has these Tensor thingies...
[edit] in Dave2D's video about the Pixel 9 Pro XL, https://youtu.be/67hVZOJDFxQ?t=323 , he shows a Geekbench comparison of recent Android CPUs, the new Tensor G4 is still slower in multithread GeekBench than SnapDragon 8 Gen2 & Gen3.
To be honest, it's probably not their fault though if games/apps are not optimized for that. But I can't wait around, using a flagship phone with sub-optimal performance.
Also, I think buyers think if you have a cheaper phone strangers may think you are poor. Personally I want people to think I am poorer than I am.
In fact, they also have a promotion right now where you can get $800 back on either the Pixel 9 or 9 Pro, spread over 24 months; that makes the 9 free and the 9 Pro only $200.
More than anything, I'm most impressed by Apple's OS support. I'm pretty convinced that SE phones are some of the best deals in the industry if you keep them until they run out of support. They have the same guts (minus cameras) as tier 1 flagship phones. Apple is a bit tight with ram, but the processor is faster than any Android phone.
And the support - 7 years is standard right now, and it could very well go longer.
---
1. I think I paid $150 for it. It has a small crack in the screen, but just the part that's over the chin, not anything that affects the display. If I wanted a pristine phone, I'm sure I could have found one for a bit more. But after several years, I'm happy with my decision.
I think the SE never really turned any heads from the flagship causing the second hand market to be lively. With these new touted SEs, they're looking to be as good as iPhone 14 (maybe pros) which has a very wide reach.
The camera is terrible though photos upon closer inspection appear smeared/blurry. My older Motorola which I paid more for has a better camera.
- SD Card up to 1TB
- 3.5mm headphone jack
I just ordered a Galaxy S24+ from Google Fi for $450 and it's a better phone than the $1100 pixel 9 pro XL imo.
6 months from now and on days like Black Friday you'll be able to get the pixel 9 for less than $500.
Don't even have to pay a fee to use a cellular smartwatch, as long as it is made by Google or Samsung.
It's like a manual phone upgrade plan. Not sure how long it could last. Last year the Google Fi deal wasn't as good and I almost missed the budget target.
I see no reason why should I buy new phone. Seems like all those new features are just gimmicks.
I would probably consider buying a new one if it had better video recording, but this Pixel only has 4k at 60Hz which wasn't impressive two years or so ago.
Spending £500 on a new one hasn't really entered my thoughts. The last time I went shopping for an (Android) phone with and for my girlfriend it was a nightmare - so many absolutely shit giant phones that don't feel right in the hand
That said, I think it was 600ish. So, yeah, I don't know that I understand the high end market. At all.
I personally could not even fathom spending $500 on a telephone let alone $1000. It's just not an important enough gadget in my life.
Because sure as hell it's not a working machine.
I’d even question your premise that phones churn more frequently than laptops, especially at the budget end.
For someone with a limited budget, a phone seems wildly more valuable than a laptop.
Your comment just seems needlessly dichotomous. I'm talking about having multiple devices, such that you aren't beholden to any single one. Nobody "requires" a laptop, just like nobody actually "requires" a phone. But if you're using up all your buy-stuff-online time looking through a tiny screen and tapping out search terms like Morse code, rather than being able to comfortably compare skus/stores far and wide, it's likely that you're drastically overpaying. I'm willing to believe this is a trap many people fall into (eg why else is Amazon always pushing Subscribe and "Save"), but we shouldn't be normalizing it as if it's effective rather than pathological and extractionary (cf Vimes's Boots).
And sure, the same trash-treadmill dynamic exists in the low end new laptop market with poor hardware and poor software (eg MSWin also pushes an upgrade treadmill). But this is kind of a weird Schrödinger's argument in a thread about a phone that costs $1,000 - someone who doesn't have enough resources to buy anything beyond a phone, yet also spends an outsized amount to have the latest flagship. My larger point still stands about the longevity of good product choices, but they require research and actualization - once again, the kind better done from a laptop or desktop rather than a pocket porthole.
This is not a helpful comment.
No one argued it was true for everyone!
> I personally could not even fathom spending $500 on a telephone let alone $1000. It's just not an important enough gadget in my life.
This is also not helpful.
Can you imagine why someone else might spend $1000 on a phone? If the answer is no you have a shockingly poor ability to empathize and see things from a different perspective.
I totally understand why some people spend $1500 on a new phone. And I also understand why some people want to spend the bare minimum! These perspectives are not difficult to grasp.
It's a pet peeve of mine how often programmers argue from their niche perspective without even attempting to think of things from a broader or different perspective. It's especially annoying when it goes from "people do X" to "well I do Y so nyah!".
It's not hard or difficult, you just have to try!
It’s also not binary. The biggest UX experts in the world will still be shocked by what people do in a user study! There’s always surprises.
Understanding a very specific individual is pretty hard! But I think understanding that there are literally billions of smart phone users and that some of them will be happy to buy expensive phones and some will be prefer to buy cheap phones is pretty straight forward! The larger the group being considered the less valuable a personal anecdote is!
Now that we no longer upgrade every second year (or, in fact, every third year) and given I usually get 50% of the cost back by sending the old phone in, spending $1500/phone means that I'm typically amortizing a $750 charge over 4 years - or $15/month for the only luxury item I own. I'm probably more concerned about the $85/month AT&T bill than the $15/month cost for the actual phone.
Never having to even think about storage, like literally zero concerns about how much I download is one reason I always grab the high-end model (now around 1TB)
Also - there are lots of weeks, (in fact, sometimes a month) that my mother doesn't touch her (pretty high end, nice 4K monitor) computer system - but I doubt there has ever been a single hour that she wasn't using her phone. The Phone, for many, has become the new computer.
And, with LLMs becoming pervasive, the new knowledge-system. (I can go many days without touching google - but I hit up some combination of Claude/ChatGPT pretty 7-10 times/day) I can already envision the day in which you will be able to run an LLM on your phone - but the H/W specs for that thing will likely be insane and I have a hard time seeing how the first releases of (reasonable speed, reasonable model -I'm aware you can do it today) - in a 2-3 years from now that can run an LLM will go for less than $2000-$2500.
And I will be standing at the front of that line begging them to take my money. Entirely new device at that point.
That's the argument I don't understand.
Like, Taxi drivers don't buy the most luxurious and comfortable car you can think of because they drive it all day, they get Toyotas and sometimes Teslas where EV support is decent.
For a phone, it’s purely esthetic, ergonomic and user friendliness that most people are buying them. Not usually roi based decision.
It answers better on HN? Gives you more value answering messages or watching YouTube?
Which far fetched edge case scenario do you need to justify the very small diminishing returns between a high end and premium phone?
...idk I think people just like premium phones, it's not that deep
I personally try to get flagship phones, but used a few years after their release. That, and avoid upgrading my phone as much as possible :P I'm jealous of Apple folks here, they support their devices for eons longer than Android!
Unless, idk, you're so deep into the Apple ecosystem, e.g. that it makes sense to stay in the gardened wall and lower any kind of friction.
I'm pretty sure that the camera on my Pixel is twice as good as the OnePlus that it replaced.
It blows me away that people actually care how much other people spend on something at all. Want a $50 flip phone? Cool. Want a $1300 fancy fold phone? Also fine.
When I had my last kid we got a Snoo bassinet, $1300 or so. Anyone that saw it couldn't help but inform me that their baby survived in a trash bag with holes poked in it or whatever for a bassinet. But I sold it 6 months later for $900, and my overall $400 investment was very worth it. Thing was a miracle.
Why is this word used to describe "pure financial loss" so often when talking about purchased luxury goods?
> Investment: the outlay of money usually for income or profit
Not really. You can also "invest" in personal relationships, for example, which implies neither a financial outlay nor an expectation of financial return.
When used in the context of purchasing consumer goods, I think it is most often used in the context of goods which are expensive (the financial outlay) and durable (ie, capable of providing enjoyment--analogous to profit--for a long time into the future). And of course those goods are more likely to be considered "luxury" goods.
It isn't. People say it in regards to quality goods of all kinds - shoes, mattresses, food.
Being healthy results in me being able to make more money, so it literally is an investment.
Investing in a luxury purse or basinet has no concept of profit, but can happily result in high value. Profit and value (or satisfaction) are not the same.
Well you can dislike this fact but there is nothing seems to be blown away about it. Because this is such a mundane fact about people.
It's an idle discussion thread about consumer electronics. Not an attack on the core of your personal identity.
Yes, there are different ways to go about it. I buy the best phone of last year or the year before, and run it into the ground.
But is it just me, or are the changes so incremental now it's hard to justify a new model of any brand? Sure the processors get better etc, but I use my phone to browse the web, text/phone and email.
Only Google Pixel devices tick those boxes, but at least you can buy older gen Pixels rather cheap (Google Pixel 6 Pro with similar camera setup as the Pixel 9 for example)
$500 extra dollars for a better device people use everyday for at least a year or more. Especially around here, many make plenty of money that a $500 difference isn't that significant.
Oddly enough I end up buying Google phones because I do not wish to put up with Google's shit.
That being said, at least for me, my phone is the device I spend the most time with, whether articals, emails, books, podcasts etc.
It is at least 5 hrs a day.
This is probably an argument to spend less time on my phone, but the will is weak.
But if I am spending a significant percentage of my waking life interacting with this single electronic device, a price difference of 500 dollars is not much, especially amortized over a 3 year period.
Wait till you see how people spend $60k on a car when there are perfectly good options for $30k.
And people also spend much more time with their phones than in their cars.
As a thought experiment, if you put me in a civic I will know I am in a civic and not a BMW in one second. If you gave me an iphone 10 or an iphone12. Or a google 8 vs google 10... You get my point. Yes Android is different then iOS but people are usually locked in.
2) In general people spend way too much on cars, either to buy capability they don't really need or can't use. Or to try and say something about themselves.
Also why can't we have decent 5" display smartphones anymore?
I have a Pixel 3a, and it's still larger than I'd like. I realize that the market for folks who would prefer something smaller is, well, small. But, I look at the phone landscape, and I hate every one of them. I like the Pixel, because it's stock Android. I wish they would release a Pixel "Basic" or something. 5.5" screen, basic camera, no AI bullshit. Just a no-frills basic phone.
That is the question.
[0]https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en#zippy=...
https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/newest-pixel...
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#z...
So in practice that'll mean 7+ years.
Note that Apple and Google made a big deal out of extending their upgrade timelines, without mentioning that they actually have to ... if they want to keep selling in the EU.
This is unsurprising, but deceptive and borderline illegal. “Presenting rights given to consumers in law as a distinctive feature of the trader's offer” is an Unfair Commercial Practice.
*And why produce Android without also producing a showcase phone?
It's also just plain not realistic. The industry would of evolved differently had it not been for android and other operating systems may have been picked up by the alternative manufacturers such as Samsung.
It such a small feature that 200$ Xiaomi phones have and Google's flagship do not, because people in their silicon valley bubble can't understand there's many carries in the world that don't support esims properly or the issues that people that live in two countries need to face.
For the size off the phone, that is sort of lame.
For GrapheneOS, trust in Google is ultimate. If you don't trust it, you're out of luck. My threat model is different.
I think the Moto X with the wood back was one of the coolest looking phones ever though.
Yes it's true, iPhone are popular, but it's a US-centric answer, because most of the rest of the world runs Android (Android has a 70.69% market share worldwide).
So Google has a really valid plan there.
Google claims their target is the "next billion people".
Also iPhones are very expensive, just relatively less expensive in the US (due to wages, low taxes, less intermediaries, etc).
Even a poor US citizen is often some sort of rich citizen in other parts of the world.
Of course, there are exceptions, for example, Kim Jong Un uses iPhone and MacBook Pro.
You know what they say about making up statistics...
Otherwise email works, the web works, mms works, and the camera, screen, and RAM, on phones ten years ago was already way more than you need.
The phone specific software barely justifies maintaining a phone (and doesn't for me so I don't even own a modern smartphone.) There's certainly nothing to justify upgrading it.
More helpful answer: I think Graphene OS still has security updates for your model (assuming Google doesn't?)
> These regulations will empower independent repairers and end-users by ensuring access to spare parts and to the information necessary to repair for at least 7 years after the end of the distribution of a product in the market. Additionally, manufacturers will have to make compatible software updates available for at least 5 years.
https://repair.eu/news/new-eu-rules-smartphones-and-tablets-...
Yeah there's some really amazing stuff the new phone can do but I honestly don't care. If I need a piece of correctly specked camera equipment I'd probably buy a dedicated device with proper cooling and a removable memory card.
And "there is a big difference but not everyone cares about it" is quite different from "there isn't a big difference". The latter is clearly false.
Looks like you may be interested in Pinephone or Librem 5.