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Comment by peapod91 | Hacker News Reader

The dominance of the negativity in these comments is noteworthy. Personally, I thought it was a exciting update with major hardware improvements, some compelling AI demos and use cases at a similar price point as the past. Top tech reviewers e.g. MKBHD has similar impressions.

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

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Simple AI fatique I guess? Personally I'm immediately turned off when yet another product announcement mentions AI gimmicks, especially when there's no other features to get excited about. It's like the time when each new TV came with "3D support".

AI will solve this AI fatigue too! Introducing AI Relaxation and Restoration Center where you will get reeducation in loving AI!

I don't really think there's bias, it's just that HN these days predominately attracts negative ranting comments.

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 think the internet has become much more toxic these last few years.

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

We all know negative content drives more engagement, see: Facebook. But I've also noticed this trend and for me it makes sense seeing as most of the content on the internet nowadays is negative content. Social media is used to belittle and criticize other people/ideas, the news has never been positive, we've passed the stage where content creators that are positive about products are seen as trustworthy, because an overly positive attitude has been linked to a "shill" mindset. We've seen the evolution of big tech from trying to destabilise old/existing industries and giving us a new, improved service to trying to squeeze as much profit out of their users as possible. Other big companies have dominated their competition and have used that power to boost prices, limit access to media, decrease the user experience,... In a lot of ways I feel like the toxicity that we are experiencing online these days is a direct result of noticing all these negative patterns and realising that most of what is being advertised to us has a large chance of being too good to be true. Games that look good pre-release but then get released full of bugs, software that was once a good deal becomes a subscription, series that get cancelled too soon, products that look good on release but have issues not long after without a chance to repair them, companies completely changing their objectives after a CEO change, the list goes on. So instead of trying to be positive and finding ways to get excited about something it is now a "safer" bet to be critical and negative about anything that is being announced because of the cycles of dissapointment we've all been through. At least to me, this makes sense, eventhough I would like to see it be different.

I agree with you assessment but I think it’s a snowball effect as well.

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.

I've been wondering if Reddit has always been this cesspool or if I just got older. When I'm logged in it's not too bad because I curated the subreddits, but the default subs it shows me when I'm logged out feel like half the content is angry people complaining about politics and immigrants.

My personal pet theory is that the Internet is aging.

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's not really new, even going back there were flame wars and shit-posting on BBSes before the internet was common. It tends to come with relative anonymity.

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.

I guess mostly because the only thing new smartphones offer is faster cpu, more memory (which I don't really need, a 10y old smartphone handle my current load correctly) and a better camera and an always bigger footprint.

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 I don't really need, a 10y old smartphone handle my current load correctly

Which phone are you using then? I presume your usage is totally non-representative of the average normal user, but curious nonetheless.

I was happily using an iPhone 6S (which is very nearly 9 years old) until recently (when I dropped it and smashed the screen). It definitely wasn't as fast as a modern phone (but it honestly wasn't bad), the camera was much worse, and the battery life wasn't as good. But it some ways it was better: it had a fingerprint reader (modern iphones don't), and it was much smaller and lighter.

I just had a samsung galaxy s6 edge die one me, probably because of heat.

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'm using a Pixel 4a myself, prior to that was a Pixel 2XL and I had about every third Nexus and a few other phones before that as well as a One-Plus phone somewhere in there. My current phone still runs fine, and I'll probably upgrade when the 9a comes out, I do think they're priced more than I would like.

I've tended to like the close to stock experience, but I do turn off all. the assistant features that I can.

> I guess mostly because the only thing new smartphones offer is faster cpu

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 think it's because Google could make a great phone, but choose not to. They keep adding gimmicky features that myself and apparently many other HNers don't care for, while core functionality is neglected and often regresses.

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.

What others would you recommend under $800? I looked at Motorola, but the camera quality is bad.

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)

Out of (genuine) curiosity, what major hardware improvements are you referring to?

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?

> On paper, it’s largely the same as prior years.

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.

I thought the upgrade to metal/glass + new design looked great which I included in "hardware".

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

Ah, fair. I usually don’t include form factor too much because it’s so subjective.

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.

You see «negative comments» where we see «constructive criticism» and «helpful reviews». It's not a «happy news» site.

> I just hate modern phones, all of them.

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?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41242944

A release of the 9th model of a phone is not "change", the change lies in the past for devices like this. I believe general statements like this increases the cynicism of those that don't really feel invested in the soft- and hardware landscape of current-day smartphones and there is a lot of reason for that in my opinion.

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?

> The Pixel 9 might be a good device comparatively, but I would be more surprised if people were too hyped about it.

Would you be surprised if a post about the new iPhone would look like this looks here?

Point taken, I would be surprised since the hype for Apple is indeed quite disproportional.

People who have never held the phone are not giving "reviews". They're trotting out pet peeves.

> Top tech reviewers e.g. MKBHD

„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.

you're in the minority, I consider myself well educated in tech and a critical person, and MKBHD videos align with my values.

GenAi is seen by some people as a very negative thing.

Maybe people resent losing their jobs to machines?

No, it's just boring and uninspiring.

Or people resent the major privacy issues, inconsistent UX, and deprioritization of what they see as needed features, all to add a few hugely hyped but minimally useful AI features.

My biggest worry is that everyone complaining about hamburger menus will soon be wishing they could use a hamburger menu instead of being forced into chatting with an AI for menu settings.

What qualifies someone as a “top tech reviewer”? It’s a phone for gods sake and some random YouTubers opinion isn’t anymore valid than a random Hackernews commentators opinion.

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.

Agree with you re: think for yourselves.

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

Joe Rogan has a lot more subscribers and listeners than this guy, does it mean I should listen to his opinions?

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.

I think this is a fair take. The parent comment shouldn't have added subscriber count as one the qualifications. But for MKBHD's qualification, simply use point number 2.

Whatever I watch==top tech reviewer, apparently.

> any other ideas?

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.

Yeah, exactly. Phones aren't going in a positive direction at all. What I want is a phone with excellent battery life, a great OLED screen, a great camera, plenty of local storage (and expandable with a microSD card), durable/rugged, and fast enough to feel snappy and not laggy. I don't want AI bullshit, stupid features that tie me to cloud services and help advertisers build profiles of me, can't-delete bloatware, stupid features that spy on me, etc. I also don't want to buy a brand-new $1000 phone every year or two when there's nothing wrong with the old one.

You're describing an iPhone. I've switched from Android to SE2 in 2020, and bought 15 last year on release day to get the type-c charging. I feel it ticks most of your boxes:

* 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.

No headphone jack, no expandable (microsd) storage.

Not listed on software, is the ability to install whatever I want, not what Apple decides I'm allowed to install.

It's not an option: I can't block ads on it with uBO and Firefox. Also, I can't connect it by USB to my Linux machine and download photos. You also forgot about the expandable storage. The lack of headphone jack also sucks.

>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.

I share this sentiment which is why I'll be passively-aggressively going for a Sony Xperia 5 VI once it launches.

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.

The snappiness (yet) and camera are not great, but Librem 5 might be relevant here. Headphone jack, ability to run anything without tracking (FLOSS GNU/Linux by default), microSD, smart card. If you install SXMo, it will be snappy, too.

Looks great except for the eMMC. That's the part that died on both of my previous phones (Galaxy NoteⅡ and Galaxy NoteⅣ; currently still using an iPhone 7 that's on its third battery and literally falling apart) so I am very wary of getting another phone with that type of non-replaceable storage. I know that people have replaced them but it takes some awfully fiddly soldering just to end up with another part that Will Die At Some Point.

True, however, in the worst case, you can boot the phone via USB (uuu).

I'm very bullish on genAI, and I bought the new phone, but I really don't think the features shown are that exciting yet. It feels like they're laying the groundwork for more powerful AI to be ready to do things in your phone apps, and the current features are just paving the way.

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.

What’s killer about that? I order food once every 2 weeks, I like to browse the different options myself. Almost all the ‘killer’ AI functions are already here: smarter photo retouching, auto-replies, searching, and text summaries with some reading comprehension to ask questions. These things I use daily.

The only thing I’d like is a better integration with ALL actions possible on my phone.

I really hope the killer-app of genAI is not takeaway food prediction, nor porn.

> 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.

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-...

I think Amazon prefers "Subscribe and Save" over Dash. (I agree with you that AI for ordering is not a killer-app.)

Being able to order food is only useful for those who live in an area where there is food to order. Here in rural Michigan I can count on one hand the number of times I've ordered delivery in the past 3 years.

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.

> I'm very bullish on genAI, and I bought the new phone, but I really don't think the features shown are that exciting yet. It feels like they're laying the groundwork for more powerful AI to be ready to do things in your phone apps, and the current features are just paving the way

That was Assistant right up until they killed it for a new thing.

This killer app of yours can be stealthily enshittified, you aren't privy to its decision-making process.

> The killer-app 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.

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.

HN has relatively high Graphene OS proportion, and those who use it are those who likely comment here. From Graphene OS user perspective, this does not – on the surface – add much new value. Thus negativity. Other factors ALSO.

It's also roughly a ~month before next iPhone, which is significant. I doubt many people will switch, but getting ahead of hype cycle is probably valuable. Or maybe Apple will see what from Google marketing has not landed and adjust decks accordingly.

the only places where MKBHD is a "Top tech reviewer" is yt subscriber ranking and corporate payrolls

It'll be interesting when (and only when) it can run GrapheneOS and other open source alternatives.

I Use Hacker News for technical input.

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.

> They only mildly upvote technology that helps their extremely privileged life.

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.

Portray

You don't have to be swimming in VC money to be an elitist.

I don't know about the second part, but I fully agree with you on the first part.

Some days HN feels like an echo chamber, where thinking outside the box is heavily downvoted.

> Metaverse

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.

Thanks for proving my point of not looking Two iterations down the line

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You have no crystal ball. You have no high ground nor do you have privileged knowledge to back what you're saying.

You are personally invested in those technologies being game changers. It couldn't be more clear given your aggressive, substance-less posts.

>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.

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.

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