There was another event page not long ago from google that was undone. E.g the FAQ page for this also looks a bit off. Not sure what is going on there.
Certainly a contrast to using the Apple Store yesterday during the M1 Pro/Max device launches. Was amazed that was able to stay up and responsive, 100% expect error screens during launches like this - though not normally from companies who have done so many launches.
Edit 1: Store back up now but still getting order errors...
Edit 2: An hour after launch, back to having store page errors...
I finally got it in my cart but I can't checkout (Error code: R013, or R008). Somehow the leather case is already "sold out" (not "out of stock") so I guess some people can check out :(
Had black Pixel 6 Pro 512GB unlocked in my cart for the past 50 minutes. Spent that time constantly trying to check out but received Error code R013. Now, I just got a message that my cart is EMPTY and it's sold out.
Edit: Product available every 10th refresh or so, but hangs on "trade in" screen. Bypassing trade-in and I now receive Error R008 when trying to check out.
Edit: Trade-in appears to be working again, but back to Error R013.
Edit: Neither Cart nor Checkout screen will load, website returns 500 Error. Not the best purchasing experience I've ever had. lol
Edit: Cart has been emptied again, and now Store website is returning 500 error. Oh, Google
I'm now seemingly at the very end of the order process, clicking the 'confirm purchase' button, the wheel turns, then nothing. Sometimes i have a popup with an obscure error code, sometimes not. It feels like doing a bitcoin transaction :P
Good luck, I am at the same spot and I doubt I am going to be able to get it to go through. The page on my phone is actually freezing up totally and the store won't load at all on my PC.
Have you ever owned one? It's quite nice actually to be able to rest your finger on the bump for stability when you're using the phone with one hand, and it lets you kind of easily prop the phone up on a wallet/notebook/whatever's around when you're reading something while eating.
On the contrary it's very practical, fits larger cameras and prevents the back of the phone from sliding flat against sharp grains scraping the back and camera glass.
It's ugly and annoying though but it's not there just for fun.
I don't like the trend either. My understanding is that camera lenses are just thicker than the phones. The phones could in turn be thicker and provide more battery life (to some extent Apple did that with the iPhone 13), but I guess "the market" just wants thin devices... and powerful cameras.
Well aside from the fact it serves to give you space for a better camera (I've heard Apple are working on some periscope style thing that'll negate the need for this) what Google are doing is smarter than Apple because by having it across the whole back you don't end up with the device being wobbly on a flat table.
>But realistically, even those don't matter because protective cases are effectively a standard part of any modern phone.
Then you buy a thin phone on paper and make it fat with a case, better if they would put more battery and less glue in. But as always designers/marketing complicate everyone life so they push their new idea: "Form over Function"
Yes, the symmetry is a huge win. I don't use a case with my phone, and the asymmetric bumps really mess up one of my primary use cases: I have the phone sitting on a desk or table reading the news.
I've been holding back on both Samsung and Apple's latest phones just because of the asymmetric bump. It is so annoying. Sticking with my old Note 8 for now even though it is out of support and receives no security updates.
I looked through the announcement and didn't see an answer to this question: does anyone know what the display technology is? LCD or AMOLED or...?
I assume the idea is that most cases will allow the phone to sit flush with the table, and most users use a case (no idea if that last part is actually true).
And honestly it will sit in a stable way, so it's probably not that big a deal in that sense. It getting caught on my pocket would probably be my biggest concern!
I don't know why Android OEMs keep thinking they can get away with controversial design choices and high prices as if they were Apple. (not sarcastic :P)
The thing I think sucks about this design decision is that I always like to have a phone case with a card sleeve on the back. Seems like the camera band makes such cases inconvenient or maybe even impossible to design.
Wow. The marketing team for this have been taking very detailed notes on Apples presentation style. Products aside, this is almost identical to Apple's launch yesterday.
Awkward people standing with shoulder width apart because the studio director told them so.
Let people stand the way they feel comfortable. Tim Cook yesterday appeared like his feet are glued to the ground in the process of squatting. Naturally people never stand with feet this far apart. But the trend continues and shitty directors at Apple don’t get it.
This type of production gets zero points from me. It’s just terrible.
As much as I love Android, the way Google introduces pixels is just sad, esp. when you think about the time and effort that Apple put into their event.
I agree, but think of it this way: Apple needs their devices to sell in order to not go broke. Google doesn't - Pixels sales are a blip on the accounting sheet.
They do indirectly increase value of the Android ecosystem by providing new features and benchmark for other manufacturers to copy, but it is not essential.
This is just how product announcements look these days. I want to say this was popularized by Apple but I don't have a source on that.
If you doubt that, here are some quotes from Apple's new product pages from yesterday:
'most powerful', 'scary fast', 'scary faster', 'best display ever', 'super fluid'
Not to mention the product names: 'pro' vs 'max', 'liquid retina', ...
No, because there's no definition of a "GPU core". Vendors just pick a random layer of their GPU and call it a core. Whether or not it makes any sense as being called a "core" or being comparable in any way isn't a goal of anyone's.
Really they aren't even comparable across a single vendor (the capabilities of a single "SP" on an Nvidia GPU has drastically shifted over the years - and not always in the "more capable" direction)
At best you can roughly compare GPUs from the same generation from the same family (eg, M1 Pro vs. M1 Max). But that's about it, and even that can be deceptive (most commonly in desktop GPUs where other differences can drastically alter scaling across differing "core" counts)
As others have said, core is not a well defined term at all in computer architecture.
Is a core something that has its own program counter? Does it need its own floating point unit to count as a core? What about cores that only do a few ops? Are the cores even all the same, or do they have access to the same resources? For example, a few older Nvidia GPUS have some portion of their cores that have only a single crossbar port, and so perform much worse.
The M1 gpu core could very well be equivalent or better than 16 tensor soc cores internally.
Does anyone knows about the state of the futuristic AI features from Google?
I recall a presentation about AI phone assistant that was ordering something on the phone and it was indistinguishable from a human, handling edge cases flawlessly. Are people using AI assistants to make them book places or order things on the phone?
I can definitively say the real-time language translation they demoed on the original Pixel Buds was complete vaporware (and the last time I bought a newly released Google product).
I have yet to get the AI assistant to book anything for me. The only related function I do use is the call screening piece, but that's hardly AI...
Not a fan of the design of the Pixel or iPhone. They both have these cold, sterile design that doesn't look like it was designed to be used and held by a human hand. It was designed to be looked at or for curated display in an Apple Store.
And what's with all the flat design, we need skeumorphism and warmth back in industrial and UI design.
I prefer the soap bar design which seems to have been forgotten. And no more glass backs please. I don't get the appeal of glass, they shatter so easily, finger print magnets and just add unnecessary weight.
If you're trying to build a look and feel which many other developers will follow then it has to be neutral in some way, something which can rely on minimal color + branding to build adequate distinction for the many companies who are to be in your ecosystem.
I agree. I had a Palm Pre and tried a Palm Pre 3 and they were truly delightful objects to hold. Things like the Unihertz Atom and TCL Palm phone still exist but occupy a miniscule niche.
Though ultimately I get why slate/phablet phones won out with their larger screens.
If they go plastic back, it looks and feels cheap. If they go metal, wireless charging breaks. I guess they could do alcantara or something. Tough spot to be in.
FWIW, the iPhone mini at least fits in my hand, so they get bonus points regardless of sharp edges. It does kind of stink needing a case to prevent it flying away.
I might just be a curmudgeon, but a lot of the newer tech products (iPhones being the exception) look really ugly to me. Pixel 6 and MacBooks being the most recent and serious offenders.
I think I’ve just accepted that we’re in a weird time for design and as long as the function is fine I’ll overlook the looks. Pixel 6 looks to me like it was deliberately designed to be so ugly people would talk about it. Same with new MacBook notch, which I wouldn’t mind if it looked exactly like the iPhone notch but larger. The curves are just off.
I guess this is karmic justice for me being so in love with Metro and flat UI ~8 years ago. I take comfort in knowing it’s cyclical and in a few years we’ll wrap around to Fisher-Price XP-style UI.
> And what's with all the flat design, we need skeumorphism and warmth back in industrial and UI design.
I’d be interested to know your general age group.
I have a theory that skeumorphism is a cross-generational design trend that serves a purpose to articulate a radical new technological paradigm in a language that makes sense to people that have never experienced it (i.e. A radio app that looks like an actual radio because that’s what everyone grew up using). I think once people are fully immersed and familiar with the tech, though, skeumorphism is limiting and ugly. We don’t need radio apps that look like radios anymore because everyone should now know how digital interfaces work. We can abstract away dials and knobs and make better use of the space for something that fits better with the constraints of a screen rather than the constraints of the physical world. This harkens back to the old discussions around the save icon and how there is an entire generation clicking an abstract symbol that holds no meaning to them while the generation prior comfortably recognized this symbol as “equivalent to archiving on my floppy disks.” Skeumorphism is really only intuitive to the first generation. Everyone that comes after just sees another (possibly ugly) abstraction that makes just as much sense as the next one. Screens don’t need metal dials, plush felts, and eye-popping gauges where a simple shadow would otherwise suffice.
I mean this with no disrespect. We all have our own sense of aesthetic. Just a thought I’ve been ruminating on. Personally I find neumorphism [1] to be a pleasing blend of the positives of both skeumorphism and flat design and I hope to see more of it going forward.
How do you differentiate that opinion from “skeumorphism came first so we all collectively got bored of it” and we like the current designs more simply because they’re newer?
In my 30s. I agree in that it is part nostalgia but I find flat featureless design to be very bland and uninteresting, what's more is that it's everywhere. now. Design is a fashion and so follows cycles, so i hope whats old will soon be new again.
I felt this way too. I recently (and reluctantly) switched to an iphone 13 pro max. I've dropped it unto asphalt from > 2m without a case twice now (not on purpose) and neither front nor back has shattered. Whatever apple did to that glass is working! Maybe everyone else just needs to do the same thing to their glass?
Indeed all tests show its super strong, but also screen scratches incredibly easy. First scratch basically in a week. 1 year later it’s totally scratched, but doesn’t really impact performance unless you look for them.
Agreed on the glass backs. Aluminium was way better. My Pixel 4 slides off just about anything, even surfaces that are just a few degrees tilted. Also, what is the point?
They're emphasizing how inclusive the camera is, was one of the segments on the video. Historically some smartphone cameras have done poorly with brightness / saturation of darker skin tones I believe.
Not just smartphone cameras. This issue goes back to the days of film. Color film was historically designed to capture white skin tones while darker skin tones were compressed in to "brown/black."
Coming from google PR machine it's obviously being strongly ideological. They're so full of their twisted vision of diversity that it turns into some kind of anti logic, as you noticed it's becoming the literal opposite of diversity
That's what I thought too. They're clearly over compensating for their history of algorithmic bias against blacks. And this attitude about diversity is unfortunately ruining universities and companies. I don't give a flying rat about people's color, as long as they don't use it as a tool to make others believe they're being treated differetnly.
[EDIT]
On https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705 it says, "Guaranteed Android version updates until at least: October 2024" and "Guaranteed security updates until at least: October 2026" for Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro
I am really liking the "Shareable moments" sidebar on the right. Such a cool idea and it's so smooth along with the right types of media (gif, png, video)
Maybe you just haven't met anyone with one or even noticed people who do own them. I've owned almost every pixel phone. In my opinion, they're some of the best Android phones available with great cameras and less crapware pre-installed.
What’s the differentiation against an iPhone? Presumably both phones are fast and take great photos and have an app ecosystem. But the iPhone is likely faster, probably has longer battery, and will last longer as a phone - I know people using Apple phones several generations old and still getting security updates. Apple also offers better privacy and their built in services like Maps are really good now.
If I were Google what I would do is make a more open phone. One with side loading, customization, repairability, and transparency as first class considerations. Otherwise it all comes off as a second class offering that’s just like anything else.
If it's cheaper and not apple, that's enough for me. I hate iOS and just need a cheap and reasonably reliable phone. the pixel 4a was great last year and when I need another new phone in 4-5 years, I'll go for whatever's not apple and cheap
Google violates more of our privacy than probably any other company, including Facebook. Their entire business is built off of sophisticated and pervasive Internet-wide tracking. Apple may have made a slight misstep but nothing on the same scale.
You can install uBlock Origin in Firefox, Project Fi, the most secure carrier, supports network switching, and you can install custom APKs (e.g. NewPipe). Also you avoid the iMessage attack surface (granted, you can disable iMessage but it will confuse the heck out of your social circle: "what, I thought you had an iPhone...").
lots of reasons to pick Android, but as far as what makes the Pixel 6 special, it got a huge camera upgrade from previous generations, likely making it the very best in class again as far as photos and video go.
Anyone knows if having some items in the basket while being unable to complete the order somehow guarantees a certain spot in the queue on store.google.com?
I want this phone badly, I want to be part of this inclusive camera experience, but due to systemic issues in the ordering process, I am still unable to checkout.
I have a feeling it does. It seems the basket is stored serverside. I tried logging in on different devices/sessions and basket was there despite not having any shared cookies. Fingers crossed.
interesting, don't really disagree with the comment about the form factor of pixel and iphone being cold/sterile (although it's been for so many years now kinda used to it and don't really notice) -- however, one thing that occurred to me on this launch is how much the software has a human feel/push from Google. The colours and theme shifting - giving your device, the UI, that personal feel which is really what makes it yours in the day-to-day (big customization/wallpaper/launcher fan here, always has been the Android advantage), and many human elements from inclusive photography to translation and things about people connecting - I appreciated that approach.
Not a huge fan of the Geordi La Forge band. Feels...bulky. In general I'm a little baffled at the Pixel's aesthetic vs the iPhone. Like take the corners on the Pixel. They're weirdly small and sharp, making the phone seem a lot more blocky. Or how the lime green doesn't go quite as well with the pastel turquoise back. Say what you will about Apple's products, they get a lot of these details right.
165 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 252 ms ] threadwhat a joke!
Overview: https://store.google.com/product/pixel_6_pro?hl=en-GB
Buy: https://store.google.com/config/pixel_6_pro?hl=en-GB
Weirdly I kept seeing an internal MOMA login page asking for an @google.com login. So clearly something is broken (I do not work at Google).
Edit: Past all of those problems... error R013 when trying to check out.
Edit: Oh well... I missed out. Sold out before I got past the R013 error.
Edit 1: Store back up now but still getting order errors...
Edit 2: An hour after launch, back to having store page errors...
Edit: Product available every 10th refresh or so, but hangs on "trade in" screen. Bypassing trade-in and I now receive Error R008 when trying to check out.
Edit: Trade-in appears to be working again, but back to Error R013.
Edit: Neither Cart nor Checkout screen will load, website returns 500 Error. Not the best purchasing experience I've ever had. lol
Edit: Cart has been emptied again, and now Store website is returning 500 error. Oh, Google
Who started this camera bump movement the past decade? it's very ugly... and not practical at all..
It keeps the back glass from getting scratched all over by turning it into a tripod.
It's ugly and annoying though but it's not there just for fun.
The bumps in one corner of the phone are the worst.
But realistically, even those don't matter because protective cases are effectively a standard part of any modern phone.
Then you buy a thin phone on paper and make it fat with a case, better if they would put more battery and less glue in. But as always designers/marketing complicate everyone life so they push their new idea: "Form over Function"
I would give up the bullshit sleek look for more battery and ruggedness in a heartbeat.
I've been holding back on both Samsung and Apple's latest phones just because of the asymmetric bump. It is so annoying. Sticking with my old Note 8 for now even though it is out of support and receives no security updates.
I looked through the announcement and didn't see an answer to this question: does anyone know what the display technology is? LCD or AMOLED or...?
The recent camera bevels are bad enough.
And honestly it will sit in a stable way, so it's probably not that big a deal in that sense. It getting caught on my pocket would probably be my biggest concern!
It was like every phone was "controversial". I miss those design days.
I'm not interested in sharing moments, I just want to see a picture of the damn thing without having to watch the stupid video.
Let people stand the way they feel comfortable. Tim Cook yesterday appeared like his feet are glued to the ground in the process of squatting. Naturally people never stand with feet this far apart. But the trend continues and shitty directors at Apple don’t get it.
This type of production gets zero points from me. It’s just terrible.
When I was at Google the cloud unit, there is always a vibe that "we are the best" without much substantiated from the products and etc.
At least they realize that something better is done for the phone department. Although I guess it's so much more obvious than cloud.
They do indirectly increase value of the Android ecosystem by providing new features and benchmark for other manufacturers to copy, but it is not essential.
'The best', 'our most powerful', 'The most advanced', 'Most hardware security', 'most light ever', 'most fluent', 'most layers of hardware'.
Seriously?
EDIT: This felt familiar, apparently I noticed something similar in the previous launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24641965
If you doubt that, here are some quotes from Apple's new product pages from yesterday: 'most powerful', 'scary fast', 'scary faster', 'best display ever', 'super fluid'
Not to mention the product names: 'pro' vs 'max', 'liquid retina', ...
Yet I don't see people complain about those.
Are cores the main thing to count? So that's better than an M1 Pro with a measly 16-cores?
/s
Really they aren't even comparable across a single vendor (the capabilities of a single "SP" on an Nvidia GPU has drastically shifted over the years - and not always in the "more capable" direction)
At best you can roughly compare GPUs from the same generation from the same family (eg, M1 Pro vs. M1 Max). But that's about it, and even that can be deceptive (most commonly in desktop GPUs where other differences can drastically alter scaling across differing "core" counts)
Is a core something that has its own program counter? Does it need its own floating point unit to count as a core? What about cores that only do a few ops? Are the cores even all the same, or do they have access to the same resources? For example, a few older Nvidia GPUS have some portion of their cores that have only a single crossbar port, and so perform much worse.
The M1 gpu core could very well be equivalent or better than 16 tensor soc cores internally.
I have yet to get the AI assistant to book anything for me. The only related function I do use is the call screening piece, but that's hardly AI...
Well, it's getting scarier by the second. For example, 'Magic Eraser' was a requested feature by Stalin.
You cannot believe any image on the internet anymore these days. This time it is getting much worse.
Fuchsia/Zircon is going to be optimised to run on Google Tensor chips most likely this decade.
I'll probably end up linking this comment in a few years.
Exactly. Wonder why they didn't do it in the first place and why the reason Fuchsia had to exist? I guess we'll never know. /s [0] [1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17568335
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27280567
And what's with all the flat design, we need skeumorphism and warmth back in industrial and UI design.
I prefer the soap bar design which seems to have been forgotten. And no more glass backs please. I don't get the appeal of glass, they shatter so easily, finger print magnets and just add unnecessary weight.
Though ultimately I get why slate/phablet phones won out with their larger screens.
FWIW, the iPhone mini at least fits in my hand, so they get bonus points regardless of sharp edges. It does kind of stink needing a case to prevent it flying away.
I might just be a curmudgeon, but a lot of the newer tech products (iPhones being the exception) look really ugly to me. Pixel 6 and MacBooks being the most recent and serious offenders.
I think I’ve just accepted that we’re in a weird time for design and as long as the function is fine I’ll overlook the looks. Pixel 6 looks to me like it was deliberately designed to be so ugly people would talk about it. Same with new MacBook notch, which I wouldn’t mind if it looked exactly like the iPhone notch but larger. The curves are just off.
I guess this is karmic justice for me being so in love with Metro and flat UI ~8 years ago. I take comfort in knowing it’s cyclical and in a few years we’ll wrap around to Fisher-Price XP-style UI.
I’d be interested to know your general age group.
I have a theory that skeumorphism is a cross-generational design trend that serves a purpose to articulate a radical new technological paradigm in a language that makes sense to people that have never experienced it (i.e. A radio app that looks like an actual radio because that’s what everyone grew up using). I think once people are fully immersed and familiar with the tech, though, skeumorphism is limiting and ugly. We don’t need radio apps that look like radios anymore because everyone should now know how digital interfaces work. We can abstract away dials and knobs and make better use of the space for something that fits better with the constraints of a screen rather than the constraints of the physical world. This harkens back to the old discussions around the save icon and how there is an entire generation clicking an abstract symbol that holds no meaning to them while the generation prior comfortably recognized this symbol as “equivalent to archiving on my floppy disks.” Skeumorphism is really only intuitive to the first generation. Everyone that comes after just sees another (possibly ugly) abstraction that makes just as much sense as the next one. Screens don’t need metal dials, plush felts, and eye-popping gauges where a simple shadow would otherwise suffice.
I mean this with no disrespect. We all have our own sense of aesthetic. Just a thought I’ve been ruminating on. Personally I find neumorphism [1] to be a pleasing blend of the positives of both skeumorphism and flat design and I hope to see more of it going forward.
[1] https://uxplanet.org/neomorphism-the-hottest-design-trend-in...
I felt this way too. I recently (and reluctantly) switched to an iphone 13 pro max. I've dropped it unto asphalt from > 2m without a case twice now (not on purpose) and neither front nor back has shattered. Whatever apple did to that glass is working! Maybe everyone else just needs to do the same thing to their glass?
Only weight is valid statement. Matte glass on iPhone is unbreakable.
"Glass is glass. And glass breaks"
Dropped it from pocket height and is completely shattered.
> the literal opposite of diversity
Were you worried we'd think it was the figurative opposite if you didn't say "literal?"
https://store.google.com/product/pixel_6_pro?hl=en-GB
[EDIT] On https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705 it says, "Guaranteed Android version updates until at least: October 2024" and "Guaranteed security updates until at least: October 2026" for Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro
New year, same shit again.
I wonder who are the target of these phones really are? Never seen anyone using a Pixel out in the wild
Feels like a pet project of Google to me. Like "we make Android so we better make some phones too otherwise people don't take us seriously" idk
Marques Brownlee on YouTube generally gives them good reviews. They're good for the ~vanilla android flavor vs manufacturer skins.
Maybe you just haven't met anyone with one or even noticed people who do own them. I've owned almost every pixel phone. In my opinion, they're some of the best Android phones available with great cameras and less crapware pre-installed.
If I were Google what I would do is make a more open phone. One with side loading, customization, repairability, and transparency as first class considerations. Otherwise it all comes off as a second class offering that’s just like anything else.
I want this phone badly, I want to be part of this inclusive camera experience, but due to systemic issues in the ordering process, I am still unable to checkout.