"Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and Pixel 9 Pro XL will receive updates for 7 years from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the US. See g.co/pixel/updates for more information."
In June 2025 new EU regulation will come into effect, mandating at least 5 years of OS updates, starting when the model is *removed from the market* aka the last unit is sold.
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.
> Note that Apple and Google made a big deal about how they are extending their upgrade timelines, without mentioning that they actually have to
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.
I mostly agree, but partially because I can't tell (even though I'm paying $20/month) what tier of Gemini I am getting. I know most people won't care, but because they won't tell me, I will assume I'm getting Gemini Flash from 6 months ago, and I'm not paying $20/month for that. I'm sure if they were honest about the model people wouldn't pay for it.
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.
There's a vanilla 2TB plan for $10/month, the plan with 2TB and Gemini is $20/month. You could say that Gemini is $10/month then, but if you don't actually need 2TB or the other benefits then you're effectively paying $20/month because you can't unbundle Gemini from everything else.
Wait, where's this $10/month plan? I don't see it. I see it at https://one.google.com/about, but I can't actually choose that.
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.
I have Gemini Advanced but I can't tell which model it is, yeah. Same problem. Whatever it is, it's useless. GPT-2 level. Can't do anything reasonable.
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.
Yeah, in practice, for the tasks I set it. High hallucination rate. Low context window. Frequently refuses to act and suggests Googling. If the other guys didn't exist, it could be useful, but as it stands it's as useful as GPT-2 because neither of them hit the threshold of usefulness.
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.
The output from an LLM is like the path a marble takes across a surface shaped by its training data and answers to “why” questions just continue the marble’s path. You may get good sounding answers to your why questions but they are just good sounding answers and not the real reasons because LLM’s lack the ability to introspect their own thinking. Note: Humans do not have this ability either unless using formal step by step reasoning.
It doesn't actually work. I pasted in a House Resolution and asked it a question and it immediately spazzed and asked me to Google. I used Claude and it just worked. That's the thing about Gemini: it has a lot of stats but it doesn't work. With Claude I could then ask it the section and look at the actual text. With Gemini it just doesn't do it at all.
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.
In my experience, the latest experimental model is a bit better than the latest Claude/ChatGPT at creativity, but a little worse at general reasoning. They're still mostly comparable and certainly of the same generation.
Where it truly stands out is the 2M context window. That's game-changing for things like analyzing publications and books.
I pay for Gemini Advanced and it's much better than GPT-2, I think. I often search the same thing between Gemini and GPT-4 and it's a toss up which is better (they each get questions right when the other gets it wrong, sometimes).
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.
Bottom left. Settings > Manage Subscription. It turns out I have it included till the end of the year because of the 5TB Google One sub https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41237943
In the Google Pixel 2024 Keynote, one of the presenters, Dave Citron, had to try three times to get Gemini to perform the preapproved, practiced demonstration task - 33.3% success rate for something that Google KNOWS will work.
At https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=4119 in the Google Pixel 2024 keynote, the generative AI in Magic Editor still produces wacky objects - a hot air balloon that looks deflated?! The gen AI did produce two decent-looking hot air balloons.
Most of the demo fails they had during today's keynote felt more like beta supporting software and bad network kinds of failures. The only failure I saw that felt more like a generative AI-level failure was one of the hot air balloon image gens they tried which generated a circle of garbage in the sky; which was one variation presented among five or six which the AI spat out in seconds.
at this stage, I'd be happy with google assistant "only" understanding what I'd like to play on youtube (+music) while driving. Far-fetched dream would be to understand streets I'd like to navigate to via google maps (not US, not english). Barrier is so low compared to rest.
UX-wise, I'm not sure why everyone is so keen on voice commands for AI.
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.
Phone with scuba glasses and the woke AI. In fact it looks like Bender from Futurama, only with a nondescript personality. Thanx but no. No need for an AI to lecture me or avoid questions because it thinks it might remotely offend a hypothetic alien civilization.
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.
Some VP of AI wants to become an SVP? And some marketing director on phones wants a "SAVE $250" sticker on all the new phones and is happy to play along?
Nah, it just looks ugly and too sterile. Nothing brave, just another double palm sized phone. A girl who tries very hard to look cool, but the bridge on her head just ruins the overall looks.
Maybe ask LG to make a cool looking phone. They have created a lot of brave designs.
The only thing that would make a new phone interesting is Linux support.
Otherwise email works, the web works, mms works, and the camera, screen, and RAM, on phones ten years ago was already way more than you need.
The phone specific software barely justifies maintaining a phone (and doesn't for me so I don't even own a modern smartphone.) There's certainly nothing to justify upgrading it.
Still using my pixel 4a. I refuse to discontinue a perfectly good phone just because the manufacturer decides it's not supported anymore. Hopefully the EU does something about planned obsolesce one day.
I don't do it "to stick it" to anyone. I am just not willing to spend 500$+ since my current hardware is perfectly fine and does what I want. Saving money and avoiding unnecessary e-waste is more important to me.
I don't have to do this on my laptop. I have 10 and 15 year old laptops that I can run the latest version of Linux straight from kernel.org on for free.
The Android running on your phone is not FOSS. If someone wants to write free software that runs on your phone they totally can (and do, check out Graphene).
To an extend yes but it's unnecessarily hard to do so. If we were at a point where is was as easy to develop foss OS/Software for mobile devices I wouldn't complain. Sadly the proprietary nature of mobile phones (mostly drivers) doesn't allow that.
> 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.
That's definitely a good step but sadly compared to PCs still the stone ages. I want to use my phone with the OS I choose. Sadly the proprietary driver BLOBs make that unnecessarily hard or sometimes impossible.
Picture taking and video recording have gotten unbelievably better over the past decade. They were not remotely sufficient for many use cases ten years ago and even now there's still plenty of room left for improvement.
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.
Call summary is such a good feature. How many times has your wife snapped her fingers for you to jot something down when she's on the phone with the pediatrician? you go crazy looking for a pen or something
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.
None of the post involved a lack of clear lines of communication. Sometimes someone on a call could use help making a note and it can be tricky to find pen and paper. Communicating better with your spouse won’t make the kids put the kitchen pen back where it goes or make it easier to both listen and hunt for things at the same time.
You don't snap at waiters, you don't snap at your spouse or partner. If you think that's "projecting" you have bigger issues and internal-unresolved-trauma my friend. I think you need to follow your own advice here: Check yourself immediately.
Spouses and partners treat each other with respect, and no that doesn't involve snapping.
Seems like a pretty common gesture when you are on the phone, someone is talking to you on the other end, and you want to get another person's attention in the room who is not looking at you. You are reading way too much into it.
It was Pixel 6 that made a big jump in quality. From 8 MP in Pixel 5 to 50 MP in Pixel 6. They also added ultrawide and telephoto on Pro. They have a big jump in sensor size to larger than most compacts. The Pixel 8 has even big sensor. The big sensor is the reason for the camera hump on the back.
They said they've rewritten the HDR+ image processing pipeline from scratch for the first time in their live event. Not sure about the Pixel 9 hardware... I think the Pixel 8 was the first new sensor in a while though.
It would be nice to be able to run llama.cpp on my phone but if I had the choice between that and a root shell and c compiler I'd definitely take the shell.
Heh I guess that's a good point. All I have is a ten year old iPhone just to run Cisco DUO for work and there seems to be no way to run llama.cpp on it even with a very small model.
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.
Do you think the inclusion of AI is some new departure? Google has declared itself as "AI-first" for the past 8 years[1]. There's been neural cores included in every Pixel since the Pixel 4.
I think the bulges are because everyone’s using a case anyway, so they may as well bump out. Unless someone’s doing the “I care so little about protecting several hundred dollars that I use an expensive phone without a case” thing.
I never use cases and I haven't had a phone break from physical damage in over a decade. Phones these days are pretty dang durable. I really don't want a giant brick in my pocket.
I never used a case in my life, owned like 6 phones since my first Galaxy back in 2012. Much rather deal with a few scratches than touching some cheap case instead of the premium metal/glass.
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.
I have dry hands and can't hold my Galaxy S23+ with glass back at all. It slips out of my hand all the time. No way I can use without a case. It'd break on the first day.
I used to say the same thing, then one day I tripped and shattered my phone. It was nothing I did that caused it. Just a small bit of uneven pavement was enough to ruin the whole device.
I just pay the extra $30 or whatever for accident protection. That's about the same price as a case and accomplishes the same goal. I think of it as a zero-ounce case.
Where do you get $30 accident protection for the lifetime of a phone? I've looked into Apple Care for this in the past, and it was about 10 times that for two years, with a deductible for broken screens.
I've never used a case and never will. It's not that hard to not drop your phone, and unless you get a heavy duty case (like an OtterBox) they aren't adding much protection anyways. It's not worth the added expense, ugly look, and crappy plastic texture.
My wallet case is indispensable (to me). In other words, I'd rather use the "space" of the camera's bump-out for my own purposes (ID and credit card) than a worse camera or even more-er battery life (for some time now "more than a day" is indistinguishable to me from "more than a day and a half") or some other gadget. Probably. Um, maybe put some more gadgets on the phone and I'll get back to you on that one...
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.
> I wish there were more options for people who don’t care that much about the camera in their smartphone.
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.
Unfortunately those come with extremely weak hw. I got one of those phones (there are no high end, small, 3.5, rootable phones). I struggle to use background apps.
> Either way people are throwing a case on to make the back straight again.
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).
I love the camera bump on the Pixel 6. I made a leather belt pouch¹ for it for use on trips and hiking, and the camera bump sits neatly on the edge of the front of the pouch (the back part curves around as a flap over the top). It gives my fingers exactly the right grip to grab it and get a solid grip on the whole device as I lift it out of its pouch.
Indeed, at this point my workflow is pretty mature. The camera bump ends up unnoticeable to me because I'll throw it into a Spigen case anyway. Seems like a lot of people are doing that.
No one wants that weight. A thicker battery puts the phone out of comfort for everyone. A thicker camera bump puts the phone out of comfort for only a few.
I really liked the "visor" style of camera bump since the Pixel 6. I like symmetry so the square corner bumps always bothered me, plus it didn't give it a corner wobble when sitting on a table. I wish they would have gone full width on the new Fold :/
Mobile phones are a mature technology. There aren't any opportunities to differentiate designs. For cars, they all look the same and differentiate brands with headlights and grills, phones only have the camera bump to differentiate brands.
My main criticism with the camera bump on the Pixel 9 are the sharp edges. It makes it difficult to slip into pants without catching, and also collects dust.
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.
Which is why I don't trust GrapheneOS. They seemingly push Google on the privacy and security crowd while ignoring truly freedom-respecting devices like GNU/Linux phones, which would be supported forever.
For GrapheneOS, trust in Google is ultimate. If you don't trust it, you're out of luck. My threat model is different.
I'm glad they finally went this route. I can't be the only one who usually wants the specs of the Pro but always opts for the smallest phone (p1, p3, p5 & now p8).
Pretty much in the same boat here. The P9P is around the same size as my P8 (0.1" shifted from depth to width), which is great news. I would pay more for a better camera, but I care more about compactness than camera quality.
As likely anyone on HN is to hold: I have a bunch of old phones.
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.?
> 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.
I long for the days of being able to reach all four corners of my phone screen with one thumb. I had an iPhone 12 mini which was a wonderful respite, but apparently us small phone fans are a small enough demographic to not warrant serving.
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.
iPhone has this accessibility feature ‘Reachability’ that can help. On the SE you double tap (but not click) the home button, I think on others you swipe up and down quickly from the bottom centre.
Reachability is useless and no substitute for a smaller screen. It just slows you down, obscures the bottom half of the screen and makes a lot of gestures impossible.
I believe that sort of feature got to Android first, and they're still there, but in reality they are no substitute for actual reach. They add cognitive and time overhead to the gesture.
Small display sizes used to mean "cheap phone" for so long that people still won't pay more money for a smaller device.
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'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).
For the majority of the population, their phone is their main computing platform. It makes sense beyond "vanity" that people want the display on their main computing platform to be large.
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.
I had the opposite experience. I've been using a larger phone for the last 3 years and to be honest, I'm ready to go back. Too many times I had to look up something in a hurry, one-handed, and just couldn't. It also fell off my hands way too often, and the choice between a sturdy one (that makes it even more unmanageably big) and a flimsy one (that will only protect from light scratches) is just depressing.
Yup. I had a Pixel 4a, which is 5.8". I thought it was a great phone and still perfectly usable, but it stopped getting security updates. I'm now using a Pixel 8. It's fine, but too large and no headphone jack. I'd buy a new Pixel tomorrow if they released a smaller one.
Yes, this too! The in-screen fingerprint reader on the Pixel 8 is distinctly not as good as the dedicated one on the Pixel 4a. I'm surprised they shipped it.
> the Zenfone 10 is also 5.8” and is adored for it
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.
There's usually a #a model like that around April/May. I think they stagger the release as many(most) would probably just opt for the a model most of the time.
I have a zFlip 5 and love it. I was pretty hesitant about switching (Pixel user before) but I like the smaller size in my pocket when folded and there seems to be a psychological effect of closing it when I'm done that results in my mindlessly fiddling with it less.
My dog sleeps most of the day. I get about 10% of the amount of sleep that he does. I'm fine disturbing his sleep once in a while, especially when he's the one that wakes me up early almost every day. I love my dog, but his comfort comes second to mine.
The Pixel and iPhone are really seeming homogenous with each other. The marketing seems similar, typefaces used, the naming conventions are close to the same, the airbrushed image generators, the photos app marketing that's turning your personal photos into a photoshoot with editing capabilities.
On top of that you've got the same earbuds form factor, smart watches, etc.
I wish we had more than two phone giants. This is aggravating.
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.
As far as the phone hardware goes, Google isn't much of a giant worldwide: Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei and probably a few more outsell Google. The pixel is downright rare outside of the US.
They don't even sell Pixels in most places, the Pixel 9 series is launching in 32 countries, except the Pixel 9 Fold which is only launching in 19. Believe it or not that's a significant improvement from the Pixel 8 series and first Fold which debuted in only 20 and 4 countries respectively.
This might be misleading. I've got a Japanese model Pixel -- except that I bought it in Chile, from a Chilean supplier. (Had to root and tinker with some hidden partition just to disable the camera shutter sound.)
Also Samsung has been innovating with hardware. I'm not the hugest fan of their flavor of Android but I absolutely love my flip phone and would not consider switching back to iOS or pure Android unless Apple or Google were to make a flip.
Samsung + Universal Android Debloater rocks. You get great hardware and you can remove as much or as little of the Samsung\Google nonsense as you like.
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.
Tangentially related, but I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by how well Airpods (at least the original ones) worked with Android phones.
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).
Oddly enough there is an official Android app for Beats headphones, which use the exact same Apple SoCs as AirPods ever since Apple acquired them. They surely could extend that app to work with AirPods too but they've seemingly made the arbitrary decision not to.
Equalizer config, shortcut button config, and firmware updates mainly. There isn't a standard way to do those on Android without a manufacturer-specific app. As for why you might want to update the firmware on your headphones, well...
Why would you want an app for bluetooth headphones.
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.
That's not exactly true, unfortunately; because Apple's product line-up would be too easy to understand otherwise.
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.
I would rather have a better phone than more options, apple's 800-pound gorilla-ness gets me a phone with:
- 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
There's that old saying that a benevolent dictatorship is the best and most effective form of government, right up until the dictator dies.
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.
if the antitrust actions actually harm the consumer, then the government can take action
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
> 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.
Apple's monopoly margins suck the air out of the innovation manifold, so who actually knows? Maybe we would have cured cancer already or something without the Apple Tax. All that money goes to a whole lot of incrementalism rather than bold new ideas and diversity.
Would there be competition though? Take the mobile app stores: consumers are going to demand that prices are consistent across storefronts (or preferentially buy from the cheapest option), so that market will inevitably race to the bottom. Is that better for consumers than Apple and Google operating them and demanding a high enough margin to support moderation and review? Or hardware; if Apple was mandated to support Android on their devices, who do you think is going to pay for the additional testing burden? Apple's certainly not going to take it out of their profit margin, they're going to forward the expense down the line, as will everyone else.
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.
>Is that better for consumers than Apple and Google operating them and demanding a high enough margin to support moderation and review?
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.
They certainly improve the situation for shareholders. I am banned from the Google app store for making an app which was labeled with the service it interacted with, which was trademarked. (Example: If you make a Reddit app, Google won't let you put "Reddit" anywhere in the label without Reddit's legal permission, making it impossible for anyone to discover your app through search, which is the way people discover apps)
> Unfortunately due to their market dominance and muddling of (hardware, OS, software distribution, and platform ecosystem), it's almost impossible to disentangle.
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.
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.
Yes, but then all apps would be poorly-written webapps in a single-threaded language with a bunch of performance kludges bolted on (like WASM, which STILL inexplicably can't directly edit the DOM).
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."
The video game industry has already solved this problem with engines like Unreal that can compile to PC, Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo. There's certainly no reason why you shouldn't be able to just compile the same phone app from the same IDE to both iOS and Android. I believe the architectures are basically the same but with different operating systems.
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.
If AGI ever becomes a thing and you can simply spend electricity to write the new operating system, that would be pretty insane, and it seems like it would disrupt duopoly.
It isn't just the barrier to entry, Microsoft famously paid the cost to enter the smartphone market.
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.
>> On top of that you've got the same earbuds form factor, smart watches, etc.
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.
Thanks for highlighting! If anything, based on compare page, it seems that camera setup is closer to previous gen Fold rather than Pixel 9. Barely any changes.
AI phone… AI laptop… AI car… AI toothbrush… yeah nobody’s asking for this shit. It’s just uninventive, unimaginative marketing rubbish. Real innovation doesn’t need to go looking for use cases.
“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.
Never in my life I will buy any Google product. They so easily kill products used by millions without second thought. This destroyed my trust in the company, they just don’t care enough, it’s all about profit and their monopolistic position.
I hope other smaller companies with better ethics will emerge
Well, from the phone viewpoint people buy them to get a less garbage-filled android experience. Most consumers don't really expect phones to last forever... because they seldom do.
My comment is still valid for software killed in the mobile space. I don’t know what other people feel but I have a strange feeling that, because they have so much money, anything other than search is built temporarily. All their software, their apps and services aren’t build to last. It’s built for now and later they will abandon to start from scratch. It’s easier to start over from scratch with a new team than to make what’s been built last.
That comes from a shortsighted vision that I dislike.
Ridiculous how a company the size of Google can only support such a small part of the world. What's even stranger is that they don't support most of the strong android markets.
So, if I understand correctly this “built-in” Gemini is 100% just calling to the Gemini cloud backend?
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 fail to see what is much better about a system where you don't know when it sends your data to the cloud or not (and is likely to do it 90% of the time).
No, it's not all just calling to a cloud backend. The newer Pixels have hardware to do some stuff on-board, including non-trivial stuff like realtime audio cleanup (that works amazingly btw). STT and TTS are done mostly locally as well (with some cloud processing used when network connection is available), but can work all offline. The Gemini Advanced stuff is going to the cloud though.
Yeah I was primarily speaking about the LLM part, as apple is doing that (smaller LLM models will handle simpler tasks on device and hand over to cloud when necessary + apps will be able to efficiently deliver fine-tuned LORAs for the already-available local models).
I do remember a lot of other typical "AI" stuff being done locally and well when I had a pixel a couple years ago.
I love Google Pixel phones because of Google Fi for traveling; unfortunately Google Fi is facing major service downgrades/outages for travelers (including me) who go on 3+ month trips out of the US. Google Support tells me the Google Pixel 9 Pro has the same limitation. For comparison my iPhone works fine on Verizon.
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.
Google Support tells me it's a Google company policy, not a U.S. policy. And for comparison, Verizon works fine, just by paying a bit extra for extended roaming.
people in the rick steves link say you just tell tmo when you get back in the us to reset it/turn it on for the us. This should not have unclear limits of course.
The issue with having an explicit threshold is super heavy users will use right up to the limit and recommend it to other super heavy users. This MVNO then gets a disproportionate percentage of unprofitable roaming costs. The solution is for them to pass through the costs so there’s no dancing around the costs by suddenly cutting you off.
It's just an anecdote, but from my one-time experience the 90 days restriction isn't a hard restriction with TMobile. Service worked fine for 5 months for a family member abroad (in a single country) with no issues or messaging from TMobile about an overstay - although this was on a family plan with other phones in the US for the majority of that time.
I know it's not a good solution, but I wonder if you can send the Google Fi eSim to a friend back in the states to "reset" the 90 day counter then have the friend send you back the eSim.
Interesting. I likely won't be in a position to take a 3+ month trip for a long time. But I just came back from spending 1 month in China and Google Fi worked flawlessly in China and Taiwan. I had better 5G coverage in Shanghai than in the US.
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!
Fraud? One needs a Google account to use FI so they for sure know who you are to any degree necessary
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
I used to be a Google Fi fan (early adopter at that) for European trips ... but nowadays, with multi-ESims, it is trivial to get a local SIM card and use that.
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.
Definitely applies to many Asian countries as well.
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.
Note that's not always the case: eSIMs I got from Nomad and Airalo in Europe/UK last year were routing things via Hong Kong, so things like DDG and google search using the SIM geolocated me to Hong Kong all the time, and the latency was noticeably bad.
If you read the reviews of some of the eSIMs there are quite a few mentions of this happening.
Definitely – you need to be aware of that when picking one. Some vendors are pretty transparent about their "IP location" these days, fortunately.
Some, like Truphone, even have multiple gateways that are dynamically selected for lower latency, which is very neat (but they're generally more expensive).
I also love Google Fi, but FYI there are substantially cheaper phones that are still compatible. For example they will sell you this one for $60 right now: https://fi.google.com/about/phones/moto-g-5g-2024. No idea if that's a good phone, just saying that if you're mostly in it for the international coverage there's no reason to pay $800+ for a brand new Pixel when you need a new phone.
It sucks about google fi after 90d, but Verizon is $10/d or $100 per billing cycle, no? It was easy and cheap for me to get a local sim (in Barcelona and London, at least). Does verizon still lock your phone? I had a bad experience traveling with Verizon to Munich. It was one of a handful of reasons I dropped them as my carrier. This was many years ago though.
Sony flagships fit these requirements (micro SD card slot, swim, flagship chip, esim, etc) but they unfortunately don't feel as polished in the software end. Not to mention Sony phones being very difficult to find.
I'm looking at either a 5a, or one of the Samsung budget phones since I don't care about the flagship chip. But I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last time getting a new phone where headphone jack is an option at all.
I dunno about your carry situation, but when I first lost access to the headphone jack on a Pixel I tried that USB-C stunt and the phone's edge came right to the top of my pocket causing the adapter to fulcrum back and forth, sometimes dislodging the plug and 100% worrying me that it's going to break my USB-C port
Yeah I can definitely see that being a problem depending on your particular phone + headphones + pants situation. For me, I use the smallest phone I can buy (iPhone 13 Mini, currently) so it all tucks into my pocket, for the most part. The adapters still regularly break after ~6 months anyway.
I personally found Best Buy's Insignia brand to be the most reliable one. I usually get 6-12 months of heavy use out of those, while Apple's usually broke after only a month or two.
Is it approved for forehead use now? My recollection is it was a gimmicky thing because they could not add human temperature functionality without some kind of regulatory thing (FDA?).
I was waiting for this to figure out if i want this phone. The answer is, I'm not willing to pay $1000 CAD.
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.
My real criterias would be way more, but if I put all of them together, the answer is there is nothing.
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.
The upcoming 9a is where Google has to make some tough business decisions whether it's going to have all the AI features of the main line, at half the price.
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.
I got a _spectacular_ deal on the pixel 8 when I called to complain on my phone plan, otherwise I would have still used a Motorola.
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.
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".
I’m still bitter about my last Pixel with the stuttering display (no real-time thread for the graphics), the settings all over the place (I counted 4 different addresses for my home, and 1 was deeply hidden in their assistant), and the debug strings in UPPER_SNAKE_CASE in the Google apps, which is unacceptable for a device that is sold to everyone.
My Pixel 5 is an amazing device, but it's slowly falling apart, software-wise. Bugs bugs and more bugs! It's also no longer getting software updates, and its successors have a laundry list of issues.
The alternative is Samsung, the company that doesn't understand privacy nor consent, or Apple, whose phones lack uBlock support.
Hold strong! I replaced my 5's battery about a year ago after it started bloating. I usually draw the line though when security updates cease. Staying with the Pixel line is easier but I'm trying to divest from Google in general and moving to a different phone would be a big step.
Kagi’s Orion browser for iOS actually supports ublock and other browser extensions.
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.
If uBlock is the only thing holding you back from an iPhone, you can use the Orion browser, which can install many Chrome extensions (including uBlock Origin)
how do we know the orion browser isn't somehow spying on you? I want an opensource browser, that's where I do so much financial and other transactions (as well as like bank company apps).
That browser should be something like a fully opensource de-googled chrome browser, but it doesn't seem to exist on mobile.
I had similar issues with my pixel 3a about three years ago, and I switched over to Pixel Experience. This got me up to Android 13, and everything just works great to this day. I'm pretty sure there won't be an Android 14+ Pixel Experience build for this device, though.
You can install all kinds of extensions on Firefox on Android my friend. Firefox for Android is one of the killer apps now IMHO. Termux, Tasker, KDE Connect, and NetGuard are some others.
FWIW, I use a Pixel 8 with an aramid fiber case (Thinborne), and it's pretty much a strict upgrade over the Pixel 5. Only real downside is that it's ~1.6mm thicker than a caseless Pixel 5, but on the other hand the added protection of a case comes in handy.
Does the case make the candybar-style camera feel less bulky? I'm in the market for a new phone, and the Pixel form factor is really nice, but the protruding camera makes me hesitate.
I personally don't mind the candybar-style camera and think it looks kind of cool. It's definitely not something I actively notice or think about while using the device, and I like that when I set the phone down the entire screen is tilted slightly upwards rather than just one corner.
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.
I read "debug strings" as something more hidden than "user-facing error messages", but perhaps you're right. Of course, a snake case error code is more searchable, so objectively more useful in at least one sense.
I'm still salty about my Pixel 8 dying out because of the "green screen" bug (basically, screen just progressively turns greener until it stops working). Very common according to reddit, and the ubreakitifixit guy acknowledged it's a common problem as well.
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.
It's still a running theme that their in-display fingerprint readers are uniquely terrible for many people, even 3 (now 4) generations after they started using them instead of rear-mounted capacitive sensors. I don't know why they struggle so much with that compared to every other manufacturer using exactly the same sensors from the same handful of suppliers.
I had some issues with this very early when I got mine, but I think this went away completely. I feel like this was a software issue, and is now fixed (well, at least part of it).
I don't think these anecdotes (yours or the guy above with the green screen issue) are useful.
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.
These anecdotes are useful to highlight the low quality of Google devices. Certainly case reports cannot replace defect rates and other meaningful statistics, but if manufacturers are deaf about the issues then it doesn't bode well for instance for security related issues.
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.
I held on to my Pixel 5a for as long as I could, primarily for that rear-mounted fingerprint reader. Such a wonderful implementation. Fast, accurate, and fingers just fell naturally into place when picking it up. I'm still dreaming that someday they'll return to that.
I had this exact issue on my Pixel 6 Pro! I thought it was done for but it seems to have recovered over the last few months and I don't see it anymore.
Most people, from a person on welfare to all celebrities and almost all CEO’s, including Elon Musk, use iPhones. The Pixel and Android in general is simply not cool like the iPhone. Google has been making their own phones for over 10 years now and they’ve barely made a dent. What’s Google’s goal here?
Their objective is simple, get the hardware in place, so they can force-feed Google Search, YouTube and Google Gemini.
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.
maybe use it to have a controlled product in the market to test Android?
I had one Google Pixel 8 and couldn't regret more. It broke (my mistake) so I'm already free of it.
Samsung, which uses Android, is the most popular phone brand in the world. Google doesn't need Pixel too be as sucessful as iPhone because Android dominates the iPhone and come pre installed with multiple Google products which is where the money is made for Google.
Remember when Google used to do live benchmarks showing it beat the iPhone (and even the iPad). Those were the days. Now Tensor is bottom of the pack for high-end phones.
There's a reason Apple is doing so way. The A and M chips are a huge reason for that.
So sure, benchmarks don't matter, but performance does, and Tensor is way behind.
I'm really not happy tbh. Android started out as a relatively open thriving open OS/ecosystem. It's since evolved into something much different due to Google and it's objectives.
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.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 379 ms ] thread[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.
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.
https://one.google.com/about/plans
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.
see https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=1692
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.
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.
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.
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/sunfish/
https://download.lineageos.org/devices/sunfish/builds
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.
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 :-)
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
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...
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.
For GrapheneOS, trust in Google is ultimate. If you don't trust it, you're out of luck. My threat model is different.
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.
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.
https://support.google.com/store/answer/2462844?hl=en_US
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 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.
I think the Moto X with the wood back was one of the coolest looking phones ever though.
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.
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.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
You know what they say about making up statistics...
*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.