I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see all these Android phones with notches on the top, but no screen going all the way to the bottom. Apple explained they wanted an edge to edge screen, and that the notch was a compromise to achieve that goal. Now all the android devices are copying the compromise without trying to copy the goal.
For Pixel in particular it really feels like they've started copying the iPhone's hardware choices in some ways, for no real reason that I can discern. The notch, eliminating the headphone jack, etc. Then they even matched it on price (heck, isn't the Pixel actually more expensive than an iPhone if you match them on flash size?). I was a Google phone fan back in the days of the Nexus 4, but these latest attempts feel like Google trying to force their market position up rather than embracing their niche.
Yeah, Apple killed headphone jacks on the iPhone. But they also:
1) Gave you lightning headphones that work on all iPhones
2) Have 3rd party lightning headphones that all work on all iPhones
3) Gave you a lightning to 3.5mm headphone adapter that worked on all iPhones with whatever regular 3.5mm headphones you previously used with your phones
4) Made better bluetooth earbuds for moving away from wired headphones entirely
Android manufacturers have not matched that with USB-C audio. They just copied "Step 0) Remove the headphone jack."
The Pixel 3 will include USB C headphones and a dongle [1]. They have worked with Bose and other manufacturers on new bluetooth headphones that have additional functionality (switching between apps, talking with the assistant app). [2]
Yeah, they'll include a dongle that will break in less than a year with very casual use. Ask me how I know.
And there are _very_ few third-party options that work with the Pixel lineup -- not necessarily Google's fault, but early adopters of the no-3.5mm trend are being punished while the market catches up.
Also, I already have headphones. I don't want Google's USB C headphones. They wouldn't need to include any of this junk with the phone if they didn't remove the jack in the first place.
Yeah, they'll include a dongle that will break in less than a year with very casual use. Ask me how I know.
FWIW, this isn't true in my experience. I've kept mine in my pocket jangling around with my keys and use it frequently, and never had any issues.
Also, I already have headphones. I don't want Google's USB C headphones. They wouldn't need to include any of this junk with the phone if they didn't remove the jack in the first place.
If you already have headphones you like, it seems like this is no different between Pixel/iPhones.
I'm not a fan by any means of axing the 9mm jack, but to get around jackless electronics, I've been using a tiny (and cheap) bluetooth receiver so I can keep using my old headphones... it's been great, and no more annoying that charging wireless headphones.
EDIT: Sidenote, I don't know how much I'd trust cheap bluetooth adapters re: security... there is a non-zero chance it's spewing my conversations out, ripe for anyone w/ the proper equipment to listen in. <Tin Hat />
Funny - at least that one doesn't lie about apt-x support. Bluetooth audio sounds like crap to me, I'll be using wired headphones until the patents on non-crap Bluetooth audio expire, I guess.
Supply chain issues notwithstanding, I think you're pretty safe with a CSR bluetooth chip - they're in everything. Whether it's a clone or an original though, no idea.
What confuses me about Bluetooth audio is that I did the math a while ago and unless I got it wrong, reasonably modern Bluetooth should have the bandwidth to stream uncompressed digital audio... So why are we still stuck with this awful lossy compression?
I don't think you read the comment you responded to. Wlesieutre correctly points out that the Android marketplace has multiple incompatible standards of USB-C headphone dongle and USB-C earbuds, so they won't necessarily work with another USB-C Android device in your household.
You can say that's not Google's fault, and that it doesn't apply to Pixel devices specifically. But like it or not, Google chose to vomit their platform across dozens of manufacturers and thousands of devices. If they didn't want the kind of chaotic inconsistency exampled above, they should have gone with the iPhone/Pixel approach from the beginning.
I’m not just talking about one manufacturer on the Android side though, I’m talking about compatibility in the whole ecosystem. Google is including headphones that work with their phone, great, it would be embarrassing it they didn’t.
If the headphone cable breaks and you buy replacement USB-C earbuds from another manufacturer, will it work with Google’s phones? Or will Google’s earbuds work with your partner’s non-Pixel phone?
The point I want to make is that’s not a question you need to ask with Lightning or 3.5mm headphones. With USB-C you do.
Since the Pixel Phones implement an open standard for USB-C audio actually yes it should just work cross device. Interesting this isn't something that's actually true of lighting headphones. There's no way to use those on any other brand of phone.
I think what you're really saying here is that you like the fact that the IPhone has huge market share. That's a fair position to hold, but I personally vastly prefer open standards that can be implemented by anyone to closed ones.
Though reading the specifics there, it looks like Google's adapters in particular should work with any other phone because they can handle analog or digital signals. So they're doing well.
It's unfortunate because it's the "USB-C standard" not to do analog through the pins, but I think this a case where it's ok to break the standards. I'm not sure if there are any IEEE fines for that though.
As described in the above PCWorld link, the problem is that the standard is open ended and the ecosystem didn't all agree on how to deal with analog vs digital audio signals and devices. Some USB-C headphones or adapters will be happy with whatever. Others will not.
Since some phones can output an analog audio signal over the USB-C connector (and ship dongles without a DAC), while others output digital only and rely on the dongle including its own DAC, the argument absolutely does not go the other way. Any lightning headphones or lighting to 3.5mm dongle will work on any phone with a lightning port.
EDIT: Here's a separate complaint - if you want to charge an iPhone while you have headphones plugged in, there are at least splitter/dongle accessories for that. USB-C Android phone? Good luck.
>Android Police reported that Google quietly pulled the listing for the one adapter it had in its online store without ever selling it. The product is also unavailable on the manufacturer’s website. According to Android Police, a few units did ship from Amazon, but the reviews were so bad that the product was quickly pulled.
> Here's a separate complaint - if you want to charge an iPhone while you have headphones plugged in, there are at least splitter/dongle accessories for that. USB-C Android phone? Good luck.
I've got a USB-C Note 8 (and the same would be true of the newer S9/Note 9 generation) and it's got no problem charging while using headphones, since Samsung—the leading Android handset maker—hasn’t dropped the 3.5mm jack and, indeed, doubled down on it by including premium AKG wired earbuds after other smartphone manufacturers started axing the jack.
The more I hear about issues with USB-C the sadder I get. It feels like we had an opportunity for 'one connector to rule them all' but the standards are so loose that what we got was something that looks like one connector but could be one of many, and it may or may not work for a particular use.
the standard is pretty clear and give options to make a cheap or expensive product.
the shock is that apple and samsung both decide to make very expensive products, that implements the "cheap" options as a way to lock consumers. ...and there is a fool born every second, as the saying goes.
did samsung had to omit the ADC in their dongle? no. did apple had to omit the other bus protocols in theirs? no. their price and volume could have literally made the dongles cheaper with all the features. but doing so lock all the fools in for upgrades and prevent brand move.
All true. I would like to tack on, that Apple recently stopped providing the included 3.5mm headphone adapter with newly purchased iPhones (include iPhone 7 and 8 purchases)[0].
That is not true. You can enable Bluetooth whilst in flight safe mode. KLM even an ounce this on their flights. I own airpods and Bose QC35s and use both wirelessly on flights all the time.
Interesting, thanks for the info on that. I was on an international Air Canada flight last week and they specifically announced that nothing wireless at all was to be used during the flight, including all headphones.
EDIT to add the official policy: "Air Canada is happy to announce that, beginning on April 1, 2018, passengers on our flights will be able to use their personal headphones (of any kind) on our in-flight entertainment system or their personal mobile devices. This service is available from gate to gate at any time, except, of course, while the safety video is being played. Please note that wireless or Bluetooth headphones may be used only on flights with WiFi, because of their technology."
Confusingly I think this means that you can only use wireless headphones with the 'provided entertainment' when the flight has Wifi because that's how they get their entertainment to your device. If the flight doesn't have wifi you have to use the in seat entertainment system and therefore can't use wireless headphones (because the entertainment system doesn't support them) not because you're not allowed to have them enabled.
Just not true. I fly all the time for work (4 flights a week), KLM eve announce that you can enable Bluetooth once flight safe mode is enabled and use Bluetooth headphones.
2013 FAA allowed Bluetooth and wifi on flights[0]. Here's a recent article on the subject of what the major airlines will allow [1]. And a screenshot for doubters of me activating Bluetooth while in airplane-safe mode, which has been a feature of every modern phone me and my friends have [2].
That's KLM-specific. There are no messages like that on many other airlines and the whole idea of airplane mode is RF protection. I'm happy that they basically say: it's bullshit, just ignore it, but officially most airlines still request no Bluetooth.
I have not been asked to switch Bluetooth off specifically on any flight. They ask that you enter flight safe mode. After that provided flight safe mode is on they don’t give any further instruction. On an iPhone at least you can enable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and remain in flight safe mode. Many flight have Wi-Fi now, considerably more powerful than Bluetooth....how do they work safely?
My cynical answer would be: it never really mattered, so this is a way to allow new tech without scraping the whole idea. Especially given the number of possible radio bands and nobody publishing what the protested ranges were supposed to be.
Regardless of it mattering or not it is simply not true that that you cannot use them on flights, airlines actually announce that you can use them during safety announcements.
Some airlines make announcements, they are allowed on all airlines I have travelled on in the last 2yrs (when I started travelling a lot..)
I mean I don’t think I can prove that literally every airline does allow Bluetooth headphones, but see previous comments where the FAA approved Bluetooth headphones for use in 2013, maybe you could provide a specific airline which does not allow Bluetooth headphones?
"that work on all iPhones", "that work on all iPhones", "that work on all iPhones".
Versus "uses a standard that more than one vendor will license".
Yet you seem to think the first is better.
I have a iPhone XS. I had really nice headphones. I despise the headphone adapter, it's horrible in my pockets and I am waiting for the cord to fray just like my Macbook power cables do.
"Go all in on Apple" or "sucks to be you" are very polarizing options.
The operative difference that the person (and your quotes) highlight is they shipped a solution “that works” on all the devices you care about. Using a standard technology is a good idea on paper, but I’d rather get something that “just works”.
Explain to me how an analog 1/4 inch jack doesn't "just work." After all, that's what's on the end of my good headphones. I never heard anyone complaining about dongles when it was 1/4 inch to 1/8th inch.
"that works" for varying degrees of "works". I happen to think that the lightning-to-3.5 adapter doesn't "just work" in the Apple sense, but is rather "minimally functional", not aesthetic, not graceful.
It's a difference between "I know it works on my device" and "I don't know if it will play sound, answer calls, not work at all, or only work if I turn on usb storage every time"
I might have agreed with you... except the adapter is very cheap and can be easily replaced if it fails.
(And complaining that it's horrible in your pocket is just stupid. If you hate wires in your pocket, you should be first in line to get wireless headphones. I bought QC35s and they've been the best, most used headphones I've ever owned—and I've got some very fancy "high end" cans.)
LG flagships have a notch, but are great otherwise. I'd argue their notch came first with the LG V10 and V20, but they were bigger and allowed you to use the rest of the screen as a 'second screen' which is what it is marketed as.
The V20 second screen seemed a much better idea though. No need for the main screen to be on, but have a tiny second screen that can remain on for notifications, music player and such.
Even placing it at top right seemed more sensible than splitting in 2. Can't comment on the reality or in day to day use as I never encountered a v20. They were never released here.
Not to mention they're much easier to get than USB-C ones. Google's official dongle is rarely in stock while Apple's is available in stores all over. I went in for one this week to see if I could live with no headphone jack and the guy just gave me one and told me I didn't have to pay. Yeah you could go to Best Buy if you need a dongle ASAP, but then you get to play the "is this analog or digital" game.
> Android manufacturers have not matched that with USB-C audio. They just copied "Step 0) Remove the headphone jack."
Well, except Samsung. Who, IIRC, is has by far the highest flagship sales of any Android handset vendor; they not only kept the headset jack but for the last couple generations have started tearing the premium wired earbuds they are not including as a selling feature.
See linked article above, you have an adapter that works with your phone, but it might not work with your friend’s phone, or your friends’ adapter/headphones may not work with your phone, and if your adapter breaks and you replace it you’ll need to be careful with finding a compatible replacement. With lightning headphones and adapters they’re all just compatible.
I don’t know anyone with Pixel earbuds, but their reviews online aren’t stellar.
Ok, they're compatible with phones that have a lightning port. Unlike the USB-C "one port shape, a million devices and cables implementing various optional subsets of the specification" compatibility mess.
As long as you use the cables that came with each device, you're great. If you're buying aftermarket accessories, research carefully, and best-case find a review from someone with the exact same set of devices and cables.
I say this as a USB-C laptop owner. The either-orientation plugs are great, the charging from whichever side of the computer is more convenient is great. But just because a cable says it supports DisplayPort alternate mode with multi-stream transport at 4K/60Hz doesn't mean it's going to work.
EDIT - actually more to the point, just because it has USB-C at one end and DisplayPort at the other, doesn't mean it supports multi-stream transport at 4K/60Hz. Right port shapes? Check. Does what you expect it to when you plug it into your gadgets? Flip a coin. And then put your screen into DisplayPort 1.2 30Hz compatibility mode and pretend the low refresh rate doesn't bother you. It's a standards compliant cable, just not the right part of the standard.
The bluetooth earbuds are starting to get better. The Bragi Pro is much better than the Dash. I don't have experience with Apple's earbuds but I'm going to guess users are facing similar issues with bluetooth connectivity and interference issues.
I think of bluetooth earbuds as this generations skipping CD's. It's totally unnecessary though. They could have waited.
Bluetooth has been great for the past few years (maybe since BT4?) My airpods and qc35 and car integration work FLAWLESSLY. The same can certainly not be said of older generation devices. I returned some Outdoor Tech Chips 2.0 something something helmet speakers that went static-y every time you turned your head the wrong way.
The new stuff can work 50+ feet away, through walls, etc.
Airpods are insanely good. Virtually no issues with quality or interference and I got them the day they were released. Bose QC35s are also great, just not as reliable as airpods... one thing with airpods is that I think all headphones know when I take them off and to pause music...
The only complaint I've heard about AirPods is the audio quality, in that that they're typical of Apple's earbuds. Better than the $10 generic ones on Amazon, worse than $150 wired earbuds from Sennheiser etc.
Bluetooth reliability is better than any other headphones, battery life is impressive for how tiny they are, pairing (with iOS/macOS) works better than other bluetooth devices, the charging case is better thought out than other "true wireless" earbuds. Customer satisfaction surveys are ridiculously positive (IIRC 98% or 99%).
I haven't bought them yet myself (just because they cost money), but maybe when the 2nd gen comes out I'll take another look.
I love the fact that the AirPods don't have touch controls. I live in a place where some kind of headwear is required for over 6 months of the year.
I can just tap the side of my wool cap with thick-ass winter gloves and it works. If it was touch sensitive, I'd need to take off my gloves, pull the cap over my ear and fiddle with the earpiece. No thanks.
I think these are fairly minor improvements, most of what makes the airpods great is already there. I’d rule out anything that makes them more complicated (that is their best feature imo) just putting in them and work is amazing, and it’s even better that they pause whatever’s playing when you take them out.
AirPod battery life isn't great when you're using the mic too (think a Skype call) but the fact that you can use one at a time while other charges makes it pretty manageable.
I tend to make quick phone calls, but Skype/Zoom/etc on my computer calls tend to be of the 30 min - 2 hour variety, so that's where I see the most battery use :-)
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
It's pretty pathetic too after they release a whole slew of ads making fun of Apple's design choices... Only to unashamedly copy them in the next iteration.
Yeah, I honestly appreciate Samsung for not jumping on those trends just for the trends sake. Samsung really lead on the thin bezels, and hasn't adopted another of the more ridiculous fads.
I'm looking forward to Samsung's NotchPhone coming out some day. I have an iPhone X and think the notch is a non-issue, but I didn't realize Android phone makers had started coping it until the past few weeks when I noticed lots of billboards for Android phones while traveling, all of which had the notch.
Well Android does have a "face-id" kind of system built in that works with the camera alone. It's not as advanced, but Google's thing is using software to really make it a nice product, and the face unlock works really well for me on my pixel 1 XL.
Isn't the point of the infrared mapping that Apple does on the iPhone that it is significantly more difficult to fool than camera-based solutions? Android has had face unlock for years but you can fool it pretty easily. Anything Apple introduces to replace Touch ID must be more secure than that.
Yes, but it's not as bad as you think (i can't fool my pixel with a picture for instance), and it's never unlocked for anyone else. It also disables it if there are any failed login attempts, and requires a "something you know" method every so often anyway.
>Anything Apple introduces to replace Touch ID must be more secure than that.
And that's the key, on android face-unlock doesn't replace fingerprint, it adds and additional option if you want it.
It only doesn’t replace a finger print sensor because it is not as secure as faceid. Fairly sure if you could remove the finger print sensor entirely you would. I don’t buy the convienience arguement at all, look at Picard on the enterprise, he doesn’t use a finger print sensor, the computer just knows it is him, faceid is much closer to this future than touchid..
>Fairly sure if you could remove the fingerprint sensor entirely you would.
I personally would absolutely not unless face-id style things became MUCH more powerful.
The only reason I have face-unlock enabled on my android device is for the occasions where the phone is face-up on the table, in it's dock on my desk, or when I lived in a colder climate and I would sometimes be wearing gloves.
I don't want to have to look directly at my screen in most cases, I don't want to have to wait any time at all while I bring the phone toward my eyes to have it unlock, I don't want to have to "focus" on it before it lets me in.
When I use a fingerprint scanner on a mobile device, it is normally unlocked a fraction of a second after it's out of my pocket, and I'm probably not going to buy a phone if it removes a fingerprint scanner as it's just so perfect for me right now.
Now on a PC or tablet, face-id is the way to go! Microsoft's "Hello" system works amazingly well on my surface book, and that is a device where I don't want a fingerprint scanner, because there isn't a single spot on the device that I normally "touch" to wake it. I LOVE how if I wake the device by any means, it unlocks pretty much instantly if I'm looking at the screen, and in the vast majority of cases the screen is pointed right at me. It also works in the dark because it uses similar IR tech as face-id does (I believe).
If you ask me, Apple needs to get face-id on the macbooks and get rid of the horrible fingerprint scanner on there which is never convenient to me.
Don't confuse "security" with "convenience". If I were going for most secure, I wouldn't be using a fingerprint scanner OR face-id, i'd stick solely with "something I know" to get into the device. But I'm personally willing to trade some of that security for convenience, and for me at least, it doesn't get any more convenient than a fingerprint scanner on the back of the device (as far as I know! If someone designs something better, i'd love to see it! But the current iterations of face-id are far from it for me).
Picard uses voice print identification and very bad passwords. And a lot of magic, like the plot sensitive doors that open just as you’re done talking.
Off topic : the launch webpage [1] is hell annoying.
Image loops, scroll-jacking, poorly thought out.
By the time I scrolled to the bottom, Chrome made 470 requests and downloaded 42.8 Megabytes (10 additional requests blocked by AdBlock plus extension) and thats just the 'Overview' tab.
I think the idea for the pricing is giving the consumer that it is not a cheap knockoff alternative to Samsung or Huawei. And Google allows heavy discount to Carriers, so consumers "saves" a few hundred dollars when they sign it with a mobile contracts. Compared to Apple you get less than 10% discount from Wholesale.
> For Pixel in particular it really feels like they've started copying the iPhone's hardware choices in some ways, for no real reason that I can discern.
Completely a conspiracy theory, but what if Google & others theorize that actively making devices worse causes an unexpected psychological response? Apple customers are devoted and willing to spend large amounts of money to upgrade flashy looking devices regularly, that's why Apple is so profitable. Making a sacrifice (the notch, high cost, lack of a headphone jack) to own an "elite" device effectively commits one to continue defending that decision, both to others (potential customers!) and through additional buying decisions later. A kind of self-induced Stockholm syndrome.
I think Apple's pricing only works because the resale is so strong. I've never lost as much money on phones as when I was buying Android flagships. When I can go sell my two year old iPhone 7 Plus for $400, it's a lot easier to stomach the purchase price of an iPhone XS. Not that I'm going to do that this year, mind you, but still.
Apple has really curated their position as the premium choice, and I commend them for that. They learned relatively quickly (though not without missteps) that people would rather buy last year's (or the year before!) flagship at a discount than a brand new budget model. Saves R&D by milking the older model for another couple years, makes a bunch more customers happy, it's really a brilliant strategy.
I think the issue here is that flagship != top of the line anymore. For the iPhone pre-2017, the device targeted at their average customer was also always the latest and greatest. But with the release of the X, Apple introduced a new high-end line meant for enthusiasts, while most people would still be pushed towards the 8 (and now the XR). So the XR isn't really a budget model in the sense that the 5c and SE were, but rather the next entry in the mainstream iPhone continuity, while the XS is the second addition to the "pro" line.
Hedging their bets? Since iPhone XS devices are are a rather large risk and they need something to fall back on in case they don’t do well. If they do, we may not see a successor.
iPhone SE was probably a similar bet since a lot of people were complaining about the large iPhone 6/6S — not to mention the Plus variants.
Or, without making ridiculous unsupported pop-psych claims, people buy iPhones because they like them better. But I think Apple managing to induce Stockholm syndrome to millions of people worldwide is much more plausible.
Or faceid, and true edge to edge screen (no chin) combined with a processor 2-3x as quick as the next best thing and an operating system designed from the ground up for speed and privacy are actually worth paying for. So tired of this Apple are scamming us story. Google are charging more for less...
It's actually an interesting idea. Of course the negative points should be at least debatable, so that you can say you actually chose to spend more, or to have a notch. Every time someone makes fun of you because you spent a thousand bucks on a phone, you're forced to go into self-defense mode, and that reinforces your identification with the object. Pure speculation, of course :)
the CEO one of the chinese phone companies (i can't remember which one) just came straight out and told theverge what we all assumed: the notch isn't necessary, but consumers see a notch as "premium". So they notch the display, because that tests better in their market research.
I heard Alan Kay sum it up well in a podcast this morning where he was talking about how evolution doesn't have to evolve to be the best anything. Paraphrasing- "If you live in a stupid environment, stupid is the most fit."
A notch is necessary for the faceid sensor array. If you don’t need a foreword facing sensor array you should get rid of the notch.
If you have a finnger print sensor on the rear why not make a no-notch phone with an edge to edge display and no notch?
Do you think Apple came to the same conclusion? That a notch was a necessity to appear premium? No they didn’t because they were not copying anyone else’s phone design, they included a notch so faceid worked.
It appears you've misunderstood the comment you're replying to. The notch is considered premium because Apple did it and imitator are only doing it because Apple did, not because they need to for the same reasons that Apple did.
Yes! It's a mad world where a design compromise suddenly becomes something to be emulated all by itself.
"It's not a bug, it's a feature".
I hate the look of the notch, but at least the rest of the iPhone looks super slick. The Pixel Notch instead just made an unattractive design far far worse. Bravo!
Someone else pointed out the screen doesn't even go all the way to the bottom, making the notch look entirely superfluous. At least the iPhone actually uses all the space on the front, even if the notch looks absurd.
Yes, but the Pixel screen doesn't go to the edges. There's a sizeable bezel at the bottom. Could have left one at the top as well, and avoided the notch.
Why though? Why get rid of screen space that could be used for something?
If you really hate that space being used, there are several apps out there that "disable" it by pushing the whole screen to treat that space as if it were bezel.
Doesn't that give everyone the best of both worlds? I prefer the notch in that it gives me more space at the top around it for things like notifications or status icons, and if you hate the look you can black it out and have it look like it's just a big bezel.
Apple made it premium, but phones had notches before them. Sharp and Essential phone come to mind.
Sharp in particular has had fully bezel-less phones for years, I honestly though their camera on the bottom design would be copied way before the weird notch.
I fondly remember the "2nd screen" of the LG V10 and V20. When I first saw the notch I figured it would be an awesome implementation of LG's 2nd (and 3rd) screen.
I was wrong thought. It's the full screen and part of it is cut out as you can see when watching videos and playing games.
I'm currently still using the V20 and like it, but do think that as the notch gets smaller, you lose the available space for functionality like the LG's second screen.
Of course ideally, the notch gets smaller, not like the Pixel.
> A notch is necessary for the faceid sensor array. If you don’t need a foreword facing sensor array you should get rid of the notch.
Pretty much every smartphone for years has had a forward facing, top-mounted sensor array (and a similarly positioned output device), either in a bezel or, if avoiding a full-width bezel, a notch.
(The “sensor array” may just be a camera and light-level sensor, but it's there, for sure.)
Well, there are some devices that try to inrease the screensize to the max, for example the Oneplus 6 (which has sadly a very high SAR value) or the newly "leaks" of de Mate 20.
The notch is now a status symbol. Sure, the notch is a clear usability sacrifice, but for 12 months the presence of a notch was synonymous with having [arguably] the best phone. Google's pixel offering captures this perfectly: the pixel 3 is notchless, you need to pay the money for the XL to get your notch.
I think that's ascribing Apple a little too much. This design trend would have happened with or without Apple, and their design goals aren't everybody's. Phones such as Essential had this notch before Apple was even rumoured to have one.
One of the factors is that Apple forces shifts before the mainstream is ready. But they can get away with it because they’re Apple. This was the case before the iPhone BTW with floppy drive factors and the like. Once Apple blesses, others feel authorized to tag along.
Not saying the notch is the same thing but 3.5mm jack certainly is.
It's almost as if they can spot an emerging trend quite well (the move away from floppy disks, the ubiquity of USB and downloading software, music and video rather than buying physical media)
It’s not so much spotting trends. I’d argue all of those were obvious by the time Apple took definitive action. The difference is that most other vendors tend to leave in legacy connectors and media for the time period when pulling them out will lead to outrage in forums such as this one.
Apple doesn't invent anything. They let someone else invent it, then they just borrow the design and iterate. It's been their MO for more than a decade.
Getting close to two decades, at a minimum. It depends on whether you want to go farther back than the iPod (2001).
Obviously, it works for them. An important, if sometimes overlooked, factor of their strategy is that it's not just borrow and iterate, it's a) identify device that will blow up, b) borrow well before it blows up, c) use that lead time to iterate and leap-frog the competition in polish, and d) release right as the market is poised to accept the new device as mainstream.
They can also misjudge any one of those items a bit and still power their way through, especially now that they have such credibility.
If I go back to the mid-90's, Amiga and Atari were much more relevant to my region than Apple, which was mostly visible on American computer magazines.
Had they not been bought by NeXT (which is what actually happened) and we wouldn't be talking about Apple setting industry designs.
Release time from concept is probably ~4 years. Factories might start to be able to build notched screens earlier. There is a chance that other vendors just got an access to early version of notched screens technology.
Comes down to two reasons..
1. Its costly to manufacture a screen that bends to avoid the bezel.
2. Apple has a patent for bended screen. So, competitors have to come up with a slightly different way to achieve this.
Personally, I'd rather have a bit of bezel... nothing sucks more than using my Pixel 2 XL without a case, invariably the edge of my finger is touching part of the screen, which messes with input more often than not.
Trying to get rid of it, while looking cool actually makes using the thing worse.
Either that or really good palm detection, the iPhone X/Xs have really good detection when I try and reach over to null palm-touches. My Essential PH-1 on the other hand does not, and that makes it really frustrating to use with one hand.
Edge to edge on sides is easy enough. The reason why all Android phones have a noticeable bottom chin is because you have to house the display driver (essentially, connections to OLED) somewhere. Apple's idea is to sacrifice part of display and bend it, so the display driver could be underneath the display. It's expensive, requires complicated engineering and manufacturing, and is also patented.
It's way cheaper to just house the driver below the display, as all the other phones are doing.
Well they still have to attach to the edge of the display. Probably there is a lot of stuff going on at the top of a phone (cameras etc) already. I expect it would also be harder to attach the display connector along a notch cutout.
Xiaomi got rid of the forehead entirely by moving everything to the (relatively small) chin on Mi Mix 2. While that is not great for the front facing camera usage since many (most?) apps don’t support 180 degree rotation, I don’t see why the design can’t be flipped. Just build a phone with a reasonable sized forehead. Although I don’t particularly mind the design choice for Galaxy Note 9 or Nokia 7 Plus — a narrow forehead and chin.
You claimed that nobody else was able to get so close to the edges due to Apple's patents. I was pointing out that Samsung already gets as close or closer to the left/right hand edges before the X was even announced.
While they didn't go fully to the top or bottom, that doesn't alter how the technology itself would work. If they can get close to the horizontal edges, they can get close to the vertical edges.
You might want to check the reason for the limitation before making such comments. A display can be stretched to the three edges of the phone —- it is the fourth edge that is the problem — as Xiaomi demonstrated with Mi Mix 2. At least some space is needed to house the display driver, camera, sensors etc.
No particular need for the bandwagoning. You're the third person to point this out, one three hours ago, one an hour ago, and now you in the last two minutes. Hard to believe you didn't see the other two comments before replying.
The issue, specifically, is that the display ribbon to connect it to the board needs to go somewhere [0]. For years, it was the bottom. So when it comes to removing a chin, you need to find a place for that ribbon. Apple achieved this by folding the screen at the bottom, so the screen isn't technically ending at the bottom. This is why it's easier to stretch out screens to the sides and the top.
The iPhone does not have front facing speakers. Now that was their choice I understand, but to think that Google couldn't do it if they didn't want to is just not true. And there's plenty of Android phones with screen edge-to-edge. Heck, the old Essential Phone has it.
I bet they're trying all kinds of crazy stuff to make their phones look newer than 5 years old while not copying the notch they have been mocking in their own commercials.
The only thing I can think of is a pop-up camera (done already) or a through-pixel camera (not done yet). If Samsung pulls off the latter the whole smartphone evolution is just done, over, finished.
I agree the notch looks really bad. But if you have the option of not having screen there vs having screen there, I am okay with the notch. You anyway have an option to turn that part of the screen off on Android? I don't know why everyone is up in their arms about this.
I guess Google really wants to stick with two speakers. And not sure about the Apple's patent about folded OLED and/or others having the expertise to do it.
Disc: Googler but don't work on the related teams.
I really don't mind small notches. My current phone has one about the same height as the notification bar. This Pixel 3 notch is absolutely hideous compared.
But Android manufacturers weren’t seeing it as “essential” until Apple did it. Same with ditching the headphone jack. The industry makes fun of Apple for doing something, then the next year, copies it
Here we are much later. Not having a headphone jack is still really stupid. Having to use a dongle for headphones is still an inconvenience that detracts from the experience. Every set of truly wireless bluetooth earbuds on the market is mediocre at best. The sound quality is substandard for listening to music (even compared to other earbuds) and the audio frequently lags, making them utterly worthless for everything else.
Even when someone does design a set of truly wireless earbuds that matches the quality of $20 wired earbuds today, its still going to be a total joke as long as those wireless earbuds cost 150-300.
Here: Airpods are very good headphones. But not for everybody.
All through this thread you're jumping on anyone who dares criticize any aspect of the Airpods. Speaking in absolutes. "Nobody who has ever used them would say that", "nobody misses the wires", "nobody misses their previous headphones".
I don't like them. I can't wear them. My ears are too small, they slide out. This doesn't distract from their quality.
But I sure as shit miss the 3.5" jack when I have to plug a silly, fragile, unwieldy dongle into my phone to listen to my Earset 3i's. (Sadly, too, their Amazon rating seems to be 2.7/5, and reading the critical reviews, that seems to be almost exclusively because people got counterfeits on Amazon).
Please stop speaking like people are _factually wrong_ for disliking the Airpods or aspects of them.
Or will it be the more typical thing with Android accessories, where you have to buy a Google knockoff and never lose it, and then when you do lose it, you have to buy a seriously off-brand thing from China because Google has lost interest in products they sold a year ago?
Nope. Airpods are admittedly a great product and very impressive, but the functionality and stability is going to be an Apple exclusive. They work on Android devices, but not nearly as seamlessly.
My in-ears tend to die due to wax, not broken cables. The $150 AirPods would be just as susceptible to that as a $2 pair of wired Huaweis. And that's ignoring the superior UX of just following the cable rather than having to guess which device they're connected to when.
It's also pretty nice being able to just connect the phone to a speaker system, rather than having to mess around with per-phone dongles, idiotic "dock" designs, or pairing to random bluetooth receivers.
I've got a $20 pair of Anker wireless earbuds that I can't distinguish in sound quality from a standard pair of Apple Lightning earbuds. The battery lasts about 5 hours on a charge, which is enough for my commute on the bus and chores around the house. And since I charge up all my devices at night anyway, draining the battery really isn't that much of an issue.
Sure they've got a wire between each earbud, so it could be argued that they're not 'truly wireless.' I can see how, from the perspective of someone for whom a dongle detracts from the purity of the $20 earbud experience, this could be a sticking point. But I haven't found it to be.
I'm a happy Pixel 2 XL user, and I definitely agree here. It almost seems like they thought the notch itself was the feature rather than just an enabler for the bezeless screen, which is the real feature.
Just as crazy, glass backs. They’re there mostly to facilitate wireless charging yet 50%+ of the phones that have them don’t support wireless charging...
Notches are hideous, and so are rounded screens (and excessively rounded designs in general -- just look at Chrome). It would be fine, though: more choice for those who prefer it, if were not for the fact that this is how "fads" and "marketing-imposed trends" work: I have no choice to buy a non-notched, square screen phone in 2018.
I pray my current phone holds for another couple years, until this fad goes away.
I find rounded corners on screens to be quite nice. I think they will be one of the big design changes over the next few years. They make screens appear more natural / organic imo.
Nah, it's all fine. The only thing better than a notch would if if/when they can go completely edge-to-edge, but short of having a protruding earpiece and not having light/prox sensors, it won't happen.
Not all of them, check out the Xiaomi Mix 2. Pictures are ok but otherwise great phone and no notch. To use the front camera you need to turn the phone around though, but for me that's a better compromise than the notch.
While I don't like the look of it myself, I'll hazard a guess as to the design thinking behind it: notifications/menu bar can now live either side of the notch without taking up 'content' space. So the screen either side of the notch is for the notifications bar/menu bar/I-can't-remember-the-android-term-for-it and the total space matches the space on the bottom of the phone, leaving a centered amount of screen space for 'content'. Because it's not most full-screen experiences are ever going to use the notch area.
In this case it's a simple reason: there are stereo speakers, which means there has to be a speaker at the bottom. That stops the screen from going all the way to the bottom edge.
Except the Apple phones don't have edge to edge screens. Currently there has to be electronics located on the edge of screens.
Apple has chosen to distribute these around their screens. Most Android phone makers have instead chosen to place them at the bottom.of the screen.
This means that in general Apple has larger edges than Android notch phones on 3 sides but no bottom chin. Android notch phones in general have a smaller distance between the edge of the screen and the edge of the phone but a larger lower chin.
The Pixel Notch is the worst looking, most disappointing phone design I've seen for a long time - from someone where I actually had certain expectations.
I can't stand the notch design band aid (the S8/9/Note just looks far far cleaner, has much greater usable screen size), and this has all but guaranteed my next phone will be another flagship Samsung.
I absolutely hate edge to edge screens. It makes for a terrible user experience when you accidentally hit something with your palm. I also hate the super thin fad. Now I just have to buy a think bumper case so I can actually hold the phone.
I don't like the notch but I don't really see the bottom bezel as any worse of a design. If you want two front facing speakers you'd need two notches and that's even more of a developer burden.
Google could have copied Vivo Apex to beat Apple in bezel-less game once for all. Instead we get an ugly notch and a bezel at the bottom. Feels premium, I really fall for it, really! :-/
It is so weird these days that 95% of the marketing and copy for new hardware is actually marketing and copy about software, not the hardware. They do however have a spec compare page for the phones: https://store.google.com/product/pixel_compare
I'm their target market then. What differentiates google for me is the SERVICES they offer: gmail, maps, search, photos, voice search, voice transcription, google voice.
Even if my perception is wrong, I picture google as a company that is better able to deliver cloud software. Since the hardware is all good enough now, what makes me consider going from Apple to Google is that I prefer google mail and google maps, and the google ecosystem. I also think google is better positioned to take on Amazon and Microsoft and Facebook. Apple is in a distant fifth place behind all those companies. And then you have Sony, which in many respects DOES have a better hardware ecosystem than Apple, for the home (speakers, playstation, cameras, televisions, headphones etc. and vue.) HomeKit and HealthKit are the two places Apple is competitive, and music/movie services are a dime a dozen at the moment, im not committing to an ecosystem if for example I liked iTunes/Beats more than Google Play. Lest we not forget Spotify and Roku are still independent beasts.
And on the other end Apples value proposition is that their store has all the flagship versions of apps (companies tend to treat iOS as their first class citizen) and privacy as a promise. That is a compelling sales pitch; to be treated as just a customer, not as something to be data mined and targeted.
Google REALLY needs to figure out Google Voice, Hangouts, Google News, Google Reader etc. Theres no reason Facebook should be a better feed and messenger, google has all the parts and talent, and cannot for the life of them unify them into a coherent simple product. Stop treating google voice like an afterthought, its a killer product. Google needs to figure out android vs chrome. Its very scary to buy into either of these product lines (at least I know my data is stored in google services regardless.)
Its a very hard decision right now to go Alexa vs Google Home, vs HomeKit. It sucks liking Swift apps, Google Photos, Facebook Messenger, DirecTV, Xbox Live, and Sony TVs. And pretty soon I'll need to have Sony, Disney, Hulu, Apple, Youtube, Netflix, Vudu/MGM, Prime, Facebook, xFinity, DirecTV/HBO/WatchTV (figure your shit out ATT). And that still leaves me without access to anything CBS/Viacom/Paramount, except what comes from DirecTV and VRV. Who am I trusting to make my multi-service experience the most pleasant; Roku, Apple, Google?
Ecosystem commitment is maddening, and paradox of choice has never made not participating more attractive.
> What differentiates google for me is the SERVICES they offer: gmail, maps, search, photos, voice search, voice transcription, google voice.
If you own almost any Android phone, you have all these services. Heck, if you own an iPhone you can still get all these services (just not as defaults).
Those services being tied RIGHT INTO the OS is a huge advantage. Thats arguably what the SHELL is. My interface between me and (facebook | microsoft | google | apple | amazon) services. Using iOS as a google app launcher is a complete waste of integration and usability potential.
Take for example JUST google photos. When I say service, I mean a best in class experience across my phone, my kitchen screen-speaker, laptop, desktop, and living room tv. Google photos does not live up to its full potential from a phone alone.
A service gives me consistent access to the same data, from a variety of interfaces. Each interface is tailored to use cases for that device type. Desktop interfaces are going to be more powerful than tablet, tv, or kitchen screen-speaker.
It's the same reason I prefer Facebook Messenger to text messaging. Works great from any device I sign into.
(Not being able to set defaults is inexcusable at this point as a product, and
borderline anticompetitive. Microsoft is playing an equally dangerous game with Edge.)
I'm not sure what you mean by your Google Photos example. I use it on my iPhone and the photos all show up on the Chromecast I have plugged into my TV. I can't think of many features I am missing by not running on Google Photos on Android.
And that's what I think the OP was getting at. If Google's main differentiator is services then I have little reason to buy an Android phone. I can get the built in security and privacy associated with iOS and dip into the Google ecosystem as and when I want by downloading individual apps. It works great for me
On iOS Google Photos doesn't sync automatically unless you open the app regularly. On Android it runs in the background, so your photos are backed up even if you don't open the app.
I'm not sure if it's an iOS limitation or Google choose to artificially limit the app but OP is right that Android provides a better platform for Google services.
You download photos from Google Photos to your device before they're available to other apps. That's a fair weakness to point out, though it's never really been a problem for me. I only delete the local copies of photos every couple of months.
being able to navigate around a mini version of the photos app, from within a share/upload screen of another app, isnt a benefit you would think of until youve tried it.
Thats just an example though. Current Apple will never treat non-Apple apps with the same kind of integration. Messaging apps, photo apps, map apps, music apps, movie apps. It will never be the same as a place with choice.
"Hey google, gift mum a copy of Almost Famous." (google remembers that my mom likes text messages, and has vudu.)
"Hey google, gift dad a copy of Key Largo." (google remembers my dad likes facebook messages, and has prime.)
Send me a message when Apple starts being friendly to competitors. iOS is a glorified app launcher if you are not a heavy Apple Services user, and Apple Services are substandard. Even iMessage only works from Apple hardware. Useless.
I am being a little silly here, Google and Microsoft are moving TOWARDS Apple-Like ecosystem lock-in, whereas Alexa/Prime and Roku are the more vendor agnostic shells.
> isnt a benefit you would think of until youve tried it.
I used an Android device full time until about a year ago, so believe me when I say I know how it works, and that I don't really miss it.
> "Hey google, gift mum a copy of Almost Famous." (google remembers that my mom likes text messages, and has vudu.)
These conversational examples always seem bizarrely contrived to me. But either way, part of the argument against this is that I don't want Google to know these things. I value privacy. I don't gift my parents movies often enough to make the trade-off worth it for me - I'll just do it manually the one time a year I do it.
> Even iMessage only works from Apple hardware. Useless.
Very obviously not true. When the vast majority of your friends and family are on iMessage it is, hands down, the best messaging solution. Better than anything Android can offer, because less tech savvy people don't even need to think about it. It is very far from useless for a lot of people. It just isn't useful for everyone.
what makes iMessage better than Facebook Messenger or Snapchat or Whatsapp? The fact that it can only communicate with most people? The fact that it doesnt work from a web browser while you are away from devices you own?
If I own an iPhone but a Windows PC, iMessage is only a fraction as powerful as something cross platform.
Youre nitpicking a conceptual example. Alexa, Roku, and Android are currently built to let ME have the power to set defaults and mix and integrate services between providers. On iOS either I use the Apple service if I want full integration, or my access to said services is locked into only the app for that service itself and apples extremely limited share menu.
> what makes iMessage better than Facebook Messenger or Snapchat or Whatsapp?
That it is already set up when you buy the device. This can't be understated. Among my friends and family, some have FB messenger, some have Snapchat and some have Whatsapp. The only one they all have is iMessage. And even Android users can participate in group messages by (automatically) downgrading to MMS.
I think being able to set FB messenger AS my SMS app is more powerful.
The entire point I am making is that we increasingly access MANY services. Content is a great example, with Netflix, ATT, Disney, National Amusement, Sony, Amazon, and Comcast getting into a pretty nasty battle. Service agnostic hardware is very very attractive, whether that service is messaging/calling, backups, or content consumption. Shells treating all services equally, is a value upon itself. They can still ship from the factory with an in house default. Roku being able to surface and categorize content from many apps, and being able to deep link directly to movies is a much more pleasant experience. Or searching for a movie and being asked which ecosystem/service I want to view it from.
It SUCKS when a company like Apple says "you need Apple hardware to watch our original series" or when "you need ATT wireless to watch this HBO show" becomes a thing.
It SUCKS that I need an Amazon Echo Show 2, Google Home Hub, Facebook Portal Plus and an iPad all set up in my kitchen to answer Video Calls!!..!.. verbally when my hands have egg on them. https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/how-smart-... (at least Facebook is considering Alexa and Google Assistant. At least Amazon Echo may allow Android texting and Skype, while also supporting Zigbee.)
> Those services being tied RIGHT INTO the OS is a huge advantage.
Assuming you own an non-Google Android phone, what difference is there? I use Google photos on my Samsung...
On iOS, I will admit there is a difference is not being able set default applications but other than that I don't really see a big difference. Google, of course, works hard to ensure the same experience regardless of device so it's not much of selling point of their own phones.
By comparison, you actually need an iPhone to experience any of Apple's product integration.
For example. I cant, in facebook messenger, pull a photo from google photos. Everything has to proxy through iOS photos. First I have to go download it, then upload. Google photos is tacked on top of the OS instead of being a part of the shell. The share/passthrough/permissions menu is the gatekeeper. Google Photos isnt a SOURCE that can be accessed from other apps on my phone.
In the future, I imagine, at the upload screen, I will be able to type in a friends name, to filter all the photos of a person. In the future, I expect to be able to use voice to be able to say things like "hey google, send my mum the latest photos from bob and sues wedding, that have Molly and I in them" and I expect Google to remember my preferred communication app is different for my Mom and Dad, know which Molly I mean, know what latest means, and act accordingly. Do you imagine Siri will integrate well with Google Photos and Facebook messenger?
What I mean is that services CAN BE hooked into the OS. My messaging service being independent from my messaging app (sms as an example.) What I mean is, by default, Google has best in class services. (Photos and Maps are clearly superior to Apple.)
Being able to SET my default maps service. I need the os to be aware of what kinds of queries my maps app can handle.
Being able to swap out my voice assistant between google, alexa, cortana, m. I need the hardware and os layer listening, ready for me to trigger my voice assistant, but once they do, they should had it off to the service of my choice. Or my Roku being able to deep link directly to content within apps, apps that advertise their content to the os search.
Android is built to allow google, a manufacturer, or a user to swap out services, but still allows the service to feel integrated.
I do think there is a distinction between Android and Google Play Services. GPS is an advantage, and a great set of default services, but im not stuck with them for the life of a device, if I choose to replace them.
Is there a way to deep link to a country specific google store? I get redirected to a locale that doesn't sell any of the pixel products, so they just don't exists on the product pages when I follow the links
I really wish Google would sell a good value (Nexus level prices) phone again, so I can own a phone with stock Android. You can get good hardware for half the price of Google's pixel phones; the downside is the crappy Android versions on them.
(thanks for the suggestions on close-to-stock-Android hardware)
The Android One phones (https://www.android.com/one/) are running stock Android and provide 2 years of Android OS updates and 3 year of security updates.
Christ, being happy for “2 years of Android os updates” reminds me how awful is the android ecosystem.
IPhone 5s, a phone from 5 years ago is running the latest iOS without any problem.
iOS 12 has been widely praised for breathing new life into old devices with its performance upgrades. And even in the cases where there is a performance tradeoff, updating isn't mandatory, but it's still an option for those who want it.
It was widely praised, because it breathed new life into old (and not so old) devices that were utterly hamstrung by iOS 11 running them into the ground.
"Apple completely ignored performance on older devices for several generations until the complaints got too loud. Now let's act like that never happened, because they have put some effort in now."
> And even in the cases where there is a performance tradeoff, updating isn't mandatory, but it's still an option for those who want it.
Yeah. Except that many of the new Xcode updates to support iOS 12 involve builds that remove older compatibility. So sure, "you can still use your older iOS! Just ignore the fact that if your favorite apps are actively being maintained the chance they'll retain old iOS compatibility will be a rapidly shrinking one".
What? If you've had your favorite app on your phone for the past 5 years and refused to update in that time, then it'll still work? And in that case you're clearly not bothered by using old software.
People always demand new features, but want them on their old devices. Apple at least offers you the option.
Also, I don't see how that is different from an Android device that did not receive updates for 3 years and "your favorite app" that surely will be maintained for all eternity on an outdated system ...
These phones are also way cheaper than the iPhone5s was at its launch. If you pay $350 for your phone and replace it after 2 years, that seems to me to be better than paying $700 for your phone and replacing it after 4 years?
You'd be mistaken. That would be a lot of phones and hence a lot of (rare) metals being delved. Sadly, even something as precious as a mobile phone is a throw away product nowadays. I have no solution, it's us, consumers, who are doing this. But please don't pretend it doesn't matter. Maybe, just maybe, if we could innovate on the recycling of our old phones, it would matter less.
How about you quantify how much of an increase in waste it would be? My prior is that almost all appeals to waste conservation fall apart when you examine them in depth.
Ok, shooting from the waist. Say on average people use their phone 3 years. Say, we could stretch that to 4 years. Roughly 2/3 of the world population owns a phone, that's 5 billion phones. That means we would save 5 billion phones every 12 years, or: more than 400 million phones every year.
I love innovation as much as the next guy/gal, but getting all those products to 7.5 billion people is probably not (yet) sustainable for our planet. What if we could make (in this case mobile phone) producers (partly) responsible for the waste disposal/recycling of their products?
I guess because most of world on the Android phones buy handsets as pre-paid devices, using them until they either die or get stolen, so they aren't actually being replaced every 3 years.
As for security updates, yes it is a bummer, but not much better than what feature phones and Symbian used to offer, which was basically zero updates.
All the Apple stuff I have access to has been paid by my employer.
I am not doing contracts and their price ranges are out of what I deem as acceptable to pay for hardware as private user.
Google informs me that there are 20 to 50 million tons of electronic waste per year. 400 million phones, each phone weighs less than half a pound, so let's say 200 million pounds per year, divide by 2000, that means 100 thousand tons of electronic waste saved.
Less than a percentage point of reduction of purely electronic waste. This is what I mean by "almost all waste claims fall apart when examined."
It's a bit unfair to measure by weight, because mobile phones are light. One television, monitor or desktop computer can weigh more than 10kg, but may not have the same impact on the environment as 10kg/125g = 80 mobile phones. And besides, why stop with mobile phones? We're doing the same with TVs, now they're smart, but 3 year old apps don't work anymore, so: next!
Well, that's why I asked you to quantify things. If you have reason to believe that mobile phones punch above their weight in terms of e-waste, tell me exactly why, and how much. Does that mean that saving 400 million mobile phones per year goes from saving 0.6% of e-waste to 0.8% of e-waste?
And I'm not defending the practice of throwing out TVs or computers or anything else after 2 years, just phones.
Because, for example, your 3.5 year old phone has a way worse camera than a modern phone. It doesn't have wireless charging. Its hardware has deficiencies that are noticeable even if the raw speed of the CPU is still fine.
"consumerist thinking"? What other kind of thinking should a consumer have? And waste? My old Android phones are pretty useful even with marginally older software. None of them have non-patched remote execution bugs that would make them risky, thanks to the fact that some of the more risk prone components (built in browser, play services, etc) get updated independently from the OS.
Not very much. The resale value of a 4 year old iPhone is sub $100. Even if you get literally $0 for a 2 year old Android, you aren't changing the cost calculations very significantly.
Keep in mind that the phone manufacture is tasked with providing those updates for Android One devices.
It was once going to be Google providing them but they changed the site a while back.... that makes me skeptical about when / if you get those updates...
Google has been struggling to get manufactures to do updates and backpedaling on Android One's updates doesn't have me optimistic.
For people who want to buy phones in the several-hundred-dollar range, 2 years of official updates really isn't sufficient. My Nexus 4 lasted 4 or 5 years, the last few on unofficial firmware - but I shouldn't have had to use third party firmware on a device that was working just fine.
It's pretty disingenuous to compare Android and iOS like it's a 1:1 comparison. Google Play services and several other components get updated independently from the system. A Nexus 4 that is running the last official security patch still works "just fine" and gives you access to the majority of apps on the Play store.
While the update model isn't perfect and a bit concerning security-wise, if you want a device that "just works" for 5 years and won't be artificially crippled, Android wins.
I know someone who has an Android One Motorola, while they like stock Android, updates are still really slow for reasons unknown. There was also no beta during Pie.
Definitely isn't a full Nexus or Pixel experience unfortunately.
I find it really annoying that phones need so much hand holding from OEMs to keep up to date. Imagine the backlash if a Windows OEM said that: a.) you could only get OS updates from them, and b.) you'd only get 2 years of updates.
The death of the Nexus / privacy concerns is why I'm tempted to flee to Apple. I've never used an iPhone but if I'm gonna pay top dollar for a Google branded type phone .... why not consider an iPhone / the privacy concerns I have and etc too?
All the other Android manufactures have been so hit and miss I'm not really interested in them as an alternative.
If you're not constrained by the hardware, then take the time to install LineageOS (https://lineageos.org/). If you need Google's flavour of Android you can get it from OpenGAPPS (https://opengapps.org/).
I did it for my mom's phone and most recently my own (which until I hit some software issues was running Google stock). It's really easy nowadays, with some tech skills and assuming your phone isn't obscure.
I just got a Pixel 1 planning to do that very thing. I thought I was getting a great deal; they're about $200 on Amazon.
I ran into an apparently common issue where it won't connect to Windows through its bundled USB cable (or any other USB cable...).
Plugging it into my external monitor, which is also a USB hub, solved that problem. Except that in bootloader mode, it is once again unrecognized, making it impossible to unlock.
I just bought a $159 Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite (Android One/Stock, US ATT or T-Mobile Compatible) to replace my original Pixel XL and I can't tell much of a difference except for the Camera. It has a much smaller notch than the Pixel 3 and will receive updates I believe until 2021 or further. Some small corners were cut, but it punches way above its price point.
I have nothing but praise for Xiaomi products. They are phenomenal value.
I have a Xiaomi Redmi 4x, which cost me $140 and has perfectly smooth performance. The camera isn't terrible either, it does the trick. Best of all, spare parts are cheap and easy to find. I completely shattered the screen on my phone, it was only $20 to get a complete new screen assembly (lcd, digitiser, and frame), which I'm fairly sure is OEM. I broke the ear speaker in the process of replacing the screen, only $1 to get a new one shipped from China. I can literally make a phone from parts, I can even buy the motherboard on Aliexpress.
Xiaomi have really good build quality too, and their their custom version of Android isn't terrible.
I also have a Xiaomi bluetooth speaker that I bought for $30, which performs as well as a speaker 2-3 times the price. It's built out of solid aluminium too, so it can take an absolute beating.
I wonder how hard that would be to make work on a bench. Would be nice for messing with postmarketOS, especially if I could get serial out working. I think these still have to be "authorised" by Xiaomi to have their bootloader unlocked though...
It only doesn't support Band 12 but band 2 and 4 are the important T-Mobile bands which it supports. No other bands are used heavily. ATT is very compatible. Using T-Mobile around Seattle with the phone and have absolutely no issues anywhere.
For $159 I'm not sure what more you could expect. Band 12 would be nice, but I understand they need to cut some corners.
Nokia could be an option: they have big range of devices in various price ranges, build quality is decent, runs near stock Android and updates are one of fastest, compared to other brands.
Sadly, not all devices have unlockable bootloader and kernel sources for some are still missing.
I think that's what OnePlus is doing these days. Not sure if you have heard of this youtuber @mkbhd he recently made a video that OnePlus 6 became his daily driver from Pixel 2. OnePlus 6 devices already run Android Oreo based OS.
Yes... but. OnePlus prices are rising at pace. I think my 3T was £309 some 2 years ago in the UK, where the 6 is £519 and the 6T is expected to be more again.
Also, where the Nexus phones were supported for at least 3 years the 3T wasn't going to get Android Pie just 2 years after release, but it seems it now will (eventually).
I agree it's been filling the segment, but I'm not sure it's continuing to, sadly. Don't get me wrong, they still seem to be beating Apple and Google in terms of bang for buck, but they're definitely chasing up the ladder after them.
I got a OnePlus 3 based on this kind of recommendation when Google discontinued their reasonably-priced-phones strategy and came out with the Pixel instead.
It works fine, but it's so large that it hurts my hand. And OnePlus appears to be committed to making only comically oversized phones. Very sad.
Just my 2 cents, I own a Nokia 6.1 and bought it for the exact reasons OP had, a cheap stock android phone. Unfortunately the hardware is really poor and I still don't have Android 9 available to me yet. The camera is really really bad, it sometimes shows a photo has been taken and when you view it later it turns out the shutter captured whatever was in view 2 seconds later. Something is also really wrong with the audio firmware, music will just stop randomly followed by a loud pop, it's like a buffer overflows or something.
I got the Nokia 6 (2017) and can confirm that the camera was also very bad there. But security updates are still coming (just updated to patch level October 2018) and Android 9 has been announced to come at the end of this year, which is absolutely fine for me because that's a much better support than a lot of "premium" phones ($600+) get. Samsung's Galaxy S9 - its top smartphone - is still running Android 8.0 (8.1 is out since end of 2017) and it will get Android 9 not before next year.
Considering that the Nokia 6 costed me only ~$170 when I bought it a few months back, this is top value.
Grumble. The 6.1 was an emergency upgrade for dad when the Nexus 5X started bootlooping in the airport. He hasn't mentioned the camera (damn, the 5X set a really high bar for a $400 phone) or audio issues yet
One more alternative, buy used Pixels, I just bought a Pixel 2 yesterday for $325. Less than half what the Pixel 3 starts for. Sure, it is small risk but if you would prefer less risk you can get certified refurbished ones for just a bit more from Amazon or Best Buy. I live outside the US so I used ebay as they do international shipping. Lastly, you get 3 of OS and security updates (2 years from now of course since it is a year old), this is the first Google phone to get updates for this long, all previous devices were 2 years.
Using mi a2 for last 2 months. A android one phone. Stock android, no bloat, very good looking hardware.. Overall a good value, but software is slightly buggy (occasional heating, random boots) and no clear communication on software upgrade policy
> no clear communication on software upgrade policy
The "Android One" label communicates 2 years of updates.
Either way, it's a Treble phone with an unlockable bootloader (without any key requests even! just like old Nexuses). I flashed a GSI (unofficial Lineage 16) right after I came home from buying the A2 :)
Of course this Treble stuff is still pretty new and you need to hack around some things — for example, I had to remove some XML file to make Bluetooth audio work, and (when Magisk rooted) SELinux is blocking the Wi-Fi driver from automatically loading so I have to load it from a root shell manually after a reboot :D but that's perfectly acceptable for me.
A Nexus level priced value product running stock Android would cannibalize Pixel sales. Google made the Pixel a premium product specifically for those who care about stock Android. People who buy value phones don't care about stock Android.
> People who buy value phones don't care about stock Android.
What does this even mean? I mean, since there are no cheap stock-Android phones clearly anyone who buys a cheap phone doesn't only care about stock Android.
But it's absolutely possible for someone to (1) want a phone at non-"premium" prices and (2) want a phone running stock Android. The fact that they then have to pick at most one of those two because no one but Google makes stock-Android phones and Google have gone premium-only doesn't mean that they don't, or shouldn't, want both.
There are a bunch of cheap stock Android phones now from the Android One program. Nokia has the 3.1, 5.1, 6.1, 6.1+. Xiaomi has Mi A1, A2 Lite, A2. Then there's the BQ Aquaris X2, GM9 Pro, Sharp X1, Motorola One.
I bought the Nexus 7 Plus below 300 Euro. You can also get the Pixel 2 (and sometime in the future also Pixel 3) camera apk running on it in a modified version.
Side note: It has also one of the best cameras on phones in this price area.
I really wish someone would do another solid 7-8" Android (or ChromeOS) tablet. That felt like a perfect form factor - I could even still pocket it in a vest.
Alas, most of what's still on the market is either ancient (and not getting new Android updates), or cheap low-res junk, or usually both. The only exception seems to be MediaPad M5, and Huawei screwed that one up by reporting it to the apps as a phone rather than as a tablet; and then there's the whole shared antenna issue (basically if you use Bluetooth, your WiFi is an order of magnitude slower).
And I'm not holding much hope for sub-10" ChromeOS tablets. It seems that everybody just wrote that market off.
They probably mean the Nokia 7 Plus, which I also own. It's a fantastic phone and you get so much for you money! Seriously, I've owned the Nexus 4, 5, 5X and 6P and this is my favourite out of them all.
Thanks. Meant the Nokia as you said... I was too fast with typing and cannot edit anymore ;)
And I agree to your comment. I had Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 5, Nexus 5X and Nokia 7 Plus is the best so far.
What a terrible live event. The presenters were awful. Okay not everyone is a natural presenter so if you don't have such people in your product management team just hire some!
As for the products. Groan. What is there to be excited about exactly? The new tablet (slate?) goes up to $1600(!) and doesn't even include a keyboard (an extra $200 for that). The videos of it seem to show it as a laggy mess as well. Hopefully it isn't like that on release.
The Home Hub does not interest me. At all. At least it doesn't have a camera though.
But the real let down is the new Pixel 3 is just so meh. A bizarrely large notch yet a large chin still? Two front facing cameras but still a single rear. Why? Are super selfie takes the biggest buyers for Pixel phones? I take a few selfies now and then but I would much rather a second 2x camera for proper zoom and not some fancy digital zoom powered by AI from my hand tremors.
I can't see any reason to replace my Pixel 2 XL if I am honest, especially at those prices.
Also what happened to the whole "you think you know" social media trolling Google was doing? Turns out yes we did know. Literally everything leaked. So bizarre.
I've bought the last two pixels on release day (as well as multiple Nexus before that). I absolutely loved my Pixel 1, but was actually fairly disappointed in my Pixel 2 as it feels so much more fragile and buggy that the Pixel 1. Honestly, I have been looking forward to upgrading to the Pixel 3 for probably 4 months now.
Unfortunately, after seeing what they put out today, I'll probably be looking at other models instead. This phone just looks so "meh" and yet it has such a premium price attached to it. It's almost a bit insulting that they raised the base price and dropped the value they are giving for trade-ins.
I woke up this morning expecting to spend $300 (after trade in) on a slight upgrade to my current phone and they've managed to some how managed to lose me as a customer after seeing what they offered.
> Turns out yes we did know. Literally everything leaked.
Well, rumors a few months ago were that plans had leaked for a third device that would be the spiritual successor to the Nexus line, with stock android at reasonable prices.
We thought we knew, but it seems like a jerk move for Google to make fun of us over our vain hope they'd put out something we wanted.
I've been told the Android One program is the spiritual successor to the Nexus line. Does anybody with more knowledge or experience feel like commenting on that? Do those phones get updates as reliably as a Nexus would in the past?
Also, how does one shop for a phone these days when you want plain old Android and sensible security updates but have other feature concerns as well? I don't want a flagship phone, don't want a giant phablet, and care more about offline GPS performance than data performance...
I am still carrying a Moto G4 Play which I think is borderline too big. It still lasts almost a week on one charge when I take it into the woods in airplane mode and just use the camera app and OSMAnd+ with GPS logging for 3-4 hours per day.
As I understand it, the Android One phones all receive updates from the vendor and not directly from Google. Historically vendors have not done a good job at making updates available in a timely manner.
Google handles the updates for Android One. I have a Xiaomi Mi A1 in addition to a Pixel and it seems to get updated on time. Occasionally, faster than the Pixel even for security updates.
Same thing could have been said about the Pixel 2 but you bought one anyway. They will sell because people settle for well-known and good, not new features.
Isn't consensus that Google's phone sales volume is pretty low? I don't think that they are well-known in non-tech circles; although I would agree that's not about new features / presentation.
Okay, so. Have we reached diminishing returns with smartphones? Because it really feels that way.
I'm sure this new Pixel is better than the previous one, but we're starting to have conversations around _not_ buying the $1k phone for its camera, and instead buying two devices for $500 each that are better.
I personally feel like even four iPhone generations ago, the iPhone was "good enough" and that the software is really what needs to be improved.
The market is basically in a holding pattern. New features tend to be situational and the performance improvements are pretty modest year-over-year. What's more, even old phones are fast enough for most uses, so even when the new one is 50% faster that's not a huge deal. It's hard to justify $800 to make a webpage load in .75 seconds instead of 1 second.
I'm still using my iPhone 6 and iOS 10 (I have some 32 bit apps that I still use). I'm considering swapping the battery instead of buying a new phone. Right now I would only upgrade if I severely broke it.
In some ways it would be a downgrade, because I use the headphone jack to wire it into my car's audio when doing navigation, and plug it into the cig lighter because navigation is a battery hog. It's pretty clear that Apple has no intention of ever bringing back the headphone jack.
Maybe I could find a bluetooth adapter on a headphone jack? I wonder if it could draw enough power from the headphone jack to not need a battery? Probably not.
I upgraded from iPhone 6 to iPhone XS and if I am 100% honest I don't feel a massive difference. New screen is really nice and I am surprised that I actually like face id much more than the fingerprint scanner. But on a day-to-day activity scale ... browsing facebook, reddit, youtube, playing games, etc. ... I often struggle to notice any real difference, even in how quick apps start. I don't regret it because I know I won't have to worry about upgrades for another 2-3 years.
But I can highly recommend the battery replacement for the iPhone 6. I was luck (unlucky?) enough to get the discounted battery replacement due to mine failing. After I got that it was a significant improvement.
IMO, FaceId is a game changer. I have an X, and rarely notice the phone unlocking. It's just working when I swipe up. Using the finger print to unlock feels old.
I have a 6s+ that I traded the battery and rear camera out at an Apple Store for less than $100 total. My rear camera was very shaky and would never focus on images so they came out blurry. I think it's totally worth a battery replacement and using your hardware as long as you can. My battery life is way better now and I'm back to going days(!) without charging.
I don't download a ton of apps these days, but this could be an issue. Especially if it's a client/server thing and the server side is updated to not support the older clients.
I have not done a jailbreak in years, but I wonder if they have a 32bit compatibility package now? That would make it worth the hassle. Plus, jailbreaks are much less of a headache once your phone is out of support.
I personally wish folks would make phone upgrade decisions with battery replacements in mind. (I am guilty of this too, of course!)
If you're happy with your phone two years on, you probably get much more bang for your buck paying $79 for a new battery than $749 or $999 or whatever for a new device.
Especially with Apple's current $29 for all recent models. Take an iPhone SE, 2016 price $400, now sells around... $100 on eBay, so that's let's say a rough $150 for an ok phone with a fresh battery. It will probably last another, what, year or two? You can browse the web with it, and install apps. I use one every day and let me tell you: it's fine. It works, it's not frustrating.
Are these new phones really $1000/$150 ≈ 6 times better?
If you're a VC or early Google employee: sure, by all means. But $1000 for a phone when $150 will do; I find it hard to stomach.
I agree. I don't want a new phone right now, I just want to keep getting software improvements. I still have the OG Pixel and I really don't want to replace it. It has a headphone jack and it still runs as well as it did day 1. Unfortunately google will probably stop supporting it soon forcing me to get a new pixel to keep getting software updates.
I think that point was reached about 4-5 years ago which is why I don't understand the prices of these phones. They offer literally nothing over a $200-$300 phone. Nothing. Diminishing returns? More like no returns and just a waste of money. Apple is a fashion brand nowadays and Google is trying to become one too. No thanks.
If you're not using iPhones, I think so. Apple is the only one adding features worth upgrading for, maybe not every year, but definitely at least every other year.
Yes. iPhone 6s is what I’m sticking with until they double the battery life (in real use, not watching a video) or do something else I might actually care about.
I upgraded from the iPhone 6 Plus to the iPhone XS Max, on a complete whim. The biggest difference is of course, snappiness of applications. The OS, not so much, because I think Apple does a good job at maintaining iOS. But Spotify used to take 8 seconds to cold boot for me on my 6 Plus, and sub-second on the XS Max.
I would love to see hardware upgrades halt for five years while we all (collectively) get our software shit together and optimize everything for performance. That'll never happen, because I think it's in our human nature to Get Things Done in the short-term with compromises that affect the long-term.
Poor software performance is our digital world's global warming.
Worth remembering that CPU is throttled to battery health over time, so you’d want to
compare your 6 as it was on day one. Not to say that your new phone isn’t faster, but your Spotify example is exactly my experience just getting a new battery for my iPhone 6 two months ago.
The reason I am happy with the 6s is that there's a big difference in speed from the 6 and earlier hardware. It's probably not quite as snappy as newer models, yes, but lag in moving around is something that I can't stand - and I find the 6s doesn't annoy me.
I like how if you go to https://store.google.com/product/pixel_3_how_to_buy and click on any of the company names under "Find your phone. Get up to $300 back" you will be redirected to Google's internal corporate SSO page:
Google famously has no "internal" pages (but a lot of private pages of course).
Instead of using a VPN solution for off-site, they have a reverse proxy sitting in front of their back-office sites, the reverse proxy verifies user authentication (inc. 2F) and permissions before allowing access to the site in question (both from on Google's campus and off-site).
The theory goes that even if you break into Google's campus and plug into their corporate network, or find an employee's computer you'll still have no easier time accessing their private pages than you would otherwise.
It is actually a really interesting topic all in its own right.
Yea. This pattern is called BeyondCorp or Zero Trust. Google was the first company to pioneer it but adopting this architecture internally. Only now companies are slowly moving to this and vendors are creating products and services to support this architecture.
I was hoping they'd release the next Pixelbook. Really wanted to try that as my next developer laptop. May be next year.
Pixel Slate is great but I can't hold it on my lap while sitting, lying on a couch or my bed. Given I spend all my working hours using my laptop, devices like Pixel Slate and Surface Pro are a no-go.
Only if they built a stronger keyboard with a adjustable latch that could hold the tablet body. I wouldn't mind the extra weight if it meant that it wouldn't need support and could be held just like a laptop in any position.
> I was hoping they'd release the next Pixelbook. Really wanted to try that as my next developer laptop.
I bought one last year to try as my dev computer and I'm back to my 2015 mac book. I'm not a fan of the keyboard on it, the battery life isn't as good as I thought it would be, I don't like having a touch screen on my dev machine, but I think the biggest factor in me switching back is that it feels like the remote development services just aren't there yet. I'd get into a coding session and then half way through have some issue with Cloud9 (or a different online IDE, I tried multiple) and it would pull me out of my flow.
I don't plan to use Cloud9 or anything like that. I want to try out native linux apps for development while using Chrome and Android apps for other workflows.
> [...] that ships with the new Linux-enabled ChromeOS
Thanks for clarification. I wasn't aware that Linux apps are now officially supported on ChromeOS, and assumed that most developers simply replace ChromeOS with Xubuntu-based GalliumOS.
After bad experiences with hardware reliably and support on the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6p, I will not be buying another piece of Google hardware.
Although, I must say, the vanilla Android software experience is top notch. I'd just rather install / customize it on more reliable hardware with better support (my op5t has been amazing!)
I'm on my third Nexus 5x. The first Boot-looped thanksgiving 6 months after I bought it, the 2nd boot-looped during christmas the next year. The third has stayed steady, I've just avoided all holidays.
I bought a pixel (2nd hand, dumb mistake) and then it bricked itself within 3 months. Went back to my repaired Nexus 5x.
Google's hardware is awful and their support is an opaque cloud of pretty UIs and unhelpful people.
I've had every Nexus and Pixel starting with the Galaxy Nexus.
Never had an issue with any of them until my most recent Pixel 2 XL where some cables stopped charging the device. One quick open chat on the Google store and I had a replacement sent immediately for free.
Was the 5x thing Google's fault or LG's? I blamed LG and I won't buy another one of their phones for awhile.
I was going to put up with my 5x until the pixel 3 came out, but it became unbearably slow to use as of this spring. So I bought the Motorola x4 under the Android one banner and I couldn't be happier. I think I paid $150 for it after getting $100 for my 5x. The battery life lasts all day and I can use Snapchat on the phone. I regret not upgrading to a "budget" phone earlier.
Yikes, I did pretty much this. Went from two 5x's (I really love the form factor) to a used pixel one. So far it hasn't bricked - is that a known issue like the 5x bootloop?
I found plenty of reports of similar issues on google groups and reddit/r/android. Phone Calling functionality would stop working, screen would glitch out, and then force a restart. At some point it just didn't wake up. Poor guy.
I've loved my 6p, but it's gotten slow AF in the last year or so. I replaced the battery after it stopped lasting more than half a day, and thought that might solve the issue. But it's still intermittently slow.
I'd love to keep it, but it's gotten quite annoying to have to wait for it to respond. I guess it could be malware on it, but it could also be just the hardware not lasting as long as I would hope it would.
I'd like to upgrade, but I don't want to spend $1000+.
Anyone running a Huawei phone that they've flash with a custom firmware? I was thinking of going that route, as it's significantly cheaper.
You don't actually need a google fi compatible phone to switch, you just need it to join google fi. I was astonished when my coworker showed me his ipad pro (I think thats the name- the big one anyway) hooked up to fi a few weeks ago.
Dual sim as in the ability to have two sims? That's popular in India and the middle-east, so Motorolas yes probably. But that's not what's required for Fi.
IIRC Fi's requirement has to do with the ability of moving phonecalls smoothly between wifi and cellular. This capability used to be limited to a dozen or so phones. I don't know what the state of this is nowadays.
Really? I love my Pixel 2. First phone I haven't rooted (so I can underclock and get a decent battery life). I'm curious what problems you have had (and if I might expect them. But I've had this for awhile now)
And I don't see myself buying the Pixel 3. Just seems like a $100 price increase for lower aesthetics. I can't see any meaningful differences in this new phone.
I can elaborate. If you encounter any problem with your Piexl phone you will have to interact with their customer support which is woefully under-equiped to support customers.
If you happen to fall off of their four state flow chart, you can expect extended calls with lots of words, but no action.
They will send you a refurbished phone, but ask you to secure delivery for the phone at the price of a new phone. They won't allow you to return your phone, they can't send you a new phone overnight, even if you offer to pay.
If they make a mistake in their system, they won't be able to fix it.
The entire customer support system feels like it was built for support reps that don't trust customers, by product managers that don't trust support.
I just realized that the $549 Surface Go comes with a Pentium Gold (more powerful than the Celeron), double the storage, and double the RAM for $50 cheaper than the base model Pixel Slate ($250 cheaper if you include the keyboards). Furthermore, a Surface Pro with a Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage is $100 cheaper than the equivalent Pixel Slate, and $170 cheaper once you factor in the costs of the keyboards.
Obvious suggestion, but: this is why I have my phone automatically copy new pictures to Google Pictures, OneDrive, and Dropbox as soon as my phone gets on a good wifi connection.
Maybe I'm naïve but I really cannot imagine Google shutting down Photos with no notice. So if they say they are closing it, I'll just downloaded them en masse and upload elsewhere.
They may have changed it, but if I remember correctly that guarantee in the original quality only lasts for 2 years. So after uploading photos for 2 years, everything is converted to lower quality. They'll also implicitly use your photos for facial recognition and I don't believe there's a way to disable this "feature."
The Pixels get 3 years of free full quality photo uploads and after the 3 years, any new photos uploaded from the phone are compressed. Existing photos do not get downgraded.
Anecdotally, I was the early user of Picassa that was shut down and all my photos have been automatically migrated to Google Photos, so I would still give Google a benefit of the doubt. But recent stunts from them make it more and more difficult to trust them.
Uhh, is it just me or did Google just take Apple's tablet and phone lines and do straight up copies of both? Because the Pixel 3 looks awfully like the iPhone X and the Pixel Slate has some similarity to the iPad Pro. I know companies copy each other, but this is quite literally notch for notch.
I think people give Apple way more credit for their "innovations" than it should be due. For example, the people in this thread who think that Apple came out with the notch first.
Even if they didn't do it first, at least Apple has a plausible claim for why they did it -- the iPhone screen goes all the way to the bottom edge. The Pixel doesn't have that restriction, so why do a notch?
The thing that really irritates me about a notch on the Pixel (or any other Android phone) is that it's much more intrusive. Not just taller (though it is), but on iOS notifications are not handled the same way, so you're not really giving much of anything up with the notch. But on Android, notifications frequently take the entire top of the screen -- right where that notch is. Seems unnecessarily clumsy.
Regardless of what happens on the bottom, without the top notch the total screen area is smaller; with it it is larger. Isn't having more total screen area a plausible enough reason to do it?
The first phone to have the notch was the Essential Phone, and the notch is much smaller than the iPhone (https://www.essential.com/#introduction). The pixel does have a dual camera that the iPhone does not have. And it's deeper, where the iPhone is wider. They seem to almost have the same footprint, but I could be wrong.
Apple has definitely copied features, and even a few design elements (see Palm Pre UI), but they always tweak them to make the product appear unique and "innovative". With the Pixel 3 and the Pixel Slate, even the most oblivious customer can see the resemblance with Apple's products. That, combined with the lower price points, kind of gives the impression that Google's trying to make cheaper versions of Apple's products. I know, not logical, but people don't always like cheaper.
Except, is the Pixel actually cheaper? Maybe this year with the bump up in prices for the iPhone, but as I recall the Pixel 2 was actually more expensive than the iPhone (in particular, priced the same but with less flash storage).
They started pretty similar, and have traded in expensiveness depending on the year and which size phone you're comparing. These are all base storage size prices in USD, ordered from cheapest to most expensive.
There's not much in it really. Looking at UK prices, the Pixel 3 is £11 cheaper than the iPhone XR which is basically nothing when you're talking about a £700+ phone. The XL is a hundred quid or so cheaper than the iPhone XS which is a bit more meaningful.
To balance that, they only promise three years of software updates. It'd be treated as an absolute scandal if an iPhone was dropped that quickly.
Correct. And since the time between the two phones was so short, there's no way Apple copied Essential here. It's just a case of two companies trying to tackle a new problem and coming up with similar solutions. But it would be fair to say that Apple popularized the notch.
> And since the time between the two phones was so short, there's no way Apple copied Essential here.
It's quite possible, since such copying does not have to start at the public introduction.
It may be coincidence, but you absolutely can't rule out copying just because the time from one public release to the other is too short for copying which started with the earlier release.
I guess it's possible if Apple got a hold of pre-release materials on the Essential phone. But a company the size of Apple gets the design ready months, possibly a year, before release. The Essential Phone was officially shown off May 30, 2017 [0], so that's the earliest Apple could have seen the design without getting pre-release renders. The iPhone X was announced on September 12 of that same year. That means that, if Apple were to copy them, they would have to completely pivot their design, change manufacturing plans, get new displays, etc, in just over 3 months. I find that unbelievable personally, especially considering things Apple did to make the display work even better, like eliminating the chin by folding the OLED panel in on itself [1]. I don't believe it's possible that they got that working in 3 months. And I guess it is possible Apple obtained pre-release renders of the Essential, but even if they got it, say, 2 months before Essential's announcement, 5 months is still not a lot of time to pivot a phone's design.
Essential showed their notch what, one and a half years ago?
Apple is good at making features user-friendly, but rarely are breaking completely new ground. Perhaps it's easy to miss that if one doesn't follow tech that closely.
Apple's notch came out like 3 months after the Essential phone had one? I don't think it's possible for them to have seen the notch, and then reengineered the phone in that short of a time.
Yes, they were likely developed simultaneously. Point stays though, that was the trend phones were going to adapt and Apple was just one of the devices doing the same thing.
"Nokia had that ten years ago" is a common quip during all Apple launch events for a reason. And there's also a good reason why Nokia's phones didn't survive the market pressure despite that.
That's one of the reasons why Apple is still one of the most innovative in the phone market. Every time they add something to the iPhone, it eventually becomes the new standard in the industry.
My big question about the Slate is its ergonomics (with keyboard) relative to a regular laptop/Chromebook. It looks to be somewhat better ("snaps in place") and the keyboard is approximately "normal." But there's still something folded behind the tablet/screen in the photo.
My issue with all these combo devices is that they're not as good for using a laptop in all sorts of random locations and positions--which pretty much describes how I use them at events and otherwise traveling. Some are better than others but I've yet to have anyone tell me that they're just as good as a laptop for using on your lap--which is sort a dealbreaker for me.
As I understand it, Google was also rumored to be announcing a more conventional PixelBook upgrade at this event but that didn't happen.
How good can you develop, let's say something easy, for example some python + Postgres + node.js on a Chromebook like the Pixel Slate without rooting or removing ChromeOS?
Provided the Linux container system works well on it - it should be easily possible. Whether the UX is good for a developer workflow I can't be sure. Users at reddit.com/r/chromeos seem to be able to do some good dev work on crostini-enabled devices.
You can’t run docker normally on ChromeOS you can run it on some chromebooks that support dual booting with something like GalliumOS, or rooting the machine and running your Linux distro in a container/chroot.
Unless you are severely strapped for cash and can’t find the same low end chromebook hardware in a low end windows form factor that can be simply reinstalled over there is absolutely no reason to even consider using a chromebook for anything other than it was intended unless you are rooting it for a hobby.
People abuse the fact that you can sometimes find them for sub $200 for $300-400 worth of hardware but it’s a hack on top of a hack to make it run anything.
The whole point of a Chromebook is simplicity. Except for maybe saving a couple hundred bucks (as you say)--which I'm guessing isn't really much of a good reason for most of the people doing this--it doesn't make a lot of sense. There's plenty of cheap generation or two back laptop hardware that you can reliably install Linux on and call it a day.
If I want to do software development etc. I'll use my Linux laptop. If I just need something simple for travel, I'll take a Chromebook.
Any Crostini supported device works fine. Obviously more RAM and better CPU means a better experience.
I have a basic Acer with a Celeron and 4GB of RAM. Been running VS Code and node to develop React Native apps. Can even load the Expo Android app from the Play Store, no separate Android device required!
Not sure about the slate, but I have a Pixelbook, which is my personal laptop, and the crostini Linux integration is great for development. Specifically, I use it for Rust programming, and have compiled a couple of C++ projects too.
The Terminal app that comes with the Linux install is good, supports tmux etc.
There is clipboard integration between the pixelbook host and the container. File sharing is also easy with the file manager being able to drag andd drop files in and out of the container.
I can use Firefox inside the container, which is what I usually use to browse.
Theoretically you have access to the lxc tool inside the top level container, so you could create multiple containers and possibly set up complicated networking setups between them, but I've not tried this.
I've done Python webapp development on an unmodified Chromebook that supported Android apps via Termux. The only catch was that the network layer doesn't make 127.0.0.1 the same for Chrome and Android so I ended up testing in Android Firefox, which is hilarious but worked fine.
Would love to know when I can get the Pixel 3 from sombebody besides Verizon or Google. Google keeps shipping us empty boxes and has shut down our network guy's personal account. We even had the fedex guy witness opening the third empty box. Fedex says it's Google's fault, Google says we're stealing phones.
So, we can't get it until they start selling from anybody besides Google or Verizon. Sounds like that will be November first.
I was underwhelmed with the specs. Only 128gb storage? Processor improved, and I guess image processing software improved... maybe that's all that should be expected after 1 year? But the iPhone seems like a huge contrast... 512gb storage available? Both of them offer cloud storage, but the 512gb option is amazing to have on the device.
Pixel comes with unlimited photo and video storage in the cloud, and will automatically delete backed up photos and videos if you start running out of storage. Any phone besides a pixel I would need above 128gb, but with the storage management I've never run out of space on my 64gb pixel 2 xl.
Why are we putting all of this storage into phones? Are you looking to keep all of your photos on your phone so when you break it/get it stolen you lose all your photos?
It just doesn't make sense. I download more movies than I can watch more music than I can listen to for flights, more apps than I use, take more videos and photos than I will ever use. The google photos app auto-deletes my old backed up videos/photos as needed unlike on Apple devices where you have to delete the folder yourself. I never run out at 64GB.
Sure, but that's not really the point. Apple didn't copy anybody when they used the notch — they were trying to make an edge-to-edge display and had to make a concession to house the front-facing camera and additional sensors for Face ID.
But ever since Apple released the iPhone X, suddenly there are notched phones everywhere. And these phones don't seem to be trying for an edge-to-edge display, so it's curious that they would choose to adopt a notch unless they're just trying to copy Apple. (Which is a viable suggestion since the smartphone market is more or less divided into Apple and Everybody Else.)
Thank you for sharing this; I hope more people can see this.
Apple gets the credit for this notch when it was the Essential phone that implemented the idea first. At least in the Essential phone their notch was so minimal to just get the camera to fit that it was not very intrusive. Even though I'm not a fan of a notch, this worked fine.
We're getting into subjective stuff, but for me once I get more than 3 notification icons up there what I get from glancing at it is less "here are the specific notifications you have" and more "you have a lot of things you need to address". I think I generally don't get a benefit out of having 8 or whatever notifications visible at once.
I get that it is still a downside. It may not be a big downside for everybody though.
Notifications are on the side though. If you have so many notifications that the notch would cover them, you're probably not caring about those notifications anyway?
I used to think people were crazy when they complained about this potential future, but it's here.
Perhaps, like when Apple "invented" the modern smartphone form factor a decade ago, it's the best usable form factor that everyone else recognizes and emulates (though the Oppo Find X seems to have a notch free version...)
Evidently it is something "we" want. I personally think it looks awful. Just compare the Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3 XL on the techspecs page. I think the normal top looks much better.
I don't understand it either. It was a really weird design choice facilitated by Apple. My assumption is that Google doesn't want to be seen as a non-innovator by not having a notch in their phones.
If someone else can provide a more plausible reason, I'm all ears =D
I never got the impression anyone was saying the notch was inherently good. It was just better (as a tradeoff) than having to forgo the screen across the entire width of the device.
Huh? The S9 and the Note 9 both have bezels top and bottom. Samsung just decided to give up the ultimate screen size to avoid having any notch. Good on them for not just copying Apple, but they certainly don't have an edge-to-edge notch-less phone.
You could also say "not sure how these are better than buying a 2-year old pixel". If good-enough is what you want, there are a ton of options, I won't disagree. I buy latest (at the time) phones because I plan to hang onto them for 3-4 years at a time.
So its really all about what you are looking for in a phone. If you think Apple has better UX and you don't mind the direction their hardware is going or have any aversions to their ecosystem, then, by all means, get an iPhone.
I loved how they kept harping on how the tablet didn't run a phone OS. Yet for the price of what they are asking you can get a surface that doesn't run a browser OS. That tablet is dead on arrival with those prices. Even microsoft charges less for the keyboard for the surface. It's not a cheap Nexus 7 tablet, Amazon took that market share, it's not a competitor to the iPad, and it's not a Surface competitor.
How can they write a blog post about new products with no links to actually buy said product? I see this a lot with corporate blogs. Why don’t they link to the corporate homepage or to the store where I can buy the product?
Although I had 10" tablets including an iPad, I and others at work found both versions of the Nexus 7 tablets very useful.
Even with my 1 yr old iPad, still have the Nexus 7 charged and use at times. (Just the screen won't rotate anymore to landscape after the last few OS upgrades lol)
When Google decided to abandon that line and their Nexus phones, it was pretty shocking - and telling. Approximately 10+ friends, family and colleagues went to other brands or iPad Minis.
You're lucky, mine was shutting down randomly and only charging up to 50%, similar to [1]. After trying the reset story from the support group I've bought an original replacement battery from Samsung, which didn't really fix it either. Aside from that, it is super slow running Android Lollipop.
No idea what is actually wrong, but never going to buy a Nexus tablet again.
Except our Nexus 10 only got up to Android 5.1.1. Our iPad 2 released the year before reached iOS 9. Our Nexus 7 (1st gen) slowly ground to a halt due to flash wear.
I still have mine from 2012 (I think I installed Dirty Unicorns on it though, which breathed new life). It still works perfectly, but I have no idea what to do with it and it's just sitting there along with my Surface RT. I'll never buy a tablet again.
Lack of headphone jack will drive me to Samsung in the next iteration. As a long-time Google phone fan(Nexus series and now a Pixel XL) this is a saddening trend.
Product page is a mess - why no simple 1 page per item that shows whats new rather multiple articles spread out over different links? I had to go to theverge to understand what was launched
Snapdragon 845 with 4GB of RAM? This is essentially a Pixel 2 XL with a notch. 4GB of ram is going to be atrocious right out of the box, and good luck in a year or two.
No headphone jack.
No memory expansion slot.
No removable battery.
Made in China.
$800 for the cheapest model (64G 5.5").
If I weren't trying to move away from Google right now, I'd be interested. But this is not priced to be an impulse purchase.
Its specs are approximately equivalent to the Samsung S8 -- similar screen (5.5" vs Samsung 5.8"), same IP68 water resistance, edge, Bluetooth 5. But there the similarities end.
S8 and S8+ and later models still have memory expansion. I have a 128gb card in my 64gb S8+, for example, for a total of 172gb. S8, S8+, and the S9 series also have retained a headphone jack. I seem to recall Google making fun of Apple for eliminating theirs, and now they have followed suit.
In my opinion, Google should just designate a best of breed phone, e.g. the Samsung, as its flagship Android, and stop trying to market a "pure Android experience". They've never been very successful with hardware -- maybe the Chromecast was a hit, but their Nexus phones (of which I bought four) have been mediocre.
> "We’ve integrated Titan™ Security, the system we built for Google, into our new mobile devices. Titan™ Security protects your most sensitive on-device data by securing your lock screen and strengthening disk encryption."
Anyone have more information about this new security chip in the Pixel 3? Is this any different from secure boot and the security chip from the Pixel 2?
Found an intriguing tidbit when reading about the Pixel Slate's version of Chrome OS:
> You can even run Linux if you’re a developer.
I wonder what exactly this means. What distro? How locked-down will my device be under this distro? Does this mean we now have a real, live Linux tablet?
Display for the slate looks fantastic, the idea seams right, but I just don't see a legitimate reason to drop another $1K to upgrade from my Pixelbook.
The Pixelbook at least has a keyboard, works great on the lap (hence the name LAPtop), does pretty much the same as the Slate.
Kinda disappointed. I have Pixel XL and was hoping to upgrade this year. But this phone doesn't look like an upgrade except for few minor software enhancements. Maybe I'll switch to iPhone for next 2 years.
Have you considered inviting Satan into your life?
/snark
The removal of the headphone jack is just stupid, and annoying. The fact that I've had no shortage of issues with my car and bluetooth since Oreo (except for 2 months of late betas for P that worked, only to have it break again after the public release). Screwing up hangouts, which was once such a great messaging app everywhere I needed, and voice integration worked great.
Broken and inconsistent "groups" management. Just plain unfinished web interfaces all around. It reminds me of Windows 8... mostly shiny, but some truly ugly areas with it. Not to mention AMP and so many other things they've done that don't really make anything better.
The headphone jack removal problem is entirely solved by a $10 dongle that (I think) comes with the phone unless you need to charge and listen at the same time, which is an edge case for most people.
Wtf, they couldn't even make the top and bottom borders have equal height in a $800 phone (the smaller Pixel)? Who's in charge of hardware design at Google, Apple would never release this.
I am surprised no one is talking about privacy. In my view, buying a phone from an advertising company is insane. Think about your phone - everything about your life is in this one device.
I don't care if Pixel 3 was twice the performance and features than iPhone. Fundamentally, I have a problem with this device and it has little do with petty details such as megapixels and build quality.
Google is not interested in selling you hardware without "free" Google services built in. If they were, they would be a hardware company, not an advertisement company.
Apple isn't perfect either. I'm not trying to defend Google, but Apple is going after the right to repair and trying to make it illegal for you to repair your own device, let alone 3rd parties to.
So if you're someone who respects your right to repair and won't pay for Apple products, and the other option is an advertising company, what options are there left?
Apple has a pretty bad record about repairability but that is most likely due to the shrinking electronics packaging and it applies to all phones and laptops - Please check iFixit repair score for Microsoft surface and Samsung tablets.
It is difficult to say, but right to repair has ranks lower in terms of societal impact than privacy. Privacy has deep and profound impact on our society than right to repair. If it is a secure device, I am OK with not being able to repair it - your phone is your life these days in 60 cubic centimeters of metal, glass and silicon.
Yes, some devices are getting more difficult to repair. However, Microsoft and Samsung aren't the ones lobbying to make it ILLEGAL to fix device.
Apple has sued over people taking displays that were still good, but just needed the glass replaced. This is a trivial repair and has been done forever in the IT industry. To the car analogy: it's like replacing the windshield and selling the vehicle. Then Honda sues you because the Honda logo is still on the car.
This has nothing to do with security and is totally over Apple wanting full control over a device that someone purchased with their own dollars. To say it's to do with security is asinine.
Does anyone know which algorithm they use for super resolution in the camera app? I know they're using RAISR [0] for zoom in the previous version, seems like they have a new method now with multi image super resolution.
I doubt it's anywhere near as good as a second camera with a different lens, so I don't understand why they won't include a second camera in the back like every other modern phone.
Between the giant top bar and the "related articles" segment that opens on its own theres almost no readable vertical space left on this blog. What kind of amateur company designed this?
> soft circles and curves evoke something natural & familiar
> the products we create become so natural in your life that you don't think about them as technology anymore
This is bad! People should think of their technology and the implications it has on their lives. Encouraging people to sleepwalk even further into 24/7 surveillance fails the "don't be evil" test in my opinion.
Call me a cynic but damn if this doesn't stuff doesn't sound creepy coming from a company whose business model is based on surveillance.
I see where you are coming from, but I think that is just fighting the inevitable. People & companies should consider the implications of technology, but that shouldn't prevent it from becoming a bigger part of our lives.
I thought some of the feature presentations were very strange. They focused way too much on "how not to do it" instead of the "here's how Pixel solves this". For example the wide angle lens got a video which was 90% "Here's a bad example and another one,..." and then a 3s example of how it works/looks with the wide angle and that was pretty much it.
This is a very dramatic opinion, but its one I've been thinking about for a while.
What is Google's five year plan with their hardware ecosystem? The only thing I can come up with is "continue gathering data to build experiences which enable them to sell ads and continue to gather more data", which feels reductive and has almost nothing to do with hardware.
The Pixel has always, in a broader market sense, been a bit of a non-starter. Its a fine device, don't get me wrong, but they sold 3.7M in 2017 [1]. Compare that to ~220M iPhones [2] or ~30M Samsung devices [2]. Its not even close. No one looks at LG's phone business and thinks its healthy, but that's the magnitude of sales we're talking about.
And their disastrous attempts at "premium" ChromeOS hardware. The Pixelbook was the most hilariously horrible device Google has ever made (wait... maybe that should go to the Pixel C?). The Slate looks a lot better, but where's the value compared to the cheaper Surface Pro 6 or iPad Pro? ChromeOS is an amazing platform for your grandma, but that doesn't sell units. And how does ChromeOS further Google's broader ecosystem goals? I use G-Suite personally and I feel no draw to buy one of these things, and I should be their target market.
If they're trying to take back more control of the Android market, they're failing. So, they've got the web. The "open web" isn't even a strategic moat for them; its the minimum price for them to exist. And geeze, even then, Apple is destroying them by forcing Safari on iOS.
This is way out in left field, but I think what Google needs to do is work on a WebASM-native processor architecture and design. Fuchsia and Flutter isn't enough alone, because they're still going to rely on companies like Samsung or Huawei to distribute the hardware, which is tenuous; these companies might see Fuchsia as an opportunity to take even more control of Android.
Right now Google is learning to make and sell end user devices. Distribution, manufacturing, etc, are no trivial matters and Google isn't a hardware company like Apple.
I think today the endgame for these devices is pure marketing. The Slate in particular is intended to bring some cool factor into the ChromeOS world which is seriously lacking.
Longer term, I'd say Google is preparing to become a major hardware manufacturer and maybe give a shot at beating Apple at its own game. We know Google is making its own universal OS, we know Google is keeping its hardware business relatively small. I think Google is preparing for the second coming of Fuchsia.
I think Google is trying to go after the premium segment and try to achieve Apple-like margins by focusing on software. If you look at the the phone specs you'll be completely unimpressed with the Pixel phones. Plenty of cheaper phones have better specs. This is why the Android phone market is so brutal: most OEMs are undifferentiated and are being squeezed because consumers largely see them as interchangeable. Google is the exception to this. So I don't think evaluating them purely on volume is a correct way to assess the health of their business.
It's hard to come to terms with the sheer lack of imagination and variety in the smartphone market. A few examples:
1. It's now all but impossible to find a phone with flagship specifications in anything smaller than a 5" form factor. You would think some company somewhere would be trying to capture the market for smaller phones but no. Sony has done this for a while but hasn't released a compact version of their latest offering.
2. In the space of less than a year the questionable design choice of adding a notch to the top of the screen has become ubiquitous. This follows a larger trend of just about every phone maker trying to make their product look as much like an iPhone as possible rather than trying to create a distinct aesthetic.
3. Headphone jacks have mostly disappeared for little discernible reason despite the overwhelming consumer preference for them. Why aren't there any smartphone manufacturers trying to differentiate by keeping the jack?
The list goes on. It boggles the mind how a market that has existed for like 10 years became so homogeneous and creatively bankrupt.
Why does nearly everything that Google makes look like it was designed by an engineer? They have top-notch engineering talent, but seem completely clueless when it comes to designing slick and beautiful experiences. There's a very thin line between cool and cringy.
For those who are dissapointed in Pixel's notch - look out for OnePlus 6T. Much more better "waterdrop" implementation which minimizes notch area. There is a rumour they're partnering with T-Mobile for this release
Happy I didn't pull the trigger on the Lenovo Smart Display. Home Hub looks pretty nice and although the screen is smaller than both of the Lenovo models, I think the price difference makes up for it.
Where's the best place to get a new/refurb Pixel 1 cheap? It's the last Google phone I'd want to own, and I'm guessing the price will drop even further now that the 3 is out.
I am not, unfortunately. :-/ And I don't have much need for a phone with lots of grunt, so the Pixel seemed like a good compromise.
Any other suggestions for a solid Android phone with a headphone jack that won't give me any trouble rooting it? Replaceable battery would be nice too, but I'm not picky on that.
There are quite a few phones that will let you unlock the bootloader, but pixels are the only ones with decent security record and ability to self-sign builds for verified boot. Pixel 1 will stop receiving support in a year. So you need to make that call if you want to buy a phone with just a year of security updates left.
It's Google's Apple care equivalent. Pretty disappointing. Pixel used to come with 2 years warranty, now it comes with one, if you want 2 years you need to pay extra.
Every Google feature is predicated on large scale user data collection. Who asked for a phone that would answer itself or cloud storage for pictures that also processes and trains models on all of them? These features are something Google wants, not consumers. When drones are able to target individuals based on facial profiles, I'm going to think "my selfies helped with that".
maybe you don't want those features but a lot of us do. cloud storage of photos has been great and I'd love to stop paying for the additional storage space. yes, Google may benefit from it also but that is why it is free...
Had a few Chromebooks with different models where after 15-90 minutes of playing audio over bluetooth, the headset would disconnect and audio would play out through the speakers at full volume.
It's the reason I didn't buy a Pixelbook to be honest.
Google's "unlimited" photo and video storage sounds like a fantastic idea! Until you realize that, as with all of Google's products, the "unlimited" storage has to be paid for somehow.
> When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.
Google's entire business is "operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and developing new ones", so it suffices to say that their usage is not so "limited". As far as I can tell, there are no terms for Google Photos that narrow the scope.
> You acknowledge and agree that Apple may, without liability to you, access, use, preserve and/or disclose your Account information and Content to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or a third party, as Apple believes is reasonably necessary or appropriate, if legally required to do so or if Apple has a good faith belief that such access, use, disclosure, or preservation is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal process or request; (b) enforce this Agreement, including investigation of any potential violation thereof; (c) detect, prevent or otherwise address security, fraud or technical issues; or (d) protect the rights, property or safety of Apple, its users, a third party, or the public as required or permitted by law.
> Except for material we may license to you, Apple does not claim ownership of the materials and/or Content you submit or make available on the Service. However, by submitting or posting such Content on areas of the Service that are accessible by the public or other users with whom you consent to share such Content, you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available, without any compensation or obligation to you.
The first paragraph is Apple saying that they can show the FBI your iCloud account, which is already a known quantity with almost all cloud storage providers (except E2E encrypted ones). The second says that Apple only uses your content if you choose to share it with people, and then, only for the purpose of sharing.
Maybe you don't care that Google has this kind of access to all your photos and videos - after all, it already does that with your GMail - but for a lot of people (myself included) this is a dealbreaker.
I didn't watch the whole live stream so I cannot tell whether they have mentioned about privacy specifically or not. From what I saw from the phone spec, there is a new chip called "Titan M" built custom for the Pixel 3.
"Embedded in the Pixel 3 phones is a new security chip named Titan M. Google designed, manufactured, and integrated the chip into the phone's secure boot process. It's used to protect the lock screen passcode authentication process and to strengthen disk encryption. This same security chip is used in Google's data centers, the company says, which means the Pixel phones are getting enterprise-level security."
That's to prevent someone from logging into your phone. However, they didn't mention anything about privacy, which would be what happens when you're already logged into your phone, and Google is tracking what you do.
Hey Google,Facebook etc... You've had data breaches and you don't really seem to care about user info and privacy, what's your response?
Facebook & Google: "Introducing these new gadgets to use in your home, where we can get access to everything you do or look up during the day"
