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Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

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Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#241

Post by ehsankia »

hypersoar wrote: post #227
mullingitover wrote: post #170

I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option. I tried Android early on, had similarly…

It seems to make a big difference whether or not you buy it from Google. I've seen lots of complaints from Nexus 6P owners who didn't being shoved off to Huawei and their terrible support. But I bought mine from Google, who twice offered me RMAs after the warranty period was over with no resistance. Most recently they replaced it with a new Pixel XL, instead (due to stock issues, I assume). That being said, Google ne…

It's also worth noting that Nexus line was more of a budget phone, whereas Pixel is a premium flagship. The extra cost is exactly for things such as better costumers support.

I don't understand people comparing a 350$ Nexus 5 phone to a 700$ Pixel phone, and saying that they're both by Google, and anything that applies to the first also must apply to the second. It's also like people blindly hating on support for paid products by bringing anecdotal evidence from support on free products. That's just not how things work.

The Nexus line was barely a Google product, it was just meant to be a vanilla open device for developers, with some Google oversight. That's very different from a premium device built and supported from start to finish by Google.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#242

Post by Anm »

Klathmon wrote: post #182
angus-prune wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They announced, in the talk, that this is all done locally on the phone. The phone will have a database of, iirc, 10,000 songs locally. [edit] typos

Ah! Then I'm sure they have some way of making the data needed much smaller than I thought it could be!

They only need to store (and occasionally update) the kernel parameters for the trained deep neural net. Very small indeed.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#243

Post by bzmwillemsen »

sly010 wrote: post #236
mullingitover wrote: post #170

I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option. I tried Android early on, had similarly…

I guess experiences vary. Both times I broke my google phone they replaced it. We had some issue with setting up Project Fi, but again they ended up replacing it for free. I find that chatting works best with google support.

I had the same experience. My pixel battery was burning through it's battery at an extraordinary way, I contact support through the phone and got a replacement within the week.

A few months later I heard a rattle in my phone, turns out they sent me one that was part of a line that had an issue with a microphone component. Contact support and yet again it was replaced within a week.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#244

Post by modzu »

lopespm wrote: post #45

Honest question: for those of you who own a mobile device without a headphone jack, do you find it to be an encuberment? Personally I still find it a bit hostile to not have the jack available, since often times I find myself charging the phone and using the headphones (when watching videos for example), so having an adapter dongle for such a frequent task seems counterintuitive to me. I believe that if a device is c…

you guys should try switching to a camera for your photography instead of a cellphone, then we can remove the camera from the phone too

the idea that because bluetooth headphones exist means the jack shouldnt exist is not fair -- there are plenty of reasons the jack is plenty useful to plenty enough people

the only excuse I can see to remove the jack is that when you sell a billion devices and the little jack costs a buck a device you just made yourself a billion dollars for nothing. oh and now you can sell dongles that cost $1 a pop to make for $10 a pop and you make yourself 10 billion

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#245

Post by MBCook »

lopespm wrote: post #45

Honest question: for those of you who own a mobile device without a headphone jack, do you find it to be an encuberment? Personally I still find it a bit hostile to not have the jack available, since often times I find myself charging the phone and using the headphones (when watching videos for example), so having an adapter dongle for such a frequent task seems counterintuitive to me. I believe that if a device is c…

Not a problem at all.

In the car the phone is plugged in with a wire anyway, that wire covers power and audio. Or I could use BT.

I’ve switched to BT headphones at work and they’re much more convenient than wired headphones. Before I bought hen I just had a single permenantly on the cord anyway.

When I travel I have my BT phones and the rest already have dongles in them. No need to remember anything.

Something else needed? $10 at many stores and I can get another dongle but I haven’t run into that.

It’s been a non-issue.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#246

Post by habosa »

mullingitover wrote: post #170

I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option. I tried Android early on, had similarly…

Disclaimer: I work at Google but have nothing to do with any hardware team.

I bought a Nexus 6P from the Google store and had some issues. Out of warranty they replaced it with a new Nexus 6P. When that failed as well, they replaced the phone with a brand new Pixel XL. Each of these replacements was sent via overnight shipping at no cost to me.

I wouldn't call this a great experience because I wish the original phone never had the issue, but I can't ask for more from support.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#247

Post by Justen »

matwood wrote: post #225
nataz wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this story a number of times, but it doesn't match at all with my experience. Did she buy it from google? I bought mine direct from google and the service was fantastic when I had an issue with my phone. I called them up, explained my problem, and 5 mins later they were sending me a replacement in the mail with a pre-stamped shipping package to send the old one back. I'm not sure what else I could ask for.

> Did she buy it from google? Why should that matter? My wife's iPhone was purchased from TMO. It had an issue so she took it into an Apple store and she came out with a new phone 10 minutes later.

It might matter for people thinking about buying another google phone.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#248

Post by endorphone »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #157
endorphone wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Gruber's stance on DXO is utterly meaningless, and it's farcical that you seriously cite it. Measuring the technical capabilities of an imaging device is patently obvious and justifiable. From dynamic range to optical and electronic resolution, noise at different light levels, etc. You can question their methodology, but saying that it "doesn't measure anything" is nonsense, and citing a guy who laughably claims…

Did you read that blog post? He was criticizing DXO for giving the iPhone 8 the highest score ever, not defending Apple. How do you objectively measure bokeh effects? And if you're so defensive of DXO, can you explain why their photo subscores range from 51-89 but that adds up to a 96?

Gruber had previously shat on DXO when the iPhone was bested by the Pixel. He took this opportunity to say "Oh btw the iPhone is now best...but it's still horseshit look at how unbiased I am".

And I'm not "defensive" of DXO scores any more than I'm defensive of dpreview. DXO analyzes a variety of real world technical capabilities of imaging systems -- most certainly in an imperfect way and needing more rigor -- but to call it "horseshit", or to ridiculously claim that it measures nothing, is specious.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#249

Post by hawski »

jamesrcole wrote: post #42
mcjiggerlog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many customers they will lose because of this decision? What I don't actually understand is what exactly is gained by its removal? It doesn't seem to be a limiting factor in either thinness or waterproofing, which are the only two I can think of. I know I for one will never buy a phone with no headphone jack.

I think (good implementations of) wireless headphones are the way of the future. What did they gain by removing floppy disk drives from laptops? Well, nothing per se, but it allowed them to make smaller laptops. Removing the jack will allow them to make phones thinner - if not now, in future iterations. And the thing with keeping features around is that it's not just a question of that one feature. It's cumulative ov…

If the jack removal allows to make thinner phones, then I hope that it will never be removed.

What is advantage of thinner phones? They are uncomfortable for hands and have probably smaller battery. They must be also easier to bend.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#250

Post by eropple »

kpxxx3 wrote: post #113
eropple wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that they work well for you, but AirPods and the like don't work well for me at all. The audio quality drop is noticeable to me; interference is a perpetual problem even when I'm just walking down the street or walking through my apartment . Bluetooth on both Android and iOS is clunky and annoying (and it's not totally their fault, the devices and the protocol have something to say about that) that the phy…

> The audio quality drop is noticeable to me. I'm not going to get into an audiophile/golden ear flamewar, but I am always skeptical of this claim. Yes, SBC is not the world's best, but it supports bitrates upto 500 kbit/s. I'm not going to claim it is completely transparent, but 9 times out of 10 it is being used with shitty bluetooth headphones (where the alternative is shitty wired headphones)... at that point the…

The audio quality issue is not due to encoding. It's due to garbling and interference from, you know, the two feet from my pocket to my headphones while sitting at home in my apartment. This has happened in every apartment I've lived in since getting Bluetooth headphones. It happened in my parents' house with a quarter mile to any neighbors. It happens when walking down the street. It happens at the gym. It happens at the office.

In an optimum environment it's fine. In the real world, having my headphones make farty noises in my ears two or three times in a ten-minute walk is silly and we live in the future and it should be better than that.

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