Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 615 posts

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#391

Post by j45 »

watbe wrote: post #192
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…

On the contrary, because I bought the Nexus 6P from the Google Store, they replaced it with a Pixel XL for free. The Google experience is terrible through a third party, but their Google 'direct' experience is pretty darn fantastic.

A slightly goofy thing about the Google Store is you can't add the warranty after the initial warranty within the warranty period.

With Apple, it's no big deal to extend the warranty during the first year of the warranty.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#392

Post by zeveb »

jamesrcole wrote: post #154
dracodoc wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wifi didn't replace Ethernet after many years. Even wifi has become much more reliable, faster and cheaper, Ethernet is always several steps better. Pushing progress is not an excuse to force transition with cost and effort burden on customers.

But does every networked device have ethernet these days? My laptop doesn't, nor does my phone. There are some contexts where Ethernet is more appropriate, but that doesn't mean it's more appropriate everywhere. > Pushing progress is not an excuse to force transition with cost and effort burden on customers. You can't make progress without doing some of that.

> But does every networked device have ethernet these days? My laptop doesn't, nor does my phone.

Every stationary or semi-stationary networked device should probably have Ethernet. A desktop or laptop should; a phone shouldn't (because it's mobile). It'd be nice if IoT thermostats and the like were wired, but that would require homes to have Ethernet-over-power or Ethernet runs in the walls or something.

WiFi is inferior to Ethernet, except when mobility is necessary. So for mobile devices like phones, it's not needed. For tablets, probably not (but imagine if your charging cable could also carry fast, reliable networking to your tablet, so you could have a better experience while reading or watching TV, but still be able to get up & go).

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#393

Post by hajile »

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 issue has nothing to do with bitrate. The first issue is that the signal cuts out randomly due to interference. The second is that you have to convert the signal to analog and DAC quality matters.

To increase battery life, you have to go with more simplistic conversion which reduces quality. To reduce the cost of 2 DACs (one per ear) you have to use worse hardware. The net result is that the onboard DAC is basically guaranteed to be better and the amount of interference over wired headphones will be minimal.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#394

Post by dnissley »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #311
habosa wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you identify yourself as a Google employee? Just asking because re: consistency, I could believe a blue badge might pull some weight in that situation. Speaking from experience, badging at an Apple Store will often change a conversation, sometimes dramatically, despite that ability not really being intended at all. Neither here nor there, just a data point.

I do not work for Google and had the same experience re: getting a pixel xl replacement for my Nexus 6p.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#395

Post by vardump »

lurker- wrote: post #358
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #292

There's a reason that Samsung still leads the pack in sales, and it's not solely due to marketing: they keep the stuff people want. People want a headphone jack, they held onto the headphone jack. People want SD card slots, they keep SD card slots. I held off on getting a GS8 about two months ago when Amazon had a great deal on them going because I was in the process of moving, and I wanted to wait to see what else w…

I won't defend ditching the headphone jack, especially after Google ridiculed Apple for doing so. But as a very happy owner of the Pixel phone, I'd say the free, unlimited storage of photos and videos in original quality is a million times better than having a SD card slot. Just today I transferred about 25GB of video and photos, and I probably wouldn't have bothered to record these videos if I had to transfer using…

> Just today I transferred about 25GB of video and photos, and I probably wouldn't have bothered to record these videos if I had to transfer using SD card or cable.

Now try to take pictures on holiday without cheap & available 4g or wifi. I prefer a few 256 GB microSD-cards. It takes just 10 seconds to swap it out and put in a fresh new one. You can transfer the contents into a Macbook at speedy 90 MB/s.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#396

Post by maltalex »

serialpreneur wrote: post #388
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 had boot loop problems twice in less than 3 year span with two different Nexus phones one after the other! Nexus 4 and Nexus 5X. I gave up on Android after that. It sucks because I was a big Android fan. Not going back now even after the whole headphone jack fiasco with iPhone 7+

>Not going back now even after the whole headphone jack fiasco with iPhone 7+

The Pixel 2 doesn't have a headphone jack either: https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/04/google-unveils-the-pixel...

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#397

Post by eric_h »

jamesrcole wrote: post #185
Zak wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The floppy disk stopped being good at moving files between computers and making backups because single files of popular types regularly exceeded its capacity at the time it stopped being a standard feature. Modems and CD drives had fallen into disuse in favor of alternatives by the time they started getting left out. The analog headphone jack still does as good a job of connecting headphones, speakers and such in a p…

> The floppy disk stopped being good at moving files between computers and making backups because single files of popular types regularly exceeded its capacity at the time it stopped being a standard feature. Modems and CD drives had fallen into disuse in favor of alternatives by the time they started getting left out. There were still people who had stuff on floppies who wanted floppy drives. There was a big fuss wh…

>> The analog headphone jack still does as good a job of connecting headphones, speakers and such in a practical sense as it always did. >Many people -- I'm not claiming it's the majority -- disagree. Many people find headphone cables a big pain in the ass.

I agree completely - wireless headphones are amazing, I hate dealing with cables.

My first pair of bluetooth headphones were shit, and very difficult to switch devices, so I went back to wired. My second pair of bluetooth headphones (Bose QC something) are fantastic! Easily connect to multiple devices, easily switch between the devices. My third (AirPods) are similarly amazing, easy to switch devices, easy to pair.

I'm never buying a pair of wired headphones again.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#398

Post by rexf »

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 having a headphone jack sucks. I use the iPhone 7 so I don't have an audio jack.

Instead of trying to remember to bring the lightning headphones or the lightning to audio adapter around, I've simply given up on using headphones. Which is terrible since I used to use my free Apple headphones a ton (on previous iPhones).

As much as people online rave about airpods, I don't need another $$ device in my life to charge and possibly misplace.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#399

Post by willtim »

pier25 wrote: post #357
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #292

There's a reason that Samsung still leads the pack in sales, and it's not solely due to marketing: they keep the stuff people want. People want a headphone jack, they held onto the headphone jack. People want SD card slots, they keep SD card slots. I held off on getting a GS8 about two months ago when Amazon had a great deal on them going because I was in the process of moving, and I wanted to wait to see what else w…

I like Samsung's hardware, but I still can't stand their TouchWiz UI. I don't understand why manufacturers simply don't offer a stock Android variant.

TouchWiz is better than stock android now. It has lots of additional useful features, especially in the areas of split screen and power saving.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#400

Post by hug »

hota_mazi wrote: post #320
modzu wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly. I routinely switch my headset from my laptop to my phone and vice versa. Doing this with a jack is trivial. Doing this with a BlueTooth headset is very annoying and requires additional steps on both devices.

Anecdotally, my experience with Bluetooth headphones is that they’re easier. I don’t have to do anything more complicated than you do — if I turn on my Bluetooth headphones in range of my computer, they connect. If I turn them on in range of my iPhone or iPad, they connect.

If any of them start playing sound, it comes out the headphones. No cable twiddling required.

Post reply on HN