Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#541

Post by cup-of-tea » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:32 AM UTC

jraedisch wrote: post #522

I am an Android user but it seems to me that it gets more and more invasive. Everytime I go somewhere it wants me to take photos and just now it advertised some Play Store movie. Search asks for location access on almost every search. To get rid of the search bar I need to install third party software. When I buy a premium phone I want the phone to work for me and not the other way around. The notification bar should…

Android wants to make money for Google. It sounds like what you want is a pocket-sized computer that can make telephone calls. Shouldn't be so difficult, right? But maybe it would be twice the price if you want to pay with money and not your data.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#542

Post by lurker- » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:42 AM UTC

alpha_squared wrote: post #446

woolvalley wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure they are taking a few 4k 60fps videos as part of that holiday, and those eat space like it's nothing.

More rough napkin math... A second of 4k60 video is ~7MB, but we'll overestimate to 8MB (though I'm using really rough metrics here). At 690GB (230 x 3), that's ~86,000 seconds. Or, more familiarly, about 24 hours of 4k60 video (holy cannoli, Batman!). I guess that's about an hour's worth of video recording every day over a three-week period. Understandable, and more doable, though still really excessive.

And when you turn it into a more realistic scenario (~1 hour video/day - something I'd almost never do with my iPhone but often do with my Pixel), it's hard to imagine not having access to WiFi throughout the week. Even the hotels/apartments with really poor connection seem to have no trouble uploading the photos/videos throughout the night.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#543

Post by flarg » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:42 AM UTC

k__ wrote: post #335

DSingularity wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been android all my life. Bought almost every phone on the Google store. After the Nexus 6p experience -- I made an oath to my self to never buy another Google phone again. From the onset it was broke. We are talking just a week after I bought, I started noticing a pattern of complaints about the audio clarity. I call support, what do I get? A refurb. Whatever, phone was just released -- probably gonna be a new phone…

I went for no-name Android phones for years now and can't complain. First I had a Huawei Ascend Mate 7 (6") for 2 years, then a Huawei MediaPad X2 (7") for 3 years. Somehow they stopped to build big phones, so I switched to a Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (6.4") and I couldn't be happier. I paid a fraction of the price of one of those Nexus/iPhone/Samsung flagship Smartphones and they all had what I needed, big display and big bat…

Second that, one plus for the last couple of years, good balance of price vs quality and no worse update policy than more expensive phones.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#544

Post by gambiting » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:43 AM UTC

criddell wrote: post #130

gambiting wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, after being really impressed with the Pixel I knew Pixel 2 was going to be my next phone. Not anymore. Lack of the headphone jack is an absolute no-go for me.

I think Google is okay with that. They know the phone isn't for everybody and fortunately there's a lot of choice in the Android world. If you want to run iOS apps, you are kind of stuck taking what Apple gives you and so I think the frustration with removal of the headphone jack there is warranted. I don't understand why anybody cares that Google is doing this. We have a lot of choice in the Android world.

>>I don't understand why anybody cares that Google is doing this.

Because I wanted to buy a Pixel, and now I won't because of a decision they made? I can of course go and buy something else, but I'm just voicing my displeasure with this.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#545

Post by Renaud » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:48 AM UTC

fffernan wrote: post #417

hota_mazi wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bose BT headphones have two inputs. I usually have my phone and laptop connected. It has some priority sorting order which seems to work well.

Yes, Bose QC BT headphones are good. So now you need $300 headphones to solve a problem that didn't exist in the first place.

And 2 inputs are good but it's clearly a pain once you want to connect more devices, say a laptop, phone, ipad, TV...

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#546

Post by willtim » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:50 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #434

willtim wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As someone with an S7 , while many improvements are nice, they are cobbled by being buggy as hell. If I just turn on power saving then turn it back off , I have to hard reset my phone because the resolution gets all messed up.

My android experience has been tarnished more by Google bugs than Samsung ones. Android 5 was a very buggy release, so much infrastructural change with little user benefit. IMHO Samsung should have skipped it entirely. I guess they bowed down to user and media pressure to always ship the latest android (although the media criticised them anyway for poor battery life, caused by Android 5).

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#547

Post by traspler » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:52 AM UTC

jraedisch wrote: post #522

I am an Android user but it seems to me that it gets more and more invasive. Everytime I go somewhere it wants me to take photos and just now it advertised some Play Store movie. Search asks for location access on almost every search. To get rid of the search bar I need to install third party software. When I buy a premium phone I want the phone to work for me and not the other way around. The notification bar should…

I really liked many of the Google services and lived comfortably and happy with them, Android as well. I think I went all in on Google. And it was fine until now.

But now I am pretty fed up with Android and Google. The increased invasiveness and how I can't disable features that I don't want anymore or the incredible persistence of asking to activate something I declined multiple times until they make it required, really put me off.

Another thing is that many of the shiny features don't benefit me at all. Previously Google offered services anyone could use. Search, GMail, Android. But now more and more services are locked to countries, languages and devices which only a subset of Google users can benefit from but everyone is expected to deal with these features.

Some features simply don't work reliably at all (e.g. Google Trips and most of Google Now related to GMail, Hangouts before it got killed) and some features are pretty much useless to me as they are bound to either the USA or a language I don't casually speak (e.g. as a Swiss-German speaker the whole Google Assistant stuff is just not fun at all as I have to either speak High-German or English. Both of which is not as natural as my native language. Many Google Now cards seem to show way less info compared to the USA or show way worse data.)

One benefit might be the "ecosystem" of everything working together perfectly but to me they still have a long way to go to achieve this. I think I see a direction in their messy portfolio of services, apps and devices but currently it's a terrible mess. Devices being abandoned as soon as they launch. Services migration to way less capable ones. That's not a seamless ecosystem, that's just a burden to me.

So to me it feels like Google expects me to let them invade my private space more and more, give them more and more of my life even though they offer very little actually intuitively useful things. For me it has long been that what they offer is worth it but now that balance has tipped towards offering very little for a lot of me.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#548

Post by pentae » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:54 AM UTC

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…

It's super annoying when you're at a friends place and want to play some music through their speaker system, in a hotel room traveling, or just when i'm using both my laptop and iphone with the same pair of headphones having to swap adapters. Bluetooth speakers NEVER pair reliably. It's utterly horrible and I will never forgive Apple for it.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#549

Post by x0x0 » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:55 AM UTC

caf wrote: post #443

robin_reala wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treble’s great, but overall it’s still not iOS competitive. For example, the iPhone 4S and 5 got 4 years and 10 months of OS support, and the 5S that launched 4 years ago got iOS 11 and presumably will get all the updates this year.

The "minimum 3 years support" for the Pixel 2 and the 4 years 10 months actual support for the iPhone 4S / 5 are not comparable numbers, exactly because one is the minimum they're promising (so it will apply from the date that the phone is discontinued) and the other is the maximum achieved (so it was measured from the model release date). Anyone who bought an iPhone 4S at the end of its run only got 2 years of suppo…

Google cut support relatively early for plenty of phones, including my Nexus 5. There were endless stupid excuses about chipsets, but the fact remains: nothing past 6.0.1. They barely supported it for two years.

Re: Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

#550

Post by x0x0 » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 7:59 AM UTC

sowbug wrote: post #512

pwython wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing a trend in this thread that a fair amount of Android users are needing to call up some sort of technical support for OS or hardware issues. Aside from the quality of support being debated, is this really a common thing in the Android world (even for savvy HN users)? I personally haven't seen that case in my Apple group of friends.

That's not a trend. It is the subject of the thread. Here's my story. Bought Nexus 5. Smashed screen in go-kart accident. Called Google to ask about repair; they offered to replace it for free. I still have that phone as a backup. Bought Nexus 6p. Then bought another for wife. Both worked fine; we gave them to family members after two years. Now have Pixel, Pixel XL for wife, and Pixel for daughter. They've all worke…

My Nexus 5, purchased directly from google, stopped charging; I think something wore on the connector. I went through 7 or 8 cables and, if you held them just right, the phone would charge. Briefly. Support was a nightmare to deal with, including them insisting that I install the latest point update of the OS which would somehow magically cure hardware damage. On a phone that I couldn't charge. And that they wouldn't help with at all until I installed the stupid OS update.

Apple just doesn't treat customers like that. IME obviously.