I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report • Hacker News Board

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#121

Post by vetinari » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:53 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #96

modeless wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that page is very simple, and very wrong. On my mom's iPad and iPhone, the app numbers on the storage page simply don't add up. Many gigabytes of space are unaccounted for, yet unusable. As far as I can tell the only way to recover the space is a factory reset, and it's only a temporary fix.

Tbf, my last phone(Xperia Z5) did the same thing - it would show me that apps were taking ~22GB, but when you displayed them and actually added up the numbers it was about ~12GB. I actually went and uninstalled pretty much everything I could, and "apps" were still showing as using nearly 10GB. I only got it back after a full firmware reset.

On Android, you can install any random file manager and explore & clean the filesystem yourself (many apps litter on the virtual sdcard). There's also a DiskUsage app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...), that will scan the device and tell you, where are the files that take up the space and allows you to delete them.

With iOS device, you can't really do that.

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#122

Post by onewhonknocks » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:54 AM UTC

You are comparing a 2014 phone (iPhone 6+) to a 2017 phone (Pixel 2), and are surprised that one seems 'better.'

It's obviously not even close to an apples-to-apples comparison though.

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#123

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:54 AM UTC

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #92

One of the author's frustrations is actually already present in iOS: > There’s a super-easy clear all link which is fantastic and hits at my #1 pet peeve w/ iOS’s design: the iOS notifications give me more work to do, not less If you force touch on the topmost (x) in the iOS notification dropdown, you get an option to clear all notifications. However, I only recently discovered this myself, after using each iOS since…

Apple has always done this, and it's frustrating. Another good example is how they've always only had one mouse button on desktop, because they claimed that having two or more was too complicated for users.

Well ... the problem is that having more than one button is actually useful, and when the buttons are hardware buttons at least they are discoverable. Instead, there's lots of functionality hidden behind Control-clicking and Option-clicking and maybe more that is very hard to discover on your own (and this goes back to the pre-OS X days even).

Force touch is similar in that the overall discoverable interface is too simple, and then the added functionality on top of that is way too hidden.

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#124

Post by antihero » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:55 AM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #93

antihero wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also there's small stuff like: Photo map. I've traced back treasured photos that would have been lost in a sea of 44,000 photos by finding them on the map. Google Photos doesn't seem to have this. Notes also works really nicely for loads of stuff.

https://github.com/k3b/APhotoManager/wiki

It's good that someone has made that but it looks nowhere near as nice.

When you open the Photos app on iOS you have a beautiful map with clustered thumbnails.

http://tinyimg.io/i/d4DRgIT.png

http://tinyimg.io/i/0lVO6KC.png

It's useful enough that I could find out the exact spot I slept by the river Seine years ago based on scrolling around Berlin on the map for 5 minutes until I found the photo, taken several years ago on a completely different iPhone, then go back there recently and recreate the picture.

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#125

Post by saagarjha » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:56 AM UTC

herbst wrote: post #114

saagarjha wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So when I get a text message, it gets archived to Gmail with a label so it's searchable. And every incoming/outgoing/missed call puts an entry with the details and timestamp in my calendar, so I can look back for reference. With iOS, these all get synced across your devices through Continuity. They're not really searchable because Apple hasn't figured out a way to do search right, but they're there.

Obviously the data is there, yet one allows you to do whatever you want in a comfortable way while the other doesn't.

This is an often-complained about issue, though, so here's to hoping that Apple fixes it at some point…

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#126

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:56 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #27

zspitzer wrote: post #21

I have a Pixel 2 XL, alas the USB-C headphone adaptor died. There's a request a support call button in settings, I pressed it and 2 mins later a native english speaker called me back, 12 minutes later (which included getting my address details), Google was express shipping a replacement from part which arrived 42 hours later (HK - Melbourne, Australia).

Holy mother cow That's awesome on so many levels. Just having "call me i need your help" on the phone is so obvious and yet unexpected. And then actually having strong customer support is ... ungoogle-like wow

There's this meme that Google has terrible customer support that is years out of date. When you have a problem with a Google product that you actually paid for (like one of their hardware devices), experiences are generally good. I had a replacement Nexus 5X shipped with no problem, for instance.

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#127

Post by dogweather » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:57 AM UTC

onewhonknocks wrote: post #122

You are comparing a 2014 phone (iPhone 6+) to a 2017 phone (Pixel 2), and are surprised that one seems 'better.' It's obviously not even close to an apples-to-apples comparison though.

For that reason, I didn't give attention to the device's speed.

95% of my comparison is the current iOS (which the 6s+ runs) vs. the current Android.

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#128

Post by canuckintime » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:58 AM UTC

no1youknowz wrote: post #120

I know a lot of this is anecdotal... My Mom who is 77, has had a few Androids. Always calling her Sons to help fix her phone. She bought cheap phones for a couple of hundred dollars, but always limited the Ram, but had plenty of storage. WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook would constantly fill it up and many times you'd have to clear out all the apps, clear the storage on the phone, etc, etc. Then I would have to explain to h…

My aunt bought a 'cheap' iPhone (SE, 16GB, $450) and ran out of storage the first month...

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#129

Post by jvannistelrooy » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:59 AM UTC

For my job as an app Product Manager, I use several different devices on a daily basis. I also switch between an iPhone and Android phone as my personal device every half year or so, to stay up-to-date with both platforms.

I think articles like these are interesting to read, but not relevant anymore. iPhones and high-end Android devices both offer a mature user experience, and you can't objectively say that one is better than the other.

The choice of one OS over another depends entirely on your personal use cases, and of course personal taste. This is also reflected by all the valid, but personal reasons people list in this thread to choose a specific OS.

Re: I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

#130

Post by dogweather » Tue, May 01, 2018, 10:59 AM UTC

mirkules wrote: post #81

chrischen wrote: post #6

I had the same experience when first switching to Android after a lifetime on iPhone. But after a year of really getting to use Android features it eventually became apparent Android has its own problems, and I ended up switching back to iOS. It'll seem great at first since it does things differently and improves on many aspects of where iOS fails at while it's fresh in your mind, but you'll need to spend much more t…

This is the review I'd really like to see. I'm not interested in "first impressions" or "1 month in". I'm interested what happens after a year, two or even three years. I have an iPhone 6S+, and it works almost flawlessly - animation is still good, very few app glitches, and even the original battery is in decent shape. I'd like to hear how Androids from that era fare compared to iPhones from that era - because I pla…

> iPhone 6S+

I replaced my battery and the phone sped way up. Unfortunately, after the battery replacement, the new battery health UI doesn't work, saying it can't communicate w/ the battery.