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Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

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Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#581
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but with Bluetooth headphones you are paying the same price as audiophile headphones, but getting mediocre quality. A couple of phones did have a decent dac/amp combo built in (HTC 10, and some LG phones), FWIW.

My HTC 10 died a couple of months back. I actually replaced it with a Pixel 3a (and Dragonfly Black) Loved that phone, the default audio was fantastic.

Yeah, I too used the HTC M8 and then 10, because of the audio.

Since then I have been using the NextDrive SpectraX. I highly recommend it, it sounds even better than the HTC 10, and now I can use (almost) whatever phone I want.

edit: Oops, I missed that you specified you were already using a DragonFly. Is that not as good as the HTC 10 was? I would have thought it'd be better...

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Tasmania, so that gave me quite the giggle. Yeah, well, Australian vendors are all trying to pay down their Toyota Prados and their seven rental property... so, fair go eh. On a more serious note, where can I get the Pixel A4 locally? I check a couple online stores yesterday but didn't see it yet.

JB and Google Store both have it. JB says the release date is September 10. https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/google-pixel-4a-128gb-jus... https://store.google.com.au/product/pixel_4a

Thanks mate!

Partners Oppo digitiser is on the fritz. Probably get it fixed and keep as back up device and get a Pixel A4.

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JB and Google Store both have it. JB says the release date is September 10. https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/google-pixel-4a-128gb-jus... https://store.google.com.au/product/pixel_4a

Thanks mate! Partners Oppo digitiser is on the fritz. Probably get it fixed and keep as back up device and get a Pixel A4.

No worries mate!

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#584
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My HTC 10 died a couple of months back. I actually replaced it with a Pixel 3a (and Dragonfly Black) Loved that phone, the default audio was fantastic.

Yeah, I too used the HTC M8 and then 10, because of the audio. Since then I have been using the NextDrive SpectraX. I highly recommend it, it sounds even better than the HTC 10, and now I can use (almost) whatever phone I want. edit: Oops, I missed that you specified you were already using a DragonFly. Is that not as good as the HTC 10 was? I would have thought it'd be better...

It was, lost it last weekend unfortunately. Replaced it with a Speaka, which so far is basically a slightly better dragonfly black for half the price.

I still appreciate a good headphone jack though. The usb-c connectors aren't always reliable and ignoring inline controls. A phone with a solid DAC & amp would be best. Unfortunately it seems only LG make those these days and their Android skin is horrible.

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue for me personally is not being able to charge and listen to audio at the same time. The main use case for headphones on my phone for me is watching streaming video in bed and that drains the battery pretty fast. I know there's a (kind of bulky) dongle for charging + headphones, but I'd rather buy a device that has the ports I need already. The $9 adapter is cool though. Afaik it's pretty much the best…

I understand the earbud+charging dilemma; my wife had the exact same bedtime use case issue. I bought her an Anker PowerPort Wireless 5 stand which holds the phone vertically. Its non-rapid charging speed is not an issue when the phone is charged overnight. (In fact the slow speed is probably good for battery longevity.) As for myself, I bought Bose QC35's prior to upgrading to my first jackless iPhone so I was never…

No combination of extra dongles and devices is going to be more convenient or cheaper than just plugging in wired headphones to me.

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#586
post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I too used the HTC M8 and then 10, because of the audio. Since then I have been using the NextDrive SpectraX. I highly recommend it, it sounds even better than the HTC 10, and now I can use (almost) whatever phone I want. edit: Oops, I missed that you specified you were already using a DragonFly. Is that not as good as the HTC 10 was? I would have thought it'd be better...

It was, lost it last weekend unfortunately. Replaced it with a Speaka, which so far is basically a slightly better dragonfly black for half the price. I still appreciate a good headphone jack though. The usb-c connectors aren't always reliable and ignoring inline controls. A phone with a solid DAC & amp would be best. Unfortunately it seems only LG make those these days and their Android skin is horrible.

I too, enjoyed having it builtin with the HTC 10, but having basically zero choice in phones became a serious problem.

One thing with the 10 was that security updates were basically nonexistent. You got one or two major OS updates, but nothing in between, and nothing after. Lots of phones have this problem, but then again some don't.

Worse than that, the Oreo update completely broke my phone. I went from 2-3 days of battery life with my typical, light usage to something like 12-16 hours with NO usage, screen completely off the entire time. Fixing that required downgrading to Nougat, which required S-OFF, which required me physically mailing my phone to a hacker group and paying around $35. And of course this left me a year or more behind in security patches.

Based on the xda thread about this, it affected lots of people, but was never acknowledged or fixed. Consider yourself lucky :)

The LG phones are, one would hope, not this bad. But still, my takeaway from the experience is that tethering (heh) oneself to a single model or line or phones is really, really bad. The inconvenience of the dongle is, in retrospect, only slightly annoying in comparison.

And there can be significant cost savings. My Moto G6 and SpectraX together cost less than one of LG's phones, and I expect to reuse the SpectraX with my next phone as well. Buying a new DAC/AMP every 1-3 years doesn't really seem right, does it?

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#587
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No professional musician is going to use anything else other than wired headphones. You deprecate an old technology when something better has replaced it, not when you want to create a new market for a product to increase your revenue. The majority of BT audio codecs is inferior to a direct connection, and suffer from > 50ms latency.

This is not a mixer table or even a computer, it's a phone.

Sure thing buddy

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#588
post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aux port is useful for much more than earbuds. I plug in an aux cable daily in my car (GPS + podcasts = need power and aux slot simultaneously, or a several hundred dollar head unit upgrade to have halfway decent bluetooth, or a dongle that does both and the hope i dont forget it if i use a rental car). Use with my existing headphones/aux cables around my house, same port as my desktop/laptop, same port as various de…

You're going to have to replace the equipment; dongles are a at best a limited workaround (basically you need to glue to dongle to the headphone or certainly never take it out of the respective device, otherwise it's too much hassle and risk of losing it). Dongles are OK for specific legacy devices, no more. But the real advantage of aux sounds like the standardization to you - and that's mostly a question of simply…

I don't like doing point-by-points, but much of what you said is not correct:

> You're going to have to replace the equipment

Or I could just keep buying and using phones with aux ports, and all the equipment at home/friends/family will continue to work

> But the real advantage of aux sounds like the standardization to you - and that's mostly a question of simply making the jump

I already listed a number of places I use the aux port. The only thing I own that uses bluetooth is a Garmin watch. I see no reason to switch.

> Yes, you need to spend a little money (but much less than your other devices like phones/laptops/etc

Or I could keep using aux and not spend any money, and my laptop/phone/desktop/car/headphones will all continue to work together just fine.

> Even today, you'll be able to use your bluetooth headphones with essentially all phones and laptops regardless of brand

Not with my desktop, nor my home theatre, nor my in flight entertainment.

> If your desktop doesn't support bluetooth, a desktop dongle is just a few dollars and you can leave it in permanently.

Or, again, keep using aux and have great quality and no dropouts?

> Switching standards is annoying, but it's going to happen sometime; and at this point bluetooth is pervasive enough that it's pretty usable.

Every time I use bluetooth, it is slow (garmin watch) or it drops out (car audio in numerous vehicles, microsoft wireless mouse) or the music stutters (cars again) or the batteries die (friends I see with bluetooth earbuds). Bluetooth offers me zero improvement, numerous regressions. And yeah, standards may switch sometime. But I have family with knob-and-tube wiring still in use, I doubt aux cables are disappearing anytime soon.

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#589
post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its also an American centric view. Travelling around Korea and back home I noticed the distinct difference in consumption habbits. Korea data isn't capped, so everyone streams news/twitch/YouTube while on there commute. Back home, everyone reads articles and spam scrolls static images on instagram. So "do people need bandwidth" no. Will they use it if they have it? Absolutely.

Yeah, access to cheap fast bandwidth certainly changed my internet habits when I was in countries like Singapore and Taiwan.

This what annoys me so much about politicians getting in the way of fast access internet due to their narrow minded view of the world where internet is for email and google.

Expanding our capabilities always has unknown unknown benefits just around the corner.

Re: Google announces Pixel 5, Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 4A

#590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's basically the reason I bought my Pixel 2. I still think Apple has a better track record here, but 3 years is better than any other Android phone vendor that I'm aware of.

My S8 just received a security update a couple weeks ago, which puts it at over 3 years of updates. It's stuck on Android 9 though.

My Huawei P10 also received security update few weeks ago. It got 2 major Android updates (7 -> 8 -> 9) and while the last update was probably the last, it got more than 3 years of SW support (released March 2017).

I really think Google could do better. Sure, you don't have to wait long for new Android version as with other manufacturers (e.g. Huawei), but 3 years is nothing to applaud Google for.

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