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Pixel 8 Pro

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Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#311
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is technically true. However, I do find that a lot of people I know tend to get new phones well before they actually have a need for them. I don't entirely blame peoples' consumerism; As somebody who once worked in cell phone sales, the mere act of visiting a carrier store is likely to land you in front of a salesperson who is incentivized to sell new phones and lines indiscriminately. Not to mention the incredi…

> lot of people I know tend to get new phones well before they actually have a need for them It might just be your “bubble”, but even if not, is it really that bad of a deal? If you resell your previous phone at 2/3 the original price each year, you can use the latest phone for like 200 bucks for a year, or $17 monthly. For a device that is with you 0-24, and is probably the most often used item a typical person owns…

Yeah, but in the end they are those who fuel the waste machine. They start it, and they are the reason why there are new phones every year. For no sane reason.

Somewhere along the way, you pass a threshold where it's uncool to have a certain version of phone and judging from what you hear about the waste problem with phones, it's above the reasonable moment to get rid of it because it's broken or not usable.

I mean, sure it's a nice lie you can tell to yourself, but in the end, it's not good.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they not make a budget phone? It's not like the BOM + assembly for a touchscreen, first(!) battery, motherboard, and plastic case cost that much. Check out some of the public reports from counterpointresearch.com: the profit margin on flagships is often double the BOM cost, the profit margin on budget phones is a little tighter but still not bad. Who cares what the revenue is per year? What matters is how m…

One of the OP's requirements was a vanilla Android. Vendor Android versions aren't features, they're profit centers. I know the Samsung phones come with a fair bit of crapware, cuz I used to have one. How's the Moto?

I have the Moto G4, which is on its last legs after 8 years.

It barely had any non-android, non-Google apps. If there were any, I uninstalled them all except one from the Apps list without having to root my phone or anything. The last one is called Moto, which is disabled (can't be uninstalled).

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#313
I recently bought a Pixel 7 after my Huawei P30 pro broke.

The older Huawei model is so much better than the newer Pixel that it makes you think why they don't allow them to access the Play store anymore.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#315
post #12

6.7 inch screen. My Pixel 5 is already big. This one is an inch bigger in my hand and in my pockets. Price increase. 875€ in Europe. The Pixel 5 was 630€. Do you really get 40% more phone?

Pixel 5 was 782€, euro-adjusted inflation, so it's a question of whether it's 12% more phone. Edit: is that price for pixel 8 pro? A Google search is saying regular pixel 8 is 799€, so basically the same price for the base model.

do they offer the watch as a free rider where you are?

Because ... that's worth 12% and then some.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that a new phone release should just be warranted. The trigger should be "we made significant improvements that couldn't be applied in software to the old device" instead of "it's October"

An improved camera can't be something applied in software, a faster chip can't be applied in software. So by your own standard every version is warranted.

"significant" is the key word here. I'd be hard pressed to think of a generational release of an existing phone line in the last 5 years that I would describe as a "significant" improvement.

The things you listed (camera and chip speed) are basically the only things left that these companies can claim is better than last year's model, but only because it's so easy to use synthetic benchmarks and numbers that mean nothing to make them sound like a dramatic improvement despite the fact that we've reached the bottom of the barrel in terms of diminishing returns on the user experience for smartphones in their current form. More megapixels don't matter anymore, CPUs are hardly a limiting factor and yearly gains on their performance are marginal at best, and we have more than enough RAM for pretty much all use cases.

My point is that if these companies insist on re-releasing the same phone every time, maybe they could space it out a little.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#317

It's starting to feel silly, having a yearly release cycle for smartphones. So much of this product page is focused on new software functions that may have some vague relationship with the slightly upgraded hardware, but that could mostly be released to existing phones. Every new iPhone, Pixel, or Samsung phone basically claims the camera is marginally better and hey, look at these software features that have very li…

It's funny because if they did not release a new phone every year, the old phones would be useful for longer. I recently had to replace my iPhone 7s plus because it was getting so slow I sometimes could not get the camera to open as it loaded the system down too much. This was despite the fact that the system said my battery was not degraded (it had been replaced with Apple Care a couple of times). Of course when it…

I wonder how much of that is the software demands increasing and the flash storage itself wearing out over time. As flash storage wears it'll often go slower and slower as the error correction needs to process more to actually get you the uncorrupted bits. This is why a lot of cheap devices tend to just become unbearably slow after a while, their storage just gets to be way too slow.

Flash storage doesn't last forever, and it's got a whole gradient of failure and wear experiences.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#318

Comparing this to the regular Pixel 8 it doesn't look like you get an awful lot more for your extra £300, I'm surprised there's such a delta. Bigger screen (which for many is a minus not a plus), an extra 4GB RAM (still seems absurd to me that we need this much RAM on a phone) and more capable/additional auxiliary cameras. I suppose the charitable take is that £700 feels like a pretty good deal for the non-Pro one.

I'd love the telephoto camera for outdoor shots, but I can't stand the price or the size of the phone. Even with the Google Fi discount of $300, the price($500 with trade-in) is too much to justify. I guess I'll stick with my Pixel 5A.

You do get the watch for free with a preorder so you get an extra tiny screen to go with your new gigantic screen.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#319

Comparing this to the regular Pixel 8 it doesn't look like you get an awful lot more for your extra £300, I'm surprised there's such a delta. Bigger screen (which for many is a minus not a plus), an extra 4GB RAM (still seems absurd to me that we need this much RAM on a phone) and more capable/additional auxiliary cameras. I suppose the charitable take is that £700 feels like a pretty good deal for the non-Pro one.

I'd love the telephoto camera for outdoor shots, but I can't stand the price or the size of the phone. Even with the Google Fi discount of $300, the price($500 with trade-in) is too much to justify. I guess I'll stick with my Pixel 5A.

Check out best-buy. They are offering $100 more on lots of pixel trade-ins than the google or fi store.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#320
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then Apple made their OS more heavy weight every year until my phone slowed to a crawl. I mean, it is a bit unfair against Apple - some of the reason behind the OS getting more heavyweight is actually backporting new features in 7 year’s distance, many which actually has dedicated hardware in case of the more modern lineup. Also, there is a big aspect which is independent of Apple: every app is getting more and…

> People on average change their phones every 3 years People in my circles seem to use their phones for 6-7 years atleast.

This figure sourcing gallup has nearly half of Americans replacing their phone "as soon as their carrier allows it": https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/07/15/how-often-...
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