Pixel 8 Pro • Hacker News Board

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#531

Post by eternityforest » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #352

chimeracoder wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Too bad no flagship phones have…

If we're looking at older phones with removable storage, it usually limited what could be put on the SD card. And in the end the OS and system libraries were still on the on-board storage which would wear out over the years. And there's good reason for the OS not being on a microSD card. Run a Raspberry Pi without locking the storage and see how fast it'll corrupt itself. Most SD cards have pretty miserable reliabili…

Most of that is because the OS defaults write about 20 times more crap than anyone needs, and devs consistently do not care about preserving write cycles. There's still a culture of "Beautiful code is everything, hardware is disposable and meant to be upgraded".

An industrial SD card plus a few software changes would largely solve the problem, but I'm not sure it could be done in a backwards-compatible way, some apps might not work if you stopped letting people hammer the disk with crap.

Even with a standard card, phones don't have any issues with FTL firmware level corruption due to power loss, they have a builtin UPS.

But with phone-scale production there's no reason they couldn't define a new SD variant that had SMART diagnostics and guaranteed reliability properties for similar cost to eMMC.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#532

Post by ChatGTP » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #110

soperj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get the "premium feel" line when everyone covers their phone in a case anyway. I don't care if my phone is made of plastic when it actually makes it less prone to breaking when dropped.

I've been saying this to people for years. Tons of companies market how a phone feels, its looks/colors but then almost everybody just ends up slapping a case on it. I literally couldn't care what a phone was made out of/how it feels since I just put a case on it before I even use it for a day in most situations.

I put one of those ridiculous military spec, carbon fiber reinforced type cases on mine, it would be in pieces otherwise. It bulks the phone up a lot but every time I drop it, I smile.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#533

Post by dheera » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

kimbernator wrote: post #229

sanswork wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't update my phone every year but I also don't really want the progress of software or tech in general determined by the laggards.

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"

The reason Google releases a phone every October is because Apple releases a phone around the same time.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#534

Post by ehsankia » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 2:01 AM UTC

kcb wrote: post #230

Tade0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when such phones were in a different size category named "phablets".

The aspect ratio makes a huge difference. Back then phones were still mostly 16:9. My Nexus 6 still feels massive compared to modern phones.

And also bezel.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#535

Post by dheera » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 2:05 AM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #376

hamandcheese wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything it seems to me like hardware advances are directly correlated with increasingly worse software.

People have been saying this literally since the release of the pentium and probably earlier. From where I'm sitting software is millions of times better today than it was in the 90s when I first started hearing people saying this(usually complaining about developers using C++ instead of assembly). Even just on the iphone the improvements in software have been dramatic over the past 10 years. Go install one of the ea…

I don't know, Microsoft Word 2.0 started up on a high-end machine of its time faster than Google Docs with its stupid progress bars.

My Tesla phone key takes 15+ seconds to connect bluetooth and unlock the car, making me look like a goddamn idiot while I keep yanking the car handle while bystanders stare at me as if I'm a car thief.

This stuff should take <0.01s in 2023 by Moore's Law. Computers should work imperceptibly fast by now for the same high-level tasks.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#536

Post by rjzzleep » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 2:06 AM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #352

chimeracoder wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Too bad no flagship phones have…

If we're looking at older phones with removable storage, it usually limited what could be put on the SD card. And in the end the OS and system libraries were still on the on-board storage which would wear out over the years. And there's good reason for the OS not being on a microSD card. Run a Raspberry Pi without locking the storage and see how fast it'll corrupt itself. Most SD cards have pretty miserable reliabili…

I have a love/hate relationship with Sony Xperia phones, they look and feel nice, have a 3.5mm and a microSD slot.

That said, unlike Pixels and OnePlus once the bootloader is unlocked you lose functionality and it's not relockable. It also almost always has some software quirks and I most recently found out that the Xperia 5 I've been eyeing will after 2-3 years of use randomly break and show vertical green or pink lines.

There you have another "well" manufactured phone with external storage that becomes almost unusable faster than the storage degrades without the user being responsible for it.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#537

Post by dangus » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 2:06 AM UTC

libertine wrote: post #328

Lutzb wrote: post #283

The depreciation between Pixels and iPhones is staggering. Trade-in in Germany on Google Store page: - Pixel 6 Pro 256gb ($999 on release) - 235€ - iPhone 13 Pro 256gb ($1099 on release) - 730€ While I am partial to Googles line of phones (had pretty much every Google phone since the nexus one), the loss of value is something I cannot really ignore any more when deciding to buy a phone.

What I don't get are these price tags. My last flagship phone was a Google Nexus 6P where the base model was $499. Amazing phone, too bad after 3 years it had a battery issue but the manufacturer gave me a new one. But the thing is: it was $499. That was the greatest thing about the Nexus lines - good hardware (maybe not the latest SOC) with regular updates and a good OS experience. I miss those phones. Google with t…

Google pushed away frugal customers. That was a very smart business decision for them.

When Google sells a Pixel 8 Pro for $999, they’re sending a signal that says “our phone is just as good as the iPhone.”

I think your story points to how the Nexus line was basically an unfinished product where Google wasn’t even willing to attempt to sell it at a profitable price point until they could buy a hardware designer (HTC) and integrate that company into Google to produce a comprehensive product. Your Nexus phone had to be entirely replaced and yet you only gave the company $500. So they just sold two flagship phones for $250 each. That’s not a business, that’s a charity.

My Nexus 5X bootlooped right in front of my eyes with no user intervention.

The Nexus lineup wasn’t as good as an iPhone (nor a Samsung or Huawei phone for that matter) and that’s why nobody paid iPhone money for it.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#538

Post by oceanplexian » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 2:07 AM UTC

A decade selling phones and these guys still can't advertise their way out of a paper bag.

GOOGLE ONE 10% CREDIT, FITBIT SUBSCRIPTION, 24 MONTHLY BILL CREDITS from GOOGLE FI. YOUTUBE PREMIUM. Wow am I pumped for all the SUBSCRIPTIONS I can now purchase.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#539

Post by kevincox » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 2:08 AM UTC

libertine wrote: post #328

Lutzb wrote: post #283

The depreciation between Pixels and iPhones is staggering. Trade-in in Germany on Google Store page: - Pixel 6 Pro 256gb ($999 on release) - 235€ - iPhone 13 Pro 256gb ($1099 on release) - 730€ While I am partial to Googles line of phones (had pretty much every Google phone since the nexus one), the loss of value is something I cannot really ignore any more when deciding to buy a phone.

What I don't get are these price tags. My last flagship phone was a Google Nexus 6P where the base model was $499. Amazing phone, too bad after 3 years it had a battery issue but the manufacturer gave me a new one. But the thing is: it was $499. That was the greatest thing about the Nexus lines - good hardware (maybe not the latest SOC) with regular updates and a good OS experience. I miss those phones. Google with t…

I think marketing is a big part of it. If they price it cheaper than the iPhone then people will view it as inferior.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#540

Post by dheera » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 2:11 AM UTC

fomine3 wrote: post #455

chiefalchemist wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple adverts push the fact that the 15 is titanium. That's it. The ad I keep seeing doesn't even hint at why Titanium matters. No matter, the point is, evidently the technical aspects don't seem to matter.

Titanium matters for lightweight that is one of the important spec for some people. They aren't good at advertising this (or don't want to advertise much to make heavier again in the future?)

You wouldn't notice it, the difference in weight between aluminum and titanium phone shell is negligible compared to the weight of the glass, battery, and PCBs combined.

Titanium sounds cool, it sounds luxury, it's a marketing hack. Like "aircraft-grade" "space-grade" aluminum. Nobody is launching their aluminum phones at escape velocity. It's 100% for marketing reasons.

I have some titanium spoons, I feel into the trap too.