AI phone… AI laptop… AI car… AI toothbrush… yeah nobody’s asking for this shit. It’s just uninventive, unimaginative marketing rubbish. Real innovation doesn’t need to go looking for use cases.
Totally agree. Look at the marketing text on the Pixel Fold ( https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_9_pro_fold?hl=en-U... ): “An epic display of Google AI. All the magic of Gemini on Pixel's largest screen.“ It is not only completely cringeworthy, but also nonsensical. How does having a bigger display affect AI at all? What sets it apart from other Pixels? Nothing. I am honestly shocked that this company can keep…
fwiw, T-Mobile also have the 90 days restriction. I'm not entirely sure it's a company policy vs a US policy.
Google Support tells me it's a Google company policy, not a U.S. policy. And for comparison, Verizon works fine, just by paying a bit extra for extended roaming.
people in the rick steves link say you just tell tmo when you get back in the us to reset it/turn it on for the us. This should not have unclear limits of course.
It blows me away that people will spend $1k for a phone when there are good options for $500 or less. I will grant that Google's phone is probably the best. But in my experience the difference in quality does not correlate to the difference in price. Apple has a monopoly and they set price expectations. Also, I think buyers think if you have a cheaper phone strangers may think you are poor. Personally I want people t…
what are your favorite $500 or less options
It's crazy where phones are at now. My $160 Motorola phone has 8GB of ram
The camera is terrible though photos upon closer inspection appear smeared/blurry. My older Motorola which I paid more for has a better camera.
I went through many moto/samsung/google phones. Every single one sucked ass after about a year or two. Wasn't a big deal when the phones came with contract renewals. Became a major deciding factor to abandon them when I had to hand over my own cash.
If I'm paying 500+ for a device it needs to you know... last more than a few years.
One of the big problems with Pixel phones is their lack of thorough testing. You upgrade and suddenly you encounter strange Bluetooth issues, call problems, or other features that were working fine before but suddenly stop functioning. Tons of people will be complaining about this in forums, and you won't receive any updates to fix them for months. IMHO all Pixel phones are just developer devices and you can't seriou…
This was a major issue that drove me away from Android. In addition to first party bugs, I got tired of 3rd party accessories not working correctly. My theory was iPhone probably got tested on most 3rd party accessories. However, the fragmentation in the Android space meant I’d have no idea what devices they actually tested with. This is further compounded by the fact that Android isn’t really an open platform, at le…
There's also only one Bluetooth stack on Apple's platforms (presumably shared), so testing is more straightforward. And if so inclined, there's also the Made for iPhone program that requires validation, but again that's with one device in two form factors. It's not a fair challenge comparing Android device support because the task is bigger, though Google could probably do some stuff to make that less painful.
One of the big problems with Pixel phones is their lack of thorough testing. You upgrade and suddenly you encounter strange Bluetooth issues, call problems, or other features that were working fine before but suddenly stop functioning. Tons of people will be complaining about this in forums, and you won't receive any updates to fix them for months. IMHO all Pixel phones are just developer devices and you can't seriou…
I've had a dozens od Bluetooth devices (of both computers and headsets), and have never not had Bluetooth issues. I would not isolate "Bluetooth issues" to Android.
One of the big problems with Pixel phones is their lack of thorough testing. You upgrade and suddenly you encounter strange Bluetooth issues, call problems, or other features that were working fine before but suddenly stop functioning. Tons of people will be complaining about this in forums, and you won't receive any updates to fix them for months. IMHO all Pixel phones are just developer devices and you can't seriou…
That's been Google phones even since the Nexus days. They review super well then three months after release there's some crazy-ass hardware problem no phone has ever experienced before. Screen discoloration, glass backs cracking while laying flat on a table, power buttons getting stuck, spontaneous camera glass cracking, etc.
The flaws were much more excusable with the Nexus phones since they were dirt cheap, but the price of the Pixels has crept upwards and now they're more or less at parity with Apple and Samsungs flagship prices.
I love Google Pixel phones because of Google Fi for traveling; unfortunately Google Fi is facing major service downgrades/outages for travelers (including me) who go on 3+ month trips out of the US. Google Support tells me the Google Pixel 9 Pro has the same limitation. For comparison my iPhone works fine on Verizon. The issue is now described in the Google Pixel T&C, and I hope Google will eventually offer a way to…
It sucks about google fi after 90d, but Verizon is $10/d or $100 per billing cycle, no? It was easy and cheap for me to get a local sim (in Barcelona and London, at least). Does verizon still lock your phone? I had a bad experience traveling with Verizon to Munich. It was one of a handful of reasons I dropped them as my carrier. This was many years ago though.
People use their phones probably more than any other single item besides their home and bed. It’s not really that crazy, especially if you factor in camera upgrades for people that care about it.
In terms of percentage of my day that I spent using X, my smartphone ranks pretty highly. More so than my TV, car, etc that are high budget items that you can spend a lot on.
I think it's true for a lot of people, but not for everyone. There's not much my phone does for me that a laptop doesn't do better, and I probably use some form of desktop/laptop about 10X the amount of time I use my phone. Sometimes I forget where my (8 year old) phone is for days, and life trucks on, but I probably sit in front of a computer for hours a day and that's just for work. I guess I'm turning into an outlier.
I personally could not even fathom spending $500 on a telephone let alone $1000. It's just not an important enough gadget in my life.