Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Pixel 9 Pro

store.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 1001 posts

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#461

Post by fsckboy »

SushiHippie wrote: post #307
fsckboy wrote: post #175

Bit of advice I'm looking for, if my question resonates for you: I've had Pixels in the past (pretty distant past at this stage) but I generally found the experience to be too "beta" or "experimental", in that various features would not carry over to a new Pixel, and I'd have to get used to something entirely different all over again. In contrast, I've enjoyed the Samsung approach, and I love the Fold. (I also carry…

I only bought a Pixel because of GrapheneOS. I think I've never had this few issues with a phone. (I only had Samsung phones before this) It feels even better than the Android that the Pixels ship with, I used it for a day before I flashed GrapheneOS, and I can completely understand why one would not buy a Pixel again if they only experienced the Stock OS.

I'm always interested in trying things like that, but I'm not that into playing some sort of "jailbreak cat and mouse" over time. If I install GrapheneOS, is it automatic after that for security updates and whatnot, or do I have to do some weird two-hands-three-fingers reboot and manually download, etc?

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#462

Post by trompetenaccoun »

jmole wrote: post #401
oezi wrote: post #330

Can someone explain why we get 12GB and 16GB RAM in these phones, but Apple sells its MacBook Air M3 with 8GB as the starting configuration. Shouldn't mobile phones require much less RAM?

This is what happens when your phone and all it's apps are written in a garbage collected language.

Yep. I still use the iphone 7+ as a backup phone, it still gets security updates and runs modern apps fine with 3GB! Slow compared to modern phones, but that's not down to the RAM, the memory management is amazing, never had an issue.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#464

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

roughly wrote: post #201

I'm an iPhone guy, but - there _are_ other designs for phones, right? The squircle corners, the shiny metal band surrounding the matte back, the aqua-pill-shaped buttons, the colors - Google is a $2T company, there's gotta be an industrial designer somewhere in the building or some process for phone design that doesn't take place in Cupertino, right?

There is a vibrant Chinese Android scene, with their own fairly stand-out design trends. One design that's pretty popular right now is the "large circle", as exemplified by Xiaomi 14 Ultra. My favorites in this theme are the ZTE Z50s Pro (IMHO just a gorgeous phone) and the Honor Magic6 Pro.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#465

Post by deergomoo »

MBCook wrote: post #393
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #197

Pixel 9 also says satellite emergency support ("Satellite SOS"). Search for info gets you to https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15254448?hl=en&... It looks like it's coming "later this year". Lots of chatter about it, see a few details at https://www.androidauthority.com/pixel-9-satellite-sos-34676... * apparently coming with android 15, but they are shipping android 14 * turning on satellite sos later, but…

TBF that’s what Apple did, basically. It wasn’t in the initial release. Needed a software update 2 months later or so. You were only supposed to get 1 year (?) of service. But they extended that by a year. Because of that everyone with a qualifying phone is still in the “free” stage so we still don’t know what it will cost. Or when that will start. If ever. I’ve never used it but I like that my iPhone has it. I would…

> You were only supposed to get 1 year (?) of service. But they extended that by a year.

I suspect they wanted to gauge what the usage (and therefore cost to them) would be like before making any promises.

I would not be surprised if satellite messaging ends up costing after the first year, but that satellite SOS remains free forever. After all, who wants the reputation hit when someone ends up dying in the wilderness because they didn't keep up their satellite payments?

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#466

Post by panarky »

bloggie wrote: post #3

"Unlock Gemini Advanced for a year on us ($239 value)" Who thinks they are booking phone sales as AI revenue to juice the numbers?

Since there's no public reporting of AI revenue, what would be the point of artificially inflating it?

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#467

Post by hibikir »

echelon wrote: post #455
lancesells wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pixel and iPhone are really seeming homogenous with each other. The marketing seems similar, typefaces used, the naming conventions are close to the same, the airbrushed image generators, the photos app marketing that's turning your personal photos into a photoshoot with editing capabilities. On top of that you've got the same earbuds form factor, smart watches, etc.

I wish we had more than two phone giants. This is aggravating. Unfortunately due to their market dominance and muddling of (hardware, OS, software distribution, and platform ecosystem), it's almost impossible to disentangle. It'd be amazing if the DOJ made these companies only offer one slice of those four things. There would be so much competition and a wild variety of new things being tried.

As far as the phone hardware goes, Google isn't much of a giant worldwide: Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei and probably a few more outsell Google. The pixel is downright rare outside of the US.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#468

Post by rhinoceraptor »

itsoktocry wrote: post #263
nblgbg wrote: post #158

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…

> IMHO all Pixel phones are just developer devices and you can't seriously use them as daily drivers. I've had Pixel 3XL, Pixel 5, Pixel 8, and Pixel Tablet all without issue. I realize that can't be everyone's experience, but the idea that you can't "seriously use" these devices is untrue.

The last I read there were still ongoing issues with 911 calls with Pixels, it didn't seem limited to any particular phone model or OS version.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#469

Post by Spivak »

paxys wrote: post #449
taeric wrote: post #183

I'm kind of sad that the world seems to have given up on the smaller phones. The marketing of the masculine hand holding the larger phone is amusing to me, and I can understand wanting to have a larger screen. I do not like the amount of space these things take in my pocket, though.

From what I have seen women tend to prefer the larger phone sizes more than men, because they keep it in their handbags and use it two-handed.

Straight facts. I have a purse, hip bag, or small backpack on me everywhere so the size is pretty much irrelevant so long as I can type on the keyboard with two hands. I would use the hell out of a 3DS XL sized folding phone.

I will say that the folding screen seems like a gimmick on the "2.5 phones taped together" size. For compact flip phones it makes sense tho.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#470

Post by trompetenaccoun »

zukzuk wrote: post #459
brookst wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulations don't much care about what's technically possible.

Apple was able to make it work in most "developed" countries (do we have a better term for these countries now?). I guess they're just better at the regulatory game?

Also why would regulations prevent them from operating in Alaska, for example? I'm sure the Alaskan government would be happy to provide better emergency connectivity, highly doubt regulation is the issue. People are already being rescued, this here happened in 2022:

https://www.businessinsider.com/stranded-man-alaska-rescued-...

Post reply on HN