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Google Pixel 9 Pro

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Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#531

Post by oorza »

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.

Would there be competition though? Take the mobile app stores: consumers are going to demand that prices are consistent across storefronts (or preferentially buy from the cheapest option), so that market will inevitably race to the bottom. Is that better for consumers than Apple and Google operating them and demanding a high enough margin to support moderation and review? Or hardware; if Apple was mandated to support Android on their devices, who do you think is going to pay for the additional testing burden? Apple's certainly not going to take it out of their profit margin, they're going to forward the expense down the line, as will everyone else.

You'd be right that there'd be a lot of new ideas floated and a lot of competition, but it's hard to see how that plays out in a way that benefits the consumer and make smart phones a better value. I'm no fan of the duopoly, but it's hard to imagine how forcing them to break their services apart winds up anywhere other than the services becoming noticeably shittier and only like 5% of people bothering to change from the defaults anyway. I also think that the innovation around smartphones has all but died, and if there was some killer innovation to be had, it would probably be worth much more in this market than an open market. The market is harder to make distinctions in than even electric cars are, and a distinguishing innovation would surely trigger a bidding war between Apple and Google at this point.

It's a rough case of what I want philosophically (break them up with great prejudice) and what I think is best for the user experience itself being directly at odds.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#532

Post by eloisant »

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?

I know people like to claim Apple designs and everyone else copy, but that's not what's happening.

Everyone is converging to the same design, Apple like the others. They all borrow from each other until they all look the same.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#533

Post by ayoisaiah »

There's no reason to upgrade a phone more than once in five years at least for me.

I bought a an iPhone 15 Pro Max few months ago and compared it to my S10+ which I bought in 2019 and still have. There's practically no difference for regular day to day stuff, except for the camera advancements which are notable (but not night & day either).

It was only the frustrating battery life, and desire to enter the superior iPhone camera ecosystem that forced me to upgrade.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#534

Post by jay_kyburz »

jocaal wrote: post #305
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?

That phone isn't a squircle, it is a rounded square. Those rounded edges seem to be inspired by google material design. Also phones have converged to the metal band, glass back before the iphone did it. Mobile phones are a mature technology and their designs have converged to the designs people are buying.

I really like the design of this red magic phone.

https://global.redmagic.gg/pages/redmagic-9-pro

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#535

Post by denysvitali »

The keynote seems to only focus on the Pixel 9 software capabilities.

Honestly, why is this important? Aside from all the AI hype, I don't see why the event should be so focused on features that are purely software updates that will most likely propagate to other non Pixel devices.

It's just a bummer that the event focused so much on the AI features instead of the HW capabilities: probably they don't have much to show this year.

I just hope they fixed the numerous HW issues the previous Pixel devices had (e.g: overheating, radio, ...)

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#536

Post by lxgr »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #521
deergomoo wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wildernes…

They can charge you after you get rescued. Or does that come out as a negligible amount?

Even if you managed to charge people (or their SAR insurances) tens of thousands of dollars per rescue, I'm not sure that would entirely pay for running such a service.

But I suspect their actual business model will be to charge for non-emergency messaging, which might just be able to subsidize the emergency use case.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#537

Post by filoleg »

vel0city wrote: post #509
echelon wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google is like 3%ish of the smartphone market in the US. Pixel phones are US-focused, so I can't imagine they're that high worldwide. https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/us-smartphone-market-share The two big phone giants in the US are Apple and Samsung. Of which Samsung isn't muddling the hardware, OS, software distribution. Maybe platform ecosystem, but generally a Samsung smartwatch or headphones will work with any ot…

Tangentially related, but I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by how well Airpods (at least the original ones) worked with Android phones.

I got the original Airpods about a year before I switched to iPhone, and they worked pretty much flawlessly with my Galaxy S8+. I assume they missed Siri-specific features (which I don’t care for even after switching to iPhone), and the newer ones probably miss some other more advanced/iOS-specific features (like Apple’s implementation of spatial audio and speech awareness). But all the actual main functionality was there, and I never felt like I was missing out by not using Airpods with iOS.

Apple Watch is a different story though, but it kinda makes sense, given how tightly integrated into iOS it is with quite a bit of private health data (that I would never trust Android with managing properly).

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#539

Post by oorza »

rangestransform wrote: post #526
echelon wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would rather have a better phone than more options, apple's 800-pound gorilla-ness gets me a phone with: - an SoC made on TSMC's latest process node, with a humongous die, and all the associated power/performance benefits - because of how many phones apple can sell, they can divide the cost of R&D over more units, and can design things like their own CPU cores - "Ask app not to track" that works, because of the app…

There's that old saying that a benevolent dictatorship is the best and most effective form of government, right up until the dictator dies.

All of the antitrust shit Apple does largely benefits its consumers _for the moment_. It's worth acknowledging that, but it's also worth acknowledging that this is necessarily a temporary state, and under different leadership, Apple will make different decisions.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#540

Post by ineedaj0b »

dijit wrote: post #441
eBombzor wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't they basically confirm that they're discontinuing the mini series? The 15 is still your best bet.

bought a 15- bearing in mind that the 12 mini was also too large for me (5s was perfect). 15 Pro has been dropped many more times, can’t be operated with one hand at all. It’s the first time I had to have a replacement screen actually- after owning iPhones for 15 years. Anyway… I’m considering going back to the 5s. I would only miss wireless charging and apple wallet I think. (and apps are now made for the larger scr…

get the SE 2, 3, or 4. 5s is too old, nothing works a lot of apps won’t download.
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