601–610 of 1001 posts
There's also the obligatory non-Pro model, and a refresh of the Pixel Fold: https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_9 https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_9_pro_fold Usually the Pro is bigger than the non-Pro but this time they're exactly the same size, and they've added a bigger Pro XL variant. https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Google-Pixel-9,Google... The Pro and Pro XL appear to have identical specs as…
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've never seen a temperature sensor on a phone before, I thought that was kind of cool. Sounds like it doesn't really work though: https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/google-pixel-8-pro-the...
The previous camera bulge was questionable but this one looks horrendous
All camera bulges are a poor design. Just make the battery thicker. Either way people are throwing a case on to make the back straight again.
For the size off the phone, that is sort of lame.
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 would bet every dollar in my pocket that Apple is intending to convert back to a more rounded design with the iPhone 17, and the S26 and Pixel 11 will follow suit.
Begging+pleading for the googung corpodrones to have just one original idea, even if its only "we're gonna do it this way simply to spite Apple" (they won't).
My Consumer Report: Do not fall for hardware backed by software that costs the seller money to keep running.
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In the beginning, smartphones were all tiny, because it was universally agreed that smaller cell phones were better. Then there was a huge, neverending push to make phones as large as possible, or larger. Sometimes smaller phones have been offered as an unpopular option, but more often "enormous" is the minimum size. And as long as that's been going on, people have been complaining that they want their phone to fit i…
>Why are the manufacturers so insistent on not providing small phones? They don't sell. Apple killed the iPhone mini due to low sales. Asus replaced the universally lauded Zenfone 10 with a very large Zenfone 11. Google increased the size of the Pixel 6 when compared to its predecessor. Sales also increased.
I wonder if to some extent they're not different enough. The iPhone mini has a 5.4" screen. Not so long ago we managed well enough with 4" iPhone screens. I wonder how a 4.5" version would sell - call it the iPhone Nano.
Unfortunately a lot of apps don't support those smaller screen sizes so well anymore. But people who want a small phone that's easy to carry around, who won't be using it for hours a day, don't always need many apps.
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.
I broke my iPhone 12 mini and part of me died that day. A tired dad moment – set the phone on the trunk lid when getting my kid in the car and then later opened the trunk. It slid down and crunched in the hinge. I could replace it with another mini but have been holding out hope for another updated version. I love the small form factor, even at the expense of battery life and camera quality. I just want a reasonable…
Shipping with new battery for extra (...unsure if I'd trust that battery though).
That one I can still use for phonecalls and occasional practical things I need when away from desk and computer.
And the irony about decent hardware is that all have decent hardware from the past 10-15 years, only the software that is crap on garbage and can't use hardware that could have been excellent mainframes some decades ago in some secret nuclear research laboratory. Need a powerstation now to present and scroll bitmaps and some text.
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What's even worse for me is that it regularly "forgets" how to respond to queries that it could serve perfectly well before, especially related to smart home things. "Play on living room stereo" has been hit and miss for my parents to the point where I regret setting them up with a Chromecast-supporting AV receiver and Google Nest speaker. They now just use the regular remote and listen to the station via FM.
If you're unlucky enough to be bilingual, it's a complet joke. It's a real shame, because it makes this function useless for the people who need it most, those who can't type easily on a phone (visual challenges), or have difficulty transcribing names in a foreign language. It could help millions of elderly people stay independent a little longer. But no instead, they were trying to sell us generative AI and photo fi…