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Google Pixel 9 Pro

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Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#651

Post by bla3 »

hibikir wrote: post #467
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.

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.

It's rare in the US too. Less rare than outside it, but still < 5% market share.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#652

Post by brewdad »

nasdaq-txn wrote: post #572
thaumasiotes wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 really wanted a 12 mini but the shortened battery life made it a no-go for me. Ended up with a standard 12 and am still happy with it years later aside from it being slightly larger than I would like.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#653

Post by caddemon »

hibikir wrote: post #467
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.

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.

Also Samsung has been innovating with hardware. I'm not the hugest fan of their flavor of Android but I absolutely love my flip phone and would not consider switching back to iOS or pure Android unless Apple or Google were to make a flip.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#654

Post by loloquwowndueo »

adamomada wrote: post #596
deergomoo wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I long for the days of being able to reach all four corners of my phone screen with one thumb. I had an iPhone 12 mini which was a wonderful respite, but apparently us small phone fans are a small enough demographic to not warrant serving. What's extra annoying is I never felt the need to use a case when phones were smaller, but one-handed corner reaching upsets the balance of the phone in my hand now to the point wh…

iPhone has this accessibility feature ‘Reachability’ that can help. On the SE you double tap (but not click) the home button, I think on others you swipe up and down quickly from the bottom centre.

Reachability is useless and no substitute for a smaller screen. It just slows you down, obscures the bottom half of the screen and makes a lot of gestures impossible.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#655

Post by Hikikomori »

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…

>- 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

As if you're benefitting from that with apples margins.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#656

Post by mckn1ght »

teekert wrote: post #494
paxys wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, that is also my anecdata (women with giant phones in their purses, or even wearing the phone as a purse). I have an iPhone 12 mini, really don't want anything bigger, but perhaps I'll go for a good watch and buds that can be online without a phone and also leave the giant phone in the bag most of the day, that would mean great battery life, less phone in hand, less distraction perhaps?

I've wanted to ditch the iPhone/Macbook and go watch/airpods/ipad for years now. They need to decouple the requirement to own an iPhone to get a watch up and running (this should be something an iPad can do), and make the iPad an actual pro dev machine. Not sure I'm ever going to get my wish, sadly.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#657

Post by itake »

thebytefairy wrote: post #597
nepger21 wrote: post #578

Google really needs to improve the core offering of what a phone is supposed to provide instead of using half baked AI as a selling point. I have been using Pixel 7 for almost the past 2 years. But the amount of basic core issues are crazy. Recently,since the July update, every place where the phone cannot catch network signal, it shutdowns. And with the update, somehow i feel it cannot catch network signal as strong…

Meanwhile, I'm getting pushed away from iOS when I can't customise basic things and the Phone app (you know, the main use of a phone) takes 30s to open, even after restores.

that seems like a hardware failure or perhaps you have too many contacts in your phone book? For 'fun' I created 50k iCloud contacts and it broke my account / phone. I had to call apple support to delete them.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#658

Post by riddley »

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.

What excited you about Graphene?

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#659

Post by RadiozRadioz »

ajross wrote: post #581
8organicbits wrote: post #571

What's the selling points here for upgrades? Comparing my five year old A50, I'm not seeing it. Presumably a better camera, and more RAM (why?). I felt compelled to upgrade in past years, but I feel like phone tech reached a plateau. The AI features, front and center, feel like hype. Haven't found them useful at all.

Wikipedia tells me the Galaxy A50 got its last security update in February of last year, FWIW.

But its Google Play Services (which includes WebView) + Chrome all receive regular updates independently.

People put a lot more weight on the Android security updates than they perhaps should. Unless you're installing random crap, there are very few OS vulnerabilities that you need to be concerned about if you have an up-to-date browser. Things like StageFright are very uncommon (and I can't find evidence of that actually being exploited in the wild)

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#660

Post by acdha »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #634
jascination wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, I have nest cameras and nest wifi (now discontinued 2 years later, so can't buy compatible wifi points anymore). Software + Google voice assistant is so goddamn buggy! Wish I went with a TP-Link solution instead

I have the Google Wifi pucks because it was only mesh system at the time that offered both wireless and wired backhaul for mesh networks, which was great because I could wire most of it. I used it as wired until I moved, and my current house I started using it wireless. That's when I discovered a bug in the wireless mesh that requires me to basically restart the network every couple days. I also wish I didn't need to…

I switched from Google Wi-Fi to Eero a few years ago and discovered that almost everything I’d thought were network limitations was some kind of non-obvious problem with the Google Wi-Fi system. Random daily 20 second hangs for iOS devices disappeared, the DNS proxy is now reliable, etc.
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