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Pixel 11 Pro Fold

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81–90 of 212 posts

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#81

I used to be a "cutting edge phone guy" where I'd get the latest iPhone ever year and the thought of having the older phone just didn't sit well with me. These days though the upgrades are so marginal I don't even care. I'm looking forward to upgrading my three year old phone this year, but not because I expect it to be more than "better camera, faster and thinner" but just because its time. These updates are so bori…

Why is it "time" after 3 years? They should hopefully still be getting software updates, at least security updates. I'm on an iPhone 13 since launch (almost 5 years ago) and still see no reason to upgrade. There just hasn't been anything 'exciting' in phones in many years. EDIT: should add, I've only used 50% of the 256GB storage and battery life is still fine (comfortably gets through an entire day+night). But I'm n…

Thank you. We need to hold corporations accountable to make devices that continue to work and don't include planned obsolescence. When people buy into the psychology of needing to buy the newest version every year or even that "it's just time" to upgrade without any specific need for it, they undermine that

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#82
post #27

Does anyone had a good experience with foldable phones? The only people I know that bought one had them broken near the 2 year mark. My phone from 2018 it's still working perfectly.

I tested out last year's foldable phone for a couple of months.. borrowed it from a friend.

Maybe I'm just losing interest in phone tech - but to me, it was only down sides and no upside.

The phone was bulky. Fragile.

The larger screen you get when you open the phone - was absolutely useless for most of the content I watch. The screen is 4:3 and most of the content I watched was 16:9. The black bars at the top and bottom of the video meant that the actual video content is exactly the same size as my non foldable Motorola Edge 40.

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a fair question. The battery is on the border of needing to be replaced, which is a $79 repair and would probably buy me another three years or so. But at this point I want something a bit snappier and I’ll probably replace the battery and use it as a backup phone.

Not a fix for the battery, but if you're on Android, enable developer settings and change your animations to 0.5x speed (there are three settings to change). Every OS animation will take half as long. It makes an aging phone feel much snappier.

That really did make using my old phone less painful, thanks for the tip!

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#85

I used to be a "cutting edge phone guy" where I'd get the latest iPhone ever year and the thought of having the older phone just didn't sit well with me. These days though the upgrades are so marginal I don't even care. I'm looking forward to upgrading my three year old phone this year, but not because I expect it to be more than "better camera, faster and thinner" but just because its time. These updates are so bori…

I'd like my next phone to be a flip one. But really what I want is a Linux phone.

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#86
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like taking pictures with your phone, the cameras are still improving steadily enough that you'll see meaningful improvements if you upgrade every three years

Anecdotally, every iphone I've tried since my iphone 11 pro seems to take worse photos. I do take a lot of photos with a standalone camera though so I imagine I am biased.

I can't remember which generation exactly had this shift, but yeah around the iPhone 12 they went really heavy on the processing, so instead of a noisy but sharp image you got a smudgy mess. Later generations improved on that but you still see this when zooming in or in low light.

The processing pipeline also started imposing its own opinions on your photos, adjusting the brightness of dark areas and bright areas to even things out, increasing saturation, etc. This has generally trended towards more processing over the years.

In a picture from a standalone camera (or an old phone back when the processing pipeline was basically just debayering, white balance, chroma denoise, and a gamma curve), you'll actually have contrast between shadows and highlights, which, when done well, looks great. When done poorly, it looks terrible (blown highlights, noisy shadows), which is the whole point of the processing pipeline -- on average (random user, random scene), you're better off reducing the overall contrast in the image with local adjustments, even if that turns some excellent photos into boring ones, because it'll turn a lot more bad photos into acceptable ones.

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#87
post #58
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, I was surprised to learn that the temperature sensor introduced on the Pixel 8 Pro in 2023 was only removed this year. No one knew why it was there in the first place.

I heard that it was a COVID feature. I guess people thought you would be scanning your friend's foreheads before socializing. That sensor would be much better if it was integrated with the camera and LIDAR, so that you could "paint" a scene with thermal data by moving the phone around.

The sensor is damned handy because it has plenty of range and good options in the software for estimating emissivity. I use it in the kitchen.

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#88
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is precisely why I left Android. Google can't seem to decide on a direction and stick with it. Years of new features that inevitably ended up abandoned 2 versions later resulted in a constantly changing and unpredictable user experience. It was fun while I had free time in college and enjoyed flashing ROMs, but as I got busier with life this lack of refinement pushed me away. The RGB leds were one of my favorite…

On BlackBerry i had an app that could do colour patterns, rhythms and so on depending who contacted you on which medium. Got a mail from you boss? Blue led. Got an sms or call? Red alarm. U could also group people and or mediums together (this was a basic feature of blackberry os)

That eventually became an OS feature, where you could set the LED color for every app.

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#89
post #49

These phones are getting larger each release, and it's the opposite of the trend I prefer now. I really am starting to miss the SE phone sizes and not feeling like I'm carrying a literal brick in my pocket wherever I go now. I don't think Apple is cutting back on the phone size either when their Fold comes out, and we're slowly just moving towards the point where a phone is just a mini tablet.

Are they? The Pixel 11 Pro and regular screens are only a tenth of an inch larger than the 3 year old Pixel 8s. The screen sizes have largely stabilized IMO with people who want any larger screens being pushed into the folding phone category. I get it's larger than the mid 2010s normal but they're not really getting much larger in the last couple years.

The Pixel 9-11 Pros are all smaller than the Pixel 6-8 Pros. "Pro" initially meant "larger and better" but more recently just "better" and if you want a huge phone you buy the Pro XL.

Re: Pixel 11 Pro Fold

#90

I used to be a "cutting edge phone guy" where I'd get the latest iPhone ever year and the thought of having the older phone just didn't sit well with me. These days though the upgrades are so marginal I don't even care. I'm looking forward to upgrading my three year old phone this year, but not because I expect it to be more than "better camera, faster and thinner" but just because its time. These updates are so bori…

I don't remember which iPhone I even have. I have a phone that does what I need and doesn't annoy the crap out of me. That's all I want.

My last Pixel was rendered useless by a software update though.

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