Looks like they're still only available in "Huge" and "comically oversized". I guess I can keep buying Pixel 4s until new ones (req for battery) are no longer available.
I replaced my 4a (which is not particularly small) after Google nerfed the battery into oblivion, but every once in a while I get it out of its drawer and am always immediately struck by how much better the form factor is. Using a modern phone with a 6+ inch screen feels like trying to tie a knot with one hand.
Pixel 10 Phones
351–360 of 982 posts
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#352The people at Google seem to think much more like me than the people at Apple. There are 3 primary decisions Google made that click with me, while Apple's choices are a mystery to me: 1: When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable. Because the backside is symmetrical. When I put an iPhone on a table, it wobbles. 2: When I sort my photos on a Pixel, I sort them in folders. The "camera" folder is where the unso…
For me, it is the ability to tether my laptop to an iPhone to use the data service on my iPhone. This alone made me give up on Windows laptops and Android phones. Sure, you can tether Windows laptops to Android phones. But, it is a slow and cumbersome process. I use this functionality frequently enough that it was worth it to switch platforms over it.
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#353Looks like they're still only available in "Huge" and "comically oversized". I guess I can keep buying Pixel 4s until new ones (req for battery) are no longer available.
It's interesting how this type of feedback always comes up for phones yet smaller phones have an extremely hard time actually selling enough units to justify making more of them. It seems part of it may be folks remaining in this group seem much more willing to stick with old devices anyways, helping drive less priority for small sizes on top of already being a smaller market segment. Perhaps there are some other big…
Smaller phones are used by people who use it less.
I have only anecdotal data, pretty sure google has the analytics to find that out.
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google https://grapheneos.org/
As a consumer, I lament most of all about Pixel devices (or any other Android device really) that I have to wipe the OS and install a different one to get features that matter to me, particularly around privacy. Thats why I don't use Pixel devices, or any Android devices really. I know its a precarious situation with Apple since they could reverse their stance at any point and sometimes they get it wrong, but they ha…
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#355Complaining about Apple walled garden, but only able to pull off their AI help if you are part of their Google garden and a lot of it on the cloud.
Same for Pixel Snap being MagSafe (sounds like a camera feature at first).
7 years of software updates promised, that’s actually nice.
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google https://grapheneos.org/
As a consumer, I lament most of all about Pixel devices (or any other Android device really) that I have to wipe the OS and install a different one to get features that matter to me, particularly around privacy. Thats why I don't use Pixel devices, or any Android devices really. I know its a precarious situation with Apple since they could reverse their stance at any point and sometimes they get it wrong, but they ha…
I haven't tried /e/, I prefer installing a raw lineage with microG myself (although I don't currently use the microG part), but it seems like you and your parent commenter would be in the intended target.
I do agree that an alternative would be great. I'd gladly use Linux mobile with good, realiable hardware.
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#357That fake zoom with AI is gross ugh If I'm taking a picture of something I want it to be real light-to-pixel action not some made up wambo-jambo
How long until someone gets arrested because an AI invented a face that looks like theirs? Hopefully lawyers will be know to throw out evidence like that, but the social media hivemind will happily ruin someone's life based on AI hallucinations.
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls, and then retraining every time Google kills it off for another almost identical app This seems like an argument for picking something third-party, perhaps Signal. It's probably not going away any time soon, and it supports both major mobile operating systems.
both iOS and Facetime are super slick and baked into the device. The end user doesn't even have to really know how to the app to use the feature as it were. It shows up on a contact as a button click. Signal does not, even on Android. You have to deliberately use it. That small friction isn't great when you're likely one of few people using it in day to day life of others. FaceTime on the other hand, just works
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not that I'm trying to justify the prices, but I'm interested by the take that a phone should cost less than a computer. To me, the phone has an actual camera and is significantly smaller (and, if you are talking desktop, has a screen) so should cost more for the same sort of power. Of course, there are phones and computers at all different prices so it's hard to compare.
It's smaller, so it should cost less, not more. It's 2025, miniaturization isn't that expensive. It's less screen and less battery than a laptop, cooling the CPU can be done passively because it's so low-powered, it has less RAM and less flash and fewer ports and a simpler mechanical design, no keyboard or touchpad... it's a slab of glass with a plastic/aluminum case containing a PCB, battery, and camera. Written on…
Phones have higher resolution, higher refresh rate, and brighter screens at the price point vs a $1000 laptop. (Also higher density screens are harder to make, 12" 1080p panels cost nothing, phone screens are often bespoke resolutions.)
RAM is the same or higher at the $1k price point - 16GB.
Fewer ports sure, but most ports are USB-C anyway, the cost of the connector is not the expensive part.
The mechanical design I'll push back on as well, phones are expected to put up with a lot more physical abuse than laptops, and also be resistant to dust and water. You can dunk a pixel phone in 3 feet of water for half an hour, good luck doing that with a laptop. As someone who got to watch the ME's sitting next to my team work on making our product water resistant, that process sucks, it takes multiple iterations ($, and time) and it is non-trivial to get right.
Tear downs of the Pixel 10 are obv not available yet, but the estimated BOM for a Pixel 9 is ~$400 USD. Figure ongoing support (7 years!), all the cloud services that come with it, and all the other costs that went into making it (the army of engineers, an entire OS team, all the apps that come with it, etc), the $800 I paid for it isn't half bad.
Edit: Oh and phones also have a modern miracle of an RF stack in them. My phone can hold onto a BT connection across my yard and through 2 brick walls! And they do this with barely any space to but the antennas. Meanwhile laptops can run antennas willy-nilly with the absurd amount of volume they have to work with.
(Apple's Laptops also have really good wireless performance, but the base models aren't trying to support the three generations of cellular protocols and standard that phones do.)