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Pixel 8 Pro

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Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#461

Post by rcarr »

kimbernator wrote: post #178

It's starting to feel silly, having a yearly release cycle for smartphones. So much of this product page is focused on new software functions that may have some vague relationship with the slightly upgraded hardware, but that could mostly be released to existing phones. Every new iPhone, Pixel, or Samsung phone basically claims the camera is marginally better and hey, look at these software features that have very li…

I think the market agrees with you as well. The going rate for a 512GB Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra in like new condition is somewhere in the £600-£700 region. The equivalent S23 Ultra, with only minor specification differences as far as I can see, is currently retailing at £1399. That's a gigantic depreciation for a phone that's only a year and a half old. Phones used to depreciate much slower 5 - 10 years ago.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#462

Post by TeMPOraL »

bradgessler wrote: post #384
kimbernator wrote: post #178

It's starting to feel silly, having a yearly release cycle for smartphones. So much of this product page is focused on new software functions that may have some vague relationship with the slightly upgraded hardware, but that could mostly be released to existing phones. Every new iPhone, Pixel, or Samsung phone basically claims the camera is marginally better and hey, look at these software features that have very li…

Try this: don’t upgrade your phone for five years. The annual incremental release cycle is fine—what’s silly is thinking phones need to be upgraded every year.

> Try this: don’t upgrade your phone for five years.

Try that and monitor your quality of life. See if you can avoid therapy.

It's not that people think they need to upgrade their phones every year, or two, or three. It's that the phones are designed for short usable life on hardware side, and on software side, neither first-party nor third-party developers give a damn about performance.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#463

Post by pfannkuchen »

epolanski wrote: post #447
pfannkuchen wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the lease thing is more to avoid dealing with any maintenance issues as well as the wear and tear on a less than new car. It’s not to get the newest tech or style all the time AFAIK.

Avoiding repairs, even if some of them might be expensive, is still insanely cheaper than leasing a new car every 3 days. People lease for many factors, not just to avoid tear and maintenance.

I don’t understand what you mean by avoiding repairs being cheaper. In order to avoid repairs you need to have a relatively new car all the time, and leasing is an easy way to achieve that.

What other reasons do people lease?

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#464

Post by criddell »

freedomben wrote: post #238
kimbernator wrote: post #178

It's starting to feel silly, having a yearly release cycle for smartphones. So much of this product page is focused on new software functions that may have some vague relationship with the slightly upgraded hardware, but that could mostly be released to existing phones. Every new iPhone, Pixel, or Samsung phone basically claims the camera is marginally better and hey, look at these software features that have very li…

Normally I agree with you, but I don't think that's the case this year at least. The on-device ML chip (Tensor G3) is a legit difference-maker. A lot of the ML features they are rolling out wouldn't be possible on older hardware. You could do the non-realtime portions in the cloud, but the realtime audio cleanup wouldn't work for example (way too much latency). Also, personally I much prefer on-device. I frequently h…

When I upgrade in two or three years from now, the ML chip will probably be even better than now. My phone has been fine for the past couple of years and the introduction of something on iPhone 15 doesn’t really change that. I don’t mind waiting.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#465

Post by megraf »

kimbernator wrote: post #178

It's starting to feel silly, having a yearly release cycle for smartphones. So much of this product page is focused on new software functions that may have some vague relationship with the slightly upgraded hardware, but that could mostly be released to existing phones. Every new iPhone, Pixel, or Samsung phone basically claims the camera is marginally better and hey, look at these software features that have very li…

I've started thinking about cars like this too. We shouldn't have yearly models, it's an absolute waste

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#466

Post by fomine3 »

libertine wrote: post #396
fluidcruft wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the segment the Pixel _a line targets? The 7a is $499...

Yes, but the 6P was the flagship. This was back in the day where a flagship phones base prices were like 600/700€. Now it's double. In 2018 the Samsung Galaxy 9 was 700€. Now a Samsung Galaxy S23 is 1.200€.

7a is almost a flagship, so most people don't have to care their flagship series. Just buy a series. Nowadays "flagship" means that the best camera they can achieve.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#467

Post by ryanbrunner »

ethbr1 wrote: post #456
rurp wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last three phone upgrades have been decidedly 'meh', and I only upgrade every 2-3 years. There have been some marginal improvements in battery life and performance, and some software niceties; but those get counteracted by bloat, regressions, and UX churn. Replacable battery and storage becoming less common is categorically worse for users. A phone with upgradable parts and minimal bloat would be better than any r…

Honestly, one of my favorite phones was the Motorola (what's now) Power. Middling specs. Huge battery. I'm still on a Pixel 4a 5G now, because I haven't seen any reason to upgrade. But I'm a "I want to be able to accidentally run over my phone with a car, shrug, and go get another one" type of person. (Despite the fact I've never actually cracked a screen...)

I still use a Motorola G(whatever, honestly can't remember) Power. Works fine, doesn't lag. The camera is nothing to write home about but I have a DSLR for good pictures and all my phone pictures are crap due to a hand tremor that stabilization can't accomodate for anyway.

Battery lasts forever and a day and there's never been a situation where I've felt prevented or limited by the phone.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#468

Post by nicce »

wffurr wrote: post #235
kylecazar wrote: post #196

It's odd to me that my Pixel 7 Pro is worth less in trade-in value than iPhone 11. I'm sure there are reasons, but it stings a little.

Aftermarket prices for Android devices are lower than iOS across the board. They depreciate faster.

That happens since software updates matter. Let’s see how this 7 year promise changes things.

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#469

Post by rcarr »

grecy wrote: post #256
grepLeigh wrote: post #173

This is a meta comment, but I think it's extraordinary that we're only 15ish years from the first smartphone release and we've already reached the "boring" incremental improvement phase for these tiny pocket supercomputers. Consider how long it took PCs to reach the same stage (with a fraction of the adoption). It was like 20 years from Kenbak-1 to the 90s PC era.

> It's extraordinary that we're only 15ish years from the first smartphone release and we've already reached the "boring" incremental improvement phase for these tiny pocket supercomputers. I think people are not yet ready to accept the exact same thing is about to happen to cars. Some company will have a perfectly usable electric self-driving vehicle and will produce tens of millions of them a year. They will be an…

It's already like this for ICE cars in the UK. So many people buy them on PCP deals and upgrade them every 3 to 4 years. It's pretty much a meme at this point about a certain kind of person:

https://youtu.be/J9n0_5p8XKo?si=dGwvSYAb676TVMEI

Re: Pixel 8 Pro

#470

Post by sanswork »

grumpyprole wrote: post #430
sanswork wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying this literally since the release of the pentium and probably earlier. From where I'm sitting software is millions of times better today than it was in the 90s when I first started hearing people saying this(usually complaining about developers using C++ instead of assembly). Even just on the iphone the improvements in software have been dramatic over the past 10 years. Go install one of the ea…

> From where I'm sitting software is millions of times better today than it was in the 90s when I first started hearing people saying this. Define better. I enjoyed computers more in the 80s. There was less bureaucracy. Cubase on the Atari ST never crashed. The modern C++ one does crash, often.

Better features, better functionality.

Much like with old IDEs old DAWs did a lot less. If you truely prefer it why aren't you still running Cubase on an old Atari or emulator?

Besides that there is the whole rose tinted glasses thing. My early experiences getting FreeBSD and Slackware running on my computers, and setting up X for example were something I'd never trade and taught me a lot about debugging systems, configs, etc. But that whole process was objectively worse than today.

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