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One week with the Google Pixel

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Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#61

Post by travv0 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #55
travv0 wrote: post #48

"The Pixel needs charging once a day, which is a little bit of a disappointment, but it charges really quickly." I'm not sure I understand this negative. I'd think any problems caused by this would be easily remedied by just charging your phone while you're sleeping, when you can't use it anyway. Or is he saying that it needs to be charged once a day, even if you charge it overnight?

If you don't always sleep in the same place it means lugging a charger. It means you can't go to bed drunk and neccessarily expect your alarm to go off in the morning. It really just means that any time your life gets out of routine, your phone is probably going to die.

Fair enough. In regards to the first point, though, you'd already have to carry the cable which I find to be more cumbersome than the plug itself.

I wish he would've elaborated a little more on battery life, as there's a big difference between a phone that barely makes it from morning to night and one that can't quite survive until the night of the second day since charge, both of which would need a daily charging.

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#62

Post by marricks »

Karunamon wrote: post #56
fweespeech wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not one of the few. People have pushed this "You are paranoid, no one is out to get you" narrative since the 90s. Everyone has something to hide, even if its just their sex life or beliefs that aren't politically favored that might affect your employment.

And yet not one single instance of Google misusing their collected advertising info exists. All of the dumping on Google Services has, to the day I write this, proven to be absolute FUD without a single concrete thing to point at.

Well that system is partly to thank for the rich info they are forced to give up for secret court orders from the US government, so I'd say there are some.

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#63

Post by viraptor »

travv0 wrote: post #48

"The Pixel needs charging once a day, which is a little bit of a disappointment, but it charges really quickly." I'm not sure I understand this negative. I'd think any problems caused by this would be easily remedied by just charging your phone while you're sleeping, when you can't use it anyway. Or is he saying that it needs to be charged once a day, even if you charge it overnight?

With wifi, bt, and mobile data on, I easily get 24h out of my pixel. (not xl) And it does doze state pretty well: ~8% charge drop overnight (that's around 1% per hour of complete inactivity)

If you pay 3d games or use it constantly, of course you'll need to charge it sometimes. But for casual usage with standard basic apps, I sometimes forget to plug it in at night and it's not problem.

https://i.imgsafe.org/cfad953cec.png

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#64

Post by kinkdr »

Karunamon wrote: post #56
fweespeech wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not one of the few. People have pushed this "You are paranoid, no one is out to get you" narrative since the 90s. Everyone has something to hide, even if its just their sex life or beliefs that aren't politically favored that might affect your employment.

And yet not one single instance of Google misusing their collected advertising info exists. All of the dumping on Google Services has, to the day I write this, proven to be absolute FUD without a single concrete thing to point at.

“Past performance does not guarantee future results”

I don't have a single bad thing to say about Google, but that doesn't mean that I am not afraid of their power and I don't dread the day that the current management will not be there to keep them in check. And sooner or later that day will come.

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#65

Post by empath75 »

visarga wrote: post #36

> For instance, ask it to search for an actor and then ask, “what films has he starred in?” It knows you’re still talking about the same person. Impressive. Yeah, but then you ask it: "What is heavier, a cat or an elephant?" and it fails, because it is lacking in common sense. It only has a small-ish factoid knowledge base and lacks all the general common sense things we take for granted.

Obviously, because they haven't created a fully conscious artificial intelligence, it's a complete failure.

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#66

Post by rmason »

I am giddy about my Pixel XL. I've sold a few of my friends on getting one. I was in the Sprint store cancelling my service as I moved over to Fi and once the guys saw it they all had to play with it.

Only problem that I've had was getting the fingerprint sensor working. You're finger down for around 45 seconds and it vibrates to tell you that its got it. That wasn't working for me and the Google engineers blamed it on software that I'd installed. But it failed before I'd installed any software.

I found an alternative way to do it ironically while waiting for a callback from the engineer. Hold your finger down for 15 seconds, lift it up but keep it hovering over the sensor. Then it will show you it's 20% done and prompt you to put your finger down again. It takes five iterations to get a finger done. You can do more than one finger and I've added four.

The one thing that I don't like is the dialing directory. You can't get it to be alphabetical and instead of a standard list you end up with these big boxes on the screen. Looks great in the photos with a half dozen contacts but fails with hundreds. The UI is extremely awkward and I don't know how it passed user testing. Does anyone have a favorite alternative for me to try?

Two pluses - battery life is fantastic and I've actually gotten almost two days from one charge. I am usually negative on all assistants but Google's is fantastic and I actually find myself using it for all sorts of things. I let my 100 year old dad try it. He smirked and said Google what is the weather in Paris, France tomorrow. It gave him the weather report and there was this gorgeous look of complete shock on his face:<).

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#67

Post by Karunamon »

kinkdr wrote: post #64
Karunamon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet not one single instance of Google misusing their collected advertising info exists. All of the dumping on Google Services has, to the day I write this, proven to be absolute FUD without a single concrete thing to point at.

“Past performance does not guarantee future results” I don't have a single bad thing to say about Google, but that doesn't mean that I am not afraid of their power and I don't dread the day that the current management will not be there to keep them in check. And sooner or later that day will come.

Your last statement is a pretty blatant slippery slope fallacy.

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#68

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

Twenty44 wrote: post #37
doubleshadow wrote: post #20

I switched from an iPhone 6+ to the Google Pixel. I've had two problems, but overall love the phone. 1.) The phone is extremely slippery. I don't agree with the author on this one. My old iPhone was way easier to grip, and the iPhone 7 is even better. I bought a case which fixed this issue. 2.) I think this is pretty important. Android apps are second class citizens. A lot of applications don't work properly with And…

I think your second point may have more to to do with the diversity of hardware that Android runs on than the developers simply putting less effort into it. Android runs on so many different devices. It is more difficult to develop and Android app that feels totally polished on every device

Are there specific devices or manufacturers that seem to fair better here? I'm on the fence on switching to Android (probably the Pixel phone), too, and I can't imagine testing for all the different phones and android releases.

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#69

Post by CydeWeys »

j7ake wrote: post #60
travv0 wrote: post #48

"The Pixel needs charging once a day, which is a little bit of a disappointment, but it charges really quickly." I'm not sure I understand this negative. I'd think any problems caused by this would be easily remedied by just charging your phone while you're sleeping, when you can't use it anyway. Or is he saying that it needs to be charged once a day, even if you charge it overnight?

It would be nice to have a phone that could survive a few days without charging. For example if you go camping for the weekend you can use your phone to take photos without worrying about battery.

I just got back from a three day hike through the Grand Canyon, and I took an external battery charger with me to recharge the phone. I took over 1,300 photos, and definitely needed the juice.

95% of the time, though, I don't need that much charge, and would rather have the option of carrying an extra battery charger with me only when I need it, rather than having a much larger, bulkier phone 100% of the time.

Re: One week with the Google Pixel

#70

Post by sowbug »

mdellavo wrote: post #42
doubleshadow wrote: post #20

I switched from an iPhone 6+ to the Google Pixel. I've had two problems, but overall love the phone. 1.) The phone is extremely slippery. I don't agree with the author on this one. My old iPhone was way easier to grip, and the iPhone 7 is even better. I bought a case which fixed this issue. 2.) I think this is pretty important. Android apps are second class citizens. A lot of applications don't work properly with And…

Can you be more specific with your second point? I haven't run across this at all.

The Tesla app for Android has numerous bugs that wouldn't have shipped if Tesla leadership carried Android devices.

* The app must be closed in a certain way (back button or swiping away, rather than home button or switching to another app) or else it'll permanently lose network connectivity after a few minutes. I think this is because they keep the socket object in their main activity, and they don't deal with cases where an idle connection gets evicted from a NAT table or similar. But that's just speculation.

* If you launch the app in certain connectivity states, it will not just put up a no-connection alert, but it will flush your stored password. This could leave you in a pickle if you use a strong passphrase that you keep in a password manager, and you were relying on the app to unlock your car.

* The app doesn't support fingerprints. This isn't a bug, but it's something that enough apps support nowadays that it feels strange they're so far behind.

In addition, I'm told the iOS app has more features than the Android version, but I've never seen it myself.

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