Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 874 posts

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#631

Post by SwellJoe »

mikestew wrote: post #13

And yet not a single hard detail in the article as to why the headline might be true. For going on ten years we've seen the "iPhone killers" come and go, and this article does nothing to tell me why this time it will be different. Perhaps because it won't be. Of what very few details the article outlines, they just go on about nifty hardware. Have we not learned by now that cool hardware still sucks when hamstrung by…

Every Android phone is an iPhone killer. Android owns ~80% of the market, to iPhone's ~18% [1]. Having many price points turns out to matter a lot; but, I think even people who are not price sensitive often prefer Android (I certainly do). I've loved every Nexus device I've owned...the pure Android experience is hard to beat, IMHO.

1: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/18/ios-android-market-share...

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#632

Post by SwellJoe »

julianpye wrote: post #354

Last week we tried to launch an Android-first app at a major startup conference with 5000 visitors. 95% of the visitors (startups, entrepreneurs, investors, executives) had iPhones. We later confirmed this by looking at the network stats and couldn't believe it. In a country where Android statistically has 80% marketshare. The Android users loved the product, but we failed because we couldn't generate word-of-mouth.…

Echo chambers are dangerous places to make marketing decisions. Startup and tech and design conferences are peak echo chamber.

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#633

Post by erikpukinskis »

WWKong wrote: post #594
erikpukinskis wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design is not a matter of personal taste. It either achieves the goals of the designer or it doesn't. It can be evaluated on a purely objective basis. You're talking about style, which is about expression more than outcomes, and is received in a very personal way. When someone reacts so negatively to material design that they won't use it, that is a failure. There's no matter of opinion there. The purpose of the desi…

What if this is not the definition of design? A quick search of various dictionaries didn't yield what you have described.

Dictionaries usually lag consensus among practitioners about what a field is really about. What is software engineering? We update our answer year after year, but Oxford English only does every decade at best.

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#634

Post by BoorishBears »

atourgates wrote: post #493
mikeryan wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matías Duarte has been consistently at the forefront of mobile UI design. This is a pretty subjective statement. It seems that a lot of Duarte's designs are somewhat derivative. Material extends MS's Flat design. I'm also not sure how much of that is Duarte, its a pretty open secret that Google makes use of some pretty high end digital agencies who aren't allowed to let folks know what they're working on. WebOS was p…

> WebOS was pretty tacky though an interesting OS design - actually implemented better by LG on their SmartTVs. I've got to stop you there. WebOS was far ahead of its time, and especially considered in the context of a small startup going against established players, was brilliant. It offered in some ways better and more intuitive usability than iOS, along with a great app development ecosystem and philosophy. Palm's…

Preware was one of the most amazing pieces of software I've ever seen on mobile (I remember going out at lunch multiple times to hang around a fast public wifi spot to try and download an LDXE-based chroot that was too large for my home connection).

Stuff like Xposed is interesting, but I haven't seen any software for mobile that managed to match the kind of community driven tweaking that Preware fostered.

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#635

Post by radiorental »

tedunangst wrote: post #551
radiorental wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese - put something on the phone Americans - tap the network backbone. What's the difference?

End to end encryption works over insecure networks, but not with insecure endpoints.

I'm sure the NSA has something to say about that, at least with consumer grade encryption.

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#637

Post by ashaikh »

johnward wrote: post #119

The camera doesn't stick out the back of the phone and become the main contact point for all surfaces. This is true innovation :)

>The camera doesn't stick out the back of the phone and become the main contact point for all surfaces.

This is a "courageous" decision ;)

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#638

Post by Steko »

atourgates wrote: post #493
mikeryan wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matías Duarte has been consistently at the forefront of mobile UI design. This is a pretty subjective statement. It seems that a lot of Duarte's designs are somewhat derivative. Material extends MS's Flat design. I'm also not sure how much of that is Duarte, its a pretty open secret that Google makes use of some pretty high end digital agencies who aren't allowed to let folks know what they're working on. WebOS was p…

> WebOS was pretty tacky though an interesting OS design - actually implemented better by LG on their SmartTVs. I've got to stop you there. WebOS was far ahead of its time, and especially considered in the context of a small startup going against established players, was brilliant. It offered in some ways better and more intuitive usability than iOS, along with a great app development ecosystem and philosophy. Palm's…

> WebOS was far ahead of its time

I see this any time WebOS is mentioned but this makes WebOS sound a lot more innovative than it was. WebOS is widely lauded for two things: (1) the card application interface and (2) the accompanying physics/gestures, especially swipe from edge. Now these are great and appropriately lauded but that is a short list that really pales compared to a similar list of things the iPhone OS had introduced at that time. Other than that WebOS is basically a nicely polished clone of the iPhone OS. Even the cards metaphor itself, the hallmark of WebOS, was used two years earlier in the original iPhone in Mobile Safari and Cover Flow.

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#639

Post by notatoad »

tw04 wrote: post #527
notatoad wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Pixel is a premium 5" phone, not a budget one. what makes it premium other than the fact that they're charging lots of money for it? i can't find a real differentiator over something like the oneplus 3, which costs half as much. i agree with you that it's better than the 5X, but comparing it to this year's competition, it doesn't look so good.

More memory, faster CPU, better GPU, and most important to me - best camera on the market. The Oneplus 3 is four times the size, the firmware running on it tends to be buggy, and the battery life is nothing close to the same. I get it - if you're on a budget you can probably do better with the Oneplus 3. But there are a MILLION options in the budget space. Pixel is about showcasing a high end Android phone WITHOUT al…

It has 2GB less ram, and the same processor (slightly higher clock speed) and same gpu, vs the oneplus 3

Re: Behind the Pixel: Google’s First Real Threat to Apple’s iPhone

#640

Post by mooman219 »

technofiend wrote: post #319
Veratyr wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what does this have that the year-old Nexus 6P and 5X don't, other than incremental hardware improvements? As someone who owns a 5X: - The Pixel is a premium 5" phone, not a budget one. It has a flagship SoC rather than a mid-tier SoC. - The camera is better and more responsive (the camera on the N5X is slow and annoying). - The body isn't plastic, which means there will be less issues with heat and CPU throttling…

As always the most compelling thing about the phone is Google's support - fast releases and minimal carrier bloat. You have a nice list of positives and I'm not disputing them. But the feature list for what is now Googles top phone is underwhelming. 4 GB of RAM is barely adequate - it should be 6 GB like the other Snapdragon 821 flagship. No water proofing? That's the new black. Bottom-facing speakers? Complete regre…

Doesn't the iPhone 7 have only 3 GB of RAM? If 4 GB is "barely adequate" then the iPhone 7 must be pretty bad. /s
Post reply on HN