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

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

#681

Post by alexland »

click170 wrote: post #510
snvzz wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very happy with my Oneplus 3.

What's the deal with Dash Charging? I see it uses USB-C but I don't understand the difference between Dash Charging and just regular fast charging over USB-C. It feels like unnecessary confusion. Even after Googling I'm left wondering what the difference is beyond patents - as a user why do I care about this what method it uses to charge quickly? Just charge quickly, and do it with any (specs compliant) USB-C cable i…

The reason Dash Charging is fast is because it moves some of the charging hardware into the brick itself, meaning the phone doesn't get as hot when charging, allowing it to charge faster. One of the main reasons charging speed is limited is because the phone gets too hot, so moving heat to the brick means the charging speed can be faster without having to throttle to keep temperatures low.

You might call the branding unnecessary confusion, but in my experience it's been a differentiating feature, one that less tech savvy people I know mention when talking about reasons to switch to a OnePlus 3. And it's not a marketing gimmick either; I've seen it work in real life, and it's speed is kind of incredible.

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

#682

Post by sliken »

x0x0 wrote: post #678
endisukaj wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android app quality is much worse. Where are you basing this on? Out of some social media apps (Facebook and Snapchat) I have found that Android apps are on-par with their iOS counterparts.

I use both. Currently I have an ipad and an android phone. Android apps are neglected next to ios. Examples: * spotify is shit on android. They broke audio playback during system announcements (like google maps directions) and just didn't give a damn for two months. It's not like anybody uses spotify and maps in a car or anything. * most bank apps on android still don't take advantage of fingerprint auth to avoid typ…

This good reader? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Good.iWare...

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

#683

Post by CaptSpify »

confounded wrote: post #679
CaptSpify wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd kill for an actual linux phone. I hear good things about Ubuntu's phone, but I've yet to try it.

Purism are working on a Debian phone! https://puri.sm/ (I wish them luck...) I bought the BQ Ubuntu tablet. I hate to say it, but it's terrible. You have to set up a cloud account with Canonical to download or update apps (no reason given). Most of the apps are pretty bad. It's constantly pinging YouTube and news websites to show me stuff I don't care about, and can't turn off. No easy way to set up a VPN. No CalDAV,…

Is it a real linux system under the hood though? I don't care much about apps or anything, I care about being able to customize it to work how I want. terminal, cron, scripts, etc.

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

#684

Post by x0x0 »

sliken wrote: post #682
x0x0 wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use both. Currently I have an ipad and an android phone. Android apps are neglected next to ios. Examples: * spotify is shit on android. They broke audio playback during system announcements (like google maps directions) and just didn't give a damn for two months. It's not like anybody uses spotify and maps in a car or anything. * most bank apps on android still don't take advantage of fingerprint auth to avoid typ…

This good reader? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Good.iWare...

It doesn't look the same to me... pretty confident the good one (did you see what I did there =p ?) is ios only.

https://www.goodreader.com/

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

#685

Post by stormbeta »

adamweld wrote: post #29
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…

>Now, Google is no Samsung, but they're a long way from Apple or even Microsoft on the UX front. Not sure I agree with this. I've been on android for a while, so I'm sure I'm biased, but stock AOSP Android is pretty much perfect for me. Very minimal and aesthetically beautiful, but still powerful and customizable.

Agreed. I tried iOS for six months this summer, and I found the overall UX very disappointing compared to modern Android at this point.

Some things are still better - unified music controls, backups, and night shift especially. And the hardware/firmware is undeniably fantastic.

But Apple's emphasis on poor contrast and lack of differentiation within the UI really hurts usability, and there's still a lot of unexpected behaviors, such as links opening with a web page telling me to install an app I already have.

Going to back to only having two real notification modes - noisy or silent - felt like a major step backwards as well.

But worst of all was the lack of consistency between apps. I get that some people think MD on Android leads to apps feeling too similar, but I prefer that. My phone isn't a piece of art, it's a functional communication device. I want my apps to use the same, practical design language that gets to the point and doesn't get in the way by trying to be "different".

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

#687

Post by twblalock »

sliken wrote: post #680
twblalock wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the Pixel will have good resale value. It seems just as well-built as an iPhone, but unless Google changes its update policy, the Pixel won't be able to run new versions of Android after two years. That is a huge drag on resale value. I don't know about you, but if I was in the market for a used phone, I'd go for one that could run the latest OS. The Pixel seems to me to be a vindication of the Apple mode…

Indeed, google on promises 2 years. But are typically much more generous. For instance the nexus 5 came out in Oct, 2013. It got marshmallow, but not nougat. I suspect it would have (it has plenty of ram/cpu), but for whatever reason qualcom didn't update the video driver for the snapdragon 800. If it really bothers you the open bootloader makes it easy to find AOSP built from whatever community that floats your boat…

> If it really bothers you the open bootloader makes it easy to find AOSP built from whatever community that floats your boat.

Or I can buy an iPhone and run the latest software with zero effort.

That is a big difference, especially when you consider that the vast majority of consumers would have to look up the terms "AOSP" and "bootloader" after reading your comment, and even after looking them up, would have no idea what to do.

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

#688

Post by obtino »

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #491
criddell wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, Google should use Material Design for their Android applications, but it doesn't belong in iOS applications.

I second this.Gmail is something that I use regularly on iOS and the interface is so ancient compared to gmail on Android. This is true for a lot of applications except maybe google photos.

Outlook (for iOS) does a better job of managing Gmail in iOS than the official app.

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

#689

Post by losteverything »

danielsju6 wrote: post #462
losteverything wrote: post #395

Probably the wrong time to say but. Is or has there been any way I could purchase a new phone assign it my number and have 2 phones ringing at same time? I would have a side by side comparison in each pocket? Like I buy pants. But 4 at the store and return 3

Hangouts dialer + Google Voice / Project Fi. That's my setup. Got 4 phone numbers, all buzz all of my devices including my computers.

Text too?

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

#690

Post by dottrap »

technofiend wrote: post #501
Veratyr wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4 GB of RAM is barely adequate I'm not disagreeing with you but what makes you say this? I've never owned a phone with more than 2GB of RAM and I'm not sure what I'm missing out on. > no optical image stabilization I trust a software company like Google with EIS, particularly given their work with HDR+. I owned an iPhone 7 for about a week and loved the stabilisation Google's app did on my Motion Stills. > Google n…

> I've never owned a phone with more than 2GB of RAM and I'm not sure what I'm missing out on. It's Linux under the hood which will always make use of more memory, but our phones are slowly migrating towards service platforms. When my phone is fully kitted out playing Ingress with friends I'm running Slack, Glympse, Zello, team-specific app(s), Ingress and maps. I want the device snappily switching between and/or giv…

>> I've never owned a phone with more than 2GB of RAM and I'm not sure what I'm missing out on.

> It's Linux under the hood which will always make use of more memory,

Linux won't really be the beneficiary of all the extra RAM in this case. The motivation behind the extra RAM is Java.

It is well known (i.e. researched) that garbage collection system performance is heavily dependent on free RAM. You typically want around 4x the amount of your peak memory usage to keep the garbage collector speed reasonable. The more free RAM, the better the performance.

http://sealedabstract.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Screen-...

But having 4x has been a real challenge for mobile and Android over the years, especially as people want to do more and more with the phones. It also didn't help that Dalvik and ART are new ground-up implementations of the Java VM which means a lot of optimizations for garbage collection needed to be reimplemented from scratch.

The lack of needing to support a garbage collector is a big reason Apple can get away with shipping far less RAM in their phones which in turn helps keep their profit margins high.

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