I'm with you that AI is overhyped but your suggested feature is "per app volume mixers" like in Windows? What's the use case on a mobile phone to warrant the extra complexity?
An example I can think of is when you're listening to a podcast or music that has been recorded on low volume. Without a volume mixer you're forced to increase the general volume, resulting in overly 'loud' sound notifications from other apps.
Media volume and notification volume have their own sliders
I have negative desire to get a phone billing itself around AI and LLM features. I turn off every AI assistant feature on my existing devices, I actively don't want a phone that ties Gemini and AI photoshop even tighter into it. If Google wanted to actually improve their phones they would add basic software functionality they're still missing instead like, say, a per-app volume mixer that half the 3rd party Android p…
I'm with you that AI is overhyped but your suggested feature is "per app volume mixers" like in Windows? What's the use case on a mobile phone to warrant the extra complexity?
The use-case is the exact same one that is on a desktop. System-wide setting for a comfortable max volume, application specific volume because different apps handle audio differently. Youtube videos are loud, voice chat is usually moderate, some recordings are quiet.
You do, because now all phones have ugly camera bumps and can't lie flat on the table without a case. Why can't make phones thicker, to match the camera bumps, filling the extra space with battery, is beyond me.
Because most people would put a case on it, making it even thicker? I mean, I spent ~$1500 on my last phone, and while I treat it carefully, I'm not risking it getting smashed so I could never go without a cover.
I would totally use my phone without cover. $1500 or $300 I'm not going to resell it anyway, so scratches and wear aren't an issue. But I'm going to put it on a table a lot and I hate it when it wobbles.
The dominance of the negativity in these comments is noteworthy. Personally, I thought it was a exciting update with major hardware improvements, some compelling AI demos and use cases at a similar price point as the past. Top tech reviewers e.g. MKBHD has similar impressions. Mostly just curious as to why there are ~0 positive comments here. I suspect could be: 1) anti-google HN bias - perhaps deserved? 2) it's simp…
HN has relatively high Graphene OS proportion, and those who use it are those who likely comment here. From Graphene OS user perspective, this does not – on the surface – add much new value. Thus negativity. Other factors ALSO.
The dominance of the negativity in these comments is noteworthy. Personally, I thought it was a exciting update with major hardware improvements, some compelling AI demos and use cases at a similar price point as the past. Top tech reviewers e.g. MKBHD has similar impressions. Mostly just curious as to why there are ~0 positive comments here. I suspect could be: 1) anti-google HN bias - perhaps deserved? 2) it's simp…
I'm very bullish on genAI, and I bought the new phone, but I really don't think the features shown are that exciting yet. It feels like they're laying the groundwork for more powerful AI to be ready to do things in your phone apps, and the current features are just paving the way. The killer-app (that isn't porn) is going to be asking your phone to order food and it guesses correctly what you want while cross-checkin…
I really hope the killer-app of genAI is not takeaway food prediction, nor porn.
There's also the obligatory non-Pro model, and a refresh of the Pixel Fold: https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_9 https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_9_pro_fold Usually the Pro is bigger than the non-Pro but this time they're exactly the same size, and they've added a bigger Pro XL variant. https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Google-Pixel-9,Google... The Pro and Pro XL appear to have identical specs as…
Sadly, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold seems to have the camera of the base Pixel 9 (non-Pro), rather than the much nicer camera of the Pixel 9 Pro.
Thanks for highlighting! If anything, based on compare page, it seems that camera setup is closer to previous gen Fold rather than Pixel 9. Barely any changes.
I don't really think there's bias, it's just that HN these days predominately attracts negative ranting comments. It's not really Google specific either - if you look at any other topic, even Linux or OSS related, there's going to be bunch of highly upvoted people ranting and raving. That pushes out any kind of positive discussion and normal people leave.
I think the internet has become much more toxic these last few years. I see a lot of resentment and projection in people’s comments. And most of the time the ,comments are useless and don’t represent the general consumer/citizen opinion. This is specially true for anonymous profiles
We all know negative content drives more engagement, see: Facebook. But I've also noticed this trend and for me it makes sense seeing as most of the content on the internet nowadays is negative content. Social media is used to belittle and criticize other people/ideas, the news has never been positive, we've passed the stage where content creators that are positive about products are seen as trustworthy, because an overly positive attitude has been linked to a "shill" mindset. We've seen the evolution of big tech from trying to destabilise old/existing industries and giving us a new, improved service to trying to squeeze as much profit out of their users as possible. Other big companies have dominated their competition and have used that power to boost prices, limit access to media, decrease the user experience,... In a lot of ways I feel like the toxicity that we are experiencing online these days is a direct result of noticing all these negative patterns and realising that most of what is being advertised to us has a large chance of being too good to be true. Games that look good pre-release but then get released full of bugs, software that was once a good deal becomes a subscription, series that get cancelled too soon, products that look good on release but have issues not long after without a chance to repair them, companies completely changing their objectives after a CEO change, the list goes on. So instead of trying to be positive and finding ways to get excited about something it is now a "safer" bet to be critical and negative about anything that is being announced because of the cycles of dissapointment we've all been through. At least to me, this makes sense, eventhough I would like to see it be different.
From what I have seen women tend to prefer the larger phone sizes more than men, because they keep it in their handbags and use it two-handed.
Sure, for some women, but let's not generalize. Personally, I hate carrying a purse, and the new phones don't even fit in the pocket inside my purse. Plus, I miss being able to reach the entire screen with one thumb, with the phone held in one hand. I do admit to typing two-handed, sometimes, but damn I wish I didn't NEED to! I can barely reach the left side of the screen reliably, much less the top left corner. :(
"Sure, for some women, but let's not generalize."
I agree, we should only talk about individual anecdotes. After all, we are special little snowflakes, each and one of us.
There is also "hold for me", where the phone listens to hold music for you, then rings when the operator arrives. And there is a feature now to show you how busy a customer service line is at a particular time, and to give you a text transcript with clickable buttons for the phone tree.
Am I the only one who thinks these features really don't add much to the experience? If an annoying phone tree is going to take 3 minutes to navigate by listening to the prompts, then it will also take 3 minutes to navigate by letting the AI listen and write little buttons for me. I didn't really save any time. If on the other hand it could say "other users have seen this phone tree before, so here is the whole searc…
I have negative desire to get a phone billing itself around AI and LLM features. I turn off every AI assistant feature on my existing devices, I actively don't want a phone that ties Gemini and AI photoshop even tighter into it. If Google wanted to actually improve their phones they would add basic software functionality they're still missing instead like, say, a per-app volume mixer that half the 3rd party Android p…
why? AI is very useful in day to day life, and having a phone with on-device capabilities is crazy useful even for those that like their privacy and are paranoid about big corpos stealing their data. I don't see any reason to hate these features.