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

Google Pixel 9 Pro

store.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

941–950 of 1001 posts

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#941

Post by barnabee »

peapod91 wrote: post #786

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…

It'll be interesting when (and only when) it can run GrapheneOS and other open source alternatives.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#942

Post by Lammy »

fsflover wrote: post #934
shiroiushi wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, exactly. Phones aren't going in a positive direction at all. What I want is a phone with excellent battery life, a great OLED screen, a great camera, plenty of local storage (and expandable with a microSD card), durable/rugged, and fast enough to feel snappy and not laggy. I don't want AI bullshit, stupid features that tie me to cloud services and help advertisers build profiles of me, can't-delete bloatware, s…

The snappiness (yet) and camera are not great, but Librem 5 might be relevant here. Headphone jack, ability to run anything without tracking (FLOSS GNU/Linux by default), microSD, smart card. If you install SXMo, it will be snappy, too.

Looks great except for the eMMC. That's the part that died on both of my previous phones (Galaxy NoteⅡ and Galaxy NoteⅣ; currently still using an iPhone 7 that's on its third battery and literally falling apart) so I am very wary of getting another phone with that type of non-replaceable storage. I know that people have replaced them but it takes some awfully fiddly soldering just to end up with another part that Will Die At Some Point.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#943

Post by spencerchubb »

nepger21 wrote: post #578

Google really needs to improve the core offering of what a phone is supposed to provide instead of using half baked AI as a selling point. I have been using Pixel 7 for almost the past 2 years. But the amount of basic core issues are crazy. Recently,since the July update, every place where the phone cannot catch network signal, it shutdowns. And with the update, somehow i feel it cannot catch network signal as strong…

what would you improve about the core offering of a phone? for me i don't see a reason to upgrade because my current phone has everything i want

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#944

Post by rurp »

peapod91 wrote: post #786

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 think it's because Google could make a great phone, but choose not to. They keep adding gimmicky features that myself and apparently many other HNers don't care for, while core functionality is neglected and often regresses.

I own a Pixel 8 Pro and it is without a doubt the worst phone I have owned in at least a decade. The amount of bugs for such an expensive product is mind boggling.

One of main features is the camera but I've found myself taking far fewer photos with the phone than I expected I would, mainly because the camera UX just kind of sucks in a 100 small to medium ways that add up to an unpleasant experience. Just for example: you need to reenable the manual focus slider after ever picture, focus peaking is flawed and impossible to disable, there's a very noticeable lag with the telephoto mode when adjusting the camera, setting are buried in several different menus, and more.

The only reason I would even consider another Google phone after this one is that the phone landscape has gotten pretty bad as a whole. Samsung phones have their own list of flaws and I won't buy a phone that Apple dictates what I can do with; and those are the alternatives for buying a nice phone that I'm aware of, but if anyone has other suggestions I'm all ears. I loved LG phones and wish those were still around.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#945

Post by coldpie »

mdaniel wrote: post #938
coldpie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a headphone jack Just use a USB-C adapter. No, it's not as good as if it was built in. Yes, it's good enough. Yes, they make charge+headphone adapters.

I dunno about your carry situation, but when I first lost access to the headphone jack on a Pixel I tried that USB-C stunt and the phone's edge came right to the top of my pocket causing the adapter to fulcrum back and forth, sometimes dislodging the plug and 100% worrying me that it's going to break my USB-C port Hard. Pass.

Yeah I can definitely see that being a problem depending on your particular phone + headphones + pants situation. For me, I use the smallest phone I can buy (iPhone 13 Mini, currently) so it all tucks into my pocket, for the most part. The adapters still regularly break after ~6 months anyway.

Sucks they removed the port :(

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#946

Post by Mikho »

One should consider that Gemini will have a paid version "Gemini Advanced" [1] for phones and whenever one has a phone with free Gemini version, it will constantly be annoyingly reminding about and pushing to the paid Gemini usage. For some reason big tech decided that people want their AI assistants and force them on everybody including requesting to pay for their decision to invest in AI hardware. I really prefer not having AI, not having an AI chip in any of my devices, and not be bothered with AI intrusion into my life.

Very soon not having an AI integrated into a phone will be a very good positive differentiation for a phone or PC brand.

1. https://gemini.google/advanced/

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#947

Post by Xeamek »

standardUser wrote: post #935
Xeamek wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>samsungs bloatware How is it any different then google's bloatware?

I'm more accustomed to Google's software. And I don't recall ever having to follow elaborate tutorials to uninstall/stop notifications for shit I don't want, like I do with every Samsung phone.

Being accustomed to one over another is fine, but there is no objective reason one would prefer google's calculator over samsungs one, or calendar or whatever.

I have google's apps included on literally every android phone out there - why do we pretend like somehow it's the samsung that is the only one forcing bloat on people?

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#948

Post by snapplebobapple »

squarefoot wrote: post #925
eadmund wrote: post #918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Google wanted to actually improve their phones … … they would enable swapping button order. … they would remove gestures. … they would improve OS stability. … they would add a hardware do not disturb switch. … they would add hardware camera and microphone switches. … they would add a headphone jack. Their phones are still preferable to iPhones, because at least with a Pixel one owns one’s own phone.

I think the best reason to use a Google phone is that turns out it's one of the easiest to Un-Google by installing GrapheneOS.

This is the correct answer. Grapheneos is basically the minimum acceptable security standard anyone should put up with from a device they carry around all day.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#949

Post by consteval »

pawelmurias wrote: post #893
MrThoughtful wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike the bundling of hardware and software alltogether. In the world of laptops, we have a wonderful situation. I can select the hardware that I like, then wipe the whole disk and install the software I like. Which in my case is a Linux distribution and then exactly the applications I prefer. I wish the world of phones was like that.

The desktop OS are all pretty bad so I wouldn't want to use that as an inspiration for anything.

I mean, define bad.

Certainly they're much more complex. More susceptible to malware, too.

But they're also much more powerful. I can get tasks done 10x as fast. They're much more open, too. They have well-defined interfaces for most things, which means I can automate tasks. Can't do that on a phone.

Re: Google Pixel 9 Pro

#950

Post by zooq_ai »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #817
zooq_ai wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I Use Hacker News for technical input. on an average, HN crowd is pretty clueless about a) running a profitable business b) foreseeing technological progress -- say two iterations down the line. c) mass adoption of features On an average, they tend to be elitist and don't represent the average brand popularity (e.g Google, Meta, Amazon). They only mildly upvote technology that helps their extremely privileged life. E…

> They only mildly upvote technology that helps their extremely privileged life. Your bias is heavily US centric. HN is not SF or SV. Plenty of users in Serbia, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, Vietnam, in war thorn Ukraine. Arguably the average user is above average for their area's COL but to claim everyone is swimming in VC money is as dilusion as the people you want to portrait in your comment.

You don't have to be swimming in VC money to be an elitist.
Post reply on HN