Technology Android

[k69atie]

How are you liking it so far?


I'm really liking it just getting used to the changes that have been made for volume controls etc

 

[dilla]

I've heard that them merging with T-mobile means that they will share infrastructure though. If it's a typical merger like that, you should have access to both networks right after it happens. So if you're on Sprint, your phone will be able to connect to Sprint towers AND T-mobile towers, as well as the other way around. Usually, mergers mean full access to both network infrastructures, and your phone would simply connect to whichever tower offers better signal strength, regardless if it was originally T-mobile or Sprint.

Before such mergers, switching to the cheaper carrier right before it happens might be worth considering if they're obliged to honor all pre-merger contract terms. After the merger, you would end up on the same network anyway, regardless if you originally signed with Sprint or T-mobile.

I don't know the details about that merger though, so I'm not sure what the time frames and terms are, and whether it's even confirmed. Sprint is a Japanese network, T-mobile is German, and by uniting they would have an upper hand against the two main American brands left (owned by the same businesses). In many countries that would be blocked on national security grounds or preservation of competition.

Yeah I follow the Sprint subreddit and the news was good news, according to the users. I don't think the merger happens for another two years, if ever. I don't have any reason to doubt it will happen but the feeling I get from the users that follow the news more closely than I do is that it will take some time.

Sprint recently released data that made them look like utter shit in terms of performance and it was suspected it was to make a stronger case for the merger to go through. That TMO would help Sprint a ton if they were together.

But I feel like phones would also need to be compatible with bands from both carriers in order to work on both networks and I don't know what those bands are. But I have a feeling it would require a much newer phone, especially if it happens in 2+ years from now. I don't plan to keep my S7 that long but I do plan on waiting to see what happens in regards to this merger before switching. Or at least have a better idea of what the future brings with the merger. Right now, we seem to be in the stages about whether it will happen or not and who absorbs whom. I don't think consumers can do much with that info. about deciding their future with those companies.

 

[dilla]

Also, what resolution do you keep your screen at on your S8? Or do you have ab S9? Whatever it is, I have mine at 1080p because even the media I watch isn't at 1080p so going to 1440 seems like a waste. They say it makes to difference on battery life but I notice things go a bit better at 1080.

Any difference?

 

[masta247]

Also, what resolution do you keep your screen at on your S8? Or do you have ab S9? Whatever it is, I have mine at 1080p because even the media I watch isn't at 1080p so going to 1440 seems like a waste. They say it makes no difference in battery life but I notice things go a bit better at 1080.

Any difference?

I frankly have no idea why they made 1080P the default. All the tests I've seen point to the fact it makes no significant difference to the battery life. Especially since that setting only changes the rendering quality for the UI and some apps.

The content (such as the videos) are opened in full resolution. Since I always prefer things to be rendered in the display's native resolution, I have it at 1440P. In general, it results in better image quality.

The battery life on the S8 is excellent. It must be around twice as good as it was on my S6. My girlfriend's S7 is somewhere in between. At the end of the day, I usually have 30-40% of battery left, despite its rather heavy usage. With the S6, I had to charge it with a power bank to make it survive the day. Now I don't even carry it.
I was really pleasantly surprised, considering the battery is still 3000mAh and the screen is bigger. The efficiency gains must have been really large with that generation.

 

[masta247]

Did you read the reviews of the new iPhones? There are a few things in the Anandtech review that caught my eye:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets

You have to ignore the bias, especially now that Anand works at Apple and works on those phones himself, so many of the quality issues and problematic areas (such as the modem issues) were conveniently skipped.
But there's no way for such bias to affect the detailed tests that are there. Particularly the detailed tests for their newest chips, which I was incredibly surprised with:

I was surprised because even Apple's marketing team fails to convey what they did. They mentioned "15% more performance" in their marketing material, which is a joke considering how overeager they usually were, and how they fell off now considering what they have on their hands with these chips.

In the Android camp, the highest performance scores are usually achieved by phones that burn through the battery within an hour or two (One Plus, LG and Huawei) just to get that extra edge in benchmarks over the perfectly balanced Snapdragon chips that Samsung or Sony tune for efficiency (just a bit less performance at much lower power drains = makes much more sense on a mobile device).
But the new Apple chips are something else. They perform much better than anyone else while being impressively efficient. There's just no way around the fact that they just perform amazingly well and are now probably several generations ahead of their competitors. Heck, the jump between their merely competitive chips in the iPhone X/8 and these is beyond revolutionary.

Surely the new 7nm process helped them a lot, considering on Android camp the 7nm chips will only come with the Galaxy S10. That said, Apple also grew to become an incredibly impressive SOC manufacturer both in terms of the CPU, GPU and memory subsystems. They were very good during the last few generations, but this time, they are so excellent that they are ahead of everyone else in all regards.

To put it into perspective, I know those chips are much simpler than what Intel or AMD chips are, and you can't compare them directly, but for simple tasks at low power, Apple smartphone chips now perform better than Intel's best low power chips that go into laptops.
Sure, Intel or AMD chips scale well to higher power levels (laptops, desktops, servers) which ARM chips just can't do, but in their own space, Apple isn't getting enough credit for how amazing their work in that area is.
They are miles ahead of all other ARM chip designers like Qualcomm or Samsung, and surely it's their biggest technological asset.


I mentioned that the Anandtech review didn't mention the known problematic areas with the phones themselves, such as the modems (they were not tested). Apart from mentioning (yet underplaying) the fact the display relies on low-frequency PWM (flickering) and that the cameras simply aren't up to par with Samsung or OnePlus/Oppo, they actually discovered one new serious issue with the phones:

"I was completely unable to complete a single run on either the iPhone XS or XS Max while the devices were cool. If the device is cool enough, the GPU will boost to such high performance states that it will actually crash. I was consistently able to reproduce this over and over again. I attempted to measure power during this test, and the platform had instantaneous average power of 7-8 watts, figures above this which I suspect weren’t recorded by my measurement methodology. For the GPU to crash, it means that the power delivery is failing to deliver the necessary transient currents during operation and we’ll see a voltage dip that corrupts the GPU."

So the iPhones do have several quality issues that would prevent me from recommending them to anyone. I think Apple lost their touch in terms of making quality products and marketing.
That said, I just wanted to point out how great the Apple chips are. I was very impressed, and they far exceeded my expectations, especially since nobody, including themselves, is giving them the cred they deserve. With the gains they are making, and consider how far ahead of everyone else they are, they have an industry leading engineering division that makes those chips that's far superior to everyone else's.

 

[dilla]

I frankly have no idea why they made 1080P the default. All the tests I've seen point to the fact it makes no significant difference to the battery life. Especially since that setting only changes the rendering quality for the UI and some apps.

The content (such as the videos) are opened in full resolution. Since I always prefer things to be rendered in the display's native resolution, I have it at 1440P. In general, it results in better image quality.

The battery life on the S8 is excellent. It must be around twice as good as it was on my S6. My girlfriend's S7 is somewhere in between. At the end of the day, I usually have 30-40% of battery left, despite its rather heavy usage. With the S6, I had to charge it with a power bank to make it survive the day. Now I don't even carry it.
I was really pleasantly surprised, considering the battery is still 3000mAh and the screen is bigger. The efficiency gains must have been really large with that generation.

Yeah, my battery has really taken a hit the last month or so. I used some unofficial battery tool called AccuBattery since January of 2017. I think I mentioned this before and after about a month of using it, I checked to see what it thought was my overall battery capacity and it said it was about 68-70%. It stayed like that for a while and I didn't really notice any further degradation. I could get about 3-4 hours of SOT while streaming video using LTE and I was fine with that. What was funny was my battery life was worse if I went the whole day without using the phone too much and getting slightly less than 2 hours of SOT with 20% left by the evening. That video streaming stat I mentioned prior? I could get 1.5 hours of streaming with a little over 50% left, so basically watching 3 or 4 episodes of TV shows. I never understood that.

But now I can see the battery dropping rather fast while I'm using it. Spending 5 mins in Instagram and browsing some timelines and profiles and watching a few videos can take it down 5% in that time, greater than 1% a minute.

So I tried a new tool that was suggest on XDA Phone Info Samsung. https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2609045&page=118

Sounds shady as hell but the posts in that thread all look positive and not suspicious about the dev's work. I tried it out and I was at 57%, according to that app. I really need to change my battery, it seems, but I also noticed the battery life sucked ass in the past 30-45 days. Which was when I got some carrier update pushed to me in mid August which was some security patches and network enhancements, whatever that means. I'd be pissed if a software update that minor was the reason behind this shit battery life. I do notice that the Google App wakes my phone up a ton more than usual but I've gone through the settings of that and I never changed any of those to begin with for months.

I'd hate to upgrade my battery and see the improvement and then have some software update "fix" the prior issue. It'd be great to like "like new" battery life again but I was hoping to not spend any additional money on this phone since release day and let it die a natural death after 3+ years. Then I'd feel fine upgrading to a newer phone whenever one seems fit. It's a $70 part and labor deal and will be done by a Samsung Approved center, uBreakIFix, but I was hoping to avoid doing that unless I really had to.

The phone still lasts a day easily with minor use but when I sit down and start catching up on social media posts, I see it drop. Really, it's IG that kills it but Twitter and Reddit also drain faster than normal. The latter two just aren't alarmingly fast like IG, though.

 

[dilla]

Did you read the reviews of the new iPhones? There are a few things in the Anandtech review that caught my eye:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets

You have to ignore the bias, especially now that Anand works at Apple and works on those phones himself, so many of the quality issues and problematic areas (such as the modem issues) were conveniently skipped.
But there's no way for such bias to affect the detailed tests that are there. Particularly the detailed tests for their newest chips, which I was incredibly surprised with:

View attachment 435

View attachment 436
View attachment 437

I was surprised because even Apple's marketing team fails to convey what they did. They mentioned "15% more performance" in their marketing material, which is a joke considering how overeager they usually were, and how they fell off now considering what they have on their hands with these chips.

In the Android camp, the highest performance scores are usually achieved by phones that burn through the battery within an hour or two (One Plus, LG and Huawei) just to get that extra edge in benchmarks over the perfectly balanced Snapdragon chips that Samsung or Sony tune for efficiency (just a bit less performance at much lower power drains = makes much more sense on a mobile device).
But the new Apple chips are something else. They perform much better than anyone else while being impressively efficient. There's just no way around the fact that they just perform amazingly well and are now probably several generations ahead of their competitors. Heck, the jump between their merely competitive chips in the iPhone X/8 and these is beyond revolutionary.

Surely the new 7nm process helped them a lot, considering on Android camp the 7nm chips will only come with the Galaxy S10. That said, Apple also grew to become an incredibly impressive SOC manufacturer both in terms of the CPU, GPU and memory subsystems. They were very good during the last few generations, but this time, they are so excellent that they are ahead of everyone else in all regards.

To put it into perspective, I know those chips are much simpler than what Intel or AMD chips are, and you can't compare them directly, but for simple tasks at low power, Apple smartphone chips now perform better than Intel's best low power chips that go into laptops.
Sure, Intel or AMD chips scale well to higher power levels (laptops, desktops, servers) which ARM chips just can't do, but in their own space, Apple isn't getting enough credit for how amazing their work in that area is.
They are miles ahead of all other ARM chip designers like Qualcomm or Samsung, and surely it's their biggest technological asset.


I mentioned that the Anandtech review didn't mention the known problematic areas with the phones themselves, such as the modems (they were not tested). Apart from mentioning (yet underplaying) the fact the display relies on low-frequency PWM (flickering) and that the cameras simply aren't up to par with Samsung or OnePlus/Oppo, they actually discovered one new serious issue with the phones:

"I was completely unable to complete a single run on either the iPhone XS or XS Max while the devices were cool. If the device is cool enough, the GPU will boost to such high performance states that it will actually crash. I was consistently able to reproduce this over and over again. I attempted to measure power during this test, and the platform had instantaneous average power of 7-8 watts, figures above this which I suspect weren’t recorded by my measurement methodology. For the GPU to crash, it means that the power delivery is failing to deliver the necessary transient currents during operation and we’ll see a voltage dip that corrupts the GPU."

So the iPhones do have several quality issues that would prevent me from recommending them to anyone. I think Apple lost their touch in terms of making quality products and marketing.
That said, I just wanted to point out how great the Apple chips are. I was very impressed, and they far exceeded my expectations, especially since nobody, including themselves, is giving them the cred they deserve. With the gains they are making, and consider how far ahead of everyone else they are, they have an industry leading engineering division that makes those chips that's far superior to everyone else's.

I read something similar posted on Reddit in the Apple sub, I think. About how the iPhone chips were years ahead of the other producers and how it would take years to get similar performance and efficiency from QC and others.

I got lost in the jargon but they also mentioned how optimized Apple's chips were at running Java and that was a big reason why. I don't know if the iPad is a fair comparison but they do use similar chips to their iPhone counterparts. My Pro has the A10X and I notice just how smooth multitasking is when switching between PDF to Safari to Notes when I'm taking notes and looking up stuff at the clinic. I don't know how intensive those processes are but I can imagine being frustrated doing that on my S7, and not just because of the smaller screen. They're also devices that are nearly 2 years apart but if I were to estimate the performance on an iPhone with the A10X (I think the 7S?) then I feel it would be a much smoother experience. And Samsung kills it in the GPU department, right? Apple used to, or still does, use Samsung GPUs, but gaming on the iPad is just so much smoother.

About the Apple GPU corruption due to power issues, can't a software fix fix that?

 

[masta247]

I read something similar posted on Reddit in the Apple sub, I think. About how the iPhone chips were years ahead of the other producers and how it would take years to get similar performance and efficiency from QC and others.

I got lost in the jargon but they also mentioned how optimized Apple's chips were at running Java and that was a big reason why. I don't know if the iPad is a fair comparison but they do use similar chips to their iPhone counterparts. My Pro has the A10X and I notice just how smooth multitasking is when switching between PDF to Safari to Notes when I'm taking notes and looking up stuff at the clinic. I don't know how intensive those processes are but I can imagine being frustrated doing that on my S7, and not just because of the smaller screen. They're also devices that are nearly 2 years apart but if I were to estimate the performance on an iPhone with the A10X (I think the 7S?) then I feel it would be a much smoother experience. And Samsung kills it in the GPU department, right? Apple used to, or still does, use Samsung GPUs, but gaming on the iPad is just so much smoother.

About the Apple GPU corruption due to power issues, can't a software fix fix that?

Apple designs their own CPUs and GPUs now, and they are manufactured by TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). In the past, PowerVR was the designer for the GPUs, Apple designed their own CPUs, and Samsung manufactured them all. Now it's just Apple as the designer and TSMC as the manufacturer.

Apple devices are great at Javascript, not Java. Javascript is a web language, and Apple is optimized really well in that regard compared to Android, thus the faster web performance. Plus their chips are simply faster in terms of pure performance, regardless of usage, so the extra optimized web engines just increase the lead even further in those workloads.

The A10X that you are referring to is especially powerful due to it being a tablet chip, allowed to use more power. While historically iPads used the same chips as the iPhones, the iPad Pro chips are significantly stronger and more power-hungry than the iPhone variants. So while the iPad Pros had the A10X, the iPhone had the A10, and it was significantly slower, but still at least competitive with Qualcomm's best during that generation. The A12 on the newest iPhones, however, is faster than even the fastest iPad Pro chips.

In terms of the iPhone issues, the GPU one could be potentially fixed in software. The problem is that Apple might face trouble doing that, as the issue happens due to the fact that they wanted to increase the performance of the chip for short burst loads. So when you browse the web, load stuff, scroll stuff, the CPU and GPU boost to unreasonable power levels to deliver the fastest experience possible. The phone can handle that for such short periods of time required to do those things, but if you use something that will load the system for longer, the GPU will get corrupted due to not getting enough power. To fix that issue for sustained loads, they would have to tune down their chips.

 

[dilla]

Apple designs their own CPUs and GPUs now, and they are manufactured by TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). In the past, PowerVR was the designer for the GPUs, Apple designed their own CPUs, and Samsung manufactured them all. Now it's just Apple as the designer and TSMC as the manufacturer.

Apple devices are great at Javascript, not Java. Javascript is a web language, and Apple is optimized really well in that regard compared to Android, thus the faster web performance. Plus their chips are simply faster in terms of pure performance, regardless of usage, so the extra optimized web engines just increase the lead even further in those workloads.

The A10X that you are referring to is especially powerful due to it being a tablet chip, allowed to use more power. While historically iPads used the same chips as the iPhones, the iPad Pro chips are significantly stronger and more power-hungry than the iPhone variants. So while the iPad Pros had the A10X, the iPhone had the A10, and it was significantly slower, but still at least competitive with Qualcomm's best during that generation. The A12 on the newest iPhones, however, is faster than even the fastest iPad Pro chips.

In terms of the iPhone issues, the GPU one could be potentially fixed in software. The problem is that Apple might face trouble doing that, as the issue happens due to the fact that they wanted to increase the performance of the chip for short burst loads. So when you browse the web, load stuff, scroll stuff, the CPU and GPU boost to unreasonable power levels to deliver the fastest experience possible. The phone can handle that for such short periods of time required to do those things, but if you use something that will load the system for longer, the GPU will get corrupted due to not getting enough power. To fix that issue for sustained loads, they would have to tune down their chips.

But if their chips are still head and shoulders above the competition, it may not be such a big loss to de-tune the processor so that a much worse issue doesn’t happen. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that but GPU corruption sounds a much more serious issue.

I didn’t realize their was a dichotomy now between the iPads and iPhones chips. I love my Pro and never feel like it’s lagging behind me when I want to do some serious multitasking. But my Air was no slouch either but I still don’t think it would have been as fluid if I did on that what I do with my Pro. Including the Pencil usage.

Also, https://www.theverge.com/platform/a...&utm_source=twitter&__twitter_impression=true

Is $799 a reasonable price, if the rumor is true? I feel like we’ve been seeing $1000+ as the new norm that $800 seems newsworthy.

 

[dilla]

I just looked up the Pocophone prices and availability and it turns it out supports one LTE band used by any US carrier lol

So much for that. Doesn’t support any CDMA bands either which isn’t too shocking.

Also, people seem pissed that the base Pixel 3 is rumors to cost $800. Verizon is doing a BOGO on it though so that might be nice for some people.

 

[masta247]

Big news from Google lol:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-shut-down-closing,37906.html

Tl;dr, Google+ shut down permanently and they tried to swipe a data leak under the rug.

I don't think many people will miss Google+, as for most of its users it was forced upon, but the fact that they didn't disclose a data leak is worrying.

It's somehow sad to think that the Google of today is largely becoming the opposite of the Google we knew and loved back in the days. There's hardly much of that former soul left over there. Which sucks.

And speaking of..

Is $799 a reasonable price, if the rumor is true? I feel like we’ve been seeing $1000+ as the new norm that $800 seems newsworthy.

I don't see how it's a reasonable price. The Pixel 2 was overpriced at $659.
The Pixel 3 is using the now outgoing Snapdragon 845 that cheaper phones had for over 6 months now and that seems to be the only significant improvement.
There are hardly any other hardware changes, except for the wireless charging, which most major flagships have by now, and costs next to nothing to implement.

At the same time, the still significantly better Galaxy S9 launched for less ($720) than the S8, and the iPhone XR launched for significantly less than the X did, with the XR offering an extreme upgrade over the iP8 for $50 more and being cheaper than the Pixel 3.
Generally speaking, this year we are getting more bang for the buck than last year, which was probably the peak of smartphone pricing.

Now back to the new Pixels, the XL notch is twice as tall as on the competing flagships, the bezels are huge on both variants and the camera uses the same hardware it did on the Pixel 2. I actually didn't see any hardware upgrades other than going from the Snapdragon 835 to 845, which isn't a large upgrade, especially since in a few months we're getting 7nm Snapdragon chips, which should be a big deal.

Pretty much all improvements are in the software, particularly camera software.

There seems to be nothing exciting about the Pixel 3, and it's even more overpriced than the previous models were. It's a $400 phone sold for $800 with software trying to compensate. The way I see it, they are capitalizing on the fact that the few followers will buy it anyway, so they're trying to sell it for as much as they can get away with. For everyone else, it's just not even close to being competitive. The Galaxy S9 will be better and cheaper, the S10 releases soon, heck, the iPhones are a better value, and I'd get the XR over the Pixel 3 in a heartbeat.

 

[dilla]

Big news from Google lol:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-shut-down-closing,37906.html

Tl;dr, Google+ shut down permanently and they tried to swipe a data leak under the rug.

I don't think many people will miss Google+, as for most of its users it was forced upon, but the fact that they didn't disclose a data leak is worrying.

It's somehow sad to think that the Google of today is largely becoming the opposite of the Google we knew and loved back in the days. There's hardly much of that former soul left over there. Which sucks.

And speaking of..



I don't see how it's a reasonable price. The Pixel 2 was overpriced at $659.
The Pixel 3 is using the now outgoing Snapdragon 845 that cheaper phones had for over 6 months now and that seems to be the only significant improvement.
There are hardly any other hardware changes, except for the wireless charging, which most major flagships have by now, and costs next to nothing to implement.

At the same time, the Galaxy S9 launched for less ($720) than the S8, and the iPhone XR launched for significantly less than the X did, with the XR offering an extreme upgrade over the iP8 for $50 more and being cheaper than the Pixel 3.
Generally speaking, this year we are getting more bang for the buck than last year, which was probably the peak of smartphone pricing.

Now back to the Pixel 3, the XL notch is twice as tall as on the competing flagships, the bezels are huge on both variants and the camera uses the same hardware it did on the Pixel 2. I actually didn't see any hardware upgrades other than going from the Snapdragon 835 to 845, which isn't a large upgrade, especially since in a few months we're getting 7nm Snapdragon chips, which should be a big deal.

Pretty much all improvements are in the software, particularly camera software.

There seems to be nothing exciting about the Pixel 3, and it's even more overpriced than the previous models were.

I didn't realize that phones were a lot less than what I thought they were. I always see the "$1000" figure thrown around when talking about smartphones the last few years, especially with the priciest of them all, the iPhone X. Now the Xs/Xr, whatever. But I thought even Samsung was getting close to $1000 but $720 is still a far cry from the $1000 people referencing to show how costly phones are these days.

Yeah, an S9 at $720 is better than the $800 Google wants for the Pixel 3 but even the Pixel 2 at $659 doesn't seem all that bad. Yeah, its a lot of money but at some point you have to start framing it in comparison to other phones, especially phones made by huge OEMs like Moto, Samsung, LG, etc. Aren't they all within $50 of each other, when it comes to their flagships? Many of us in the US don't have the luxury of unlocked phones, especially ones from OEMs like Xiaomi and ZTE and OnePlus. Otherwise, I know that they do offer their flagships, typically, at a lower cost compared to the bigger OEMs. No use dwelling on that if it's not an option for many of us in the US.

 

[masta247]

I didn't realize that phones were a lot less than what I thought they were. I always see the "$1000" figure thrown around when talking about smartphones the last few years, especially with the priciest of them all, the iPhone X. Now the Xs/Xr, whatever. But I thought even Samsung was getting close to $1000 but $720 is still a far cry from the $1000 people referencing to show how costly phones are these days.

I think the asking price for the Pixel 3 is outrageous considering how cheap of a phone it is in terms of its hardware, and how bad of an offering it is compared to the major flagships.
Not to mention it's being released mid-generation (in Android lifecycle), with competing and more cutting-edge phones having released at the very beginning of that generation (when the hardware was more expensive and groundbreaking) and were cheaper even then, and when the major Android makers are planning more polished hardware that will be a full generation ahead in just a few months.

The S9 was $720 when it launched with brand new and shiny hardware half a year ago. Hardware that is significantly more polished and more expensive than on the Pixel 3 even now. Now the S9 costs literally $569 unlocked from Best Buy, and the S10, which will be a full generation ahead in all regards, is around the corner, and will likely still cost less or the same as the Pixel 3. I think you can see how unappealing the Pixel 3 and its pricing are.

The Pixel 3 is built like a $400-500 phone and sold for $800 with software trying to compensate. The way I see it, they are capitalizing on the fact that the few followers will buy it anyway, so they're trying to sell it for as much as they can get away with, especially since they know they won't sell anywhere as many units as other OEMs. For everyone else, even on the US market, it's just not even close to being competitive. The Galaxy S9 will be better for almost $250 less, the S10 releases soon, heck, the iPhones are a better value, and I'd get the XR (which is $749 unlocked from the Apple store!) over the Pixel 3 in a heartbeat. Personally, no matter how much I loved the Nexus phones, I see the Pixel 3 as the worst value smartphone on the market, and by a rather long shot.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

As much as I would like one for a phone update and the camera, I think my best bet is to factory reset my G4 and wait another year. I think I'll opt to do this over buying the Poco F1. Who knows, by that time Three UK might even start retailing Xiaomi phones by then. I think the Pixel 4 will be a more significant upgrade from the Pixel 3, than the Pixel 3 was from the Pixel 2. It could mean waiting until January 2020 though if the prices on phones are to high and I'm looking for a deal. Why not wait though? Could pay off.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

What are people's thoughts on the Pixel Slate? I like it so far and I'd like one. One limitation is that I'd be limited to using the keyboard on a flat table surface only. I love the idea of using a 2-in-1 as a tablet and then then flipping the keyboard out to type away (and I can do this anywhere such as being in a cosy position on the sofa or in bed because the base will be more sturdy as the screen will stay upright) - or am I wrong and can I use the Pixel Slate in said positions/scenarios?

 

[dilla]

I think the asking price for the Pixel 3 is outrageous considering how cheap of a phone it is in terms of its hardware, and how bad of an offering it is compared to the major flagships.
Not to mention it's being released mid-generation (in Android lifecycle), with competing and more cutting-edge phones having released at the very beginning of that generation (when the hardware was more expensive and groundbreaking) and were cheaper even then, and when the major Android makers are planning more polished hardware that will be a full generation ahead in just a few months.

The S9 was $720 when it launched with brand new and shiny hardware half a year ago. Hardware that is significantly more polished and more expensive than on the Pixel 3 even now. Now the S9 costs literally $569 unlocked from Best Buy, and the S10, which will be a full generation ahead in all regards, is around the corner, and will likely still cost less or the same as the Pixel 3. I think you can see how unappealing the Pixel 3 and its pricing are.

The Pixel 3 is built like a $400-500 phone and sold for $800 with software trying to compensate. The way I see it, they are capitalizing on the fact that the few followers will buy it anyway, so they're trying to sell it for as much as they can get away with, especially since they know they won't sell anywhere as many units as other OEMs. For everyone else, even on the US market, it's just not even close to being competitive. The Galaxy S9 will be better for almost $250 less, the S10 releases soon, heck, the iPhones are a better value, and I'd get the XR (which is $749 unlocked from the Apple store!) over the Pixel 3 in a heartbeat. Personally, no matter how much I loved the Nexus phones, I see the Pixel 3 as the worst value smartphone on the market, and by a rather long shot.

Star are people's rights on the Pixel Slate? I like it so far and I'd like one. One limitation is that I'd be limited to using the keyboard on a flat table surface only. I love the idea of using a 2-in-1 as a tablet and then then flipping the keyboard out to type away (and I can do this anywhere such as being in a cosy position on the sofa or in bed because the base will be more sturdy as the screen will stay upright. Or am I wrong and can I use the Pixel Slate in said positions/scenarios?

I haven't been keeping an eye on phone prices for some time, unless I was thinking about upgrading and so I haven't really been able to keep a running tally on the costs of phones relative to each other. Like I mentioned earlier, I just saw the "$1000" number being thrown around and subconsciously just accepted that that was how much they cost. It can be deceiving for us US folks where we have installment plans on phone that seem the same to us and are broken down over 24 months and many of us just see that and are fine without calculating just how much $37-45 a month for an iPhone or S9 really comes out to being.

That being said, I also didn't realize the S9 was unlocked at $569. I realize it's nearly half a year old and basically halfway through its life cycle but that is quite the drop. I never paid attention to how quickly these prices dropped after launch for Android phones.

I did get up to speed a bit by watching MKBHD's video on the Pixel 3. I think I know what you and Casey were talking about when you mentioned Google's camera software. Well, I still don't know for sure but I think I have an idea when I saw their digital zoom tech as well as the feature that allows you to select a picture in case someone blinks or something because it has the ability to edit those pictures to look better. At least that's what I thought it was doing but it still feels similar to just holding your finger on the shutter icon and taking a bunch of rapid shots in succession and choosing the best one.

The ability to to point the camera at a menu with contact information and have the link to email, call, etc. a business on that menu was pretty neat but that seems like a Lens feature. I did hear that some of the features were exclusive to the Pixel 3 despite them being software updates and not hardware-restricted; still the older Pixels miss out on those features and that's kind of shitty. I bet XDA will get some workaround sooner or later.

As for the Slate, I had no idea there was even a rumor about this existing. MKBHD really touched on it briefly and I left the video thinking it was a tablet but it looks to be more like a Surface Pro competitor that runs ChromeOS. Never used ChromeOS but I can't picture myself using that over and Windows tablet, especially the Surface Pro. If I understand ChromeOS correctly, it can run Android apps within it, so app compatibility shouldn't be an issue as there should be plenty of options for editing photos, productivity, etc. But that sounds very similar to just running Android on a proper tablet or phone, just having a bigger screen and physical keyboard and stylus. Not too different from what the iPad is but I feel iOS just has so many options for apps to do certain things to remain productive that I feel it works just fine for the iPad.

The hardware on the Slate, the entry level seems to be fit for a tablet and competitor to the iPad directly, but the models after that have an m3 and an i5 with 8 GB of RAM. You'd need to really like Chrome OS to make an $800+ investment in it with hardware that is fit for a laptop or whatever the Surface Pro is but running Chrome OS.

The entry level model at $599 seems like a value since it's a 12" screen and undercuts the 12" iPad Pro by a few hundred bucks but when it comes to usage, Chrome OS doesn't strike me as an OS I'd want to start from scratch with. I've never used Chrome OS, so maybe it's my ignorance speaking but I think Google was better off toning down the hardware pissing contest and just making a quality device with a version of Android that was optimized for tablets. If that's what Chrome OS is, they've still overestimated how much someone is going to pay for an Android tablet after Google seemingly abandoned tablets just a few years back.

 

[masta247]

I did get up to speed a bit by watching MKBHD's video on the Pixel 3. I think I know what you and Casey were talking about when you mentioned Google's camera software. Well, I still don't know for sure but I think I have an idea when I saw their digital zoom tech as well as the feature that allows you to select a picture in case someone blinks or something because it has the ability to edit those pictures to look better. At least that's what I thought it was doing but it still feels similar to just holding your finger on the shutter icon and taking a bunch of rapid shots in succession and choosing the best one.

While it's always better to simply have the better camera, as the software processing distorts the true image in order to produce photos more appealing to the eye/realistic looking, the software processing on the Pixels is second to none. You have a mediocre camera module on a phone that processes the photos so they end up looking (in some regards) a bit like they were taken with a camera with a significantly larger sensor.
I'd take a larger camera sensor any day, and I'll buy any next phone that comes with a larger camera sensor (like the old Nokia Pureview phones of back in the days), but gotta give credit where it's due that Google are doing their best with what they're given.

The software zoom feature is simple but clever. I'm glad they actually developed a tech around it, and I hope the results look good. The same tech they use would theoretically allow for capturing higher resolution photos without zoom (ala Huaweii, hopefully with a better implementation), which would be cool to see.

The software processing works on a simple, purpose-built signal processing chip that's only there in the Pixels. This is problematic, as you can't really just take the code and run it on a different phone, as they usually process their photos on DPS processors integrated into the chipsets.
I have no idea whether the previous gen phones will be able to take advantage of the new software processing updates. If they did, that would give some merit to buying the Pixels (the promise of the camera getting new features and its quality improving over time). That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they just end up saying the Pixel 3 has a new chip and it's not possible to bring those features to the original Pixel or Pixel 2.

The hardware on the Slate, the entry level seems to be fit for a tablet and competitor to the iPad directly, but the models after that have an m3 and an i5 with 8 GB of RAM. You'd need to really like Chrome OS to make an $800+ investment in it with hardware that is fit for a laptop or whatever the Surface Pro is but running Chrome OS.

Chrome OS is a confusing product to me, so I'm not the best person to comment. Chrome OS shows that a lot of people need nothing more than a browser on their laptops. While that's fair enough, I have no idea what's the point of having a quad-core i5 or i7 processor and 8GB of ram in it. I think Chrome OS can make sense on potato-books, with cheap, low-performance hardware, but beats me why overpower and overcharge for a browser OS.

 

[dilla]

While it's always better to simply have the better camera, as the software processing distorts the true image in order to produce photos more appealing to the eye/realistic looking, the software processing on the Pixels is second to none. You have a mediocre camera module on a phone that processes the photos so they end up looking (in some regards) a bit like they were taken with a camera with a significantly larger sensor.
I'd take a larger camera sensor any day, and I'll buy any next phone that comes with a larger camera sensor (like the old Nokia Pureview phones of back in the days), but gotta give credit where it's due that Google are doing their best with what they're given.

The software zoom feature is simple but clever. I'm glad they actually developed a tech around it, and I hope the results look good. The same tech they use would theoretically allow for capturing higher resolution photos without zoom (ala Huaweii, hopefully with a better implementation), which would be cool to see.

The software processing works on a simple, purpose-built signal processing chip that's only there in the Pixels. This is problematic, as you can't really just take the code and run it on a different phone, as they usually process their photos on DPS processors integrated into the chipsets.
I have no idea whether the previous gen phones will be able to take advantage of the new software processing updates. If they did, that would give some merit to buying the Pixels (the promise of the camera getting new features and its quality improving over time). That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they just end up saying the Pixel 3 has a new chip and it's not possible to bring those features to the original Pixel or Pixel 2.



Chrome OS is a confusing product to me, so I'm not the best person to comment. Chrome OS shows that a lot of people need nothing more than a browser on their laptops. While that's fair enough, I have no idea what's the point of having a quad-core i5 or i7 processor and 8GB of ram in it. I think Chrome OS can make sense on potato-books, with cheap, low-performance hardware, but beats me why overpower and overcharge for a browser OS.

I see. If that photo optimization is tied to the chip, truly or artificially by Google's choice, then I don't expect it to work well on other devices. That's just Google's way, where porting something like that breaks some key functionality and it just doesn't work as well. I remember this issue with some features back in the CyanogenMod days on my S3's camera and even my phone's modem, which meant I got shittier speeds for some reason. Some proprietary drivers were missing and that was the difference between a normal picture and a shitty, grainy one or getting LTE or not when it first launched in my area back in 2011.

I looked up some videos on YouTube for Chrome OS usage. Looks like a dock on the bottom, similar to macOS, but it all seemed heavy on the Chrome browser usage, like you said. There was mention of running Android apps on it but one reviewer said the scaling was off and it looked like shit. So basically what we deal with on Android at times.

I too don't understand why someone would need that hardware to do those tasks. There was mention of Lightroom being used on ChromeOS, but who does that on a consistent basis enough to warrant an i5 on a tablet that's not running Windows 10 or even iOS (iPad Pro)? Those high end specs start pushing the price closer to $1000 and at the point you might as well get a Surface or iPad. Like I said earlier, you seriously need to like Chrome OS to want to spend that much on something that still feels limited in app choices for productivity. The base model makes sense for someone that wants a 12" tablet to fuck around on. I think the $599 asking price is pretty good compared to the iPad Pro 12.9. But the more you start to deviate from web browsing or using social media apps and games, the more you realize you could run in to issues with not having all the apps or features of services like Adobe on Chrome OS.

I'll wait for the reviews. It looks very nice but even if I wanted it as a tablet, that scaling issue seems to be a big enough one to make me think twice. I didn't get the names of apps that were tried and had scaling issues but I'd assume Google apps were safe from that, as were Microsoft and Adobe products. Things people may use to make a living or simply get serious work done. But I'm not sure about games or even social media. Or even streaming apps; if the devs of those services work on making it look nice on a 12" screen. Not just for the upcoming Slate but also the myriad of Chromebooks that have been out for some time that have been running Chrome OS. What developer even considers the Nexus Player when making their apps? Well, Android TV, in general; I feel like there's always been complaints on apps for Android TV just sucking ass. I haven't used my Nexus Player in almost a year but that's just because I prefer my monitor and MBP now to get a screen of a decent size. But Android TV was a mess too and part of it was devs ignoring bugs in the TV apps.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

I don't get why some places reported that the Pixel Slate has an Intel y-series chip. There is a Celeron version, and the more expensive options include an Core m3, i5 or i7 - where is the y series?

Okay, just did a quick search on Wikipedia and it seems that the i5 and i7 are y-series processors.

In the videos I've seen so far of the Pixel Slate, the device seemed a little laggy (even in one of the demonstrations by Google themselves). On others, it looked super fast. I wonder if the lag will be bad on the most basic celeron model with 4GB of RAM (this is probably the one I'll be getting if anything but not if it is really slow).

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Big news from Google lol:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-shut-down-closing,37906.html

Tl;dr, Google+ shut down permanently and they tried to swipe a data leak under the rug.

I don't think many people will miss Google+, as for most of its users it was forced upon, but the fact that they didn't disclose a data leak is worrying.

It's somehow sad to think that the Google of today is largely becoming the opposite of the Google we knew and loved back in the days. There's hardly much of that former soul left over there. Which sucks.

And speaking of..



I don't see how it's a reasonable price. The Pixel 2 was overpriced at $659.
The Pixel 3 is using the now outgoing Snapdragon 845 that cheaper phones had for over 6 months now and that seems to be the only significant improvement.
There are hardly any other hardware changes, except for the wireless charging, which most major flagships have by now, and costs next to nothing to implement.

At the same time, the still significantly better Galaxy S9 launched for less ($720) than the S8, and the iPhone XR launched for significantly less than the X did, with the XR offering an extreme upgrade over the iP8 for $50 more and being cheaper than the Pixel 3.
Generally speaking, this year we are getting more bang for the buck than last year, which was probably the peak of smartphone pricing.

Now back to the new Pixels, the XL notch is twice as tall as on the competing flagships, the bezels are huge on both variants and the camera uses the same hardware it did on the Pixel 2. I actually didn't see any hardware upgrades other than going from the Snapdragon 835 to 845, which isn't a large upgrade, especially since in a few months we're getting 7nm Snapdragon chips, which should be a big deal.

Pretty much all improvements are in the software, particularly camera software.

There seems to be nothing exciting about the Pixel 3, and it's even more overpriced than the previous models were. It's a $400 phone sold for $800 with software trying to compensate. The way I see it, they are capitalizing on the fact that the few followers will buy it anyway, so they're trying to sell it for as much as they can get away with. For everyone else, it's just not even close to being competitive. The Galaxy S9 will be better and cheaper, the S10 releases soon, heck, the iPhones are a better value, and I'd get the XR over the Pixel 3 in a heartbeat.

Is it safe to say then that the Google Pixel 4 will most likely have the new 7nm chip (I'm guessing it'll be Snapdragon 855?), 6GB RAM, maybe a second rear camera and smaller bezels. That's my guess.