Google Unveils New Flagship Pixel 5 Smartphone With 5G and $699 Price Tag

[coolfactor]

Apple is really dropping the ball on HomePod and AppleTV. Next to this, Apple's offerings are boring and far too sparse.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant you wouldn't notice the difference between this and a modern iPhone processor. A phone call is still a phone call. A text is a text. Taking photos, checking bus times, using maps, etc, these things don't strain modern phone hardware, and performance is pretty comparable across the board.

When I say handcuffs, I mean the OS itself limits what you can do (think Desktop computer vs iPad, the iPad Pro is insanely powerful, but the software stops it from being as versatile as a traditional computer). That's not to say that these are bad, it's a phone and many of these handcuffs are what make it last all day (eg freezing apps when not in use), but it means that unless you're playing a super demanding game, it's unlikely that you'll ever really take advantage of all the power the CPU has to offer.

To put it another way, think of it like a Ferarri with a speed limiter. It's still a super-powerful car, but no matter how hard you stomp on that pedal you're never going to push it to its limits.

It’s up to app devs to take full advantage of iOS and iPhone hardware; same with iPadOS/iPad. Some devs do, but most don’t.

But if someone only needs the power of a 3 or 4 year old phone, they could always get an iPhone 8 for about $200, a X for $300, or an XR for around $350. Is there really a reason to pay $500, $600 or $700 for that?

 

[Xiroteus]

Nope. Another phone with a hole in the screen.

Just waiting.........it's taking too long for companies to figure this out. (Aside from the ones that kind of did already)

 

[dba415]

No chance, outdated specs, cheaper build quality, iPhone 12 will crush it.

Not about specs I thought. That’s what apple fanboys kept saying forever.

 

[il_teo77]

Apple really needs to step up their game. Either the AppleTV device becomes small and the interface A LOT BETTER or, if they keep the actual design, then they have to put a new processor in and become serious about gaming on it.
But, either way, the interface has to become a LOT BETTER and Siri being available in some devices in some languages and in others not is becoming really really long in the tooth.

I live in Switzerland and speak Italian.

Siri on my iPhone is available in Italian (as well as AirPods and AppleWatch of course).
Siri on my AppleTV is available in Italian, in Italy, but not in Switzerland (seriously!!)
Siri on my HomePod is NOT available in Italian.

And, on top of that, if I pronounce a band name or song name in English (which I speak fluently) Siri in Italian would just provide some random search on the internet.

So, all in all, if the voice assistant in Google is much better, I might actually be tempted.

To turn off the lights I have either to speak to my HomePod in English or to my phone in Italian. While my AppleTV, when pressing the "Siri button" only opens a manual search interface.

Furthermore, I like the Aluminum back. I wish it came back and, when it does, it might be my biggest reason to upgrade.

 

[Bestevaer]

We pay them to harvest our $$data$$. At this point shouldn't the phone be free? Like, we know guys, the gig's up.

The shortsightedness of these kind of comments baffles me....

Do you use google search? Gmail or anything from Google? Do you use Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp or anything else from Facebook? Do you use outlook or anything else from Microsoft? Tok Tok, Tinder and we can go one and on...

Even look at your apps (e.g. news and games) and check to which obscure add company and server they send data to.

Everything you do on your phone is being tracked. Android or ios....

 

[Bestevaer]

If only Google cared about our privacy... Oh yeah, they can’t.

Neither does facebook, microsoft or other apps on your iphone do.

If you don't want to get tracked, don't use a smartphone

 

[Bestevaer]

That makes no sense to me, please explain.

you do know iPhone 8 and iPhone X are several years old, not the current generation. the SE blows these babies away, and yes you would notice it. You can check the App Store you can get many apps including for googles much vaunted night vision, you have drawing, photo editing, movie editing, audio editing, spreadsheets, word processors, phones. I am literally not seeing what these "handcuffs" are doing. there are so many apps that do so many different things.

Several years ago the consensus on these forums where that it's not about the hardware or specs, but about the experience. What happened to that philosophy?

 

[dba415]

The shortsightedness of these kind of comments baffle me....

Do you use google search? Gmail or anything from Google? Do you use Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp or anything else from Facebook? Do you use outlook or anything else from Microsoft? Tok Tok, Tinder and we can go one and on...

Even look at your apps (e.g. news and games) and check to which obscure add company and server they send data to.

Everything you do on your phone is being tracked. Android or ios....

Apples privacy campaign is nothing more than a marketing gimmick which apparently works on people. So gullible.

 

[Morgenland]

iPhone killer! The price doesn’t seem so bad.

Googles spyware a killer? My dear, what are you talking?

 

[il_teo77]

Apples privacy campaign is nothing more than a marketing gimmick which apparently works on people. So gullible.

The question is not if Apple or Google use your data to provide services. It is if they sell it or not and to whom and in which detail. That is what I am most interested in, in terms of "privacy". If I buy a Google, Apple, Microsoft product I implicitly trust them. And if my usage of an app or the data they gather helps them make a better product, then it's fine by me (provided they are located in a country where there's the rule of law, and the US, I'm sorry, is less and less trustworthy but I digress...).
I begin to have a problem when the data which I willingly share with the company that provides a product or a service gets repackaged, sold and shared with third parties without my control. Parties that are opaque, untrustworthy and, in general, are NOT chosen by me.

That should be the fundamental criteria. And the legal framework should be in place to provide the user with the choice (or force the company to provide the user with the choice) about how far his/her data gets shared outside "company A" which is the one decided to trust.

 

[SmugMaverick]

Yep. Meanwhile, Apple is about to charge twice as much for less. Im about done with Apple's greed.

this.

we’re about to get 12 mini at $699 with 64GB and 60hz display or even worse the 12 Pro at $1049.

 

[Okasian]

Just pre-ordered. This is going to replace my iPhone X.

 

[LiE_]

The speed of the chip has been pretty irrelevant for the past few years, unless you are in the minority that play intensive games/use intensive apps. For most users who take photos, browser the web, do a bit of social media and messaging, these chips breeze through it. I'm currently using a iPhone 6S and it handles everything smoothly.

 

[Okasian]

I’m thinking about getting this or the 4a and trying one of the de-googled android roms like CalyxOS or GrapheneOS, and see how hard it is to get by on either open source apps, or at least ones that don’t require google play services to run

I was going to use LineageOS for this new Pixel.

But I didn’t know about those that you suggested. I’ll have to check them out. Cheers. 👍

 

[bandrews]

£599 in the uk

ridiculously good value and yes a 90hz display.

pre ordered and comes 3 days after the iPhone 12 event so will see if the 12 is worth over £1000

UK vs US price Google 5
£599 vs $699

UK vs US iPhone 11 Pro
£1049 vs £999

Feel like Apple is really ripping us UK customers off.

If it wasn't for the damn apple watch I'd be fully on Android by now.

 

[LiE_]

UK vs US price Google 5
£599 vs $699

UK vs US iPhone 11 Pro
£1049 vs £999

Feel like Apple is really ripping us UK customers off.

If it wasn't for the damn apple watch I'd be fully on Android by now.

Also for £599 you get a £200+ pair of headphones.

 

[The Game 161]

Be interested the camera improvements I imagine won't be much difference.

 

[Makosuke]

Hmm... I was going to skip iPhone 12 as I am underwhelmed by the rumours, I bet it ships really late for people like me who can't be bothered to play the "I need it yesterday" ordering game (January?), and the X is going strong.I am increasingly annoyed at being fleeced. Yes, I like iPhones, yes I can afford them, but I feel increasingly like an idiot paying top dollar for laughable memory specs, for example. Is it time to break from the "walled garden"? This tempts me to buy this thing to run alongside my X. If I like it, great! If not, no big deal. I sell it, keep using my X, and buy the iPhone 13 in 2021. Seems little to lose.

There are plenty of choices in the market, and maybe the Pixel is for you, but what spec, other than RAM, is not directly competitive with high-end Android phones? I'm also genuinely curious: Have you experienced a time actually using your X where you said "Dang, I wish I had more RAM"?

Sure, the spec-hog in me would love to see a bigger RAM number on an iPhone. I have 64GB sitting next to me ready to install in my iMac tomorrow, and 32GB in my laptop. But the absolute truth, at least for my use case, is that I have never once actually experienced a time when I noticed a RAM shortage on my phone. I've worked with big images, big apps, and big documents that would be the sort of thing that might get hit by low RAM, but it just... hasn't been an issue. So whatever I "feel" about it, the reality is that it doesn't affect me. However much RAM is in there is enough for my use case.

Past that, the iPhone has cameras directly competitive with top-of-the-line Android phones, screens are top-of-the-line, they have fast internal storage, solid GPU performance, and CPUs that are superior to anything else available in nearly every benchmark before you even factor in the special-purpose processing units. In what area, other than GB of RAM, are the specs so bad?

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

You're OK with your phone then not being part of the ecosystem the rest of your Apple products are part of? And the seamless sharing across devices that comes with that?

That's something I heavily rely on, and not having that seamless sharing would never work for me.

I’ve found that the “seamless sharing” is anything but. I had an iPhone and a MacBook with no wifi network and I wanted to share a picture between them. Totally impossible. I plugged the phone into the laptop - it told me to just transfer through the non-existent internet. I set up a Hotspot on the phone and connected my laptop to it. AirDrop didn’t work that way. I set up my laptop to have its own Wifi network and had the iPhone join it. AirDrop also doesn’t work that way. AirDrop only works through WiFi with a dedicated router involved - lord knows why. I was simply unable to transfer the picture until I got in range of WiFi a few hours later.

(The laptop had a firewall that blocks email, social networks, and file sharing websites. There was probably some way via FTP that I could have done it, but didn’t occur to me at the time, and I figured that surely there'd be some way to either use AirDrop or a physical connection.)

 

[shanson27]

I hope Apple will do a some improvement with the iPhone camera. Look at the leafs on the iPhone versus the Pixel 4

 

[Jason2000]

My 11 pro max was about 1300, and the 12 pro is rumored to have worse specs than a 700 dollar google phone. Apple can do better.

You can not be serious in comparing the Pixel 5 to the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Not sure what else to say here except lol. Thanks for the laugh.

 

[Jason2000]

I hope Apple will do a some improvement with the iPhone camera. Look at the leafs on the iPhone versus the Pixel 4View attachment 961764View attachment 961765

I can show you photo after photo of the iPhone 11 Pro taking a better shot than the Pixel 4. I can also show you photo after photo of the Pixel 4 taking better shots than the iPhone 11 Pro. Its a hit or miss thing. One photo does not prove anything.

 

[edubfromktown]

Just pre-ordered. This is going to replace my iPhone X.

I finally got off of the "upgrade my iPhone for a better camera bandwagon" back with the 8 Plus. Opted for the 4a to replace it and remain quite happy with the decision more than a month later. It is still hard for me to fathom how the Pixel 5 can be so much more money...

This is a good time to be a switcher (1st time I've dumped iOS... used them since iPhone 3 days).

Android 11 has resolved some nagging issues, Google's setup/import of iPhone data is quite impressive, messages for web is much improved and Google file stream for regular Gmail accounts is a nice feature. For the security conscious, use it with Google Advanced Privacy Protection MFA using Titan hardware BT/NFC, USB keys or in conjunction with your Pixel phone (which has a built FIDO 2FA authenticator).

 

[4look4rd]

Apples privacy campaign is nothing more than a marketing gimmick which apparently works on people. So gullible.

Yeah, apple is better than google but still more marketing than actions. no reason for iCloud backups to not be encrypted at this time.