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I see you are really concerned about google services , you realise google pays billions to Apple to be the default search engine . That does not sit well with me .
Yes I am aware of that but I never use Google directly. It is always via a VPN. I never use Chrome and never will.
Most of the google owned domains are blocked on my home firewall as is all of Facebook, Twitter and all other social media platforms.
If I want to use them then it is done via a VPN. I do not trust google at all. They are evil with what they want to do with my data.
 
Read the post carefully. It seems everyone here bashes on everything they hate on the Pixel models when iPhones are not at all that far away. Yes Apple uses more premium materials in some components, it's the "leader" in design in the industry and the integration of its software with hardware is what makes IOS run way smoother than Android. However, aside from that not all the components that every phone has make it better. It's subjective to a user's needs. I do appreciate the adequate price for a premium Android phone that will be fairly handy for many Android users as well as users looking for something different than IOS.

As far as the top notch comments those who mention it might as well bash on the iPhone X, XS, and XS Max. It looks no worse than on the Apple phones.

Kudos on Google for the lens upgrades and pricing.
 
Multiple others have noted, and after watching the video showing the Pixel phones, I have to ask "Who designed these phones?" It looks like it was designed by committee, where there were different committees for the top and bottom of the screens. It's that, or they've got some lazy or ignorant designers. The notch, the chin, what look like different radius corners top vs bottom - they clearly are not sweating the details on design.

I do think Google is doing a great job on the software side of things, especially regarding photos and Hey Google digital assistant. But as others have noted, these services ultimately come at the cost of your digital privacy.
 
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I think my I Phone XS Max runs circles around this google contraption just my opinion.
Runs circles, in what way, and doing what exactly?

Multiple others have noted, and after watching the video showing the Pixel phones, I have to ask "Who designed these phones?" It looks like it was designed by committee, where there were different committees for the top and bottom of the screens. It's that, or they've got some lazy or ignorant designers. The notch, the chin, what look like different radius corners top vs bottom - they clearly are not sweating the details on design.

I do think Google is doing a great job on the software side of things, especially regarding photos and Hey Google digital assistant. But as others have noted, these services ultimately come at the cost of your digital privacy.

I assume you mean XL, not the Pixel 3 standard. The Pixel 3 looks like every other legacy smartphone, which many people are fine with.

xQU4W6EpyNDgHPQNeghXVW-1200-80.jpg
 
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From the insider of Google; this was a throw away year for the Pixel phone so they just went with the marketing route and it seems to have worked. Lot of interest and interested in seeing how Google improve their camera for the Pixel 3. The XL notch will be taken care of in a software update later on too if the owner wants to hide it!

Apple iPhone is definitely on the back slide in terms of its camera now. Google is the king of the smartphone camera and it done with only one len too! That is marvelous!
 
Yes I am aware of that but I never use Google directly. It is always via a VPN. I never use Chrome and never will.
Most of the google owned domains are blocked on my home firewall as is all of Facebook, Twitter and all other social media platforms.
If I want to use them then it is done via a VPN. I do not trust google at all. They are evil with what they want to do with my data.

I understand your point, And good to see your taking action . Many just criticise google and do nothing about it .
 
That's what everyone is saying but so far the mechanism seems very robust. There has not been any reports of them failing yet.

I'm of course not discounting the fact that moving parts have a higher chance of failing, especially motorised mechanical parts. But look at Cars. We drive them for years, some people spend 3-4 hours in their car every day for multiple years before anything at all breaks.

The phone with the pop up camera only really has to last 24 to 36 months. Which is about the amount of time someone will keep that device. Looking at the internals it features two motors and it looks quite beefy to me, though I'm not a mechanical engineer.

The true test of that mechanism will be after the first year mark but I wouldn't discount it quite yet. It's a stop gap until we can put the cameras and sensors directly beneath the display and still have them work and I'm okay with making this mechanical compromise until then.

Not a very good comparison with vehicles, people use and abuse a handheld device more. If one were to compare daily usage one would conclude a mobile communication device has seen and been through it all.

While I am uncertain of the validity if these springloaded mechanisms have or have not failed or how many, it is a challenge to know if this design have been through it all. Some people use cases and screen protectors, some don’t while others a combination. Yet some will still get scratches and chips on their devices.

Though I am not asserting these mechanisms are rugged, has drop test been conducted with the mechanism open and falling to the ground. The other issue is that people may have to close the mechanism after use. Humans by nature will always seek the easier way (some call this lazy), customers will always baby their device for a 6 months to a year, after that it becomes an inconvenience, similar to a couples honeymoon stage. This is why I suspect not a lot of reports of failure.

I used to have a sliding keyboard phone, eventually the locking mechanism broke and the phone screen would slide down. I am not saying this is the case for all, however a possibility.

Candy/chocolate bar designs have proven to be a convenient form factor without complexity (this is key). Less moving parts and complexity the better for a wider audience and that is important. Those companies are being creative and innovating which is great IMHO, however it is may not be adopted on mass.
 
So here’s the thing: the iPhone X has a far superior design when it comes to hardware. However, i believe that ios and its homescreen is in dire need of refresh as its ui is actually much more visually messy to me then that android homescreen. I believe ios has far better overall UX, but the homescreen is cluttered to hell

The iOS homescreen is complete joke these days

Android is so far ahead with widgets allowing things like media controls and live information

Maybe a couple of years from now Apple will have the courage to add another column of icons
 
Runs circles, in what way, and doing what exactly?



I assume you mean XL, not the Pixel 3 standard. The Pixel 3 looks like every other legacy smartphone, which many people are fine with.

View attachment 793765

Definitely the XL is all sorts of funky, design-wise. But the Pixel 3 itself, with the exaggerated chin and forehead (where the forehead looks slightly taller) isn't like every other smart phone out there. Google designed two phones, that are clearly connected together as a singular line offering, but they have disparate physical design languages, which makes zero sense. Again, it's as if different teams were designing both phones where the only consistencies were some chips and cameras used, and they didn't bother to look at what each was doing until the end.

Maybe what we're seeing is Google's machine learning in action - where their smart bot did the design work, not human teams?
 
Google, Android and Qualcomm release cycles seem to be out of sync. Google Pixel comes with almost a year old processor and just before Qualcomm is about to release new one based on 7nm node. OEMs will start using the new CPU next year by which time Android 9 Pie will get old and Google will be talking about next version.
So with Pixel, you end up with new Android OS with Google support but with older CPU and with other OEM phones, you get new CPU but last year's Android OS.
 
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Let me stop you right there. "They are very polished and a smooth OS" is a joke. I owned a samsung galaxy nexus, nexus 4, nexus 5 and nexus 6. Each one i've used for a year and had multiple issues. Nexus 5 was known for its crappy camera and unreliable battery life. Nexus 4 had a horrible camera and would heat up for no reason and the back would magically crack. Each version of android on these phones had numerous issues. I had my friends look at me when my PHONE APP crashed. I couldnt explain it. My nexus 5 was the worst phone I've ever owned.

Obviously things have changed but dont begin to say Android is polished. There's a lot they could be doing better but since they want the market, they are lax with developer rules, changing things, etc. Also play protect is a joke.

I still own android devices and they are way more unreliable than my iOS devices. My nvidia shield running Android 9 crashes more than my iOS 12 devices

I will say it is polished. Have you tried a Pixel 1 or 2 or the latest Galaxy phones? I have, so have some experience, as I said, I now have a iPhone XS so can compare, you can't. I will give you a tip, stay with your iOS devises, their simplicity seems to suit you.

You say you had 4 Nexus devices for a year each and never changed when you had a bad experience, you kept going for 4 years? You realise how that makes you look?

Comparing a nvidia shield with a Pixel/Samsung phone operating Android, now where's the joke? Here's a tip, go back and read the very first line of my post, what does it say? Have you ever owned a Pixel or Pixel 2? By your own admission, you haven't, so it applies to you.
 
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It seems as if no other company (except Apple) has any idea what good design is. Like zero idea.

I mean look at that hideousness.

Don't even get me started on how all other companies are fighting over Apple Notch™ like baboons and macaques, and can't for the love of god decide what it should look like.

Unbelievable

I think Samsung has surpassed Apple. The Galaxy 9 design blows the iPhone X clean out of the water — no ugly as sin notch AND a headphone jack.
 
or maybe you haven't seen much....

51FZqAOcG0L.jpg


It seems as if no other company (except Apple) has any idea what good design is. Like zero idea.

I mean look at that hideousness.

Don't even get me started on how all other companies are fighting over Apple Notch™ like baboons and macaques, and can't for the love of god decide what it should look like.

Unbelievable
 
This will be a failure. Some will buy it just for the selfie cam but you would have to be a real die-hard Google fan to not buy a Samsung phone instead.

What makes you say that? I'm a fan of both Apple and Google, last year switched to Pixel 2 because I'm an app/web designer and wanted to learn more about Android (and ended up liking it a lot... Apple has gotten really lazy with improvements on the software end, finally did some catching up with iOS 12), and I would never buy a Samsung product. A Google phone gives me the pure OS, with updates available when they come out. Samsung is a terrible company that has gotten into multiple lawsuits with Apple for copying their designs, and their software updates are always behind Google and come with weird customizations.

There are a lot of tiny details in a pure Android OS that are really nice, and most of the improvements of iOS 12 have been in Android for over 1-2 years (like being able to edit a notification from a notification, proper integration with password managers, keyword search for photos).

Also even on the iOS end, app designers/developers are frustrated by Apple's lack of a proper design system and design innovations, and are looking at Google Material more often than anything Apple has produced even when designing for iOS. iOS's UI conventions are old, nobody wants to design apps that use them. And Google Material is pretty much the entire Android OS, not just the bunch of apps you use from Google on iOS.

As far as the notch goes, I hate it both on the iPhone and the Pixel 3 XL, so I'm getting a Pixel 3. But I think people are completely oversimplifying the process for building hardware to think that companies are adding notches to phones just because they think it looks good on an iPhone. It takes a huge amount of effort for hardware changes like that to make it into the ecosystem/supply chain. If a huge company like Apple is putting engineering/manufacturing resources into learning how to build components to fit into a notch, it doesn't make any sense for other companies not to build similar components and put their own resources into learning how to do that and make it better. A lot of these suppliers also build components both for iPhones and Android phones (even Samsung produces components for Apple).

Also, yes, the Pixel 2 camera is awesome for the kinds of photos I take. I live in New York, so I often end up taking pictures at night, indoors, in places that don't have great lighting. My partner has had an iPhone X and has been extremely frustrated by how much crappier his pictures are in those situations compared to mine, and he spent so much more money to upgrade from his old phone, and it's almost double the price of mine. And it has two cameras... mine only has one. It sounds like the new iPhones XSes are better in some of those situations (but still not all the way as good?), but the new Pixel 3 is going to be even better.
 
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First of all the design is actually vey unique with the except of the front. I'm not the happiest about the new Pixel release but I don't think it's fair to say "Look they copied iPhone" companies will follow whatever is trending and what they feel will sell. The only real way to increase the screen to body ratio would be to implement a notch or use Oppos implementation but I assume that would raise production costs and pricing.

The camera is obviously going to outdo the iPhone thanks to the amount of data Google has, so I think in the software and camera side it's the best Android has to offer at the moment.
 
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