Hands-On With Google's New Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel Watch

[The Game 161]

I'd say that when it comes to point and shoot both the iPhone and the Pixel take fantastic photos, but if you take the average user as a benchmark I don't think the iPhone comes anywhere near the utility and quality of a Pixel -- for photos anyway and judged against the whole set of features you get from a Pixel. Video is a different story.

The ability to easily remove people and objects (Magic Eraser), AI-powered motion blur, photo unblur and more realistic skin tones make me very jealous when I look over the fence. My iPhone can copy/paste people and objects out of a photo or video, which is a nice gimmick but I doubt it's a use case many people actually have regularly.

Google pioneered night sight long before the iPhone and Apple still hasn't rolled it out on all of its phones (SE). Portrait mode on a Pixel allows you to adjust the direction of a light source after you've taken the picture, which is neat.

I will say this: For all the deserved mockery, Google has actually been really good at pushing out innovative features that I would love to see on my iPhone. And as a general observation, it doesn't hurt to admit that.

Apple really missed a trick with that copying a photo. I thought for sure they would add something similar where you could erase the background as well if given the choice. Pixel does it so well.

 

[DeepIn2U]

I’ll address this one now because it’s the easiest to talk about before I go to sleep. Every day, the alarm blasts us out of bed. Why? Because there is no way to set the alarm volume separately.

The Pixel has four volume sliders. You can set your phone up how you like, different functions have different volumes. The iPhone has only one. If I want to hear my text message notifications, then I have to accept everything else being too loud. Or I have to work the volume slider throughout the day. I really don’t want to be jarred awake every morning.

Furthermore, the Pixel’s alarm ramps up. It begins with a gentle vibration, followed by a medium vibration, followed by a very soft alarm notification sound, which then increasingly gets louder. There’s plenty of time to reach over while still half asleep and snooze it.

Just this one aspect of the iPhone is a daily annoyance. People who have only lived with the iPhone don’t realize what they are missing in this respect (and various others). It boggles my mind that Apple is probably the most difficult and most selective company to get a job at, and they can’t figure out something so simple like this. It’s pure arrogance, because they are so unbelievably profitable.

Another example of the Pixel’s alarm being better is that it gives its users notifications before major holidays, asking them if they want to dismiss the alarm the next day. “It’s Labor Day tomorrow, would you like to dismiss the alarm?“ Then the user doesn’t have to turn off that alarm in order to sleep in. In a similar vein, you can dismiss an upcoming alarm if you happen to wake up early by going to the notification pane and dismissing it. It’s right there for you to push the button. So you don’t have to worry that you’re going to be in the shower and your phone is going to start blasting its alarm while your spouse is still sleeping.

Like I said, I know both phones, and I’ll try to give some more details in response to your post if I can. I wanted to correct peoples misconceptions about what Apple is and what it isn’t for those who haven’t used other platforms.

Aaaah. A tangible debate. Great.

iOS allows the Sleep based alarm to set the volume and it’s gradual as well with or without vibration (or a custom vibration you can create) see attached screenshots.

The main alarms, I agree at first glance you cannot set the volume. But this is controlled by the Ringer and Alerts volume or main device volume.

Http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207512.

Just needed to search or call Apple support.

So yeah yours has individual options for valine by alarm , but the gripes about alarm volume in iOS is misplaced since you didn’t check.

Cheers

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I'd say that when it comes to point and shoot both the iPhone and the Pixel take fantastic photos, but if you take the average user as a benchmark I don't think the iPhone comes anywhere near the utility and quality of a Pixel -- for photos anyway and judged against the whole set of features you get from a Pixel. Video is a different story.

I’d say that’s right. On the Apple side, Apple only includes the easiest to understand and quickest to use features. In order to do more than that, one HAS to buy a third party camera app (several good ones, of which, are subscription now). So, if a user doesn’t know what ISO means, they’ll get a similarly good shot with either phones, both of which captures the colors highlights and shadows about as well as each other.

However, once you learn more about photography and want to exercise those skills, on iOS “there’s an app for that”. Not to say that there’s not additional Camera apps on Android, just that the stock app goes further than Apple’s.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Not the same thing.
In a 1vs1 the Pixel will consistently take the better shot. The difference will be way more visible if there's even slight wind. Pixel's Astrophotography mode does a lot of stuff to clean up the photo, make sure stars are not blurred due to movement and so on.

Ah, OK. iPhones and professional cameras, due to physics and the rotation of the Earth, have to have sky trackers or the pictures will have streaks as expected. The Android built in camera has a mode (I’m hoping it’s just a mode and not standard operation) where the streaks are automatically removed.

I’d be interested to pixel peep the iPhone sky tracker image against an Android AI Image. I’m thinking it wouldn’t be a fair comparison, though.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Apple really missed a trick with that copying a photo. I thought for sure they would add something similar where you could erase the background as well if given the choice. Pixel does it so well.

Isn’t lifting the foreground off the background effectively the same as removing the background? In either case you can have a solid color background OR replace the background completely.

 

[d686546s]

Isn’t lifting the foreground off the background effectively the same as removing the background? In either case you can have a solid color background OR replace the background completely.

I can't speak for the underlying mechanics, but it serves completely different purposes. Google's Magic Eraser removes people, pets and objects from an existing photograph as if they weren't there at all. Say, you have a picture of yourself on vacation in front of a landmark, but another tourist just walks into the shot. On the Pixel you can remove the person from your picture.

On the iPhone, you can remove something or someone from an image to do something, like you say put in another picture or on a solid color background.

It's not really the same.

 

[DeepIn2U]

This forum section is indeed childish, when it's something that is not made by Apple. Mocking because of the so called bezels while the people who have seen the watch, all are saying how good it looks in person. Also they didn't complain on how thick the Apple Watch was, before generation 7.

Funny about mentioning childish with regards to bezels.

Across the web for years Android fans would say this for so long about iPhones it was getting old fast.

So sorry that Android phones have had minimal bezels for years yet went completely backwards on their pixel Watch. Not sorry that was a poor hardware decision by Google a really bad decision you gotta admit.

 

[Mousse]

Apple really missed a trick with that copying a photo. I thought for sure they would add something similar where you could erase the background as well if given the choice. Pixel does it so well.

Apple's AI software is far, far inferior to Google's AI work. When Apple can get Siri working properly, then they can play in the big boys AI league.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Funny about mentioning childish with regards to bezels.

Across the web for years Android fans would say this for so long about iPhones it was getting old fast.

So sorry that Android phones have had minimal bezels for years yet went completely backwards on their pixel Watch. Not sorry that was a poor hardware decision by Google a really bad decision you gotta admit.

Another childish action is an Android Fanboy just randomly disagreeing with everything I post about Android, just because, right @M3gatron ? lol.

Proof
LG created the Nexus 4 - many apps were compatible, BUT without a reason why. I see you but ignoring. To substatiate my claim of my post above : not all apps are supported amongst Android devices with the same hardware/OS spec.

Example: Nexus 4 E960 vs Optimus G E975

Compare LG Optimus G E975 vs. LG Nexus 4 E960 - GSMArena.com

www.gsmarena.com

is hardware for hardware, OS:OS the exact same device with a diferrent external shell. The latter shipped with 16/32G of storage, the former 8/16GB only. A slightly different model of the latter got LTE.

LG Optimus G E975

LG Optimus G E975 pictures, official photos

www.gsmarena.com

Each with
Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon S4 Pro
Quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait
Adreno 320

Same went with the Sony Xperia 5 / 5 Compact vs Samsung or LG devices at that time. Years later same with Galaxy S10 vs other devices using the same chipset (example vs Sony Xperia 1 m2/m3). Its all dependent on developers running their apps on various hardware, doing bug fixes in the purpose to make their apps more compatible. Since this only happens on the highest selling devices, this becomes fact.

 

[jr5x]

Aaaah. A tangible debate. Great.

iOS allows the Sleep based alarm to set the volume and it’s gradual as well with or without vibration (or a custom vibration you can create) see attached screenshots.

The main alarms, I agree at first glance you cannot set the volume. But this is controlled by the Ringer and Alerts volume or main device volume.

Http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207512.

Just needed to search or call Apple support.

So yeah yours has individual options for valine by alarm , but the gripes about alarm volume in iOS is misplaced since you didn’t check.

Cheers

TY, DeepIn2U, for letting me know that the Sleep based alarm has a gradual wake-up.

I use three different alarms each week, and don't use an alarm at all on the weekend (but still want to set the Sleep focus times), so hopefully this isn't too hard to set up.

Still, any alarm outside of the Sleep settings is only one volume. This is something Apple should change. Four volume sliders are much nicer than one (I've been using phones that have this for many years).

While we're on the topic of alerts, text message notifications on the Pixel are also more advanced. You can set a notification sound for each person. When I get text messages, I'm used to knowing who sent it to me based on the alert sound. My wife, child, parent, and business all have different sounds. This is a very nice feature to have, and one Apple should also copy from Pixel/Android.

On the Pixel, you can set the bubbles color for each text message conversation, another nice feature. But Apple will never allow this, as the hard-to-read green bubbles are a daily little annoyance that drives people to get their friends and family to move to the iPhone.

Speaking of copying features, a year or two ago Google separated out many system apps from the OS updates. So Google can issue updates with new features to system apps much more often. Apple, please follow suit!

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I can't speak for the underlying mechanics, but it serves completely different purposes. Google's Magic Eraser removes people, pets and objects from an existing photograph as if they weren't there at all. Say, you have a picture of yourself on vacation in front of a landmark, but another tourist just walks into the shot. On the Pixel you can remove the person from your picture.

On the iPhone, you can remove something or someone from an image to do something, like you say put in another picture or on a solid color background.

It's not really the same.

OHHHHH ok, sorry, I get it now. Apple just enables the ability to clip out the foreground object, but Magic Eraser works like the tools in Pixelmator or other apps where Machine Learning is used to overwrite unwanted elements in the background (like power lines or people).

This is another area where Apple doesn’t provide the feature, but it is made available via applications that use Apple’s API’s. I don’t know how much of this is Apple leaving a feature on the table for third parties to take advantage of, but it’s not like iOS is incapable of the same feat without the proper app.

 

[himynameisryan]

The google pixel watch looks like a Fitbit but with round Apple Watch concept design language

 

[DeepIn2U]

TY, DeepIn2U, for letting me know that the Sleep based alarm has a gradual wake-up.

I use three different alarms each week, and don't use an alarm at all on the weekend (but still want to set the Sleep focus times), so hopefully this isn't too hard to set up.

Still, any alarm outside of the Sleep settings is only one volume. This is something Apple should change. Four volume sliders are much nicer than one (I've been using phones that have this for many years).

While we're on the topic of alerts, text message notifications on the Pixel are also more advanced. You can set a notification sound for each person. When I get text messages, I'm used to knowing who sent it to me based on the alert sound. My wife, child, parent, and business all have different sounds. This is a very nice feature to have, and one Apple should also copy from Pixel/Android.

On the Pixel, you can set the bubbles color for each text message conversation, another nice feature. But Apple will never allow this, as the hard-to-read green bubbles are a daily little annoyance that drives people to get their friends and family to move to the iPhone.

Speaking of copying features, a year or two ago Google separated out many system apps from the OS updates. So Google can issue updates with new features to system apps much more often. Apple, please follow suit!

Excellent and I do agree - after looking at a friends and my mothers Android alarm settings. Thanks for highlighting this.

Apple has allowed many core apps to be deleted and re-installed from the App store for the last 2-3yrs no progressing more and more, I think they're complete in this task. Apple does, at times, release Delta OS updates for specific incremental updates which I'm guessing started the same 2-3yrs time frame, unless I'm mistaken. I've only seen Apple do this with Safari/Webkit zero day fix for an issue related to remote commandeering an iPhone.

I still prefer Apple's iOS method to include security updates with iOS updates/bug fixes. I've seen users connected to an MDM solution being so unaware OS updates on Android are indeed separate than security updates.

 

[Hurda]

Increase sales for apple equates to increased market share which equates to more profit.

Global marketshare of iPhone is ~16%-ish, Samsung is at ~24%.
Global share of profits of iPhone is ~80%, Samsung is at under 20%.
(Sources:1, 2, 3)
Sure, getting more marketshare with lower prices at the expense of profits is possible, but then you just end up selling more units to get to the same level of profits as before.
So: Why, if you don't really have to?

 

[The Game 161]

Apple's AI software is far, far inferior to Google's AI work. When Apple can get Siri working properly, then they can play in the big boys AI league.

That will never happen as apple will never allow as much data to get such results. Google assistant will remain in a league of it’s own in that regard.

 

[nemofish]

Best cameraphone on the market according to DXO

DXOMARK

Everything you need to know about the Smartphone Google Pixel 7 Pro 📱. From specifications to Pros & Cons and Scores, discover the Review by DXOMARK

www.dxomark.com

 

[M3gatron]

Another childish action is an Android Fanboy just randomly disagreeing with everything I post about Android, just because, right @M3gatron ? lol.

LoL, calm down kid.
Your necessity to attack at all cost android and android fans is blinding you.
Also you constantly make generalized claims you can't support. You are not an expert, calm down and concentrate on your 🍎.

Android phones have had minimal bezels for years yet went completely backwards on their pixel Watch

Also since when is "the pixel watch" the rep of all android smartphones(yeah another shameless generalisation that doesn't even make sense). Your hole attack is built on sand, of course I disagreed with it.