Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced | Hacker News Reader

Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced

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346 pointsplessthanpt05597 comments

I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option.

I tried Android early on, had similarly unacceptable support experiences, and whenever I'm tempted to dip my toes back in the water I'm reminded of how bad things are with cases like this. In the case of the Nexus 6p it's Google's flagship product and it's a worthless paperweight 13 months after purchase.

I had a Nexus 5X die within the warranty period, and had a similar experience. LG's support was utterly awful, it took them 3 weeks to replace the phone.

They originally told me I could get a replacement 5X, then they told me I could get a T-Mobile G5 and what they eventually sent me was an AT&T specific G5 that required digging into config menus before it would connect to T-mobile LTE.

Big company support have lots of moving parts. My girlfriend's Nexus 5x also died this week. Local LG branch (Budapest) replaced the motherboard within a day. She basically got a new phone for free.

> I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option.

Something similar happened to my wife with her Nexus5X. Google shipped an update that bricked a ton of 5X phones, and Google stopped responding to her Customer Service emails.

We've been Nexus (specifically pure Nexus) users since the first Google phone. I own a G1, still in my closet. I own all of them (well, at least one of each generation). I own a Pixel XL as well. I'm done with Google, for this, and other reasons.

The 6p was the end of Google phones for me. It was the first phone I hade to give up due to not working and no help from Google.

Another Nexus 5X user here and also dissatisfied. A while back, my phone stopped being able to answer calls. It rings, but no UI dialog appears on screen to let me answer. This is a known issue that I've seen on support forums, but nothing suggested there has fixed it. I've spoken with Fi support on multiple occasions and they've exhausted all options and now want me to wipe my phone hoping that will fix the problem.

I'm amazed at how poor the Android experience has been after years on iPhone. I'm still more amazed that Android is as popular as it is despite all this.

My Pixel actually suffered from that phone issue as well until I wiped it. Good (and disappointing) to learn now that it's not an isolated issue.

Doesn't help that my Pixel was supposed to replace an ever-bootlooping Nexus 5X.

On the contrary, because I bought the Nexus 6P from the Google Store, they replaced it with a Pixel XL for free. The Google experience is terrible through a third party, but their Google 'direct' experience is pretty darn fantastic.

I can't fathom why the place where the device was purchased would matter if it's a Google phone. Apple manages to support iPhones whether you purchase them from an Apple store or in a back alley for bitcoins.

Apple is the manufacturer that is honoring the manufacturer's warranty (and/or additional warranty options). Google is not the manufacturer of the Nexus 5X/6P, that's Huawei. So if you didn't buy from them, they send you to the manufacturer, like most retailers would after the initial return window, even if you did buy it from them.

I agree that it's bad for Google's image to operate that way, stick their name on a phone and then shrug their shoulders and tell you to talk to the real manufacturer. But that distinction is why Apple supports most iPhones no questions asked, and Google wants to know that you bought it from them. They're a glorified retailer licensing out their brand to Huawei.

If the phone is Google branded, it’s Google’s problem.

If it was advertised as a Huawei 6p that would be different.

I've seen it branded as Nexus 6P and Huawei Nexus 6P; never Google 6P or Google Nexus 6P. Same thing with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

The Pixel, instead, is branded as the Google Pixel.

My 6P has the Huawei logo on the back. It doesn't say Google anywhere.

I get it, but it's essentially Google wanting to have their cake (marketing to customers: "It's a Google phone! Pure Google all the way, baby!") and eat it, too (product support: "Uhhh, yeah, we uh, we don't make this thing, it's all Huawei, we're just a humble retailer."). I agree that it's absolutely bad for Google's image to operate this way, as you can see from the comments in this thread. People aren't mad at the OEMs Google paid to manufacture their devices, they're mad at Google.

> the OEMs Google paid to manufacture their devices

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think that's how it was. LG's Nexus devices were manufactured by LG for LG, etc. The "Google" part of a Nexus phone is the software and some collaboration in the design.

> I can't fathom why the place where the device was purchased would matter if it's a Google phone

Because Google isn't the manufacturer of Google-branded Nexus devices and, if you bought it elsewhere, isn't the retailer, either.

> Apple manages to support iPhones whether you purchase them from an Apple store or in a back alley for bitcoins.

Apple is always the manufacturer of iPhones.

I know this is semantics, but it's fair. Apple doesn't manufacture anything, they design products and contract out the manufacturing to Foxconn. Basically the same as Google contracting out manufacturing to Huwei, only I think with the Nexus products it was more of a design collaboration than with the Pixel line.

A slightly goofy thing about the Google Store is you can't add the warranty after the initial warranty within the warranty period.

With Apple, it's no big deal to extend the warranty during the first year of the warranty.

It's really hit or miss. I've had to escalate to get my son's Pixel replaced twice now.

The replacement they sent has the wide-spread microphone issue out of the box, and I just haven't had the gumption to deal with yet another support experience.

I've had great luck so far with my Pixel XL and love it - one of the best phones I've ever owned. But the Pixel I bought along with it has been by far the most unreliable piece of hardware I've bought in a decade. It's really soured my opinion of Google, even though so far they have (grudgingly) replaced the item.

I'm dreading replacing it for the third time, as I know they will refer to their 2 replacements limit in their warranty contract. Zero of those replacements were anything but known hardware issues on the handset itself thousands of others have reported on-line.

I had the same great experience when my Nexus 5X had a boot loop. I have Google Fi and bought the phone through them. My phone died and next day I had a new phone. Great online experience too.

This sounds terrible. FWIW, I have Project Fi and have had several excellent experiences with their support, including replacing a Nexus 5X that my wife dropped and then ran over with the car.

Project Fi's support has been nothing short of spectacular... I've had two slow activations (coming from StraightTalk) and they've spent 10-20 minutes on the phone with me until the problem was resolved.

As an aside, even if I get good customer service, these days I'm frankly tired of not having physical stores. Being able to walk into an Apple Store is a really tempting offer, compared to shipping a phone for repair and communicating through emails.

I'll take advance replacement and phone/chat/email support over waiting in line in a store any day.

Check out these terrible support periods: https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en#pixel_...

An iPhone gets OS updates for years and years, Google's flagship Pixel phone has two years of updates. Never would I spend that money on a phone that has so terrible support.

It's 3 years now for the Pixel 2[0][1]. This has been discussed before on HN, and it tends to fall on the reliance on Qualcomm as the chip maker, who is responsible for driver ports on any kernel upgrades. It's the reason Google kicked off project Treble[2].

[0] https://store.google.com/product/pixel_2_specs

[1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/04/google-says-pixel-2-...

[2] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes...

Treble’s great, but overall it’s still not iOS competitive. For example, the iPhone 4S and 5 got 4 years and 10 months of OS support, and the 5S that launched 4 years ago got iOS 11 and presumably will get all the updates this year.

The "minimum 3 years support" for the Pixel 2 and the 4 years 10 months actual support for the iPhone 4S / 5 are not comparable numbers, exactly because one is the minimum they're promising (so it will apply from the date that the phone is discontinued) and the other is the maximum achieved (so it was measured from the model release date).

Anyone who bought an iPhone 4S at the end of its run only got 2 years of support. The iPhone 5 did much better though - 3 years 10 months.

For the the iPhone 5S to reach a minimum of 3 years support, it'll have to continue to get updates for another 17 months.

Google cut support relatively early for plenty of phones, including my Nexus 5. There were endless stupid excuses about chipsets, but the fact remains: nothing past 6.0.1. They barely supported it for two years.

IIRC Google cut support for the Nexus 4 whilst maintaining support for their tablet that used exactly the same chipset. One of Google’s Android engineers even did their own cut+paste builds for the Nexus 4 from the new Android release at the time.

Dropping support at that particular point in time was purely a marketing / management decision that wasn't driven by any technical considerations whatsoever.

When you do this kind of thing as a company over and over again, people notice.

Never heard these claims. Source?

Here’s a blog post by the programmer in question: http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=06.+Thoughts&proj=02.%20Android...

I think that covers most of the main points.

Of course, it may be that it all came down to support contracts internally between Google and the Nexus device suppliers (the Nexus 7 blobs come via Asus, the Nexus 4 was an LG device that used the same Qualcomm chipset IIRC.) but that’s the kind of detail that end users really don’t care about: both were Google devices that Google sold & from the point of view of the end user Google dropped support for one device for no obvious reason as far as the end user can see.

Sure. The point here is that the promised "3 year minimum OS updates" for the Pixel 2 is a significant improvement on that.

My point is that

1 - Google has a history of living up to the absolute bare minimum promised. Apple does not. Per history, one can assume that when Google says they'll support for 3 years they mean 3 years and one day, and Apple means about 5.

2 - Google has a history of whining as if they are absolutely powerless, broke, and incapable of affecting what Qualcomm or others do. At least when it suits Google.

Which Apple device got 5 years support (from the last sale date, which is when a "minimum support" period applies from)?

As a user, I do not care at all whose fault it is that my phone gets no updates after three years.

Yeah. I had similar issues with samsung and nexus devices.

Despite the removal of the headphone jack, I switched to an iPhone 7+. Had an issue with touch id, and they just replaced the entire screen for free while I hung out at the mall.

Between the privacy moves Apple has made, along with their awesome support, I can't see myself switching back.

Same experience here: a year ago my iPhone 5s had discoloration issues on the screen's edges. I booked a genius appointment, they replaced the screen for free, and after two hours I could pick the phone.

I also once had a problem with a new MacBook Pro (probably bad memory). Went to the Apple Store, I could either get a (new) replacement or my money back, no questions asked.

I used Android for a while when Motorola was a Google company and a brief period after they were purchased by Lenovo. My Moto X 2013 had spontaneous reboots, repair took one or two weeks and afterwards they wouldn't tell me the problem was. After a year or so, the Moto X started cracking spontaneously. I also purchased a Moto 360, which spontaneously cracked as well (known problem). Repair took one week, but the package disappeared in delivery. It took them two months (!) to send me a new Moto 360. Then there was the horror of the incredibly buggy Android 5.0 release on the Moto X 2014, which had a memory leak that killed background apps all the time.

I had an issue with a MacBook that was totally my fault. (I slammed my fist down on it frustration, tearing the SATA cable) Not only that, but I rolled in there and had an initial attitude at the lack of attention, only to discover I went to the wrong location from where I set my appointment. They took care of me, and replaced the cable for free.

I've heard this story a number of times, but it doesn't match at all with my experience. Did she buy it from google?

I bought mine direct from google and the service was fantastic when I had an issue with my phone. I called them up, explained my problem, and 5 mins later they were sending me a replacement in the mail with a pre-stamped shipping package to send the old one back. I'm not sure what else I could ask for.

> Did she buy it from google?

Why should that matter? My wife's iPhone was purchased from TMO. It had an issue so she took it into an Apple store and she came out with a new phone 10 minutes later.

It might matter for people thinking about buying another google phone.

See comment below - Nexus 6p is a Huawei phone. Google was just a reseller, like t-mobile in the grandparent.

> Nexus 6p is a Huawei phone

That's definitely not how it was marketed.

Google's marketing page https://www.google.com/nexus/6p/ shows pictures of the phone, with two words on it:

Huawei Nexus

The Nexus marketing always seemed pretty clear to me: buy a phone made by the chosen hardware partner, and get the pure Google Android experience.

> she took it into an Apple store

What the parent is saying is that's precisely the difference. Your wife brought her phone to the manufacturer.

The Nexus phones were not manufactured by Google. If I don't buy it from the Google store, my buying didn't establish a commercial relationship with them. The Pixel phones, though, are manufactured by Google.

Disclaimer: Even though I'm a Google employee I have no idea how these things work. I'm just clarifying what the parent said, which sounds likely to me.

How is a Google phone, manufactured by Huawei ...

any different from an Apple phone, manufactured by FoxConn?

Apple wasn't the manufacturer at all.

If you buy an iPhone, do you get a FoxConn logo on the back? Because my Nexus 5X has an LG logo on the back, not a Google one.

So yes, it's pretty different from an Apple phone. Unless you refer to yours as the FoxConn iPhone 6 or something, which would be a unique perspective on your part.

Because it was a "Nexus" - Manufactured by someone else, in 'collaboration' with Google. The first Pixel was also manufactured by HTC (and may be FoxConn eventually, who knows), but it carries the tag of manufactured by Google, so that should be supported regardless of where you buy it from. That's the first Google phone.

As I understand, Nexus phones too are not manufactured by Google. Pixel XL is manufactured by LG, Pixel by HTC.

> Did she buy it from google?

It's a Google product. So yes, she bought it from Google. Which store sold this Google product shouldn't be a factor in whether Google is willing to support it to the best of their ability, should it?

I thought the 6p was like other Nexus phones and Google was at most a reseller, so if you bought it from a different store, you'd go back to the manufacturer (Huawei).

https://support.google.com/store/answer/6301411?hl=en

Nexus 6p is a Huawei product that you may or may not purchase via Google. iPhone is always an Apple product.

Google designed the phone, but they weren't the manufacturer or the retailer

I'm seeing a trend in this thread that a fair amount of Android users are needing to call up some sort of technical support for OS or hardware issues. Aside from the quality of support being debated, is this really a common thing in the Android world (even for savvy HN users)? I personally haven't seen that case in my Apple group of friends.

I've had 5 android phones and never called anyone for any issues, although I have only bought Samsung and HTC.

Why Google ever did a licensing deal with Huawei is beyond me. They are controlled by the same Chinese government that won't allow Google to operate in their borders.

That's not a trend. It is the subject of the thread.

Here's my story.

Bought Nexus 5. Smashed screen in go-kart accident. Called Google to ask about repair; they offered to replace it for free. I still have that phone as a backup.

Bought Nexus 6p. Then bought another for wife. Both worked fine; we gave them to family members after two years.

Now have Pixel, Pixel XL for wife, and Pixel for daughter. They've all worked fine. Daughter got small scratch on screen, bought screen protector after that, no incidents since.

Standard disclosure: I work at Google. These experiences were all with normal retail devices, purchased with own money at full price, using personal Gmail accounts, with no special treatment as a Google employee.

My Nexus 5, purchased directly from google, stopped charging; I think something wore on the connector. I went through 7 or 8 cables and, if you held them just right, the phone would charge. Briefly. Support was a nightmare to deal with, including them insisting that I install the latest point update of the OS which would somehow magically cure hardware damage. On a phone that I couldn't charge. And that they wouldn't help with at all until I installed the stupid OS update.

Apple just doesn't treat customers like that. IME obviously.

Bought an HTC Hero. Used it two years with no issues, besides lack of storage. With apps getting larger and storage issues cleared up with newer hardware, I needed an upgrade.

Bought a Galaxy Nexus. Used it for two years without issues. Would've continued with it for longer, but I was leaving Sprint.

Bought a Nexus 5. Used it for two years, with minor issues concerning wifi signal strength and wireless charging. The phone still works, and I keep it as a spare, but the wifi issues were especially annoying.

I've had an HTC One A9 for a year so far. No issues, aside from it being larger than I'd really like. I don't plan to replace it until I have a very good reason. Also have an iPhone 6 from work. It's nice, but harder to tinker with, which I think has always been Apple devices' shortcoming.

Stories like this are the reason I will never switch from Apple products. I have personally have had nothing but outstanding customer service from Apple and have heard countless examples of products being fixed or replaced for free even when out of warranty without any hassles.

Switching to an Android phone to save $100-200 over the lifetime of a product that I use 1000 times per day, and risk bad customer service is just bad value.

> Stories like this are the reason I will never switch from Apple products.

Strong words. If Apple's support started getting worse, you'd switch.

What you're saying is that you like to stick with a company that has so far had an outstanding support track record.

Which is pretty self-evident.

It might be only in USA. Costs so high in India that I can but new android devices each year. Repair costs are high as well again could buy new devices instead of repairing it.

Same in South Africa. I can literally by a new Xiaomi for the cost of getting an iPhone(or Samsung) screen replacement.

I've been very happy with my iPhones so far, though. Only ever had issues when the batteries started to swell up.

It seems to make a big difference whether or not you buy it from Google. I've seen lots of complaints from Nexus 6P owners who didn't being shoved off to Huawei and their terrible support. But I bought mine from Google, who twice offered me RMAs after the warranty period was over with no resistance. Most recently they replaced it with a new Pixel XL, instead (due to stock issues, I assume).

That being said, Google needs to improve their out-of-warranty repair/replacement options. I couldn't do anything for my Chromebook Pixel once the warranty ran out, and I wouldn't count on them to randomly add a de facto additional year to the warranty like they did with the 6P, which was probably done because of its terrible, widespread battery issues.

It's also worth noting that Nexus line was more of a budget phone, whereas Pixel is a premium flagship. The extra cost is exactly for things such as better costumers support.

I don't understand people comparing a 350$ Nexus 5 phone to a 700$ Pixel phone, and saying that they're both by Google, and anything that applies to the first also must apply to the second. It's also like people blindly hating on support for paid products by bringing anecdotal evidence from support on free products. That's just not how things work.

The Nexus line was barely a Google product, it was just meant to be a vanilla open device for developers, with some Google oversight. That's very different from a premium device built and supported from start to finish by Google.

Nexus 6p was definitely not a budget phone

> It's also worth noting that Nexus line was more of a budget phone

She paid over $600 for it, I wouldn't exactly call it a bargain bin device.

600$, compared to 800$ for a comparable Pixel phone. That 200$ difference is the premium you pay for good support. The Pixel doesn't really have anything else that the 6P didn't have.

So Google treats customers like that? Pay for a more expensive product, get better support?

Er, yes. Welcome to Earth. There's no industry in the world where the person paying more $$$ doesn't routinely get better service.

At the time it was released it was the single most expensive consumer product Google made.

Google clearly did not intend 6P to be either budget or 'developer' phone. They were very serious about the phone and spent a lot of money on advertising it to consumers in a number of countries.

> The Nexus line was barely a Google product"

Certainly so. They didn't really stand behind it, like they should have.

> it was just meant to be a vanilla open device for developers, with some Google oversight."

That counters the reality that these things were sold on the mass market to normal people without developer accounts and the accompanying "You'll shoot your eye out, dev" EULA.

It was advertised on TV, for !@!#$@ sake.

> That's very different from a premium device built and supported from start to finish by Google*

There aren't many devices out there, aside from the iPhone, that are supported from start and finish by one company.

> It seems to make a big difference whether or not you buy it from Google.

I bought my 6p from Google. I paid for the extended warranty. It went into a boot loop after 13 months and they still wanted me to pay the $75 fee for a refurb phone. Remember: I paid $89 in advance for a 2 year extended warranty. This is for a well known issue in their hardware, that iirc they are being taken to court for.

I had purchased a new Android phone every year for many years at that point. I do Android development for a popular open source library/product.

They're banned now. No more Android phones in my house for a long time. Happy on the iPhone and know if I walk into an Apple store I'll actually receive support.

seems like the 100's of dollars people pay is not enough to keep the phone running for even 2 years.

they need additional 75 or more to assure the phone would function and that too with salty terms and conditions.

I had no warranty and they gave me a replacement 6P for free despite being OUT of warranty.

I heard others were given Pixel XLs. I guess mileage really can vary.

It sounds like they're pretty random with their support. In a way that's almost worse, if their support was fully broken then you could make your choice to buy or not based on that, but when it's 50/50 then you have to take a gamble.

Yep, dropped my phone (totally my fault), got a Pixel XL for $89. Pretty OK, would buy the extended warranty again.

My understanding is that even with the two year $99 Applecare+ for your phone, you have to pay them an additional $79 if your iPhone needs replacement.

Only if you physically damage it, not if it gets stuck in a bootloop (or any other manufacturing- or software-related defect).

Had a bad experience with google support as well. My 6p was bought from google store, had boot loop issue just about 2 weeks out of warranty, google support did not want to take responsibility, and huawei was kind enough to RMA the device for free. Google only started to offer RMAs when the issue was being spread by media. And they recently denied me again of the phone dieing with battery below 40%, said because the phone was repaired by huawei before. Sounds absurd to me, I basically purchased the phone from google store without any support.

And those were multiple tries with different support associates. I will stay away from google hardware products until there are substantial improvements.

Well, when you can. Pixel stuff wasn’t available in France for some reason, and Pixel 2 seemingly isn’t going to be either. That’s another area Samsung and Apple have nailed that Google is yet to crack on the hardware (and sometimes services) side: presence.

P.S: my Nexus 5 support story was stellar. With the Pixel promising but unavailable as a replacement I went for an iPhone 6S (not a 7 because I just invested in quality, jack’d audio hardware)

I bought from Google and they replaced mine on warranty after I (truthfully) described it as having been "run over by a car." I expected them to say no, but was very thankful that they helped me.

They did tell me that this was a one-time deal though.

I bought directly and was passed around by Google and Huawei support for months (and multiple calls; hours of my time wasted - why can't anyone just do support by email anymore?) before ultimately giving up on getting the constant battery issues addressed. Initial contact was precisely 3 weeks outside of the warranty period for the now well-documented phone shuts off when battery reaches [15|30|50]%.

I feel like I purchased a year's worth of problem-free phone experience for nearly $CAD900. To me, that's not great value.

My experience (multiple times) with Google's hardware support has really been nice. Every time they have helped me immediately, sometimes replacing the devices without asking questions or proofs etc.

FYI people may have negative customer support experiences because they insist on the phone with the operator. If someone is not solving your problem, hang up and call again. Eventually you will reach someone who will help. Once I learned this it saved me countless hours, thousands of dollars possibly and a lot of unnecessary frustration.

Expecting someone to need to call again until they find an amenable representative is the antithesis of good customer service. You may have found a method that is effective for you; that's great. One should not need to go to such lengths.

Alternatively you can just ask to speak to a supervisor as soon as the CS rep answers. It's not rude and they won't get blamed for screwing up if you don't say anything to them. Most of the time your problem will be solved or at least the supervisor won't waste your time with fairy tales.

I guess experiences vary. Both times I broke my google phone they replaced it. We had some issue with setting up Project Fi, but again they ended up replacing it for free. I find that chatting works best with google support.

I had the same experience. My pixel battery was burning through it's battery at an extraordinary way, I contact support through the phone and got a replacement within the week.

A few months later I heard a rattle in my phone, turns out they sent me one that was part of a line that had an issue with a microphone component. Contact support and yet again it was replaced within a week.

they have infinite data may be they have classified users and have a preferred set of customers who they love so much and take so much care of, do u buy lot of google products or have u subscribed to any google services. looks biased as still majority are having trouble based on the forums.

> turns out they sent me one that was part of a line that had an issue with a microphone component. Contact support and yet again it was replaced within a week.

This is my issue. They have continually sent replacement refurbs that exhibited well known and common problems. This has to be done knowingly.

It's really made me think about an iphone for the first time ever. I refuse to use any non-nexus (or pixel now) Android since I care about software updates and shovelware, so it's either a Pixel or an iPhone at this point. Google shoveling me repeatedly known bad hardware just sits very wrong with me.

Disclaimer: I work at Google but have nothing to do with any hardware team.

I bought a Nexus 6P from the Google store and had some issues. Out of warranty they replaced it with a new Nexus 6P. When that failed as well, they replaced the phone with a brand new Pixel XL. Each of these replacements was sent via overnight shipping at no cost to me.

I wouldn't call this a great experience because I wish the original phone never had the issue, but I can't ask for more from support.

All I can say is google support is wildly inconsistent.

Did you identify yourself as a Google employee? Just asking because re: consistency, I could believe a blue badge might pull some weight in that situation. Speaking from experience, badging at an Apple Store will often change a conversation, sometimes dramatically, despite that ability not really being intended at all. Neither here nor there, just a data point.

I do not work for Google and had the same experience re: getting a pixel xl replacement for my Nexus 6p.

I heard it from so many people, that I want my Nexus 6P to go bad all by itself, unfortunately, that doesn't happen :).

No, I did not mention where I worked or even the industry.

I think you're identifying why the Pixel program is better than the Nexus program. Google's completely responsible for the design and support now.

I had a similar experience and decided not to buy high-end Android phones: the modular (or fragmented) nature of Android's ecosystem doesn't lend itself for quality end-to-end experience. This is not meant to be a knock on Android. I exclusively used Android for the last 4 years, and I like Google's software, the choices on hardware, etc.

However, when it comes to end-to-end experience, Apple's vertically integrated approach is simply better. This is one of the key reasons I switched back to iPhone recently: I just want my phone to work and to be taken care of when it doesn't work.

I've had two Android "support" experiences, so here's my anecdata:

1) My wife's Samsung phone developed an issue. We contacted Samsung and they RMA'd it and she had a brand new phone by the end of the week. Not Applecare, but it was fine.

2) Had an Android tablet with a minor battery recall. The manufacturer just sent me a second tablet and told me to keep both.

I hear about these kinds of horror stories but if you go in knowing that you aren't going to get Applecare, you don't look for it and you deal with it like literally any other consumer purchase you might make in your life, from refrigerators to cars and it's suddenly not a big deal.

And the Pixel XL is the best phone I've ever used. Let's face it, everyone has good/bad experiences with lots of devices.

The iPhone 3G is the worst purchase I ever made, a month after buying it iOS 4 turned it into a barely functoinal brick with no ability to roll back the OS.

I've also had an HTC Amaze which was great, a Note 3 which was great, a Nexus 5 which was OK, etc...

No company always gets it right, even Apple. That being said, the Pixel XL was great, so I'll guess that this new one will be good too. Nexus 6p was a dud, Huawei doesn't make them anymore, Google re-branded and moved on...

My girlfriend had the exact same experience with her Nexus 5x.

Fwiw there's a small open-source patch for affected devices that disables big cores (disables dual core I think) and fixes the bootloop but cripples the phone's performance.

Now, it looks like those issues are caused by the Snapdragon 808/810. The Pixel 2 uses the 835. I don't think it's been around long enough to know of any long-term issues, but I'm hoping it sucks less.

Been android all my life. Bought almost every phone on the Google store. After the Nexus 6p experience -- I made an oath to my self to never buy another Google phone again.

From the onset it was broke. We are talking just a week after I bought, I started noticing a pattern of complaints about the audio clarity. I call support, what do I get? A refurb. Whatever, phone was just released -- probably gonna be a new phone. Two weeks later, another phone, same problem. I got used to it eventually, and worked around it. Headset, speaker phone, or whatsapp (for whatever reason) would fix the problem.

At first it was never Huawei again, whatever. But that changed. I called Google store again, one last time to complain. This time, they offered me a "buyers remorse refund". But then they retracted their offer as soon as the lady saw that I had it for a few weeks longer than 2 year. They told me the option wasn't available. But I kept asking them, why didn't you offer me this the second or third time I called? They never answered that one directly.

I am still so angry about this... I threw 600$ + 100$ for warranty at a company and for 2+ years I had a crappy phone that doesnt work when I call people. Done, never again.

I went for no-name Android phones for years now and can't complain.

First I had a Huawei Ascend Mate 7 (6") for 2 years, then a Huawei MediaPad X2 (7") for 3 years. Somehow they stopped to build big phones, so I switched to a Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (6.4") and I couldn't be happier.

I paid a fraction of the price of one of those Nexus/iPhone/Samsung flagship Smartphones and they all had what I needed, big display and big battery.

What about updates?

I've purchased my Nexus 5x just a couple of months ago. Since it's a two-year-old model, you can also get it for a fraction of a flagship model (~$200), and, well, since I've purchased it brand new, I still have a year of security updates + a warranty that lasts exactly that. And on top of that, pure vanilla Android experience + whatever Google comes up with in the meanwhile (for example, I have Google Fi, Pixel camera app, Android Oreo, fingerprint reader at the same spot as this $1000 phone).

Next year I might buy the Pixel (original, not 2). My point is, if that I continue with what I've started this year, I'll upgrade to the next two-year-old Google phone, receive the latest and greatest features (that non-Google-made flagship models still don't have at the time) and I'll receive upgrades constantly.

but u cudnt have got it from google store. if it runs into boot loop wat wud u do?

Worst case scenario: it's just 200 bucks.

I never plan on buying a phone that I would be devastated with the amount lost (like, 1000 bucks) if something ever happens to it for whatever reason.

If not Google store where else is it best to buy from, where did u buy from? So tat they respond with warranty n stuff without 100s of emails n calls.

I saw 2 problems with updates.

Either you don't get them and your apps stop working one by one after some time.

Or you get them and performance goes downhill until your apps stop working one by one after some time

The only solution I found was to get a new device every 3-4 years.

Second that, one plus for the last couple of years, good balance of price vs quality and no worse update policy than more expensive phones.

The update policy was a problem >5 years ago, but now I'm surprised how much updates I get on these "China-phones".

3 years ago it was a big task to get the devices to speak English and install Google apps.

Now they got onboarding even for German and all things are installed on the first start.

it doesn't matter if we buy from google store, i was told the google hardware will send me a replacement 2 months back and i am still mailing for follow ups as i haven't got any response. on top of this every time i discus i get contradicting and time wasting response. i don't think anyone who needs to look at value for money factor would buy a mobile beyond 100$ or if possible 50$ and funny things is they have 80% of the features and definitely more than what we need.

I was put through the Huawei/Google ping pong. I don't know what the alternative is.

I bought a lot of Samsung notes, but they are outright negligent with monthly security updates. Samsung also famously introduced the Galaxy Note 2 a little over 8 months after I spent $900 on the Note 1 (which became a paperweight quickly due to faulty sim trays).

Almost all android manufacturers are negligent in creating good phones, and if they do, ruining them by not offering the required monthly updates that Google and Apple offer directly.

Android was a poor experience pre-gingerbread. Now, the changed UI's doesn't look much better than native android - product differentiation aside.

Google was onto something very good with LG and the Nexus 5 partnership. I'm encouraged to see LG building their phone again, and hope the HTC acquisition will improve the phone quality moving forward.

If google is serious, I hope they leave the XL with LG while they build the Pixel 3 with their new HTC subsidiary to get some experience under their belt before expanding.

I'm using an LG G6 for the past few months. The phone has been excellent. The phone updates are a few months behind and I'm reminded why I'll be probably heading back to a monthly security Android phone - at moment I believe it's the Pixels or a Blackberry.

Ah, mobile phones.. :-)

I think my first phone was the Motorola Micro Tac, which was revolutionary for price and size. It selled like hotcakes in Norway on release in .. 93? Then the Nokia 8110, which I loved - it had WAP! :)

Then (in Australia) I had the great misfortune of buying into Hutchinson's first 3g phone - the Motorola A920. Switched after a while to the Motorola Razr - awesome - upgraded to the SLVR L7 - and then I think the Nokia N85.

My first proper smartphone was an iPhone 3, jailbroke it, then switched to the Nexus One when it came out. That was one of my all time favourites; still have it, still works (sans sim). I've been on Samsungs pretty much since that, however, starting with their S2 - then Nexus 4 briefly (got run over by a car after 2 months, fell out of pocket and got completely squashed - I was gutted) - replaced it with the S4, then the S6 Edge and now the S8+.

Have no regrets for staying with Samsung in the past 6 odd years. Love the OLED screens.

On the occasions when I've been having issues I've received immediate service; latest was my old S6 Edge needing a new motherboard which was done same day at a Samsung Experience center (Melbourne Central). This was at 16 months.

I'll continue buying their products until such a time that they make me regret it. I've been lucky with my phones; no major issues other than Three phone due to the initial horrible state of the network and the rushed release of the phone.

I've been on Android since the DevPhone1, had to import it to Aus using a reshipper.

I got a Samsung Galaxy S when it first came out while on a trip to the UK. I've always thought Samsung made good hardware generally, but their insistance on fucking with the Android experience is what stops me really liking it. I don't want their S Notes or their S Calendar, etc. Putting a custom ROM on it tended to be a better experience than stock.

The current bullshit with Bixby is also not encouraging - I want a stock Android experience.

The latest update for Bixby lets you disable the button. I find that encouraging because it shows that Samsung is listening to complaints.

Up to the S4, and to some extent the S5 (#), I'll agree with you. Since the S6 I've actually found that I prefer the Touchwiz experience to the stock Android one. They've been ahead when it comes to certain features that I've come to like.

In the S8, there's hardly anything that's annoyingly Samsung. Minor exception for Bixby, but at least they let us disable the short presses now (for the button). Ideally they'd let us use whatever A.I. provider of choice; I'd prefer to map it to Google Now/Plus.

(#Just realised I forgot to add the S5 in between the S4 and S6 Edge in my chronology!)

Huh, my brother has a 6p and recently got it replaced by a refurbished one after it had issues booting. My 5x has worked like a champ for two years.

Take a look at the chinese manufacturers if you want good android phones.

My experience with Nexus 6p support was very different. I bought my 6P at launch in 2015, it ran perfectly for a year and a half and then I noticed that it shut down at around 15% battery a couple of times. One phone call to Google, despite the fact that I was out of warranty, and then 2 days later a brand new Pixel XL (last year's model) showed up in an overnight FedEx. Could not be more pleased.

More anecdata: I've had excellent support with my Pixel, had a replacement phone shipped in two days when I had a hardware problem.

Why would you expect them to support the phone indefinitely outside of warranty or a support contract?

My Nexus 5X had a boot loop issue, I filed a support ticket, paid the deductible, and 2 days later I had a replacement phone in hand. Couldn't have been easier...

you are not alone, i am sure 1000's are impacted because of this.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/nexus/G_0s70PzK...

Check this! You can still buy devices from Google or LG or HTC if you have way too much money to waste of same device repeatedly every year.

I had the opposite experience. My Nexus 5X randomly stopped working (which it shouldn't have obviously, but a different discussion). Google were great to deal with. Got put through to a human very quickly and he just asked me to email a few photos of the phone just to make sure it wasn't smashed to pieces.

After I sent them, within a few days a brand new Nexus was delivered along with a return package for my broken one. They didn't even demand I send back the faulty one first. He said the idea was that you won't be without a phone in the interim (irrelevant in my case however as the phone was bricked).

When I broke my Nexus 4 or whatever it was called in 2012 or so, they wanted me to ship them my phone first to repair and give them a credit card authorization in case they had to send a new one, and then after they fixed it, I would get it back, maybe after 10 business days. This was all purchased from google’s own website.

After that I went with iPhone, simply because I know I can get it replaced or fixed within 2 days, but I have walked out of the store with a brand new one in 20 min before.

Opposite experience here: My 5x started boot-looping for no reason a few weeks ago, also out of warranty. I got a new on in the mail 3 days later, zero hassle.

That's interesting, because I had a friend who had the 6p, and when he ran into problems they replaced his phone with a brand new Pixel. Which is worth way more then a 6p new.

The 6P had it's issues (I experienced some too).

Pixel was much better, except the XL 128gb had memory speed issues.

Google has gone back to LG to build the Pixel 2 XL, (similar to the Nexus 5) which was great. For that reason I'm probably going to get it - my dad still has and loves his LG made nexus 5.

I love my Nexus 5 and would probably love a Pixel 2 but it has no headphone jack. :(

I do an insane amount of long-haul flying and really rely on the 3.5mm jack for my noise cancelling headphones. I could get bluetooth headphones but they wouldn't work with in-flight entertainment when it's available.

I hope this whole no-headphone jack trend doesn't continue, I know the 3.5mm TNC isn't the best jack but if you don't want it because of bad waterproofing reasons or size/whatever can we just get a different analog jack with an adapter? Having the DAC built into the phone is required to keep things nice.

I know of a few options depending on the desired setup:

- There are USB-C to 3.5mm jacks. Probably the simplest. There are also Y cables that put out a USB-C charging port and 3.5mm. - I own a Sony SBH54. Converts bluetooth into 3.5mm. Awesome to pair to my phone and laptop, hoping improved specs of Bluetooth 5 shoe up in a new device soon. I have been on Bluetooth audio with their SBH50 and MW600 - the audio quality has improved greatly. I wonder if there's a wireless external DAC.

I heard of an intriguing option yesterday - USB C Digital headphones where the signal remains purely digital.

LG has put dacs into the v20 and a variant of the g6, I kind of wish I had gotten a model with one.

I sense the no headphone jack is here to stay if the reason for it is true (allowing thinner phones).

I had boot loop problems twice in less than 3 year span with two different Nexus phones one after the other! Nexus 4 and Nexus 5X. I gave up on Android after that. It sucks because I was a big Android fan. Not going back now even after the whole headphone jack fiasco with iPhone 7+

>Not going back now even after the whole headphone jack fiasco with iPhone 7+

The Pixel 2 doesn't have a headphone jack either: https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/04/google-unveils-the-pixel...

An opposite anecdote:

I bought my Nexus 5X used on Swappa. It finally bootlooped about a month ago. Called Project Fi support, they transferred the phone to my ownership in their system, and then issued an RMA and sent me a refurbed 5X. I was fairly surprised, as the phone was both out of warranty and bought used.

I bought an extended warranty from Asurion for my Nexus 6P.

Last month, it started shutting down early. I contacted them and they're sending me a $800 check...

I thought the Nexus 5 was the best phone I ever owned (I've owned many Android phones, across the spectrum, as well as several iPhones). It was a really great phone, for a while. After about 10 months the battery starting dying at 15% without warning, then eventually 20%, 30%, and finally 50% mid-run when I decided to put it out of it's misery. You could write it off as a one-time known flaw with the battery used by Huawei in this model, but this type of story is consistently my experience with Android products.

The applications are generally less polished, the hardware is better on paper yet fails to hold up in real life, and the battery life is abysmal within a year or less. It use to be the case that some of the sacrifices were worth it because flagship Android phones were considerably cheaper than their Apple counterparts, but that is no longer true either.

I'll be going back to Apple for the first time since the iPhone 4, now that they've finally killed the hideous 1980's CRT style bezel.

I specifically stayed away from the Nexus 6P because it was Huawei. Never buy anything Huawei- seriously, never. The Pixel is much more of a Google phone than the Nexus line was.

I had the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and then the Galaxy S5, both great phones. Definitely preferred the vanilla Android experience though, and the Pixel XL has been great for the past year. It is the best phone I've ever held, vastly better display than any iPhone. The Pixel 2 with no headphone jack is not going to work for me, but I expect to use the Pixel XL for 3-4 years anyway.

My 6p worked fine. What turned me off google phones is that that i only bought it a year ago and it won't even get security updates beyond a year from now. Might as well be a brick then.

Same, it was a huge mistake...

Interesting.

My support experience with the 6p was pretty good : when the battery became unusable they replaced the phone without asking too many questions (they just made sure I had followed all the basic steps to make sure that the problem was indeed hardware, even though I am a mobile engineer able to diagnose the device myself. I don't rely blame them for having to follow a script though).

Anecdotally my support experience with Apple has been atrocious : -they refused to repair my mbp 2011 whereas it suffered from their well known design flaw in the GPU soldering and have a repair program for this model.

-they made me pay reparation fees for a mbp for which all the cooling system started malfunctioning while it was still in the warranty period.

Had a Moto X 2013. Bought it because it was supported by Verizon (the only connectivity, some places I went/go), and with the Google purchase of Moto, was supposed to get timely updates on an ongoing basis. Well, not so much...

Switched to a Nexus 5x. After 1.3 years of rather gentle use, it bootlooped. I would attempt to get Google to deal with it, but it bootlooped days after I took pictures of flood damage (not mine, fortunately), and I hadn't gotten those pictures off the phone. Then, I got busy. Still hope one of the rescue approaches will let me get the pictures off, before I try to maybe get a replacement. Fuck the warranty, 1.3 years of use -- cut short by a known product defect -- is simply not acceptable.

I bought a cheap Moto G5 Plus to tide me over; figured I could dink around with it after I switched to maybe a Pixel 2.

At this point, and at those prices, I can't bring myself to give Google a premium price for that product.

Maybe if I find a cheap Pixel 1, I'll give Android one more go. Otherwise, it's Apple.

Even if Apple is pricey, I'll expect decent support and to amortize that cost over more than a year, two at the outside.

P.S. The Moto G5+ was widely heralded as "the" budget Android choice. And while the camera is definitely not top tier, it takes mostly ok pictures, and the phone otherwise functions decently. Even its IPS screen is no slouch.

It was already a bit behind, on Android 7.0 and not 7.1 . This caused me some concern, but I wasn't going to plop down e.g. full price for a Pixel 1 with the Pixel 2 just weeks away.

But now we have the Bluetooth... I forget the catchy name. The Bluemageddon. And I'm back to plugging in the speaker to listen to podcasts (fortunately, old enough to have a jack). The older FM adapter in the car, that has a jack; its replacement is Bluetooth only. (And I'm sorry, but my older car is in fine shape and I don't really need to replace it, nor to I wan to rip apart its rather nice integrated and apparently rather well-tunend stereo system.)

Anyway, at least the G5+ has an audio out jack. Because I don't know when the hell Lenovo is going to get around to shipping the Bluetooth fix to it.

So, basically, Google, if you happen to be reading this: Fuck all this.

I've also started to encounter interesting posts from developers who say that this kind of outlay for an Android device on which they can adequately test, is getting outside the realm of the reasonable. Not my bailiwick.

But if you're a small-time developer, and your iPhone bites it, seems you may actually get some support from Apple.

Had a similar experience but better opinion of Google's sorry. My wife's 6P entered a bootloop 5 or 7 days after the 1-year warranty expired. Google and Huawei said "sorry—your warranty expired." But I don't fault them. An expired warranty is, after all, expired. I ended up reselling the phone on eBay for $120. At least it's recycled: people use them for parts.

On the other hand, I actually loved Google's support. Reaching them on the phone was easy. No wait. At some point I had to step away to take care of my baby, so they said they would call me back in 30min, and the same rep called me EXACTLY on the dot when they said they would call. They didn't follow a script to the letter, with numerous unnecessary steps, but jumped ahead when I told them what I had tried to diagnose the problem. Overall, very efficient, quality support. Of course I was bummed the bootloop couldn't be fixed (I experienced it before it was a widespread issue) but I was honestly stunned how good their support experience was.

I ended up replacing the 6P by a Nexus 5X. I know I'll get good support IF I ever need it.

My wife's 6P entered a bootloop 5 or 7 days after the 1-year warranty expired. Google and Huawei said "sorry—your warranty expired." But I don't fault them. An expired warranty is, after all, expired.

How is this acceptable? The boot loop is most likely caused by a software bug that was not introduced by your wife (unless she was installing custom ROMs). Moreover, it is probably easy for Huawei/Google to repair the phone by reflashing the firmware.

Rather than going the extra mile for a customer who dropped $500+ on a device, they literally stick to the warranty period mandated by the law and leave you out in the woods.

That is terrible customer service.

100% terrible customer service. The bootloop was caused by flaws in the Snapdragon chip. The OSS fix is to basically disable half of the cores and run the phone in a crippled state.

https://www.xda-developers.com/nexus-6p-bootloop-fix/

I had a reverse experience with Google support. Me and my wife bought our Nexus 5x phones at the same time, me from amazon and she from Google. When mine bootlooped (under warranty), I was forced to contact LG and they did take the phone in but returned it back without fixing claiming "water damage". I read online that they were doing that for many customers to shrug off their responsibility.

When my wife's phone bootlooped (8 months out of warranty), Google shipped her a replacement phone for free! I swore myself away from buying any LG products after that.

I am an Android user but it seems to me that it gets more and more invasive. Everytime I go somewhere it wants me to take photos and just now it advertised some Play Store movie. Search asks for location access on almost every search. To get rid of the search bar I need to install third party software.

When I buy a premium phone I want the phone to work for me and not the other way around. The notification bar should only be used for stuff that I want to be notified about - not ads or cheap tries to get me working for free.

In the future I sometimes imagine two classes of devices: one controls the lives of their owners and one helps their owners to control their lives. What does Android want?

And Google makes it so hard to disable the new Google Feed for Android, but so distractingly easy to accidentally press. Their settings experience is still a mess.

I have an iPhone as my primary phone, and a secondary Pixel XL. The Pixel XL uses a separate Gmail account, used nowhere else. I've added no "Places" to Google maps. I love how it tells me how many minutes my drive to work is (which I'm okay with that on my iPhone, since I explicitly set that info in Google Maps on that account)

> one controls the lives of their owners and one helps their owners to control their lives. What does Android want?

I think you answered your own question in the first paragraph.

Don’t give google any data, other than maybe your searches.

Instead of working for google, let google work for you. Only searches and in a different tab container.

Android wants to make money for Google. It sounds like what you want is a pocket-sized computer that can make telephone calls. Shouldn't be so difficult, right? But maybe it would be twice the price if you want to pay with money and not your data.

Or same price and it would be 1-2 mm thicker with resolution only slightly bigger than regular destkop monitor? Who knows...

> Android wants to make money for Google.

Pretty sure they just want to sell more ads since 88% of their revenue comes from ads.[0]

[0] https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/05/tech-giants-google-apple-f...

I really liked many of the Google services and lived comfortably and happy with them, Android as well. I think I went all in on Google. And it was fine until now.

But now I am pretty fed up with Android and Google. The increased invasiveness and how I can't disable features that I don't want anymore or the incredible persistence of asking to activate something I declined multiple times until they make it required, really put me off.

Another thing is that many of the shiny features don't benefit me at all. Previously Google offered services anyone could use. Search, GMail, Android. But now more and more services are locked to countries, languages and devices which only a subset of Google users can benefit from but everyone is expected to deal with these features.

Some features simply don't work reliably at all (e.g. Google Trips and most of Google Now related to GMail, Hangouts before it got killed) and some features are pretty much useless to me as they are bound to either the USA or a language I don't casually speak (e.g. as a Swiss-German speaker the whole Google Assistant stuff is just not fun at all as I have to either speak High-German or English. Both of which is not as natural as my native language. Many Google Now cards seem to show way less info compared to the USA or show way worse data.)

One benefit might be the "ecosystem" of everything working together perfectly but to me they still have a long way to go to achieve this. I think I see a direction in their messy portfolio of services, apps and devices but currently it's a terrible mess. Devices being abandoned as soon as they launch. Services migration to way less capable ones. That's not a seamless ecosystem, that's just a burden to me.

So to me it feels like Google expects me to let them invade my private space more and more, give them more and more of my life even though they offer very little actually intuitively useful things. For me it has long been that what they offer is worth it but now that balance has tipped towards offering very little for a lot of me.

I hate the invasive features that seems to only increase with every Android update. So now I am getting an iPhone for the first time in years.

> And this year’s Pixel will take advantage of the phone’s always-on microphones to listen for music (not just the phrase “OK Google”) and display what you’re listening to on the screen, even if it’s something on the radio.

Like.. wtf? No! I don't want that. Sure it "only listens for music". I don't want Google to save my passwords in apps. I don't want anything of that. Get out of my life google.

In the process of removing Google out of my life as much as possible. This is my progress:

Completed:

- Using DDG for search

- Using bing maps or OSM for maps

- Only using Firefox / Vivaldi for browsing.

TODO:

- Move email provider completely, now I am only partly using my gmail.

- Move to iPhone (will soon be done)

- Youtube (unfortunately I think this is hard to avoid)

Don't really use any other Google service than that. I urge people to do the same.

I installed CopperheadOS on my Nexus 5X, it has been a blessing. I use OsmAnd~ maps and navigation, Startpage for search and Firefox (and Firefox Klar) as my browser.

I chose Mailbox.org as my mail/calendar/contacts provider. DAVdroid syncs my calendar with the default Copperhead OS calendar app (Etar) and the Contacts app. I use the K-9 mail app.

For YouTube I use NewPipe. It suits me a lot better than the YouTube app. I can even download video/audio for offline use.

All the apps I mentioned above are free and open source and available via the F-Droid app “store” that comes pre-installed with Copperhead.

For the first time I feel that I own my phone (not the other way around).

I don't want to have to change the OS on my phone to get an acceptable experience. I rather do something else with my time.

But I use fastmail for mail and calendar. It works great for me. I still have like 10 years worth of data in Google Mail. So it will take some time before I can completely release that.

You can import all your Gmail contents to Fastmail. I did this, it was very straightforward.

You can install lineageOS intead of android on your phone, because I think apple could be similar in some ways to google

The difference is that in the Google ecosystem you are the product while using a device from Apple you are the customer from the start.

Of course they have cloud stuff, that doesn't bother me. It's the evasive cloud stuff that you have minimal control over that bothers me.

"I urge people to do the same."

I am just fine with my Google service thank you. If I don't like something I disable it. Most of it I can and I appreciate the convenience of some of the stuff.

The iphone without any of the doodads feels like a dumb phone. This is a great way though to discourage constant phone use though.

On my phone at least, Google spams me for data input whenever I use maps and it seems at least to do that even if I simply have location on without actually using any app.

Ï cannot disable this, it also sends me ads from built in apps (not really Google here) that I cannot disable.

I am done with all of that. For years I have been an android enthusiast, thinking it was so much better than iPhone. How times change.

> Ï cannot disable this

Yes you can. Settings > Notifications > Your contributions.

And even if that didn't work, Android lets you turn off individual categories of notifications for Maps and other apps at a system-wide level.

Don't know how you feel about ad blockers, but I installed an off-market app called BlockThis (Google it) to get rid of ads on my browser, and it had the added benefit of disabling ads within apps. Many Android apps are very obstructive with their ads (not androids fault) so now I just always have BlockThis enabled.

> When I buy a premium phone I want the phone to work for me and not the other way around.

You are in the wrong ecosystem then. On Android, you are a sharecropper on Google's farm.

Agree, these behaviors are only acceptable if the phone would be paid for by Google. It's very silly that we pay $1,000 for a phone that actually helps Google make even more money when we use it.

There's a reason that Samsung still leads the pack in sales, and it's not solely due to marketing: they keep the stuff people want. People want a headphone jack, they held onto the headphone jack. People want SD card slots, they keep SD card slots.

I held off on getting a GS8 about two months ago when Amazon had a great deal on them going because I was in the process of moving, and I wanted to wait to see what else was coming out. Even though the S8 is lagging behind on updates, it still seems to be the best option. The HTC 11, Pixel 2, and Essential phone have all disappointed.

Waiting on the reviews for how the Sony Xperia XZ1 compact fares, because I wouldn't mind a smaller phone.

I like Samsung's hardware, but I still can't stand their TouchWiz UI.

I don't understand why manufacturers simply don't offer a stock Android variant.

They did, they were called "Google Play Editions".[0]

No one bought them, because they were released at a time when people still paid subsidized phone prices and upgraded their phones every two years for $200. So when they were asked to pay $600 upfront, the vast majority had sticker shock.

[0]https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/review-the-samsung-g...

TouchWiz is better than stock android now. It has lots of additional useful features, especially in the areas of split screen and power saving.

agreed 100%. it was not good before, but now? i prefer it.

Can you mention a few of those additional features?

Off the top of my head: Knox secure folder, better split screen options (app pairs), app suspension, power saving modes, file manager, better camera app, many more configuration options.

As someone with an S7 , while many improvements are nice, they are cobbled by being buggy as hell.

If I just turn on power saving then turn it back off , I have to hard reset my phone because the resolution gets all messed up.

My android experience has been tarnished more by Google bugs than Samsung ones. Android 5 was a very buggy release, so much infrastructural change with little user benefit. IMHO Samsung should have skipped it entirely. I guess they bowed down to user and media pressure to always ship the latest android (although the media criticised them anyway for poor battery life, caused by Android 5).

I had a Moto G at the time with almost stock and Android 5 worked perfectly for me.

There were many many bugs, but this one had a significant effect on battery life: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37038331

For end users, it was a big regression from android 4, even if you personally found it "perfect".

> I don't understand why manufacturers simply don't offer a stock Android variant.

When the hardware is commoditized, manufacturers need to distinguish themselves by offering a unique software experience.

That's what they are all trying to do. Unfortunately, most of them aren't any good at it, and the UIs they come up with are usually worse than stock Android. But if they offered stock Android, they would have to compete on hardware alone, and they are just slapping commodity parts together like everyone else except Apple.

I won't defend ditching the headphone jack, especially after Google ridiculed Apple for doing so. But as a very happy owner of the Pixel phone, I'd say the free, unlimited storage of photos and videos in original quality is a million times better than having a SD card slot.

Just today I transferred about 25GB of video and photos, and I probably wouldn't have bothered to record these videos if I had to transfer using SD card or cable. One might argue that's a sign that these videos aren't worth storing, but I'd say it shows the value of unlimited storage. In fact, if I had to choose between two near identical phones, with the only thing separating them being the unlimited Google Photos storage, then I'd gladly add an additional $250 to obtain that.

I think many of us experienced what it's like to make the jump from HD to FHD, or especially FHD to UHD on a similar sized screen. Once you make the jump, then you begin to wonder how you ever lived without it. For me, and I think for most Pixel owners, unlimited storage of high quality photos and 4k videos gives the exact same feeling. Having stock Android, best camera, slick design and great build quality just makes it that much sweeter, and I honestly do believe that marketing, brand loyalty and availability is the only reason the Pixel phone wasn't more successful than [insert any phone here] (I'd estimate 19 out of 20 who have asked about my phone never heard of Google Pixel, and had no idea Google even made any hardware products).

Your unlimited original-quality photos will be cut off after 2020:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/04/pixel-2s-free-origin...

I'm aware, if it lasted forever then I'd gladly pay an additional $1000+.

But as you also know, after 2020 then they'll still offer unlimited high-quality photo/video storage, and I think those who don't abuse the offering by storing RAW files and such won't mind the minor quality difference, and those who do will likely want to upgrade their phone.

imho they are telling that a pixel buys you three years of unlimited storage, if you will buy a new one after three years a new unlimited storage period will follow, maybe for another three years.

> Just today I transferred about 25GB of video and photos, and I probably wouldn't have bothered to record these videos if I had to transfer using SD card or cable.

Now try to take pictures on holiday without cheap & available 4g or wifi. I prefer a few 256 GB microSD-cards. It takes just 10 seconds to swap it out and put in a fresh new one. You can transfer the contents into a Macbook at speedy 90 MB/s.

> Now try to take pictures on holiday > I prefer a few 256 GB microSD-cards

My immediate reaction to this is, "holy crap!"

Using a 12MP camera, each image you take would roughly be 2-3MB. Assuming the higher end of 3MB (and only 230GB available per card), that's ~79,000 photos per card.

Since "a few" typically means three or more, let's assume three, that's ~240,000 photos. If it's a typical holiday/vacation, that's likely 2-3 weeks -- let's assume it's three, which comes out to be 21 days. Achieving ~11,000 photos per day during a holiday is quite a feat...

I'm pretty sure they are taking a few 4k 60fps videos as part of that holiday, and those eat space like it's nothing.

More rough napkin math...

A second of 4k60 video is ~7MB, but we'll overestimate to 8MB (though I'm using really rough metrics here). At 690GB (230 x 3), that's ~86,000 seconds. Or, more familiarly, about 24 hours of 4k60 video (holy cannoli, Batman!). I guess that's about an hour's worth of video recording every day over a three-week period. Understandable, and more doable, though still really excessive.

And when you turn it into a more realistic scenario (~1 hour video/day - something I'd almost never do with my iPhone but often do with my Pixel), it's hard to imagine not having access to WiFi throughout the week. Even the hotels/apartments with really poor connection seem to have no trouble uploading the photos/videos throughout the night.

Actually, I'm lucky to work remotely, allowing me to travel around in Asia on a pretty much weekly basis. I'm currently in Thailand where they offer free, unlimited data (accessible pretty much anywhere) for only $9 for a month. I was also recently in Vietnam where the WiFi at all the hotels were crazy fast. A great thing about my national SIM card is also that in most western countries, I'm free to use it as much as I want with no extra charge. So far I haven't had any connection problems anywhere during my travels in Northern Europe, Asia and USA.

I've yet to encounter a situation where I ran out of storage (and I take thousands of pictures and a few videos whenever I visit some sightseeing place). Sometimes I even go 2-3 full battery charges (using powerbanks) where all the battery is spent on photos+chatting+uploading, and as long as I click 'free up device storage' under the Photos app then I'll never get maxed out.

Another great benefit of this is that I can easily use great phone covers like LifeProof without having to deal with removing and adding the cover (this is truly a pain in the ass when using the LifeProof cover - not sure if there are any other great and slick phone covers that makes it easier and convenient to take it off/on while also providing great protection for the phone). In any case, I can't imagine ending up in a situation with no wifi, no data, and the need to take more than 2k photos before obtaining access to decent internet, and I'd like to think that I have traveled a lot, especially in underdeveloped countries and cities.

> It takes just 10 seconds to swap it out and put in a fresh new one.

Just don't be too fast if you have an S7 or S8, lest you lose the SIM in the integrated tray :-)

That's all well and good in countries where you don't pay $10/GB for mobile data...

Not sure what countries you're referring to, but I haven't had any issues throughout my travels, and when I visited Vietnam then I didn't even bother to buy data (I believe it only costed about $10 for unlimited data for 15 days) because the WiFi at the hotels was sufficient for me.

I also feel some of you really underestimate just how many photos/videos you can store with 15-20GB. Speaking of which, with my iPhone I was always struggling with storage because I wanted to keep some pics/videos on my phone, and I was often too lazy to transfer to my laptop, which would just cause storage issues there.. with the Pixel I've never had any trouble staying above 15GB out of the 32 (24 including system) GB available. In most cases you would likely run out of battery multiple times before you managed to capture 15-20GB worth of photos/videos throughout the day.

I also never worry that any of my photos/videos will get lost/corrupted thanks to Google Photos; this has always been a major issue for me when I relied on external hard-drives (I've probably lost hundreds of thousands of pictures throughout the last 15 years because a harddrive broke, or the pictures got corrupted for no apparent reason). It was also always a pain to deal with duplicates, to deal with identical image names (if I recall correctly then iPhone would have name clashes whenever you reached 9999 photos), etc. And relocating a specific picture/video meant that I had to look through thousands of photos in countless poorly named/organized folders (and always bring the hard-drive(s) with me).. With Google Photos I can just search the name of the place, or only search for videos, and locate what I'm looking for within a few seconds.

I have been looking for a replacement for my iphone 6s for a while. I find LG V30 is appealing in terms of both aesthetic and specs.

I want a removable battery, not an exploding one. (Still on my Note 3, with its battery swapped out after the stock one started giving me bad battery life, a friend is still on his Note 4.) And I make use of the IR Blaster just enough that I'd be annoyed not to have it anymore. Samsung doesn't keep stuff people want, they just follow trends like everyone else. I am looking forward to seeing how the "flexible phones/tablets" end up though since I've wanted that concept for a while, even if I have to give up some features for it...

I have an S8 (plus) and I'd love to upgrade to the Pixel 2. I am so tired of Samsung trying to replace every piece of functionality with their own. I had to go find Google's "Android messaging" app in the Play store - just their standard SMS app - to replace the Samsung stock one because it kept opening URLs in "Samsung Internet", their version of the browser. The Samsung keyboard is awful, and I can't seem to find a decent replacement. And don't get me started on f'ing Bixby.

Have you tried and disliked the Google keyboard? That's what I used when I was on a GS6, and it was pretty good.

I did - I really like it, except that every once in a while, for reasons I can't pinpoint but I assume are random, it will only let me type by hitting letters individually (no swiping). I re-enabled it today, so hopefully if that was a bug in the app it's been fixed, but we'll see.

It's not fixed, unfortunately. It still happens to me every now and then. But, when that happens, just keep swiping. It'll kick back in. It even registers all the letters you swipe, but it's so off-putting that I usually mess up the word and delete the gibberish I typed.

Ugh, glad it's not just me though. Incredible that at a place like Google something as crucial as a keyboard can suffer from such a severe bug, unpatched for who knows how long.

Til I'm not alone!

This is the only thing stopping me from buying a Samsung phone.

They've almost a completely different company from the original Samsung Galaxy days. If they could partner their build quality with a stock experience and optional downloads of their apps then I'd be completely sold.

> People want SD card slots, they keep SD card slots.

Wasn't really a fan of moving it to the SIM tray. Too easy to lose your SIM card that way. Then again, they did make it tougher to remove the SD card, since you need the tool/paperclip handy (as opposed to the easy-access removable battery cover)

>Waiting on the reviews for how the Sony Xperia XZ1 compact fares, because I wouldn't mind a smaller phone.

Wow, this looks nice. I have wanted a small android phone like this for YEARS, before finally buying an iPhone SE a couple of months ago.

Honest question: for those of you who own a mobile device without a headphone jack, do you find it to be an encuberment?

Personally I still find it a bit hostile to not have the jack available, since often times I find myself charging the phone and using the headphones (when watching videos for example), so having an adapter dongle for such a frequent task seems counterintuitive to me. I believe that if a device is correctly designed, then it should serve most of its usecases without the aid of an extra adapter. These should be reserved for edge cases.

Moreover, I use headphones for a good part on my day and I am not sold on the idea of having a wireless device next to my brain for such an extended amount of time. Sure, we are already exposed to a good number of electromagnetic radiations, but this one I might want to pass. Not to mention the need to charge yet another device.

(personal antidote) I had 3 pairs of headphones I primarily used pre-removal of the headphone jack. 2 bluetooth (working out and @work) and the third was a nice pair for at home listening. I have no problems with a dongle always connected to my nice pair, and have actually found myself using bluetooth more often regardless of Aux port availability.

I have the iPhone 7. I've been using Bluetooth headphones since about 2014 (started with the JayBirds, but use the AirPods now). I use my headphones pretty much all day.

Not once have I noticed the absence of the headphone jack, nor have I felt the need for it.

On a iPhone 7+. nope, AirPods are so amazing and convenient I cannot go back to a wired set.

Yes. It sucks.

My friend with an iPhone was unable to play his music through the speakers in my car because he forgot his adapter. We had to use a cup to amplify the speakers. Even if he had remembered his dongle, if he'd needed to charge his phone it'd need to be a splitter dongle. We'd had no problems playing music in the car for the past decade.

Get a bluetooth adapter for the car. Save yourself from ever having to plug it in (or even pull it out of your pocket) unless you need to charge it. I did this pre-donglegate and plugging my phone in has only been an inconvenience ever since.

When the solution to losing an adaptor is to buy another set of different adapters, something is wrong.

iPhone 7+. It is annoying as I cannot plug my phone’s headphones to my laptop.

Was “forced” to switch to Bluetooth.

I owned iPhone 8+ for a week and didn't notice any differences than iPhone 6 with jack for the sound quality.

Only one bad thing, you can't be charging while listening to music.

I am considering switching from an iPhone 6 to an 8 Plus. Do you regret going for a bigger iPhone or not? I tried the 8 Plus in a store and it was much faster! But also much heavier, that's why I haven't made the jump yet.

I can't even use the smaller phones now, and will never go back.

ive got a 7+ and it’s amazing. if youre at all tempted, go for it.

Oh sorry, miss typed. I owned iPhone 6+ before but I used to own a smaller screen phone, iPhone 5s and Galaxy S also.

To me, I have no regret for a bigger screen since I'm not a frequent one-hand user. But, if I holding food in another hand, it's a problem. I can't touch another side of screen edge easily. (However, I'm a left-handed, and all designs put the button on right.)

iPhone 8+ screen is much better than iPhone 6+! It's worth to upgrade :) Better camera also.

> Only one bad thing, you can't be charging while listening to music.

There are cheap dongles available which allow you to do this.

>for those of you who own a mobile device without a headphone jack, do you find it to be an encuberment?

Yes. Every single day. I bought an iPhone 7 when my 6 got stolen from me. Huge mistake. Have tried several bluetooth headsets, have never been satisfied with their quality (spotty connectivity just from ears to the pocket). I haven't tried the AirPods yet, but I'm not willing to drop $159 on yet another bluetooth product (and they look ridiculous).

The lightning dongle just introduces a new mechanical point of failure, and it's never there when you need it.

I won't be purchasing a product without a headphone jack again.

If you're OK with a headset as opposed to earbuds, I swear by SB220's (https://www.amazon.com/SB220-Bluetooth-Headphone-Streaming-H...). They're cheap and generic, but I like them for exactly that reason; use them as long as they last, sweat into them when I exercise, and keep a few extra pairs around for when one fails (usually they last about 6 months with regular, sweaty exercise).

Miss it every day. The whole concept is beyond absurd.

> for those of you who own a mobile device without a headphone jack, do you find it to be an encuberment?

Never notice it. I have 2 adapters, 1 in my car and 1 in my bag. I can't remember the last time I needed the one from my bag. The 1 in the car stays permanently attached to the car headphone jack.

Any portable headphones I use are bluetooth and were bluetooth before the iPhone removed the jack.

At home, I stream over BT/wifi to speakers/devices.

Sitting at my computer I stream music from my computer. If I were to stream to wired headphones from my phone all the time I would just buy another $7 adapter and leave it attached to the headphones.

you guys should try switching to a camera for your photography instead of a cellphone, then we can remove the camera from the phone too

the idea that because bluetooth headphones exist means the jack shouldnt exist is not fair -- there are plenty of reasons the jack is plenty useful to plenty enough people

the only excuse I can see to remove the jack is that when you sell a billion devices and the little jack costs a buck a device you just made yourself a billion dollars for nothing. oh and now you can sell dongles that cost $1 a pop to make for $10 a pop and you make yourself 10 billion

Exactly. I routinely switch my headset from my laptop to my phone and vice versa. Doing this with a jack is trivial. Doing this with a BlueTooth headset is very annoying and requires additional steps on both devices.

Anecdotally, my experience with Bluetooth headphones is that they’re easier. I don’t have to do anything more complicated than you do — if I turn on my Bluetooth headphones in range of my computer, they connect. If I turn them on in range of my iPhone or iPad, they connect.

If any of them start playing sound, it comes out the headphones. No cable twiddling required.

> No cable twiddling required.

But charging is.

And if they're currently connected to your phone and you want to connect to your computer?

Bose BT headphones have two inputs. I usually have my phone and laptop connected. It has some priority sorting order which seems to work well.

Yes, Bose QC BT headphones are good. So now you need $300 headphones to solve a problem that didn't exist in the first place.

And 2 inputs are good but it's clearly a pain once you want to connect more devices, say a laptop, phone, ipad, TV...

I think there's value in having a camera there, even if it's shitty. It means you are always carrying around a device capable of image/video recording, which is tremendously useful.

> when you sell a billion devices and the little jack costs a buck a device you just made yourself a billion dollars for nothing

You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not the money you save; it's the money you make by selling adapters.

Also, there might be legitimate engineering reasons for getting rid of the 3.5mm jack. It is rather large by modern standards, maybe there are also water-proofing concerns. It's a trade-off I wouldn't make, but I'm neither Apple nor Google.

If space utilization is the issue then use a 2.5mm jack. Like Palm (before HP) did over 10 years ago. Waterproofing a jack is not any harder than doing it for USB.

Eliminating the jack entirely just means I'll be looking elsewhere for my next phone and I've bought a lot of Google phones.

Bluetooth dropouts and interference are a regular occurrence. And dongles are not necessary unless the phone makers is just trying to make more money by removing existing functionality from the base device.

Not even dongles, you drive X% increase in Bluetooth headphone sales of your Beats line and $150 AirPods.

That's a bad analogy or whatever it is. If you remove the camera from the phone you cannot take photos. If you remove the 3.5mm jack you can still listen to audio and even still plug in wired headphones with an adapter.

you said it yourself -- i can still listen to audio "with an adapter". so this is like saying you can still take photos "with a camera".

the point being that to some, the wired output was useful and significant without the requirement of having additional adapters.

actually wasn't the idea of a "smart" phone that it could replace so many separate things we used to also have to carry around...?

Not a problem at all.

In the car the phone is plugged in with a wire anyway, that wire covers power and audio. Or I could use BT.

I’ve switched to BT headphones at work and they’re much more convenient than wired headphones. Before I bought hen I just had a single permenantly on the cord anyway.

When I travel I have my BT phones and the rest already have dongles in them. No need to remember anything.

Something else needed? $10 at many stores and I can get another dongle but I haven’t run into that.

It’s been a non-issue.

It's not a problem at all.

I have a lot of nice-ish headphones and in ear monitors, and I thought it be more of an inconvenience, but it's not. The adapter works fine.

And now that wireless audio sounds good, I find that I use AirPods or Powerbeats almost exclusively while walking around. Turns out the only time I ever plug my nice headphones into the phone is when I'm sitting for long stretches.

it’s annoying! i’m constantly misplacing or forgetting adapters and not able to listen to music as a result. it’s not just headphones; it’s anytime you want to plug an aux cable in.

recently spent a week camping w/ friends unable to listen to any of my music because i had misplaced the stupid adapter...

When they make bluetooth earbuds that have same quality sound as Etymotic ER4's, I'll switch then... the likelihood of that happening is virtually nil.

If you're looking for the best quality, aren't you better off using a USB DAC than using even the wired headphone jack with the phone's DAC that was chosen more for its size and power usage than quality?

Yep, I'm with you. I use Shure SE846 earbuds, and even though the dongle supposedly uses a DAC chip identical to the DAC in the iPhone 6, the audio is noticeably flatter and less enjoyable. Since the chip is the same, I figure it must be either the amplifier (haven't read whether that's the same) or the bit of super thin cable between the chip and the headphone port. It was a downgrade from the iPhone 6.

I have a good number of bluetooth headphones so I never have to bother with wires if I don't want to, and yet I would still rather use wired headphones if I could.

I always tend to get weird Bluetooth problems. I'll turn on a pair of headphones and they will connect to both my laptop and my phone, with the signal from both being choppy. Or I'll turn on my headphones and connect them to my phone, but it will say something like "Connected (no sound)" and it won't play music through the headphones even though they're connected, until I either re-pair or keep pressing the button until it hopefully connects.

None of these are things I'd have to worry about with a headphone jack.

I do have a head phone jack on everything (laptop, phone, desktop) - but I also have a SoundBlaster E3 usb soundcard/Bluetooth soundcard/mic:

https://us.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-e3

Really happy with it. Never tried it with Apple hw, but guessing it would work. Great as a "wireless headphone enabler" while watching films late, at a screen a little further away than ~1m. Or even for gaming along with a wireless controller etc.

It's not the best day in the world (and Bluetooth doesn't have completely lossless audio in any profile afaik). But it's better than any portable equipment I'm aware of - including the early Sony mp3 players that were steel boxes/melee weapons with proper line out...

Not having a headphone jack sucks. I use the iPhone 7 so I don't have an audio jack.

Instead of trying to remember to bring the lightning headphones or the lightning to audio adapter around, I've simply given up on using headphones. Which is terrible since I used to use my free Apple headphones a ton (on previous iPhones).

As much as people online rave about airpods, I don't need another $$ device in my life to charge and possibly misplace.

> Which is terrible since I used to use my free Apple headphones a ton (on previous iPhones).

Um, what? You can still use your free Apple headphones. You still have to remember to bring your headphones, no matter which ones they are.

As an iPhone 7+ user, the dongle life sucks. Seriously considering “upgrading” to an SE, especially if they do a refresh, just for the jack.

It would be nice if Apple kept the audio jack on the plus iPhone models. There should be space for it. But that would ruin Apple’s narrative.

It annoys my wife. She can't use the earbuds that came with her phone to listen to anything on her iPad, b/c it only came with a dongle going the other direction (for connecting standard headphones to the iPhone). When we're in the car she can't charge & use the aux cable at the same time. Both of these could possibly be solved with 3rd party dongles, but it's silly to have to pay $20-30 extra for that.

I know that the headphones which came in the box work through the lightning port on my iPad. I think firmware support was added to all devices in iOS 10, maybe check if she's updated.

Good call, i'll look into that.

I prefer solving the charge+car audio issue with a Bluetooth receiver which can be found for $25 on Amazon, my wife loves being able to play music in the car without snaking an AUX cable from the dash to the center console.

Not a bad idea.

I know they're a hassle to charge, but I bought bluetooth earphones for my morning run. Started using them on my morning commute in the subway.

Now I don't use wired headphones at all and the experience is just way, way better.

I still have my audiophile headphones (AudioTechnica M50x) but I only use them when I'm making music or seriously listening to music.

I've offlodaed all casual listening to the Bluetooth earphones. Couldn't be happier

I have an iPhone 7 with Airpods and it is the best combo. It is seriously awesome and I don't miss a headphone jack at all. It has literally never been an issue, even before I got my airpods.

I use my iphone + airpods every single day. I have never had bluetooth headphones before so that might slant my judgement a little bit.

Having said that I don't listen to music in my car and don't have a car charger either. I think most people who have issues with the lack of a jack are people who need to charge + play music in their car.

This is coming from someone who also scoffed at how "courageous" apple was for removing the jack. I thought it was stupid, but I "bought in" and got the iphone 7 and couldn't be happier.

Same here, the genius of AirPods is the charger case, it literally feels like I never actually charge them, I can’t recall a single time when both headphones and charge case were both flat.

Nope, but I already knew going in that I never charge and listen to headphones at the same time, and I only use the included headphones on my phone.

Yea, it definitely continues to be an annoyance. I have some great bluetooth headphones, but if I forget them I can’t exactly pick up a cheap pair. The adapter works well but it’s easy to lose, especially if you want to use it in a car and also have to remember the lightning splitter so you can charge your phone at the same time.

That said, totally worth the improvements in water resistance. I use it in the shower all the time.

Mostly I just use headphones much less.

Every phone I've ever had has had a headphone jack and I haven't used it since Android Gingerbread.

I don't, but then I rarely plugged in headphones before it was removed. The headphones that were included with my iPhone 7 are still in their packaging.

Most of the headphones I own are bluetooth. At home, I stream over BT or wifi and charge my BT headphones while my phone charges. While driving I also use BT, which is nice since I rarely have to pull my phone out and my jams are already playing as I get into the car.

My phone has an headphone jack but I don't use it more than twice a year.

I use bluetooth buds on my phones. tbh I am not entirely sold on having a wireless device so close to my brain either. It is way more convenient than having a cable though.

At the office, I just use full size headphones (the kind you can't run with) plugged into my laptop.

Nope. My iPhone 7 came with a pair of Lightning headphones which I leave in my backpack and an 3.5mm adapter which I leave plugged into my headphones at home. Basically if you don't use more than 2 pairs of headphones on a regular basis it's a non-issue. Worse case you might need to buy an additional ~ $10 adapter for a second set of third party headphones or for a spare.

Incidentally Apple's PR on dropping the headphone jack was terrible. They tried to play it up as almost a benefit when in reality it's a boring lateral move that is of little consequence for most people.

Initially I thought that dropping the jack was a "meh" idea, myself using only bluetooth headphones for more than 2 years now.

But then every single time I commute or go to a park I see a bunch of people with their cable headphones and how inconvenient it is: the cables are just messy, they cling to stuff.

Wireless headphones make more sense in terms of how easy it is to use them. Although, agreed - the PR on dropping the headphone jack was pretty bad.

I'm using an iPhone 7, it will be my last iPhone after 4 models. The lack of headphone jack sucks, the adapter breaks, none of the cheap adapters work - and the audio on good devices sucks.

The only real option is to carry a DAC around which is ridiculous.

Yes, it's a huge inconvenience. I got the iPhone 7 knowing it didn't have a headphone jack. What I didn't realize was how awful the adapter would be (I have two, both have problems). I barely use headphones anymore, because the adapter just doesn't work reliably. Audio sometimes won't play, so I have to unplug / re-plug many times. And when I put it in my pocket, the thin wire seems to lose continuity when it bends. The sound crackles or cuts out with any pressure on the adapter. It was a terrible solution to... I don't even know what problem it solved.

All of my audio is bluetooth (car, AirPods, Bose noise cancelling headphones, LG Tone headset). I don't have them on as much as I used to, as I've become a bit more aware of the risk of damaging my hearing as I get older.

It's super annoying when you're at a friends place and want to play some music through their speaker system, in a hotel room traveling, or just when i'm using both my laptop and iphone with the same pair of headphones having to swap adapters. Bluetooth speakers NEVER pair reliably. It's utterly horrible and I will never forgive Apple for it.

"Hostile" is a good way to put it. I am infrequently, but still regularly, annoyed by the missing jack. It's especially problematic when I need to debug an audio app or play guitar through an Apogee JAM. (There is no existing dongle that gives you both aux and data, so I have to use the speaker.) Makes me feel like I have a toy phone.

I have iPhone 7 for about a year, and it was never issue for me. I dont even carry that dongle. (I usually charge my phone at work where I dont need to use it)

Edit up top: The identification is done on-device. The Verge article didn't mention this.

This sounds creepy. So now when excessive microphone data is seen to be going out to the cloud, they can just say "Oh, the phone thought there was music playing and was trying to identify it. Simple misunderstanding, nothing nefarious!".

Except it doesn't send any data to the cloud. They mentioned that explicitly. There's an on-phone database of songs that it is matching against.

> They mentioned that explicitly

Okay? The submitted article certainly didn't mention that.

The Anadtech live blog does indeed state "01:05PM EDT - On device machine learning. Local music identificat (sic)"

I wonder how much space this takes on the device. How many signatures does it keep and how often is this updated

It's not very significant. Basically it stores some distances between peaks in each song's spectrogram which can then be further compressed.

Even supporting a database of millions of songs would be possible.

Spotify has 30 million songs.

Even if it takes up a small amount of space, it's basically a non-feature.

The index can be highly compressed, see for example

https://blog.afterthedeadline.com/2010/01/29/how-i-trie-to-m...

>Spotify has 30 million songs.

Many of those songs have never been played[1]. There's a really (really, really, really) long tail.

[1]: http://forgotify.com/

If each signature occupies an effective space of 1k (not sure how feasible this is), then for 1000 songs this would take 1M, 10M for 10k songs, etc

Every year gives us around 100 popular songs (add a % of location-specific popular ones), so it seems the plan is feasible.

Other articles did mention that this will be local.

I have a feeling they are using federated machine learning for this to have a lot of the processing done locally and not need to activate the radios for as much of the processing as possible. They have been making big strides in that area lately and this might be the start of some of the major applications of it (I think they are using it in their keyboard prediction as well from a bit ago)

so there's going to be a huge database of songs on my mobile!!! i don't think anybody asked for it... sounds like trickery... this is going to take up some storage space now...

anyone know how many gb or mb this occupies in my phone... can v jus clear this data...

I doubt it, that would be a good chunk of data for what I see as a fairly small feature.

More likely (this is a guess, nobody outside google really knows at this point), they will use federated machine learning to figure out that something is "a song", then perhaps clean up and isolate the actual "song" part of it and send that over to a google server for processing.

But again it was just announced, so nobody really knows how this works, where the data is or goes, and what tradeoffs were made.

They announced, in the talk, that this is all done locally on the phone. The phone will have a database of, iirc, 10,000 songs locally.

[edit] typos

Ah! Then I'm sure they have some way of making the data needed much smaller than I thought it could be!

They only need to store (and occasionally update) the kernel parameters for the trained deep neural net. Very small indeed.

how small, what technology is that?

I don't do neural nets, but if I had to crudely estimate... 10,000 songs (the outputs) * 16 layers * 16 parameters per node * 4 for the bytes per float = 10MB + a DB of song/artist names.

I'm probably underestimating the parameters per node, and overestimating the size of the layers closer to the input. Further, it's more likely structured as an LSTM than a convolutional network, since sound is a streaming source.

The phone is just storing song fingerprints, probably no more than a few megs for every song ever recorded. It would be great to extract the data and release it for public use.

This was my thought as well. Hopefully someone extracts this database for anyone to hack on.

Lots of devices already do this. My Echo occasionally misinterprets its wakeword and broadcasts up little 4-second clips of whatever is going on at the time it decides to do that. If you're worried about so-called "accidental" identification that allows them to activate listeners and receive the sound data from the room, that's already a pervasive threat.

Reminder that US intel exploited a bug (or a "bug") in Samsung Smart TVs that allowed them to surreptitiously activate the built-in microphones and stream the room's sound on-demand, obviously with no notification to the user. [0]

That gets me curious, did anyone try running that malware and see which servers it transmitted up to? Would be interesting to go through logs and see, retroactively, who this was used on in the wild. Would be even _more_ interesting if it proxied through a tunnel at a cooperative BigCo...

[0] https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_12353643.html

I bought a Pixel when it came out, switching from the Nexus 5 primarily because Project Fi was an easy, cheap way to get off my parent's cell-phone plan and gain some personal independence. It was about time for a new phone anyway.

I wish I had just stuck with the Nexus 5... it was a fantastic phone. Wireless charging (which I personally found to be the most useful feature), excellent dimensions, excellent price, and the notification light was bright. The case was made of some sort of rubberized plastic, so it could withstand a real beating.

Squeezable sides and marginally improved specs aren't enough for me to consider upgrading, and at this point, as an Android fan since the Nexus 4, I would strongly considering making the switch the iPhone.

Are you planning to already switch phones again?

I have a pixel as well and feel like it will still last some time.

The Pixel is so solid, and still plenty fast enough for me that I honestly can't imagine upgrading until there's something I need that doesn't support it.

The Pixel is by no means a bad phone, it's just been an exercise in disappointment the whole way. So I'm not actively planning to switch phones, I'm just lamenting that I don't get the same utility out of the Pixel that I was getting out of my Nexus 5. Also being on Project Fi locks me into a certain set of phones, switching would be an expensive endeavor.

I have the Nexus 5, great phone! But it no longer gets updated. And with the Blueborne security issue this annoys the heck out of me. With iPhone I can at least expect 5 years lifetime with updates.

I must have a lime since my nexus 5 randomly turns on the flashlight and goes into airplane mode sometimes. For the price, I'll bear with it but it's definitely not as polished (even the apps are UI-strange). Not sure I'd recommend it to anyone unless they are just looking to save money.

I still have a Nexus 5, and it's been solid for many years. It would be really painful to spend twice as much on a phone and get half or less the lifetime from it. So sad that there's not an equivalent phone available today!

Why do you need a new phone anyway ?

Even as an Android dev giving a very rough time to my phones, they can easily last 2 years nowadays.

If you don't care too much about fluidity or photography, 3 or 4 years don't seem too long either, as long as you replace the battery.

I switched from Nexus 5 to a Pixel XL and had a very different experience. It did seem slightly larger than optimal (thought I felt the same when switching from Nexus 4 to Nexus 5), and very slippery, but I went from having to charge multiple times a day to a battery that lasts all day. Wireless charging was nice--not having to charge is so much nicer. (It's gotten worse with Oreo, but I'm hoping it will improve with time.)

Be careful with the unlimited video storage deal because it's not really unlimited video?

It's unlimited until 2020[0] and then I'm guessing you'll have to pay for it afterwards, and after a few years of taking videos without caring about space, you're probably going to rack up a massive bill or have to spend a ton of time cherry picking what you want to save.

Their plan is pretty smart tho. Most people will be like "screw it, I'll just buy another phone to avoid spending that just to keep my videos".

[0]: https://i.imgur.com/M5LYvrH.png (read the fine print)

That's insidious if that's the case. I (and probably) many others took it to mean that photos taken through that date would enjoy unlimited storage permanently, not that they would start charging after that date. Would be nice if we could get some clarification.

Parent comment is correct. From footnote #2 from here: https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_2

> Free, unlimited original-quality storage for photos and videos taken with Pixel through the end of 2020, and free, unlimited high-quality storage for photos taken with Pixel afterwards.

That's still not clear. It doesn't say they will start charging for original quality shots taken before 2020. To me it just seems like if you want to keep storing original quality shots taken AFTER 2020, then you will have to pay for that going forward.

Assuming it's just like all of their other storage promotions have been over the last several years.

If you are over your free cap when the promotion ends, you don't lose access to anything, you just can't add anything new.

This. To add more stuff you change the setting. (When changing from "original" to the "high" quality setting, they convert your stuff to the lower quality.)

Source: did it before, probably still works the same way.

No. The photos that I uploaded in "Original Quality" are still original quality, and they remain that. I switched to 'High quality' because I don't have a Pixel, and it hasn't retrospectively changed the previous ones. That is also what Google probably means here.

As I understand it, the media you capture until 2020 is unlimited and will stay that way, and only what you capture afterwards will eat your quota.

I picked up the Pixel on release, but I've been disappointed by the quality of the product overall. The screen scratches easily , battery life is mediocre, and the changes to android recently have not been positive. I've had the device replaced once by Google, which was a painless process, but the new one scratches just as easily as the old, and loves to reboot on occasion.

Interestly enough, I started a new job right around the time I got my Pixel, and work provided me a brand new iPhone 7, so I've been able to compare them side by side for a year now, in nearly identical usage. I've been on the android bandwagon for a long time now, but the iPhone 7 is hands down the better hardware. The Pixel has been replaced once ~6 months ago, and spent most of its life in a soft shell case, but it has not handled general wear and tear well. The iPhone 7 has been blatantly abused (work phone, don't care) but still looks brand new. iOS leaves a lot to be desired, but with all of android's missteps the difference isn't as drastic as it used to be.

I recently switched from Android phones to an iPhone in July of this year.

This after having used android since the G1 (first android phone).

I think your sentiments are the most fair and realistic I've come across in a while (FYI for others reading).

The gap isn't as big as it used to be software wise, but the hardware is still better by a big margin. iOS has also been a little more stable, less app crashes, random reboots, etc.

The only thing I'd add is that the apple stores have been surprisingly helpful and have added more to the experience than I would have thought. Go in, try everything, get brought up to speed real quick by friendly staff, and they seem to always be conveniently located (for me at least).

All in all the experience has been better and I haven't missed Android's famous flexibility.

As an audio engineer, the headphone jack removal trend is an absolute travesty in an industry that utilizes AUX IN audio capabilities night after night.

I'm often using iPods or other local-music devices to pump sound into concert venues between acts. Taking away 1/8" audio standards in favor of USB-C or Lightning non-standardized ports causes chaos when needing to fill in music in a pinch.

In my industry, I simply cannot live without a standard audio port, which absolutely no one was clamoring to discard.

If my 1st generation Pixel were to break today, I'd buy another 1st generation Pixel.

I love my Pixel, but they just lost me as a customer for this reason. I'm not totally against removing the headphone jack, but it's not time yet -- the transition has been done poorly.

Yep. All that was needed to get me to switch from my current iPhone 6/iOS was a current Google branded Android phone with a headphone jack. Now there is no reason for me to switch if I am going to be stuck buying a bunch of adapters.

Yep, after being really impressed with the Pixel I knew Pixel 2 was going to be my next phone. Not anymore. Lack of the headphone jack is an absolute no-go for me.

LG V30 is going to be the phone to get in 2017.

I think Google is okay with that. They know the phone isn't for everybody and fortunately there's a lot of choice in the Android world.

If you want to run iOS apps, you are kind of stuck taking what Apple gives you and so I think the frustration with removal of the headphone jack there is warranted. I don't understand why anybody cares that Google is doing this. We have a lot of choice in the Android world.

>>I don't understand why anybody cares that Google is doing this.

Because I wanted to buy a Pixel, and now I won't because of a decision they made? I can of course go and buy something else, but I'm just voicing my displeasure with this.

Because being forced to go to another Android device means you no longer get stock Android. That's why it's annoying.

Having used every Nexus device from the One through to my current PixelXL, except for the Nexus 6 which I skipped in favour of the OnePlus One, I'm very annoyed I'm going to have to put up with :

1) Someone else's skin on Android 2) Someone else's schedule for supplying my phone with software updates, which from my experience with the OnePlus One, and with anecdotal evidence from everyone who hasn't had a Google device seems to be "sometime, if ever".

That's why this is annoying to me at least.

Do you actually use the headphone jack? Most people don't and because of wireless headphones, I bet the number that do is getting smaller each year. I think the best you could say is that it's too early to get rid of the jack. It's definitely on track to get to the point where the value of it is less than the cost of it.

Same. I have a variety of different things that use the headphone jack. A good pair of headphones, a couple of pairs of sound-isolating earbuds, a couple of pairs of open-ear headphones for running and walking. Because those are cheap, I can always keep a set where I need them. If I lose them or give them away, NBD.

Taking away the headphone jack does not solve any problem I have. It would impose extra costs, both in conversion, and ongoing. And it gives me a worse experience overall.

Why is it not time yet? When I lost my Pixel on a trip, I switched to an iPhone 7 + airpods and it's been great. I don't want to go back to wired headphones. Apple certainly seems to have nailed it. I can't imagine Google + HTC can't too.

It's great that they work well for you, but AirPods and the like don't work well for me at all. The audio quality drop is noticeable to me; interference is a perpetual problem even when I'm just walking down the street or walking through my apartment. Bluetooth on both Android and iOS is clunky and annoying (and it's not totally their fault, the devices and the protocol have something to say about that) that the physical act of jacking headphones into a device makes unambiguous and easy. I very much want to be able to take the headphones I use on my computer and just go rather than play the pairing/reconnect dance or whatever.

If I don't care about what I'm listening to that much (podcasts etc.), wireless headphones are fine, don't get me wrong, but the usability across-the-board still sucks, while not in any way or at any level improving the experience for me. It is a strictly worse experience.

> The audio quality drop is noticeable to me.

I'm not going to get into an audiophile/golden ear flamewar, but I am always skeptical of this claim. Yes, SBC is not the world's best, but it supports bitrates upto 500 kbit/s. I'm not going to claim it is completely transparent, but 9 times out of 10 it is being used with shitty bluetooth headphones (where the alternative is shitty wired headphones)... at that point the quality of the headphones (wired or not) has far more to do with the audio quality than anything.

And yes, I doubt most people will notice an audio quality drop in a pair of high quality Sennheisers going from wired to SBC (there isn't convincing evidence that aptX is much better than SBC). I wouldn't be too surprised about a conflicting experimental result, but skeptical for now. Anyway, most people are not hooking up high quality headphones to their phone, or they are purposefully using phones tuned for a particular lo-fi response (Beats)... who cares about whatever SBC does at 350 kbit/s at that point.

Edit: And walking down the street is hardly a hi-fi listening environment.

The audio quality issue is not due to encoding. It's due to garbling and interference from, you know, the two feet from my pocket to my headphones while sitting at home in my apartment. This has happened in every apartment I've lived in since getting Bluetooth headphones. It happened in my parents' house with a quarter mile to any neighbors. It happens when walking down the street. It happens at the gym. It happens at the office.

In an optimum environment it's fine. In the real world, having my headphones make farty noises in my ears two or three times in a ten-minute walk is silly and we live in the future and it should be better than that.

I ride the subway in NYC every day, and this is especially bad on my commute. The interference is absolutely unacceptable, and has convinced me that bluetooth is not ready at all for my use case.

The airpods themselves, sold as a premium experience, lack the additional comfort and noise isolation of quality headphones.

The mere prevalence of people enjoying the stock iphone, ipod, cheap airline, and wireless headphones -- versus isolation quality you can get in a $20 pair of sony's suggests I'm a minority when it comes to audio quality.

The issue has nothing to do with bitrate. The first issue is that the signal cuts out randomly due to interference. The second is that you have to convert the signal to analog and DAC quality matters.

To increase battery life, you have to go with more simplistic conversion which reduces quality. To reduce the cost of 2 DACs (one per ear) you have to use worse hardware. The net result is that the onboard DAC is basically guaranteed to be better and the amount of interference over wired headphones will be minimal.

I’m chaffing at the naked push towards buying apple’s expensive wireless earbuds here. I buy apple because they are the best phone out there, but lately I have been very frustrated with headphone dongles and looking elsewhere. I don’t want to buy more apple hardware to solve a problem apple created, and my other Bluetooth headphones are a nightmare to keep paired and charged.

Battery life.

I cannot even use bluetooth headphones for a full workday before they die.

You're really asking why overpriced wireless devices with mediocre to atrocious battery life and substandard audio quality are not a sufficient replacement for devices you can literally buy in any convenience store around the world for tens of dollars? There is room for a headphone jack in these phones (video below). The only reason they removed them when they did is to push accessory sales.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA

> The only reason they removed them when they did is to push accessory sales

This is baseless and ridiculous.

They did it because people are expecting more out of their phones e.g. better cameras, better screen, battery life, TouchID, FaceID all whilst demanding the same thickness. Something has to give. First it was the 30-pin adapter, now it's headphone, next will be SIM.

And Apple makes so little from their accessory sales compared to everything else they do so it is illogical they would intentionally cripple their flagship device to make a few hundred million.

> They did it because people are expecting more out of their phones e.g. better cameras, better screen, battery life, TouchID, FaceID all whilst demanding the same thickness. Something has to give. First it was the 30-pin adapter, now it's headphone, next will be SIM.

Way to completely ignore the fact that there is room for a headphone jack in the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 8. It was not removed in order to make room for anything. See the video I posted above.

Well for starters we are still at a point where the majority of owned headphones use a 3.5mm. Bluetooth is becoming more popular, sure, but 3.5 is still the norm. Now I have to carry around an adapter to use any of the nice pairs of headphones I own? Alternatively I have to buy a pair of $200 airpods that sound like garbage to get the full experience? The market isn't ready.

Because they don't need to remove it. A headphone jack wouldn't stop you from having your airpods.

My biggest problem with this is that I do not want to have yet another device that requires batteries and/or charging in order for it to function. Wired headphones powered through the audio cable are simple, don't quit working if their battery drain, don't require charging, and you can find them anywhere if you need a replacement.

Yeah, I definitely have "charging fatigue."

I have... I don't even know. 20? 50? devices that need to be charged on a regular basis. I really don't want to charge anything besides my phone and my laptop. I don't want the ritual of taking 2 or 5 or 10 different things out of my bag at the end of the day, plugging them in, and then unplugging them and rewrapping the cables and putting them back into my bag. That is not "convenience" in my book.

There's also a small level of cognitive overhead involved with remembering which devices were charged when. We're not talking rocket science here but most of us are IMHO already in a constant state of distraction thanks to information overload, and I don't want more variables to think about.

For me it's not time yet because it's a clunky and annoying process to switch bluetooth earbuds from my phone to my laptop and back, at least compared to the simplicity of unplugging something. This is something I do multiple times a day.

Apple is the only company that has figured out how to make it easy, but it requires a iphone/macbook of course.

its always time to buy replacements for all those things in capitalism!

Yes, I've hated this change ever since I got my last iPhone. It's a pain and doesn't actually improve anything. I bought a bunch of those little dongles because I always lose them.

I've also had some break. They are apparently pretty flimsy.

I wonder how many customers they will lose because of this decision? What I don't actually understand is what exactly is gained by its removal? It doesn't seem to be a limiting factor in either thinness or waterproofing, which are the only two I can think of.

I know I for one will never buy a phone with no headphone jack.

I think (good implementations of) wireless headphones are the way of the future.

What did they gain by removing floppy disk drives from laptops? Well, nothing per se, but it allowed them to make smaller laptops.

Removing the jack will allow them to make phones thinner - if not now, in future iterations.

And the thing with keeping features around is that it's not just a question of that one feature. It's cumulative over time. It's not just a question of removing the floppy drive, it's that AND the internal modem AND the CD drive, etc. The effects can add up.

I mostly use my headphone jack to connect to stereo systems at home and in the car, so wireless headphones don't really help (nevermind how much more expensive they are and issues with sound).

I understand that's the case now - I did say "the way of the future". I believe wireless will become the standard everywhere (for everyday use, at least).

Any transition like that is going to be awkward at first. If people tried to wait for perfect conditions, progress would never be made.

Wifi didn't replace Ethernet after many years. Even wifi has become much more reliable, faster and cheaper, Ethernet is always several steps better.

Pushing progress is not an excuse to force transition with cost and effort burden on customers.

But does every networked device have ethernet these days? My laptop doesn't, nor does my phone. There are some contexts where Ethernet is more appropriate, but that doesn't mean it's more appropriate everywhere.

> Pushing progress is not an excuse to force transition with cost and effort burden on customers.

You can't make progress without doing some of that.

> But does every networked device have ethernet these days? My laptop doesn't, nor does my phone.

Every stationary or semi-stationary networked device should probably have Ethernet. A desktop or laptop should; a phone shouldn't (because it's mobile). It'd be nice if IoT thermostats and the like were wired, but that would require homes to have Ethernet-over-power or Ethernet runs in the walls or something.

WiFi is inferior to Ethernet, except when mobility is necessary. So for mobile devices like phones, it's not needed. For tablets, probably not (but imagine if your charging cable could also carry fast, reliable networking to your tablet, so you could have a better experience while reading or watching TV, but still be able to get up & go).

When they removed floppy drives it was because there was a better alternative. I don’t agree that Bluetooth is a better alternative than a cord that is 100% reliable to pair, perfect audio quality, and never needs to be charged

> When they removed floppy drives it was because there was a better alternative.

When they removed that -- or any of the other things -- there was still some backlash from people who still had uses for them, and still wanted them.

> I don’t agree that Bluetooth is a better alternative than a cord that is 100% reliable to pair, perfect audio quality, and never needs to be charged

From what I've heard the ear pods are very reliable to pair and have good audio quality.

> From what I've heard the ear pods are very reliable to pair and have good audio quality.

I think the comparison to removal of floppy drives fails here because neither is clearly superior to the other.

Wired headphones are inconvenient (you need a wire) but have great sound quality and reliability. They're also cheap. Wireless headphones are convenient in some aspects (no wires) but inconvenient in others (need to charge them) and have decent quality and somewhat less reliability. They're also expensive.

You can't say wireless headphones supersede wired headphones, they just choose different tradeoffs.

> have decent quality and somewhat less reliability

I don't believe that is inherently true about wireless headphones.

Re: tradeoffs, you can say that about any set of alternatives, and there can still be one option that in the long term is best for most people. Eg horses vs cars as means for personal transport.

> I don't believe that is inherently true about wireless headphones.

I believe it is. Wireless headphones are subject to interference while wired ones are not. Physical connections are much less likely to fail. Wired headphones also lack batteries.

> Re: tradeoffs, you can say that about any set of alternatives, and there can still be one option that in the long term is best for most people. Eg horses vs cars as means for personal transport.

It's true that whether a product is superior to another is a subjective decision but I think there's a threshold to be met in terms of numbers.

Horses vs. cars is easy: Cars today are cheaper, faster, safer, require less space and require less maintenance than horses. The number of people who'd prefer a horse to a car is insignificant.

Wired vs. wireless is much closer. I think at best 50% of people would prefer wireless after trying them for a week or two.

Wireless and wired aren't mutually exclusive either. There's no reason a phone can't support both wired and wireless headphones and let people choose. That's what we've had for years now and unsurprisingly, wireless headphones haven't really taken off.

> Wireless headphones are subject to interference while wired ones are not.

The GSM "buzz" would like to have a word with you.

Admittedly it's no longer much of an issue as that standard is not used much anymore, but still...

> I think at best 50% of people would prefer wireless

I'm curious what your sample size on that is, as literally everyone I know who switched to a (good) pair a bluetooth headphones (20+ at this point) is 100% on the wireless bandwagon, myself included.

Admittedly - a large portion of that 20+ samples of anecdata are from pool players who like to wear headphones while playing the game. The fact that there are no wires means that said players no longer have to come up with a way of dealing with the wire to prevent it from interfering in the game (so, sure, my sample is biased).

> Wireless headphones are subject to interference while wired ones are not.

That's not true. Have you ever had gunk get into your headphone jack and have that affect the sound? I have.

> Physical connections are much less likely to fail.

I hear the air pods are pretty reliable. I've had plenty of wired headphones either stop working properly or stop working altogether. Wires can get yanked and this an effect the internal connections in the headphones, for example.

> Wired headphones also lack batteries.

The literal text of what I was replying to was "have decent quality and somewhat less reliability", and batteries have nothing to do with that.

> Horses vs. cars is easy: Cars today are cheaper, faster, safer, require less space and require less maintenance than horses. The number of people who'd prefer a horse to a car is insignificant.

We're not talking about horses vs cars today, we're talking about horses vs cars when cars were being introduced! That's the analogous situation.

> I think at best 50% of people would prefer wireless after trying them for a week or two.

On what grounds?

> Wireless and wired aren't mutually exclusive either. There's no reason a phone can't support both wired and wireless headphones and let people choose.

Yes, that's true. But I think that the longer-term picture is different. More features means more cost and complexity. And you can't consider this just in the context of one issue. It's cumulative over time. An analogy here is all the various features that have been lost in desktop and laptop computers over the years (and replaced by different ones). Sure, any one of those isn't necessarily a big deal, but in the longer term it's not about individual ones. If you said that about each individual feature, and kept it on, the devices these days would be really encumbered with all sorts of stuff.

> That's what we've had for years now and unsurprisingly, wireless headphones haven't really taken off.

We're not talking about decades and decades of good, consumer-level priced wireless technology. It's still pretty new, and that also means it's still pretty expensive. I think it's clear that a fair number of people who are against the wireless headphones still haven't actually tried good one, which shows that the exposure levels for the technology is still pretty low.

And removing the jack is the kind of thing that may push the adoption of wireless headphones and lead to the kinds of economies of scales that reduce the price and lead to more takeup.

You can still do that. You just need an adapter. The rest of us will be happy to sacrifice quality we can hardly recognize for better mobility.

Also, this already happened with the Ethernet port.

Ethernet makes less sense on a mobile device, because you don’t carry routers on your body, and the standard was no where near as old. Again, removing because there was a better alternative. Adaptors are not a better alternative. Bluetooth is not a better alternative.

WiFi is in no way better than Ethernet except one: That you don't have a cable. Bluetooth headphones are no different.

Your metaphor is dropping important details. The cable mattered because it tethered you to a location, which is not true of headphones. Routers also didn’t need to be charged before or after.

The headphone cables tether you to your phone. There are times when you want to be able to put down your phone and be able to use headphones but not be physically connected to it. Eg lying in bed listening to music, but then getting up to go to get something from the kitchen (and not having to pick up your phone, or carry it with you, or unplug the headphones) before lying back down again. And being able to do that while continuing to listen to the music.

Routers need to be plugged into a wall socket. Batteries don't require that constant use of a cable or socket.

They can make the phone thinner, but they are only doing that by putting more hardware (a DAC) into the headphone. It's massively duplicating one component for such a negligible advantage.

I don't think the consumer cares about such duplication (indirectly, they will, if it makes the headphones cost more, though I think that cost will go down over time).

An advantage I didn't mention in my original comment is: getting rid of cables. Personally, I hate headphone cables. They seem to always be getting tangled up when the headphones aren't in use (meaning I have to mess around untangling them before using them), and always caught on things while I'm wearing them.

> I don't think the consumer cares about such duplication

Aside from cost, more devices that need to be charged creates more overhead.

It's cost vs benefit. Obviously there's differences of opinions on the costs vs benefits, but I'm of the view that the benefits of wireless outweigh the costs of charging the headphones.

The floppy disk stopped being good at moving files between computers and making backups because single files of popular types regularly exceeded its capacity at the time it stopped being a standard feature. Modems and CD drives had fallen into disuse in favor of alternatives by the time they started getting left out.

The analog headphone jack still does as good a job of connecting headphones, speakers and such in a practical sense as it always did. Perhaps even better since cars have aux in ports most of the time now[0]. It hasn't fallen into disuse either. While bluetooth headphones exist and enjoy some popularity, most people I know own, and regularly use wired headphones.

I don't think the analogy holds. The headphone jack is still as useful and popular with consumers as it ever was.

[0] Yes, they also usually have bluetooth, but getting a car and a phone to pair, and getting the right phone to be paired at the right time isn't always a good UX.

> The floppy disk stopped being good at moving files between computers and making backups because single files of popular types regularly exceeded its capacity at the time it stopped being a standard feature. Modems and CD drives had fallen into disuse in favor of alternatives by the time they started getting left out.

There were still people who had stuff on floppies who wanted floppy drives.

There was a big fuss when Apple first removed CD drives from their laptops.

> The analog headphone jack still does as good a job of connecting headphones, speakers and such in a practical sense as it always did.

Many people -- I'm not claiming it's the majority -- disagree. Many people find headphone cables a big pain in the ass.

> While bluetooth headphones exist and enjoy some popularity, most people I know own, and regularly use wired headphones.

At least part of that is that wireless headphones tend to be expensive and many of them aren't the best at pairing and staying connected. Those things aren't inherent to wireless technology and will change over time.

> Yes, they also usually have bluetooth, but getting a car and a phone to pair, and getting the right phone to be paired at the right time isn't always a good UX.

Again, that's nothing inherent to wireless. Apparently the Apple wireless pairing works pretty perfectly.

> Many people find headphone cables a big pain in the ass.

But they don't also find having to charge headphones, and eventually to throw them out and purchase new ones, to be 'a big pain in the ass'?

> At least part of that is that wireless headphones tend to be expensive and many of them aren't the best at pairing and staying connected. Those things aren't inherent to wireless technology and will change over time.

I'm pretty sure that expense and complexity are inherent to wireless. No wireless connexion is going to be as cheap and reliable as an equivalent wired connexion, if only because the wireless connexion terminates in … a wire.

The complexity in wireless such as Bluetooth is strictly because it's a digital, packed-switched network driven by a fairly complicated software stack.

Basically, chaos originates from the involvement of computer science.

Cordless home phones and "900 Mhz" wireless headphones to use around the house are dead friggin' simple and reliable.

(Not to mention insecure: another story).

> But they don't also find having to charge headphones, and eventually to throw them out and purchase new ones, to be 'a big pain in the ass'?

you have to buy at least one pair of wireless headphones (and eventually they'll be bundled with phones), but you wouldn't need to replace them any more frequently than other headphones. This is the way with all changes. When wifi first became available we had to buy new modems.

As for charging them, that doesn't seem like a big pain to me. I charge my phone and laptop each day, this is just one other thing. For me the benefits -- no cables to get tangled (and have to untangle) or get caught on things -- outweigh the costs.

> I'm pretty sure that expense and complexity are inherent to wireless. No wireless connexion is going to be as cheap and reliable as an equivalent wired connexion, if only because the wireless connexion terminates in … a wire.

I hear the air pods are very reliable.

Regarding expense, if economies of scale get going, which I believe will happen, and manufacturers get more experience making them, then this will make the prices come down.

> but you wouldn't need to replace them any more frequently than other headphones

Except that the batteries will eventually stop holding a charge. This is not a problem with wired headphones. I can plug a 40 year old pair of headphones my Dad got in college into my phone and they work the same now as they did then. You can't do that with wireless headphones.

> Except that the batteries will eventually stop holding a charge.

You're wrongly assuming that this always means the headphones will no longer work. There are wireless headphones with replaceable batteries -- e.g. https://www.beoplay.com/products/beoplayh8#techtalk

And, it's not like most wired headphones last forever. I must have gone through 5 - 10 pairs in the last few years. Admittedly most of these were towards the lower-end, but still, they just stopped working.

This is an argument against non-removable batteries more than against wireless headphones in general. There's no reason headphones can't have both onboard charging and removable batteries in standardized sizes. It's fairly common in higher-end flashlights, for example.

>> The analog headphone jack still does as good a job of connecting headphones, speakers and such in a practical sense as it always did. >Many people -- I'm not claiming it's the majority -- disagree. Many people find headphone cables a big pain in the ass.

I agree completely - wireless headphones are amazing, I hate dealing with cables.

My first pair of bluetooth headphones were shit, and very difficult to switch devices, so I went back to wired. My second pair of bluetooth headphones (Bose QC something) are fantastic! Easily connect to multiple devices, easily switch between the devices. My third (AirPods) are similarly amazing, easy to switch devices, easy to pair.

I'm never buying a pair of wired headphones again.

That's great for you.

I still want cheep, easy to find, simple, reliable personal audio that doesn't depend on a low-noise RF environment.

I still want to EASILY interface with /all/ of the current devices that accept standard electronic line-in signal.

Sure, my use case is different than your's, but that port is still useful and it is a feature.

Just make the battery a little thicker to keep things uniform and give us all a full 10 hours of watching videos on a plain / train / etc.

When Apple released the imac without a floppy drive, public opinion definitely wasn't with them.

As far as I can tell, that move is now seen as prescient rather than premature.

It also dropped ADB, SCSI, serial, and parallel ports in favor of USB (1.1).

> Removing the jack will allow them to make phones thinner - if not now, in future iterations.

People keep saying this but the circuitry and the depth was very small. There was even that guy from China who hacked a working 3.5mm jack into the iPhone 7 without changing its shape AT ALL yet Apple cited that they had to remove it to fit in more stuff.

If this isn't something that's useful to remove now, they should wait until it IS useful. It's all very frustrating. I now have my non-techie family asking me what to do with their phone that doesn't have a headphone jack or they're asking for support for their bluetooth headphones which MOST of them still completely SUCK (especially for the average user).

I mean I ultimately agree with you but I think we're still years away.

If the jack removal allows to make thinner phones, then I hope that it will never be removed.

What is advantage of thinner phones? They are uncomfortable for hands and have probably smaller battery. They must be also easier to bend.

Underrated question. How thin do they need to be? Lots of other components need to catch up first

Its a dealbreaker for me. Otherwise, I would have considered the phone. I use my headphone jack nearly every day. I have a nice pair of Shure earphones that I use. I have no desire to get some wireless earphones. The headphone jack is small, durable, and ubiquitous. Removing it is idiotic.

If you work in 'the industry', surely it would not be a big deal to carry around an adapter a long with the other standard tools of your trade? I imagine it'll be about as inconvenient as carrying around ear buds.

Having used the adapters they often break very easily and look like a complete mess. I have been through several on my iPhone.

It is much more likely that I misplace an adapter or break the connector or break the port than it is that I have a problem with a built-in 3.5mm jack. And, similarly, this is why we still use 1/4" jacks and XLR for real audio gear. We could make all this stuff smaller, we could make all this stuff digital, but it'd be more stuff that breaks on us.

I lost my iOS headphones and the little white adapter so I can use the "old" plug. For the past two days I have been running in the gym without listening to absolutely nothing even though I have like 20 headphones in my closet. What a stupid idea.

You can't charge your phone and listen to music through the dongle. This is the deal breaker for me.

"I'm sure you can put up with this massive inconvenience for a job and workflow I have no understanding of or context for but sure do have an opinion on"

Found the SWE!

I say you are committing the same sin exactly.

The audio industry is the most adapter-heavy industry on the planet. I need to carry a bag of adapters, and I'm just a small-time home-recording guy.

Single/double RCA to mono/stereo big/small jack, double mono/stereo big/small jack to stereo/mono small/big jack, the other way around, and more, you name it.

Even if you got a 3.5mm jack, you’d still need adapters, because very little audio equipment uses 3.5mm jacks anyway. Even the most basic stuff only carries 1/4”, RCA or XLR. My headphones do not carry a 3.5mm jack as well.

You might think of committing to a single cable-type everywhere, and being done with it – but if you’ve ever coded in the real world you know how realistic that sounds.

A 3.5-to-1/4 adapter or cable is a difference of kind to a Lightning or USB adapter. One costs me a couple bucks, is electrical, and in a pinch I can even repair it in the field. The other costs me no doubt more (and I say "no doubt" because I can't even find one for an Android device, and that's before we get into compatibility-matrix craziness), is digital, and is a black box to me.

I'm with you, fellow small time home recording guy who needs to carry around adapters. My synth is 3.5mm out, my mixer is XLR / 1/4 inch Mono or Stereo, my piano puts out in mono or stereo 1/4, and on and on and on.

I still think that the hubris to say 'what's one more adaptor' is enormous.

With the iPhone, some combos are no longer possible with any adaptor. For example, audio out and data in. Nobody makes an audio+data dongle, only audio+charge.

man. you're in the audio industry. most people are not. I'm talking the VAST majority of people. So they should cater to you? I think it is not unreasonable to expect the professional to have whatever equipment they need - there are aux adapters for USB C and lightning. They are small. They are inexpensive.

Everybody with a pair of wired headphones would appreciate a standard jack, too.

I agree the fact that a huge majority of headphones are still sold with the standard head phone jack - means the move is too early. Last release they even mentioned the head phone jack as a feature (and it was)..

I'll be sticking with my pixel xl

Then don't buy this phone. Headphones will soon all be either wireless or use USB C or lighting anyway. And if there are headphones that do not, use an adapter.

No one is going to move to usb c or lightning, it offers absolutely no intrinsic advantages over the 3.5 jack and isn’t going away from laptops, desktops, speakers and other electronics. You’ll just buy dongles or Bluetooth.

They end up having an intrinsic advantage when they are the only port present. I want the same jack for my headphones on my phone and laptop. I wish it was a 3.5mm, but since it isn't I'd prefer a lightning or USB C that did.

I won't, but I also don't want this regression to catch on and propagate.

I bought headphones from Sennheiser with lifelong guarantee once, and I plan to use them until I die, just like my parents used their Sennheisers for decades.

There’s many people exactly like that.

There might be many people like that, but given the cost of such headphones they'd have to be a small percentage of the overall population of phone/headphone users.

They don’t have to be super expensive – even 160€ headphones from sennheiser are awesome, and you can get replacement parts and repairs for decades.

Are these the ones with lifelong guarantees that you mentioned and I was responding to?

No, only 24 to 60 months of all failures repaired, for free, without questions asked.

Afterwards you can get all parts replaced for basically nothing, though, or buy the replacement parts and do it yourself (I just replaced the leather pads and cabling on mine)

Hi, member of the vast majority of people here. I don't want to have to carry a dongle.

This was an unnecessary change no matter how you slice it. Just look at the other options: bluetooth or an adapter. With bluetooth you have to pair it and remember to charge the headphones. With an adapter you have to remember to bring it everywhere if you want to listen to a podcast or music or audio book. They say they're making a simple device but they're making my life more complicated. This is one of the few times where I'll get upset over such a simple change, especially since I was planning to buy a Pixel 2 until they announced this.

I'm not an audio professional and I think there's far more like me that you can't ignore.

then use another type of connector for headphones. aux does not have to be the only connector forever. what makes this so special that it is the only connector that people refuse to upgrade? EVERY OTHER CONNECTOR has gone through improvements. new USB standards. new video. everything. why is this any different?

AUX has been replaced, there is a new standard in the industry – but no one uses it for consumer products.

AUX is the only standard used by both consumers and professionals, and losing that would be very annoying.

> then use another type of connector for headphones.

USB-C is a nice connector, and for digital headsets it is pretty nice, but it has some disadvantages (and advantages!) compared to standard headphone jack:

1. Portable devices tend to only have 1, so no listening to music while charging. Common in car scenarios, not all cars have BT audio, and BT audio implementations in cars can vary in quality by large factors.

2. Sound degradation over BT is a problem. Recompressing an already compressed file (e.g. MP3) is going to result in a loss of quality. Since a lot of music is streamed at a bitrate that is "just above noticeable loss", further compression will result in a sound quality decrease.

3. It moves the DAC to outside the phone. This is mostly a good thing, assuming the dongle uses a good DAC, and eventually we'll see third party high quality USB-C DACs (as are already present on desktops for traditional USB)

4. Pure USB-C headphones require more engineering, and they require a type of engineering that headphone companies are not traditionally familiar with. Headphone companies are experts in making high quality analog sound systems, shoehorning the need for digital expertise is needless. (Though more and more headphone companies already have a digital team, it does raise the bar for new entrants.)

5. The AUX jack is pretty damn good. Replacing it with a digital jack isn't really needed. Even with a huge industry push, it'll be many many years before USB-C is everywhere, and if you count the professional markets, it will likely be decades, if ever. (This isn't helped by Apple pushing a competing standard!) Digital means software, which means things can and will go wrong. With an analog plug the quality of the signal is the quality of the physical connection and the wiring going between them, and as a species we have almost over a century of knowledge about analog signals. With digital, ideally quality never degrades, but with firmware/software bugs it can degrade, and to get optimal quality it'll require every device in a chain not have any bugs related to sound quality.

Come to think of it, that's a pretty good Kickstarter idea.

Usb-C to 3.5mm jack, where it isn't a dongle, but rather built into the cable itself.

> EVERY OTHER CONNECTOR has gone through improvements. new USB standards. new video. everything. why is this any different?

Because BT isn't an improvement. It's a worse experience in almost every way.

>EVERY OTHER CONNECTOR has gone through improvements. new USB standards. new video. everything. why is this any different?

Physical improvements have been necessary for USB to increase bandwidth. 3.5mm is a connector for carrying two (sometimes 3) analog signals, and backwards-incompatible changes aren't necessary until we develop a third ear.

What I really don't get is why we want to move the DAC into the headphone. It just makes sense to have a single DAC in the phone, that anything can plug into. Now every set of headphones needs its own DAC to convert that digital bluetooth/USB signal into something you can actually hear.

My unsubstantiated guess: It's phase 1 for some new DRM scheme

DRM audio(or worse, DAC) authentication over a USB-C connection.

Your storage device has to handshake with the playback device. Maybe HDCP over USB?

Nexus 5X owner. I won't buy one of these due to lack of aux output, and I'm not in "the industry".

I'm not in the audio industry. I need the headphone jack.

I'm not against removing the Aux port on principal or anything, but I just don't understand why we're going toward removing seemingly core hardware.

Even on desktops/laptops 3.5mm audio is still used. Why do we need dongles to use core features?

Especially since we're removing an "out" port, now we're reliant on a single port to manage all in and out. I don't want to carry dongles to be able to use my phone normally.

Desktops and laptops have different constraints than phones. Bluetooth uses less power (from the device), makes waterproofing easier, and frees up space for battery. I personally would prefer having a headphone jack on the phone (even though I've never used mine), but I understand why they did what they did.

Bluetooth uses less power... than what? Than a headphone jack?

Yes. It uses less power than driving headphones.

Evidence seems hard to come by on this subject, but a web search yields a lot of results along these lines:

https://www.quora.com/Which-uses-less-battery-for-a-car-audi...

It's hardly a scientific study, but it reinforces my prior belief that aux doesn't inherently require any electricity, while bluetooth is sending information over radio waves which of course has to use electricity.

I'm not sure about the difference when it comes to fancy, high-powered headphones, but my (anecdotal) experience with bluetooth vs. analog certainly supports the idea that bluetooth uses more power. I'd appreciate some citations if you have some other information about this subject.

AUX has to send electricity down the wire to drive the speakers in headphones. The Quora article you link to is weirdly written but confirms this, "the signal is from your phone and your phone uses it's battery to make it." I.e., headphones work by taking electricity from your phone and converting it to sound.

The Quora article also mentions car audio. In a car, Bluetooth uses more power than a 3.5 mm cable plugged into an AUX port on the head unit.

Yes, it is saying the car uses more power for the bluetooth connection, than receiving the AUX in from the phone. Not that the phone uses less power.

> aux doesn't inherently require any electricit

Yes I'm sure those headphone drivers magically shake themselves.

What on earth do you need a scientific study on? There are speakers in the headphones that produce audio. Where do you think the power for that comes from?

While driving the headphones, sure - I'll believe that in certain cases with high-draw headphones. But from a daily power drain perspective, I find that very hard to believe. Bluetooth transmitting is going to be orders of magnitude higher draw than corded earbuds. And when you're not actively listening, standby is still digging Bluetooth further in the hole.

No, overall, you'll be using more power (DAC vs encoding + decoding + DAC). It's just split across two devices you have to charge independently.

Sure, but battery power in the phone is valuable. Modern Bluetooth headphones can play 30-40 hours of music per charge.

its up to the phone how much amplification there is on the analog output. the latest BT specification is pretty low power, but which is lowest will depend. in my own experience, it seems like i get longer battery when using the jack over the BT radio, but i have not tested this rigorously

https://www.quora.com/How-much-power-current-goes-through-an...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_level

https://www.turntablelab.com/pages/headphone-buying-guide-wh...

My audio jack is neither core nor I need a dongle after it's removal. On the go I've got BeatsX, at the desk, I use good headphones which are connected via USB.

It's not core hardware for the vast majority of people.

And it is silly, because it is copying Apple move, but at the same time a different kind of port (USB-C vs Lightning).

So now, instead of a solid standard that has been for decades there's an attempt to have 3 standards.

WTF

>If my 1st generation Pixel were to break today, I'd buy another 1st generation Pixel.

Yup, no way I'm buying new a car just to listen to music while driving.

Instead of buying a new car, you could just use the adaptor that comes with the phone.

and when I lose that adaptor I won't be able to listen to music until I buy a new one. Why are we adding extra steps to an already solved problem?

So you can arrive to your destination with 50% battery.

There's really no argument that paints headphone jack removal as a net positive. Samsung has proved you can waterproof a phone with one (and an SD card!).

Wait, what? Am I understanding you correctly, that you mean the adapter will use more battery?

USB-C allows for analog audio passthrough, unlike Lightning.

The adapter doesn’t allow charging while passing audio through, unless you use yet another adapter.

It's not going to take a genius to start adding an aux-out to usb-c car chargers. I'll have to replace my micro usb car charger anyway.

I think by adapter, he meant USB-C -> Audio jack dongle, not a bluetooth adapter. So battery wouldn't be an issue.

Or a $40 headunit with a USB plug on the front.

I actually bought a $25 bluetooth -> aux adapter that sits in my car like 2 years ago. I get in my car, plug in my phone to charge, bluetooth turns on and auto connects.

Has anyone ever actually been bothered by having an audio jack? Having to plug in an adapter is not futuristic, its annoying.

Well, for some reason the ports on my phones would always kind of stop working at some point unless I held the headphone jack in at just the right angle. It wasn't the headphones because they would work fine on other devices.

> Well, for some reason the ports on my phones would always kind of stop working at some point

Lint. Headphone jacks and lightning ports on every iPhone I've ever owned would always stop working properly after 6 months to a year of being carried around in my pocket. (Sort of) easily fixed with a paperclip to pick the lint out of the port, of course, but annoying and the headphone jack was harder to clean than the lighting/dock connecter port.

I wonder if it's better water resistance after removing the jack, anyone knows that?

I just ended up buying a bunch of cheap Bluetooth audio adapters: https://www.amazon.com/Mpow-Bluetooth-Receiver-Streaming-Han...

About the same price as an overpriced cable from Best Buy.

I am not an audio engineer but I own a pair of bluetooth headphones and 2 devices that I use them with and it's a nightmare as both devices fight over it. It seems to be the USB problem all over but an order of magnitude worse. I can't just flip the cable over, I need to disable bluetooth temporarily on the device that I don't want to pair.

I am not an audio engineer but I own BeatsX and use them across four devices without even thinking about it.

Yeah, I love the direction LG has taken here. Rather than removing the port, they have added a higher quality DAC to make the inbuilt 3.5mm port even better!

So, I use it all the 3.5mm jack even more now. Is the idea behind an adaptor so that the user can use an even higher quality DAC?

I really wish they would reintroduce the Nexus series. The money felt worth it for the phone. Not sure if I can say the same for the Pixel series.

What’s in a name?

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Pixel's goal is to be an iPhone competitor. This is reflected in its pricing and product design. Nexus was for Android enthusiasts who wanted the stock experience. I think in their own words it was "meant to showcase the best of Android."

Plus Nexus was available to buy. I've had several Nexus phones, but Google doesn't want to sell Pixel phones in my country.

The only reason to remove the headphone jack is to sell more dongles and wireless headphones. That's it.

Consumers are not asking for it for the aesthetics. It doesn't make the phone much thinner. It doesn't make the phone easier to manufacture.

After finding cheap Bluetooth headsets on Amazon last about as long as a pair of earbuds, and have no cord, I don't see a problem.

I'm very rough on physical devices, and will go through 4-6 pair of earbuds a year. Because these do not physically connect to the device, they take an order of magnitude less wear, and thus last longer.

I have the same problem of "going through earbuds." I'm not an engineer but I believe it has has to do with feedback when unplugging and plugging in the headphones. I have both a Nexus and an iPhone and have noticed that the new lightning headphones last longer then the same Apple branded earbuds.

The Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile doesn't have a standard for loseless audio, which means that you end up crappilly re-encoding the audio to send it to the headphones. The reference codec (SBC) is particularly crappy. Shipping MP3 or AAC over Bluetooth is not mandatory and may or may not work depending on the sender and receiver.

Ok, fine.

The oldest pair of headphones that I own that work is older than my usage of the Internet. The oldest pair of headphones I own that I still use regularly I bought for college - and that was a long time ago.

Assuming that everyone treats their equipment as though it's disposable is frustrating to me. Some of us use our gear for a very long time, and in the case of something as mundane as a 3.5" jack, expect to be able to.

I take great care of my headphones, because they're such an important part of my life. I use them 90% of every day.

I have never had a pair of headphones last for more than 2 years. Almost every time it's because the cable gets worn out from rubbing against the inside of my pocket.

A lot of people have nicer headphones with removable cables though.

Yeah, I had a pair of Bose noise cancelling headphones like that.

The left speaker stopped working after 6 months of every day normal use.

I've never had a pair of Bluetooth headsets that haven't had connection issues with my Pixel. This is especially true of the cheap Sony pair I tried, but also true of the nicer Macaws and Here Ones. Even my car's head unit has a new bug with Oreo where it connects/"plays" but is muted until I reconnect.

Interesting. I've never had bluetooth issues with pixel. My current headphones (Bose QC35, but not the fancy assistant ones) work amazingly, and even my older headphones (ancient LG Tones) worked great. My only complaints with my 5X were occasional stutter, and that was gone with Pixel.

There might be something wrong with your Pixel. I use a fairly inexpensive set of Jabra headphones connected via Bluetooth to an old iPhone 5C that I use as an iPod and it has worked flawlessly for many years now.

What about water-proofing? That's the best reason I've heard.

What about it? Samsung solved it.

The LG V30 and Galaxy S8 have a headphone jack AND have IP68 waterproofing, versus the Pixel 2's (and iPhone 7/8) IP67.

Ah, very nice. Too bad a nice piece of open hardware is going proprietary.

As I understand it, they aren't waterproof when you have headphones plugged in. This is important to know if you like to listen to music or podcasts when you swim.

When they mentioned the headphone jack being removed, I thought it was a joke. I have a 6S now and was considering getting the Pixel, in part because of the headphone jack and also for the more "open" ecosystem of Android (and things not proprietary-Apple). But now it's basically the same, so there's less motivation for me there. I just think Google could've swooped in and gotten the people who still appreciate headphone jacks.

Interesting round of new devices this year around, I wonder what the consensus is on who did it better, Google or Apple?

Pretty much have to stick to iPhone 6S for the rest of my life... So disappointing to see possibly THE ONLY universal port - the 3.5mm aux - be removed from devices before our eyes. I wonder what the adoption rate on Bluetooth / Lightning / USBC headphones is. Can't imagine more than 5% or so.

Bluetooth headphone sales passed wired headphone sales last year, even before the iPhone 7 was announced [1]. I have to believe it’s only gone up from there.

1. https://qz.com/745108/wireless-headphone-sales-just-hit-a-ti...

It looks great, I hope Google can keep up the shipments. I really like the white and black XL, and the orange button really reminds me of Dieter Rams calculator from Braun.

Is there a way to remove the auto-scanning and microphone listening features? I have an Iphone so I don't know. Every phone does this now I know. It just seems weird that it is brought up so non-chalantly in the article. Like I guess we are just okay with this now.

On the original Pixel there is, I assume it would be the case with the new one.

Seems pretty nice.

I may consider the Pixel 2 XL over the IPhone X in a few months, but will definitely need to see some reviews of both first.

The removal of the headphone jack is devastating. I listen to music nearly every waking moment, so I am unsure about moving to Bluetooth whenever I use headphones.

It comes with a 3.5mm dongle in the box.

Just do what everyone else does and leave it attached to your headphones.

How do you leave it attached when you plug it into your laptop and how do you listen while you charge? Great that it works for you, but having another dongle that you can lose, and have to attach and remove throughout the day is a real pain for others.

I wish Google would do a mid range Pixel, or call it something else if they want, just something like a follow up to the 5x.

I think this is what the Moto X4 is.

https://www.blog.google/products/project-fi/project-fi-welco...

The Moto X4 won’t get Android Preview Releases, and is therefore useless for developers.

I’m a student, but I also develop apps. Even with the emulator, there are still bugs you can only find on real devices.

So now every time a new Android version comes out, I’ll either end up with a month where my apps are broken and I’m slowly working on fixing them (so ~10% of the time the app is unusable), or I have to shell out north of $900 just to get the cheapest still supported Pixel in Germany.

This is a good perspective I hadn't considered.

Additionally, my largest concern with no mid-range device supporting preview releases is that the mid-range phone experience is going to decline rapidly (slow downs, resource bloat) until the only viable equivalent experience to what we have now is on a $1000+ phone. When phones were sub $500, I could get a new one every two years pretty reasonably. Or if I didn't like my phone, it wasn't a huge hit to upgrade early. But now I'm paying more than 2x what I paid when I started using Android phones. At that price point, Apple starts to look real good.

Does it get updates as fast as a Nexus/Pixel?

Yes it appears so

> Like all Android One phones, Android One moto x4 runs a pure Android experience .... You’ll also get access to the latest updates from Android, such as Android Oreo before the end of the year. Android One moto x4 will be among the first to receive an upgrade to Android P.

Moto X Style got Nougat over a year from Nougats release, and it won't get Oreo at all.

After Lenovo took over Motorola updates went downhill.

Before I bought 5X I was hoping to buy an Android One phone. But it seemed impossible in my corner of Europe. I'm glad that it is changing.

Provided Moto does the updates....it is up to them.

I think they're aiming at the 'Android One' devices to replace the Nexus ones. The Mi A1 might be your friend.

Guess it’s for many a minor thing but why can’t the phone just be symmetric (top and bottom bezel have the same height)?

The Xiaomi mi mix did exactly that.

The top of the phone’s bezel contains a camera, and the bottom doesn’t. Why do you want a larger chin with wasted space? The pixel 1’s chin always bothered me for that reason.

Either you make a phone clearly asymmetric (eg new iPhone X) or clearly symmetric. The new Pixel tries to have a symmetric design but fails slighlty (top and bottom bezel have similar heights and form language but are still asymmetric).

I kind of like the chin on the Pixel 1 because I know I have another option to grab the phone without touching the touchscreen.

They sure look symmetric in the pictures, though?

Looks great for $849. The camera is amazing with a 98 Dxo score. Also, the free unlimited Photo and Video storage is a great deal.

Only conern is the inventory, they make 100 pieces and do marketing for a million, I don't understand the logic, smh.

Is that a broken link in a major Google product release blog post? Gasp! Screenshot for posterity: https://i.imgur.com/r7TpRQY.png

No headphone jack, twice as much as my nexus 5x. You lost me and my family as a customer for both phones and service.

The € price is ridiculously higher than the $ price. The smaller pixel costs 799€ which includes 19% of taxes (in Germany), the 649$ does not contain taxes. Still that's a difference of 150€ on top of my hat. There's also a fee which manufactures have to pay (GEMA which collects money for artists and so on). Guess they also include that Google Home Mini in this price which is kinda dumb. Not going to buy with such a huge price bump

If that includes 19% taxes, than its a €30 or 4% difference on the pretax pricing. Not very big really. Especially, if there's other fees they pay to sell the product in your territory.

How did you calculate that? Without taxes it’s 671€, which is 789$. So the difference is 190$

I don't know how you came to 30 EUR difference.

    649 USD = 552 EUR
    552 * 1.2 (20% VAT) = 662
    799 - 662 = 137

The difference is 137 EUR (161 USD). That's quite a coin.

It‘s worse than the iPhone (699$ vs 799€), but unfortunately it’s just the continuation of the trend. Over the last years electronics steadily got more expensive in Europe compared to US. Before that is was often 1$ == 1€, which was not that far off after taxes.

However another thing to consider in pricing ist that android phone prices will fall pretty quickly over the year anyway, up to about 50%. We’ll see how it will be for the Pixel2

The Pixels price at least in the Google store has been pretty steady afaik. A buddy of mine one thing to consider for this price bump is the CE certificate which companies have to get for their devices. Still weird that Samsung and other don't seem to have these problems.

Here in Canada, the Pixel 2 starts at 900$ and the 2 XL at 1 159,00$.

This phone is as expensive as the latest iOS phones, at least ball-park wise. Yet, Google only supports its hardware for two years, while Apple does so for four, at least (still too little, but at least twice as good). I am using a "bricked" Nexus 5 right now and need to update because I get no more updates. No more Google phones for me, unless they cost half or less than the current iPhones.

I'm very disappointed they didn't drop the price of the 1st generation Pixels more. There was a 1 day sale on the Pixels earlier this year (that included a free Google Home device) that was much lower than what they have dropped them to today. My wife's Nexus 5 recently died. I had hoped to get her the 1st generation Pixel to replace it, but I'll probably get her the iPhone SE instead.

I bought a second-hand Pixel on Ebay. The seller sent it complete with boxes, manual, etc. After 6 months it received an OTA and now is a 600 dollars paperweight. They tell me that since the phone, which is not reported stolen, is assigned to another account they cannot do anything about it. I have contacted the seller but she won't respond. Be aware of this.

Have you tried sideloading an update manually? It's really easy and quick to do.

https://developers.google.com/android/ota

I will try it. I tried to get into download mode and recovery, and no luck.

Oh dear. And I'm already seeing stock issues also. Pre-orders for the 2 XL in B&W just went "out of stock".

Android Nougat still 17.8% on the market.

I've been developing Android apps since 2011, and Android development is getting worse. The support I have to deal with goes back to Android 4.4 which is like 4-5 years ago. And the phones in the market here in Asia are still mostly on 6.0. I am no longer getting excited for Android releases anymore.

Very underwhelming.

The camera solution they adopted is technologically inferior to the (much more common) dual wide/tele lens solution, since the former offers only some of the advantages of the latter (e.g. bokeh: yes, 2X optical zoom: no).

And they gave that guy who retrofitted a headphone jack in the iPhone 7 a reason to come out with a new video.

I love my Nexus 5X, but the high end phone market has no appeal to me. I don't need a phone that can do 5% more and cost 150% more. I'm not sure why anyone needs a phone like this really.

Perhaps the Nexus 5X is only good because it is basically an LG G phone.

I wonder if Nexus 6 users would move to the Pixel XL2? I love that it has stereo front-facing speakers with the full 6 inch screen, but as Darth Shamu said: "I find your lack of a headphone jack disturbing"

No wireless charging?

Wireless charging can't provide enough amps to actually charge newer Google devices. Nexus phones had them through the 5/7, but lost them with the 5x/6p.

My Nexus 5 wall charger can't even push enough amps to charge my Nexus 5x.

Edit: Does the new iPhone use the same wireless chargers as older phones? Can you use it with those Ikea lamps with wireless charging? Or does it use a different/less lossy transmission method?

The new iPhones would like to file a disagreement with you.

Sure, it's slower than a quick charger, but in a lot of cases you don't need a quick charge.

Wait, then how is Apple able to use wireless charging for the new iPhone 8s and X?

I wirelessly fast-charge my Samsung S7; I'm not sure where you got the idea that it doesn't work.

Is your phone getting super hot while wireless charging?

Not any hotter than my Nexus 5 did. It gets about as hot wirelessly charging as wired.

No, I've been using wireless charging every day for nearly two years (Samsung s6)

Not at all. I even leave it in its case.

In my experience with Nexus (4&6P), it always had microphone issues (person on the other side not being able hear you for first few minutes); since I always used Bluetooth headset for calls; I didn’t bother much.

But I’ve seen some good support cases from Google for nexus, my friend exchanged his nexus 4 after a year out of warranty by sending to US though; it was not bought from Google in India. I hope the support would be better for Pixel series of devices now that they own the manufacturer responsibility.

how can an adjacent pixel be used to calculate depth map. Are they telling me the sensor and their algorithm is that sensitive to generate none binary depth info from adjacent pixels?

Thanks Google. Even with your $400 trade in refund, I think I'll stick with my original Google Pixel XL and forego marginal improvements and no 3.5mm jack on the phone itself. Forget your USB-C->3.5mm plugin... it's a pathetic attempt to move us away from wired to wireless headphones which never will work as well as 3.5 mm headsets/buds.

In fact, if you don't shape up in a year or so by the time I will upgrade, I'm probably going back to Moto, or getting a Samsung...

I think wireless will eventually work as well, but that future is not now (or close to it). This would have to improve first: Sound quality, battery life (both for the phone, as bluetooth needs to be on, and headphone) and price

When they make bluetooth earbuds that have same quality sound as Etymotic ER4's, I'll switch then... the likelihood of that happening is virtually nil. reply

Motion photos - if I'm understanding correctly this is basically "motion stills"[1] integrated into the main camera app. It takes three seconds of video, but no photo with it like in live photos.

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

My pixel hardware has been a disappointment. The vibrator actually broke off from the phone and it now just makes a rattling noise as it bounces around inside the phone. The screen scratches easily. Bluetooth pops and crackles.

I couldn't have imagined buying a second pixel, so removing the saving grace, the headphone jack, almost seems gratuitous.

> The screen scratches easily.

This is an understatement. After I got a few scratches on my Galaxy S4 from putting my phone in my pocket with keys, I made sure I would never make that mistake again. I was extra-cautious with my Pixel, but after less than a year of ownership it's is already the most scratched-up phone I've ever had.

I'd love to buy a Pixel phone (1 or 2) but Google doesn't sell where I live just South of the border.

Bit of a side conversation here, but is anyone else jaded that the only real options are iOS and Android?

$649/$849

it looks like a nice phone, but i have a hard time understanding how it's 5-7x better than my xiaomi.

Well, for a device that is basically the primary device for the vast majority of people to conduct their lives, that are expected to have useful lives of about 2 years, i.e. ~750 days, $400-$500 more may absolutely be worth even a slight improvement, as long as you can afford it.

> $400-$500 more may absolutely be worth even a slight improvement, as long as you can afford it.

The problem is, the Nexus series showed us that Google can release a high quality phone at 1/2 the price of the rest of the market, and keep it updated and running fast for years.

There is obviously more money in selling phones at market rate.

The problem lies with the definition of market rate. I cannot justify spending €300 more than a S8+. I've had many Nexus devices and always felt like I was getting a discount in exchange for being a beta tester. Then Google raised their pricing to match the iPhone's, yet I don't see much improvement in quality control (both hardware and software) or in operations (they're still incapable of a worldwide launch or proper stock management, despite volumes that are a fraction of their competitors').

I don't even understand how the Pixel 1 was fairly successful in the US (subsidized phones and project Fi maybe?)

Nexus phones were probably subsidized to promote Android ecosystem.

I think Nexus phones sacrificed in the materials department to hit their price point. Other phones from Chinese manufacturers had similar specs, so it isn't impossible.

Custom tooling for complex industrial design is expensive, and the Nexus series tended to re-use existing phone designs wholesale, which also likely cut costs.

Since I put a case on my phone anyway, I don't particularly care about the industrial design. I also understand I am not in the majority there. But a $500 premium is a lot...

I paid $200 for my Nexus 5x. Not looking forward to paying 2.5x to retain the same phone-utility in the future.

My Nexus 5x runs like crap, very slow and closes apps when I do 2-3 things at a time (music, gym app, browser for example). I tried everything, reinstalled 7.X system, installed 8.0 on launch, removed most of the apps... Btw, removing facebook and messenger apps helped very much. Now I use messenger lite and don`t use facebook on the phone (thanks, Google :) ). Was waiting for new phone releases, but maybe for the first time I will try an iPhone, I just hope iOS is not that limited and bad any more.

Its DX0 score is 98

Which is meaningless. They have declared themselves the standard but that number doesn’t actually measure anything.

I mean the fact they sell cameras alone means they’re not unbiased.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/09/22/dxo-ratings-are...

Wait for real camera reviews.

John Gruber's stance on DXO is utterly meaningless, and it's farcical that you seriously cite it.

Measuring the technical capabilities of an imaging device is patently obvious and justifiable. From dynamic range to optical and electronic resolution, noise at different light levels, etc. You can question their methodology, but saying that it "doesn't measure anything" is nonsense, and citing a guy who laughably claims that you can't measure the "art" is uproarious.

Gruber has less than zero legitimacy in this discussion, and his sole motivating intention is defend Apple in all facets.

Gruber's conclusion is correct, even though his reasoning is not. DxO scores are crap, because they do not adequately control scenes in their comparisons.

Most DSLR reviews have a consistent scene that pushes the envelope of what a sensor can capture, and all cameras are benchmarked against that scene. Here's an example: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d7500-review-speed-an...

I agree entirely -- their methodology is sloppy and what they do have is poorly documented. I certainly don't hold their scores supreme or canonical. Complaining that it can be done with more rigor and consistency, and with more objective openness, is valid. Gruber's hand-wavy art complaint is not.

Did you read that blog post? He was criticizing DXO for giving the iPhone 8 the highest score ever, not defending Apple. How do you objectively measure bokeh effects? And if you're so defensive of DXO, can you explain why their photo subscores range from 51-89 but that adds up to a 96?

Should we run it through a machine learning algorithm to see how the hell any of the "component" score adds up to a 96 overall score? And why only those components, but not others? I want my dog nose filter score in too.

Snake oil is what that number is.

Gruber had previously shat on DXO when the iPhone was bested by the Pixel. He took this opportunity to say "Oh btw the iPhone is now best...but it's still horseshit look at how unbiased I am".

And I'm not "defensive" of DXO scores any more than I'm defensive of dpreview. DXO analyzes a variety of real world technical capabilities of imaging systems -- most certainly in an imperfect way and needing more rigor -- but to call it "horseshit", or to ridiculously claim that it measures nothing, is specious.

> Measuring the technical capabilities of an imaging device is patently obvious and justifiable. From dynamic range to optical and electronic resolution, noise at different light levels, etc.

I agree completely. DPreview and other sites do that.

> but saying that it "doesn't measure anything" is nonsense

Then please tell me what that one final number measures. How do they get to it? It doesn’t seem objective at all.

Other camera review sites give a bunch of objective measurements then a subjective opinion about how the camera related to others.

DXO wants you to think their arbitrary number is scientifically rigorous.

> and citing a guy who laughably claims that you can't measure the "art" is uproarious.

Are you claiming you can measure art? That’s what DXO seems to do. Having a single number final score means that if camera A had a higher score than B then it must take objectively better pictures.

Or we have to admit their score is subjective.

> Gruber has less than zero legitimacy in this discussion

Why?

> and his sole motivating intention is defend Apple in all facets.

He’s complaining that the iPhone had the highest score ever. If you were right he would be writing about how DXO said it was the best camera ever, not that DXO is a sham.

If you can’t look past Gruber’s byline I imagine there are other articles online about DXO and their questionable practices. I’ve seen others before, this was the first Google turned up.

"Why?"

Because Gruber is a biased individual whose professional existence is to pander to a narrow crowd. He has nothing broadly interesting to say about cross-cutting concerns.

"He’s complaining that the iPhone had the highest score ever."

He previously dismissed DXO when the iPhone was beat. Now he wants to simultaneously crow about the iPhone taking the victory while claiming that he totally doesn't care about it anyways. People buy this teenager level nonsense?

"Are you claiming you can measure art?"

This is absurd. DXO is a broad, generalist, imperfect measure of imaging devices, and paradoxically there is broad agreement that the devices that do really well generally are capable of the best photos.

But you can take a great photo with a pinhole camera, from an artistic perspective. Does this make a pinhole camera the best? That is nonsensical.

Don't believe DXO. Don't believe Consumer Reports. Don't believe metacritic or star reviews or RT or whatever. But to claim it measures nothing, or to cite some biased player, is not credible.

> He previously dismissed DXO when the iPhone was beat. Now he wants to simultaneously crow about the iPhone taking the victory while claiming that he totally doesn't care about it anyways.

He wasn’t crowing about it. He was complaining people were taking about DXO scores at all because they’re a sham.

It might be meaningless but given the Pixel/Google's recent push with image based ai I would not be dismissive of the phone's camera prowess

I don’t doubt the camera is good.

The dual pixel thing sounds a little iffy to me in that I wonder if it can really duplicate the portrait mode of the iPhone.

I’ll be very interested to see REAL reviews.

DXO’s numbers mean as much as a five star system. They’re not quantitative but want to be treated like they are.

I own a Pixel but this DxO stuff is really dodgy.

In the portrait pic of the girl, the difference between the Pixel 2 [1] and the iPhone 8 [2] is night and day, with the Pixel 2 looking like shit. She so pale, and the fake bokeh looks like a 5 year old smearing all over, it's simply not pleasant to look at.

And the whole push on adding the fake bokeh """scores""" to justify changing the scores so every fucking newly released device gets the highest score is stupid. Thanks for scoring the bokeh, if I had really wanted bokeh, I would have pulled out my bulky mirrorless camera.

I bet when a new phone comes out and they pay the DxO guy enough, they will add a dog nose filter score to make the new camera score the highest.

1: A https://cdn.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ref1_Boke...

B https://cdn.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ref2_Lowl...

2: A https://cdn.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ref1_Boke...

B https://cdn.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ref2_Lowl...

Uhhhhhhhhhhh are you serious? The iPhone 8 results look SO much better...

Exactly, the iPhone 8 pictures look so much better. You don't have to quantify shit to realize this.

It's post-processing, not the quality of the sensor, photo from iPhone have warmer color balance.

If you compare the right eyebrow, you will see that [1] have more details, than [2]

That might be true, but I'd say if they say their expertise is to have artificial intelligence, then by that I'd like to have the picture that is the most pleasant to look at. By that benchmark, and I can confidently say that 1 is definitely not more pleasant to look at than 2.

Remember, the picture is always a depiction of what our eyes see, and that our eyes see is only a part of the reality. My eyes don't see bokehs. My eyes don't focus the same way the camera does. My eyes don't see in 3500K or 6500K or whatever the hell that is. My eyes don't care how many strands of hair there are in her eyebrows and how detailed they are. My eyes don't see in black and white, either. Yet those are what you see in pictures. Focusing on the little detail "accuracy" and forget what it really matters at the end is dangerous.

Weird that you spend virtually the entirety of your post comparing the "bokeh" score when that is one area where the pixel 2 scores significantly worse than the iPhone 8.

Another one of your posts, talking about the white temperature, etc, is just surreal, and I dare you say that you are utterly clueless on this subject.

I was really looking forward to this phone. Lack of headphone jack = instant dealbreaker.

As creepy as the increased invasion of privacy on the Google phones, the most disturbing is the Google Clips camera. That's literally how the movie "The Circle" started (although it's a pretty bad movie).

> Though there is some bad news this year: the headphone jack is gone.

Expected, but it still stings. I guess I'll look elsewhere for my replacement for trusty Nexus 5X. Speaking of which, how's Pixel?

Great software and camera. But having seen pixel 2 xl, I find the bezel on my pixel really intolerable.

I don't really mind bezel; it's the lack of headphone jack that I take exception on.

I really really hope they have fixed their supply issues this time around. I live in the 4th largest city in North America and I was unable to get a Pixel within a reasonable amount of time.

Same. I waited for weeks for the Pixel to be in stock last year. I finally bought an iPhone 7 Plus after being all android since the T-Mobile G1. I love it, and it shipped in like 24 hours! I was blown away that google couldn’t provide a phone to those that wanted it. (Note: I wanted to max out storage and I wanted the XL. There was stock on models with the least storage.)

I really hope they can keep these in stock.

An LG G6 for $350 more†.

+ Software updates

+ Camera software (probably)

+ Squeezing

- Dual camera

Did I miss anything?

†Yes it's unfair to compare speculated launch price to current store price but that's the decision I'm making right now.

Snapdragon 835 instead of 821, 64GB base instead of 32GB, OLED w/ always-on display instead of IPS

Good points. I had assumed base storage would be 32GB for all time, that recent phones would use the same processor, and that LGs OLED investments had trickled down to their own devices. Times, they are a changing.

>Did I miss anything?

3 years of OS and Security updates. The LG will be lucky to get 1.

Unlimited full resolution photo and movie backups.

the rounded corners on the pixel 2 xl just looks ugly... dont u guys think...

Also the huge bezels in pixel 2...

seems like these announcements just boil down to nothing...

at least those headphones could have been individual device without a need for pixel or if it needs to be paired then at least it should have been around $50

it is basically just a total waste of time, it was fun to listen to those new music in the event though...

Does anyone know how consistent the squeeze feature is on phones that have already implemented such?

At least with latest Android OS you can replace the Assistant with other options/apps.

Buy OnePlus phones instead of expensive crap. OnePlus is cheap, reliable and replaceable.

Dropped my Pixel 1 in a toilet. Glad the Pixel 2 is water proof. Preordered!

Thanks but no thanks. I love my Nexus 6P a lot (still)!

Same boat. It's still a fantastic phone and meets all the demands and then some! The the only reason to switch might be the battery life. Still not a serious enough issue to switch, yet.

u should b super lucky they are still alive, mine just crapped out and kept showing the image of the people who screwed it and then died.

There is no privacy with those devices.

The pixel 2 was made by HTC and pixel 2xl was made by LG.

Two manufacturers for what should be the same phone.

There are no words.

the smaller one looks like a stictly worse oneplus5

How could they neglect wireless charging and the headphone jack?

I currently have a Nexus 6P. It was the flagship before the Pixel series. I use Bluetooth headphones daily on my commute using the Philly subway system (SEPTA). In center city and around suburban station I experience sound cutting in and out all the time on two different wireless bluetooth headphones. It seems to work just fine in my apartment when I don't need it but is never reliable when there's a ton of other signals around.

I can't stand the current state of the industry. New phones cost more but offer little in terms of value. They also look like trash. Who actually thought it was a good idea to make a flag ship phone have a two tone plastic case?

I'll be sticking to my aluminum cased 6P for a while. I'm also likely to get it again when this one finally dies. There's absolutely nothing that makes me want a Samsung or a Google branded Android phone right now.

What headphones do you have? I've found that your experience varies wildly depending on your headset. Can you try a different set of Bluetooth headphones and report back?

One of each of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y2YYS2L/ref=oh_aui_deta... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AWIPITS/ref=oh_aui_deta...

They work just fine at the gym, at home, and at work but when in a crowded public space the cutting in/out is consistent.

I had every Nexus through to the 6P, and then moved to a Galaxy S8. With the Pixel Google has been overcome with profound me-tooism trying to ape every choice of Apple. It's humorous that the new iPhone offers wireless charging.

Coincidentally I just caught their cringe-inducing intro of the new Google Clips that captures live photos. Groan.

I can't bring myself to buy a Samsung device. The bloatware is cringy as fuck. Maaaybe if it was unlocked right away and someone on XDA put together a Google only rom but short of that I'll never willingly buy a Samsung device.

For sure, Samsung's desperate attempt to fork off users is annoying. From Bixby to their own little app store, to duplicate versions of all of the basics like the clock and the calculator. But overall my experience has been extremely positive.

And it's only fair to note that what we know as the pure Android was Google essentially sweeping in all of the cool things from Samsung, HTC and others.

I don't agree with that assessment. I've been using Android since 1.0.

The default experience is simply just that. No frills. No skins. Just Google apps. What exactly did they pull from HTC or Samsung that is now in the Gapps package?

Android comes without Google apps as well. Gapps package installs Gmail, Maps, etc but not much in the way of frills.

I've used maybe 15 Android devices since it's inception. HTC, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, and "Google" (two Nexus devices and 1 Pixel).

If I had to choose I would take stock Android in terms of aesthetics, ten times out of ten.

However, over time Android has indeed taken MANY features from HTC, Motrola, Samsung and other OEMS and added them to vanilla android.

I know I'm forgetting a lot more but off the top of my head:

- multi-app support - always on displays - readibility - night mode - smart gestures - Stamina mode which is now Doze on stock Android - voice commands - even things like Google Now (minus the smart assistant) to the left of the home screen, were actually provided earlier by OEMs (as a method to differentiate) like HTC's blinkfeed - heck, the first stock Android devices, didn't even have smart dialers (HTC added that as part of their Sense dialer)

Samsung's Touchwiz looked terrible until the most recent incarnation (it's now called the Samsung Experience) and it did contain some bloat, namely with duplicate apps but it's always been much more feature packed than stock Android. Some of the features were not so great but a lot of them were and eventually Google copied them. You can say the same to a lesser extent for HTC, Sony and Motorola.

Yea... but how much of those features are really from HTC, Samsung, et al and not duplicates of features from iOS or even custom roms from XDA?

None of them? There is absolutely no question that these vendors tried some novel things that were later integrated within Android.

And if we need to talk about experience, I started with a G1 on Android 1.0, then G2, HTC Hero, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Glide, GS2, Nexus 4, GS3, Nexus 5, one other HTC that I can't remember the name of, Nexus 6p, GS8. I've tried a lot of devices, and I've rocked them all.

And through those with unique vendor additions, it was always a mix of ups and downs, and later to see many of those innovations being swept into the Android base.

I also question any claim that Android is "without frills, without skins". Android is 98% frills. With each iteration we have a new laundry list of frills. At the same time the core OS took until about version 7 to finally get basics like smooth scrolling down (something that vendor skins got to a much better state much earlier).

I used the 6P for a fair amount of time, but I think the Nexus 5 was still the high water mark for Nexus phones. Cheap, great hardware, durable, and perfectly sized.

That said, I would have kept my 6P if I had known how disappointing the Pixel 1 was going to be. Double the price without any useful changes just feels like a rip off. No chance I'm going to throw more money at Google for another mediocre product.

This. So much this. I had the Nexus 5 as well.

The 6P offers me:

- Aluminum case.

- 1080p screen

- 4K video recording

- Slow-motion video recording @ 1080p 240fps

- 12.3MP single shot

- A good enough CPU for lag free web browsing, spotify, snapchat, instagram, etc.

Why the fuck would I pay $700+ for a new phone for marginal improvements???

Google just dropped support for the Nexus 5X and 6P, for unknown reasons. I hate it. Now I have no options left. (I need a device that will get android developer previews)

I'm so done with Google. This would be like Microsoft ending security updates for Windows 8.1 after only two years.

By the way you can get a custom rom from here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-6p/development

Yes, but I need to support apps.

Some of my users are on Pixel devices and will get Android 9.0 the day it is released, while in best case, the source code only drops a week later. So assuming it takes me 10 minutes to fix all bugs, my app might crash for a week.

Realistically, my apps would be at least a month unusable.

I'm french, i would like Google to take my money.

Why would anyone pay money to buy a phone from an advertising company?

Yeah, I feel Google should re-invent itself and make some bold decisions to move out of it's ad business. They seem very capable of making excellent products. Will their shareholders be up in arms if they got out slowly from this add business?

Google Apps, Android, Pixel etc are really excellent products.

Never gonna happen. Google can do the things it does because it holds monopoly pricing in internet advertising. The freedom from competition and massive capitalization is what allows it to invest in blue sky projects.

Why on earth would they want to get out of the ad business?

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