Comment by MattyMc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MattyMc | Hacker News Reader

I was so ready to jump into a Pixel (long time iPhone user). I thought on-board voice recognition would be a game changer. This had to be the most lacklustre event I've seen:

  - Nothing on video.  

  - No details on the processor (or most hardware specs).  

  - Nothing on the forward-facing camera.  

  - Nothing on battery life.

It honestly felt like Google watched Apple's presentation and then cut 2/3 of what they had planned.

Moreover, and this is purely a marketing-spin thing, the event had no energy. There were some super cool demos, and they were received with pure silence from the crowd. It was very weird.

Let's be realistic, though... the type of thing that would be a game-changer and make a big buzz at an event like this just doesn't exist right now. Phones have gotten so advanced that the "next big thing" needs to be paradigm-shifting and completely redefining in order to get a sizable reaction.

Everything else right now is just iterative.

I really thought on-board voice would be a game changer. Not having to do the round-trip to the cloud to determine intent, and providing a conversational interface (i.e. "now send this to Pam") I thought would generate that buzz. It sure seemed to when Google announced that they had reduced this ML model to ~500mb so it could run locally.

In contrast, Apple's A13 chip's contribution to extend battery power is incredibly impressive to me.

Maybe they assumed that you had already read about all of those things from the months of leaks that lead the event.

Maybe. I don't recall seeing leaks on picture/video specs or battery life.

When you build an event like this, I think you put your best foot forward. Google did, it just wasn't terribly impressive IMO.

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