The Pixel 6, Google’s Take on an ‘Ultra High End’ Phone | Hacker News Reader

The Pixel 6, Google’s Take on an ‘Ultra High End’ Phone

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18 pointstotaldude8714 comments

Rather than a pithy, "I give this 2 generations" comment, I'll talk about why I can't see myself buying a phone by Google.

They don't support phones as long as Apple does. They don't have a clear focus on usability or compatibility. Every generation is different in a unique way. Put the last three generations of Pixels side by side, and you would be justified in claiming that they were designed by three different product teams, which they might very well be.

Lastly, it feels like the Pixel range is a showpiece for Google rather than an honest effort in making a phone or phone series that lasts the test of time. Be it Soli or the new TPU, it feels more like showboating than something driven by user demand. Not to mention the price inexorably increases every year.

Hopefully this being Google's SOC they will no longer have to rely on third parties(Qualcomm) driver/updates for major OS updates and therefore be able to better update their hardware. I would like to point out that the Pixel 5 was cheaper than the Pixel 4...there was no year over year increase in price there.

It is my opinion that the Pixel phones really did not look that much dissimilar as you claim them to be. Not that that even matters

> They don't support phones as long as Apple does

Maybe you missed it, but this news is mostly about the single thing that's likely going to allow Google to support phones longer: finally ditching Qualcomm for a custom SoC that Google has more control over.

There have been many changes to Android that ostensibly would allow Google and the manufacturers to support older hardware longer. All for naught, because nothing talks louder than the profit motive. They want to sell people upgrades by leaving the old phones unable to upgrade.

Also, quite frankly I have trouble believing that a multi-trillion dollar company cannot negotiate with a chip supplier to have support or be able to write drivers themselves, lacking a HAL as Android does.

Qualcomm wants to sell hardware upgrades. Google wants people to use its services. Completely different motivations.

Most of all Google wants to avoid a competitor taking a large majority share of the phone market and using that control to deprecate the web in favor of a curated native app store, putting a gatekeeper in between Google and its customers. That was the original motivation for Android in the first place and it hasn't really changed.

Samsung and Huawei have their own chipsets but not an appreciable longer device lifecycle. I'm not holding my breath here.

Making their money predominantly from hardware sales, the motivations of Samsung and Huawei are similar to Qualcomm, not Google.

We're here discussing a hardware launch from Google, with a rumored selling price of $1000+. In what way does that not imply that Google wants to make money from hardware sales?

The key word is predominantly. As long as Google makes dramatically more money from platform-agnostic services than hardware, which will still be true even if this device is much more successful than expected, its motivations will be very different from those of hardware companies.

Currently on Pixel 5, a few months in. So far so good.

I moved from my Pixel 4 when a defect ("torn" battery cable after "normal" drop while encased) triggered a cascade of failures - repair from iFixit unexpectedly resulted in 0 water-sealing - then water resulted in permadeath. Was always disappointed in their "SOLI" radar gesture implementation - it 80% of the time would do something I did not want it to do - overall that feature was a fail IMO.

Pixel 3 was ok for my experience.

I barely recall moving from my Pixel 2 when a defect motivated that move as well. Rebooting randomly or something.

I guess this is where Apple and Google are so radically differ in their messaging.

Why do I as a customer care about Tensor or TPU, what does it give me or more clearly, why should I care?

Apple's messaging is about longer battery life or instant start or whatever, things I as a user see and notice.

How does having a Tensor or whatever core affect me in day to day useage?

I'm not getting that message clearly from skimming the article, other than "We have Tensor"

> Apple's messaging is about longer battery life

Which to be honest is almost always 3-4 years behind even the Android phones that cost ¼ or less than the cheapest iPhones.

iPhones aren’t starting instantly either. Not even close.

I’m fan of neither and I use an iPhone.

This is most likely an attempt of trying to gain control from the leakers and it's mostly nerds who care about leaked phones, everyone else just goes into the store and buys what's available. This is unlikely to be their mainstream marketing strategy.

From homepage of apple.com:

"iPad Pro: Supercharged by the Apple M1 chip."

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