by exacube on 10/15/19, 3:42 PM with 139 comments
by jtokoph on 10/15/19, 4:10 PM
I’m still using an iPhone 6s which has gotten its last major iOS update after owning the device for 5 years. It will continue getting security fixes for another year until iOS 14 is released.
iPhones last twice as long as Pixel devices, which is a big plus when you must have a secure phone.
by tecleandor on 10/15/19, 4:21 PM
"²Not functional in Japan and may not be functional in other Pixel countries. Motion Sense is functional in the US, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan and most European countries."
"Check that you’re in a country where Motion Sense is approved. Currently, Motion Sense will work in the US, Canada, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, and most European countries. If you travel to a country where it’s not approved, it won’t work."
What's up with that? Is there any regulation against moving your hands in front of the phone?
The only thing I can think of is the "kind of" mandatory shutter noise when using the camera on Japanese phones, to avoid up-skirt photos and the like. An I say "kind of", because depending on who I've talked to, some say it's a mandatory law, some others say it's a good faith agreement between manufacturers.
Anyway, maybe, if the hand waving stuff is detected using the camera, might be problematic on some countries as in Japan.
by johnmaguire2013 on 10/15/19, 3:51 PM
I'm also incredibly excited about the face unlocking feature -- I owned a Pixel Xs for about a week before returning it, and face unlock was my absolute favorite feature. It's very seamless especially compared to fingerprint unlock.
As an aside, Marc Levoy, who spoke at the Google event today is a Professor Emeritus at Stanford, and has a great series titled "Lectures on Digital Photography" available for free on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7HrM-fk_Rc
by dhd415 on 10/15/19, 3:56 PM
by dharma1 on 10/15/19, 4:02 PM
Would have been nice to see a wide angle lens too. The radar thing feels gimmicky.
by rrggrr on 10/15/19, 3:57 PM
by me_me_me on 10/15/19, 4:14 PM
2800 mAh
Ughh... why can't they make a phone with bigger battery?
XL model has a decent size battery but it is way to cumbersome to use as mobile device and 2800 mAh is barely enough to last day (not to mention degradation over time).
Is it that i am in a filter bobble? But most of my friends and family complains about low battery or agrees with me that they would love a phone that last more then a day.
by akersten on 10/15/19, 3:53 PM
by madez on 10/15/19, 4:28 PM
In the German version of this announcement, the first thing written under the title is that you if you order soon enough, you'll get a free Google Nest Hub with the phone. Well, uhm, no, please don't.
Further down, Google praises itself with "Stets an deiner Seite: Google Assistant ...", which means "Always at your side: Google Assistant ...". This is just creepy to me now.
I'm astounded by how much my perspective of Google has changed since a couple of years ago. Their marketing is off-putting to me now.
by MattyMc on 10/15/19, 4:19 PM
- Nothing on video.
- No details on the processor (or most hardware specs).
- Nothing on the forward-facing camera.
- Nothing on battery life.
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.
by cbolton on 10/15/19, 4:38 PM
The team showed an impressive amount of cool stuff back then, it's nice to see one of these projects shipping on a flagship product. There's more info here on how it's used: https://www.blog.google/products/pixel/new-features-pixel4/
EDIT: found the original presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbWQbkl8_g . I think the touch sensitive cloth project also made it into a few products.
by shujito on 10/15/19, 4:00 PM
Appending a locale parameter to the url works well [1]
by sudosteph on 10/15/19, 4:04 PM
by rpmisms on 10/15/19, 4:02 PM
by baby on 10/15/19, 4:01 PM
Edit: a lot of sarcastic answers down there :D
by armandososa on 10/15/19, 4:33 PM
by neogodless on 10/15/19, 4:15 PM
For example, think about computer releases. As someone who likes to build a PC and install my own operating system, I love how these two things are somewhat decoupled (albeit imperfectly.) So I was excited about individual component releases, of course the CPU and GPU in particular, not to mention the rapid advancement of storage technology! And I was happy to try out a whole new version of Windows. (I particularly like 2000 and 7.)
Computers, on the other hand - well I've all but ignored desktops and announcements about them my whole life. Laptops were more interesting, because I was excited when they started to have decent internal components, nice screens and usable battery life. (I've been less impressed with increasingly closed systems with fewer options for upgrades.)
So back to the point at hand? I'd like to think that new phones should be focused on performance, and in my dream world, decoupling from software. I don't want "new gadgets" to be a thing on a phone. If I want to use it a certain way, i.e. hand waving away my song tracks, I have to now rely on a specific manufacturer running a specific operating system on at least the minimum version. No real options there, though.
I'm still not sure "modular" can work for phones, or maybe it can but we're not there yet, or there hasn't been enough market success to push manufacturers to go that way. But even that feels mostly unnecessary. I haven't had any complaints about my phone hardware, except for batteries wearing out, and being difficult to replace. Cameras have been "good enough" for my needs for several years now. Storage and computing performance has been fine, too. (Of course, new features are compute-intensive and will require hardware to keep up.)
If I have a point, it's that this is a boring phone release to me, but I kind of wish all phone releases were boring at this point. I'm sure some of the imaginative features coming out will become important, but right now, I feel like I don't need them. What I would prefer would be an improvement in decoupling between phone hardware and software.
by nwah1 on 10/15/19, 4:06 PM
by jorgemf on 10/15/19, 4:13 PM
by lern_too_spel on 10/15/19, 6:30 PM
by dopamean on 10/15/19, 6:39 PM
by meerita on 10/15/19, 4:11 PM
by imagiko on 10/15/19, 4:33 PM
by ojhughes on 10/15/19, 4:24 PM
by markdog12 on 10/15/19, 7:42 PM
by linuxftw on 10/15/19, 4:13 PM
WTF. I don't want more EMR coming from a phone. I just want a phone. All this extra technology literally noone asked for adding to the price of a phone, same with fingerprint readers, same with face scan.
Ultra-privacy intruding phones.