by mikeevans on 10/19/21, 5:59 PM with 816 comments
by DCKing on 10/19/21, 6:27 PM
I want as little to do with Google’s services as possible in my life, but they really deserve credits for making a modern usable smartphone that is reasonably open. There is just one single feature I will be buying this for - the 5 years of software updates. While good image processing is definitely a pro, all of these software you’re presenting features I really don’t give a damn about. Just give me a phone that is meant to last a little while - and allow me to run what I damn please. This looks to be like a continuation of the Pixel 5, which allows you run your own software like /e/OS and CalyxOS aside to just being a lot less of a walled garden on the stock ROM.
The Android market is completely dire, and no vendor can be trusted to provide openness, reasonable taste or security updates. They sell you a phone, and once you’ve clicked buy they’ve already stopped caring. So last year I switched to an iPhone 12. I needed to vote with my wallet to get a phone that lasts. But although I get what’s appealing about iPhones and the walled garden, I started feeling claustrophobic. Feeling claustrophobic about what I can tailor about my browser, how easily I can run Game Boy games, what ads I can block, and Apple’s stated intents to actively incriminate you by scanning your photos on a personal device. I will continue to recommend those phones for most people (pending what they’re going to do with trying to incriminate you), but it’s not for me.
Finally here’s a seemingly good Android phone with 5 years of support - from the only phone vendor outside of Apple who appears to give a damn about that aspect. Don’t get me wrong: 5 years is still too short in my view, and not as long as Apple provides support for on their stuff [1]. But the market needs change, and I’ll put money towards that.
[1]: The iPhone 5S has just hit 8 years of _kernel_ security updates last month with iOS 12.5.5. One can dream on the Android side, but I’ll take 5 years in the current market.
by Sodman on 10/19/21, 8:07 PM
I would totally pay flagship prices for a regular ~5.5-6" phone with flagship specs, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Make it 50% thicker if there are space/heat concerns, but making it wider and taller just makes it super difficult to use consistently with one hand. I also say this as somebody with larger-than-average hands!
by eis on 10/19/21, 8:35 PM
MKBHD mentions this (and shows nothing from the phone really) @ https://youtu.be/roWxo6jWoYw?t=140 And Mrwhosetheboss said he refused to cover these phones due to the embargo. The Tech Chap mentions he can't show anything apart from the home screen. Can't even swipe down to show notifications @ https://youtu.be/aLr7eCsY6Cg?t=191
Wonder what made them think that that's a good idea. Especially because Android 12 is not exactly a secret.
by standardUser on 10/20/21, 2:58 AM
My mistake, because the Samsung phone had preloaded software that took considerable effort to remove (more than most people could/would deal with). It wasn't the software itself that bothered me, but rather that there were notifications for apps I don't use that I could not turn off. That's enough to make me hate a company for a long time.
Bloat my phone all you want, but notifications take my brain-space, not my drive space. At least with a Google phone I have a semblance of control over the core function of the device. Looking forward to the Pixel 7 or equivalent once this Samsung device has served its purpose.
by nicbou on 10/19/21, 6:52 PM
It's a proper appliance phone. It holds the same place in my life as my kettle or my washing machine. It does what I want it to do, and asks nothing of me. I don't know any stats about it, only that it's fast enough, has a long enough battery life, and takes good enough pictures.
I couldn't be happier.
by kisamoto on 10/19/21, 6:47 PM
When I think about how powerful I need my phone to be I don't need the best. I want something I can fix and update myself; something that's supported for more than a couple of years; something that is a little "better" for the planet.
Does anybody use all of the new power of these incredible devices?
by tootie on 10/19/21, 7:05 PM
by o_____________o on 10/19/21, 6:45 PM
by PennRobotics on 10/19/21, 9:34 PM
At the end of the day, there's a huge focus on photography, live transcribe, and extended support. From my perspective, that's their hook.
For photography, I have a Sony Alpha with OIS, etc. Live Transcribe has been a Google Research app for months, so it's not unique to the 6 or even to the Pixel lineup. Companies like Fairphone are fighting to bring long-term support to Android, and the major players are slowly coming around e.g. Samsung.
For me, the downsides include the appearance (smooth, shiny, uniform glass on both sides; dull two-tone colors), unnecessary curved screen on the Pro, lack of a headphone jack, virtually no mention of audio quality or tuning of the onboard speaker/microphones, giant size, and plenty of features I won't use (wireless charging, reverse wireless charging, security chip, 120Hz display). The fingerprint scanner seems better in review videos than the Fairphone 3's abysmal sensor but is in an awkward location if you pull the phone from a pocket with one hand---probably the second worst location, TBH, with the worst being next to the USB port on the bottom edge. Of all the silly nuances (protruding camera, curved glass) the fingerprint sensor location is most likely to drive me to put a case around this phone. A case isn't a bad idea either; it would hide the weak exterior design, keep your palms from accidentally touching the waterfall display, and make the thing so bulky and uncomfortable, you'd never put it in a pocket and risk bending the frame. It's good the software support doesn't last longer than 5 years, because if it survives this long, every non-camera hardware feature would be an annoyance. This is purely my opinion.
I don't want to financially support the assembly country, as I disagree with their style of government, stronghold on entire industries, and widely rumored aggression toward outsiders and the lower class. They're almost as bad as the U.S.
In short, the price is right. The features feel almost all wrong.
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Even the bonus deal misses the mark. In Europe, they're including Bose NC headphones. But ... I already have wireless NC headphones, so I'd need to resell either NC pair, then sell my Beyerdynamic wired headphones, then throw away my wired buds, and optionally buy a set of wireless earbuds. At the risk of irritating the North American Pixel 6 buyers who would love some Bose 700s, I'd rather have the phone for a lower price or have not-so-awesome Pixel earbuds as a bonus.
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On skin tone: Does every smartphone manufacturer develop their own system camera app from the ground up? If most phone makers have camera apps based on Google Camera (just as most browsers are based on Chrome), it's a bit of a dick move for Google to declare great progress in skin tone photography and inclusiveness unless your company is gonna share those algorithms with other Android partners. You know... since Android is also made by Google, and the skin tone correction is likely performed 100 percent by software. I mean, why not just press release, "Black people, dark-skinned Latinos: you all matter to us, ... UNLESS you buy an Xperia or Oneplus running our OS and system apps!"
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Here's to hoping the Pixel 7 focuses on audio, physical durability, and repairability without sacrificing a good IP66/67/68 rating.
by paulpan on 10/19/21, 6:38 PM
Bigger news is Qualcomm being left out. Will they go the way of Intel by incentivizing their customers build their own SOCs?
by murukesh_s on 10/20/21, 2:19 AM
by stefan_ on 10/19/21, 6:17 PM
I didn't check, but I suppose the answer is "no". Can't keep pointing at Qualcomm anymore, I guess.
by bilalq on 10/19/21, 6:57 PM
Some red flags:
* If/when you cancel Pixel Pass in the future, it will also cancel your Google One membership. If you're over the 15GB free tier, your email will stop working (!!!)[0].
* You have to cancel your existing YouTube Premium subscription before you can sign up.
[0]: https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9056360?hl=en&co...
by kelnos on 10/20/21, 5:49 AM
Also, what is up with the gigantic camera bump on the back? It looks terrible.
I guess I'll be keeping my Pixel 4 a bit longer...
by JediWing on 10/19/21, 7:02 PM
There's a hilarious dissonance between the talk of SoC design, AI, computational photography and ambient computing and the inability to handle a website with a relatively simple purchase flow for a phone that, let's be real, probably has about 1/10 th of the interest and web traffic of the iPhone.
From the moment the store website went live with these phones there were all sorts of errors, and I ended up forgoing purchasing from the google store after trying to for an hour!
Once Best Buy went live with their stock, I instantly was able to pre-order with little issue. I'll be picking it up on release day there.
Fix the store, Google!
by fomine3 on 10/20/21, 12:08 AM
by G3rn0ti on 10/20/21, 4:04 AM
It’s unlikely but let’s hope Google has improved the repairability …
by Audiophilip on 10/19/21, 6:54 PM
by robocat on 10/19/21, 8:14 PM
Otherwise you see your local country store...
Dang: perhaps replace link so international users get the same page?
by Teknoman117 on 10/20/21, 12:52 AM
One of the largest troubles with running your own OS on phones is having little to no information on the SoCs, and thus having to run parts of Android with a shim to a standard Linux user space.
by otar on 10/20/21, 6:55 AM
I leave outside US and in my country Google has no official dealer. I bought an unlocked Pixel 3 via my friend in US, who shipped it to me.
At first, everything seemed good unless it started to lag in few months. First, battery percentage was stuck at 26% (but the phone was charging), then, received phone calls were having a very bad quality (calls via messengers were good).
So, in conclusion, I couldn’t: 1) understand if the phone was charged or not; 2) always had a bluetooth earpods with me in case I needed to call or receive a phone call.
It appeared that both of the issues were a hardware failures and needed my phone to be shipped back to US to the Google Service Center, which I didn’t do.
When you pay a decent money for a flagship phone, such issues are unacceptable.
Pixel 6 might be an excellent phone, but I’m not risking my $$$ anymore with it.
by marcodiego on 10/19/21, 6:41 PM
by f6v on 10/19/21, 6:58 PM
My slim fit jeans say “no”. Seriously, how big do people want their phones to be?
by mithr on 10/20/21, 4:10 AM
by dreamer7 on 10/19/21, 6:38 PM
Apple throws numbers repeatedly at you through out the presentation and you end up remembering quite a few useless statistics (55.7 billion transitors in M1 Max)
Apple makes a much bigger deal about each device with lots of close ups and pseudo x-raying of the product. Google just throws in a Pro with an extra camera that you can barely make out on the dark glass.
Apple spends several minutes talking about their SoC. Google says it spent years on Tensor and just leaves it as a shiny golden box.
The weirdest thing in the Google presentation is that several sections had presenters talking to a different camera than facing the screen. That just felt very strange.
by mellosouls on 10/19/21, 6:33 PM
by sim_card_map on 10/20/21, 1:39 AM
All companies are obsessed with these phablets.
by turbinerneiter on 10/19/21, 6:22 PM
Just be cool. Let me build my own thing with this.
by sekou on 10/19/21, 10:04 PM
by josteink on 10/19/21, 6:30 PM
(Location: Norway/Europe)
by wodenokoto on 10/20/21, 7:13 AM
Google has this shitty policy that if they aren't selling it to you, you are not allowed to see it, so they redirect you away.
by dcchambers on 10/20/21, 3:06 PM
It's hard not to compare Google's event with the iPhone 13 launch event a month ago, and the wildly different strategies the companies are using to try and market their devices. Apple (rightfully so) is very proud of the performance of their SoCs and definitely emphasized that aspect - using tons of numbers and data throughout the presentation. This was also seen in the new Macbook event last week. Meanwhile, google hardly mentioned a single hardware detail and focused more on the software and user experience. I have to admit the google event felt more "hand wave-y." They may have avoided talking about hardware details in the event though since they basically revealed the phones months ago.
by neilv on 10/20/21, 5:01 AM
Currently I'm using that for GrapheneOS. https://grapheneos.org/
But I'm not fond of the recent front-facing camera cutouts in the display, which are tackier to cover with tape. I foresee being sad if/when end of upstream device security fixes forces me to upgrade hardware from my Pixel 3.
by schleck8 on 10/19/21, 6:15 PM
by nick0garvey on 10/19/21, 6:12 PM
by hyperpallium2 on 10/20/21, 2:31 AM
97.15 * 20 = 1943 GFLOPS
by rjzzleep on 10/20/21, 1:40 AM
Same goes for SoC and driver support. This is mostly a rehashed Exynos, so are we really certain that the drivers will me more open than on the exynos side?
by unethical_ban on 10/19/21, 7:19 PM
by adventured on 10/20/21, 1:26 AM
by jjice on 10/19/21, 7:53 PM
by yonaguska on 10/19/21, 8:50 PM
I had a really hard time finding an in-stock fast wireless charger for my pixel 3, and ended up just not purchasing it. Kind of a pain since the usb-c charger is always getting gunked up from putting the phone in my pocket.
by dang on 10/20/21, 12:15 AM
Google Pixel 6 Launch [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28920140 - Oct 2021 (155 comments)
by farnsworth on 10/19/21, 6:23 PM
by causi on 10/19/21, 6:08 PM
by lmm on 10/20/21, 1:57 AM
by thoughty on 10/20/21, 2:58 AM
by MikeBVaughn on 10/19/21, 7:00 PM
I've heard some bad things about Google's consumer-electronics-side customer service, but I don't know how representative those stories are.
I dislike iOS, but AppleCare+ is the one thing that tempts me to go back to iPhones. If, after spending my entire work day writing code and fixing bugs, I have a problem with my phone, being able to say "you know, screw it, this is is a problem for the Genius Bar" has a very strong appeal.
by webmaven on 10/20/21, 5:49 PM
Maybe I should just wait until a Subscribe and Save plan for a (hypothetical) Pixel 6a is available.
by intricatedetail on 10/20/21, 12:58 AM
by krzyk on 10/19/21, 8:10 PM
Rumors where that it will be in the 6 Pro, but technical specification doesn't mention it.
So I'm staying with Pixel 4, yet another year.
by fooblitzky on 10/20/21, 1:23 AM
I guess the customer support horror I went through when they canceled my phone number out of the blue in Google Fi is also factored into that decision (took two months to get my phone number back), but to be fair, that wasn't an issue with their hardware.
by abeyer on 10/19/21, 8:13 PM
by ece on 10/20/21, 3:25 AM
I still like what I saw, and I hope Google's able to get to shipping kernel updates through the play store.
by guru4consulting on 10/20/21, 2:38 AM
by lucidone on 10/20/21, 2:06 AM
by nkotov on 10/20/21, 1:13 AM
by voidfunc on 10/20/21, 1:28 AM
Is the 5a worth picking up? Im not a fan of iOS and Android has a killer feature in Work Profiles. Id like to switch back.
by colordrops on 10/19/21, 7:51 PM
by ricardobeat on 10/19/21, 7:12 PM
by markdown on 10/20/21, 12:22 AM
On the other hand, I can view everything there is to view about iPhones on the Apple website even though I can't buy one.
by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on 10/20/21, 5:42 PM
by nerdwaller on 10/19/21, 8:35 PM
by brianmcc on 10/19/21, 9:14 PM
by Ninjinka on 10/19/21, 7:12 PM
by danhoule on 10/20/21, 1:57 PM
by tiagobraw on 10/20/21, 1:29 AM
Then one day I needed Google support for hardware… It was terrible. Just to contact them was multiile multi hour wait calls until I could get it RMAd and had to stay a week without a phone… then I switched to iphone and guess what, it has the same apps… except I know if something happens with my phone I can just take it to a apple store and have it checked right away
by cf100clunk on 10/19/21, 6:00 PM
by emodendroket on 10/20/21, 5:40 AM
by stolsvik on 10/23/21, 8:39 AM
by ankurdhama on 10/20/21, 6:08 AM
by yCloser on 10/20/21, 7:01 AM
google doesn't even want to to know that later model exist
by sagarpatil on 10/20/21, 2:44 AM
by loxias on 10/20/21, 1:47 AM
by oblio on 10/20/21, 9:52 AM
by wiso on 10/20/21, 9:37 AM
by inasio on 10/20/21, 3:54 AM
by LtdJorge on 10/20/21, 1:55 PM
by l4bytt on 10/19/21, 11:51 PM
by jerrygoyal on 10/20/21, 7:51 AM
by ur-whale on 10/20/21, 6:12 AM
by figassis on 10/20/21, 1:11 AM
by e2e4 on 10/19/21, 9:49 PM
by a-dub on 10/20/21, 3:43 AM
also, does it speak lte? is verizon still the champ in 5g?
by polyterative on 10/20/21, 10:02 AM
by mesozoic on 10/20/21, 8:47 PM
by sabujp on 10/20/21, 6:11 AM
by kevmo on 10/19/21, 6:48 PM
by kubb on 10/19/21, 7:16 PM
by notyourday on 10/19/21, 6:49 PM
Why on earth would one ever believe the rest of the product which is orders of magnitude more complicated would actually function and not suck in 4 months?
by kkjjkgjjgg on 10/20/21, 7:05 AM
by darth_avocado on 10/19/21, 6:42 PM
Meanwhile, my wife is still rocking the iPhone 7 with some degradation in battery life, but pretty much everything else working as it should. I don't regret jumping into the Apple coolaid one bit.
I wish instead of "cool features", they'd spend some time improving their supply chain. You expect some quality from a $1000 phone. And in case it seems subjective, look up lawsuits for faulty hardware for pixel phones. I’m not making this up.