Google's Pixel XL priced like Apple's iPhone 7 Plus, but it lacks numerous key features

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  • Reply 121 of 190
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    Dracarys said:
    sog35 said:
    DXOMark has lost all creditbility.

    Timing the release of their review of the Pixel is obvious they worked together to get maximum buzz.

    Pretty pathetic. 

    Its painfully obvious that DXOMark got a nice fat paycheck from Google for that high review
    Enough already, you guys always come up with conspiracy theories anytime something favours someone other than Apple. If DXoMark had given the iPhone the highest you wouldn't be saying the same for Apple. It could just be that overall the Pixel did take great photos.
    Dxonark has been blasted left and right for quite a while because their methodology is opaque, their weighting is also seemingly arbitrary
    Go to pro photographer board and see what they. Think about this shit

    I don't give a crap if the iphonés on top or not, i want something scientific and this is NOT

    The photos are not better by any sane metric and if you look at the sensor, optic dsp and camera mechanism, their results make no sense. Got 30 years of photography behind me to judge such things and have used a hell of a lo of equip


    edited October 2016 caliwilliamlondon
  • Reply 122 of 190
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    What's interesting is that we typically defend Apple by stating that it's not just the hardware or the software that matters, but the combination of both, resulting in a great user experience. Here we are tearing the Pixel apart for having inferior hardware specs, completely ignoring Google's very vocal message that they've aimed for a great user experience, particularly with the Google Assistant feature built in. Do the specs *really* matter, or is this about Google delivering fewer specs for the same price? Aren't they delivering more *value* through their tight hardware+software approach? I don't think that can be dismissed.
    Their assistant isn't that great either, most based functions on a phone are useless except in the car.
    See a lot of hype, like most thing google; lets see how the hype bears out

    i predict bad results like everything else except search coming out of Google 
    caliwilliamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 123 of 190
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    So apple finally adds features that other Android phons have had for a while and now its the best iPhone? AFAIK Apple still doesn't make their own ram/storage, thats coming from Samsung. The Apple ARM 9 and 10 chips are also made by Samsung and TSMC. You guys write and talk like you have something to prove. Read an iPhone comparison on an Android site is more informative than finger pointing.
    So, you're another  fracking troll, got that
    right.. android were despite apple having 15% of the market, zit faced teens piss on apple all day long... for years like apple was the dominating evil that ruled the world (sic)

    sites like ars have treated this phone like the big yawn it is


    calibaconstangwilliamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 124 of 190
    danvmdanvm Posts: 1,400member
    foggyhill said:
    What's interesting is that we typically defend Apple by stating that it's not just the hardware or the software that matters, but the combination of both, resulting in a great user experience. Here we are tearing the Pixel apart for having inferior hardware specs, completely ignoring Google's very vocal message that they've aimed for a great user experience, particularly with the Google Assistant feature built in. Do the specs *really* matter, or is this about Google delivering fewer specs for the same price? Aren't they delivering more *value* through their tight hardware+software approach? I don't think that can be dismissed.
    Their assistant isn't that great either, most based functions on a phone are useless except in the car.
    See a lot of hype, like most thing google; lets see how the hype bears out

    i predict bad results like everything else except search coming out of Google 
    How do you know that Google Assistant "isn't that great"?  From what I saw in the keynote, it may be better version of Google Now, which is miles ahead of Siri. 
    xweaponXI
  • Reply 125 of 190
    danvmdanvm Posts: 1,400member

    Specs don't matter. User experience does.

    The Pixel is a vessel for Google's AI and Machine learning prowess.

    And right now, you'd be hard-pressed to find a phone with a better AI and multimedia experience than the Pixel.

    This is why the Pixel is better than any phone Apple has created. And will continue to be better than any Phone Apple will create moving forward.

    Unless of course, AI and Machine Learning is just a fad.
    so you've used the device? you can buy movie tickets exceptionally well?

    and why on earth would you believe it impossible for any other firm to do better than google in this relatively new area of mobile computing? hogwash. 
    You are right.  I think too that other companies, like Amazon, MS and Facebook, are capable of match or being better than Google in AI and Machine Learning.  Apple?  Not sure about them.  Based in what they have done with Siri recently and how slow they have react to cloud computing, data centers and Machine Learning, I don't see them being an important part of this market. 

    And I don't think Machine Learning and AI are a "new area of mobile computing".  Mobile users benefit from it, but it's a lot more than a that.

  • Reply 126 of 190
    calicali Posts: 3,494member
    jsw said:
    cali said:

    9  years later fandroids claim "google finally got it right"



    It seems obvious to me that the phone on the left has a cleaner interface, which is disappointing as a long-time Apple fan. Yes, they're both rounded rectangles, but what matters is what's on the screen, and Google's screen is cleaner. It really doesn't matter who did what first - both sides have appropriated ideas from the other. What matters is where they are now. I use both OSs daily, and Android wins on usability as an OS just as much as iOS wins with virtually every app. Messages wins. Siri loses. And so on.
    You're right one is a lock screen and the other is a home screen.

    edit:  looks like that might be a home screen. This is even worse, why does the G "tab" have to be visible? Why can't you just swipe right? Not clean at all.
    edited October 2016 baconstangwilliamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 127 of 190
    pscooter63pscooter63 Posts: 1,080member
    jsw said:
    Google's screen is cleaner.
    Right.  Eight soft buttons crammed into the space of four is obviously cleaner.  /s

    The little visual "hint" to swipe up is cleaner (as opposed to actually knowing what you're doing).

    And what happened to all the complaints about iPhone's giant chin, when the one on this New Kid On The Block has abso-farking-lutely no reason to exist, interface-wise?

    Weak sauce, man.  Weak.
    baconstangbestkeptsecretwatto_cobra
  • Reply 128 of 190
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    jsw said:
    cali said:

    9  years later fandroids claim "google finally got it right"



    It seems obvious to me that the phone on the left has a cleaner interface, which is disappointing as a long-time Apple fan. Yes, they're both rounded rectangles, but what matters is what's on the screen, and Google's screen is cleaner. It really doesn't matter who did what first - both sides have appropriated ideas from the other. What matters is where they are now. I use both OSs daily, and Android wins on usability as an OS just as much as iOS wins with virtually every app. Messages wins. Siri loses. And so on.
    This is a joke post, right? Google blatantly copied the iPhone...again. 
    calibaconstangwatto_cobra
  • Reply 129 of 190
    kevin keekevin kee Posts: 1,289member
    koop said:
    I think people here aren't going to like this, but iOS/Siri is more of a liability for Apple than it's ever been since the first iPhone. Pixel is basically trying to sell itself on software and artificial intelligence. They are selling this as their A.I. phone. You can giggle about the spec wars, but you're missing the big picture that Google has surpassed Apple in software years ago, and Google is going to drive their "information" advantage into a hardware war that wont be about who has the faster CPU or most RAM. 

    I can only imagine in 2030 it's really about what company has the bigger server farms, artificial neural networking and machine learning algorithms that determines which product makes consumers lives the easiest. Not some display resolution or wide color gamut. 

    Google has the long game here. We're still figuring out what Apple has besides their phone at this point.
    I can see that you are living in a bubble of false-hope and misguided information. Google has surpassed Apple in software? I have used both recently and it's so obvious to see that many of Google apps are always felt like a beta version while Apple iOS for example is extremely polished.
    calibaconstangwatto_cobra
  • Reply 130 of 190
    calicali Posts: 3,494member
    Missing important features... such as the headphone jack? Whoops sorry wrong phone. My bad.
     Reminds me of the Apple haters who said no keyboard was a "fail". like CD ROM drives and floppy disks before that, the only thing that is "a fail" is your lack of seeing the future.

    applejunk said:
    I'm going to take a shot in the dark (hope someone has an iPhone to catch it, apparently) and say this is a biased article written by a die-hard apple junkie. Buy a juicer, put your apple in there because you'll get the best results that way. Google typically does things better than other competitors and Pixel will be no exception.
    Do you even know who you're talking about? Daniel is one of the only journalist on the Internet that posts facts and statistics to back up his views. Truth hurts?

    Oh and yes pixel will be a success just like Nexus and the G1 phone.

    watto_cobrapscooter63
  • Reply 131 of 190
    Haibane said:
    Lets see... so you're posting misinformation on at least two things.
    Its 4GB not 3GB.
    It does have OIS, in fact they spent a significant amount of time on that feature.
    As a user of both phones, I find this to be a very difficult choice between the two.
    You should really double check your sources cause they are wrong.
    Where are you getting your information? Multiple websites and sources including the Android sites all state there is no optical image stabilization. You might be confusing electronic image stabilization which is a software feature and significantly inferior to OIS. In the real world, phones with OIS take much better pictures especially accounting for movement or low light situations. I have a 6S and I will wait for the 7S/8. I already have an Amazon echo and the Google assistant offers nothing that Alexa doesn't already provide. I don't use Siri these days as the latency is annoying and she does not recognize my words much of the time. I don't see Google assistant as being a killer app that drives adoption of the device. I see the product selling to a small group of Google enthusiasts while the vast majority of the public purchases less expensive Samsung and LG devices.
    baconstangwatto_cobrapropod
  • Reply 132 of 190
    xweaponXI said:
    Geez, the comments on this post are comical. The pixel XL has a better display, but lacks water resistance. Other then that, the phone is pretty damn identical to the iPhone. These clowns mocking the build, remember, HTC did it first. The contract Apple pushed to get with HTC to use the design says it all. Man, where is the knowledge at. A bunch of fanboys sucking Apple stems. And this article is Inaccurate Ina. Few places. But I'm sure those who pay attention. To facts already know. Good on you guys.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 133 of 190
    danvm said:

    Specs don't matter. User experience does.

    The Pixel is a vessel for Google's AI and Machine learning prowess.

    And right now, you'd be hard-pressed to find a phone with a better AI and multimedia experience than the Pixel.

    This is why the Pixel is better than any phone Apple has created. And will continue to be better than any Phone Apple will create moving forward.

    Unless of course, AI and Machine Learning is just a fad.
    so you've used the device? you can buy movie tickets exceptionally well?

    and why on earth would you believe it impossible for any other firm to do better than google in this relatively new area of mobile computing? hogwash. 
    You are right.  I think too that other companies, like Amazon, MS and Facebook, are capable of match or being better than Google in AI and Machine Learning.  Apple?  Not sure about them.  Based in what they have done with Siri recently and how slow they have react to cloud computing, data centers and Machine Learning, I don't see them being an important part of this market. 

    And I don't think Machine Learning and AI are a "new area of mobile computing".  Mobile users benefit from it, but it's a lot more than a that.

    Actually, Apple can do just as well or better than anyone else in AI with the possible exception of Amazon. Amazon and Apple have very high quality data on their customer bases. Google has to extrapolate data based on search requests on the iOS user base. Monetizing the Android userbase is far less lucrative. Amazon has actual purchasing patterns and has essentially locked Google completely out from obtaining data on their prime members. With Apple, they are trying to balance privacy issues with data acquisition. They are moving slowly, but it doesn't mean that they aren't working on AI. While I would like to see Siri become a better assistant, I much prefer that Apple honor my privacy as they have done. Apple is figuring out how to anonymize the data so that they can use it meaningfully. They are behind in data analytics but will rapidly catch up. They have the most important userbase and large numbers of Chinese also on iOS. Something that Google does not have access to. Apple's GPU technology is far better than Google's. And machine learning depends much more on the GPU. Amazon and Facebook are going to destroy Google's ad revenues. And the company will flounder. Apple has the luxury of time. GOOGL does not. They have to make Google assistant a success while they can. Before Amazon's Alexa takes over. I know that I will purchase a fire tablet just to get Alexa. A far better investment than the ridiculously expensive Pixel.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 134 of 190
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    sog35 said:
    koop said:
    I think people here aren't going to like this, but iOS/Siri is more of a liability for Apple than it's ever been since the first iPhone. Pixel is basically trying to sell itself on software and artificial intelligence. They are selling this as their A.I. phone. You can giggle about the spec wars, but you're missing the big picture that Google has surpassed Apple in software years ago, and Google is going to drive their "information" advantage into a hardware war that wont be about who has the faster CPU or most RAM. 

    I can only imagine in 2030 it's really about what company has the bigger server farms, artificial neural networking and machine learning algorithms that determines which product makes consumers lives the easiest. Not some display resolution or wide color gamut. 

    Google has the long game here. We're still figuring out what Apple has besides their phone at this point.
    What a load of garbage.

    So Apple is NOTHING besides iPhone at this point?

    Google had $75 billion in sales in 2015



    Guess how much NON-iPhone sales Apple had last year?



    Google's Company Wide Sales 2015 - $75 billion
    Apple's NON-iPhone Sales 2015 - $79 billion

    So if Apple is NOTHING besides iPhone than Google is LESS THAN NOTHING.

    Stop spewing pure ignorant trash.
    I think we all would like you spouting less ignorant trash but I won't be holding my breath.

    Your rational is every other company that remotely compete against Apple should shut up shop because they earn less than them.

    Koop posted an opinion without facts or figures to back it up. 
    Sog refuted them with facts and figures to make his case. 

    Not I sure I see the problem. 
    edited October 2016 williamlondonpscooter63watto_cobra
  • Reply 135 of 190
    displayer78displayer78 Posts: 3unconfirmed, member
    koop said:
    I think people here aren't going to like this, but iOS/Siri is more of a liability for Apple than it's ever been since the first iPhone. Pixel is basically trying to sell itself on software and artificial intelligence. They are selling this as their A.I. phone. You can giggle about the spec wars, but you're missing the big picture that Google has surpassed Apple in software years ago, and Google is going to drive their "information" advantage into a hardware war that wont be about who has the faster CPU or most RAM. 

    I can only imagine in 2030 it's really about what company has the bigger server farms, artificial neural networking and machine learning algorithms that determines which product makes consumers lives the easiest. Not some display resolution or wide color gamut. 

    Google has the long game here. We're still figuring out what Apple has besides their phone at this point.

    Truth be told... Koop, you are a legend!
    jsw
  • Reply 136 of 190
    displayer78displayer78 Posts: 3unconfirmed, member
    An article written by a true Apple fanboy.   

    Wide color gamut is not a feature - If the screen is beautiful, the screen is beautiful.  Nobody cares about wide color gamut.
    Actually, the end result (lack of result, that is) is in the fact that Android doesn't know how to handle color management...without which a "beautiful screen" isn't gonna help, sadly. 
    In the absense of the aforementioned CM, sRGB colors, placed in P3 color space will be oversaturated and incorrect.
    And, despite what you said, wide gamut along with high contrast and enought color bit depth should bring more realistic colors to PEDs, hence it is not a gimmick.

    I was actually surprized when I tried to snap a picture of a flower with my iPhone. The flower had petals of that purple-blueish color, which normally gets displayed wrongly even on a professional level of equipment (like Nikon DXXX level cameras). But because CM was followed through and through, the color of the actual flower and its image were quite close. Calibrated devices, along with a working CM pipeline, is what really allows you to use a screen to its full potential.
    I get it.  For purists, accurate color is very important.  For the majority of phone owners, I would suspect though, are more interested in colors that pop and are vivid.   People love the iPhone screens because it looks nice.  Never once have I heard people say "wow those colors look really accurate!". Usually it's more along the lines of "that's a GORGEOUS screen."  Gorgeous typically means vivid, bright, and poppy.  Also, do you really think that in a world in which Instagram users are posting photos that are filtered to oblivion that they would care about real world color accuracy?

    You sir are in dire need of a photo capturing device at affordable pricing. Check this out: Canon EOS Rebel T5i DSLR for $650, visit Amazon.com
  • Reply 137 of 190
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,312member
    gatorguy said:
    sog35 said:
    An article written by a true Apple fanboy.   

    Wide color gamut is not a feature - If the screen is beautiful, the screen is beautiful.  Nobody cares about wide color gamut.
    Actually, the end result (lack of result, that is) is in the fact that Android doesn't know how to handle color management...without which a "beautiful screen" isn't gonna help, sadly. 
    In the absense of the aforementioned CM, sRGB colors, placed in P3 color space will be oversaturated and incorrect.
    And, despite what you said, wide gamut along with high contrast and enought color bit depth should bring more realistic colors to PEDs, hence it is not a gimmick.

    I was actually surprized when I tried to snap a picture of a flower with my iPhone. The flower had petals of that purple-blueish color, which normally gets displayed wrongly even on a professional level of equipment (like Nikon DXXX level cameras). But because CM was followed through and through, the color of the actual flower and its image were quite close. Calibrated devices, along with a working CM pipeline, is what really allows you to use a screen to its full potential.
    I get it.  For purists, accurate color is very important.  For the majority of phone owners, I would suspect though, are more interested in colors that pop and are vivid.   People love the iPhone screens because it looks nice.  Never once have I heard people say "wow those colors look really accurate!". Usually it's more along the lines of "that's a GORGEOUS screen."  Gorgeous typically means vivid, bright, and poppy.  Also, do you really think that in a world in which Instagram users are posting photos that are filtered to oblivion that they would care about real world color accuracy?
    But where it does make a HUGE difference is skin tone. That is where you need GREAT color accuracy... Without perfect color calibration photo's of people will always look a little alien.
    BS.  My photography and imaging gear is color-corrected and calibrated to the hilt, and recalibrated on a regular monthly basis, but I quite frequently and purposefully alter skin tones in portraits in order to please the person sitting for them. So do millions of Apple smartphone users who modify their own pics to get what they believe is a nicer image than the one their phone took.  

    I'm not at all downplaying the advantages of calibrated color, makes my job so much easier, but a person's "true-to-life and accurate skin tone" is often what they DON'T want. Pleasing skin-tones really can be rendered by default settings on a good but non-calibrated smartphone camera. With that said kudos to Apple for making color-calibration a priority, tho even there the skin-tones are all over the place being very dependent on reflected/ambient lighting. Just look at the images over at the iMore camera test you viewed yesterday. There's no consistency. 
    http://www.imore.com/best-smartphone-camera
    I'll bet you do your best work if you know what lighting that portrait is gong to be viewed under, and I'd even bet that you would use color filters on your lights over photoshopping given the chance to enhance the your subject. Why you or anyone else would not want your work viewed under conditions consistent with the creation of your work is not in doubt, but I'll bet that there are plenty of superb images that you have created that look awful under the wrong conditions, including the mass of smartphones in the wild.

    That Apple cares about this is beneficial to their users, whether they know it to not, and more so if those images have a near identical look on all of Apple's products,. That's the advantage of having color management and wide gamut support, for the most part, throughout Apple's ecosystem. The fact that I can edit iPhone images in LR on an iPad Pro and now get the same color accuracy and a wide gamut is kind of a big deal. That's a pro feature that sets the iPad on a path to replacing notebooks and laptops in the field for some photographers, and it will likely only get better with each iteration.

    If anything, I would like Apple to open up its mobile devices to third party color calibration, whether as a service or as a lightning connected spectrophotometer.

    But yeah, bullshit. /s
    edited October 2016
  • Reply 138 of 190
    displayer78displayer78 Posts: 3unconfirmed, member
    Some highlights of the Pixel Keynote Event:
    • Google believes that the next great innovation "will take place at the intersection of hardware and software, with AI at the center."
    • Google's goal is to build an "individual Google for each user" that understands your preferences and your interests, with a plan to make its Google Assistant product a "universal service."
    • Google expects the big bet it has made on its artificial intelligence and machine learning features to not only be a differentiator for its products but to really define what Google will be going forward.Check out http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-announces-neural-machine-translation-to-improve-google-translate/
    Pixel is a big change from having other Android phone makers design the Nexus phones, Pixel is "designed and built by Google." Reports say that Google is only designing and not actually manufacturing the Pixel devices and that in fact HTC is doing the manufacturing. That's analogous to how Apple doesn't do the physical manufacturing of the iPhone. You can argue that Google was actually even more in the hardware business when they owned Motorola a few years ago. Of course, Apple designs the actual processors in their phones, as do Samsung and Huawei for some models, which Google to date is not doing.

    Google announced a lot of new products, heralding Google's new focus on hardware to take advantage of it's back-end intelligence.





  • Reply 139 of 190
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,312member
    Some highlights of the Pixel Keynote Event:
    • Google believes that the next great innovation "will take place at the intersection of hardware and software, with AI at the center."
    • Google's goal is to build an "individual Google for each user" that understands your preferences and your interests, with a plan to make its Google Assistant product a "universal service."
    • Google expects the big bet it has made on its artificial intelligence and machine learning features to not only be a differentiator for its products but to really define what Google will be going forward.Check out http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-announces-neural-machine-translation-to-improve-google-translate/
    Pixel is a big change from having other Android phone makers design the Nexus phones, Pixel is "designed and built by Google." Reports say that Google is only designing and not actually manufacturing the Pixel devices and that in fact HTC is doing the manufacturing. That's analogous to how Apple doesn't do the physical manufacturing of the iPhone. You can argue that Google was actually even more in the hardware business when they owned Motorola a few years ago. Of course, Apple designs the actual processors in their phones, as do Samsung and Huawei for some models, which Google to date is not doing.

    Google announced a lot of new products, heralding Google's new focus on hardware to take advantage of it's back-end intelligence.

    Actually, Apple is well known to be not only involved in manufacturing and manufacturing technologies with its partners, but is a driver for many of these same technologies that we now see widely in consumer electronics, and arguably, Apple's introduction of CNC machining into high volume consumer products, beginning with the Mac Book Pro, followed by the iPhone, lead to the ubiquity of machined aluminum into the premium smartphone markets. Considering that not every, and likely not a majority of Apple users are using any Google Services other that the Google search engine, suggests that maybe the presentation that you saw was heavily biased towards Google, and not its competitors.

    No one could possibly imagine. 

    Be careful extrapolating the scale of Apple's efforts in any technology; most of its efforts are kept under wraps until the technology is fully baked, and as Apple's efforts in Maps has demonstrated, Apple has the ability to run the long race and win.
    williamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 140 of 190
    BluntBlunt Posts: 224member
    Wow. So many new Android - or should i say Google - trolls! It's too much to handle! I mean one Gatorguy is funny. Every forum needs a housetroll. The trolls posts are full of bullshit. 

    Pixel buyers: Please wait, this phone will be on sale soon!
    The definition of Google Tax: first we screw you with an overpriced phone and then we screw you with a bunch of ads.

    By the way. Here in Europe Google (you know the spyware company the tech blogs love so much) is heading for big problems. The EU thinks that gathering search results and selling ads based on it is against the law! They are looking for ways to stop Google from doing that.
    williamlondonpscooter63watto_cobrabrucemcnolamacguy
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