Lots of AI talk (bleh), but some more interesting, assistant style stuff makes the AI at least a bit more palatable. We'll see if it actually works though lol. I basically watch these events for...
Lots of AI talk (bleh), but some more interesting, assistant style stuff makes the AI at least a bit more palatable. We'll see if it actually works though lol. I basically watch these events for work so I figured people should know!
I haven’t checked out the event yet, but if there’s a place where our current AI’s make sense, it’s in our phones and PCs at OS level. It’s the place where it can have access to most context about...
I haven’t checked out the event yet, but if there’s a place where our current AI’s make sense, it’s in our phones and PCs at OS level. It’s the place where it can have access to most context about you and reply/take actions that can help you better. AI pin and rabbit failed because… A lot of reasons, but one of them was also that at the end of the day, it was a device that didn’t and couldn’t know a lot about you, so it was just a portable chatGPT device at the end of the day.
But I say this with a big caveat: I’m thinking of smaller models that run locally, akin to what Apple is doing but without the cloud part. Models specialized at certain tasks, that can do them well, all on device. I’m imagining Siri that no longer needs me to say word by word what I want it to do, and can understand nuances/implications, and my previous prompts. It doesn’t need to be smart enough to carry out conversations.
E.g. A lot of times I ask it to set a reminder while I’m driving, and usually I say “when I get home, when I get to work, in 20 minutes”, etc. In other words, I ask it to remind me of something when I stop driving. It would be great if I could say “remind me of this”, and it understood that I’m driving, therefore I want it to remind me when it notices that I stopped.
It’s in little QoL things like this that I can see these AIs becoming a game changer for personal assistants
You seem to be in the know, so I'll ask for your opinion. I also probably misunderstood your comment, so I'd like to clarify. I have never used any of these features (Siri - I never owned an...
You seem to be in the know, so I'll ask for your opinion. I also probably misunderstood your comment, so I'd like to clarify. I have never used any of these features (Siri - I never owned an iPhone; and I haven't used the equivalent features that come on Samsung Galaxy phones)
Is Siri capable of setting reminders on your phone? If you have experience with others, how would you compare it?
Also, is there any way to use it for organizing your day? Such as telling it you have tasks X, Y, Z, that need to be done by times A, B, C and asking it to keep track of it & set reminders?
So basically I am asking if it has any sort of assistant-like functionality. I searched a bit online and I can't seem to find this sort of feature on a smartphone. The closest I got to was Apple Intelligence, but it's unreleased so I have no clue if it's just marketing buzz or not.
I’m not the person you asked, but I’ve been using Siri for years, so I hope I can weigh in here. Siri pre-Apple Intelligence is definitely able to set reminders and alarms and timers, and execute...
I’m not the person you asked, but I’ve been using Siri for years, so I hope I can weigh in here.
Siri pre-Apple Intelligence is definitely able to set reminders and alarms and timers, and execute basic functionality. The issue I run into is that Siri is very literal and not very flexible. I don’t know if it’s possible to train Siri to learn new phrases to execute certain tasks, but I’ve definitely had to adapt my own language to fit Siri’s expectations in order to get what I want.
For example, let’s say I know I’ve got to pick up a delivery on Monday at lunchtime, and I want to set an alarm. I can’t set an alarm to only go off on a particular day, but if it’s less than a week away, I can get around that by having the alarm “repeat on Mondays”. And let’s say I also want to give the alarm a name, so that when Monday rolls around, I don’t have some mystery alarm, I see “collect delivery” and remember what it was for.
I need to carefully order my clauses in order to get what I want. “Set an alarm called collect delivery that repeats on Monday at 12:30pm” is just as likely to get me an alarm called “collect delivery that repeats on Monday” or maybe even a response from Siri “what time do you want me to set it” while displaying an alarm named “collect delivery that repeats on Monday at 12:30pm” which doesn’t yet have a time.
I also can’t reliably set an alarm for example that goes off at 4:30pm, with the name “post office closes at 5pm” by just putting a sentence together for Siri to convert into an alarm.
It’s frustrating that even if I put pauses in my sentence for emphasis (that any other fluent speaker would instantly recognise as verbal punctuation, and understand where I’m breaking phrases up for clarity) Siri either doesn’t understand those verbal cues, or worse thinks you’ve stopped talking and tries to execute half of a command.
I think the excruciating detail of my comment may have accidentally implied that it’s quite a chore to work with — As long as you’re open to learning the quirks of how Siri needs things to be...
I think the excruciating detail of my comment may have accidentally implied that it’s quite a chore to work with — As long as you’re open to learning the quirks of how Siri needs things to be structured, it’s actually quite powerful and can do a lot!
I can ask it to set alarms and timers, I can set time-based or location-based reminders, I can ask it to play music, I can get it to call someone or text someone, I can ask it to open or close apps, and depending on the integration I can even get Siri to take actions within those apps entirely by voice command. I can, if I’m specific enough, probably completely run my calendar (adding, moving, deleting calendar events) using just voice commands with Siri.
If you’re a power user, there’s also an app you can download called Shortcuts which has a visual programming style way of building all kinds of complex commands, hooking into various apps and even the wider open internet with API calls.
I’ve built a shortcut which fetches weather information from one app, checks my to-do list from another app, and strings it all together into a sentence that Siri reads back to me, with a little personality thrown in for good fun. I’ve also got that shortcut to automatically trigger when my morning alarm goes off, so as soon as I’m awake, I’m greeted with (just an example) “Currently it’s 8°C and cloudy, with a top of 17°C and rain. Your first quest is to meet James for brunch”
It’s frustrating because it’s so close to natural language, but you have to restructure your sentences if you’re requesting anything with a bit of nuance or complexity. But for most things, it’s surprisingly powerful, and these days it’s very rare for me to even come up against a proper limitation of what Siri can do.
ThrowdoBaggins made an excellent comment and hit the nail on the head, the problem with Siri specifically is how inorganic it is. You need to think of a command in a literal way before you say it,...
ThrowdoBaggins made an excellent comment and hit the nail on the head, the problem with Siri specifically is how inorganic it is. You need to think of a command in a literal way before you say it, then say it.
Everything you asked, yes technically Siri can do it. But it can be very inconvenient.
For reminders, you say something like “Hey Siri, remind me (what you want to be reminded about) in 20 minutes”. Or instead of “in 20 minutes” you can also say “when I arrive home”, “at 20:00” or “tomorrow”. It will ask you to confirm the reminder then you just say yes.
For simple reminders, this works just fine. But now imagine that inside the reminder you say something like “ask my brother about what’s he doing later at night”, Siri might confuse this “later at night” as if it’s the timer that you’re setting for your reminder, if you’re not fast enough to finish what you’re saying.
Or imagine that you ask “hey siri, remind me to go to the grocery store at 19:00”. But you forgot to mention what you’re buying, so… You’re SooL. Siri can make small basic edits to a reminder that you created, but only after you created the reminder, during the confirmation process (when she asks you to confirm). After that, you can just create a new reminder, Siri has no context awareness.
Which leads me to the general problem of Siri, it has no idea of what you were talking about before. Every time you talk to her, it’s a new instance. So although you technically could program your entire day by setting alarms, reminders, events in the calendar, etc, you would have to execute several “commands”, and be literal with each and every one of them.
You couldn’t, for example, do something like this “Hey Siri, after I’m done with training, set an alarm to go home”. It has no idea what you are talking about, even if you created a calendar event for this training beforehand.
Then, there’s also the most limiting factor for me, which is you have to speak perfect english. Sucks to be you if you need a second to think about what you’re going to say next and if you have an accent. Stop for just a bit, Siri interprets it as if you finished talking, even if you were still mid sentence. And say a word “wrong”, Siri won’t try to understand the context of your phrase and notice that you probably didn’t say X, you said Y. This relates to what I said in the beginning, you have to think about what you’re going to say before you talk to Siri, and then say it as “correctly” as possible.
Thanks for the very detailed response. Now I know that Siri at least is not what I'm looking for. Apple Intelligence seems to address these issues (provided it's not marketing bait). If it really...
Thanks for the very detailed response. Now I know that Siri at least is not what I'm looking for. Apple Intelligence seems to address these issues (provided it's not marketing bait). If it really turns out to be a good assistant, I would consider buying into the Apple ecosystem. But outside of that there's nothing drawing me to it.
And more related to the article of this post: I'm surprised there's nothing of the sort that was revealed for these new Pixel phones. There's only AI features that I couldn't care less about.
I think that android phones will have similar functions, I think google assistant (now Gemini) will be capable of working like a good assistant. But I also think that, Google being Google, every...
I think that android phones will have similar functions, I think google assistant (now Gemini) will be capable of working like a good assistant.
But I also think that, Google being Google, every single command will go to the cloud. Maybe their phones can have some offline capabilities but for the most part, they’ll rely on the cloud.
Assuming Apple didn’t over-promise with their presentation of Apple Intelligence, I think they got the right idea of how these Assistants should work. In both technical (rely on local smaller models whenever possible) and on what they should do (they should be useful, not just gimmicks). I mean, let me correct myself a bit, they did make some gimmicks (the emoji generation thingy), but overall they got the right idea: proofreading, being able to reschedule conflicting events in the calendar, notifications priorities, understanding when a notification might be too important and notifies you while in focus mode, understanding context, summarizing content, etc. Yes please, give me all that, those are actually useful.
Related to the Google remark, I noticed that this AI will be integrated with Google services. I don't use gmail or search, so it kind of fell flat for me. But I did not watch the Apple...
Related to the Google remark, I noticed that this AI will be integrated with Google services. I don't use gmail or search, so it kind of fell flat for me.
But I did not watch the Apple presentation, and these things that you mentioned sound really useful indeed. Thanks for that. I'll wait for September to see how people review it.
Edit: I just tried replacing Google Assistant with Gemini on my phone. It very often cuts me off while speaking, I need to always start my sentences with "Hey Google", which got old pretty fast. It can't search for specific things in my calendar, which is pretty weird. I also enabled the permission to see what's on my screen and it always says it can't see anything.
This is one thing I’ve noticed Siri has gotten a lot better at over the years. I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem since I got my dad’s hand-me-down 4S and I’ve always ported my data forward every...
Then, there’s also the most limiting factor for me, which is you have to speak perfect english. Sucks to be you if you … have an accent.
This is one thing I’ve noticed Siri has gotten a lot better at over the years. I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem since I got my dad’s hand-me-down 4S and I’ve always ported my data forward every time I got a new phone, so the training data has been carried forward. I’m Australian, so while it used to almost require me to use an American accent at the start, I find that I can speak naturally and Siri has learned not just my accent and pronunciation, but even some of my mannerisms. Sure, part of that has been that over the years I’ve occasionally explicitly told Siri that I want to teach it how to pronounce some of my friend’s and family’s names, but I very rarely get errors these days.
Part of that is that I’ve always made sure the transcription of what Siri thinks I’m saying appears on screen, because that gives me the opportunity to tap a word that it misunderstood and type what I actually said, and Siri can learn from that.
I'm at the point where I fold my arms and go "show me", whenever they bring up AI. I'm low key convinced that we'll soon find out that the real-world scenarios in which AI can actually be used to...
I'm at the point where I fold my arms and go "show me", whenever they bring up AI. I'm low key convinced that we'll soon find out that the real-world scenarios in which AI can actually be used to make our lives easier are very limited and there will be some sobering up. You see the demo use cases converging towards "summarize this" and "check my calendar". Which is cool but if a) you use this in a professional setting, you probably would need robustness go from 90% to like 99% which is that long and frustrating part of a technology maturing and b) in a private setting you probably barely run into enough situations to make this a significant time save.
I didn't really follow the announcement, but I just read some of the summaries and pre-ordered the smaller 9 pro, trading in my pixel 7. My main reason for upgrading is the zoom camera with the...
I didn't really follow the announcement, but I just read some of the summaries and pre-ordered the smaller 9 pro, trading in my pixel 7. My main reason for upgrading is the zoom camera with the small screen size. I've always been an advocate for zooming with your feet, but I found myself using the zoom function on my phone more and more , even though it's just a crop. I wanted to have a better optical zoom but I didn't want a larger phone. I was considering switching to a Samsung s24, but there were several software issues I had with my s22 that led to me selling it, so I was a bit reluctant to return to Samsung. The new AI features aren't much of a selling point for me, but I'm trying to stay open-minded about them and I suppose I'll see how useful they are.
I'm curious what kind of software issues you had with the s22? I have a Pixel 6a that's had some issues crop up, like I've always gotten this weird echo on the phone (like people tell me they hear...
I'm curious what kind of software issues you had with the s22? I have a Pixel 6a that's had some issues crop up, like I've always gotten this weird echo on the phone (like people tell me they hear themselves) unless I'm on speaker, but only for actual phone calls and not apps like Discord. And another issue where my vibration will stop working until a reboot, but only when not connected to wifi. Although that one hasn't happened in a few weeks so maybe they finally fixed it.
I've been considering changing to a different brand for my next phone, possibly Samsung. Maybe I'd just be trading one set of problems for another though...
I love the hardware of my S21, it's quite possibly the studiest phone I've ever owned, and barely has a handful of screen scratches despite being dropped and dragged on concrete and stone...
I love the hardware of my S21, it's quite possibly the studiest phone I've ever owned, and barely has a handful of screen scratches despite being dropped and dragged on concrete and stone countless times.
However, I hate the Samsung software so much. I recently booted up my old Pixel 3, installed pretty much the same apps I use on the S21, and it was so much nicer to use.
I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do when this thing breaks. Newer phones are even bigger and heavier than this thing, and it's already obnoxiously heavy.
I honestly don't remember that well, but the biggest one was probably having occasional touch/scroll latency. Most times it would be fine, but every few days it would start taking longer to react...
I honestly don't remember that well, but the biggest one was probably having occasional touch/scroll latency. Most times it would be fine, but every few days it would start taking longer to react to my finger. I think this was app dependent, so I figured it was a software issue. I guess it's still possible that it was a hardware issue.
I also didn't like dealing with Samsung's versions of various apps. I tried to disable everything from the Samsung apps, but it just felt like every once in a while some Samsung app would start notifying me. I hate notifications that aren't important to me, and Samsung loves giving you notifications from a dozen different apps while occasionally introducing new notification categories, so it felt like playing whack-a-mole. I know a lot of apps can be uninstalled using ADB, with some tools even automating the process, but in the past this has caused some other issues when the system expects some app to exist. I used to be really into customizing my phone, but this is just too much tinkering for my taste at this point in my life.
There were probably a few other small things, but that's what I remember. I think some people wouldn't really notice such things, but they really pissed me off, so I wanted to switch to something else.
I haven't owned an S model in ages, I've been sticking with A (I don't do much with my phone). But my last A16 had, besides the same issue as yours (except everywhere on the phone) this strange...
I haven't owned an S model in ages, I've been sticking with A (I don't do much with my phone). But my last A16 had, besides the same issue as yours (except everywhere on the phone) this strange issue: sometimes it would start typing by itself, a lot & very fast. Maybe caused by some humidity on the screen? It never clicked on icons, or anything else on the screen. It would happen only on the keyboard. It started happening so often that I ended up buying a newer model because of it.
Sometimes my new phone (A22 I think) also does this for a short bit, and my heart skips a little.
Agreed. I chose my Pixel 6 Pro for the telephoto camera, and it has been well worth it. It enables shots with a fundamentally different feel due to perspective compression. Very happy to have the...
Agreed. I chose my Pixel 6 Pro for the telephoto camera, and it has been well worth it. It enables shots with a fundamentally different feel due to perspective compression. Very happy to have the smaller option this time around. The 6 Pro is just a bit too big and heavy, especially in a case.
Mine and my wife's last 3 phones each have been pixels but between those 6, 3 have bricked just about 2 years after we got them, and that combined with my frustrations with the 6a (particularly...
Mine and my wife's last 3 phones each have been pixels but between those 6, 3 have bricked just about 2 years after we got them, and that combined with my frustrations with the 6a (particularly the touch screen/fingerprint scanner) has me considering looking elsewhere for phones on the next cycle.
But, I really don't know what the landscape is like for other brands these days. We're staying away from Apple, but that's really all we know for sure.
I've been a Pixel person since the 6 Pro, but I'm an Android developer so I have used Samsung phones and used OnePlus phones as well. OnePlus IMO is probably a good one to stay away from. I think...
I've been a Pixel person since the 6 Pro, but I'm an Android developer so I have used Samsung phones and used OnePlus phones as well. OnePlus IMO is probably a good one to stay away from. I think Samsung is probably the next best one from my experience after Pixel. I've heard good things about Asus as well, but I've heard that some of the more recent ones aren't as good.
I'm also fortunate enough to not have the same issues with bricking though.
Isn’t Asus kinda bad at software support for its phones? At least not nearly as good as Google and Samsung. Out of curiosity, why do you recommend staying away from OnePlus?
Isn’t Asus kinda bad at software support for its phones? At least not nearly as good as Google and Samsung.
Out of curiosity, why do you recommend staying away from OnePlus?
Yeah they are, that's why I put a caveat haha. I actually considered switching to a Zenfone for a bit, before just deciding to go with the Pixel until further notice. My OnePlus 6T was just kinda...
Yeah they are, that's why I put a caveat haha. I actually considered switching to a Zenfone for a bit, before just deciding to go with the Pixel until further notice.
My OnePlus 6T was just kinda bad after a while, and I think I just got bad memories on it mostly. There were a lot of random points of frustration that I had that I honestly can't remember anymore, I just have had bad vibes from it since. I also remembered seeing some bad reviews of the OnePlus 10 or something and just solidified my bad vibes from it.
Yeah I'd agree that Samsung is another great option, they're popular for good reason. They're still the top in terms of amount of features shoved into a phone, at least in the US if I'm not...
Yeah I'd agree that Samsung is another great option, they're popular for good reason. They're still the top in terms of amount of features shoved into a phone, at least in the US if I'm not mistaken. I do think they could do with a bit more polish on the software, but overall, they're great.
I swore off OnePlus after getting their 7 Pro as an upgrade from the 3T. The 7 Pro was really expensive and I found the curved screen to be such a massive pain in terms of touch screen. That, and...
I swore off OnePlus after getting their 7 Pro as an upgrade from the 3T. The 7 Pro was really expensive and I found the curved screen to be such a massive pain in terms of touch screen. That, and there was no real perceived improvements, even with the new 90Hz display.
I now have the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G (rolls off the tongue, right?). With that said, I had iPhones before - they were OK, but I did miss customising my phone and actually having some level of control over it like I could do with an Android phone (for a start, it has a proper filesystem that is user accessible). I got this phone for £180, and for that price it is absolutely phenomenal. The camera is crap, but I'm not someone who takes many photos anyway, so it was an incredible bargain.
Failing that, I would've gone with used/refurbished phones from reliable manufacturers (Google, possibly Samsung although they tend to bloat their phones)
I never buy a phone with a letter after the name (aka the budget model of a flagship phone). I keep my phones for years. It's worth the extra couple hundred bucks to get the nicest phone I can get...
I never buy a phone with a letter after the name (aka the budget model of a flagship phone).
I keep my phones for years. It's worth the extra couple hundred bucks to get the nicest phone I can get and then hang on to it for 5+ years.
I had the pixel 4, upgraded to the 7 for free. Both have been amazing phones and have held up great. It's actually incredible how useful they are. Google has done a great job building their software and cloud projects into their hardware. Everything just works seamlessly. Like the iPhone but with way more freedom and more user-friendly design decisions.
I've been using the Pixel a series for a while (4a, 6a and 7a) and had great luck with them. Not five years luck, but 3+ usually (and I pass mine down to my partners as he uses less phone than...
I've been using the Pixel a series for a while (4a, 6a and 7a) and had great luck with them. Not five years luck, but 3+ usually (and I pass mine down to my partners as he uses less phone than me.) FWIW they've all held up wonderfully as well.
While most of the phone stuff leaked in advance, the 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL look great. Love the Hazel color on the Pro XL and fast charging on the XL is a nice addition. Not sure if I want to trade...
While most of the phone stuff leaked in advance, the 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL look great. Love the Hazel color on the Pro XL and fast charging on the XL is a nice addition. Not sure if I want to trade in my 7 Pro, it still works great. The trade in prices are decent. $540 in the US for a 7 Pro 128GB. I bought mine used for $500 last year so I'm kind of tempted but I also have no need for the new phone other than "ooh, shiny"
I took a trade in deal for my a Pixel-to-Pixel upgrade via the Google Store and despite my old phone appearing near-mint to me (and having spent all but about ten minutes of it's 18 months of life...
I took a trade in deal for my a Pixel-to-Pixel upgrade via the Google Store and despite my old phone appearing near-mint to me (and having spent all but about ten minutes of it's 18 months of life in a good quality case), the trade in company Google used came back to me with a list of "damage" that I couldn't see. They provided photos but it wasn't convincing at all, and they refused to give me the £175 that the Google Store suggested I could get, and offered me a mere £40.
I won't be buying a new phone again via that route, not when I can last year's flagship used-but-mint for a fraction of the price of new. I can wait until the Pixel 9 series hits the refurb markets.
I've heard the trade in values are meh on the 8 Pro, but I do like that they're putting out a Pro 9 in a "normal" size (it still looks pretty big lol). I only switch phones on the even numbers...
I've heard the trade in values are meh on the 8 Pro, but I do like that they're putting out a Pro 9 in a "normal" size (it still looks pretty big lol). I only switch phones on the even numbers though so it's whatever for me haha.
Yeah I saw earlier that the trade in value for the 8 Pro is $699 which isn't too bad. Updating on the even numbers might actually work in your favor here actually. I remember seeing articles about...
Yeah I saw earlier that the trade in value for the 8 Pro is $699 which isn't too bad. Updating on the even numbers might actually work in your favor here actually. I remember seeing articles about how the 10 series will have their SoCs fabricated at TSMC so they should be a really big jump from the G3.
I feel like updating on even numbers is usually the move, only because of our base 10 number system lol. 10 is usually a big deal and a significant number so that's the cadence I try to hit.
I feel like updating on even numbers is usually the move, only because of our base 10 number system lol. 10 is usually a big deal and a significant number so that's the cadence I try to hit.
This isn't exactly just a round number thing, but in general I want to avoid releases that have a lot of new features and wait for them to make the more refined iteration. For example, hype...
This isn't exactly just a round number thing, but in general I want to avoid releases that have a lot of new features and wait for them to make the more refined iteration. For example, hype overrode reason when I got the Pixel 6 with the first Tensor chip, and it had bad overheating issues. I missed some training material because it stopped recording video due to overheating, and I couldn't restart the video recording. This was just plain 1080p video recording. After upgrading to the Pixel 7 I haven't had any issues. People are looking forward to the Pixel 10 with the switch to TSMC, but I'm definitely avoiding that generation.
to each their own for sure! I don't really mind doing the first adopter thing (looking at my first generation Vive here) and I'm generally pretty decent at avoiding the weird issues that come up...
to each their own for sure! I don't really mind doing the first adopter thing (looking at my first generation Vive here) and I'm generally pretty decent at avoiding the weird issues that come up (knock on wood). I had a Pixel 6Pro when they had Tensor1 and that phone is still around and kicking to this day!
Gonna upgrade from my 8 pro to 9 pro for the following reasons: 8 pro has serious issues with wifi7, I've had to do a lot of nonsense with my network because of the shit support Huge upgrade in...
Gonna upgrade from my 8 pro to 9 pro for the following reasons:
8 pro has serious issues with wifi7, I've had to do a lot of nonsense with my network because of the shit support
Huge upgrade in selfie camera, about time
more 5g and mm bands
I bought into the pixel ecosystem because of the call screening and sms spam detection, I honestly should just change my number but I'm lazy and these phones are fine
Honestly point one has been bugging me for awhile I'd like to simplify my home wifi situation. This doesn't seem like a huge step up and the AI stuff this year isn't as useful as it was last year (better spam/call screening/etc). But I am expecting the photo stuff to be interesting and with more RAM and better AI chip I hope that some number of the little things might turn out useful. The AI summaries of calls could be useful for tracking support calls with various companies that require you to call them, and I'm hoping it's hinting at having a hold for me button on non-800 numbers for local businesses that have terrible wait times.
Wifi 6 is useful because it performs better in crowded spaces like offices where there's lots of devices due to the extra spectrum space. I've not heard of much using 7 yet.
Wifi 6 is useful because it performs better in crowded spaces like offices where there's lots of devices due to the extra spectrum space. I've not heard of much using 7 yet.
I'm still running Wifi 5 over here. I 'upgraded' by having a second access point covering half the house. Course, I run wires for anything that is stationary, so not exactly competing for much...
I'm still running Wifi 5 over here. I 'upgraded' by having a second access point covering half the house.
Course, I run wires for anything that is stationary, so not exactly competing for much bandwith on the wifi.
It has listed 7 standards it supports, as I explained in another comment this is specific to the timing of when 7 was announced and what modem is used not supporting the official standards because...
It has listed 7 standards it supports, as I explained in another comment this is specific to the timing of when 7 was announced and what modem is used not supporting the official standards because they came out later. My assumption is that the problem is they tried to make it support but never bothered to really put enough resources in ensuring it did, meaning it's really buggy and depends on other hardware just happening to do it in the way it likes
It’s shallow maybe, but I’ve not been digging the huge camera bar of the past couple of generations at all. Hope designs like the Xperia which try to make the cameras more subtle or better yet...
It’s shallow maybe, but I’ve not been digging the huge camera bar of the past couple of generations at all. Hope designs like the Xperia which try to make the cameras more subtle or better yet have uniform thickness come back into favor.
I kind of wish they'd return to what they did with the OG Pixel and have the width taper down along the phone, so the cameras still stay flush with the back. I can't say I hate the camera bump...
I kind of wish they'd return to what they did with the OG Pixel and have the width taper down along the phone, so the cameras still stay flush with the back.
I can't say I hate the camera bump though, I do like it more than the camera square that the 4a 5G had (and the ones on the past couple iPhone generations), and I like the rounded take on it of the 9.
Anyone know if the AI features are able to be disabled or ignored? I know a lot of them can be (I don't need to interact with the AI photo stuff if I don't want to), but I was watching video...
Anyone know if the AI features are able to be disabled or ignored? I know a lot of them can be (I don't need to interact with the AI photo stuff if I don't want to), but I was watching video earlier which showed things like "AI weather report" which I have no interest in and would rather just disable.
My Samsung s21 ultra is going to stop being updated in under a year so I'm looking to get a new phone soon. Stock android has always been my favorite, so if I can move back to pixel I would rather do that. I just have zero interest in this AI hype trend and if I can shield myself from it with relative ease that would be a bonus.
On the 8 you can turn all of it off. In fact, most of it is not even on by default, and you have to enable it. I use the hold for me button often, I have turned on call screening, and I use the...
On the 8 you can turn all of it off. In fact, most of it is not even on by default, and you have to enable it.
I use the hold for me button often, I have turned on call screening, and I use the sms spam detection as well. From time to time I turn on the captions and I've used the live translate before but you could just open the translate app for that. The other feature specific stuff like AI editing in photos is great, but that's not an on/off thing so much as it exists within an app.
This is all good to know, I appreciate the insight. I know the AI stuff is going to be here to stay and will be a highlighted "feature" in basically every brand now given the hype train, so it's...
This is all good to know, I appreciate the insight. I know the AI stuff is going to be here to stay and will be a highlighted "feature" in basically every brand now given the hype train, so it's more a matter of what's going to be the most seamless and least intrusive implementation of it, and if there's options to either turn off or ignore the parts I have no interest in that's a huge plus. Pixel 9 might be a good way to go for my next phone.
In general I've found Google to be good at keeping the stock experience stock, and having most new things be opt-in. There's a small caveat that they redid the search bar and the at a glance in a...
In general I've found Google to be good at keeping the stock experience stock, and having most new things be opt-in. There's a small caveat that they redid the search bar and the at a glance in a way that can't be overridden without a custom launcher, but that's been true of android in general and is not specific to pixel phones. Samsung tends to have better hardware, but I hate all the bloat and how it practically forces you to use their apps.
Looking at what's new this year, I think the searching stuff could be particularly useful when you want to quickly find a photo (or meme) you took a year ago to show or send to somebody. I'm guessing it'll be able to search through documents too which could be useful but generally not the kind of thing I use my phone for.
Also to add the above comment, most of AI feature requires different model to do on device compute, so if you're not using them, you won't have to download it. It(Those part) won't be on your device.
Also to add the above comment, most of AI feature requires different model to do on device compute, so if you're not using them, you won't have to download it. It(Those part) won't be on your device.
Looks like I'm finally going to give a foldable a shot. My only two reservations are the name is crazy long ("Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold") and the battery seems a bit small. My Pixel 6 Pro is running...
Looks like I'm finally going to give a foldable a shot. My only two reservations are the name is crazy long ("Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold") and the battery seems a bit small. My Pixel 6 Pro is running out of updates now, but I'll probably still wait till a Black Friday sale to pick it up. Maybe get a Pixel Watch too? My Samsung watch is alright, but I'd like my notification settings to sync.
From my experience, Black Friday or something is probably a good time to wait till, especially since the phones themselves release at the end of September-ish anyways. I know price drops go down...
From my experience, Black Friday or something is probably a good time to wait till, especially since the phones themselves release at the end of September-ish anyways. I know price drops go down around there, last year it wasn't as big but still a hundred bucks or so IIRC. I really like my Pixel Watch a lot, I was thinking I might end up doing the update for accessories on odd years, and updating my main phone on even years. :shrug:
I had the Samsung Z Flip 3 and the small battery was my biggest issue with that phone. 4,650 mAh is definitely small. It will be fine most of the time but you will almost certainly have days you...
I had the Samsung Z Flip 3 and the small battery was my biggest issue with that phone. 4,650 mAh is definitely small. It will be fine most of the time but you will almost certainly have days you can't get the whole way through without charging. At least it has 45 W charging so while not fast it is definitely faster than the typical 25/30 W slowness.
What's the recommendation from someone that doesn't need all the flashy features of the latest model and would rather pay less but still wants a Pixel? Is it worth waiting for black Friday or...
What's the recommendation from someone that doesn't need all the flashy features of the latest model and would rather pay less but still wants a Pixel? Is it worth waiting for black Friday or similar events for a price decrease? Would it be better to wait until the 9a is out?
Just buy a used pixel 8 if you don't need anything new and flashy, maybe on Black Friday. Probably better to wait until the 9 is fully out when people start trading in their old stuff. You're...
Just buy a used pixel 8 if you don't need anything new and flashy, maybe on Black Friday. Probably better to wait until the 9 is fully out when people start trading in their old stuff. You're guaranteed 6(?) years of updates with an 8 and if you don't need all the new features you'll be fine.
Lots of AI talk (bleh), but some more interesting, assistant style stuff makes the AI at least a bit more palatable. We'll see if it actually works though lol. I basically watch these events for work so I figured people should know!
I haven’t checked out the event yet, but if there’s a place where our current AI’s make sense, it’s in our phones and PCs at OS level. It’s the place where it can have access to most context about you and reply/take actions that can help you better. AI pin and rabbit failed because… A lot of reasons, but one of them was also that at the end of the day, it was a device that didn’t and couldn’t know a lot about you, so it was just a portable chatGPT device at the end of the day.
But I say this with a big caveat: I’m thinking of smaller models that run locally, akin to what Apple is doing but without the cloud part. Models specialized at certain tasks, that can do them well, all on device. I’m imagining Siri that no longer needs me to say word by word what I want it to do, and can understand nuances/implications, and my previous prompts. It doesn’t need to be smart enough to carry out conversations.
E.g. A lot of times I ask it to set a reminder while I’m driving, and usually I say “when I get home, when I get to work, in 20 minutes”, etc. In other words, I ask it to remind me of something when I stop driving. It would be great if I could say “remind me of this”, and it understood that I’m driving, therefore I want it to remind me when it notices that I stopped.
It’s in little QoL things like this that I can see these AIs becoming a game changer for personal assistants
You seem to be in the know, so I'll ask for your opinion. I also probably misunderstood your comment, so I'd like to clarify. I have never used any of these features (Siri - I never owned an iPhone; and I haven't used the equivalent features that come on Samsung Galaxy phones)
Is Siri capable of setting reminders on your phone? If you have experience with others, how would you compare it?
Also, is there any way to use it for organizing your day? Such as telling it you have tasks X, Y, Z, that need to be done by times A, B, C and asking it to keep track of it & set reminders?
So basically I am asking if it has any sort of assistant-like functionality. I searched a bit online and I can't seem to find this sort of feature on a smartphone. The closest I got to was Apple Intelligence, but it's unreleased so I have no clue if it's just marketing buzz or not.
I’m not the person you asked, but I’ve been using Siri for years, so I hope I can weigh in here.
Siri pre-Apple Intelligence is definitely able to set reminders and alarms and timers, and execute basic functionality. The issue I run into is that Siri is very literal and not very flexible. I don’t know if it’s possible to train Siri to learn new phrases to execute certain tasks, but I’ve definitely had to adapt my own language to fit Siri’s expectations in order to get what I want.
For example, let’s say I know I’ve got to pick up a delivery on Monday at lunchtime, and I want to set an alarm. I can’t set an alarm to only go off on a particular day, but if it’s less than a week away, I can get around that by having the alarm “repeat on Mondays”. And let’s say I also want to give the alarm a name, so that when Monday rolls around, I don’t have some mystery alarm, I see “collect delivery” and remember what it was for.
I need to carefully order my clauses in order to get what I want. “Set an alarm called collect delivery that repeats on Monday at 12:30pm” is just as likely to get me an alarm called “collect delivery that repeats on Monday” or maybe even a response from Siri “what time do you want me to set it” while displaying an alarm named “collect delivery that repeats on Monday at 12:30pm” which doesn’t yet have a time.
I also can’t reliably set an alarm for example that goes off at 4:30pm, with the name “post office closes at 5pm” by just putting a sentence together for Siri to convert into an alarm.
It’s frustrating that even if I put pauses in my sentence for emphasis (that any other fluent speaker would instantly recognise as verbal punctuation, and understand where I’m breaking phrases up for clarity) Siri either doesn’t understand those verbal cues, or worse thinks you’ve stopped talking and tries to execute half of a command.
To be honest, that doesn't inspire too much confidence. How about time management / scheduling? Did you find it helpful in any way?
I think the excruciating detail of my comment may have accidentally implied that it’s quite a chore to work with — As long as you’re open to learning the quirks of how Siri needs things to be structured, it’s actually quite powerful and can do a lot!
I can ask it to set alarms and timers, I can set time-based or location-based reminders, I can ask it to play music, I can get it to call someone or text someone, I can ask it to open or close apps, and depending on the integration I can even get Siri to take actions within those apps entirely by voice command. I can, if I’m specific enough, probably completely run my calendar (adding, moving, deleting calendar events) using just voice commands with Siri.
If you’re a power user, there’s also an app you can download called Shortcuts which has a visual programming style way of building all kinds of complex commands, hooking into various apps and even the wider open internet with API calls.
I’ve built a shortcut which fetches weather information from one app, checks my to-do list from another app, and strings it all together into a sentence that Siri reads back to me, with a little personality thrown in for good fun. I’ve also got that shortcut to automatically trigger when my morning alarm goes off, so as soon as I’m awake, I’m greeted with (just an example) “Currently it’s 8°C and cloudy, with a top of 17°C and rain. Your first quest is to meet James for brunch”
It’s frustrating because it’s so close to natural language, but you have to restructure your sentences if you’re requesting anything with a bit of nuance or complexity. But for most things, it’s surprisingly powerful, and these days it’s very rare for me to even come up against a proper limitation of what Siri can do.
ThrowdoBaggins made an excellent comment and hit the nail on the head, the problem with Siri specifically is how inorganic it is. You need to think of a command in a literal way before you say it, then say it.
Everything you asked, yes technically Siri can do it. But it can be very inconvenient.
For reminders, you say something like “Hey Siri, remind me (what you want to be reminded about) in 20 minutes”. Or instead of “in 20 minutes” you can also say “when I arrive home”, “at 20:00” or “tomorrow”. It will ask you to confirm the reminder then you just say yes.
For simple reminders, this works just fine. But now imagine that inside the reminder you say something like “ask my brother about what’s he doing later at night”, Siri might confuse this “later at night” as if it’s the timer that you’re setting for your reminder, if you’re not fast enough to finish what you’re saying.
Or imagine that you ask “hey siri, remind me to go to the grocery store at 19:00”. But you forgot to mention what you’re buying, so… You’re SooL. Siri can make small basic edits to a reminder that you created, but only after you created the reminder, during the confirmation process (when she asks you to confirm). After that, you can just create a new reminder, Siri has no context awareness.
Which leads me to the general problem of Siri, it has no idea of what you were talking about before. Every time you talk to her, it’s a new instance. So although you technically could program your entire day by setting alarms, reminders, events in the calendar, etc, you would have to execute several “commands”, and be literal with each and every one of them.
You couldn’t, for example, do something like this “Hey Siri, after I’m done with training, set an alarm to go home”. It has no idea what you are talking about, even if you created a calendar event for this training beforehand.
Then, there’s also the most limiting factor for me, which is you have to speak perfect english. Sucks to be you if you need a second to think about what you’re going to say next and if you have an accent. Stop for just a bit, Siri interprets it as if you finished talking, even if you were still mid sentence. And say a word “wrong”, Siri won’t try to understand the context of your phrase and notice that you probably didn’t say X, you said Y. This relates to what I said in the beginning, you have to think about what you’re going to say before you talk to Siri, and then say it as “correctly” as possible.
Thanks for the very detailed response. Now I know that Siri at least is not what I'm looking for. Apple Intelligence seems to address these issues (provided it's not marketing bait). If it really turns out to be a good assistant, I would consider buying into the Apple ecosystem. But outside of that there's nothing drawing me to it.
And more related to the article of this post: I'm surprised there's nothing of the sort that was revealed for these new Pixel phones. There's only AI features that I couldn't care less about.
I think that android phones will have similar functions, I think google assistant (now Gemini) will be capable of working like a good assistant.
But I also think that, Google being Google, every single command will go to the cloud. Maybe their phones can have some offline capabilities but for the most part, they’ll rely on the cloud.
Assuming Apple didn’t over-promise with their presentation of Apple Intelligence, I think they got the right idea of how these Assistants should work. In both technical (rely on local smaller models whenever possible) and on what they should do (they should be useful, not just gimmicks). I mean, let me correct myself a bit, they did make some gimmicks (the emoji generation thingy), but overall they got the right idea: proofreading, being able to reschedule conflicting events in the calendar, notifications priorities, understanding when a notification might be too important and notifies you while in focus mode, understanding context, summarizing content, etc. Yes please, give me all that, those are actually useful.
Related to the Google remark, I noticed that this AI will be integrated with Google services. I don't use gmail or search, so it kind of fell flat for me.
But I did not watch the Apple presentation, and these things that you mentioned sound really useful indeed. Thanks for that. I'll wait for September to see how people review it.
Edit: I just tried replacing Google Assistant with Gemini on my phone. It very often cuts me off while speaking, I need to always start my sentences with "Hey Google", which got old pretty fast. It can't search for specific things in my calendar, which is pretty weird. I also enabled the permission to see what's on my screen and it always says it can't see anything.
Overall it's pretty bad.
This is one thing I’ve noticed Siri has gotten a lot better at over the years. I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem since I got my dad’s hand-me-down 4S and I’ve always ported my data forward every time I got a new phone, so the training data has been carried forward. I’m Australian, so while it used to almost require me to use an American accent at the start, I find that I can speak naturally and Siri has learned not just my accent and pronunciation, but even some of my mannerisms. Sure, part of that has been that over the years I’ve occasionally explicitly told Siri that I want to teach it how to pronounce some of my friend’s and family’s names, but I very rarely get errors these days.
Part of that is that I’ve always made sure the transcription of what Siri thinks I’m saying appears on screen, because that gives me the opportunity to tap a word that it misunderstood and type what I actually said, and Siri can learn from that.
I'm at the point where I fold my arms and go "show me", whenever they bring up AI. I'm low key convinced that we'll soon find out that the real-world scenarios in which AI can actually be used to make our lives easier are very limited and there will be some sobering up. You see the demo use cases converging towards "summarize this" and "check my calendar". Which is cool but if a) you use this in a professional setting, you probably would need robustness go from 90% to like 99% which is that long and frustrating part of a technology maturing and b) in a private setting you probably barely run into enough situations to make this a significant time save.
I didn't really follow the announcement, but I just read some of the summaries and pre-ordered the smaller 9 pro, trading in my pixel 7. My main reason for upgrading is the zoom camera with the small screen size. I've always been an advocate for zooming with your feet, but I found myself using the zoom function on my phone more and more , even though it's just a crop. I wanted to have a better optical zoom but I didn't want a larger phone. I was considering switching to a Samsung s24, but there were several software issues I had with my s22 that led to me selling it, so I was a bit reluctant to return to Samsung. The new AI features aren't much of a selling point for me, but I'm trying to stay open-minded about them and I suppose I'll see how useful they are.
I'm curious what kind of software issues you had with the s22? I have a Pixel 6a that's had some issues crop up, like I've always gotten this weird echo on the phone (like people tell me they hear themselves) unless I'm on speaker, but only for actual phone calls and not apps like Discord. And another issue where my vibration will stop working until a reboot, but only when not connected to wifi. Although that one hasn't happened in a few weeks so maybe they finally fixed it.
I've been considering changing to a different brand for my next phone, possibly Samsung. Maybe I'd just be trading one set of problems for another though...
I love the hardware of my S21, it's quite possibly the studiest phone I've ever owned, and barely has a handful of screen scratches despite being dropped and dragged on concrete and stone countless times.
However, I hate the Samsung software so much. I recently booted up my old Pixel 3, installed pretty much the same apps I use on the S21, and it was so much nicer to use.
I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do when this thing breaks. Newer phones are even bigger and heavier than this thing, and it's already obnoxiously heavy.
I miss my Galaxy S5.
I honestly don't remember that well, but the biggest one was probably having occasional touch/scroll latency. Most times it would be fine, but every few days it would start taking longer to react to my finger. I think this was app dependent, so I figured it was a software issue. I guess it's still possible that it was a hardware issue.
I also didn't like dealing with Samsung's versions of various apps. I tried to disable everything from the Samsung apps, but it just felt like every once in a while some Samsung app would start notifying me. I hate notifications that aren't important to me, and Samsung loves giving you notifications from a dozen different apps while occasionally introducing new notification categories, so it felt like playing whack-a-mole. I know a lot of apps can be uninstalled using ADB, with some tools even automating the process, but in the past this has caused some other issues when the system expects some app to exist. I used to be really into customizing my phone, but this is just too much tinkering for my taste at this point in my life.
There were probably a few other small things, but that's what I remember. I think some people wouldn't really notice such things, but they really pissed me off, so I wanted to switch to something else.
I haven't owned an S model in ages, I've been sticking with A (I don't do much with my phone). But my last A16 had, besides the same issue as yours (except everywhere on the phone) this strange issue: sometimes it would start typing by itself, a lot & very fast. Maybe caused by some humidity on the screen? It never clicked on icons, or anything else on the screen. It would happen only on the keyboard. It started happening so often that I ended up buying a newer model because of it.
Sometimes my new phone (A22 I think) also does this for a short bit, and my heart skips a little.
Agreed. I chose my Pixel 6 Pro for the telephoto camera, and it has been well worth it. It enables shots with a fundamentally different feel due to perspective compression. Very happy to have the smaller option this time around. The 6 Pro is just a bit too big and heavy, especially in a case.
Mine and my wife's last 3 phones each have been pixels but between those 6, 3 have bricked just about 2 years after we got them, and that combined with my frustrations with the 6a (particularly the touch screen/fingerprint scanner) has me considering looking elsewhere for phones on the next cycle.
But, I really don't know what the landscape is like for other brands these days. We're staying away from Apple, but that's really all we know for sure.
I've been a Pixel person since the 6 Pro, but I'm an Android developer so I have used Samsung phones and used OnePlus phones as well. OnePlus IMO is probably a good one to stay away from. I think Samsung is probably the next best one from my experience after Pixel. I've heard good things about Asus as well, but I've heard that some of the more recent ones aren't as good.
I'm also fortunate enough to not have the same issues with bricking though.
Isn’t Asus kinda bad at software support for its phones? At least not nearly as good as Google and Samsung.
Out of curiosity, why do you recommend staying away from OnePlus?
Yeah they are, that's why I put a caveat haha. I actually considered switching to a Zenfone for a bit, before just deciding to go with the Pixel until further notice.
My OnePlus 6T was just kinda bad after a while, and I think I just got bad memories on it mostly. There were a lot of random points of frustration that I had that I honestly can't remember anymore, I just have had bad vibes from it since. I also remembered seeing some bad reviews of the OnePlus 10 or something and just solidified my bad vibes from it.
Yeah I'd agree that Samsung is another great option, they're popular for good reason. They're still the top in terms of amount of features shoved into a phone, at least in the US if I'm not mistaken. I do think they could do with a bit more polish on the software, but overall, they're great.
I swore off OnePlus after getting their 7 Pro as an upgrade from the 3T. The 7 Pro was really expensive and I found the curved screen to be such a massive pain in terms of touch screen. That, and there was no real perceived improvements, even with the new 90Hz display.
I now have the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G (rolls off the tongue, right?). With that said, I had iPhones before - they were OK, but I did miss customising my phone and actually having some level of control over it like I could do with an Android phone (for a start, it has a proper filesystem that is user accessible). I got this phone for £180, and for that price it is absolutely phenomenal. The camera is crap, but I'm not someone who takes many photos anyway, so it was an incredible bargain.
Failing that, I would've gone with used/refurbished phones from reliable manufacturers (Google, possibly Samsung although they tend to bloat their phones)
I never buy a phone with a letter after the name (aka the budget model of a flagship phone).
I keep my phones for years. It's worth the extra couple hundred bucks to get the nicest phone I can get and then hang on to it for 5+ years.
I had the pixel 4, upgraded to the 7 for free. Both have been amazing phones and have held up great. It's actually incredible how useful they are. Google has done a great job building their software and cloud projects into their hardware. Everything just works seamlessly. Like the iPhone but with way more freedom and more user-friendly design decisions.
I've been using the Pixel a series for a while (4a, 6a and 7a) and had great luck with them. Not five years luck, but 3+ usually (and I pass mine down to my partners as he uses less phone than me.) FWIW they've all held up wonderfully as well.
While most of the phone stuff leaked in advance, the 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL look great. Love the Hazel color on the Pro XL and fast charging on the XL is a nice addition. Not sure if I want to trade in my 7 Pro, it still works great. The trade in prices are decent. $540 in the US for a 7 Pro 128GB. I bought mine used for $500 last year so I'm kind of tempted but I also have no need for the new phone other than "ooh, shiny"
I took a trade in deal for my a Pixel-to-Pixel upgrade via the Google Store and despite my old phone appearing near-mint to me (and having spent all but about ten minutes of it's 18 months of life in a good quality case), the trade in company Google used came back to me with a list of "damage" that I couldn't see. They provided photos but it wasn't convincing at all, and they refused to give me the £175 that the Google Store suggested I could get, and offered me a mere £40.
I won't be buying a new phone again via that route, not when I can last year's flagship used-but-mint for a fraction of the price of new. I can wait until the Pixel 9 series hits the refurb markets.
I've heard the trade in values are meh on the 8 Pro, but I do like that they're putting out a Pro 9 in a "normal" size (it still looks pretty big lol). I only switch phones on the even numbers though so it's whatever for me haha.
Yeah I saw earlier that the trade in value for the 8 Pro is $699 which isn't too bad. Updating on the even numbers might actually work in your favor here actually. I remember seeing articles about how the 10 series will have their SoCs fabricated at TSMC so they should be a really big jump from the G3.
I feel like updating on even numbers is usually the move, only because of our base 10 number system lol. 10 is usually a big deal and a significant number so that's the cadence I try to hit.
Smart haha. I usually upgrade when I feel tired of a phone which has usually been every 2 years.
This isn't exactly just a round number thing, but in general I want to avoid releases that have a lot of new features and wait for them to make the more refined iteration. For example, hype overrode reason when I got the Pixel 6 with the first Tensor chip, and it had bad overheating issues. I missed some training material because it stopped recording video due to overheating, and I couldn't restart the video recording. This was just plain 1080p video recording. After upgrading to the Pixel 7 I haven't had any issues. People are looking forward to the Pixel 10 with the switch to TSMC, but I'm definitely avoiding that generation.
to each their own for sure! I don't really mind doing the first adopter thing (looking at my first generation Vive here) and I'm generally pretty decent at avoiding the weird issues that come up (knock on wood). I had a Pixel 6Pro when they had Tensor1 and that phone is still around and kicking to this day!
Gonna upgrade from my 8 pro to 9 pro for the following reasons:
Honestly point one has been bugging me for awhile I'd like to simplify my home wifi situation. This doesn't seem like a huge step up and the AI stuff this year isn't as useful as it was last year (better spam/call screening/etc). But I am expecting the photo stuff to be interesting and with more RAM and better AI chip I hope that some number of the little things might turn out useful. The AI summaries of calls could be useful for tracking support calls with various companies that require you to call them, and I'm hoping it's hinting at having a hold for me button on non-800 numbers for local businesses that have terrible wait times.
Since both my phone and our routers are pretty old, I doubt I've ever used WiFi 7. Is this something most people should worry about?
Wifi 6 is useful because it performs better in crowded spaces like offices where there's lots of devices due to the extra spectrum space. I've not heard of much using 7 yet.
It's specific to the 8 series because it came out before the standards were standardized but after it had been announced. I wouldn't worry about it
I'm still running Wifi 5 over here. I 'upgraded' by having a second access point covering half the house.
Course, I run wires for anything that is stationary, so not exactly competing for much bandwith on the wifi.
Feels like the pixel phones have had modem and wifi issues forever, what makes you think the 9 will be any different?
It has listed 7 standards it supports, as I explained in another comment this is specific to the timing of when 7 was announced and what modem is used not supporting the official standards because they came out later. My assumption is that the problem is they tried to make it support but never bothered to really put enough resources in ensuring it did, meaning it's really buggy and depends on other hardware just happening to do it in the way it likes
It’s shallow maybe, but I’ve not been digging the huge camera bar of the past couple of generations at all. Hope designs like the Xperia which try to make the cameras more subtle or better yet have uniform thickness come back into favor.
I usually use a case that flattens out the back anyways, but even in the times I didn't, I prefer the camera bar over a camera bump.
I kind of wish they'd return to what they did with the OG Pixel and have the width taper down along the phone, so the cameras still stay flush with the back.
I can't say I hate the camera bump though, I do like it more than the camera square that the 4a 5G had (and the ones on the past couple iPhone generations), and I like the rounded take on it of the 9.
Anyone know if the AI features are able to be disabled or ignored? I know a lot of them can be (I don't need to interact with the AI photo stuff if I don't want to), but I was watching video earlier which showed things like "AI weather report" which I have no interest in and would rather just disable.
My Samsung s21 ultra is going to stop being updated in under a year so I'm looking to get a new phone soon. Stock android has always been my favorite, so if I can move back to pixel I would rather do that. I just have zero interest in this AI hype trend and if I can shield myself from it with relative ease that would be a bonus.
On the 8 you can turn all of it off. In fact, most of it is not even on by default, and you have to enable it.
I use the hold for me button often, I have turned on call screening, and I use the sms spam detection as well. From time to time I turn on the captions and I've used the live translate before but you could just open the translate app for that. The other feature specific stuff like AI editing in photos is great, but that's not an on/off thing so much as it exists within an app.
This is all good to know, I appreciate the insight. I know the AI stuff is going to be here to stay and will be a highlighted "feature" in basically every brand now given the hype train, so it's more a matter of what's going to be the most seamless and least intrusive implementation of it, and if there's options to either turn off or ignore the parts I have no interest in that's a huge plus. Pixel 9 might be a good way to go for my next phone.
In general I've found Google to be good at keeping the stock experience stock, and having most new things be opt-in. There's a small caveat that they redid the search bar and the at a glance in a way that can't be overridden without a custom launcher, but that's been true of android in general and is not specific to pixel phones. Samsung tends to have better hardware, but I hate all the bloat and how it practically forces you to use their apps.
Looking at what's new this year, I think the searching stuff could be particularly useful when you want to quickly find a photo (or meme) you took a year ago to show or send to somebody. I'm guessing it'll be able to search through documents too which could be useful but generally not the kind of thing I use my phone for.
Also to add the above comment, most of AI feature requires different model to do on device compute, so if you're not using them, you won't have to download it. It(Those part) won't be on your device.
I just wish more phones had the IR blaster. I'd love something with the bloat free setup of a pixel and an IR blaster like the Chinese phones have.
Looks like I'm finally going to give a foldable a shot. My only two reservations are the name is crazy long ("Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold") and the battery seems a bit small. My Pixel 6 Pro is running out of updates now, but I'll probably still wait till a Black Friday sale to pick it up. Maybe get a Pixel Watch too? My Samsung watch is alright, but I'd like my notification settings to sync.
From my experience, Black Friday or something is probably a good time to wait till, especially since the phones themselves release at the end of September-ish anyways. I know price drops go down around there, last year it wasn't as big but still a hundred bucks or so IIRC. I really like my Pixel Watch a lot, I was thinking I might end up doing the update for accessories on odd years, and updating my main phone on even years. :shrug:
I had the Samsung Z Flip 3 and the small battery was my biggest issue with that phone. 4,650 mAh is definitely small. It will be fine most of the time but you will almost certainly have days you can't get the whole way through without charging. At least it has 45 W charging so while not fast it is definitely faster than the typical 25/30 W slowness.
Thanks for sharing. That's my biggest concern, so we'll see.
What's the recommendation from someone that doesn't need all the flashy features of the latest model and would rather pay less but still wants a Pixel? Is it worth waiting for black Friday or similar events for a price decrease? Would it be better to wait until the 9a is out?
Just buy a used pixel 8 if you don't need anything new and flashy, maybe on Black Friday. Probably better to wait until the 9 is fully out when people start trading in their old stuff. You're guaranteed 6(?) years of updates with an 8 and if you don't need all the new features you'll be fine.
Wirecutter recommends the 8a. I’m considering it. My Pixel 4a works fine, but it got its final update a year ago.
Buying a used or new 8 Pro(based on offer) will be better than 9a.
Conspiracy theory: the trade in prices are amazing cuz they want everyone on the AI phone. More data for Google to sell!