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Forums - Gaming Discussion - To Pixel or not to Pixel, that is the question.

Louie said:

I think it looks like a great phone. I'm an iPhone user and I like the seamless experience of integrated hardware and software. If Google can offer this then this is a viable alternative for me. 

I don't want to get into the spec war. In the end a 16mp camera is not automatically better than a 12mp (which is why iPhones often win in this department on sites that focus on comparing the quality of cameras but get mocked by reviewers) and the same goes for stuff like PPI (what about color accuracy and calibration of the display?) or water resistance ratings (iPhone is IP67, Galaxy S7 is IP68 but in real life tests the iPhone beats the Galaxy when it comes to water resistance - the Pixel might still be really good at resisting water, just not enough to get an IP67 rating and who drops their phone into a deep pond for an extended period of time?).

Vanilla Android should be great for real world performance regardless of specs on paper. Small OS footprint makes a big difference. A friend of mine has a Galaxy S7 but apps regularly run smoother on my 2 year old iPhone 6 Plus (I noticed this first when he showed me his Pokemon in Pokemon Go). And software updates definitely matter to me. If I ever get fed up with Apple (which is entirely possible) I'd consider a premium smartphone made by Google first.

http://www.droid-life.com/2016/10/05/google-pixel-ip53-water-resistance/

yep --- looks like Pixel does have some water resistance, just not as good as other leaders.



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I'm not that sold on this Phones. The number 1 thing with Nexus was having a cheaper option of a pretty good device. I really don't think that current flagships retailing for 600 bucks are a decent price, these phones aren't worth this.

My gripes with the Pixel phones:
- Expensive
- No SD card
- No dual SIM (minor gripe, really)
- Google promised 2 years of software updates, less than the Nexus

I think that the new Moto phones are a much more solid option, specially the Z Play. Pure Android, cheaper, SD card, dual SIM and also gets 2 year support, while being half the price. It's nor a high end device, but after having its predecessor (X Play), I really don't mind the difference. The Moto Mods also are another big plus, specially the battery pack.

I'm quite sad seeing Nexus go away. I considered an iPhone too, but the lack of console emulators (without jailbreaking) and ridiculous pricing are a bigger letdown than updates for me. But these Pixel phones seems to remove the Nexus advantages over Moto phones at least.



torok said:
I'm not that sold on this Phones. The number 1 thing with Nexus was having a cheaper option of a pretty good device. I really don't think that current flagships retailing for 600 bucks are a decent price, these phones aren't worth this.

My gripes with the Pixel phones:
- Expensive
- No SD card
- No dual SIM (minor gripe, really)
- Google promised 2 years of software updates, less than the Nexus

I think that the new Moto phones are a much more solid option, specially the Z Play. Pure Android, cheaper, SD card, dual SIM and also gets 2 year support, while being half the price. It's nor a high end device, but after having its predecessor (X Play), I really don't mind the difference. The Moto Mods also are another big plus, specially the battery pack.

I'm quite sad seeing Nexus go away. I considered an iPhone too, but the lack of console emulators (without jailbreaking) and ridiculous pricing are a bigger letdown than updates for me. But these Pixel phones seems to remove the Nexus advantages over Moto phones at least.

Except the Z Play is a 'Droid' device and exclusive to Verizon. I was actually waiting to see if that would come in a non-Verizon exclusive, but Moto is only doing the 'Z' model for $700 as stand-alone, which makes Pixel the best stock Android choice unless you want to go down to something like the Moto G4.

I still don't see why people care that much about SD card slots. Nexus have never had those. Also, Googles upgrade policy is at least 2 years (not only 2) and that includes Nexus, but as they've demonstrated repeatedly they will keep pushing software to a device so long as it can handle it. My son recently had an LG Nexus 5 and it was on M. Not sure if it would have received N though. So it got 3 years of updates. 



superchunk said:
whelp - I went ahead and ordered a 5" 32GB black version. Should arrive near end of month. much excite! My 2 year old moto x (2nd gen) is going to be put to good use as the test phone for my 2nd oldest. I like to give them their first smartphones as a hand-me-down to prove they are mature enough to keep the phone safe as well as not do stupid things with unlimited internet access/data usage. My oldest just passed that year long test and received a new Moto G4 last week. Those are actually really nice phones for only $200. Seriously, if you want a solid mid-tier phone for cheap, check it out.

Congrats on your new phone!



                  

PC Specs: CPU: 7800X3D || GPU: Strix 4090 || RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000 || Main SSD: WD 2TB SN850

Before you guys go on championing Motorola, please follow them more closely, google their broken promises and you get results. Probably not as many broken promises as other manufacturers but a promise is a promise. A mid-range or a low-end device, once the trust is broken any investment will feel like taking a risk.

http://www.droid-life.com/2015/10/15/motorola-what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-you/



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The OnePlus 3 ($399) its a better "bang for the buck" deal. imo

And if you can stand to be in the highmid-range I will totally recommend a Redmi Note 3 pro, if you are going to change phones every year, those devices better be $150.



LurkerJ said:
Captain_Yuri said:

One thing before you go though.

You seem to state that iphone and Nexus phones are in the same league when it comes to storage but they really aren't. iphone 6s as well as iphone 7 uses NVMe storage vs Samsung's eMMC on the Nexus 6p and Galaxy S6/S7's UFS. Considering this is Samsung's controller, most likely, the Pixel will be a bit less than the internal storage speed of the Galaxy S7 if they go with Samsung again like they did with the 6p. The point is, iphone storage speed blows away any android phone's storage speed due to its NVMe storage solution. So I don't think it makes sense to say, oh Apple has it like this so Nexus can do it too when they don't even have comparable storage technologies.

#Snipz

FDE stands for "Full Disk Encryption" if you were wondering.

Thanks for posting this and enlightening people  It gets tiring to refute claims about Apple being cheap with the iPhone components.

You should check my previous post since you seem to like Samsung products, even if you are not a fan of voice assistants, you should know that Samsung has acquired more than Viv, the talent and the minds behind Viv will surely put to use in other areas as well.

No worries. I always feel like Galaxy and iphone devices get unwarranted hate these days. Now don't get me wrong, when the company does something stupid like the lack of a headphone jack or Note 7's exploding battery, then sure, criticize them. But both Apple and Samsung have things in them which set them apart from the rest. And it is the biggest reason (apart from marketing) why its always iphone vs Galaxy and not iphone vs (insert other phone manufacturers). Both are great devices in their respective ways and both will continue to compete with each other because they are the best (subjectively and sales wize) that the industry has to offer.

The assistant is interesting but knowing Samsung and Google, most likely the Galaxy S devices will get both. Google will try to push their assistant to as many devices as possible because that is the entire point of machine learning. It needs to learn to be effective and it can't do on Pixel devices alone. So when Android N for Galaxy S devices come around, I am sure it will get the Assistant like how it has Google Now and S Voice currently. And then when Samsung is ready to launch their assistant, Galaxy S devices will most likely have both.



                  

PC Specs: CPU: 7800X3D || GPU: Strix 4090 || RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000 || Main SSD: WD 2TB SN850

superchunk said:
LurkerJ said:

Samsung just acquired Viv, the new voice assistant that made headlines months ago because it's developed by the creators of Siri. It's fantastic, check it out.

Siri was better when it launched than it is now in my opinion, Apple just didn't give the team the freedom they wanted back then because Apple is so anal about "privacy" of its users, so they left and started again from scratch Viv. The fun fact now is that Apple acknowledges that it messed up and heavily stunted Siri growth and they are trying to fix it, one can't help but wonder what Siri would be like as of now if the original team remained with Apple and continued developing Siri without restrictions.

I guess this is it then for Samsung, they clearly will not be using Google's assistant, this also means that Microsoft's dreams of making Cortona the default voice assistant on Android devices can be put to rest.

This is also why Google moved to put out its own high-end phones. The biggest Android distributor has continuously made steps to define the Android experience. Samsung has continuously put out software that directly replaces core areas of Android including the previous voice support, Pay, etc. They also have their own OS (Tizen) that is continuously developed upon. I expect at some point Samsung will quietly replace their touchwiz'd Android experience with Tizen, or at least they want to, and are possibly still resolving how they do that without killing off support of Play store / apps. Losing that would kill its support (big reasons why blackberry and windows phones failed).

Basically, Google needed to create its own premier experience to ensure their vision of Android was a known product and not being taken over by Samsung's own aspirations.

I am not against the Pixel, I am all for it.

Google should be making hardware just like MS is making Surfaces. Google didn't want to leave their thumb on the scale and be part of the competition because it would've angered Samsung and the rest of big players, they even had to justify their Motorola purchase (it's about the patents!) and they had to make promises to Sammy, it was funny

Enough with the pandering, go hard Google!



superchunk said:
 

Except the Z Play is a 'Droid' device and exclusive to Verizon. I was actually waiting to see if that would come in a non-Verizon exclusive, but Moto is only doing the 'Z' model for $700 as stand-alone, which makes Pixel the best stock Android choice unless you want to go down to something like the Moto G4.

I still don't see why people care that much about SD card slots. Nexus have never had those. Also, Googles upgrade policy is at least 2 years (not only 2) and that includes Nexus, but as they've demonstrated repeatedly they will keep pushing software to a device so long as it can handle it. My son recently had an LG Nexus 5 and it was on M. Not sure if it would have received N though. So it got 3 years of updates. 

I don't live in the US, so it is a normal unlocked phone here and a great option. Anyway, the Pixel phone are also Verizon exclusives in the US, unless you buy them off-contract. The Z Play can also be bought off-contract (with US warranty) in Amazon, so it's basically the same.

The reason why people care about SD card slots it's because phone manufacturers usually demand a huge extra for more storage. Usually, a jump from 32 to 64GB will demand a 50 bucks increase while the real cost is around 6 to 10 bucks. Also, we have some stupid options:

- Pixel phone have 32 or 128GB. 32 is too low for a phone without SD, so you have to jump all the way to 128GB.

- iPhone SE. Either 16GB or 64GB. As 16GB would make the phone as useful as a brick, you have to go all the way up to 64GB.

My X Play has 32GB of internal memory and supports up to 128GB in a SD. So I could get more storage than the high end pixel phone by less. I could even use a fast class 10 card and merge it with my internal memory to get a super storage. Right now, I'm rocking a simpla 16GB card not merged with my storage. I use it to put my musics, films, etc. My internal storage is basically just pics and apps. The SD card allows me to have way more memory paying less and to decide how much I want instead of depending on what the manufacturer thinks it's best for me. I really can't see why having this option is bad. I could get a simple Moto G3, a mid-end Android device, and put a 128GB card on it and it would have more memory than any Pixel phone while costing 1/4 of the price. I think that this sound pretty ridiculous as it really is.

As for updates, the Pixel site says 2 years of OS updates + 1 extra of security patches. It's quite low for a phone that promises a "fully integrated Google experience". As I said, it's basically asking a huge premium and not delivering much more than other manufacturers. I could get Moto phones for half the price with 2-year updates. A Galaxy S7 is cheaper and also includes this. The problem is that you buy the phone now and your only promise is 2 years. When we discover if it will be more or not, it will be too late to worry about this.

Google promised a revolutionary event, but I'm not really seeing any revolution. It's basically the same thing as a Samsung or LG high-end phone. If it works, it's just because Google will put heavy marketing on it. I expected much more, maybe more years of support or something like that. Next year, the S8 will arrive with a better screen, SoC, camera, etc. Hell, maybe even the S7 already beats the Pixels since its screen is better and the Exynos variant may be faster. Even the camera is a mattter of discussion since Pixel doesn't have OIS. It has a higher DxOMark score, but that tests are done with tripods, so the real-world performance may be significantly affected.



The design had me from the get-go.



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