new s*itphone needed

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Adding to this, I saw some claims around the time it was announced that the Nexus 6P existing is partly to blame for the 5X's awful pricing too. For 32GB models, the 5X ($429) was only $70 less than the 6P ($499), as if Google wanted to avoid pushing people to the 5X with a price gap.

i wouldn't doubt that this is true at all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy_effect

decoy pricing should be illegal

Well, prices for the Pixel don't exactly mean much, considering even the small model is overpriced by at least like $200. Matching the iPhone in the US and even drastically exceeding it in every other country is crazy, considering even when you ignore the cut corners it's more comparable to the Galaxy S7 which has been priced lower since launch and dropped even more in the months before Pixel's launch.

google is absolutely nuts tbh

actually, lots of lagdroid oems are

they want all of the prestige of apple but don't do anything except the most superficial things they can do in a sad attempt to achieve that

and they fail every time, which is why the nexus line bombed, and why the pixels will next, unless they change their strategy

[Hiro]

I hate all phones at the moment

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Yeah, you'd probably like the S8+ if those details are what you want. You could even import the better Exynos version, but I'm not sure if that works with Band 12.

it does, but sadly importing is way more expensive than buying domestically

it'd be over 2x what i would pay here for the inferior 835 variant

...Also, the Chinese and Korean versions of the S8 have both the Exynos and 6GB of RAM.

qualcomm truly goes out of its way to ensure we get the worst models of the samsung devices in north america and it's kind of maddening

By the way, even though the extra-tall ratio (18.5:9) makes the S8+ measure 6.2" diagonally, its width actually matches what you'd get from a 5.53" 16:9 phone. The XZ Premium and OnePlus 5 have 5.5" displays too.

i definitely appreciate the fact that its unusual aspect ratio makes it narrower than most 5.5" phones

and the screen area of the s8+ is actually greater than that of the 5.9in mate 9, despite again being significantly easier to hold

the s8's tiny bezels certainly help

If you really want more than 4GB, I guess OnePlus is your only option. Or Mi 6, but I doubt you want to consider that.

The new big Pixel might meet what you want too: current rumors say it's SD835 with 4GB RAM and a 6.0" display with smaller bezels.

a shame that all of these are hugely compromised in other important ways

On the other hand, the current rumors for the smaller Pixel paint an awful picture: keeps the huge bezels but adds dual front-facing speakers, loses the headphone jack, and is otherwise the same besides upgrading the SoC from SD821 to SD835. If this turns out to be true, I'm buying a 2016 Pixel as soon as the imminent replacement causes its first price drop ever.

and this is why the pixel series will prove to be google's next nexus-tier failed experiment

[bluaki]

Even before it launched, I was hesitant about the 5X's size. I already thought the Nexus 4 bezels were bad for its time, but the 5X had even worse bezels, and the Pixel somehow has worse yet

how is this even possible

I think Pixel's bezels are just about exactly the same size as the Nexus 5X, but they're proportionally larger because they're put next to a smaller screen. Unlike the Nexuses, Pixel doesn't have speakers or anything else in those bezels, so they're totally empty which makes them appear bigger and also clearly useless.

When measured straight, the 5X bezels are only very slightly bigger (maybe 1mm on both top and bottom, probably small enough that you could say it's proportionally smaller compared to the bigger screen) than the Nexus 4, but they look a lot bigger because the phone is more rectangular than any previous Nexus phone which means there's more area in those bezels.

Meanwhile, Samsung's Galaxy S series had smaller bezels than any of these three phones in every device since... the Galaxy S3 in 2012.

Google showed it was capable of making smaller bezels with the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6, but they backtracked in this sense with the 2015 devices and went back even further in 2016. At least they haven't quite backtracked all the way to the 2010 Nexus S, but they're pretty close.

and that's why i'm so bothered by the fact that there are so few options with >4gb of ram in 2017: my cheap 2015 shitphone had that much at launch

To be fair, 4GB was pretty rare in 2015, I think all the major flagships only had 3GB.

I feel like you can probably at least partially attribute the stagnation to Qualcomm. It's clearly possible to have more than 4GB on an SD835, but there might be some sort of weird tradeoffs like memory bandwidth or latency thanks to limitations in the memory controller. I don't know, I'm just speculating, but with what I know about hardware I think that sounds like a plausible explanation for why only someone like OnePlus would do it.

Planned obsolescence is clearly a design goal with all the major smartphone manufacturers. With how much perceived performance has stagnated, they probably want to draw out what little improvements are left so that there's still clear improvement every year and more manufactured reason to give up the older devices. That means, regardless whether it's easy to add or within the budget of all the flagships, you're not getting 8GB RAM this year.

Still, for a phone, 4GB should be good, especially if you choose a vendor that doesn't consume half of that with heavily skinned SystemUI and home screen. For some more context of scale: even if you multitask a lot, it's probably nowhere near comparable to how much stuff you would keep open on a laptop, and even the premium laptops still go with 8GB standard while 4GB is very common with cheaper models and 16GB is pretty much entirely reserved to the "pay a lot extra to add this extra premium option on your already-premium laptop" tier.

also, the moto g line in particular is another series of phones whose level of popularity today is completely unwarranted

the very first moto g had a wonderful price:value ratio

every moto g since has been underpowered absolute slop

to think i almost bought one of the things in 2015 before i discovered the zenfone lol

i'd probably have felt compelled to buy a new device at the end of my first year with the moto g 2

Yeah, I remember thinking the 2013 Moto G was really nice and it really stood out, but all the revisions really feel "meh". The 2nd gen Moto E in 2015 also stood out pretty well, and the Zenfone 2 which was also 2015, but I haven't heard much about any other particularly great budget phones.

I feel like there's some sort of consensus lately that phone specs are good enough now that there's hardly any reason to go for flagships anymore, but I don't hear much of anything about actual examples anymore. Maybe people just don't talk about them as much anymore, or at least not at any of the places I check. Most of the time I check Amazon or whatever, I find that older flagships seem generally better for the same price than new lower-tier devices.

and they fail every time, which is why the nexus line bombed, and why the pixels will next, unless they change their strategy

Nexus line bombed because it had zero advertising and minimal-to-no carrier partnerships and very little availability outside the US. The Pixel performed as poorly as it did because Google decided to go all-out on advertising and then not manufacture enough of the devices to meet even a fraction of the demand before people gave up and looked elsewhere.

If nobody knows about the device, or nobody who wants it is able to acquire the device, then any of the other mistakes are frankly meaningless for sales numbers. As awful as the Pixel pricing is, it wasn't awful enough to make the demand low enough to be met by the supply.

I don't know if this phenomenon also has a name, but I feel like Google might've been betting on the idea that people perceive higher-priced items as better... and they might've been, unfortunately, right about that. "It's the same price as the iPhone, so it's just as good" is likely what they were going for.

Come to think of it, a lot of Google's non-phone devices did pretty well. Chromecast is wildly successful, Nexus 7 was really popular, Google Home is pretty well-known, even the Nexus Player was fairly widespread. I guess Google is a lot better at dealing with retailers than it is with carriers, and carrier partnerships are what you need for a phone to be remotely successful in the US.

it does, but sadly importing is way more expensive than buying domestically

it'd be over 2x what i would pay here for the inferior 835 variant

Amazon sells the international (G955F) S8+ for $750. The US version costs between $750~$850 from carriers and unlocked from retailers like Best Buy as far as I can tell. How is that half the price?

i definitely appreciate the fact that its unusual aspect ratio makes it narrower than most 5.5" phones

Nah, the ratio would put it at the same width or very slightly wider than most 5.5" phones. It's the curved display and lack of left/right bezel that makes it narrower. But that same curved display also means that, from a front view, the screen is effectively smaller.

If you really want more than 4GB, I guess OnePlus is your only option. Or Mi 6, but I doubt you want to consider that.

The new big Pixel might meet what you want too: current rumors say it's SD835 with 4GB RAM and a 6.0" display with smaller bezels.

a shame that all of these are hugely compromised in other important ways

The Pixel 2 XXL doesn't have any compromises confirmed yet. I'm sure they'll come with time, of course.

The comment I said about the headphone jack applies just to the smaller version, the source specifically says the bigger one does have a headphone jack in contrast.

and this is why the pixel series will prove to be google's next nexus-tier failed experiment

Will your opinion change if/when the Google SoC is ready for consumers and put in Pixel devices?

but yeah, the current rumors are a mess. They give the impression that the design goals are all over the place, considering they claimed a 5.5" device that had been in production until recently was just canceled and that the 6.0" device seems like an entirely separate thing with a completely different design instead of a bigger version. They are still just rumors, so they could be wrong.

I think it's been confirmed that the first Pixel devices were rushed in development, because initially negotiations were happening with Huawei for manufacturing but they bailed out (Google went with HTC instead afterward) because of a branding/logo disagreement, and the rushed production is probably why the first PIxel phone has a front that looks like exactly the same shape/dimensions/ratios as an existing HTC phone but with the buttons removed.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

To be fair, 4GB was pretty rare in 2015, I think all the major flagships only had 3GB.

I feel like you can probably at least partially attribute the stagnation to Qualcomm. It's clearly possible to have more than 4GB on an SD835, but there might be some sort of weird tradeoffs like memory bandwidth or latency thanks to limitations in the memory controller. I don't know, I'm just speculating, but with what I know about hardware I think that sounds like a plausible explanation for why only someone like OnePlus would do it.

Planned obsolescence is clearly a design goal with all the major smartphone manufacturers. With how much perceived performance has stagnated, they probably want to draw out what little improvements are left so that there's still clear improvement every year and more manufactured reason to give up the older devices. That means, regardless whether it's easy to add or within the budget of all the flagships, you're not getting 8GB RAM this year.

Still, for a phone, 4GB should be good, especially if you choose a vendor that doesn't consume half of that with heavily skinned SystemUI and home screen. For some more context of scale: even if you multitask a lot, it's probably nowhere near comparable to how much stuff you would keep open on a laptop, and even the premium laptops still go with 8GB standard while 4GB is very common with cheaper models and 16GB is pretty much entirely reserved to the "pay a lot extra to add this extra premium option on your already-premium laptop" tier.

Yep, I myself suspected that the pitiful RAM situation was attributable to Qualcomm being absolutely pathetic once again.

8gb is excessive but 6gb would greatly improve the longevity of flagship devices, i think

the same thing happens in the gpu space pretty regularly: a single gpu is released in two configurations, the more expensive model with 2x the memory of the less expensive model

and the longevity award goes to the more expensive one every single time, strictly due to having more ram in spite of otherwise equivalent specs

I feel like there's some sort of consensus lately that phone specs are good enough now that there's hardly any reason to go for flagships anymore, but I don't hear much of anything about actual examples anymore. Maybe people just don't talk about them as much anymore, or at least not at any of the places I check. Most of the time I check Amazon or whatever, I find that older flagships seem generally better for the same price than new lower-tier devices.

these days it's necessary to do your own research

there are still good and reasonably priced phones that hit the market on a fairly regular basis, but they often come from companies whose names might not be as familiar as motorola or sony

although it's also often true that a last-year flagship might be a better deal

but yes, the mobile industry has matured enough that basically anything $200+ is probably 'good enough' for most basic needs

I don't know if this phenomenon also has a name, but I feel like Google might've been betting on the idea that people perceive higher-priced items as better... and they might've been, unfortunately, right about that. "It's the same price as the iPhone, so it's just as good" is likely what they were going for.

there are several terms for this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law_of_business_balance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption

google (and other android oems) wants to benefit from the veblen good effect, and ultimately want their devices to become status symbols for conspicuous consumers

...except there is not a single shred of prestige associated with google/android, nor does "quality" come to mind when you think of the average ugly laggy android device and and the abundance of terrible and often hilariously overpriced phones that pollute the platform

so the strategy never actually works for android oems, google included, and it likely never will

only apple can manage because apple isn't absolutely lazy about quality and understands the importance of both presentation and customer satisfaction

iphone fanboys have every reason to be proud of their devices

whereas android owners should be, and are, ashamed

The Pixel 2 XXL doesn't have any compromises confirmed yet. I'm sure they'll come with time, of course.

The comment I said about the headphone jack applies just to the smaller version, the source specifically says the bigger one does have a headphone jack in contrast.

i feel like there's a missed opportunity here: PIXXL

but yeah of course google will ruin it somehow

By the way, is there any good justification whatsoever for the removal of the headphone jack? Is it really just a matter of making the device half a millimeter slimmer?

because if it is, android oems are even dumber and more shameless than i could possibly have imagined for following apple off that particular cliff

Will your opinion change if/when the Google SoC is ready for consumers and put in Pixel devices?

only if it's good

but you'd have to go out of your way to be any worse than qualcomm

i like the idea of google producing its own chip because it would at least expose qualcomm to some desperately-needed competition (again assuming google's soc is even remotely decent, which is a huge assumption )

but yeah, the current rumors are a mess. They give the impression that the design goals are all over the place, considering they claimed a 5.5" device that had been in production until recently was just canceled and that the 6.0" device seems like an entirely separate thing with a completely different design instead of a bigger version. They are still just rumors, so they could be wrong.

I think it's been confirmed that the first Pixel devices were rushed in development, because initially negotiations were happening with Huawei for manufacturing but they bailed out (Google went with HTC instead afterward) because of a branding/logo disagreement, and the rushed production is probably why the first PIxel phone has a front that looks like exactly the same shape/dimensions/ratios as an existing HTC phone but with the buttons removed.

sad, isn't it

apple simply isn't this disorganized

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Anyway, I did ultimately end up buying the S8+.

but

Amazon sells the international (G955F) S8+ for $750. The US version costs between $750~$850 from carriers and unlocked from retailers like Best Buy as far as I can tell. How is that half the price?

i didn't pay anything near full price for it lol

t mobile had a buy one get one free* offer on the s8 phones, so i did that

and ultimately i only paid about $395 for my own (which is only 2/3 what i would have paid for the mate 9)

so importing for me would have been nearly 2x more than what i paid for the sad american 835 model

Welp, I hope Samsung's TouchJizz™ isn't as egregious as I expect it to be.

[Thyme]

why are phones so

spensy

[Kalahari Inkantation]

[spoiler]

though you can find v. good ones that aren't so spensy

like, again, the zte v8 pro

and the s8+ at $395 is a p. good deal imo

the regular s8 can be had for as little as $375 (though at that point you might as well get the +)[/spoiler]

[bluaki]

there are several terms for this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law_of_business_balance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption

google (and other android oems) wants to benefit from the veblen good effect, and ultimately want their devices to become status symbols for conspicuous consumers

...except there is not a single shred of prestige associated with google/android, nor does "quality" come to mind when you think of the average ugly laggy android device and and the abundance of terrible and often hilariously overpriced phones that pollute the platform

so the strategy never actually works for android oems, google included, and it likely never will

only apple can manage because apple isn't absolutely lazy about quality and understands the importance of both presentation and customer satisfaction

iphone fanboys have every reason to be proud of their devices

whereas android owners should be, and are, ashamed

What's so terrible about flagship Android devices in your opinion, compared to iPhone? Is it just the Qualcomm vs Apple SoC and nothing else?

Apple devices seem to be basically the same but with a big home button instead of Android's 3 navigation buttons (or onscreen nav), less RAM, and lower screen resolutions.

Well, at least on the software UX side of things, I guess I'll agree with you that Apple actually kinda knows what they're doing (though they make mistakes like the entire emoji set and skeumorphism). Google seems to actually put some thought into UX even if they make a lot of baffling decisions about stuff like consistency or ditching services they don't like or releasing new services that compete with themselves or totally forgetting about tablets existing every time they redesign anything. Samsung and other Android OEMs seem to just slap features and content in without really acknowledging the whole at all in terms of UX, and they often bundled other disjoint products due to partnerships and junk.

Good multitasking ability is great, but older versions of Android were so generous about it that apps could actively kill RAM and battery life (especially when facebook is installed) and it's really hard for google to rein things in to improve those problems without breaking old APIs that tons of apps depend on. They've been gradually improving things on this front with major Android updates, but it's slow, and app developers keep answering those improvements with more and more bloated apps. I still think it's worth it compared to what iOS offers.

[bluaki]

By the way, is there any good justification whatsoever for the removal of the headphone jack? Is it really just a matter of making the device half a millimeter slimmer?

Yes. Slimness is actually an awful excuse to begin with, I don't think iPhone 7, Essential, or even Moto Z are actually too slim to fit a headphone jack.

The internal size is pretty significant. The 3.5mm headphone jacks are long, which takes away from how long the battery can be unless they use a weird non-rectangular battery.

For Apple at least, a bigger reason than either of those is driving the sale of Bluetooth accessories which have bigger profit margins and are better at making Apple devices seem cool and high-tech to bystanders than a cable.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

What's so terrible about flagship Android devices in your opinion, compared to iPhone? Is it just the Qualcomm vs Apple SoC and nothing else?

well, that's part of it, but

Well, at least on the software UX side of things, I guess I'll agree with you that Apple actually kinda knows what they're doing (though they make mistakes like the entire emoji set and skeumorphism).

Google seems to actually put some thought into UX even if they make a lot of baffling decisions about stuff like consistency or ditching services they don't like or releasing new services that compete with themselves or totally forgetting about tablets existing every time they redesign anything. Samsung and other Android OEMs seem to just slap features and content in without really acknowledging the whole at all in terms of UX, and they often bundled other disjoint products due to partnerships and junk.

yeah you pretty much covered everything lol

it's the combination of consistently disappointing hardware, excluding a tiny handful of flagsghips that are iphone-priced and beyond (and yet still have inferior cpus/performance to the iphone), and completely inconsistent software that requires you to spend days relearning android every time you get a new phone, still lacks basic features like a universal backup ability, the fact that you might only get one upgrade per device max if you're extremely lucky, the fact that basic issues like these

like i have a 64 gig SD card + 16gb internal storage (cuz i figured the SD card obviated the need for large internal storage).

6.39GB of internal is used by OS. that's normal ok
9.03/9.61 GB is used in internal

try to view what is uing it and it takes 300000000 hours to actually calculate that

when it does

5.56GB in Apps 1.96GB in Cached data

That's 7.52GB. WHERES THE OTHER FUCKING 1.51GB. it gets annoying cuz everything defaults to internal storage and then i cant install apps lmao

i move some stuff to SD but it doesnt seem to be enough

https://forums.androidcentral.com/moto-x-pure-edition/659238-storage-doesnt-add-up.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/496sn3/lets_clear_up_the_confusion_regarding_storage_in/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MotoX/comments/4bnmos/general_storage_question/

gj shitdroid

i guess i'll update the phone

oh i can't lol

remain inescapable problems after almost ten years, etc. etc.

And yet,

I still think it's worth it compared to what iOS offers.

Somehow, so do I.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

The internal size is pretty significant. The 3.5mm headphone jacks are long, which takes away from how long the battery can be unless they use a weird non-rectangular battery.

For Apple at least, a bigger reason than either of those is driving the sale of Bluetooth accessories which have bigger profit margins and are better at making Apple devices seem cool and high-tech to bystanders than a cable.

i suppose that makes sense, at least the space is arguably being used productively

still, it'll be a very long time before i settle on a phone without a headphone jack

and yes, apple does have the advantage of being able to sell literally anything to its own class of absolute suckers

Anyway, I've had the S8+ for a few days now and I don't hate it. But there are a few minor annoyances like the awful placement of the fingerprint sensor, the equally awful placement of the volume buttons, the ing Bixby button that nobody asked or cared for, and a moderately-sized list of irritating software nitpicks that I'll hopefully just get used to or learn to work around in time.

i've been following the oneplus 5 closely since getting the s8+, and oh my goodness am i glad i made the choice i did

how could oneplus possibly be so disaster-prone lol

[bluaki]

Anyway, I've had the S8+ for a few days now and I don't hate it. But there are a few minor annoyances like the awful placement of the fingerprint sensor, the equally awful placement of the volume buttons, the ing Bixby button that nobody asked or cared for, and a moderately-sized list of irritating software nitpicks that I'll hopefully just get used to or learn to work around in time.

That fingerprint sensor is definitely the most baffling design decision. As soon as the phone was revealed, basically everybody who watched was asking "WHY?"

What's wrong with the volume placement? It feels fine to me.

Yeah, basically everybody hates the Bixby button too. iirc it used to be possible to remap it to less useless things without root but Samsung patched that out in an update

You can't avoid Samsung's lock screen, notifications, recents, or settings menu, but you can at least install a third-party home screen and I think you can disable all the bad preloaded apps. Replacing the home screen really makes every Samsung phone feel a lot better imo.

i've been following the oneplus 5 closely since getting the s8+, and oh my goodness am i glad i made the choice i did

how could oneplus possibly be so disaster-prone lol

I'm guessing you heard about the upside-down screen and stereo speakers issues?

also, I forgot about this earlier, there was another SD835 device that's been announced for a while: the Essential phone. That screen cut-out is the worst phone design decision I've seen in years, which is quite a feat. It's especially baffling to me that the co-founder of Android would make this choice: they excuse it by saying they made the status bar avoid putting stuff there, but it's almost like they didn't even know about a lot of core Android features like Immersive Mode (which hides the status bar and ruins a lot of games on this phone) and Heads-up Notifications (the popups that cover the status bar when unlocked like when you get a phone call).

[Kalahari Inkantation]

That fingerprint sensor is definitely the most baffling design decision. As soon as the phone was revealed, basically everybody who watched was asking "WHY?"

because apparently it wasn't actually meant to be there

it's alleged that samsung wanted to be the first to have a the sensor underneath the display itself, but they couldn't pull it off in time

so plan b was to just stick it on the back

but since they had already designed the board such that there was absolutely no space for anything but the battery beneath the camera, the only remaining option was to stick the fingerprint sensor to the side

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/1/15147998/samsung-galaxy-s8-fingerprint-reader-location

but regardless of the justification it's still a terribly inconvenient location

What's wrong with the volume placement? It feels fine to me.

2close2bixby so i keep accidentally launching it

and i much prefer for volume to be placed on the right of the device so i can just use my thumb to adjust it

as it's on the left, i have to slightly readjust the position of the phone itself, or use my left hand

great for lefties though i guess

Yeah, basically everybody hates the Bixby button too. iirc it used to be possible to remap it to less useless things without root but Samsung patched that out in an update

You can't avoid Samsung's lock screen, notifications, recents, or settings menu, but you can at least install a third-party home screen and I think you can disable all the bad preloaded apps. Replacing the home screen really makes every Samsung phone feel a lot better imo.

jesus samsung

touchwizz has only been mildly annoying so far, but i feel like it's not quite so bad as to warrant a third-party launcher

i've always seen non-stock launchers as excess cosmetic bloat, unless absolutely necessary because the stock is just that terrible

android is bloated enough :'(

I'm guessing you heard about the upside-down screen and stereo speakers issues?

rofl yes

what's funny is that the oneplus 5 is measurably faster than the s8 despite using the same 835 (jesus christ samsung), but absolutely everything else about the oneplus 5 is massively compromised

considering i actually paid less for the s8+ than i would have for the oneplus 5, i'm feeling pretty good about my decision

also, I forgot about this earlier, there was another SD835 device that's been announced for a while: the Essential phone.

or, as those in the know have taken to calling it, the unEssential phone

i try to forget about it too, as its display and many of its other characteristics truly are disgusting

it's as unsurprising as it is absolutely pitiful that the literal co-founder of android would be so unfamiliar with the platform he himself claims to have '''developed'''

[spoiler]

i bet he uses an iphone[/spoiler]

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Never Settleâ,,¢