Zedless: Zed fork focused on privacy and being local-first (github.com)

2: When I sort my photos on a Pixel, I sort them in folders. The "camera" folder is where the unsorted photos are. When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders. This seems impossible on iPhones. Everything stays in the main folder forever. You can add photos to albums, but that does not remove them from the main folder. So there is no way to know which photos I have already sorted.

3: On Android I can use Chrome. Which means web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones.

I'm sure people who prefer iPhones have their own set of "this clicks with me on iPhones and puzzles me on Pixels" aspects?

Is this a "left brain vs right brain" type of thing? Do most HNers prefer Androids?

thewebguyd · 1h ago

Same for me, although I currently use an iPhone (and the rest of the Apple ecosystem). I actually don't like iOS, and barely tolerate macOS but I love the hardware on mac right now.

For me, it's Apple's privacy stance (which I know could change at anytime, but that's where we are at right now). Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google, and with advanced data protection and Apple's tracking protection and transparency and I'm in.

As long as apps on Android can do crap like the web-to-app tracking via localhost and other shady data harvesting that Google continues to allow, I don't touch it no matter how much better it is and how much I prefer the workflows.

Also, on either platform, why is it still not possible to toggle off network access in app permissions. Its a glaring and deliberate omission.

highwaylights · 27m ago

> barely tolerate macOS

I guess it depends what you’re comparing it to but macOS is (for me) the best of a bad bunch of compromises. POSIX with app boundaries that are (mostly) respected, if not particularly granular. There’s nothing I really hate about the platform save for homebrew and being walled in to the ecosystem.

I actually love modern Linux with Gnome, and it has all the parts these days to be a great desktop operating system, but I find the freedom there undercuts a lot of the promises (Flatpaks are a good idea in theory that doesn’t work in practice as the sandboxes are overly liberal and overreach on most apps because no-one’s forced to justify why they need the permissions they do etc).

I spent so long on Windows that I really don’t miss it. The Window management was way better for so long, but the idioms drive me crazy (registry issues and programs still freely writing anywhere they like), and supporting everything forever has massive drawbacks to usability (although Winget sort of slightly helps with this but it’s not much better than homebrew).

moelf · 1h ago

>Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google

https://grapheneos.org/

no_wizard · 31m ago

As a consumer, I lament most of all about Pixel devices (or any other Android device really) that I have to wipe the OS and install a different one to get features that matter to me, particularly around privacy.

Thats why I don't use Pixel devices, or any Android devices really. I know its a precarious situation with Apple since they could reverse their stance at any point and sometimes they get it wrong, but they have yet to completely fail me when it comes to privacy.

In any event, it'd be nice if there was a 3rd mainstream vendor in the mobile race[0][1]

[0]: Both design wise and conceptually, I miss WebOS when it was strictly under Palm. It could have really been something. Why they didn't embrace multitouch screens I haven't a clue, it was the one thing that baffled me.

[1]: The one project I really wanted Mozilla to take a long term view on - Firefox OS - was another great innovation of our time that didn't get the love or support it deserved. It was a blast using web technology to build apps that ran fluidly on modern hardware. Unfortunately, it was all too often relegated to cheap manufacturer hardware that couldn't support it ideally, but even with this being true, they pulled off alot of technical excellence with that project.

k4rnaj1k · 1h ago

Isn't battery life worse on it?

I did consider it at some point but not having google wallet(apparently nfc payments are only available via banks' apps there) was too big of a downside for me.

j1elo · 3m ago

It is Google themselves choosing to prevent GrapheneOS from passing the validation checks required to make GPay work (which is the app that makes the actual payment).

Wallet is there, you can hold digital cards, and transit cards, and your Ikea member card, etc. It's GPay that won't work to do the payment. And it's Google the one being a bully and deliberately making you think like that towards any alternative that's not in their list of approved systems that can be used in your own phone.

NetOpWibby · 1h ago

The privacy stuff and the hardware quality are my main reasons as well. Oh, and Chrome OS isn't a real OS to me so I couldn't imagine using that as my daily driver as I would macOS.

Another reason I stick with Apple is style/design. Aside from the latest Alan Dye-led stuff, Apple's design has been top-notch, they make every other company look like they lack class and design-sense.

With that said, I did like Nokia's Windows Phones and the the period of Microsoft's design revolution where Surface devices had suede or whatever. That massive Surface table thing was dope too but man, Windows just keeps getting worse...somehow!

I'm looking forward to getting a Framework laptop at some point and installing Linux.

RattlesnakeJake · 1h ago

> Apple's design has been top-notch

But only from the iPhone X to 14, after which the Dynamic Island took over.

(I'll see myself out)

highwaylights · 26m ago

No judgement here. I liked my touchbar, and was pretty productive with it before it got axed.

dwaite · 17m ago

I maintain that if the Touch Bar had been made full height and had an affordance (like slightly more distance) to prevent accidental touches, it would have been way more practical.

Apple tends to have products on a design refresh schedule, and for the Mac is it about five years. I think the combination of user dislike of the initial implementation and limited developer integration caused the physical Touch Bar to be eliminated in the M1 design.

AstralSerenity · 1h ago

I would love to have Android software on an Apple device. Their hardware is incredible!

Ultimately, I tolerate Android from a privacy standpoint because we're still able to fully modify our devices and use open-source app sources. The minute that goes away (and it feels like Google isn't as tolerant of it anymore), I go.

ThePowerOfFuet · 55m ago

>Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google, and with advanced data protection and Apple's tracking protection and transparency and I'm in.

GrapheneOS may interest you.

>Also, on either platform, why is it still not possible to toggle off network access in app permissions. Its a glaring and deliberate omission.

GrapheneOS specifically supports this for all installed apps.

littlecranky67 · 8m ago

All of my banking apps that are required for 2FA would probably not work.

pferde · 3m ago

You might want to take a gander at this list: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

arijun · 1h ago

Those are some very minor complaints, all of which would not affect my buying choice, given the larger differences. That said, I’ll tell you that I don’t notice (1), for (2) I would never sit there organizing my photos, I have other (mostly less productive) things to do with my time, and (3) seems like something I specifically _dont_ want.

packetlost · 1h ago

No, two of those are some pretty fundamental complaints about how GP wants to use their device. Just because you don't have those complaints doesn't make them any less fundamental.

Ultimately the disagreement is primarily on the fact that Apple goes very far out of their way to hide the concept of a file and filesystem from the user.

The wobbling one is minor, in all fairness.

gpm · 1h ago

The wobbling one would be pretty major if you ran into it all the time in your regular workflow...

packetlost · 1h ago

It's easily solvable with a case. I agree that it's silly that Apple does it this way, but I struggle to see how it rises to the level of being a fundamental flaw like file management is.

Ruthalas · 11m ago

The wobble actually factors onto my device choice as well. It's just annoying to live with for the life of the phone if you can't find a case that widens it, which many don't.

SwamyM · 26m ago

> 2: When I sort my photos on a Pixel, I sort them in folders. The "camera" folder is where the unsorted photos are. When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders. This seems impossible on iPhones. Everything stays in the main folder forever. You can add photos to albums, but that does not remove them from the main folder. So there is no way to know which photos I have already sorted.

This along with iOS dumping pictures from WhatsApp, etc. into your main pictures folder is such a huge deal breaker for me. If I am backing up my pictures to a hard drive, there is no easy way to select just the pictures taken on my phone. Seems like such an oversight but I suspect it's a way to drive people to sign up for iCloud storage.

nielsbot · 3m ago

Isn't that something WhatsApp is specifically doing tho? I haven't seen this behavior.

hammock · 22m ago

I can’t believe there isn’t a fix for this. I thought I was the only person with these problems. How have they persisted for so long?

haspok · 22m ago

> 3: On Android I can use Chrome.

On Android I can use Firefox (with uBlock Origin, and the ability to play Youtube videos in the background or with the screen locked).

There, I corrected it for you.

nielsbot · 1m ago

The Vinegar extension on macOS/iOS lets you use the system video player on YouTube. (It has a few glitches but works fine and let's you use PiP and play videos with the screen locked.)

m463 · 3m ago

I can understand point #1

- 99% of people put a case on their phone

- the more thickness you have for the camera (sensor+lens), the better you can make the optical design. (bigger sensor, more range of focus, etc)

- the camera - especially wide angle lens - must be even with surface of case, not below it (otherwise the case occludes the edges of the photo)

pkulak · 4m ago

2/3 of your complaints seem to be down to Apple's insistence that filesystems are silly and should be hidden from users. Unless it's iCloud, then show the user 2 identical filesystems and scatter everything at random between the two. Really, it's a write-only filesystem. Apps will constantly save things there, but god help you if you ever want to find something.

cosmic_cheese · 34m ago

I’d prefer the photo organization behavior you describe, but I don’t want websites to ever be dipping into the local filesystem outside of heavily siloed areas reserved for web apps exclusively. I don’t want the browser to even be capable of it, because regardless of what permissions and security measures are put in place, someone is going to find a way around them.

The only exception I can see making for filesystem access is for PWAs explicitly installed by the user, and even then there should be restrictions in place like limiting access to scripts loaded from the installed PWA’s domain. The open web in a generalized browser like Chrome on the other hand is too untrustworthy.

As for camera bumps, they’re all equally awful and I’d rather they just disappear entirely, even if that means thicker devices.

dsr_ · 17m ago

It's so strange that we don't have cameras which have write-only access to the image spool, galleries that have read-only access to the image spool, and a file manager app that can handle delete requests from other applications with the intent system.

hattar · 1h ago

I use an iphone and have for many years. I was a phone geek who would always use custom ROMs and have everything dialed in just so. I'm sure this has changed over the years but back in the day it seemed like there was always some weird issue with my Android phone. Admittedly, a lot of that could have been my fault for constantly messing with the device. Eventually I got busy and just needed my phone to do the simple stuff and get out of the way.

iOS has a number of really annoying behaviors and general flaws that are never going to be addressed. I don't recall having the same frustrations with Android, but maybe I did.

I'm constantly annoyed that my iPhone can't do simple stuff my Android phone could do 15 years ago. I am also aware that if it could do all those things, I probably wouldn't spend the time to get everything set up, dialed in, and maintained anyway.

The things that keep me on iPhone are unrelated to all of that, though.

1. I like the small form factor. I have a 13 Mini and there's no decent equivalent that I've found in any ecosystem (sadly, even Apple now).

2. I use Facetime with both sets of parents a fair bit. Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls, and then retraining every time Google kills it off for another almost identical app, sounds like a lot of work and frustration.

3. Real or not, my perception is that privacy in the Apple ecosystem has historically been, and currently is, far better than Google. I don't like the idea of the device I'm constantly relying on to be the product of an ad company, it just feels gross.

4. Proper unlock with FaceID is so damn convenient. I don't know for sure, but suspect going back to a fingerprint would really bug me.

Zak · 1h ago

> Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls, and then retraining every time Google kills it off for another almost identical app

This seems like an argument for picking something third-party, perhaps Signal. It's probably not going away any time soon, and it supports both major mobile operating systems.

no_wizard · 26m ago

both iOS and Facetime are super slick and baked into the device. The end user doesn't even have to really know how to the app to use the feature as it were. It shows up on a contact as a button click.

Signal does not, even on Android. You have to deliberately use it.

That small friction isn't great when you're likely one of few people using it in day to day life of others.

FaceTime on the other hand, just works

taco_emoji · 38m ago

Pixel has had face unlock since at least Pixel 7

mnky9800n · 1h ago

I miss having a small phone. My iPhone 16 ironically seems small compared to lots of phones my friends have. But I wish they bring back the mini. I would buy it immediately.

ggreer · 21m ago

You can buy a mini on secondary markets. Some are even new in box, though you might need to replace the battery.

Until about a year ago, Apple had 13 minis in their refurb store.[1] That's where I managed to get one. I'm going to hang on to it as long as possible. Previously I had an iPhone SE (the one that looks like an iPhone 5), and I still slightly regret upgrading to the mini. The mini's camera and display are significantly better, but it's a little wide for my hands.

1. https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/iphone

paulgerhardt · 52m ago

How’s your 13 mini holding up? I have a recently refurbished one (6 months old) and I can’t make it to 2pm without recharging.

Additional my mail search and photo search broke with Apple Intelligence/iOS18 integration.

Debating jumping ship to a epaper phone or holding out for the rumored iPhone Air.

mikepurvis · 28m ago

My 13 mini is also not great on battery. I've been debating ordering an iFixit battery and doing the swap, but in the past I've felt it was kind of mixed results from that. I don't think those batteries are newly manufactured units, but rather leftovers from the original production line that have been sitting on the shelf for 2-3 years. So although they'll be an improvement over one that's been through 1-2k cycles, they won't be like it was when it was brand new.

For now I'm just making do with having a power bank in my bag when I'm out and about.

hattar · 10m ago

I don't think the iPhone Air will actually be smaller in the dimensions I care about, just thinner which I assume will compromise battery life.

My mini is holding up ok. Battery needs replacing but I haven't done it. Like mikepurvis, I carry power banks around if I'm doing anything where I'm not going to be able to recharge easily. I use one like this https://www.amazon.com/Anker-PowerCore-Magnetic-Slim-B2C/dp/...

mikepurvis · 32m ago

I'm also holding tight on an iPhone 13 Mini (5.18 in x 2.53 in) and I'm honestly not thrilled that even that is a size up from the 5s (4.87 in x 2.31 in).

Pixel 10 is yet another step up, at 6.02 in x 2.83 in, and I just wish it didn't have to be that way.

dismalaf · 22m ago

> Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls

Everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp these days. Both of which are cross platform, even web (so can use on a desktop browser).

Also, the current Google thing, Meet, doesn't need the person you're calling to have the app. You invite them, they get a link, it opens in their browser, mobile or desktop.

therein · 50m ago

FaceID is terrible, not even reliable. It scans your face all the time, even when you are not unlocking it. Every 20-30 seconds or so, let's just scan your face.

I would love it if iPhones stayed with fingerprint unlock. Sometimes I put the phone on the desk and not pointing it to my face and I want to unlock it. I have to wait for the stupid FaceID timeout to be able to input my code.

t0md4n · 27m ago

Face ID is not terrible. Especially on newer phones which support landscape rotation etc. They check to see if you’re looking at the screen and your eyes are open, so they can keep the screen on regardless of the auto lock setting. It’s a smart and useful feature which you can turn off if you don’t like it.

coldpie · 1h ago

I prefer Android. Unlike iPhone, the Android notifications system actually makes sense, and I can use real Firefox on Android. But, I prefer phones sized to fit in a human hand even more, so I'm stuck on an iPhone 13 Mini. Please make a ~4.5" screen Pixel phone, Google :(

Fishkins · 30m ago

Yeah, the main news I want to hear is the release of smaller Pixel phone. Secondarily, I'd like the return of the 3.5mm port. I don't care about any of the stuff they actually announce.

I do currently use a Pixel, but I hate how big it is.

nielsbot · 21s ago

You prefer wired to non-wired headphones?

coldpie · 26m ago

Eh, I've gotten over the headphone jack thing. I just buy a dozen adapters, stick one on each of my headphones, and replace them as they wear out every couple months. Good enough.

javier2 · 1h ago

13 Mini, best phone ever made :(

meowkit · 1h ago

As someone who prefers iphones…

- iPhone wobble is real. Mostly mitigated by a proper case. Does the iPhone get a better camera in return? Usually in my experience.

- I don’t sort my photos. The semantic search has been sufficient, and I back everything up to my NAS via an iCloud docker shim.

- Chrome/chromium is adware garbage now. FireFox is the only browser I use. The FS API does sound great though. Enviable given how annoying it is to do work on an iPhone sometimes.

gpm · 1h ago

> - Chrome/chromium is adware garbage now. FireFox is the only browser I use

This is actually one of the stronger arguments in favour of Android's though, you can install (real) firefox and (fully functional) ublock origin, while Apple prevents you from doing so on their non-macos products.

littlecranky67 · 1m ago

Safari on iOS worldwide supports extensions. There is UBlock origin lite and i.e vinagre for youtube background videos. I am still amazed google does not allow extensions on their default browser.

benbristow · 1h ago

Microsoft Edge on Android now also supports some extensions, one being uBlock Origin. Seems just as powerful as the real thing. And has the benefit of using the Chrome engine.

toephu2 · 19m ago

> I back everything up to my NAS via an iCloud docker shim

As someone who refuses to pay extra for iCloud storage, can you tell me how to do this? I haven't figured out a good (read: easy) way to backup photos from my iPhone to computer/external storage (I don't want to use iTunes software cause I don't need everything syncing both ways).

izacus · 1h ago

Pixel phones have won blind camera tests last few years without Apple coming close though.

nomel · 42m ago

This is tricky. Most Android phones apply heavy color saturation and contrast adjustments, by default, to the images and the display itself, where iPhone tends to keep things more "raw". But, "pop" is what the average person usually prefers. It's post processing step that can heavily influence favor, unrelated to the camera. The Samsung cameras are still objectively better though, in many metrics.

My work involves showing images accurately on screens, and I always have dig through all the settings to make the Android phones just to show an image without heavy modification (for Samsung, it's 3 separate settings!). There is no such setting for iPhone, where the default experience is a (literally) color calibrated screen.

hbn · 1h ago

The difference between the photos on any flagship phone for the past 5 or so years is insignificant and mostly up to personal preference, but the difference between iPhone and anything else in videos is massive.

RankingMember · 1h ago

In my view Pixels have been dominating in still photos for years but their video has never been on par with iPhone. I'd put my old Pixel 3's still camera up against my iPhone 13 any day (if my Pixel hadn't bricked itself a little out of warranty like all of mine seemed to).

jama211 · 55m ago

For pictures but not for video, the stabilisation is better on iOS typically

tick_tock_tick · 20m ago

Stabilization is about to all become post processing AI based and if we know there is only thing Apple sucks at now a days it's software.

vunderba · 1h ago

I was under the impression that every browser running on iOS was just backed by WebKit - so it's basically just a firefox skin.

bsimpson · 1h ago

I switched to Android when Google gave me an HTC EVO at that year's Google I/O.

The deciding factors were:

- The large, high-res screen was way prettier.

- It had access to the whole internet, including Flash.

- The kickstand was handy. (minor, but still a nudge)

Android also had 3rd party keyboards with swipe-typing years before Apple did. I think Android has always been the preferred platform for tinkerers.

nfriedly · 22m ago

I miss HTC. They made some of the best phones, and they were always easy to put custom ROMs on.

dwaite · 25m ago

1. If the phone is bare. If you have a case (or a magnetic wallet like mine) it is stable. Rumors are they are moving to a camera bar in the next release.

2. There is a filter 'not in an album' which would do what you want. The library view is the equivalent of "All Mail" in Gmail. In newer versions, this is a distinct view - they are moving albums, automatically generated collections and search to be a primary interface.

3. Both WebKit and Mozilla have said they consider the local access variant of that API to be harmful, since they do not have an adequately prominent way to surface and manage that you've given a web application permanent access to sensitive directories and files, potentially in the background via service workers. Both do support the origin private filesystem variant. Are there productivity apps direct filesystem access would be useful for other than IDEs?

hintymad · 35m ago

A mystery about Apple is that some of its software are ridiculously bad. iTunes sync was one of them. Another example is removing iCloud sync used to wipe out the content on the disconnected devices. Screen Time is pretty much unusable. It's really hard to batch update photos in iphone. Heck, it's even hard to batch move app icons on iphone screen.

LeafItAlone · 1h ago

I use an iPhone.

1. I’m always going to have a case on my phone, so I don’t care about the camera bump.

2. You’re correct here. I mostly don’t care, but I want to have different hidden folders, which iOS doesn’t natively have. Otherwise I don’t care much.

3. Safari’s locked-down-ness is precisely why I use it.

But TBH, at this point, there’s minimal differences between iOS and Android.

jamesponddotco · 1h ago

I can sort my photos in folders (or albums) in iOS, not sure what you mean? I can have personal and shared albums, unless you mean the fact you don’t have that in the filesystem, in which case I completely agree.

I’m a Firefox guy myself and web apps are not something I care about for privacy reasons, but I agree that not having the option is a bummer.

The camera bump never really bothered me on the iPhone or the Pixel Fold I had before this iPhone. I just don’t notice it, but then again, I also didn’t notice the crease in the fold.

I miss Tachiyomi though. Panels is nice, but I had to built a whole OPDS-proxy to a manga website to have something close to Tachiyomi. Oh, and the ability to turn off network access on a per-application basis that came with GrapheneOS (plus the security of GrapheneOS itself).

While I prefer Android and Pixels (using GrapheneOS), I have switched my family to the Apple ecosystem to have a middle ground between privacy and features, so I’m not coming from an “I love Apple and everything else sucks” background, mind you.

afavour · 1h ago

I think OP is describing using their main Photos album as an inbox of sorts, emptying it out by filing photos away. On iOS even when you add a photo to an album it still exists in the main album.

jamesponddotco · 1h ago

Ah, yeah, that makes sense. I simply ignore the main view and go straight to the albums. In iOS 26 it defaults to your last view, so that works for me.

lnsru · 1h ago

I just went into trades and I do a picture every other hour of my work. It really makes me mad, that I can’t properly separate this photo-documentation from my personal private pictures. It’s a complete mess now in the main folder… Next phone will be one with GrapheneOS.

vvvvtt340 · 1h ago

I switched from Android to iOS a few years ago. I used to be deep into Android customization - custom ROMs, custom icon packs, etc. But today, I feel that iOS and Android offer pretty all the features that I could ever want. My deciding factors when I switched:

- iOS UI animations are significantly better

- access to iMessage

- Apple got around to adding their version of "always on display"

- I turn the vast majority of notifications off, so Android's better notification management stopped mattering to me

- It felt like Google kept bending Android towards iOS anyway (camera app, moving away from the 3 button navigation)

jech · 19m ago

> I feel that iOS and Android offer pretty all the features that I could ever want.

Except privacy.

cyberax · 1h ago

> iOS UI animations are significantly better

And if you don't like them: tough luck. They're mandatory.

nomel · 54m ago

Well, technically...

    Accessibility -> Motion -> Reduce Motion

I also usually turn off transparency, to reduce GPU usage by a negligible amount.

xp84 · 14m ago

I don't like Reduce Motion as it still forces you to wait through the half second of delay while it slowly fades things. I just want all animations deleted to avoid delaying the action itself. You used to be able to do this on a jailbroken phone by setting the global animation duration to be like zero or something, but of course Apple basically won the war on us "users" having any control on the devices we buy from them, or should I say, 'license the privilege of using'?

cyberax · 47m ago

Well, try it. It reduces motion, but it does not eliminate all animations.

I turned off all animations on my Android phone, and now each time I have to use iOS (for development) it feels like swimming through molasses.

csmcg · 53m ago

you can "Reduce Motion" and "Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions" under accessibility. Not sure if that's what is being referred to though.

appease7727 · 33m ago

My pixel 8 does not stay where I put it. Without a case, it will slide right off of any slightly tilted surface.

It should be illegal to put glass on the back of a phone.

xp84 · 10m ago

I agree so much. I get why: "Designers" consider plastic to be low-class, metal is radio-opaque, so that leaves glass as the only option even though it has zero functional advantages over plastic (glass is heavier and more fragile).

Imagine if it was a panel of plastic, and that you could easily replace it if it got too scuffed up.

jama211 · 19m ago

FYI rumour has it the iPhones about to be released will have the same sort of full width camera module so the “wobble” won’t be an issue. Not that it ever was for me before, I have a case on it.

baby · 52m ago

I think photos on the pixel are messed up (long-time iphone user who switched for the pixel 9 folding pro), you have all these folders that by default don't get backed up, it took me ages to understand I had to go in settings and manually check all new apps that I install for photos to back them up (and display them in my gallery). It's never clear what's the "offline" vs "online" view of google photos (and why there are other google photos apps).

With a bit of fiddling I can finally backup my whatsapp photos, but oh boy why aren't the default saner?

For Chrome, it's inconsistancies after inconsistancies. First, I couldn't read PDFs from there, now I can but I can't edit the URL when I edit a PDF, also no built-in app to read PDF, it's crazy.

meuman · 49m ago

4: the fact that Android has unified gestures: back, home and tray. Whenever I used iOS, I felt like every single app had a different way of going back somewhere. On Android, this is not an issue at all.

cm2012 · 1h ago

I think for most people its just whatever you are used to. That said I can't stand iPhone. My wife also switched to Android after being jealous of some features on my phone.

criddell · 16m ago

I have an iPhone because at the time I bought it I liked the size (Mini 13) and it's fine. Before that I had some Android phone and it was fine too.

I've never understood the strong emotions people have attached to these things.

About the only thing I'm looking forward to when I upgrade my phone in a couple of years is getting a better camera. Phones were pretty exciting for a while, but now? It feels like a mature segment and not much is changing anymore.

thewebguyd · 1h ago

> I think for most people its just whatever you are used to.

Or in the US, it's whatever your family and/or circle of friends use, RCS or not. iMessage lock in is real (along with Facetime, Airdrop, Apple Pay, etc.)

cheema33 · 53m ago

For me, it is the ability to tether my laptop to an iPhone to use the data service on my iPhone. This alone made me give up on Windows laptops and Android phones. Sure, you can tether Windows laptops to Android phones. But, it is a slow and cumbersome process. I use this functionality frequently enough that it was worth it to switch platforms over it.

mvieira38 · 1h ago

> Is this a "left brain vs right brain" type of thing? Do most HNers prefer Androids?

I don't think so. The stuff you mentioned is objectively better as there's no reason for Apple not to let you do it. It's more of a "I've been in the Apple walled garden for so long and so are all my friends" or the so-called network effects. Examples: you can't "Facetime" and "Airdrop" on Android, your text confirmation marks are green instead of blue, you don't have access to the same apps as your friends (sometimes), you don't have integration with iPad. If you grew up in certain circles you may be bullied for not having an iPhone, too.

Also there is a prevailing sentiment that Android doesn't "just work" as much as iOS, which is true tbh but not for Pixels which are basically the Android equivalent of an iPhone, where the device is pretty much tailor-made for the OS.

cosmic_cheese · 17m ago

There’s still an element of subjective preference, as much as many like to say otherwise. To me, Android animations and gestures have always felt less polished and natural and more rough “forever prototype” and mechanistic, for example.

In terms of “just working,” a big weak point of Android that stands out to me is just how clunky it is if you’re not neck-deep in the Google ecosystem and use more standardized service providers like FastMail. iOS stock apps work great with IMAP, CardDAV, CalDAV, etc but on Android you have to hunt down third party service agnostic apps for everything, few of which are designed to work with each other. To be fair though, Windows also suffers this issue.

jama211 · 46m ago

“There’s no reason for apple to not let you do it” - they have reasons. Whether you agree with them or not is fine but pretending they don’t have reasons is a little silly.

You also can’t put every option in for everything, because simplicity has value too.

gowld · 1h ago

Logical analysis, like using folders and file APIs, is "left-brained".

jama211 · 46m ago

This is such a redditor comment

andybak · 1h ago

The left/right brain thing is pseudo-science and even worse - a false dichotomy. It's much more about cultural snobbery and cultural tribalism around which pursuits are regarded as "more worthy".

Look up C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures" - it was incredibly influential at the time but also described a prejudice we still labour under. It's pervasive in the English speaking world. I suspect less so in the non-anglosphere West and possibly even less so in Asia.

Macha · 51m ago

> When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable

My experience with the Pixel 7 Pro is due to the very pronounced camera bump and the rounded edges, the phone would slide off tables with problematic frequency, to the point that mine just lives in its bike mount case full time now.

mvdtnz · 46m ago

What

mikepurvis · 1h ago

My first smartphone was a cheap Android and then I switched to iPhone about eight years ago and mostly haven't looked back.

That said, Apple's behaviour around locking out wearables from key system APIs does have me reconsidering. I found the inconsistent sync and notifications on my Fitbit to be a pretty big source of annoyance and if that continues on the new Pebble I would consider switching back to Android just for that.

xp84 · 7m ago

I think the EU or the US (one of them) is trying to force Apple to give third parties access to the things Apple Watch has access to, so there might be relief coming for one of those continents (one assumes that the petulant child that is Apple's leadership will, after appealing to the maximum, region-gate any remedy, exactly as they did for third-party app stores in EU).

AstroBen · 1h ago

The biggest selling point of an iPhone for me is the easy connection with my Mac and the consistency between them. If it weren't for that I'd strongly consider a pixel

littlecranky67 · 1h ago

To your 3: On iOS Safari, I can use extensions. That includes adblockers (uBlock origin lite) and others like Vinegar (allows youtube videos to play in background while display is off). No ads boosts productivity more than the file API - what would I need that for?

flowardnut · 1h ago

I can download an APK and install it on android. Why can't I use my iphone like I use my macbook?

xp84 · 3m ago

An underrated question. The answer of course is twofold:

* Paternalism (Apple believes users are too stupid to be trusted to control their devices, and no amount of "I really know what I'm doing" confirmations could change that)

* Apple's biggest fear is being disintermediated by Google or Meta, the way WeChat did to phone manufacturers in China. An ability to side-load an app could allow a foothold for a powerful competitor who could wean you off of all their lock-in features in favor of an experience that would tie into a competing ecosystem.

dsr_ · 15m ago

Apple would like your macbook to be more like your iphone: applications only via their store, thank you very much.

But it isn't worth the bother; the macbook market is much smaller than the iphone market.

dyauspitr · 7m ago

None of those things matter to me. What does matter to me is that to get stuff off my iPhone I have to do a weird sync process and/or use iCloud. Infact, a lot of my issues with the iPhone stem from refusing to use iCloud. Can’t use Apple Pay or FindMy.

For now I use Airdrop to move photos from my iPhone to the computer but it’s very error prone and fails 1/5 times and way more often if you try to do it with more than 30 images/videos. Is this situation better in the Pixel?

myaccountonhn · 1h ago

I knew apple wasn't for me when I tried to sync and backup my stuff on something that wasn't iCloud. Its just plain unusable if you don't want to be fully entrenched in their cloud services.

jama211 · 45m ago

I’m an iphone user and I’ve always used Dropbox and google photos as my general backup mediums.

hellisothers · 1h ago

2: you can organize photos into folders but nobody does

3: I actively don’t want this nor would I want anybody I care about to have to deal with this.

But props to you for having an argument for Android aside from the usual “I have more control”

OtherShrezzing · 50m ago

I do t think I’ve ever met anyone who doesn’t use a phone case, all of which fix #1

coldpie · 43m ago

I've never used a phone case. I don't understand why they make these things so small and then everyone just slaps on an extra couple mm. What's the point? If we're making them bigger anyway, at least use that space for more battery.

Anyway, the wobble is real, and sucks.

cosmic_cheese · 10m ago

I run caseless too and would be willing to sacrifice a few mm for better durability and no bump. Plastic is fine too. Bring back designs like the iPhone 3GS which were curved to fit your palm and if dropped would just bounce and tank it!

dismalaf · 18m ago

Phones are too slippery these days. Everyone makes them of smooth glass or metal.

coldpie · 14m ago

Remember soft touch plastics? Grippy and didn't waste all the space of a case? Then some dingleberry marketer decided slippery metals and glass were "premium" and braindead phone reviewers happily parroted that crap and now everyone buys several mm thick cases made of soft touch plastics to cover up the "premium" materials they bought. Sigh.

muizelaar · 1h ago

What web apps do you use that use the File System Access API?

siva7 · 1h ago

Nope, i wish Apple would do this the way Android does. Most people here prefer Apple, not because of the crap iOS but because of the hardware.

x0x0 · 48m ago

A counterpoint: google intentionally broke the ability to backup photos in Google Photos.

Yes, takeout sort of exists, but it doesn't work. If you sort pictures into albums, you get duplicates of each photo for every album. So one copy in the automatic year album; one copy for each album you have put a photo into. My 80gb of photos triples in size, and oh, sometimes downloads fail on the zips they put them into. And since I use a mac, who has 600gb of free disk to download and extract the zips for my dedup script to run.

Additionally, they intentionally broke their api (well, just disabled it... but only for most users; it seems to still be available for Microsoft) to do incremental backup. tada!

It's the most Apple thing.

Gud · 1h ago

Frankly, iOS could be a giant turd of an OS, at least it's somewhat privacy respecting(for the time being), I would still prefer it.

As long as it's that, it's light years ahead of Android. Which is a vehicle for Google to spy on you so they can sell your data.

dismalaf · 27m ago

I prefer Pixel phones, for slightly different reasons.

One, it takes really good photos. Better than phones with supposedly better specs. This is big for me, I have a 3 year old, being able to snap photos that look great with no effort is huge.

Two, the Google integration is just really a gamechanger. My laptop is my "computing" device. So my phone is mostly for calling, navigating (I travel a lot), searching for businesses, that sort of thing. It's really effortless with Pixel devices, takes a tad more work with other brands.

All browsers are equal citizens. I use Vivaldi, it's nice it can be the default and work just as well with the phone as Chrome.

And finally, in all my dealings with big tech over my lifetime, Google has been the only one that I feel doesn't try to abuse users. With MS it's endless nagging and annoyances, plus their security sucks, with Apple they're very anti-consumer unless you do exactly what they want, all the time. Even Samsung annoyed me with bloatware and trying to make their apps default over and over. If I change something on a Pixel phone, it stays changed. I pay for some Google products so no ads for the most part. Their security is great. They prefer open formats and protocols and have done a ton for the open web. Just the best ecosystem I've bought into.

IT4MD · 1h ago

They also screw up the hardware.

When I use a fingerprint scanner on other phones, it works.

When I used it on my last Pixel (6 or 7, I cant remember) it failed over half the time.

How does one screw up biometrics this badly? Lack of care/QA on a $1k device.

GL with your Pixel.

Note: I'm not an Apple fan boi. I swap every couple of years so I maintain skills in both OSes.

OneDeuxTriSeiGo · 1h ago

If it was the Pixel 6, I can attest that the 6 (at least the 6 Pro XL) had issues with the fingerprint scanner. I had no issues with my 5 series (when the fingerprint scanner was on the back) but the 6 series always gave me trouble. I'd wager a guess the reason why was because it was the first generation with an under-display fingerprint scanner and they hadn't yet worked out the quirks.

I've since upgraded to a 9 series and it works flawlessly so I can assume they've figured it out some time since then.

crinkly · 1h ago

I have an iPhone 15 Pro. I am a semi regular Pixel user as well. I prefer the iPhone by a mile.

1. Mine sits flat too. It's in a rugged case.

2. You don't know how to use Photos properly. You create collections from the pool and name them. You can create folders as well. In fact it actually does that automatically now.

3. There's literally a files app and filesystem abstraction on iOS. I use it for moving stuff around all the time.

Add one gain:

1. All my photos are in real files in Photos.app on my desktop within seconds of me taking them. I do not have my files held ransom behind a web interface. Edits and folders are transparently replicated between both devices. When I back up my mac I have a copy of everything.

And a total loss:

Post processing on both devices for images is terrible so I use a dedicated camera.

delfinom · 1h ago

>3: On Android I can use Chrome. Which means web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones.

Working as intended. Apple wants their 30% cut by all possible means. Web apps would bypass their cut.

carlosjobim · 1h ago

> This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones.

The thing is that web apps are always a worse experience if you have native apps. Linux and Android (and now also Windows) depend on web apps because they don't have good quality native apps. For Apple devices you can always find a top quality native app to use, so web apps aren't any concern. The only people I have met who want to use apps in their browser on MacOS are Linux refugees who were attracted by the "specs" of Apple devices. It's a bit like buying an electric car and lamenting the lack of a gearbox. You don't need it anymore.

tristor · 1h ago

As someone who started on Android but switched to Apple many many many years ago, I still find things like this that are quibbles for me, but in general my preference for Apple is because of security/privacy, battery life management, performance, update longevity, and hardware quality.

That said, I think it's worth noting that #1 hardly bothers anyone because most people put their phone in a case, and that can quickly resolve this. #2 isn't a real problem, because you can absolutely sort your photos into folders, they're call albums though, and this is a first-class workflow in the Photos app since they switched from iPhoto to Photos about 6-7 years ago. For #3, I don't want my web browser having file system access via an API and I don't use Chrome.

afavour · 1h ago

I’m a former Android user (bought a Nexus One on release!) that switched to iOS many years ago and I don’t miss Android as much as I thought I might.

To me the biggest thing to reflect on is how depressing it is that we must all fit ourselves into one of two boxes. My kingdom for a flourishing mobile OS ecosystem where we can all find the exact combination that scratches our itches.

xandrius · 1h ago

Well, we have 3 main boxes and 1 got mostly rejected (windows).

One is a worse version of OSX and the other is basically what would have happened if Linux was initially created by a huge corp.

My dream is for a top-notch Ubuntu for mobile. I'm still waiting for Desktop to catch up, so won't hold my breath.

gralab · 33m ago

These are all extremely minor issues. 2 and 3 are not even relevant to 99% of normal users. Very few people want to spend time manually organizing photos like that, and albums do essentially the same thing. The wobbling thing is a non-issue. It doesn't even wobble unless you're pounding down on the phone on a table.

jjice · 2h ago

> Tensor G5 and the latest version of Gemini Nano work together to run Magic Cue privately and securely on your phone.

Running Gemini Nano on device is the most interesting thing here. Magic Cue sounds exactly like the Siri improvements that Apple failed to launch this past year (and have stayed mostly quiet about for this coming year, except saying "eventually"). I hope it works well, because on-device AI for simple lookups and such is actually one of the most interesting use cases for LLMs on mobile phones to me.

I love the idea of an on-device model that I can say something like "who's going to the baseball game this weekend" and it'll intelligently check my calendar and see who's listed. Or saying something like "how much was the dinner at McDoogle's last week?" and have it check digital wallet transactions. There are so many possibilities. I assume this kind of thing would just be implemented as tool calls with app intents. I hope we see this across the board in the next three years.

dakiol · 2h ago

> I love the idea of an on-device model that I can say something like "who's going to the baseball game this weekend" and it'll intelligently check my calendar and see who's listed. Or saying something like "how much was the dinner at McDoogle's last week?" and have it check digital wallet transactions.

It's probably just me (or a few like me) but I don't really keep my life in digital format as much as others (and I'm a "geek" for my family/friends since i work in the software industry). If I'm going to the cinema or baseball or any other event... I don't have it in any calendar. I pay with debit/credit cards but I don't have any digital wallet. I don't take my phone with me most of the time (my phone is big and having it hanging in my pockets is not nice).

The features described in the Pixel 10 left me with a sense of "I think I am missing something! But... oh well, whatever, I don't need any of that". Which is weird again, because I'm supposed to be the "geek".

JoshTriplett · 2h ago

> If I'm going to the cinema or baseball or any other event... I don't have it in any calendar.

If I don't have it in my calendar, it doesn't happen. I would fail to actually go to the event otherwise.

dmd · 1h ago

I'm calendar-driven to such an extent that I joke that all it would take to murder me would be to insert "jump off a cliff" in my calendar.

ryandvm · 1h ago

Same. Calendar events, reminders, and timers are the only way anything in my life gets done.

taco_emoji · 37m ago

I also have ADHD!

inerte · 2h ago

You don't add to your calendar but you probably got a confirmation email. Or you may have used an app that could expose this data to the operating system. OR, you called, and the phone app transcribed and summarized the call.

Same for the wallet... if you have your credit card / banking app installed it could expose this.

But yeah, none _needs_ any of that, for different degrees of fun and life optimization.

johntb86 · 35m ago

How do you get your tickets? Do you just buy in person at the theater or ballpark?

cm2012 · 1h ago

I dont think I have left my house without my phone in 5+ years.

jama211 · 30m ago

I think it’s been 15+ years for me

giancarlostoro · 1h ago

I think on-device models will be the breaking point for AI. Nobody wants to pay for a trillion dollar cloud bill. We've made consumers think that the only way you're paying for software is if you have to buy hardware that comes with it. If you want AI to truly blow up, make it run on potatoes. It doesnt have to do EVERYTHING, just specific needs.

That said, what is with Android phones and their back cameras? They look silly. I thought Apple adding 3 to theirs for the 12 was a bit silly, but at least they made it look nice. One of those models looks like a Battlestar Galactica villain...

ZeWaka · 1h ago

They have the same camera bump design on the Pixel 9 phones.

I quite like it, it's a natural rest for my phone to sit at an angle (and protect the camera glass), and is great for holding it with a single hand.

lbrito · 1h ago

>That said, what is with Android phones and their back cameras? They look silly.

Isn't it a market thing though? Doesn't Apple have a phone with horrendous, trypophobia-inducing camera nests?

izacus · 1h ago

I (and many other people) think the cameras look great and are a nice change from the repetitive boring Apple designs.

cbsmith · 1h ago

> Nobody wants to pay for a trillion dollar cloud bill.

Buying dedicated hardware as a way to keep your AI bill down seems like a tough proposition for your average consumer. Unless you're using AI constantly, renting AI capacity when you need it is just going to be cheaper. The win with the on-device model is you don't have to go out to the network in the first place.

jayd16 · 35m ago

I mean, look at these examples. Is a big LLM really needed to hit most of what people want?

Seems like Android just needs to lean into the voice command hooks API. A local LLM can grease the natural language into the mechanical APIs installed on your device. That's a much simpler task than an omniscient robot with access to all of your data.

delichon · 2h ago

Or for the police, "list any legally questionable content on the phone or behavior by the owner."

killingtime74 · 2h ago

The model might even make something up, giving police "reasonable suspicion". Not that it seems it's needed anymore in the US

jonbiggums22 · 2h ago

AI is about to put drug sniffing dogs out of a job.

pornel · 2h ago

The Nano model is 3.2B parameters at 4bit quantization. This is quite small compared to what you get from hosted chatbots, and even compared to open-weights models runnable on desktops.

It's cool to have something like this available locally anyway, but don't expect it to have reasoning capabilities. At this size it's going to be naive and prone to hallucinations. It's going to be more like a natural language regex and a word association game.

jjice · 2h ago

The big win for those small local models to me isn't knowledge based (I'll leave that to the large hosted models), but more so a natural language interface that can then dispatch to tool calls and summarize results. I think this is where they have the opportunity to shine. You're totally right that these are going to be awful for knowledge.

KoolKat23 · 2h ago

You can already ask Gemini those questions on your phone.

This is more popping up magically before you needed to ask.

Both are great (when they work).

jjice · 2h ago

Oh really? I switched to an iPhone end of last year (for non-AI reasons), so I may be missing out. Is this on on-device model, or does it still dispatch to hosted Gemini? But I'd imagine that Gemini would have a great integration with Calendar and Gmail.

bravoetch · 1h ago

I love the idea of on-device AI. But the implementation of Gemini on Android is fully toxic. In the assistant settings I'm able to select what app I want to use as the assistant. But if I even open the Gemini app, it sets that automatically to be the phone assistant app. It doesn't ask, there's no confirmation, it just changes that setting. After that many tasks will fail because Gemini can't launch google maps to navigate you etc etc. Super annoying.

curvaturearth · 1h ago

This. I tried Gemini, twice, and each time my usual use of hand free tasks were no longer possible. This is what I don't understand, all these big tech companies think I want to have a conversation and ask questions to an AI in every part of my life but I do not. All I want is to tell my phone to put in a calendar invite, play a song on an specific app, navigate to somewhere, etc. My android phone triggers itself when listening to podcasts too, which is fun.

therein · 2h ago

It being by Google, I have a feeling Google and LEA will be able to use tools on your phone too. They could very conveniently use this for "we didn't analyze your data using AI, we instructed your local AI to analyze your data" so it isn't technically a violation of your rights.

_blk · 1h ago

Yup. Fortunately Graphene OS will likely soon run just as well as on their previous hardware. You can re-googlify it as much as you're comfortable with.

the__alchemist · 2h ago

Looks like they're still only available in "Huge" and "comically oversized". I guess I can keep buying Pixel 4s until new ones (req for battery) are no longer available.

zamadatix · 1h ago

It's interesting how this type of feedback always comes up for phones yet smaller phones have an extremely hard time actually selling enough units to justify making more of them. It seems part of it may be folks remaining in this group seem much more willing to stick with old devices anyways, helping drive less priority for small sizes on top of already being a smaller market segment. Perhaps there are some other big factors beyond those two things too.

coldpie · 1h ago

> yet smaller phones have an extremely hard time actually selling enough units to justify making more of them

I don't buy this. The iPhone 13 Mini all by itself sold 6 million units in a year. That's about half the rate of Google's entire Pixel lineup. The market is small, yeah, but it definitely exists. I think a company could quietly make a high quality, straightforward, small Android device with maybe every-other-year hardware updates, and run away with a whole corner of the market all to itself.

avidiax · 17m ago

Smaller phones tend to have a lower price point.

If they don't offer a smaller phone, you'll eventually buy a bigger phone. Once you are in camp big phone, you'll probably be back on the 2-5 year device treadmill. And you'll be spending more on the big phones.

Apple is in a continuous state of not giving their customers what they want.

A convertible Macbook with a touch screen and dual MacOS/IOS personalities would sell out. They will never make it because no one will ever buy an iPad again.

A high quality TV with Apple TV built in at a premium but reasonable price would sell like hotcakes. It would compete with Apple Cinema displays, however.

A basic "good enough" 5 inch phone for $499 would also sell fast.

Apple won't do these things because you'd be happier but spend less.

wijwp · 46m ago

You can't just look at units sold, you have to look at net units sold because the version of the product existed.

For example, if 5.9 million of those 6 million people would have bought the larger iPhone model anyway, then you didn't actually gain much by offering the Mini unit.

I have no idea what those numbers are, though.

ethersteeds · 15m ago

> You can't just look at hamburger sales to judge hamburger demand. You have to consider an alternate universe where hamburgers aren't on the menu, then subtract all the people who would have ordered something else for lunch vs going hungry.

I know this probably is how the decisions get made. Especially if the alternative has a higher profit margin. I just have to say I think the world is worse for it.

hbn · 50m ago

Apple said the mini iPhones underperformed, but they were not some sort of commercial failure. They sold millions of units. Numbers most Android OEMs could only dream of for a single flagship model. Current day Apple is all about optimizing and determined that still wasn't enough, and I imagine the manufacturing for small, specialized display panels certainly took a chunk out of those margins, so Apple decided to pull the plug.

Myself and the people who said we wanted a smaller phone may be a vocal minority but we did buy the small phone when we were offered it. After I used the 12 mini for 2 years, I bought a 14 Pro since no mini was offered in the 14 generation, but I returned it a week later cause it was too big/heavy and bought a 13 mini. These days I'm using a 16 Pro since no mini is offered and the titanium did help a lot with the weight issue, but if they brought back mini phones I'd happily sacrifice the camera for a reasonably sized screen.

silotis · 1h ago

The problem is for many years now the smallest phone available has been getting larger and larger. This has lead small phone enthusiasts to cling to their old phones as long as they can stand it until they are forced to step to a larger model.

jama211 · 25m ago

Ultra principled users rarely if ever buy new devices or have predictable purchasing patterns in almost any way. Trying to appease this market is mostly a fools game, as they have learned.

battesonb · 1h ago

I'm exactly that person. Always running an older device and lamenting the lack of small devices. Unfortunately, the mainstream wants big devices, so we all get big devices.

daemonologist · 2h ago

I replaced my 4a (which is not particularly small) after Google nerfed the battery into oblivion, but every once in a while I get it out of its drawer and am always immediately struck by how much better the form factor is. Using a modern phone with a 6+ inch screen feels like trying to tie a knot with one hand.

jama211 · 29m ago

I have this experience… until I turn it on and start to try and type stuff on the tiny keyboard or watch stuff on it again. Then I realise I’m glad I moved up a little

sudokatsu · 2h ago

Really wish they would at least make the Fold a reasonable size when closed. It would scratch my smaller phone itch, and offer a larger screen when I actually do want one. Currently it’s “comically oversized” when folded, and literal tablet when open.

leetharris · 2h ago

I just went from a Z Fold 5 to a Z Fold 7 and I hate it for this exact reason.

Z Fold 6 and earlier were slim, one handed use phones when folded, small tablet when opened.

Now it's just a regular phone, and a medium tablet when I open it.

First phone I've ever regretted upgrading to.

AshamedCaptain · 2h ago

Consumers have spoken though. Same as dropping the stylus...

sylos · 1h ago

I dont think consumers have as much influence as people believe.

ortusdux · 2h ago

I'd hoped others would copy/iterate the Flip form factor. A friend has one and it does feel great. I just don't get along with the Samsung software suite.

lawn · 2h ago

I'd buy a Flip as soon as I can install GrapheneOS on it.

With the popularity of the Flip I can only hope I won't have to wait too long.

markasoftware · 2h ago

I agree, but I got the Pixel 5 instead; the 5 is actually smaller while the screen size is larger due to the curved screen corners. It also has a fingerprint sensor, unlike the 4. That being said, I still miss the squeeze-activated flashlight on the 4.

madduci · 2h ago

Me crying for a newer Nexus 4, the best device in terms of quality/price ever made by Google

bscphil · 1h ago

Best phone I've ever owned and it's not close. Every phone since then has been a compromise, to the point that (in a sunk cost fallacy kind of way) I've just quit caring about phones and just buy whatever the cheapest available unlocked device is. I run them into the ground (way past the end-of-service date) because I know the next one is going to be worse.

Grazester · 59m ago

The Nexus 4 was a nice phone but I thought the battery life was bad and it also ran hot.

My Moto-X was truly next level. It was oled and could do always on display that didn't need to power the blacks pixels on the screen. It was the first phone to do this. It has voice recognition for unlocking (getting info that you couldn't when the phone was locked). First to do this too since I believe it uses dedicated hardware at the time. It also knew when I was driving to unlock the phone for voice commands also. It was small.

poisonborz · 2h ago

There are no alternatives. S25 is 6.2, and Pixels put the Pro/best version in 6.3, while on Samsung you get a step up to 6.7 and 6.9. Much better specs on almost the same size.

pelagicAustral · 2h ago

s25 is super manageable, it's the most comfy phone I've had since ever.

tetris11 · 2h ago

It's sad what they did to the Pixel 4a's battery, because that phone was otherwise comfort perfection

mnmalst · 2h ago

Still using mine on the stock rom. Mine was luckily not effected by the battery problems. Such a good phone.

51Cards · 2h ago

I still carry my Pixel 5 for this reason. 2 replacement batteries in now and I have a spare sitting on a shelf. That said the Pixel 9A is tempting as it's not much larger than my Pixel 5. I hate that the finger print readers have moved to the front though. The sensor on the back of my 5 is perfectly postioned and also acts like a little track-pad for opening the notification tray. It was a perfect design IMO.

bsimpson · 1h ago

> a spare sitting on a shelf

Does that work for batteries? I feel like unused batteries tend to become unusable batteries.

avidiax · 10m ago

Would be better in a drawer in the refrigerator. Calendar aging for batteries is mostly about the temperature and storage SoC, which should be in the 30-50% level.

_blk · 1h ago

Agreed on battery. I started with a 6a and only ever had the fingerprint in the front. I thought it's well designed and works well (as long as I stick to office job activities.. as soon as you start doing handy works it has its issues.. same for Px7).

jauntywundrkind · 2h ago

I keep thinking of how the Nexus 7 has a 7.02" screen. And how modern phones tend to be 6.1 - 6.9". But never quite 7!

Mistletoe · 1h ago

Just bought a used iPhone 13 Mini last week to replace my 12 Mini. This has to last me...apparently until the heat death of the universe.

andrepd · 2h ago

Pixel 5 is about as big, but yes, that's as far as it goes.

Unfortunately that goes for virtually any phone on the market... Sad.

metalliqaz · 2h ago

I really liked my Pixel4 but in 2025 the hardware and software are getting too out of date.

andrepd · 2h ago

Still does everything that I want it to and the photos are still excellent. I don't think I'm missing much.

_giorgio_ · 2h ago

Until I purchased a Pixel 8a, I thought the same thing.

I discovered that all the newer pant models that I purchased have bigger pockets, so that's not a problem anymore.

throw-the-towel · 1h ago

I just hope that all the newer body models I purchase have bigger hands.

Mistletoe · 1h ago

https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/095D6...

Shot of humans from the future.

layer8 · 1h ago

That doesn't solve the weight problem.

bityard · 2h ago

"Just buy bigger pants" is the 2025 version of "you're holding it wrong"?

somewhatrandom9 · 1h ago

The tech specs: https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_10_specs?hl=en-US Says it has vpn capabilities..But then there is a footnote:

>12. Restrictions apply. Some data is not transmitted through VPN.... See https://g.co/pixel/vpn for details.

Does anyone know what data doesn't go through the vpn?

On the positive side it lists a 24+ hour battery life!! This is huge for me!! ..but it has a footnote, as well

> 6. Battery life depends upon many factors and usage of certain features will decrease battery life. Actual battery life may be lower. Over time, Pixel software will manage battery performance to help maintain battery health as your battery ages. See https://g.co/pixel/battery-tests and https://g.co/pixel/batteryhealth for details.

Which I guess is understandable

Disparallel · 58m ago

The help section article lists

# Data that isn’t protected by the VPN

Not all network data from your device is protected by the VPN. Examples of data that aren’t protected by the VPN include:

- Tethering traffic

  - This includes USB and Wi-Fi hotspot.

- Push notifications

- Wi-Fi calling and other IMS services

- Work profile app traffic

  - This applies if a work profile is configured on your device.

- Data traffic from an app that routes traffic directly over the Wi-Fi or a cellular connection

All of which make sense to me except push notifications. My guess is they might mean syncing notifications to e.g. a watch.

OneDeuxTriSeiGo · 57m ago

> Does anyone know what data doesn't go through the vpn?

I can't speak to exactly what data doesn't go through their VPN but I know carrier apps tend to not play nice with VPNs, especially the Google Fi app (as it relies on its connection and what IP its on to coordinate switching between their various carrier contracts and that seems to break under a VPN).

And also seemingly Wi-fi calling has been problematic over VPN for as long as I can remember so that's usually a safe bet for exclusion.

vader1 · 38m ago

The lack of a physical SIM tray is just one more way to lock users in Google's walled garden. eSIM support is not implemented in Android itself (AOSP), but part of the proprietary GMS package. This means Google-free Android forks like LineageOS will be unusable on the Pixel 10 series :-(

leeoniya · 36m ago

does this mean no GrapheneOS either?

vader1 · 24m ago

GrapheneOS found a way to provide eSIM support, but it depends on installing a patched version of Google's proprietary LPA app. I don't know how future-proof that is..

Ganipote · 26m ago

GrapheneOS support eSim : https://grapheneos.org/usage#esim-support

a2128 · 29m ago

Graphene supports eSIM https://grapheneos.org/usage#esim-support

ge96 · 1h ago

That fake zoom with AI is gross ugh

If I'm taking a picture of something I want it to be real light-to-pixel action not some made up wambo-jambo

racktash · 31m ago

Agreed, not a fan. The world has enough fakery in it already without people accidentally generating even more (I assume quite a lot of casual users will mistake this zoom for zoom in the traditional sense).

gdbsjjdn · 17m ago

It's giving "Samsung fake moon". If generative AI is going to make up details why bother zooming in, you could just ask to make up a whole AI slop picture.

Jabbles · 55m ago

https://imgur.com/a/sDJTiyK

That 100x zoom looks a bit... sloppy...

The car has one wing mirror and the rear tire is wider than the front. Edit: this might be real, see child comments.

Is there someone who knows more about cars who can confirm that this is in fact, not real?

Etheryte · 34m ago

What looks off the most is the fact that the blinkers under the bender aren't even remotely close to looking similar. The rest of the car could pass as a restomod, but the fact that so many things are asymmetrical between the two sides just looks completely wrong. Blinkers, hood clips, mirror-no-mirror, etc.

Kirby64 · 43m ago

This is an old classic car/truck. Only one mirror was somewhat common back then. Also, wider rear tires are not unusual. Especially on anything with a bed, since you want additional loading capabilities in the back.

ranger207 · 40m ago

That looks vaguely similar to a 60s Mustang (although also has a lot of details that are wrong) and old muscle cars like that often have wider rear tires for better traction

cenamus · 50m ago

I think the rear looking bigger is an artifact of the zoom, where your brain expects it to look smaller, but it's actually the same size due to the extreme cropping

nfriedly · 16m ago

No, it's definitely wider in the photo. The rear tire is about double the width of my mouse pointer while the front tire is about 1x the width.

That said, as other commentators have mentioned, it might also be wider in real life, so not necessarily an artifact at all.

rafaelmn · 1h ago

I am considering switching to Google, I am getting annoyed by Apple more and more, but the critical feature for me is AI assistant.

I am the first to criticize the LLM hype and I do not expect much out of them - but the fact that I cannot get Siri to turn a single light in my room instead of all of them is just FUBAR from my perspective. Siri is such garbage at this point that the gap between it and ChatGPT app is unbelievable. I can't even get it to reliably call people in my contacts, meanwhile my 4 year old can talk to ChatGPT in Croatian. Google Gemini seems to be on par so their assistant should be at least semi competent.

baby · 49m ago

I switched to the previous google phones (9) for the folding phone, even though I'm not too much of a fan of the android experience I cannot switch back to Apple right now because:

* the AI integration on google phones is just amazing

* the folding phone has insane screen estate on-demand anywhere any time, I wouldn't be able to go back to a single screen

Jabbles · 1h ago

> For instance, when you're calling an airline, it can automatically find your flight details from your email and display it during your phone call.

Is this really the best example usecase they can think of? How often does an individual call an airline? I'm sure in aggregate they get a lot of calls, but I don't think I've ever had to.

It just seems really weird that this is the top example of on-device AI. The other examples mentioned, like "finding the right photos to share with a friend", seem more relatable.

ortusdux · 1h ago

AI assisted zoom is interesting. Will it invent license plate numbers, guess what faces look like, or just output high resolution blurs?

ZeWaka · 1h ago

They already have this on the pixel 9s with their 20x super zoom. I haven't noticed any weird artifacts like this from my usage. It just appears as indistinguishable camera fuzz - hard to describe.

ryandvm · 1h ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the AI is using video (i.e. multiple frames) to put together enough information for the zoom to be as accurate as possible. That said, I don't know if there's enough information to do 100X.

bityard · 2h ago

> Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL are all available for preorder today starting at $799, $999 and $1199.

Sigh, still not going to pay more for a phone than I paid for my computer.

Also, what is up with that camera module? This doesn't look like it can physically slide into jeans pockets. At least round the corners or add little ramps. I guess this is what happens when design folk are allowed to trump engineers.

JoshTriplett · 2h ago

> This doesn't look like it can physically slide into jeans pockets.

I'm interested to hear more about this, because it's always interesting to understand how other people interact with things who have different use cases or usage models.

How tight are your jeans, and how do you fit anything else in your pocket if something ~1in thick doesn't fit comfortably (without having to force the pocket open in a way that would require a "ramp")?

Are you using your back pockets? I have never once understood the utility of those; I have no desire to sit on anything in my pockets.

charlie-83 · 1h ago

Not that I'm trying to justify the prices, but I'm interested by the take that a phone should cost less than a computer. To me, the phone has an actual camera and is significantly smaller (and, if you are talking desktop, has a screen) so should cost more for the same sort of power. Of course, there are phones and computers at all different prices so it's hard to compare.

LeifCarrotson · 1h ago

It's smaller, so it should cost less, not more. It's 2025, miniaturization isn't that expensive. It's less screen and less battery than a laptop, cooling the CPU can be done passively because it's so low-powered, it has less RAM and less flash and fewer ports and a simpler mechanical design, no keyboard or touchpad... it's a slab of glass with a plastic/aluminum case containing a PCB, battery, and camera.

Written on my $250 Motorola

jama211 · 21m ago

By this logic a Ferrari should cost less than a Toyota Camry because it has less seats and luggage space.

I.e. you’re conveniently leaving out the _entire_ set of reasons this isn’t the case.

As a side note, computers DO cost more than phones, in general. You can barely get a graphics card for that price these days, so you’re not really comparing apples to apples if your computer is that cheap.

Dylan16807 · 14m ago

> I.e. you’re conveniently leaving out the _entire_ set of reasons this isn’t the case.

Would you like to list those for the phone? I don't think your analogy is fair at all.

MinimalAction · 1h ago

While I mostly agree with you that it is counterintuitive to have mobile costlier than laptop, this year's Pixel Pro models have 16GB RAM. That is better than most entry level laptops on the market right now.

Dylan16807 · 29m ago

The Pro having more ram than the average entry level laptop doesn't imply very much.

When I search '16gb laptop' on Amazon the first result is $320 and the third result is $220. The first one also has 512GB of storage, and I can upgrade to 24GB of ram and 1TB of storage for only $50. And it has a plenty good CPU with two fast cores and four slow cores.

The upgrade part is especially nasty for phones. Laptops and phones use the same production lines for ram and flash chips, so no price excuses there. And you can fit 2TB into a microSD these days. But if I want 1TB on my Pixel I have to start with a Pro and then add an extra $450.

ndriscoll · 1h ago

Also Google stuff always lacks SD card slots and have tiny storage. The $250 Motorola can add a $50 1 TB SD Card, which is enough to fit your entire music collection, all of wikipedia, and an offline ad-free routable map of the world from OSM, and still have probably like 700 GB left over for photos/videos. Google meanwhile charges $100 for a 128 GB storage upgrade. Probably because they want to funnel you into their cloud storage, want you to use their online maps/music services, etc.

Phone cameras are also absolute trash anyway, and pulling up some comparisons in Google Photos right now, I'm fairly certain that my Pixel 6a takes obviously worse photos than my Nexus 5x did 10 years ago, even comparing high light for the 6a to low light for the 5x. I'll probably buy a Motorola when my current phone dies because the only ostensible reason to buy a Pixel is the camera. Or I suspect the real big-brained solution lives in the handheld gaming PC space.

topspin · 1h ago

Few people are paying those prices. Cell providers sell these at far less: on the order of 60% of Googles retail price.

mattnewton · 45m ago

Well, minor nit- cell providers offer it for 60% Google’s price to start[0], while locking it into a phone contract that subsidizes it. This is effectively bundling a loan for the hardware with your data plan. That price is more of a down payment on said loan.

[0] actually in the US at least they’ll frequently offer it for “free” with a new plan, that of course locks the phone to said plan.

ryandvm · 1h ago

Pro tip: Buy the second-to-latest generation. Costs half as much and it was literally the best that even billionaires could have purchased just a year ago.

frogperson · 1h ago

I always amortize the coat of the phone over the months of security updates remaining. Sometimes the last gen is a better deal, on a per month basis, sometimes the new one is only a couple bucks a month more. i dont mind a few more dollars per month.

mrcwinn · 18m ago

I really like their AI strategy. It’s much stronger than Apple’s, which seems to be nonexistent. The problem I have is I really like my Apple Watch Ultra. There is nothing like it in the android space and I can’t rely on Google. Actually caring about building a great product the way Apple does. Googles hardware products always seem to be some strategic wedge play to keep the ecosystem in check. They don’t seem to exist because they really care about building the very best watch, or phone, or whatever and at any point they might just cancel the effort.

thebruce87m · 2h ago

If you own a pixel phone remember to do regular emergency call tests. They have a bug that has stuck around for generations but for some reason they get a pass.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1ano09x/pixel_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1jzo5hu/pixel_...

denysvitali · 2h ago

> regular emergency call tests

This sounds like a huge waste of time for the dispatch operators if everyone starts to do such tests regularly.

On a similar note, it would be great (especially for these tests) if carriers provided a non-emergency / echo number that gets treated the same way as an emergency call (works w/o SIM card, gets preferential treatment, ...)

barbazoo · 2h ago

When phones are no longer considered reliable to make emergency calls in certain places, what alternative is there?

Sure it sucks for the operator to get a call, "Sorry, just testing to make sure emergency calling works, thanks, bye" and it would also suck, probably even more, for an individual to not be able to make an emergency call. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, hopefully someone improves the system, lol.

Hackbraten · 3m ago

What I've done is write the dispatch center a friendly email explaining what I want and suggesting that they choose any off-peak time they find convenient.

A few days later, they called me and said that I could make the test call right now. Worked fine.

kingstnap · 1h ago

You can't just say A less bad then B so we should all do A.

You have to consider number of A * badness A vs number of B * badness B.

If thousands of pixel users start doing test calls in mass you will actually start causing that unable to make an emergency call issue.

barbazoo · 33m ago

And then maybe we will act and hold Google accountable for having a potentially lethal bug on their phone.

tgv · 2h ago

Frequently calling the alarm number without a valid reason can be fined up to 6700 euro, or result in 3 months detention here.

So if Pixel still has this bug, that's just another reason not to buy a Google product.

shawnz · 1h ago

What's the threshold by which a phone isn't considered reliable enough to make emergency calls?

I've never personally had an emergency call fail on a Pixel device, and I don't know the broader statistics of how often they fail for other people compared to other phones. Do you?

interloxia · 1h ago

For Australia, it needs to be on a whitelist.

https://isthisphoneblocked.net.au/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-03/brand-new-phones-unab...

nicce · 2h ago

One of the most important features of the phone. A huge reason to not buy if there is any uncertainty. You might die if it is not working.

ironman1478 · 1h ago

The hardware and features seem great, but I'm not gonna buy another pixel phone. I've had a pixel 8 for 2 years the stability of the software has gone down so much. I frequently have an unresponsive UI, requiring me to turn off my phone with the side buttons. I also have had many issues with the keyboard and it not responding when using chrome, requiring me to kill chrome and restart it.

It seems like Google only tests on their latest device when releasing android because people I know who always get the latest phones don't have these problems. It's a very poor customer experience. It's the phone experience of an old super car. It's fast and does lots of cool things, but it feels like the wheels are gonna come off at any minute.

martijn_himself · 59m ago

Same here (on a Pixel 7). Apart from there being absolutely no reason to upgrade, really, even with the generous trade-in values offered by Google around the time of release. I kind of miss the time when a new smartphone release was exciting.

6thbit · 32m ago

> Magic Cue ... to proactively offer the right information at the right time

That's one way to justify a permanent snoop on everything you are doing and saying in all your messages and calls.

Even if your data is kept on device, their telemetry could still reveal your activity and patterns.

mrintegrity · 1h ago

My dream is to have a phone like this that supports thunderbolt host mode, runs grapheneos or similar and can drive a couple of displays via usb-c docking station. With the memory and CPU this phone could easily replace my work laptop (vscode and ssh for the most part). Sadly I haven't found any phone that would make this possible (Samsung Dex doesn't count because it's proprietary)

shawnz · 1h ago

Android 16 will have this (at least for a single external display): https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/06/developer-...

overfeed · 1h ago

> My dream is to have a phone like this that supports thunderbolt host mode, runs grapheneos or similar and can drive a couple of displays via usb-c docking station

Sounds like you're thinking of the stock Pixel 10. Google worked with Samsung to bring the Dex experience to upstream Android, and their Linux VM work is almost fully baked in Android 15. Running VSCode and ssh can be done today with a Pixel phone plugged into a USB-C hub, keyboard, mouse and a monitor. I don't know why Google isn't promoting this capability yet,

qwertox · 2h ago

Google is being deceptive with their zoom demo.

They zoom from 100x to 0.5x and present 0.5x as "what it actually looks like."

They're making 100x zoom appear twice as impressive by using ultra-wide (0.5x) as fake 'normal' vision.

ucarion · 1h ago

Kind of moot anyway; 100x zoom is equivalent to a 2400mm lens (with no stabilization assist). If you can hand-aim that on target, you're an elite marksman.

Workaccount2 · 2h ago

I'm pretty sure that was just an accident, if you pinch all the ways out it goes seamlessly to the wide angle lens.

gowld · 1h ago

0.5x is 0.5x, not "what it actually looks like."

The deceptive part is using AI to creatively fill in gaps in the picture, and saying "recover and refine intricate details" when the details are actually hallucinated, making that blue car look like a drawing of a toy.

varbhat · 1h ago

I want to know how the TSMC-manufactured Tensor processors compares to Samsung-manufactured Tensor processors and also how TSMC-manufactured Tensor processors compare to TSMC-manufactured Snapdragon processors. Samsung's Tensors (also Exynos) had the fame of getting superhot. I want to know if these problems persist in new Tensor chips.

nfriedly · 2h ago

Looks like a minor improvement to the pixel 9 series. Honestly, that's fine, I'm pretty happy with my Pixel 9 Pro.

The built-in magsafe charging magnets are a nice addition, although a case with magnets in it works for me for now.

Of course, the #1 feature I'd like to see is expandable storage, which Google seems to be strangely against. #2 would be a headphones jack - Google has already reversed course on that one once, but another reversal seems unlikely.

nfriedly · 12m ago

Oh, and it's too late to edit, but I just noticed they removed the physical SIM and force you to use an eSIM now. That feels like a significant downgrade.

VTimofeenko · 1h ago

Yeah, I am on Pixel 9 pro too and quick trade in check shows that upgrade would cost net ~500$(256Gb). Arguably ~250$ if buying 10 would extend the gemini subscription for a year -- not sure about the verbiage of the terms here.

100x "composite" zoom is nice but not sure if it's worth it.

RankingMember · 1h ago

As much as I'd love if phones still had headphone jacks, the inertia sure seems to be going the other direction. I fully anticipate the power port will be the next to go and wireless charging will be the only way to charge (and I don't want that either).

baby · 54m ago

No fold phones???

EDIT: https://blog.google/products/pixel/google-pixel-10-pro-fold/...

^ this should be the main post

mattfrommars · 1h ago

Looks slick.

> automatically find your flight details

I appreciate this but can they please go beyond search and instead legitimately find me cheapest price and overall best time to fly? Or strategies to find cheaper fight using different plans or maybe integrated credit point I have, coupons?

I'd love to see AI saving me big money and doing all the hassle for me.

MinimalAction · 1h ago

Google launched a new tool for finding flights: https://www.google.com/travel/flights/deals.

More details at: https://blog.google/products/search/google-flights-ai-flight....

jeffbee · 1h ago

If you mean impossible to hold without the silicone case (not included) then I concur based on my experience with the older Pixels :-]

drewbitt · 2h ago

You can't install any of the AI models on the Pixel 9 if you have the bootloader unlocked. Wouldn't be surprised that Gemini Nano or Pro Res Zoom didn't work, either.

benbristow · 1h ago

It's a shame the Pixels don't have IR sensors. One of the most underrated features that some Androids have - I was in a hotel in Poland this year and it had Aircon in the room (and was rather warm), but there was no remote. The IR sensor on my phone saved my butt as it could turn on the AC!

There's no end of times that the IR sensor has come in useful one way or another.

wishfish · 2h ago

I hope there's an improved screen. I bought a 9 Pro XL with hopes of running GrapheneOS but the PWM on the Pixel was terrible. Instant headaches. I can more or less get by ok with recent iPhone screens but the Pixel screen didn't work at all for me.

Heard a rumor that Google was going to take eye strain seriously for this version. Hope that's true.

No comments yet

LucidLynx · 2h ago

> Tensor G5 and the latest version of Gemini Nano work together to run Magic Cue privately and securely on your phone.

YES! Here we talk.

The fact we can now host a version of an AI model, and make sure everything is processed locally and is not sent to the cloud is the best feature of those phones. I just hope that data do not leave the phone OR are encrypted to be stored in Google servers...

piperswe · 2h ago

I wonder how they'll screw it up this time. I have to deal with a pink line down my Pixel 8's screen, because while there is an extended warranty for that issue, you need to flash the stock firmware (wiping the device) to put it in "service mode" so uBreakIFix can do their thing.

thewebguyd · 2h ago

That's the problem with pixel. Everytime I try to switch from iPhone, ever year's line up has some glaring GC issue. I've tried every year since the 2XL. Most recent is the 9 Pro XL (only the XL size) the camera bar falling off.

The pixels could be amazing phones if Google could fix their crappy QC and invest in some actual customer support.

People like Apple - you can go to a physical store and get support. You can get AppleCare+ and have accidental damage replacements, battery replacements, etc just take it to the store.

Google doesn't have that, they don't have a physical presence, and it's nearly impossible to get a human and if you do, they are really stingy about RMAs.

educasean · 1h ago

Wow. Either you're extremely unlucky or I'm extremely lucky.

I'm still using my Pixel 6 pro and have had zero hardware issues with this phone or my previous pixel 4.

pphysch · 1h ago

You have bought and returned new Pixel phones every year for the last 7 years due to QC? That sounds like a tall tale.

thewebguyd · 1h ago

I'm really picky. Creaks, screen issues (got the line down the middle of the screen on a 2XL, 3, and 6), speaker went out on 5, cell radio would randomly stop working on the 8, having to reboot multiple times per day. Most recently a 9 Pro XL, flexed more than my wife's, and the screen creaked when pressed (which my wife's didn't). The camera bump falling off didn't happen to me, but I've seen it on others.

If I'm going to pay Apple prices, I expect the same level of quality. I really want to like the pixel, but I can't trust Google's quality until they prove otherwise. Every generation of Pixel has had some sort of QC problem.

kimbernator · 7m ago

Yet again, Google announces another lineup of phones where a vast majority of the announcement is about software features that could be implemented on existing devices, highlighting the wastefulness of the yearly release cycle.

jmcphers · 2h ago

I'm delighted to see that they don't make you get the biggest phone in order to get the best cameras. I've been using Pixels since the Pixel 3 and always feel like I'm making compromises in the camera department in order to get a phone that will actually fit in my hand/pocket.

Depurator · 2h ago

I'm curious what kind of performance the Tensor G5 would have with llama.cpp, compared to a 16gb desktop gpu.

devinprater · 1h ago

I love Android, besides a few accessibility issues, especially when typing to Gemini and TalkBack not speaking the reply, but I don't like how sluggish TalkBack is on Pixel phones. I had the 8 and hated that.

cyocum · 56m ago

I still have a Samsung Galaxy S8. It runs fine. I don't really need more from a phone. Maybe I am missing something but I really cannot see myself getting a new phone.

JoshTriplett · 2h ago

I really wish they'd upgrade the Pro Fold to have the Pro camera system. :(

I don't know why they assume that someone buying a $2000 phone doesn't want the best available camera.

NoboruWataya · 1h ago

I wonder will this make some of the older Pixels (say 7-9) cheaper on eBay. I have been toying with the idea of replacing my Samsung S10 for ages now, and the battery life is really starting to degrade so I might pull the trigger soon.

sparrish · 2h ago

That camera bump is huge. I guess that's how you get the great zoom?

Phone cases are doing heavy lifting to smooth out the back of this phone.

kevincox · 2h ago

On the other hand I much prefer the full-width bump than a corner bump. It helps when holding your phone (a ledge for your fingers) and means that the phone doesn't rock around when used on a table.

Freak_NL · 50m ago

I made a leather pouch with a belt loop for my Pixel 6. Great when travelling or hiking. The camera band sits above the edge of the front of the pouch with the 'lid' covering that when the pouch is closed with a tuck lock.

The full-width band is just perfect for grabbing the phone and lifting it out of the form-fitting pouch, and doubles as a sort of safety preventing it from slipping from your grip.

RankingMember · 1h ago

I'd be curious to know if they did any surveys/research on how many people use a case or not. If the vast majority do (my anecdata-based hunch), why not just thicken the phone to add battery and use a thinner case rather than just having the case space the back of the phone out to be flat?

My partner got a Pixel 9a and it's nice that they went completely flat on that one, though it's obviously almost a straight rip-off of the recent non-pro iPhones aesthetically (not a bad thing imo).

layer8 · 1h ago

> why not just thicken the phone to add battery

Weight. Many people already don't like how heavy their phones are.

RankingMember · 1h ago

Good point. Even my regular iPhone 13 is the heaviest phone I've ever owned and it's kind of annoying in that it actually hurts to drop on your face if you're vegging out watching a video while laying down.

abhinavk · 2h ago

Atleast these type of bumps don't cause the phones to wobble.

nancyminusone · 2h ago

Too bad it can't be smoothed out (with more battery or something) to start with.

That bump is more than 1/4 of the phone's total thickness. This is becoming comical.

Johnny555 · 1h ago

The camera bump (rather than a full-size thickness increase) makes the phone feel less massive, especially in your pocket.

nancyminusone · 1h ago

I don't need it to "feel" less massive. Most wallets are thicker and I don't hear anyone complain.

Johnny555 · 42m ago

not sure if you mean clip-on cell phone wallets (I assume that people that don't want a thick cell phone don't add a wallet since it makes their cell phone too thick), or actual wallets... plenty of people complain about those:

https://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-downsize-my-ridiculously-la... https://veryexcellenthabits.com/downsize-ridiculously-enormo... https://www.reddit.com/r/onebag/comments/5blfkt/my_wallet_is...

And a thick wallet causes enough health problems for it to be called "Fat Wallet Syndrome".

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fat_Wallet_Syndro...

dtf · 1h ago

I wonder if these new devices will finally have support for the elusive APV codec.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Professional_Video

andrewinardeer · 1h ago

The link you posted says Android 16 support. Why wouldn't Pixel run it?

mrbonner · 1h ago

If we can somehow put AI agent locally on a phone that could use tools (cough: APIs) I think it will be the wildest revolution after the invention of a smart phone. How about a truly smart phone!

codeduck · 2h ago

God, what an ugly device.

neural_thing · 2h ago

Don't all phones look extremely similar today?

Maybe I'm old but no two phones today seem as different as e.g. Nokia 8800 was from Motorola Razr

gpm · 1h ago

> all phones

Eh...

https://www.samsung.com/ca/smartphones/galaxy-z-flip7/buy/

https://www.samsung.com/ca/smartphones/others/galaxy-xcover7...

Both from the same company and I think about an equal distance between them as the Nokia 8800 and a similarly dated Motorola Razr.

lern_too_spel · 1h ago

Yes, I don't know why they bother showing the phone turned off anymore. They all look the same.

The materials might be different, and that's where a lot of companies go wrong. The Pixel 10 uses polished glass, which is too slippery. It slides off uneven surfaces and is harder to hold.

silisili · 2h ago

I know it's a petty thing, but I quit using the Pixel when they forced an unmovable and unhideable search bar onto the bottom of the homescreen.

Can anyone report if that's still the case? I know custom launchers exist, but I'd really rather not go that route.

setay11 · 1h ago

You can just use a custom launcher.

I've been using Nova Launcher for so long I couldn't tell you what the normal homescreen looks like right now.

ritzaco · 1h ago

I was gonna say it's definitely not there on mine but I just checked and it is.

Amazing how good my mental adblocker is for things I've been looking at every day for 2 years.

spogbiper · 1h ago

its still there on my pixel 9 in the stock/default launcher, but you can still use an alternative launcher if you like. many of those do not have the bar or let you toggle it off.

ZeWaka · 1h ago

Nova launcher is fantastic.

lern_too_spel · 1h ago

> I know custom launchers exist, but I'd really rather not go that route.

If you switched to a different phone, it is using a different launcher. If your only complaint is the launcher, it doesn't make sense to change the whole phone.

ryandvm · 1h ago

I'm sorry, is that car in the 100X zoom even a real model?

LeoPanthera · 2h ago

I'm not an Android user, so pardon me if this is a stupid thing to say, but it's weird to me that these phones apparently have some new UI unique to them. I thought Android was just Android. Won't other Android phones get this update?

xxmarkuski · 58m ago

Android is not just Android. The device vendors have to customize it to fit their devices by including drivers for example. Device vendors have the option to change the look pretty heavily, Samsung TouchWiz was infamous, Chinese vendors also offer very customized versions, including making it look like iOS. What you are seeing is material design 3 "expressive" which will be rolled out in the next minor Android version and Google apps

pphysch · 1h ago

Not all phones capable of running Android (everything?) have the hardware to host the local LLM models at a useful level of performance.

binary132 · 1h ago

Insanely hideous.

CharlesW · 1h ago

They look like Bender from the back. "Bite my shiny metal phone!"

Paianni · 1h ago

I hope they stop superglueing the batteries inside the phones.

spoaceman7777 · 27m ago

The only downside is that all of these new features will be supported for about 3 weeks, and then rapidly turn into another Google abandoned strip mall.

Fooled me once, shame on you, fooled me (hundreds of times), shame on me

Bet the people who launched these are already interviewing for their next gig.

highwaylights · 23m ago

.. as I sit here with my Apple devices that are 90% abandonware.

I feel your pain.

wrcwill · 56m ago

still a low frequency pwm phone.. what i would give for a modern no-pwm / high frequency pwm phone

programmertote · 1h ago

The look of the phone reminds me of Bender from Futurama.

jjulius · 2h ago

Why do we need brand new models every year?

AstroBen · 2h ago

So that people that buy that year can get the latest improvements

They're not releasing them on your personal upgrade schedule

kevincox · 2h ago

Because even if your phone only breaks every 5 years on average do you want to get a new 5 year old phone because your last one died right before the refresh cycle? Having regular releases means that when you do get the phone you have a relatively up-to-date device with latest hardware improvements. You don't need to upgrade yearly because they release a new phone yearly.

sowbug · 2h ago

You probably don't, as your current phone ought to last for years. But hardware manufacturers, like software developers, benefit from faster release cycles.

Workaccount2 · 2h ago

People are on different phone cycles. Even if most people update once every 5 years, it only takes 5 distinct groups to warrant a yearly new phone.

sam1234apter · 2h ago

Battery life looks great

barbazoo · 2h ago

> They feature our biggest batteries

That's the only thing I found on there. Doesn't even say if it lasts longer than the previous generation.

hypeatei · 2h ago

The "magic cue" sounds like Windows CoPilot but isn't getting the same backlash for some reason. Why would I want AI tightly woven into everything I'm doing on my phone?

Seems like a privacy nightmare.

charlie-83 · 1h ago

I would guess because the windows recall stores screenshots of everything you do forever while this just watches and pops up without storing information that could later be used against you. Of course, it could be secretly recording but if you are concerned about that you need to install grapheneOS or something.

Not that I like this feature or think there aren't privacy concerns.

dzonga · 1h ago

can these guys now actually make phones that don't overheat or have battery problems ?

_blk · 2h ago

Phones are not the hot commodity they used to be anymore and that's a good thing IMHO. I just bought a Px7 after breaking my 6a that I had for 3 years. I did look at the Px10 specs but with the price/value it was an easy decision. I'm now expecting the same 3y worth of battery I was getting out of my 6a (a day started getting tight at the end). Bigger still seems to be the definition of better but I had a CAT S60 for a while, so it's still small compared to that brick.

Overall very happy with the Px series and I'm happy they keep making them. On the software side it runs Graphene OS just as well as the 6a. Setup was super easy with the Chromium WebUSB based installer. I expect the Px10 to be supported soon too.

frankfrank13 · 2h ago

> A camera with Gemini

and im out

> Exclusive to the Pixel 10 Pro and 10 Pro XL, Pro Res Zoom captures astonishing detail at up to 100x zoom. It isn't just a simple crop; Pro Res Zoom uses Tensor G5 and an all-new generative imaging model to intelligently recover and refine intricate details.

bro in your demo the car is a half el-camino half mustang

bsimpson · 1h ago

meta: It's getting to the point where I need to pay for The Verge or stop reading it. Every one of their Pixel articles is behind a paywall.

thewebguyd · 1h ago

archive.org

baxuz · 1h ago

So, any of these features gonna be available for non-US regions/system region settings?

cft · 1h ago

Does the camera module still fall off like on the Pixel 9?

https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+pixel+camera+falling

mrbluecoat · 2h ago

That 100X zoom example is pretty amazing

xnx · 2h ago

Yes, but hard to know how much detail is hallucinated out of thin air.

LtWorf · 2h ago

The famous "enhance" of CSI is finally here!

andrepd · 2h ago

Judging by existing implementations, all of it.

vaughnegut · 2h ago

In fairness it's AI "upscaled". What kind of car that is isn't actually present in the original image's data, it's a best guess from the AI.

crinkly · 2h ago

It's probably impossible to use as well. Just a 10x is fairly difficult to control.

Plus AI upscaling. Fuck no.

levitate · 2h ago

Shouldn't be impossible. Samsung already offers Space Zoom which has a good UX and a LOT of image stabilization so your hands shaking isn't magnified by 100x.

As far as AI upscaling though, agreed. At least make a setting so we can do our own A/B tests.

RankingMember · 1h ago

Ever since magic eraser we've been slip-sliding down the slippery slope that ends with all our picture memories being half-AI-generated with the same "look" based on whatever flavor generated them at the time.

crinkly · 1h ago

Yeah that. I'm not up for that. The post-processing is bad enough on my iPhone that I bought a mirrorless camera to use instead.

do_not_redeem · 2h ago

> Pro Res Zoom uses Tensor G5 and an all-new generative imaging model to intelligently recover and refine intricate details.

Reminds me of https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo...

I guess we'll never be able to trust any photos taken with a Pixel 10 or above.

lbrito · 2h ago

Yeah.

So basically the trend now is to stop actually improving things and have AI make shit up to fill the gaps and pretend we're improving things.

zanecodes · 2h ago

I look forward to the news stories about people getting lost because they used 100x "zoom" to read a distant sign.

pphysch · 1h ago

Getting confused by distant street signs with a $1K GPS device in your pocket. Come now.

andrepd · 2h ago

Really hope that can be disabled.

subscribed · 2h ago

So far all the camera features are available through the API (and not hidden behind drm), so you could potentially use something like ProShot.

andrepd · 1h ago

How so? I was under the impression that gCam uses proprietary algos.

jandrese · 2h ago

> Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL are all available for preorder today starting at $799, $999 and $1199.

No Pixel 10a was announced, and frankly Google's track record with hardware is a bit discouraging for someone thinking about spending a grand on a phone.

zanecodes · 2h ago

The -a models are typically released in the spring, the Pixel 9a was only just released in April of this year, so I wouldn't expect to see a Pixel 10a until March or April of 2026.

throwawaylaptop · 2h ago

I got my entire family Pixel 4XLs when they were new. Every single one had the battery replaced once under warranty, and then they denied more batteries (it was actually the fragile connector). So I started replacing them myself. I even slightly modified the connector mount so it would stop failing. The third batteries ended up lasting years because of my modification. Finally, all 3 died around 2023 from motherboard problems apparently. Otherwise great phones. Sad that some weird hardware problems killed them all for most people.

nagisa · 1h ago

Its a google phone. Wouldn't be surprised if this one too forgets the WiFi credentials every second day.

1970-01-01 · 1h ago

That's likely your unreliable AP dropping offline and coming back frequently. Pixel thinks this is an attacker and stops joining it until it can hear the SSID consistently.