Google will want the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro to be best-sellers, but these phones have another role to play beyond market share.
  • extended update service to 7 years
  • pushing Material UI consistency
  • Tensor G3 chip for AI & machine learning performed locally on device
  • Havald@lemmy.worldEnglish
    435·
    2 years ago

    I just want to change my battery and get a phone for that no people had to die In some poor country.

    Like seriously, what’s the percentage of people that run machine learning algorithms on their phone? 0.0000000001%?

    • kirklennon@kbin.social
      304·
      2 years ago

      Like seriously, what’s the percentage of people that run machine learning algorithms on their phone? 0.0000000001%?

      It’s 100%. You use them on your phone all day every day. Your keyboard used machine learning algorithms as you typed your comment to dynamically adjust the size of the tap target of your likely next character and for autocorrect.

      Every single photo taken on a phone is run through a huge amount of ML to create it.

      All of this is to say, however, that this headline is ridiculous. Aside from Material UI, this is basically a description of every iPhone from the last half decade (with a dedicated “neural engine”). Not really a change in the smartphone world.

      • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        5·
        2 years ago

        Definitely a little bit of hyperbole with that headline. I think I have to use the exact headline the article uses though.

      • rush@lemm.eeEnglish
        51·
        2 years ago

        I agree in the fact that some ML algorithms are used daily by nearly all who have a smartphone, but things like increasing the touch target is BS. It’s quite easy to confirm by simply either looking at the code or enabling “show layout bounds” in Android’s Developer Options.

        • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          It was such a cool concept. I really don’t care about how thin my phone is. I’d much rather be able to replace a broken screen easily. I’d love to be able to upgrade my camera or take the camera out and put a little more battery in it. I really hope they revisit the concept someday.

          • eumesmo@lemmings.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            It would be the solution to phone obsolescence. This concept, paired with project treble would allow us to run our phones for as long as possible. Want a screen with more pixels? Just install one. Phone getting behind on specs?Change the cpu or add ram. Want a better camera? Just get a new one. At some point, the chassis would need to be replaced, but even then, you could reuse some of your installed conponents. It would be so awesome.

    • Transient Punk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      2 years ago

      Many actions on modern phones use AI. Text to speech and image processing just to name two. I am very excited to not have that information being constantly sent to the cloud for processing.

      • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        It’s my understanding that the Pixel camera hardware isn’t that spectacular but boy-oh-boy the processed photos look spectacular.

        • rush@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          2 years ago

          the hardware is middle to low class, but they’ve taken a lot of time to optimize the software indeed

  • Mojojojo1993@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    2 years ago

    What rubbish. It is exactly the same as every other smartphone on the planet. Updates are only new software and even then you could flash a new rom.

    Click bait bullshit

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldEnglish
    132·
    2 years ago

    My big issue with the line has been no microSD slot. I won’t buy a phone with locked memory capacity.

    • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      61·
      2 years ago

      I feel like phones provide enough disc space nowadays. I was never a huge fan of microSD slots to begin with. They’re slower than internal storage and I’ve had one fail before and everything on it was lost. I had to factory reset the phone to get the slot working again. There might have been a better solution but I couldn’t figure one out.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        2 years ago

        I have enough media to fill my phone about 4x over. I’d be lost without the expansion.

        And no… “buh, buh, cloud storage!” is useless if you’re not connected.

  • kftX@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    Is this year’s Tensor an actual in-house chip or just another rebranded shitty Exynos?

    Hats off to Samsung tho, kneecapping the competition 😂

  • rikonium@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    I’m being a non-article-reading heathen here but of those three bullets I don’t think any is new to the smartphone industry - albeit Apple is cagey with support timelines (and probably slows down on what’s fixed versus the current iOS version) but the 5s technically got a iOS 12 patch this year.

    • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      If a seven year update cycle becomes the norm for Android phones that would be revolutionary in my opinion. I have my doubts though.

        • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Very impressive. $700+ is unfortunately well out of my preferred price range. Especially if the battery issues I just read about are accurate.

          • virtualbriefcase@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            2 years ago

            They usually drop in price. They were just selling the 6a for $200 like a month ago, so given a bit of time you can get a good deal on the second-to-latest generation.

  • Granixo@feddit.clEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    The only thing that i want from Google right now is that they release Android 14.

    • vector_zero@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      Meanwhile, I want them to stop releasing shit. IMO Android peaked already, and it seems like every update over the last 5 years has made things slightly worse.

      Have they made improvements? Yes, but each improvement has come bundled with several UI regressions.

      • Granixo@feddit.clEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Yeah, and to be honest, the only reason i look up to Android 14 is because of the AV1 codec hardware acceleration requirement.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
    32·
    2 years ago

    none of those features are current or future requirements of mine. i want user-expandable memory, and useful expansion IO like the headphone jack, microsd and USBc.

    there is not a single ‘feature’ introduced in the last decade that i care about.