Any other tech podcast suggestions?
The only ones I listen to are Android Central, MacWorld and sometimes Android Police.
There are quite a few others around, though!
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Ay, there's the rub!
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Phones Google Pixel 2 / Google Pixel 2 XL
- Thread starter kkh786
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The only ones I listen to are Android Central, MacWorld and sometimes Android Police.
There are quite a few others around, though!
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Ay, there's the rub!
Ah, okay. My bad. Did they push the Pixel V 1 all year or until the S8 came out?
From what I recall, yes. In fact they were running promotions around it up until the Pixel 2's release. In VZW stores the depth chart goes:
Samsung
Pixel
Would you like to look at a Samsung or a Pixel?
Oh. iPhones are over there
I can also confirm that the Pixel 2 is the very first phone when you walk into the Verizon store near my home.
@Michael Goff, Verizon is the exclusive carrier of the Pixel in the US.
I've been holding off on really using this phone until I can root it. I would hate to set it up, start using it and need to once again wipe the device so I can root.
I found there may be another command that I may have to do for rooting, which evidently is new to these devices.
I found there may be another command that I may have to do for rooting, which evidently is new to these devices.
I know. I assumed they had other carriers outside the US. Also, being Verizon only is a shame because that limits the reach.
I was thinking that Google would expand their carrier partners this year, but that ended up not happening. Maybe next year. I'm assuming it might be a multi-year deal.
I think we’re arguing different things. I know there are carriers outside of the US that partnered with Google to offer this phone. And those are the carriers I’m talking about possibly not pushing this phone much.
No luck. Camera fatal error keeps coming up. The device isn't even being taxed. Just randomly, it'll error and crash the camera app. Sometimes, the error occurs the moment you launch the camera.
We're doing an RMA. This is really disappointing. This is supposed to be the Android experience, stable and reliable. The experience this weekend with the camera was far from it.
We're doing an RMA. This is really disappointing. This is supposed to be the Android experience, stable and reliable. The experience this weekend with the camera was far from it.
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Boooo. A lemon is the worst. You exchanging or calling it a day on your Pixel experiment?
Exchanging. If the new one is good, great. If not, that's it.
Weird. That's no bueno. I haven't had a single performance issue nor any screen issues. I must have a unicorn
I just finished doing a video shootout inside my house between my iPhone 7 Plus and my Pixel 2 in ordinary indoor lighting that ranges from good in my kitchen to bad and dim in my family room and medium in the formal living room. I was shocked how bad the noise and jerky the panning sometimes looked on the Pixel 2. And there was again that strong tendency to bring out a mustard tint to everything. The colors were bad. Exposures were poor. It was so bad I was starting to wonder if my Pixel 2 is actually defective. So I did a test with my husband’s 2 XL and did get better results. Neither results were as good as the video produced by my iPhone 7 Plus, but the 2XL put in a competent showing, similar to what I get on my S8+. Audio quality did seem to be louder and more clear on both Pixels than on the iPhone, so at least there was that much going for them.
I’m rather disturbed that there is a quality variance apparent between two models that should have identical camera specs.
Also, while recording while using my husband’s Pixel, notifications kept chiming while I was recording. I don’t think I ever had that happen on an iPhone. Does iOS mute notifications by default while recording video? It never occurred to me to ever check because it’s never happened to me before.
Tomorrow I’ll test in daylight if I get a chance. I’ve got a lot to do this week so I don’t know if I’ll get to it all. My husband’s IPhone X is coming in and it will be interesting to compare that one’s camera to the Pixel’s.
There are still many other aspects besides the camera that I love about my Pixel 2. But taken in total so far, the experience of the Pixel has been one of inconsistency and unexpected results. I’m not going to check auto connectivity because I just don’t have the time and it’s something I just don’t bother with most of the time. When I get into my car I am going and I don’t mess around with connections. I use the car’s radio and GPS. Calls come in on my Apple Watch and I pull over and park if I need to take them. My husband will check that.
I’m rather disturbed that there is a quality variance apparent between two models that should have identical camera specs.
Also, while recording while using my husband’s Pixel, notifications kept chiming while I was recording. I don’t think I ever had that happen on an iPhone. Does iOS mute notifications by default while recording video? It never occurred to me to ever check because it’s never happened to me before.
Tomorrow I’ll test in daylight if I get a chance. I’ve got a lot to do this week so I don’t know if I’ll get to it all. My husband’s IPhone X is coming in and it will be interesting to compare that one’s camera to the Pixel’s.
There are still many other aspects besides the camera that I love about my Pixel 2. But taken in total so far, the experience of the Pixel has been one of inconsistency and unexpected results. I’m not going to check auto connectivity because I just don’t have the time and it’s something I just don’t bother with most of the time. When I get into my car I am going and I don’t mess around with connections. I use the car’s radio and GPS. Calls come in on my Apple Watch and I pull over and park if I need to take them. My husband will check that.
I'm considering returning my Pixel 2 and exchanging to go back to an S8 just because of the camera. (Well, I also miss the taller screen, but camera is very disappointing.) Daytime photos are great, but the lowlight photos are too noisy and orange tinted. Here are some example pics. They were taken a few months apart, but around same time of day. You can see how the Pixel 2 image is very orange. The S8 picture is the way the scene actually looked in person.
https://imgur.com/a/gKkVp
Pixel 2
S8
https://imgur.com/a/gKkVp
Pixel 2
S8
Seems to fall in line with Grumpymum's views on the camera. Disappointing.I'm considering returning my Pixel 2 and exchanging to go back to an S8 just because of the camera. (Well, I also miss the taller screen, but camera is very disappointing.) Daytime photos are great, but the lowlight photos are too noisy and orange tinted. Here are some example pics. They were taken a few months apart, but around same time of day. You can see how the Pixel 2 image is very orange. The S8 picture is the way the scene actually looked in person.
https://imgur.com/a/gKkVp
Pixel 2
S8
Here are two more photos. Taken a few nights apart, but you get the idea. Again, Pixel 2 is too orange.
Pixel 2
S8
Pixel 2
S8
This explains why companies like Sony and Samsung continue to lead in Display tech. I am pretty sure they find themselves having to develop their own Display management tools.
Guys/gals don't forget that the pixel has the dedicated SOC just for the camera that will be implemented in a month or two
Here are two more photos. Taken a few nights apart, but you get the idea. Again, Pixel 2 is too orange.
Pixel 2
S8
I think there's something wrong with your Pixel!!
That doesn't look representative of the pics I've seen, might be worth checking if there's something actually wrong.
Long term, I'm sure the Visual Core chip will make a big difference to reliability. In 6 months time, it will be like having a new phone, but admittedly that's a long time to wait.
It’s a disaster when this orange tint happens to people’s faces. Dark skinned or light skinned, your subjects are not going to look the way they ought to. I was frustrated with iPhone cameras for years for giving light haired, light skinned people a bit of a sallow tint. This takes it to a whole other level in both photos and videos. The orange issue is one exhibited by both my husband’s Pixel 2 XL and my Pixel 2.
Obviously, I think it can and probably will be corrected in firmware updates, especially if Google’s attention is called to it, but I believe I also have a defective camera. The video quality was so bad on every setting I tried, and I even cleaned the lens. But it was just bad. There were unexpected jitters and jumps during panning. I think maybe the mechanism that permits mechanical OIS to take place might be borked somehow.
I could just RMA-exchange it but really, looking around at what’s going on at large with these phones, I think Google needs another year to get its head out of its rear and get its house in gear. You can’t sell us on a single lens camera when the competition at the same price level is offering dual lenses and not have the camera work at the same level in all respects. I can’t imagine why the Cheeto effect on tint was not discovered during development and testing. You can’t sell this camera as better than that of an iPhone and not have it outperform a year old iPhone camera in every respect right at release. Yes, in many situations it out performed my iPhone’s camera but only very marginally and often we had to squint and pixel peep to make that conclusion. In many other situations my iPhone clearly outperformed it.
I know there’s a dedicated processor to be activated sometime in the future. It really should have been ready to go now. I’m getting a little tired of all of these manufacturers releasing hardware that’s not fully ready to go and more importantly, fully tested before release. Either the product is ready for prime time or it’s not. None of this in between stuff. I am sick of spending my money on promises.
The industry may need to rethink the annual release cycle and stretch it to a year and a half or two years now that smart phones are a mature commodity anyway. Instead, they’re all rushed to market in all of their halfazzed glory.
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Maybe, but I'm not buying anything on the hope that a change/fix sometime later in the product cycle, well after my return window, will fix or improve performance.
So far, I'm really enjoying the experience with my Pixel 2 XL, though I've admittedly done the equivalent of 'wading into the shallow end of the pool' at this point. I'm still coming up against some of the same obstacles using Android that I have in the past but going to spend some time seeing if I can put together some comparable solutions/equivalents vs. what I do on an iPhone/iOS.
Dual lenses have not proven to offer a huge value add. The portrait modes as implemented are hit or miss, and virtually all reviews of these phones often suggest the second lens is an inferior shooter. I don't know about the orange tint issue you're having. I haven't had the same issue.
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May I ask what obsticles you're running into?
Dual lenses aren’t needed for good portrait mode but having a second optical zoom lens is useful. And the bokeh effect with my iPhone 7 Plus does look a little better but I imagine that will change with future software upgrades on the Google lens.
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I don’t have a YouTube account and I don’t want to share photos here of my family and friends, so I’ll link to this YouTube video posted by Chris Pirillo as an example of what the camera does to skin tone. If you look at his many other videos taken with various other cameras, some good, some not so good, you will see in none of the other videos does his skin appear Homer Simpson yellowish. Even his regular viewers comment a little bit on the change in skin tone.
The hue of his skin does change a bit as the video progresses and normalizes a bit. The yellow comes and goes.
In low light photos on both my phone and my husband’s phone, the effect persists on still photos and some selfies. Taking note of this could be seen as nitpicking, but when you add this to the bigger picture of what is going on with the phones, for some of us the value for the dollar isn’t what we want at the present time.
I’m not setting this situation in stone. Things and situations change rapidly depending on how companies choose to respond. I am not permanently writing Pixel phones off. Or Samsung or any other manufacturer who has disappointed me recently. That would be immature.
I’m just not willing to kick around with this stuff right now when I have a perfectly satisfactory phone that’s all paid for. I will have a few more days of fun and exploration so that my time with the Pixel 2 does not go to waste. But then I’m going to be playing some Animal Crossing on my IPhone instead of spending my spare minutes posting or evaluating phones. Yay KK Slider! With the rest of my time I’ll be volunteering for various things at two schools and trying to get everyone updated on their doctors visits and get my pets and trap more ferals to take to the vet.
Remember I’m just linking this video to give an example of the yellow hue thing, not to discuss the content of the video—
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First, I'll qualify that much of this just has to do with personal preference. Off the top of my head:
1) Web browsing - Safari is a much better mobile browsing experience, especially against Chrome. Syncing across devices is at the top of my list, followed up by ability to use a content blocker. Chrome does the former but not the latter. Firefox I just find to be an inferior experience. I like the Samsung browser--very, very similar to Safari but unless you are on a Samsung phone, you can't sync Chrome bookmarks (or at least I haven't discovered the setting that lets me do it). I spend lots of time in a web browser so this one is significantly felt.
2) Calendar. I use Google to sync my calendars across devices/platforms. There is one specific function I need to be able to do and bewilderingly, I can do it in the Apple ecosystem, using Google Calendar, but can't on Android, and that's the ability to move an appointment from one calendar to another. I have a set of different calendars on my Google account (Home, Work, School, Kids, etc) that my wife and I share to plan out our crazy family schedule. She often puts an item on the wrong calendar. On iOS, I just edit it and switch it to another calendar. Yet, in Google's very own calendar app, this can't be done. I have to delete the entry entirely and re-enter it. Really can't understand how Google lets this happen. Most third party calendar apps on Android are limited in the same way. I've found a couple that let me do it but their overall app experience is otherwise crap.
3) AnyList app. This is an iOS only app that we use for grocery and other shopping lists. It's great because my wife and I can share the lists and it offers a robust experience. What makes it indispensable to me is that it integrates with the iOS Reminders app. I can add items into a list on Reminders using Siri (most often on my watch), i.e. 'Add milk to my grocery list', and it automatically gets synced into the App. I'm likely going to continue to wear my Apple Watch even when I carry the Pixel so losing this functionality hurts. Worse still, I haven't found any way to replicate it on Android using Android Wear. You can do the same with Google Keep (at least you used to be able to, haven't checked) but only on the phone. Try it on Android Wear and the functionality wasn't there.
4) Messaging. The consistent 'elephant in the room' for many iOS to Android switchers. Of course I can just use SMS but it's an inferior solution and anyone who disagrees either isn't using iMessage to its fullest or doesn't have a large group of iOS contacts that I do to take advantage of it. Moving to something else will take a lot of work.
5) Other apps will less functionality, especially in regards to using FP for authentication. A bunch of apps still haven't been updated to use the FP sensor even though their iOS counterparts have. The Outlook Mail app's notifications don't allow me to delete Gmail messages as I can on iOS, just Archive. I also much prefer having all of my quick setting accessible from the bottom as is done with Control Center (well, at least it's that way on the 7, won't be on the X
). 1Password is a bit janky compared to iOS. There are scattered other examples.I miss some aspects of 3D Touch as well...especially the cursor navigation and text selection. The implementation on GBoard just isn't as good.
There are plenty of things I like about the move though so don't want it to seem like its just bad apples. Notifications are cleaner and organized far better. Better integration with Google Assistant and Google Now is great. Google Assistant herself is much more useful than Siri. Selecting default apps is also missed on iOS.
Regardless, it's nice to have a new device to once again explore.
FWIW, Samsung Internet Beta (in the the play store) lets you sync Chrome bookmarks on non-Samsung devices. It's just as fast (maybe faster?) and as good as the regular Samsung Internet. You can also download the companion app on your Chrome browser on pc/mac to start the sync.