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Next up, one of the most important updates for this new release from Google would be its dedicated chipset, with Pixel 9 to get the Tensor G4 SoC. However, early leaks of the Tensor G4 regarded that its benchmark test only delivered slight improvements compared to the old Tensor G3 from the Pixel 8 series, but was said to feature a new ARMv9-A core.
Where's the punch?
Where's the punch?
In the face of everyone expecting an upgrade
For me, phones have been more than powerful enough for probably 5 years. I'm predominantly looking for battery life from my new phone, not more power. I think I'd happily use a Pixel 1 processor if it had double the battery life.
I have had my phone for 7 years now and recently replaced the battery for 20 bucks. I don't really understand the need for fast af phones when everything already works smooth as butter. What are people doing on their phones that needs that much power?
Mobile gaming.
Lemmy isn't really the iPad baby generation's demographic.
are mobile games actually good or are you referring to emulation?
"Good" is subjective, but mobile gaming is huge.
During the survey, more than 68 percent of internet users stated they played video games on smartphones, making them the most popular gaming devices among global gaming audiences.
That's a fair point. Mobile gaming is a fairly broad spectrum and perhaps I should have differentiated casual, lower demanding games from high fidelity ones.
Like, I know cod mobile was decently popular (and maybe still is), I would consider this one higher fidelity. I would be quick to question whether these games are actually good, though. The flappy birds of the segment on the other hand probably dont need much graphics throughput.
Both types of games are brimming with predatory monetisation. The only value I personally see when it comes to gaming on a phone is via emulators, source ports, indie gems like shattered pixel dungeon etc.
Though, on the topic of emulation (and to contradict my earlier comment about the need for higher perf) you can leverage box86/64 and Winulator to play fairly recent desktop windows games on your phone.
A key caveat is that the experience is contingent on the gfx umd quality for the SOC vendor (Qualcomm seem okay here but others may suffer - the state of Vulkan on Android still isn't great right now), but it seems we're gradually reaching the possibility of having phones as our primary computing devices.
I think you might be a bit behind on the mobile game market. Stuff like the Resident Evil Village and the Resident Evil 4 remake are on Apple arcade and actually playable. Furthermore, you can stream both PS+ games and Gamepass games on phones now. There's an emerging market of having single player games from last gen consoles ported to mobile and PC at the same time, as well. Lemmy might tell you that the Steam deck is the mobile gaming device of the future, but that's very much because Lemmy is a techy, older, Western niche audience with disposable income. Buying a phone is much easier to justify than buying a "gaming machine".
I agree with you about the monetization of gatcha games, but that's not going away, especially when people playing stuff like Genshin Impact or Honkai think it's "worth it" because they are higher fidelity games that they can play without having to put the up front costs of a console/PC.
I can't comment much about emulation, I just got into it. But I installed Dolphin onto my old Pixel just as their servers got borked from the achievements update, so I have to go back and actually play around with it.
I'm familiar with those releases. We also saw Bioshock, GTA etc come over several years ago. It's great to seem them ported over but they are still few and far between. It's not like we're getting the equivalent of your entire steam library as native apps on mobile. Native ports feel less likely now considering you can just cheese it with translation layers.
Streaming to phones is video decode, you don't really need performant graphics for that. I'm a little on the fence about streaming though it can definitely work well for certain types of games.
Battery life and performance go hand in hand. Race to idle when done correctly gives both great battery life and feels nice to use.
I don’t use my phone for a lot of intensive things often, but when I do I punish this thing. Also for work we abuse our poor phones.
I don't disagree with the theory but I've been getting barely a day of battery life since I started buying smartphones 15 years ago. As processor efficiencies are made, they waste all the power elsewhere.
I want to know how long a Nexus 5 would last with a modern battery and CPU and modem.
A modern nexus 5 would also have modern software and probably get the same battery life because of it.
And while I don’t use my phone a whole lot, I pretty easily get 2 days of battery life out of my iPhone. Had I gotten the MAXX XL Xtreme instead of the smaller one I’d easily get 2 days of battery life. And that’s with my maximum charge limited to 80%.
This exactly how I looked at my phone. I just got a pixel 8 pro this week upgrading from the pixel 3xl (because I fell for the sale email and got it for $600 lol) I was already considering upgrading as my phone had started acting up and hitching recently and it's been about 5 years anyway.
Can't say I'm a fan of the 8 pros battery life so far in comparison to the pixel 3xl though.
The balls
Also, don't forget this flagship phone ships with 128gb of memory...
This phone is competing against 2021 flagships.
The odd bit here is that Pixel phones were not necessarily considered flagship phones. And accordingly we're priced not as flagship phones but if rumors are correct they are trying to get a flagship phone price for non flagship phone.
The only update I'm interested in is the new ~6" display.
Why do OEMs copy every fucking stupid thing Apple does except the size of their devices?
Leaked
Fuckin advertised is the word you're looking for
Least rounded corners on a modern phone.
Seriously, does anyone like this trend? It just makes the screen exponentially smaller.
I definitely don't like it, I'm pretty sure exponentially doesn't mean what this comment thinks it means though....
Maybe it's logarithmic. IDK. I'm grumpy.
Edit: I'm "measuring" how much smaller a rectangle gets to stay fully on the scree per how much the corners get rounded, if that makes sense.
You'd usually crop out the top and bottom of the screen anyways.
I don’t think you know what the word exponential means
I do
if you mean displays having rounded corners, I'm inclined to think about production cost, wastage, complexity, durability. Also tends to feature with front camera cutouts, under-display FP sensors.
I wish we didn't go this route. Sony xperia phones still have a top and bottom bezel, the top accommodates the camera, they still have a dedicated FP sensor etc. they still have a 3.5mm jack, sd card slot lol
shame you can't use them with graphene, calyx, etc.
I have the 7a and even that amount of roubded corners pissed me off. I don't know what I'm gonna do after this phone. At least I'll get security updates for four more years.
similar boat. the pixel security model is tough to move away from. I dislike practically everything else about my p7.
I dislike practically everything else about my p7.
Like what?
how much time do you have 😓
The pixel security model makes secure, privacy respecting custom ROMs like GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, DivestOS more accessible.
My issues with the P7 are more like generic hangups seen with most phones today, and are not necessarily specifc to the phone itself. This is bearing in mind that my prior phone from 2019 (SD855 SoC) featured an LCD FHD display (without rounded corners or cutouts), headphone jack, notification LED, SD card slot. I had a lot of the hardware amenities that were already being phased out around that time.
I've made peace with the idea that I won't get these back (I'm not going back to vendor ROMs), it's just a shame that vendors can cut away at everything nice to have in the pursuit of cost optimisation.
Yeah, the phone duopoly is awful, especially for the software. Even on Graphene OS there's bullshit like notifications only turning on some tiny portion of the screen with a brightness level near zero. Like, I have the setting on so I can see when notifications come in.
But yes I do miss the SD card slot. Not so much headphone jack because I personally prefer wireless but I stand with you.
And I have all day keep going.
Edit: sorry most of that wasn't relevant to your comment.
No worries, I'm just ranting at this point.
The headphone jack is a sore spot for me, I have a few speaker systems around the house and garage with 3.5mm. I use an adapter but wired audio over USB C on android has terrible UX; it's treated as a generic USB device, so it carries the same security implications (can only route audio with the device unlocked, can cut out if you lock the phone shortly after). Audio quality over type C + adapter has been worse in my experience but this will vary by device.
The displays are kind of a multi faceted thing for me. I can always see the impact of the pentile sub-pixel layout on text regardless of pixel density. I cannot unsee that sort of screen door effect.
Compared to LCD IPS, you might notice a smearing effect with UI animations on oled, I believe the same can be observed with desktop displays (in addition to VRR backlight flicker on darker content)
There's also the faster rate of degradation it carries as a technology, which has prompted mitigations at the OS level.
The infinite contrast / per pixel backlighting is nice for sure, though it's led to AOD replacing dedicated notification RGB LEDs (which feels sort of inelegant; that's additional content to render on display and it's generally less functional than addressable RGB at a glance), has enabled under-display fingerprint readers (which pale in performance to conventional sensors). Rounded corners aren't intrinsic to oled but camera hole punch designs seem to be. Those camera holes will never not look like a design concession to me. 18 months with this and I still think it's dumb.
The phone feels pretty solid but the back is glass, the sides are slippery without a case, and the glass on both sides protrudes past the bezel, making it a bit more damage prone.
None of these things are intrinsic to the pixel, it's sad to see so little variation out there though.
Hmm, seems like some phones don’t have a DAC anymore and thus, the USB-C adapter need to get the audio in digital form and use its own DAC..
I guess in that case, it would be a better experience attaching a wifi audio receiver and send the hifi signal over that. Best scenario would be if the music box would have a digital in port you can use, so you would use the DAC dedicated to your speakers, which is better than phone DAC in most cases.
I've been looking at several powered adapters as well as Bluetooth receivers with aux output. I've also considered a low power dedicated music system, problem for the garage is no wlan access.
Oh, I see, 😄 maybe you can "steal" a car radio from a wrecked car 😁 many of those have great DAC and bluetooth and/or a USB-A port for music input.
If touch and android car compatible, you’d get a very nice experience, I assume.
Ah, and of course, what comes out of car radios is an analog audio signal that powers the speakers directly. I think you could use that analog out signal and feed it into the aux port 😇
Hahaha I like the idea of that
I personally am ok with the rounded corners since it makes it more ergonomic to handle. Part of why I got rid of my s22 ultra was the corners bit into my palm whenever I held it with one hand.
