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It's super obvious at this point that the Pixel team doesn't really prioritize hardware design. Behind the scenes, they're probably just tweaking leftover designs from other OEMs like they have for years. It was the same way with Nexus, but at least those were half the cost, so compromises were...

It's going to be a lot harder for OEMs to find excuses for cutting off updates after a year, or delivering them months late, when you consider this: https://developer.android.com/preview/devices/ Several cheap devices from the Asian market are now getting Android P betas the same day as Pixel...

Why 18:9? Same reason why there's about to be a notch on every device for 12-18 months, or why the latest fad in interior design is absolutely mandatory for suburban homes: because it's incredibly easy and cheap for companies to pass off inconsequential trends in consumer products as big...

Oh, I'm totally with you there. In fact, I trust MKBHD more than 98% of reviewers who are just employees of somewhere like The Verge. He's at least a real enthusiast who geeks out over this stuff in his spare time like us.

I will watch MKBHD reviews occasionally if I'm interested in the product, and I enjoy them for what they are. But I've never understood treating his word as the gospel; not now, not 4-5 years ago before money and fame "went to his head." He's just a kid who likes tech and has a talent for making...

This is pretty much what I assume, too. I said it in an iPhone thread recently, and I'll say it again: Apple is the only company with the balls to lead and make design choices that go against the prevailing market wisdom, which is a bad thing for everyone. The more they emphasize aesthetics at...

But, but... this year's LagWiz is so much lighter and snappier than the last 8 iterations! Samsung's software has really arrived. OEM skins are awesome and bring so many value-added features amidst their ugly, unintuitive, arbitrary, for-the-sake-of-it UI changes. Ditto for the host of...

"A ton more features without losing any performance" on shitty OEM skins seems like a pipe dream, based on most of Android's history. The other complaints I can agree with.

I was mainly interested in the price drop on 1st gens. Looks like they're going the Apple route of continuing to sell last year's models at only $100 off. Bleh.

I know some will see this as hyperbole, but it really does cut to the core of a major issue. When debating hardware design, specifically the transition from plastic/utilitarian to unibody/aesthetics-first across the Android market, Apple fans are likely to argue "hey, it turns out that's just...

There's definitely some truth to Apple pushing risky innovations that might be harder sells for a company with lots of similar competition. I will acknowledge that. The multi-touch philosophy of the original iPhone is a good example. At the same time, that's only the good side of the coin. The...

Battery life used to be a main selling point of the Note series, if not the selling point. Now it's middling because Samsung, like most of the major Android OEMs, decided they needed to pivot to form over function and race after Apple from behind, rather than keep playing a game they can win at...

This is all a fair assessment. What scares me is that the "tight vertical integration" model was always a minority niche (Mac) in the age of desktops and laptops. In the age of smartphones as the dominant personal device, it's becoming the dominant seller (iPhone), at least among middle- and...

Saw a display Pixel XL the other day with god awful burn-in... like, Stevie Wonder would've been appalled. I actually thought it was a software error at first when I swiped to the Google Now page. I guarantee this has driven away numerous would-be AMOLED phone customers in stores worldwide over...

While I still probably wouldn't buy an iPhone if they added it, I'm personally less put off by the lack of tweaking than by the lack of filesystem access. I guess that makes me old school these days, somehow, but I don't think I can ever get past it.

Given the severe burn-in I've witnessed on display units of various AMOLED phones over the years, I have to imagine they're all susceptible. Obviously display units represent an unnatural worst-case scenario, but the burn-in on you see on them after a few months is so laughably ruinous that...

But ten years ago, people didn't tend to buy brand new high-end laptops every 12-24 months. They also didn't tend to do so separately for every member of the family. I'm a tech enthusiast and power user who values my computing devices more than the average person, and I still think it's insane...

Yeah, at least most of the financing plans right now are interest-free. In reality, there's no downside to taking advantage of them. It's just that the masses are easily deceived by seeing $34.99/mo. instead of having to face the reality of dropping $800 for a phone every year or two, so I'd...

If you can afford it, just go Pixel and forget about it. Virtually everyone seems happy with them unless they get one of the rare lemons (as with any device). The alternatives are too risky to be worth the savings or other marginal advantages. I learned that the hard way with this Moto X Pure...

Well, I'll be damned. I totally missed the Pixel discount. That was a solid deal, even if the hardware is a year old now. Actually, I recall they did a good "back to school" deal ($100-150 off) with the 6P last summer for a few days... and then you could never find those prices again, ever...

Problem is that the Pixel line has decimated the ability to get "deals" anywhere in Google's current or former offerings. I was all ready to switch to the 6P a year ago, only to find they never got discounted after the Pixel announcement... they just emptied out stock at MSRP, and now you can't...

This reminds me a ton of the Moto X Pure I was so excited to buy two years ago. In hindsight, it was everything I'd hoped... except for support and updates. Which, in reality, is a big deal. I'd expect no different here. If you're really lucky, you'll get a few security updates the first year...

Maybe a quibble here, but to say Android was shit up until "a couple years ago" seems like a gross exaggeration. It was really unpolished in the very early days, but by any reasonable standard, the interface became plenty clean and idiot-proof around Ice Cream Sandwich (2011). For the past...

So many things about this phone that run counter to the audience it seems primed for. Why is it that every "nerd phone" like OnePlus and Essential makes design choices as if it's being marketed as a fashion statement for 16 year old girls? Form over function, shiny over durable, "premium...

You're in the same predicament as me: I prefer using my PC for most tasks when I'm at home or work, and my DSLR for any meaningful photography, so I'm not enough of a power user to justify spending more than $400-500. Yet, bloatware and proprietary nonsense repulse me and are instant...

Isn't the real answer to the OP's question, predictably, that Apple patented the shit out of every rudimentary element of iMessage? There would be a cross-platform alternative by now from someone if it were any other reason.

It's not difficult to imagine that most folks really do feel this way when the question is posed directly - and yet, on the day they drop and shatter their old phone and rush to the AT&T store for a replacement, it's the "shiny slim" factor (along with a healthy sales pitch) that sways their...

I'd be careful with the MVNO route. You miss out on certain roaming agreements that way, which can be huge in remote areas. For example, a big chunk of western Oklahoma is still covered with towers owned by a regional mom-n-pop provider, and you're SOL without roaming there. You can find similar...

They certainly aren't a wash in the central flyover states (KS, NE, IA, etc.), in my experience. But, as the guy above said, you won't be in bad shape with AT&T on interstates. But once you get off of those and into true BFE, all bets are off. I can still go 20+ miles at a time without AT&T...

As someone who drives through very remote parts of the central U.S. regularly, Verizon is easily in its own class. Anymore, AT&T is second place, but it's a distant second.

It's a sad state of affairs out there if you want stock Android and can't/won't go with Pixel. I wouldn't ever buy Moto/Lenovo again after the experience with my current MXPE. Support has been totally abandoned post-acquisition. The handoff to Lenovo was already known when I purchased, and my...

For anything that isn't a direct hardware failure, I default to blaming OEM skins/frameworks like TouchWiz and LG's UI. Guilty until proven innocent, as far as I'm concerned. Why? Because my experiences using OEM skinned software on HTC and Samsung phones I previously owned was laggy and buggy...

I believe GBoard is the stock keyboard on Pixel devices, but I don't own one, so can't verify that. It's the default option on my Moto X Pure, which is also AOSP-ish.

The N5 process is at least straightforward enough for any semi-enthusiast with a slight appetite for risk, albeit probably more than Joe Public can handle. But replacing batteries on the leading flagships (iPhone 6s, Galaxy S6) is completely infeasible. And I just don't understand why anyone...

It's not necessarily about being able to stockpile 8 swappable batteries in a fanny pack for day-to-day use -- it's also about replacing an aging battery quickly and cheaply when its performance inevitably declines 12-18 months into owning a phone. For the life of me, I'll never understand why...

I understand your argument that things like shatterproof and expandable/greater storage are higher priority (water resistance I'm not seeing for the "average person," but fair enough). But "fuck removable batteries" is ludicrous, when you just said you'd expect a $75-100 charge to replace a...

It's more about planned obsolescence and being able to permanently replace a failing battery without (a) ripping your phone's soldered and glued innards apart (or paying someone else $100 to do so) and voiding your warranty, or (b) just tossing a perfectly functional $700 device into the trash...

If there's any truth to the speculation above about Google shipping only a relatively small number of Pixels, it just makes the demise of Nexus this year all the more aggravating. If Pixel 2016 was only going to be for 2 million diehards worldwide, it might as well have just been the Nexus 6...

Owning the MXPE, I would have to lean in favor of it over the G4+ for now. I've tried the latter in-store and the screen quality seemed substantially worse - downright cheapy, honestly - which is hard to look past. But the point about updates is well taken. We're supposed to get Nougat on the...

As a fellow MXPE owner, I've concluded there's simply no appealing upgrade path right now, at least if the Pixel XL is out of your budget. The universal radio compatibility of our device (all 4 US carriers) is something I'm just not willing to give up, which greatly narrows the field right off...