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Google Unveils Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL With No Headphone Jack (venturebeat.com) 291

Posted by msmash from the new-shiny-devices dept.
From a report: Google product chief Mario Queiroz today unveiled two new Android 8.1 Oreo smartphones at the company's annual hardware event: the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL. The smaller Pixel 2 sports a 5-inch, 1080p display, with a 16:9 aspect ratio that was until this year the standard on Android flagships. The larger Pixel 2 XL, meanwhile, has a 6-inch, QHD+ display in an 18:9 aspect ratio, in line with 2017's flagship smartphones. The Pixel 2 thus still has a large bezel while the Pixel XL 2 has a noticeably reduced bezel profile, although certainly not the smallest we've seen. As always, smartphone size also dictates battery capacity: 2700 mAh for the Pixel 2 and 3520 mAh for the Pixel 2 XL. Here's the rundown: Snapdragon 835 chipset, 4GB of RAM, either 64GB or 128GB of storage, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, a 12-megapixel rear camera, front stereo speakers, a fingerprint scanner on the back, a USB-C port on the bottom, and no headphone jack. "Use your existing analog headphones with the included adapter," Queiroz said. [...] The HTC-manufactured Pixel 2 will be available in Just Black, Clearly White, and Kinda Blue on October 19. The LG-manufactured Pixel 2 XL will ship in Just Black and Black & White on November 15. The Pixel 2 will be available for $649 (64GB) and $749 (128GB) while the Pixel 2 XL will come in $849 (64GB) and $949 (128GB) flavors.
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Google Unveils Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL With No Headphone Jack More

Google Unveils Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL With No Headphone Jack

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  • Bye (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @01:02PM (#55309815) Journal

    Fi-licia.

    "You dont need SD cards, put it all in the cloud! Oh by the way, data is $10/GB"

    • Re:Bye (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dknj ( 441802 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @01:08PM (#55309867) Journal

      just another digital rights grab by the music industry. too little, too late. the worry is when android ceases to stop supporting the analog headphone jack, this is what google is setting up for

      -dk

      • Android being an open source (not necessarily free) operating system, why should it? Assuming you have the hardware to put it into, you should be able to support the 3.5mm jack.

      • Re:Bye (Score:5, Insightful)

        by zenbi ( 3530707 ) <bryan@pipedot.org> on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @02:30PM (#55310495) Homepage
        Did anyone else notice the microphone is always on and listening? On a phone. Without a disable switch.

        Speaking of audio, the Pixel 2s have a music recognition feature that is always on, Google’s director of product management Sabrina Ellis revealed. Whenever music is playing nearby and the second-generation Pixel recognizes the song, it will automatically show the artist and title on your lock screen.

        The obvious next step is to display an ad to "purchase" the song in the Play store. Or maybe just go ahead and charge you anyway if you don't a have sufficient license to the song. Be careful what you say near a Pixel phone. If the phone can continually listen for songs, it could also continually listen for key words and phrases.

        It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

        You are a slow learner, Winston.

    • Not only to mention that I can't reach the cloud from TWRP if I need to re-flash a ROM or a software package. Fuck this shit. Phones are practically mini computers, and they should be able to function as such.
      • Could just use an external storage via USB-OTG. I generally like to wipe everything if I'm getting into recovery to flash. Generally happy enough with lineage or omnirom doing the OTAs though, so recovery generally not something I need to spend that much time in.

    • and $15-$20/meg roaming!

    • Just two pixels (Score:4, Funny)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @01:31PM (#55310077)

      Even my flip phone had a screen with more than 2 pixels. I don't care if they are XL sized pixels. You can;t even write an ascii charcter with that. let me know when they reach VGA quality

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      I think you're overestimating the need for the SD storage - for non-technical people its more complex to manage, it can affect performance and it turned out to not be necessary for most users. As someone who buys the base storage on every mobile device I've only run out of storage once - a 2-year old tablet when I downloaded a bunch of video for a trip.

      • It shouldn't be more complex to manage. The problem is Android is braindead stupid about handling removable storage. Especially storing applications on removable storage.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Just buy a OnePlus phone and fuck Google. It's cheaper to boot.

  • Do they have an ugly notch at the top of the screen as well?

    • Do they have an ugly notch at the top of the screen as well?

      In the $1,000 Pixel X, they probably will :-)

      • "$949 (128GB)"
        That is fairly close to the $1000 mark The $51.00 difference on the grand scheme of things isn't that much of an issue.

        • I'm ignoring the respective phablets from Apple and Google (Plus and XL) and just going with the base phones, Pixel 2 and iPhone 8, vs iPhone X.

          • The iPhone X in terms of Specs is closer to the phablet. The usable screen area in the iPhone X is rather close to the usable screen area in in iPhone 8+.

            So you should rather compare the Pixel 2 against the iPhone 8

    • Oh, and they even introduced their own overpriced Bluetooth earbuds for $159!

  • Google, we need AFFORDABLE Android phones! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @01:10PM (#55309889)

    Google, please, we need AFFORDABLE Android phones! And by "affordable" we don't mean trashy third-world shit phones, either.

    All we want is the next generation of what the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones were. Give us reasonably sized phones that have reasonably good displays and reasonably good performance with reasonably good cameras and with reasonably good quality at a reasonably good price.

    We don't need top-end everything, but nor do we want bottom-end shit, either. Give us a good middle-of-the-road phone.

    It's not even really about finding the money. Many of us can come up with $700 without any problem. The problem is that we don't want to drop that much money on a top-end phone. We'd rather spend $300 to $400, and get something in the middle. The problem is that we don't find anything like that these days, when in the past we did with the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones.

    It's dumb to pay $700 or even $1000 for a phone that can be so easily damaged or lost, or worse, become artificially "obsolete" after only 3 years.

    Google, give us something like the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 5 were!

    • Give us reasonably sized phones that have reasonably good displays and reasonably good performance with reasonably good cameras and with reasonably good quality at a reasonably good price.

      They have already arrived: Moto G5S Plus [tomsguide.com] and Huawei Honor 6X [tomsguide.com].

    • So there's a bit of background first.

      Have you noticed that Apple has stopped trying to remove all of the Google related things from them? Apple made their version of a map app, started poorly but got better and ultimately didn't matter. Google was and remains so far ahead that catching up isn't feasible w/o expending a supreme amount of resources. It didn't matter what Apple tried. Unverifying the app only alienated their customer base. Dropping it from the store only saw articles on how to sideload it prol

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        And making it run poorly in the native web browser saw Chrome for iOS get downloaded more.

        I thought Chrome for iOS still used Apple's built-in WebKit?

      • Sorry, but Apple Maps is superior to Google Maps now, and has been for a while. I'm curious in what way you consider it to be way beyond what Apple offers...

        Apple Maps is more readable, and still give better directions (though Google has tried to keep up there).

        The only area Google still leads in is Street View, but that's not as necessary as good directions.

        However you are right that Apple is still working happily with Google in some areas still - especially search.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          I like aspects of its user interface, but it still can't find places by name for shit. I can put place names into Google Maps and it always finds what I'm looking for. Most of the time Apple Maps doesn't find anything or it finds something totally wrong, far away.

      • I'm not sure what you're talking about. Apple Maps remains the highest used map application on iOS. The power of defaults is enormous, which is why both Google and Apple want to have the default app on your phone. Google pays Apple $3 billion/yr to be the favoured search app for Siri. Sideloading isn't really a thing on iOS devices. WebKit is the MANDATORY rendering engine for all iOS web rendering; Chrome is literally just chrome around WebKit.

        Your inputs are so bad that there's no way to come to any relia

    • Re:Google, we need AFFORDABLE Android phones! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @01:47PM (#55310177)

      Agreed - its more than just their phones their entire product line has become egregiously expensive.

      If we recount their popular and successful products - Nexus 7, Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Chromecast, Cardboard. Whats the common factor? A good product at a great price.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by u19925 ( 613350 )

      Sorry, Apple does not make them, so we don't know how to copy them. BTW, we are selling phones without 3.5 mm jack and also selling wireless earbuds for $159, just like Apple. Thanks for your interest in Android.

    • All I want is an Open, reasonably priced phone with reasonable specs on which I can install Plasma Active/Linux. That would take care of every other need I have.

    • You just described the Moto line of phones from Motorola. I have the Moto E4. Finger print sensor. Replaceable Battery. SD Card Slot. $130.

  • Decent (Score:2)

    by Reid ( 629 )

    Don't regret buying a Note 8 based on those stats.

  • Ballsy Move (Score:5, Informative)

    by pi_rules ( 123171 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @01:15PM (#55309925)

    Given that the original Pixel is absolutely horrible at playing back music via Bluetooth I'd call this a pretty ballsy move. Google doesn't appear to have any idea how to fix the problem on the Pixel either. Mine will start skipping during music so bad you'd think I was listening to a CD player in 1994 going down a gravel road.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      Given that the original Pixel is absolutely horrible at playing back music via Bluetooth I'd call this a pretty ballsy move.

      So it took courage to do it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Are you sure its the Pixel not the speaker? The only time my Nexus 6p chops is with an inexpensive aftermarket car stereo, and even then usually when its in the far pocket with my arm resting on it.

      • There have been many articles and user complaints about poor bluetooth quality on the Pixel phones. Although it might appear to be a hardware problem instead of a software problem (interference with the WiFi module).

    • Should be okay, Pixel supports AptX as far as I know.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sl3xd ( 111641 )

        AptX only matters if:

        - Your entire device chain supports AptX
        - You actually buy into AptX having higher quality because "more bits".

        AptX is Qualcomm's effort at licensing out a 1980's-era codec, and sells "more bits is better" (much like $1,000 "audiophile" optical cables, magic rocks, and so on.) Honestly, AptX is decades older (and less sophisticated) than Bluetooth's SBC.

    • My nexus 6 started skipping when I upgraded to nougat. Maybe it's the OS?

  • Use your existing analog headphones with the included adapter ...

    Which is a separate Bluetooth-enabled feature phone, with a headphone jack.

  • Only 4GB RAM? (Score:3)

    by OneHundredAndTen ( 1523865 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @01:27PM (#55310029)
    For a device that starts at $600+, I expect a minimum of 6GB RAM. You get 4GB in devices in the $200 ballpark. Plus, these Pixel phones do not take SD cards. Thanks but, no, thanks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      What are you doing that needs more 4gb of RAM exactly? With 3gb I don't see any issues from swapping.

      • More memory is about headroom for future updates.

        Just wait for Android Oreo to arrive. The Nexus 5X with 2GB RAM was barely usable running Nougat, but after the September update it can't keep any apps in memory at all. So I would assume, with 8.0, 3GB is now the babre minimum you need, and 4GB is the comfortable amount of RAM, while +4GB is for future headroom.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luthair ( 847766 )

          Oreo runs fine on the Nexus 6P. I did find Nougat slow on the Nexus 9 though which is 2gb.

          There is a point of diminishing returns, on the PC for day-to-day use RAM requirements definitely stalled out.

  • Misses the REAL story (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @01:28PM (#55310031) Homepage
    The lack of a headphone jack gets all the attention. I think Google left off the headphone jack as a distraction. The real story is that Clips camera. It decides when to take pictures of what is "interesting"? How is that done? Does everything potentially interesting get streamed to the mother ship so that Google's algorithm can determine if it is "interesting" or not? And what exactly is the definition of "interesting"?

    Maybe Google has two different "interesting" filters. One that the consumer sees the results of. And one that Google privately keeps the results of.

    But not to worry. It's all okay. Google says it's not evil. And you can trust Google to tell you the truth. Because Google is not evil. I know Google is not evil because Google says so. And I can trust Google's statement because Google is not evil.

    • Re:Misses the REAL story (Score:4, Informative)

      by Albanach ( 527650 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @02:00PM (#55310249) Homepage

      But not to worry. It's all okay. Google says it's not evil.

      That's a pretty serious amount of wild speculation from someone that didn't watch the launch or read any of the followup press articles. The camera does the AI on-board. In fact that was a theme of the presentation - music detection also being performed on board the new pixel.

      I'm not sure if Google has rediscovered privacy, if this is a reflection of more powerful mobile processors now being capable of this type of workload, or a bit of both.

  • ...Even with a 10ft pole.

    And that because of one reason: The lack of that 3.5mm headphone jack.

    • I'll bet you don't touch any modern computer either due to their lack of MFM hard drive interfaces and AUI ethernet, right? You chuckleheads need to get over the fucken headphone jack thing, because in a few years they won't exist anywhere.

      • You chuckleheads need to get over the fucken headphone jack thing, because in a few years they won't exist anywhere.

        Hopefully, in the next few years there will be an adequate replacement for it. When there is, I won't care that there's no headphone jack.

        But I'm honestly curious -- why do you care whether or not people "get over" the jack?

  • Google unveils $159 Pixel Buds, its answer to Apple AirPods

    How did I already know that?

  • ... make one that magnetically docks onto the phone (ergonomically, not like the Apple Pencil shit that sticks out of the device by several inches), and which charges whenever the phone itself is being charged so that I never have to worry about charging the earpiece separately.
  • Does it make sense to buy the Pixel 1 XL 128GB now that it has come down in price? It still comes with the headphone jack and Google's OS updates. The Pixel 2's lack of headphone jack is a no-go for me. The USB-C headphone adapter is too fragile. Hunting for good sounding Bluetooth earbuds is unappealing to me (plus expensive, plus the battery charging and relatively quick failure..).

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