The Google Pixel reviews are coming in, and they are quite positive.
This is Google’s first phone, and for a first effort it is remarkably good. By almost every metric I can think of – speed, power, camera, smart assistant, you name it – it matches or exceeds the best phones available on the market today. And though the design is far from groundbreaking, it’s certainly approachable. The whole package is pretty incredible, and if you’re not put off by the premium price, you’ll be very happy with this premium phone. I prefer the XL, which isn’t huge and seems to get notably better battery life
Walt Mossberg, also for The Verge:
If you’re an Android fan, willing to buy a premium phone, the Pixel is your answer. To repeat: it’s simply the best Android phone I’ve tested. If you’re an iPhone user thinking of switching, the Pixel will seem physically familiar, but you’ll have to overcome the sticky links you’ve developed with fellow iPhone users, things like iMessage (which Google can’t match yet) and iCloud Photo Sharing (which Google is trying to copy). You’ll also have to do without the comfort of your neighborhood Genius Bar.
But my main message, dear readers, is this: Google has come out of the gate with a top-flight phone and suddenly, there’s no longer an Apple-Samsung duopoly in premium handsets.
Joanna Stern for The Wall Street Journal:
Android people, please step forward. Good news! Your next phone-buying decision just got a heck of a lot easier. The Google Pixel is now the best Android smartphone you can buy. The other leading contender was disqualified due to spontaneous combustion.
iPhone people, it’s your turn. Ask yourself: Why do I have an iPhone? Is it because of its software, services and privacy policies? Or is it because it’s a very good phone for things like Google Maps, Gmail, Spotify and Facebook Messenger? If you’ve answered yes to the latter, the Pixel may be for you, too.
Lastly, the Android Central review:
The Google Pixel XL is my new daily driver. As for the smaller Pixel, I know it’s going to take a lot to tear Daniel Bader away from this compact Android powerhouse. Both are excellent smartphones which we can wholeheartedly recommend, even with their sky-high price tags. The question of whether a smartphone can be worth $700 to $1,000 in 2016 is a debate altogether. But if any phone is worth that amount of cash, the Pixels are. Just as that same argument can be made for the iPhone 7 or Galaxy S7.
Interesting how all the American reviewers mention iMessage so often as a barrier to switching. Living in a country where WhatsApp has a 100% market share and iMessage is entirely unused, it’s just an annoying junk app to me.
I use an iPhone at work, and I really don’t understand what’s so damn special about iMessage. It sends and receives texts. So do about a hundred apps on Android, and you can choose which one you want to use.
1. You can use it on your Mac (and iPad, for that matter), and it’ll send/receive the same messages, from your number
2. End-to-end encryption (to other iMessage users, at least)
3. It is (almost) seemlessly integrated with normal texts (for Android buddies)
God. The fact that they color texts from non-iPhone users a different color is tacky.
They didn’t even pick a decent looking color, either. Instead, they chose a bright and garish color of green.
They don’t color texts from non iPhone users a different colour. Texts are always green. IMessage messages are always blue. Whether or not the other end is an iPhone is completely irrelevant
You can say that, but it still comes down to a pleasantly blue colour when texting your iFone buddies and that awful green when texting non-iFone buddies. Or do you mean to say that there are in fact iFone users that rather use SMS messages than iMessage messages, and there are non-iFone users that are able to use iMessage? I think not, in both cases.
It’s always been green for SMS messages, the first iPhone SMS messages were green too.
Blue messages for iMessage was introduced in 2010 with the iMessage service and the iPhone 4.
Yes, it has always been green indeed, but the tint of green has changed from pleasant to awful over time. There even are articles on the internet lamenting this!
Hangouts does all those things. I guess imessages “killer feature” is that it is locked to one manufacturer.
What Apple has done with iMessage would not have worked without a ton of hype, and a big giant market share , but most importantly – relatively seamless integration with SMS – which actually, Hangouts doesn’t do at all.
Also, Hangout is ugly and unfun, and the desktop component uses a web browser, like it’s 2005 or something, and is at least as unfun as the mobile client, if not more. ;-P
So what you are saying is that I can send anyone a google hangout link, and we could be communicating with no need for them to install snyting at their end, hmm sonds like a plus ro meesp if this icludes voice and video chat
Hangouts used to randomly decide that a conversation that was part hangout, part sms was 2 conversations and split them. There was a way to fix it, but it was a PITA, then that stopped working too. I lost faith in hangouts after that.
Edited 2016-10-20 11:48 UTC
With Hangouts and Google Voice, I can send and receive messages from any computer with a web browser. Plus, there’s lots of SMS apps that have this same capability as iMessage. (I assume some work with Macs too.)
Edited 2016-10-19 00:26 UTC
Can you receive SMS messages sent to your mobile number, in browser? And, answer them from the browser?
I’m not sure… never tried it.
I can, but rarely do is that a iMessage feature too? Not sure why I’d want that.
iMessage just seems like a lonely version of irc or slack for you hipsters.
Haven’t seen a messaging platform that could NOT do that since the late 90s. Why are you Apple users so proud of ancient standard features?
Can you receive SMS messages in iMessage in your browser when your phone is not online?
Or do you mean to ask if received SMS messages on the phone are also displayed on other platforms where you can access Hangouts?
Hangouts. And, using the mobile number I’ve had for ages, rather than having to get a Google Voice number. I use Textra as my messaging app – somewhat unstable, but I don’t erase text messages ever, and the default Android messaging program gets really, really slow once the message count gets high.
I’m just curious. I think most of my friends have iPhones anyways, so I’m not likely to be able to take advantage of any end-to-end encryption that Hangouts might have.
In my country the market share of the iPhone is just below 20%. So less than 4% of all messages sent are iPhone to IPhone. Standard SMSM messgaes cover 100% of the users. So all the extra features that iMessage has on top of a normal SMS application are not that relevant.
Although I have an iPhone, iMessage is for me the app I use to send and receive SMS messages, period. Of the 50 top persons I interact with, only 7 have an iPhone. I won’t use any nice feature iMessage can offer, if I can only use it for 7 out of 50 correspondants.
3. Transparency. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m sending an iMessage or not. If the receiver supports it, an iMessage is sent. If not, it’s a regular text. On Android I always had to keep track of who used Hangouts, who used WhatsApp, etc. It got quite irritating. Google has had the opportunity, for many years, to make Hangouts match and far exceed iMessage. Yet, as with most things Google, they’ve sat on it and done the bare minimum in features while adding tons of bling and advertising space.
I don’t see how this can apply to Hangouts but not to iMessage.
Or should you not know who uses WhatsApp when using iMessage? I’d think not.
There’s an option in Hangouts to use it as your default SMS app, so it should work just like iMessage – send a Hangouts message when the other person is using Hangouts, or otherwise send an SMS.
If all you friends/contacts live in iMessage world (that is FaceTime world too) it’s hard to just go away. Your connection to them gets degraded to SMS/MMS.
What is the difference, besides the gimmicky stickers and shit?
Why whatsapp? I mean they’re all dumb and none is really better than the other, in the same way that most shoes just work and there isn’t a need to really feel bad about using or not using a specific brand.
Beats me. With messaging, you use what everyone else uses. That’s just how it works. In The Netherlands, that was MSN Messenger back when it was still called IM, and it’s WhatsApp now that it’s called messaging. Both MSN and WhatsApp have actually become verbs (for the act of digital messaging) and nouns (for the actual digital message) in Dutch.
Don’t ask me why those two, specifically. I don’t think there’s any logical reasoning at play here.
You know what everyone has? A phone number with SMS capability. Why bother with whatsapp when you can already send anyone a text without needing any extra apps (or even a smartphone)
SMS costs money. The more SMS-messages I send the higher the next bill will be. On the other hand, no matter how many messages I send over Whatsapp or anything similar, the bill stays the same.
That’s more than enough of a reason for many people, but then there’s also how easy Whatsapp and friends make sharing of videos, pictures and whatnot. SMS can’t do any of that.
That’s probably why not a lot of people use Whatsapp in the States – SMS/MMS tend to be free, with data being the thing that costs money
Aye, they have ridiculously low datacaps and just as ridiculously high overage-fees and all, from what I’ve seen. Over here in Finland, with most carriers you just pay a monthly fee for a speed of your choosing, but you can then use it as much as you wish, no caps associated.
Probably no wonder, but mobile broadband is hugely popular over here and no one seems to think twice about watching Youtubes or using Spotify or whatever even when they aren’t within WiFi-range.
It’s not quite as bleak over here anymore – Caps are growing, going pass the cap tends to just buy another chunk of data rather than grossly overpriced per-MB charges like they used to, or they’ll just throttle past the cap (I think Verizon charges $5/mo for that, which is lame, but whatever)
T-Mobile (My carrier) no longer has caps for new customers, but throttles video and blocks tethering unless you pay $10/mo or so for each. Otherwise, they’re fast in areas with their best coverage.
My plan is older, so it works better – high cap, and either free throttled video (lower resolution, doesn’t count against the cap), or unthrottled video that counts against the cap.
I’m on Sprint and I have unlimited data. Actually unlimited. No bizarre throttling or weird restrictions based of what you are streaming, etc. Just unfettered 4G/LTE if its available. I use around 40-50GB/m on average and have passed 100GB on busy months
But my Sprint plan is pushing 16 years old and costs me around $300 for 5 phones. Still, not bad.
Grandfathered-in unlimited plan, I take it?
Sprint does the same thing as T-Mobile now, for new unlimited plans – throttles video to force it to be lower resolution, unless you pay $20 per line.
I’ve got an older plan from T-Mobile – 10GB a month (I’m usually near wifi, dont’ watch much video on my phone either)
Drumhellar,
I have t-mobile myself, and while I’m not generally using video on my phone much either. I’m disturbed that tmobile’s video “binge on” clearly goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of net neutrality. It’s advertised as “optimization” of certain services to end users, but they don’t realize that it’s literally nothing more than throttling. If this were only applied to the participating low-definition binge-on video partners in exchange for free streaming, then fine. But the fact is tmobile’s throttling also gets applied to video services where I’m footing the bill for high speed data, which is lousy and deceitful.
The EFF has a pretty good chart and description:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles-bingeon…
TLDR; If you are going to charge a transfer against a user’s high speed bandwidth quota, then it shouldn’t be artificially throttled down to low speeds!
I didn’t set out to measure this, but I recently needed to transfer an ISO over encrypted SFTP, and it appeared that tmobile was throttling the encrypted traffic (ie it started extremely quickly and then slowed down drastically even though I hadn’t hit the high speed data cap). The same day I transferred many files over plain HTTP with no slowdown. I’m just annoyed that carriers are discriminating against uses of bandwidth even though I pay the same amount per byte; it shouldn’t be any of their business how I use the bandwidth I’ve paid for.
Well, Binge-On video didn’t count against your cap – that was the whole point. Unlimited, free video, unless you chose to disable it. That’s not an issue – it’s left the choice to the user.
Now, though, with their unlimited plan throttling video unless you pay the extra money, that’s an issue. Initially it seemed the FCC was cool with Binge-On, but I wonder how they’re going to react to the paid prioritization that’s going on now…
Drumhellar,
But that’s not exactly true, even the services who’s bandwidth are being paid by you as high speed data are throttled by Binge-On, and that’s the problem.
Net neutrality should be unconditional! You should be entitled to use your high speed bandwidth without throttling and without additional conditions being imposed. If T-mobile wanted to do the right thing, it would have to give customers control over binge-on partner service throttling independently from those that you are paying for.
T-Mobile knows that by eliminating such control they can effectively defeat network neutrality. Of course, they say users can opt out of both with one switch, but if we allow our neutrality rights to be contingent upon paying more for other services, then that’s a very slippery slope and I suspect the only reason net neutrality doesn’t forbid it explicitly is because they hadn’t thought of it. I’ll give t-mobile credit for being clever and out-thinking the legislators, but it’s still quite underhanded. If it’s allowed, it could have future implications for all kinds of applications well beyond video streaming services, which is why I’m hoping the FCC puts an end to it.
I disagree.
As Binge On was implemented, it was great. I disagree that it was against the principle of net neutrality, as it gives end users the control.
You could have it disabled, and data would come with no restriction. Full bandwidth for video, allowing video sites to send a full 1080p stream. Of course, this counted against your cap (Caps are their own problem, of course). Finer-grained control would be useful, but since it can be enabled/disabled at will, it wasn’t that much of an issue.
Alternatively, you could enable it, and get free video that doesn’t count against your cap. Originally, it only applied to video services that signed up (Which, by the way, was free to do.) This control, given to the user, is great. It didn’t cost extra for anybody. Since the end user is in control, it doesn’t violate net neutrality.
Now, the system they have now – No caps ever, but all video throttled unless you pay an extra $20, well, that does violate net neutrality, and I hope the FCC puts the smack down on them.
The switch isn’t hidden – go to the data usage page in your account settings, and click the “Binge On” link.
Or, use the T-Mobile app and click the very easy to find Binge-On button.
It should’ve been opt-in, but they did notify users about it via text, via a notification on your account page, and via the app. The notifications also told how to change it.
W/r to throttling, it’s merely an implementation detail. Accuracy could perhaps be better (It absolutely shouldn’t throttle sites that aren’t partners), but the fact that they throttle to get the desired result is meaningless.
Drumhellar,
(emphasis mine)
Yes, basically my whole complaint can be boiled down to that one sentence of yours, haha
That’s easy. They’ll try to find a way to ring some of the additional $$$ into their own hands. It’s how every regulatory organization works in the states.
As long as they manage to do some good along the way, I don’t care too much how much money they divert from service providers…
EFF is splitting hairs. I normally agree with them, but not in this case. All T-Mobile actually promises is that you get 480p video that doesn’t count against your cap.
They’re splitting hair about the implementation.
Sidestepping the issue of caps, I disagree with them that this violates net neutrality, simply because control is left to the end-user, and not the network provider.
I mean, if I decided to fiddle with my computer and set it to download certain files slower, am I violating net neutrality? No. I have control, as it is my computer.
What if I push that function to my router? Is it then? No, again, I have control, and it is my router.
But, what if it isn’t my router? What if it’s one I rent from my service provider? Since it isn’t my router, does it suddenly violate net neutrality? Probably not, since I ultimately have control.
The point is, with Binge On as it was implemented, I, the end user, had control. (Now, it doesn’t really exist anymore, since TMo is all unlimited for new customers
[q[I’m just annoyed that carriers are discriminating against uses of bandwidth even though I pay the same amount per byte; it shouldn’t be any of their business how I use the bandwidth I’ve paid for. [/q]
Then disable Binge On, and it won’t mistakenly be applied to non-video streams.
Now, as for their new plans, which are all unlimited, and video is throttled unless you pay an extra $20, yeah, that’s bullshit, and the FCC needs to step in.
Drumhellar,
I’d agree that’s the impression tmobile wants consumers to have, but the problem is that it’s factually wrong. If I use a video service that isn’t a tmobile partner, then it will count against high speed data cap EVEN IF it’s only 480p video. Furthermore, even though it’s coming out of my package’s high speed LTE data quota, it still gets throttled to 1.5mbps, which nobody would have expected, but EFF’s data clearly shows to be true.
If I find a bit of time, I’ll try to test the effects of encryption, because it seems that it might be throttled as well even for streams that have nothing whatsoever to do with video.
Edited 2016-10-20 00:13 UTC
I just wanted to follow up. I was correct about ssh. I measured these by hand, so it’s a bit rough, but I tried them twice and they seem to be consistent. Ideally I’d do more measurements, tethering, etc, but I didn’t have time.
Binge-On = on
transfer video .mov file from my camera
http = 1.4mbps
https = 28.9mbps
sftp = 6.5mbps
transfer non-video .zip file
http = 1.5mbps
Binge-On = off
.mov file
http 32.5mbps
https 28.9mbps
sftp = 6.6mbps
.zip file
http = 29.7mbps
Obviously encryption fundamentally breaks deep packet inspection, so tmobile can’t tell whether HTTPS is video or not. The results above tell us that tmobile does not throttle https by default. I’m guessing they have staff who maintain a domain blacklist for sites specializing in video streaming over https in order to throttle them.
sftp is throttled both with and without binge-on, I wasn’t expecting it to be throttled at all. I wonder about other services like email/games/etc.
The fact that the zip file was throttled is rather disappointing because either it means tmobile’s video detection is broken or they’re disingenuous about what binge-on actually throttles.
It still bothers me that my own file transfers (the ones that count against my high speed data quota, which is all of them) are ever throttled regardless of protocol/format/binge-on mode! I paid for that high speed data, any interference by the carriers is shady. Oh well, I’m just rehashing now, I’ll have to accept this is the future of and move on.
I doubt that SMS messages are billed per message but data (what WhatsApp actually consumes) isn’t.
In my country, both for SMS messages *and* data you are given a package that includes an insane amounts of SMS messages and a (hopefully reasonable) amount of data that you can use at will, without costing you more than the standard monthly cost.
They are, over here. I wouldn’t have said that if it wasn’t like that. It all depends on the plan you have, and the cheaper plans are all about pay-as-you-go, ie. you pay a certain amount of money per minute for voice-calls and a certain amount of money per SMS-message.
As for data: it’s speed-limited, not amount-limited. Even with the cheapest, 4.90^a`not/month pay-as-you-go plan you get 256Kbps bandwidth and you can literally use it 24/7 the whole month and it’ll still cost that 4.90^a`not. That’s about 80GB data a month.
That just is how most carriers operate here in Finland.
That’s actually the way I’d like it most of all: unlimited data, limited whatever-else.
Unfortunately, where I live you pay a fixed amount of cash to charge your prepaid sim. Those credits are used up when calling, but aren’t used up when using data or sms (within limits) in the first months after you’ve charged up. After that, both messages and data also costs credits until you’re out and you’re cut off.
It seems that every country has its own quirks.
The problem is – Finland, population circa 5.4 million. Infrastructure has been important and kept up with demand. People are more switched on about technology in general.
UK, population circa 65 million. Infrastructure ignored, creaky. Mobile service providers are all monopolistic and prices vary little across the board (it has been getting steadily cheaper, but not for data.) One large and a few smaller providers give fair use unlimited plans, but they are never less than ^Alb25 – ^Alb30, usually closer to ^Alb40 per month. People are switched on about technology, but people accept poor service. The infrastructure struggles to accommodate the capacity.
US – well, lets just say population, size of country, telephony monopoly – you’re screwed.
So, yeah, sure Finland gets a fair deal. The reason is that you have a small population, people expect a good service and your providers are trying to provide always on mobile data and so moved to a model where they throttle your speed to a specific level for what you pay. In the UK we could do that, but it would probably make the cell towers go in to meltdown. We have too much congestion already in urban areas.
I wish our providers would adopt that model, because it might shame some of them in to improving their networks.
henderson101,
If anything, that should give the UK and US have a leg up in terms of scales of economy; Having a larger population shouldn’t be a problem when we are funding our services per capita.
Having a low population density can make infrastructure more expensive, but even if we selectively cherry pick ISPs in dense cities like Boston, services are still slower and more expensive than other countries, so there’s clearly something more going on. It seems evident to me that by giving corporations carte blanche to do as they please without doing anything to protect the balance & choice for consumers, we’ve ended up with decreased services at greater costs.
Wow, those plans still exist? Get with the times. I haven’t been charged for an sms in about seven years.
If you read further, you’d know she lives in Finland and there the subscriptions tend to cost you money when calling or texting, but data is only bandwidth-capped and not capacity-capped. That last bit it very, VERY nice indeed!
Exactly. It just gets better when you realize that you can just set up a hotspot for your desktop or laptop or tablet whenever you need, or like when I was visiting my mum for a week, I tethered my laptop to my mobile’s broadband, with no worries about datacap-overages or anything. I installed a couple of games on Steam and downloaded a virtual-machine image from my server over it (I had forgotten to take it with me on USB-drive), just like I would use Internet at home — just somewhat slower, as I have much more bandwidth at home.
My plan costs me 17.90^a`not/month + whatever costs I incur from the few SMS-messages (typically 15 SMS/month or less, as my mum hasn’t learned to use anything else yet) I use a month, but that includes 21Mbps uncapped mobile-broadband. So, that begs the question: if I have the choice of using Whatsapp or whatever over that mobile-broadband, why the literal f–k would I bother with SMS? That darknexus-guy just doesn’t seem to get it. Uncapped mobile-broadband just makes so much sense in the modern world and it makes life so much easier.
Edited 2016-10-19 13:15 UTC
Ahhh, well I guess because in most other countries mobile data is still (made) very expensive (and capped at unreasonably low limits) while texts are thrown in for free at a rate of thousands per month.
It’s really weird.
Maybe they hurt themselves too much throwing in those free texts that they decided to earn their money back on mobile data, which is exactly what they are doing. Even The Netherlands with their historical unlimited mobile data plans started being capped a few years ago, because they smelled DELICIOUS MONEY… and screw the proletariat that might suffer from these decisions!
Edited 2016-10-19 13:18 UTC
WereCatf,
To be honest, these don’t effect me because I have cable internet service at home, but otherwise if I needed to depend on cellular internet (like my parents do) then it would be quite an impediment.
SMS/MMS are more often than not free with most providers in Scandinavia, unless you subscripe to the cheapest offer available – or one of those prepaid, subscription-less phones.
1) (already mentioned) pictures, videos and voice messages
2) (already mentioned) relatively free
3) group talk!
4) web interface if needed
5) end-to-end encrytion
I mean, under the hood it’s all just AIM. Does anyone still use that? I remember that was all the rage back in the day.
My step father even still uses ICQ
Edited 2016-10-18 23:30 UTC
CaptainN-,
Haha, I was on there too. I preferred powow, but it was too unpopular. I actually developed a client/server chat program that a few of us used at school. It supported a shared whiteboard, session recording/playback, synchronized mp3 playing. Ultimately without a significant user base nor commercial support, I took it down once I left academia because I lost access to university hosting.
Given how easy they are to develop, I suspect there were probably tens of thousands of chat platforms similar to mine globally. Of course the world doesn’t need more than a couple, and network effects tended to focus all the attention on the very few popular ones.
Good memories though
ICQ was the big thing a long time ago (damn, I’ve gotten oldish). Used that a lot between 1998 and 2006.
Android forced all email into the Gmail app and getting Google Calendars to pick up Exchange Calendars because of the switch to Gmail is tricky. The schizoid nature of messaging for Andorid. SMS works fine, but MMS/group messages only if the stars align just right, or aren’t aligned just right. Maybe it’s because of solar flares. Whichever, MMS doesn’t work well. Of course none of this is integrated with Hangouts now.
Then there is Google killing stuff, replacing stuff with equivalents that aren’t equivalents until years later, and letting stuff rot on the vine.
Email is just better on the iPhone, and the experience is smoother overall. Then there is getting multiple OS updates to the phone and actually software support from people selling business software.
I carried Android and iOS for about three years, and I used iOS more. I recently switched my personal phone to iOS, and it’s been nice.
“The question of whether a smartphone can be worth $700 to $1,000 in 2016 is a debate altogether.”
iPhone 7 Plus USD749-949 outright.
http://www.iphone7updates.org/iphone-7-price-usa-unlocked-price-pre…
The author seems completely oblivious to the fact that most of the cost of an iPhone is hidden in the carrier contract.
That is not always the case in all countries.
That was my point. The US is the only country where the iPhone has a large share of the market (due to subsidies).
It’s SMS that’s ubiquitous in the US. iMessage just lets people send text messages from their Mac or iPad. It’s really cool when you’re used to messages being siloed on one device.
iMessage being novel just speaks to how horrible device integration and systems integration is on the consumer side. We’re living in walled gardens rather then open ecosystems.
Things like Pushbullet (https://www.pushbullet.com/) or Hangouts are the closest Android equivalents, and Pushbullet is a little more full featured then iMessage when people pay for it.
The thing that’s nice about SMS is that’s it’s universal. If someone has a cellphone, they can get text messages, and it’s the path of least resistance when every messaging app has its own protocol or locks 3rd parties out of its servers, like Whatsapp did in 2014 when a Pidgen plugin was released.
In summary, messaging is crap, and outside of Facebook Messanger, Slack, and SMS, every other messaging app has like two accounts, and those accounts might be test accounts that no one uses.
WhatsApp has over one billion users.
And?
Facebook has 1.71 billion.
That doesn’t make them any less proprietary.
Edited 2016-10-19 02:39 UTC
You were falsely claiming that WhasApp etc had virtually no users.
SMS has so many limitations that it is virtually useless. You don’t even know if your SMS was receieved.
For all it’s flaws, SMS has a wide install base. It’s like email, it’s not the greatest and everyone wants it to be something it’s not, but it’s entrenched at this point.
I claimed I have very little use for messaging apps because they aren’t federated or open which results in a siloed information, and and rather then try and convince everyone to switch to an app, I go with the path of least resistance which is SMS.
I really wish they would phase SMS out in favor of something else like XMPP, and I really wish the phone companies would switch to a data based model, such as SIP, where I could use a softphone to get calls on my current computer.
So yeah, there are a lot of wishes.
Edited 2016-10-19 15:04 UTC
Oh that would be very nice indeed, and at least SIP has a minimum standardization level we could rely on. They could even monetize it by having SIP as an additional plan add-on and the like. Count me in on that wish.
Whoopdedoo. There are 6.8 Billion active cell phones in the world. SMS works with probably 99% of them, no shitty app required.
One has to wonder how many of those Billion user are actually active and where they are. I barely see anyone with it here in Australia, my few friends in America say the same.
Australia and the US are totally unrepresentative of phone use. They are amongst the few countries where iPhones and two year contracts are mainstream. Most other places rely on prepaid phones or monthly contracts.
Probably 90-95% of Whatsapp accounts are active. In India, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East Whatsapp has around 70% market penetration. It is so widely used in India that even the emergency services have Whatsapp phone numbers.
Exactly. Here in Brazil, WhatsApp is the de facto text messaging standard.
Well that’s sort of frightening to know, you guys replaced a shitty but open standard with a far less shitty but completely closed program
There is nothing shittier and limited than SMS. That is why carriers have been trying to introduce RCS for years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
In Australia an SMS sent on a prepaid mobile costs around 10-20c. That is for a mere ~1KB of data.
I’ve been wanting to upgrade my LG G2 and I was hoping either of the new Google-phones would make for a worthy successor, but..there’s literally nothing about them to make them appealing to me.
For one, I don’t like the glass back. Glass is slippery, and there is nothing “premium” about it, it’s just another gimmicky fashion trend that people fall for. I’d much prefer a non-slippery soft-touch plastic back.
Secondly, I have zero use for Google’s new Assistant. It won’t work with Finnish anyways, so there’s just no reason to get excited about it.
Third, no OIS. They literally said they went with software-stabilization in order to make the phone slimmer, not because of any actual technical reasons. After watching several videos and such the phones’ software-based stabilization in low-light situations leaves a lot to be desired. Low-light performance is important to me, so that’s a nail in the coffin.
Fourth, horrible price. It’s just a no-go from the get-go.
Now I’ll have to wait again for the next Google-phones before I can even consider ditching my aging G2, and I’m not happy about that at all.
In the meantime to soothe your pain, you can swap your G2 for a G4, maybe? I see that you can buy them for half the introduction price now!
No, I learned my lesson with G2 and I’m never touching anything with non-stock Android again.
That’s a little bitter. I’m happy with my Sony device.
Well. I had a G2 for 2 years. My new phone is a Nexus 5x. Fast, cheap and good fingerprint. When support of Google stops, I will certainly switch to cyanogenmod.
I raelly don’t understand about people buying a 700 dollar/euro high end phone. Why? Are they doing high end stuff with it? No, they are whatsapping (in Dutch it is a verb) or snapchat all day. One can do that with a medicore smartphone.
I highly doubt WhatsApp has 100% market share in the Netherlands. A very high percentage, yes, 100%? No.
Personal rant below:
And by the way, WhatsApp is in my humble opinion the shittiest of all the available chat clients. Even Facebook Messenger is better. Apple’s iMessage, Viber, Line, Kik, etc, all have more features, are better maintained, have better structured UI:s, and so on. WhatsApp is basically a glorified MMS extension tied to Facebook.
The fact that there’s still not a desktop client for WhatsApp doesn’t make it better. Sure, it has a web client, but it’s not the same thing (but it’s better than nothing I guess).
The amount of features added to iMessage for each update is quite astounding actually. WhatsApp still has no support for stickers, video calls, etc. Once people get hooked to all the new iMessage features, it’ll be harder to get them to use something as primitive as WhatsApp.
Quite difficult for anyone not using an iPhone to get hooked to.
You have to keep in mind that although in the US the iPhone might have around 40% share, the rest of the world looks much different, and [probably] nobody will buy an iPhone just for iMessage so you can’t just expect people to get hooked.
I’m Dutch here. I can confirm that WhatApp doesn’t have 100% marketshare. I have never used it and all Dutch people I communicate with are on Google Talk. This is likely due to Android being very popular here. (I never used Android myself either though.)
WhatsApp is in use on 92% of all smartphones in The Netherlands. So maybe not quite 100%, but effectively it might as well be.
Google Talk isn’t even a thing any more.
https://tweakers.net/nieuws/109689/whatsapp-staat-op-11-komma-2-milj…
The article literally states that men tend to use Hangouts and G+ which is effectively the same as Google Talk. That seems to be my experience as well. I don’t know what clients people exactly use, but I just chat with them on their Jabber addresses which end in gmail.com from my own gmail address. While interoperability has become more limited with the newer Google clients, everything still works as long as you use a gmail.com address in your Jabber client.
I wonder how many people in the Netherlands have a smartphone. Then it would be more easy to understand that 92%. In practice however, I see a notable increase among gmail users over the past years which I guess is caused by whatever Android has built in.
Im from the UK and there is a lot of iPhone use. Pretty much all my friends and family use iPhones and iPads. My Dad uses a Mac but has an old nokia phone.
Using iMessage i can send/receieve messages, photos and video. The group chat is also pretty useful.
Could you do these on other platforms, sure, whatsapp is really widespread as is facebook messager, however for me it’s convenient and easy way to stay in touch with everyone.
I love that whatever device i am using, iPhone/iPad or Mac all my messages are syncronised so i can continue the conversation no matter what device i use.
I remember the Google Engineer platform speech from 4 years ago and decided to stick with the Apple platform.
I’m still sad to see articles like this treating Apple and Samsung like the only premium devices, and now all of the sudden Pixel is the best thing ever.
There are just many other handset that evolved pretty fast and can surely be in the same premium category as well (Moto Z, LG V20, HTC 10) but they do not get the same treatment.
If they say so…
If I needed a new phone I’d buy the S7 without a doubt.
Pros for the Pixel:
– It should get new Android versions faster it will probably get three big updates instead of two.
Pros for the S7:
– Much bigger display in a smaller body. No soft. buttons.
– Expandable storage
– Wireless charging
– IP68 water resistance
– Software features that are actually useful (like SideSync)
– Cheaper!
I am not sure I like the world where the Samsung S7 is considered the “cheaper option”!
I’ll wait a year or more. If it can still match the battery life, and is still reliably getting every update, I’ll consider it. If Google then actually comes out with a second generation that’s comparable, I’ll believe they’re serious and will probably get one. I’ll be patient. At this point, Google have to earn my trust.
I live in a country where WhatsApp makes up the majority as well, but I still think it’s a junk app. Dug out my old Nexus 5 (the first one) just to use Whatsapp because I couldn’t bring myself to install it on my daily driver iPhone. Give me iMessage any day of the week.
As for the Pixel, I’ll pass.
Edited 2016-10-19 17:46 UTC
I don’t know anyone using it here in the US. Sounds like just one more messenger that nobody needs.