The latest phone reviews have been eyebrow raising.
The just announced pixel is the same phone as last year. I know it sounds like a usual complaint, but look at the actual specs, it literally is the same phone with differences so small that hey might have passed as regional variance.
As for the Samsung, the screen can darken when looked from the side for privacy. That’s pretty much it. Price increased though.
Coupled with the current iOS situation it seems like things are… rotting. Everything in decline.
> The latest phone reviews have been eyebrow raising.
It's eyebrow raising for me in other ways.
I have a Pixel 9a and it's been quite good with really solid battery life. It's barely 6 months old and I got it new straight from Google.
A few days ago I noticed the battery started to drain much faster than usual. I also noticed at the same time Google is pushing the 10a.
Nothing changed on my end. I barely use the phone in my day to day. In 10 hours today I sent 3 text messages with Whatsapp and lost 60% of my battery in that time frame. Up until a few days ago, 60% would last me 3 days.
I find it weirdly coincidental that the battery life went from amazing to worse than a 5 year old device I had prior to this just as they are releasing new phones. I've powered it down and given it a full discharge / charge too. It's still draining at an alarming rate.
Did it happen to them in the last few days? Did it self fix itself?
I wish there were better options for phones. It's absolutely crazy to me that a phone can be perfectly working one day and then it starts getting issues like this out of the blue.
It makes it completely undependable. All I want is a phone I can trust traveling with where I'm not going to wake up the next day and then the phone starts draining 3-4x faster than it normally does.
There hasn't even been a system update for almost 3 weeks, so it wasn't an update that busted things.
I had the conversation yesterday, unexplained battery drain as of then unresolved.
They mentioned people complaining on Reddit about battery drain since the last update, but I haven’t personally seen the threads so take it with a grain of salt.
I dont think Google is gimping your device to sell you new ones.
What you probably see is Google toggling on some new AI feature, which is now doing some initial on-device computation. It will usually calm down after a few days.
> I dont think Google is gimping your device to sell you new ones.
I'm not sure.
Last year they ruined my Pixel 4a by pushing that battery patch to everyone (even to end of life devices).
Their official repair center replaced the battery as per Google's guidelines and offer but during the battery swap they managed to physically break other parts of the phone over the course of multiple visits. Each visit broke a new component.
Google support didn't do anything in the end, eventually ignoring me. This went on for almost 6 months with an email chain over 100+ replies.
Eventually the repair center gave me enough credit towards a new phone (this 9a) but only after I mentioned I was going to small claims court since they left me with a device that didn't function in the way it used to function before I visited them.
I just noticed something called smart download in youtube: in the background download 1GB of videos I may or may not watch, enabled by default. That surely drains the battery. It might also affect longevity of the UFS storage.
Upcoming Apple display mounted to wall or robot arm is rumored to have audio interface and new OS without 3rd-party apps, only "AI".
Jony Ive at OpenAI is rumored to have smart speaker, pendant, pen and bone-conducting headset in the launch pipeline. Audio interfaces, no screens,
Meta is selling millions of smart glasses, with Apple and others following.
If the memory market was not distorted, home AI + agents + open models could have a bigger role via AMD Strix Halo. Instead, they will be reserved for those who can afford to spend five figures on 512GB or 1TB unified memory on Mac Studio Ultra devices.
> users [could] interact with Siri and future Apple devices without speaking out loud.. AI systems capable of interpreting facial expressions and subtle muscle movements to understand so-called “silent speech.”
Not sure. Some AI audio pendants are always on. The Apple device is rumored to adapt its interface to the user based on facial recognition. They could choose to start monitoring audio when it thinks a known human wants to interact with the device, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145201
Apple is developing a tabletop robot as the centerpiece of its artificial intelligence strategy, with plans to launch the device in 2027.. The robot resembles an iPad mounted on a movable limb that can swivel to follow users around a room..The company is also exploring other robotics concepts, including a mobile bot with wheels similar to Amazon’s Astro, and has discussed humanoid models..
The FaceID subsystem is already pulsing periodically (N seconds?) on iPhones, e.g. to check for human attention. Apple could also use WiFi 7 Sensing (which can fingerprint humans by heartbeat) to trigger on human presence and determine when a full facial recognition scan was needed.
I'm actually super fine with the hardware stagnating! Work on the yields, cut the prices, simplify and make it more robust, while keeping the spec the same. It gives developers something to focus on, like a console, so the software gets better over the life of the device, not worse.
Perhaps this could give room for physical design changes instead. I'm sick of phones that are just a slab of glass. I remember fun, weird, fashionable designs! Buttons and keyboards, phones felt like an individual choice, not just this boring black mirror. I'd take ten years of stagnation on hardware development in phones in exchange for ten years of exciting form factors with improving software. Let's face it: the spec is high enough for anything we need to be doing, by now. The software is the real problem, and there's room here for massive improvement.
OSes have been in decline for a long time. This memory price is just a blip, though. These supply and demand shocks happen periodically and always return to normal.
I think even going back a few generations, phones are improving at a much slower pace. You can only jam so many cameras onto a phone frame before users lose interest. A few years back there was a mad dash to add AR features to flagship phones so they could wow us with apps that never materialized. My last few upgrades have been almost imperceptible. Buyers just don't have a good reason to buy new phones every two years.
> Coupled with the current iOS situation it seems like things are… rotting. Everything in decline.
Just "commoditizing". Last years microwave ovens were basically the same as 2024's also, and no one cares. You still need them and people still buy them and use them as much as ever, but at a replacement rate and not because of fashion or innovation.
That is a good thing. It means the economy is doing what it's supposed to do and bringing maximal value to consumers so we can spend our resources more efficiently (on other fashion-driven junk in different market segments), making us richer.
It's only bad news if your business is selling "phones" and not innovative products more generally. Which, yeah, is pretty much AAPL's trap. But that's on them, not us. We're winning.
We are and have been for many years now. Check out the "free" phone tier at your mobile vendor of choice. Those are great devices!
They may not match your particular tastes, but people with inflexible taste are always the last-resort market for manufacturers of commoditized products. People still buy from Hermès even though Shein completely dwarfs them in revenue, etc... That's the way it will always be with Apple too.
you better not look at screen:body ratio since Pixel 6a, it decreased for few generations and only now it's finally back on par, that's not what I call evolution/progress
same with Amazfit Bip from like 2018, you can't buy small THIN <10mm watch with battery requiring charging once a month and always readable MIP display (the more sunlight the better)
The just announced pixel is the same phone as last year. I know it sounds like a usual complaint, but look at the actual specs, it literally is the same phone with differences so small that hey might have passed as regional variance.
As for the Samsung, the screen can darken when looked from the side for privacy. That’s pretty much it. Price increased though.
Coupled with the current iOS situation it seems like things are… rotting. Everything in decline.