There's a reason that Samsung still leads the pack in sales, and it's not solely due to marketing: they keep the stuff people want. People want a headphone jack, they held onto the headphone jack. People want SD card slots, they keep SD card slots.
I held off on getting a GS8 about two months ago when Amazon had a great deal on them going because I was in the process of moving, and I wanted to wait to see what else was coming out. Even though the S8 is lagging behind on updates, it still seems to be the best option. The HTC 11, Pixel 2, and Essential phone have all disappointed.
Waiting on the reviews for how the Sony Xperia XZ1 compact fares, because I wouldn't mind a smaller phone.
I won't defend ditching the headphone jack, especially after Google ridiculed Apple for doing so. But as a very happy owner of the Pixel phone, I'd say the free, unlimited storage of photos and videos in original quality is a million times better than having a SD card slot.
Just today I transferred about 25GB of video and photos, and I probably wouldn't have bothered to record these videos if I had to transfer using SD card or cable. One might argue that's a sign that these videos aren't worth storing, but I'd say it shows the value of unlimited storage. In fact, if I had to choose between two near identical phones, with the only thing separating them being the unlimited Google Photos storage, then I'd gladly add an additional $250 to obtain that.
I think many of us experienced what it's like to make the jump from HD to FHD, or especially FHD to UHD on a similar sized screen. Once you make the jump, then you begin to wonder how you ever lived without it. For me, and I think for most Pixel owners, unlimited storage of high quality photos and 4k videos gives the exact same feeling. Having stock Android, best camera, slick design and great build quality just makes it that much sweeter, and I honestly do believe that marketing, brand loyalty and availability is the only reason the Pixel phone wasn't more successful than [insert any phone here] (I'd estimate 19 out of 20 who have asked about my phone never heard of Google Pixel, and had no idea Google even made any hardware products).
I'm aware, if it lasted forever then I'd gladly pay an additional $1000+.
But as you also know, after 2020 then they'll still offer unlimited high-quality photo/video storage, and I think those who don't abuse the offering by storing RAW files and such won't mind the minor quality difference, and those who do will likely want to upgrade their phone.
imho they are telling that a pixel buys you three years of unlimited storage, if you will buy a new one after three years a new unlimited storage period will follow, maybe for another three years.
> Just today I transferred about 25GB of video and photos, and I probably wouldn't have bothered to record these videos if I had to transfer using SD card or cable.
Now try to take pictures on holiday without cheap & available 4g or wifi. I prefer a few 256 GB microSD-cards. It takes just 10 seconds to swap it out and put in a fresh new one. You can transfer the contents into a Macbook at speedy 90 MB/s.
> Now try to take pictures on holiday
> I prefer a few 256 GB microSD-cards
My immediate reaction to this is, "holy crap!"
Using a 12MP camera, each image you take would roughly be 2-3MB. Assuming the higher end of 3MB (and only 230GB available per card), that's ~79,000 photos per card.
Since "a few" typically means three or more, let's assume three, that's ~240,000 photos. If it's a typical holiday/vacation, that's likely 2-3 weeks -- let's assume it's three, which comes out to be 21 days. Achieving ~11,000 photos per day during a holiday is quite a feat...
A second of 4k60 video is ~7MB, but we'll overestimate to 8MB (though I'm using really rough metrics here). At 690GB (230 x 3), that's ~86,000 seconds. Or, more familiarly, about 24 hours of 4k60 video (holy cannoli, Batman!). I guess that's about an hour's worth of video recording every day over a three-week period. Understandable, and more doable, though still really excessive.
And when you turn it into a more realistic scenario (~1 hour video/day - something I'd almost never do with my iPhone but often do with my Pixel), it's hard to imagine not having access to WiFi throughout the week. Even the hotels/apartments with really poor connection seem to have no trouble uploading the photos/videos throughout the night.
Actually, I'm lucky to work remotely, allowing me to travel around in Asia on a pretty much weekly basis. I'm currently in Thailand where they offer free, unlimited data (accessible pretty much anywhere) for only $9 for a month. I was also recently in Vietnam where the WiFi at all the hotels were crazy fast. A great thing about my national SIM card is also that in most western countries, I'm free to use it as much as I want with no extra charge. So far I haven't had any connection problems anywhere during my travels in Northern Europe, Asia and USA.
I've yet to encounter a situation where I ran out of storage (and I take thousands of pictures and a few videos whenever I visit some sightseeing place). Sometimes I even go 2-3 full battery charges (using powerbanks) where all the battery is spent on photos+chatting+uploading, and as long as I click 'free up device storage' under the Photos app then I'll never get maxed out.
Another great benefit of this is that I can easily use great phone covers like LifeProof without having to deal with removing and adding the cover (this is truly a pain in the ass when using the LifeProof cover - not sure if there are any other great and slick phone covers that makes it easier and convenient to take it off/on while also providing great protection for the phone). In any case, I can't imagine ending up in a situation with no wifi, no data, and the need to take more than 2k photos before obtaining access to decent internet, and I'd like to think that I have traveled a lot, especially in underdeveloped countries and cities.
Not sure what countries you're referring to, but I haven't had any issues throughout my travels, and when I visited Vietnam then I didn't even bother to buy data (I believe it only costed about $10 for unlimited data for 15 days) because the WiFi at the hotels was sufficient for me.
I also feel some of you really underestimate just how many photos/videos you can store with 15-20GB. Speaking of which, with my iPhone I was always struggling with storage because I wanted to keep some pics/videos on my phone, and I was often too lazy to transfer to my laptop, which would just cause storage issues there.. with the Pixel I've never had any trouble staying above 15GB out of the 32 (24 including system) GB available. In most cases you would likely run out of battery multiple times before you managed to capture 15-20GB worth of photos/videos throughout the day.
I also never worry that any of my photos/videos will get lost/corrupted thanks to Google Photos; this has always been a major issue for me when I relied on external hard-drives (I've probably lost hundreds of thousands of pictures throughout the last 15 years because a harddrive broke, or the pictures got corrupted for no apparent reason). It was also always a pain to deal with duplicates, to deal with identical image names (if I recall correctly then iPhone would have name clashes whenever you reached 9999 photos), etc. And relocating a specific picture/video meant that I had to look through thousands of photos in countless poorly named/organized folders (and always bring the hard-drive(s) with me).. With Google Photos I can just search the name of the place, or only search for videos, and locate what I'm looking for within a few seconds.
I have an S8 (plus) and I'd love to upgrade to the Pixel 2. I am so tired of Samsung trying to replace every piece of functionality with their own. I had to go find Google's "Android messaging" app in the Play store - just their standard SMS app - to replace the Samsung stock one because it kept opening URLs in "Samsung Internet", their version of the browser. The Samsung keyboard is awful, and I can't seem to find a decent replacement. And don't get me started on f'ing Bixby.
This is the only thing stopping me from buying a Samsung phone.
They've almost a completely different company from the original Samsung Galaxy days. If they could partner their build quality with a stock experience and optional downloads of their apps then I'd be completely sold.
I did - I really like it, except that every once in a while, for reasons I can't pinpoint but I assume are random, it will only let me type by hitting letters individually (no swiping). I re-enabled it today, so hopefully if that was a bug in the app it's been fixed, but we'll see.
It's not fixed, unfortunately. It still happens to me every now and then. But, when that happens, just keep swiping. It'll kick back in. It even registers all the letters you swipe, but it's so off-putting that I usually mess up the word and delete the gibberish I typed.
Ugh, glad it's not just me though. Incredible that at a place like Google something as crucial as a keyboard can suffer from such a severe bug, unpatched for who knows how long.
They did, they were called "Google Play Editions".[0]
No one bought them, because they were released at a time when people still paid subsidized phone prices and upgraded their phones every two years for $200. So when they were asked to pay $600 upfront, the vast majority had sticker shock.
> I don't understand why manufacturers simply don't offer a stock Android variant.
When the hardware is commoditized, manufacturers need to distinguish themselves by offering a unique software experience.
That's what they are all trying to do. Unfortunately, most of them aren't any good at it, and the UIs they come up with are usually worse than stock Android. But if they offered stock Android, they would have to compete on hardware alone, and they are just slapping commodity parts together like everyone else except Apple.
My android experience has been tarnished more by Google bugs than Samsung ones. Android 5 was a very buggy release, so much infrastructural change with little user benefit. IMHO Samsung should have skipped it entirely. I guess they bowed down to user and media pressure to always ship the latest android (although the media criticised them anyway for poor battery life, caused by Android 5).
Off the top of my head: Knox secure folder, better split screen options (app pairs), app suspension, power saving modes, file manager, better camera app, many more configuration options.
I want a removable battery, not an exploding one. (Still on my Note 3, with its battery swapped out after the stock one started giving me bad battery life, a friend is still on his Note 4.) And I make use of the IR Blaster just enough that I'd be annoyed not to have it anymore. Samsung doesn't keep stuff people want, they just follow trends like everyone else. I am looking forward to seeing how the "flexible phones/tablets" end up though since I've wanted that concept for a while, even if I have to give up some features for it...
> People want SD card slots, they keep SD card slots.
Wasn't really a fan of moving it to the SIM tray. Too easy to lose your SIM card that way. Then again, they did make it tougher to remove the SD card, since you need the tool/paperclip handy (as opposed to the easy-access removable battery cover)
I held off on getting a GS8 about two months ago when Amazon had a great deal on them going because I was in the process of moving, and I wanted to wait to see what else was coming out. Even though the S8 is lagging behind on updates, it still seems to be the best option. The HTC 11, Pixel 2, and Essential phone have all disappointed.
Waiting on the reviews for how the Sony Xperia XZ1 compact fares, because I wouldn't mind a smaller phone.