I just can't help but notice all phone cameras right now are incredibly close in quality, and the differences don't really matter anymore. The software experience has become the only important thing.
There's an easy explanation for it too. Pretty much every single high-end phone released in the last two years uses a Sony sensor. They completely dominate the smartphone sensor market right now.
Software is key and one of the selling point of Google made phones, like the Nexus 4, was the promise of a lightweight android installation with minimal apps. On my Nexus 4, this is no longer the case as you cannot remove Google's apps and they frequently require updates [1]. Add the fact that the really cool new Android features, e.g. Google Now, are poorly supported outside the US, and I'm not sure my next phone will be a Google phone.
[1] Current list of these unremovable apps on my Nexus 4: Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheets, Google Presentations, Cloud Print, E-mail, Google Now, Google Drive, Google Earth, Google Indic Keyboard, Google Keep, Google News & Weather, Google Play Books, Google Play Movies, Google Play Music, Google Play Games, Google Play News kiosk, Google street view, Google talkback, Google text to speech, Google+, Hangouts, Google Wifi connectivity, Youtube.
> On my Nexus 4, this is no longer the case as you cannot remove Google's apps and they frequently require updates
While I don't think you can properly "uninstall" Google+ and Hangouts, you can "disable" them, which makes them inaccessible. I don't think you get updates pushed for disabled apps, either.
They get removed, not soft-uninstall. Moreover, those apps (docs, spreadsheet etc) were not present initially, I had to install from play store. The fact that, Samsung/LG won't let you uninstall (only disable) their crap-wares is the main reason I stick to stock Android.
Can you uninstall Google Play Games, Google Play Movies & TV or Google Play Music? I have a Nexus 5X running Android 7.0, and it appears these can only be disabled, not uninstalled.
I don't really begrudge them for not allowing the store application to be removed. I can't imagine the number of customer headaches that would exist because of accidental uninstallation.
I'm kind of looking forward to and also kind of dreading doing the same thing (flashing Copperhead) on my 6P. I have traditionally just disabled all the Google apps from the stock ROM while retaining Google Play Services for the Play Store and push notifications. Not sure how easily I will adapt to not having either of those things on a truly Google-free phone.
I'll also be abandoning several paid apps that I've bought over the years that are only available on the Play Store. It's going to be hard extricating myself from that ecosystem.
I'm running a rooted phone at the moment but you're essentially reducing the security of the phone. I wish I didn't have to root my phone to get all the features I want (removing apps, backing up apps to somewhere I control, redirecting audio)
I'm a fellow rooter also concerned about device security. I think full disk encryption, with the unlock key encrypted with a passphrase not stored on the device gives me more than the security that was lost by rooting my phone. Even recovery can't touch the OS or my files without me feeding it the passphrase.
Nexus phones have never been about about an "lightweight Android installation or minimal apps" but no crappy heavy skins (TouchWiz) and no 3rd party or carrier apps.
Your point is still valid, but I think you can at least disable the built-in apps. This way the won't require updates and will not clutter your apps list. They still take up space on the internal storage though.
The Pixel phone also reserves a copy of the system partition, so you can update faster (all those 2 times per year that a big update happens), so double the bloat.
That is an amazing feature that benefits everyone, you really want your users to keep updated for security reasons and guess what happens once users can no longer update due to a lack of free space? Apple ran into this because they insisted on selling 16GB models well past the time that was not enough space. I applaud Google for making the hard choice of less free space, but more timely updates.
Android correctly gets a lot of flack for having a fragmented user base which makes it a security and developing nightmare, if this feature were to become standard it would help everyone.
It should also be noted that they are giving away unlimited cloud storage for photos and videos which makes leaving some free space for updates a lot less painful. You probably won't fill your phone with app binaries, it's the photos and videos that take up lots of space.
It's not just about saved minutes. It's also a much safer update mechanism, and it's what is used by a lot of enterprise level network equipment. It allows easy rollback if there's any sort of problem. So it's not just quicker updates, it's quicker, safer updates.
Yeah, so instead of testing their updates, user still has less space JUST IN CASE. Sorry, not buying this. If the phone had expandable storage, then yeah maybe, but this is the 16GB story all over again (woops, 11GB actually and less after the Play apps updates).
> Yeah, so instead of testing their updates, user still has less space JUST IN CASE.
That seems a little short sighted. You seem to assume the only way an update can fail is in because of a software bug, and it's just a matter of not enough testing. If the phone loses power for some reason, or one of the hardware components is misbehaving, I would rather it not brick my phone. This is the industry standard, because shit happens, and CYA is a good thing.
> Sorry, not buying this. If the phone had expandable storage, then yeah maybe, but this is the 16GB story all over again (woops, 11GB actually and less after the Play apps updates).
Buying what? I'm not selling you anything. Is there somewhere I tried to convince you it was ultimately the best solution? I simply explained it had an additional (likely primary) purpose that you were not accounting for.
Security patches prior to N also required recompiling all apps, which takes more than "a couple minutes" for nearly everyone. This, along with not being able to adequately control when & how updates are downloaded & installed, has always been a major pain point. Imho, the new method is a huge improvement in both user friendliness and stability/safety.
Not only that, nearly all of them use the IMX377 :)
That said, there is TREMENDOUS variance in image quality, even if you're using the same sensor. The ISP and color tuning process is extraordinarily complex and severely subjective; the noise filtering and encoding processes are incredibly difficult as well.
And then there is Autofocus; HDR blending; when to do HDR at all; video stabilization; and so on and so on.
You can fuck up good sensor data in post-processing. I find the iPhone 6 and iPhone SE cameras to have too much noise reduction (or maybe JPEG compression) applied. Even in daylight, the images are very soft.
I'm not expecting D810 quality, but I do find it suspect when artifacts appear in blue skies. There is plenty of light, there shouldn't be any noise. Then again, there are a lot of pixels packed into a very small space.
With a 6s or SE or higher you can shoot DNG as well and compare to what Apple spits out of their image processor. I played around in Lightroom for a little bit and the differences were definitely there.
Lightroom Mobile is my current weapon of choice for this, also provides a basic processing interface + sync with Adobe CC so you can grab them from your desktop. There's plenty of others out there, but since I already have a CC subscription I just went with it (as it does require you have at minimum Lightroom CC).
I can't agree with all phones being close in quality at all. Even some high level flagship devices have notably deficient cameras compared to the top of the list. Once you get into the sub $300 Android range, you can get wildly different results. Even the Nexus range had common camera complaints through 6.
Based on what we're seeing here, there might be a viable competitor to the iPhone in this space, but that hasn't really been the case until now.
> Based on what we're seeing here, there might be a viable competitor to the iPhone in this space, but that hasn't really been the case until now.
Let's stop perpetuating this falsehood. Agreed that iPhones produce great results. But as you can see from the previous and current DxOMark results, there have been several cameras that had better image quality than the iPhone. High end Samsung and Sony cameras have been consistently good for a while.
I've owned a couple of those; when I say "this space" I mean top-of-the-line smartphones with great cameras. Those Samsung & Sony phones fulfilled only one of those parameters.
I can't speak to the Sony phones, but for at least a couple of generations (Galaxy S6, S7, Note 5, Note 7, etc.), Samsung phones have been right there with the iPhone in terms of camera quality. The S6 beat the iPhone 6S+ by about the same DxOMark margin as the Pixel is beating the iPhone 7.
Looking at any sort of comparative review, you'll find that on some shots the Samsung produces better results; on others, an iPhone looks better. Each phone may perform a little differently in different situations -- low light, high contrast, whatever. But taken as a whole, at least some Android flagships' cameras have been as good as the iPhone's for a couple of years now.
Nexus phones have been noticeably worse, but they've also tended to cost 60% as much, so it's not exactly an easy comparison to make.
"Nonsense", to the other responses to your question, the 5X camera (along with the 6P) is outstanding! I consistently "out-shoot" friends with the iPhone in side by side photo situations. This usually involves low light so I can't speak to other scenarios. My 5x camera is one the reasons I love the phone, among quite a few others.
I own a 5x. The camera will be the primary reason I upgrade before I really need to. Its mostly decent but occasionally bad: Out of focus (or incorrect focal point), extremely poor in low light, occasionally crashes (not doing anything fancy here). I think the phone overall is good, and I can't imagine using non-vanilla android. But prior to the Pixel announcement (and after owning this and last gen's Nexus) I'd started considering giving the iPhone a try based solely on the camera.
I'm not sure about that. DxO rates Sony's very highly, and they're by far the most objective of all the camera ratings.
Sony gets a lot of hate online from people comparing full-resolution pictures at 100%. Sony has been using 23MP/25MP sensors in their own phones for a while, but in auto mode images are supersampled to 8MP. In manual mode you can use the full resolution. People always compare the full 25MP pictures at 100% to full 12MP pictures from other devices at 100%. And at that point, they will indeed look a bit less good and less detailed. At Sony's default 8MP things actually do look great. And their camera apps are pretty good too.
For me (the owner of both a Z3C and Z5C) the photos don't even come close to the quality of an iPhone. I don't have any objective measure for that, just my own experience - I will always use an iPhone if I can.
Perhaps just as importantly, it takes at least four seconds for the camera app to activate and be ready to take a photo. Simply put, the software is awful.
I used to have a Sony Xperia Z3C and I feel like the photos were acceptable for me. The bigger issue to me was that the cameras were significantly slower than the iPhone camera. I suppose this is only an issue depending on what you're taking but I mainly only take pictures of my cats who never stay in one position for long.
I have to chime in to backup the others here that despite my absolute love affair with the Z3 compact (I had one stolen after a year and bought another immediately to replace it cause I loved the battery life and form factor so much), the camera really was a big letdown. My second Z3 compact finally broke and due to the fact that the current generation of Android devices lacks a sub 5-inch phone with as good of battery life as the Z3 compact had (I'm purposefully ignoring some great Chinese phones cause they lack licensing to be able to run on 4G/LTE in the USA), I ended up switching to iPhone 5 SE and entering iOS for the first time.
So yeah Sony, you used to have shit cameras but amazing battery life, but now the battery life is trending downwards, great job.
And yes everyone, if you look at just the hardware the Sony phone's cameras should be great, but the software and processing has always been so shitty that the pictures you get have been awful despite the great components.
If that's true, curious if sony ever chooses to, or is forced to ("forced" due to a disruption to their supply chain, I mean) raise prices on that component, that would pretty much raise the price for everyone's phones. (Or at least everyone who relies on that component.) In biology, to fend off this type of dependency, i think they call that genetic diversity; I'm sure there's a name for the same in supply chain management.
Fujifilm and Canon still make their own sensors. Fuji's seem pretty good. Canon can't compete, opting to sell DSLRs to people already locked into their system.
This is not true. Fuji's X-Trans sensors are just Sony sensors with a X-Trans filter instead of a Bayer filter. The latest Canon sensors (5D mkIV) lose to the Sony sensors at base ISO but pull ahead at higher ISOs.
There are a few other manufacturers, but Sony has pretty much cornered the market. Much in the same way Intel has when it comes to CPUs.
I know Aptina[1] has made sensors used in smartphones in the past. And was also the initial manufacturer for sensors used by Nikon in their 1 series mirrorless cameras.
Toshiba has manufactured some in the past, but sold their image sensor business to Sony[2] last year.
What's nice from a photographers view: The Lumia 950 offers RAW image files (DNG, 16 MP). That's what I want to get. But I can understand, that a normal user wants to get automatically optimised pictures (even if a tool like Lightroom can do the job a lot better).
I have the Lumia 929 and it offers both jpg and raw at the same time. That means I get the best of both worlds. It also does a second or so of video before the pic is taken, which is pretty cool.
That's a very simplistic view, IMO. The sensor is just one part of the camera. The lens assembly and the image processor play an equally important role (or even better roles) to get a good picture in the end. Even the type of flash makes a big difference. This is why Apple's cameras have had good quality despite using lower megapixel sensors compared to the competition.
I have no doubt about quality of camera. I somehow can not shake off this feeling, that despite top of the line components and Google software, the iPhone comparable pricing will limit its market to very small size.
The only successful hardware by Google is chromecast which is very cheap to buy. So ~$650 price of phone despite having best camera does not seem attractive enough. It does not have cutting edge custom components like e.g. TPU etc which I wonder would make its price lot more palatable.
Yeah, I think you're right, I still see Nexus 5s around every day and why did it do so well? Because it was priced at $200 less than otherwise comparable flagship devices from Apple, Samsung and HTC.
Heck, look at the OnePlus 3 right now, it has more battery than a Pixel, an 820 instead of an 821, but also 2 GB more RAM than the Pixel. Pretty close specs overall, but one device costs $250 USD less. Unless the only thing you care about is camera quality, you really have to consider if that Pixel will be $250 more worth of phone than the OP3. Is that 820->821 upgrade going to make a difference in your daily usage?
I think the answer is probably not, and I think that holds true for other flagship devices. Never will I pay $650 when I can get a roughly comparable phone for $400 or less.
You're forgetting some people (like me) don't put price as the top factor. The OP3 is too big, I hate large phones. I also have this borderline allergic reaction to third-party skins after dealing with years and years of Samsung. Then there's the final nail in the coffin - bugs. I used to root and then roll cyanogenmod and there were always these small little bugs that never quite got worked out. I had the same issue with my original OP1, and it appears the same sort of thing exists with the OP3.
If oneplus worked with Google to put vanilla android | a fully supported bug free version | onto the OP3 I'd consider it, but the form factor would still likely be a deal breaker.
Really? I'm running a OP1 right now, never noticed a problem... is there something I'm missing? Biggest issue I've had is probably shooting RAW pictures on non-stock ROMs was kind of complicated until someone made a flashable version of the OPPO camera app.
Well, for starters like 50%+ of the first round of phones to go out had touch screen issues that as far as I know never got fixed. After sending mine back 3 times, I gave up.
Yes? Using non-mod cyanogen OS gave me bootloader issues because I didn't update the official way.
I've run CM for a few years on it actually, decided to try Paranoid Android again recently when it looked like they started back up (I missed HOLO) but that now seems abandoned again and I really missed some features that turned out to be from CM, so I'm probably going back soon.
And yet, the OnePlus 3 sells a fraction of the amount that the Samsung Galaxy S7 sells.
It really seems like inexpensive high-end phones should sell like hotcakes, but in practice, it doesn't happen. It's arguably very possible that a $650 phone will sell better than a $450 phone even with the same components, because it'll get perceived as "high-end" in a way the inexpensive one wouldn't.
Probably because not many providers sell the phone, they'd rather rip you off with whatever overpriced contract they can. A few years ago many providers did have the N5 and it did do very well (anecdotally). I think if they could lock those deals down they'd do better, but I'm sure there's some conflicts of interest at play there.
I think they have to price them this high because neither Verizon nor HTC have their logos on the phone. I think that may have cost Google, but of course, I'm just guessing/trying to rationalize why they feel they need to charge so much.
This is even more pronounced in Europe, in Germany OnePlus 3 costs 360€ (~$400) less than the baseline Pixel. Basically you'll get two OnePlus devices (399€) for the price of one Pixel (759€).
> pricing will limit its market to very small size
I'll give Google the benefit of doubt here. I suspect they priced it high either because their production isn't fully in place to handle a massive surge.
OR they are signalling to the market that Google is not just a bunch of free services but also a premium brand like Apple, and they are willing to sacrifice revenue today to solidify their brand.
I think it's a bit of both. Android has its market established, so Google has more to gain through positioning their brand than driving a little extra revenue.
Edit: Now that I think about it undercutting Android partners might be their primary reason–they can risk upsetting Samsung, but prefer not to piss them off too much.
Another possible reason: you can price something higher with the intention of discounting it to drive sales later (especially after the early adopters pay full price). Generally, in consumer products at least, something for list $649 on sale for $499 will outsell something for list $499.
I'm not saying Google is doing this specifically, but I don't imagine they're as anti-discounting as Apple is.
May be more to it, if they position it at this level, there won't be much conflict of interest with their partners (Samsung, LG, et all), don't know, just a thought.
I'd be hesitant to buy anything from Google again.. I had a nexus 7 tablet and they killed it in an update. At least with an iPhone, it'll be supported for a few years.
As someone who bought a Nexus 6P with the tagline 'Always New' and the full belief that I'd be receiving Google's latest and greatest software as soon as it was ready, I'm also hesitant. Being locked out of the new launcher, assistant and various other niceties simply because a phone with 'similar but slightly higher specs and a new name' has been released feels like a kick in the teeth to a long-time Nexus fan (I've had the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 5, Nexus 10 and Nexus 6P). Until 2 days ago it was Google's flagship model; now I'll probably get the new functionality later than iOS users.
Similar Nexus-only owner here -- Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and now Nexus 6P. I skipped Nexus 6 (released between 5 and 6P) and I'm afraid I will also skip the initial Pixel line in favor of what's next.
Depending on what's next, I may have to switch to something else entirely.
Many clamored for a flagship-quality phone and we got it, but the sticker shock is real.
I've owned the 4, 5 and both 7s, but I returned the 5X after a week. It was a good phone but the first (?) batch out of the factory had issues with the touchscreen while charging and it was $700+ here - it wasn't a $700 phone, IMO. Is the Pixel a $1200 phone? I'm not sure, but I've switched to a Moto X Style for $520 and it's quite good.
Unfortunately, I'll have to flash CM soon due to Lenovo deciding to leave the phone on a May 2016 security patch. I'm missing the Nexus updates, but Google's hardware and pricing is leaving a lot to be desired.
First tablet I owned was a HP touchpad, got burned there so decided to go with a safer choice, a year later I bought the Surface RT, what a mistake.
I then had a Nexus 7 that after an update wouldn't turn on. I tried many things until finding on some random forum from another update that you had to hold the power button will holding the volume buttons and then insert the USB charger to start it....
I just Google Hanged-out (Hungout?) with my mother on the N7 I bought for her a few Christmas' ago and it worked just fine (AFAIK there has been no firmware releases or upgrades that 'brick'ed it - but try this https://www.reddit.com/r/Nexus7/comments/2egszj/2012_is_it_d... ). I'd be curious to know what version upgrade bricked you though.
My Nexus 4 is still my favorite form-factor/experience out-of-the-box for my "I just need quick access to my email and sometimes a camera-phone/video" purposes. It was exactly what I wanted in a phone - $200 - no contract, minimalist, no junkware, hackable out of the box, large enough to one-hand for my average male 5'10 hands, decent battery life.
Granted I actively try to stay away from technology when I'm not working - i.e. I mostly use it as an equivalent for a doctors' pager in case anything catastrophic happens. It's mostly used for GPS (which is pretty phenomenal), to listen to music, and track my speeds/path when I run, etc) so I'm certainly not the power-user who needs 16gb of RAM to support 100 active Safari tabs.
When this breaks, I'm going to upgrade just out of necessity at some point at which point, assuming this isn't cluttered with junkware it's one of the few phones I'm entertaining (since there's no real viable 'open' phone on the market right now, as far as I can tell). The alternatives I'm considering is going for one of those Asian vendors (Lenovo, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Huawei). My Euro and Asian friends say they're all are putting out quality (e.g. Samsung level) stuff with no contract lock-in .
FWIW I felt similarly about my Nexus 4 and was upset when it took a bath. I replaced it with a Nexus 5 and while I initially thought it might be too big, I very quickly got used to the additional size. After two years of use I like it more than the N4 in almost every way. Would a bit more storage or a slightly better camera be nice? Sure, but I almost can't imagine a feature that a new phone could add which would compel me to shell out money for it. My N5 is awesome and I hope it lasts another 2 years.
It wasn't bricked, it was just so slow that it couldn't get past the lock screen. Lots of people complained about it on the support forums, and you could get it to work better for a few hours if you got into the settings and cleared the cache, but it wasn't worth it at that point. There was talk of a fix in an update, but I never saw one. So no, it's not like an update burned up the charging circuit or something, it just made the device unusable.
Android OEM's need to start standardizing bootloader and driver support. Phones are a mature product, and anything I buy I expect to be able to upgrade for a good while longer than 2 years. If it's too much work for component manufacturers to maintain the updates, they need to take it out of their hands.
"Supported" -- I'm not sure if you've ever tried to use a last-gen iPhone device with the latest iOS release, but, every device I've ever owned was sketchy at best after the 1st hardware release, and completely unusable as of the 2nd. In my experience, it didn't matter if I upgraded to the S or full version model, this problem happened from 3->4, 4->5, and 5->6. I expect my wife, who is still an Apple user, to be asking me for the iPhone 7 before the year end because her phone is "a slow piece of shit".
That's simply not true. My daughter currently uses my old iPhone 5, with the latest iOS 10, and the phone works just fine (with changed battery).
As a comparison, my younger daughter inherited my old Nexus 4 (bought couple of months before I got company-issued iPhone 5), the phone introduced more or less in the same time as iPhone 5, and not only the hardware is failing (the top of the screen doesn't respond anymore), Google stopped supporting the phone after a year and some.
I have the same to say even for the iPhone 5, which I'd been using for several years and was recently a delight to use with iOS10.
I actually just bought myself an iPhone 5s to replace it because the iPhone 5's battery life finally became unusably short after many years, but I didn't want a big phone to replace it. My 5s is also performing very well with iOS10.
My 5s is a second-hand refurb, markedly cheaper than the SE, which I was reluctant to buy after several of my acquaintances complained of the device expiring days after purchase.
My comparably old Android phone won't even allow a software update and is still on Android 4. My partner prefers Android and has a Moto G (and has a tendency to drop phones hence why I suggested something cheap to replace) and it also won't update to the latest Android version.
So while the Pixel might be the shiniest, I would be reluctant to invest in something which will not have the effective lifespan of an iPhone.
I really wish Google would make a great Android phone so I could have better integration with my Chromebook and G-Suite. Android phones can be used to unlock Chromebooks in lieu of password entry, which would be a cool feature. I use G-Suite for my business so it would be better for that too. I've never owned a Mac computer and I've little loyalty to any company. The iPhone 5s was simply the apex in terms of phone-to-pocket-size/toughness/tactility/features (for me personally).
> the SE, which I was reluctant to buy after several of my acquaintances complained of the device expiring days after purchase
As a counter point, myself and 2 friends all have the SE, and we all love it. iPhone 5 form factor, better battery life and equal performance to the iPhone 6s made it the winning choice for all 3 of us.
Of course it works well for many buyers. In my mind, it was still £300 more than I paid for my 5s and I had no further demands of the iPhone 5 besides a longer passcode.
I also own a 5S. While I can't say it's as fast as the day I bought it (I got it second-hand with iOS 9 loaded), it's certainly faster than the 3GS it replaced! The 3GS in turn, was a replacement for my Motorola Milestone (Droid in the US) which, despite being released the same year, received a grand total of one major OS updates and then was dropped.
iPhone 5 for my wife here. Working alright too. Older hardware used to be really crippled by each new iOS release. (we had iPhone 1 and iPhone4 before), no such problem nowadays.
Yeah, you get about the same with the Nexus devices, at least I've got friends still running the N5 who've went from 4->5->6 without issue. I've done about the same on my OnePlus One (5 was out when I got it but it shipped with 4) so it's not unheard of on the Android side at least.
I've been really surprised how well my iPhone 4S held up. It's a losing battle against software that expects ever more resources, but it still does the things.
Even if relatively small in market size compared to current Android install base I think Google would like to grab some of Apple's profit from the high end. While Apple has around 17% of unit sales in smartphones they earn something like 91% of the profit [1]. I'm sure other competitors will be aiming to get some of that profit for themselves or at least make life hard for Apple by using competition to drive down Apple's margins.
> the iPhone comparable pricing will limit its market to very small size
Why do you think that is? There are around 3x as many Android handsets being sold as iOS handsets, right? The market for high-end Android phones should be as big as the market for Apple phones. I understand there are more Android manufacturers, but that still leaves a pretty big market for Google to sell into.
That's not true. Apple owns the high end market almost entirely, so it's arguable that Android just isn't able to compete with Apple at that point. So the high price point will just keep the phone from selling at all.
One of the things not mentioned in the article is the support from Google photos. Storage space is now unlimited, and files are uploaded full res, which they didn't do before. If you take a lot of pictures, this makes life so easy. Plus the image search- you can find that picture of a dog catching a frisbee you took 6 months ago just by asking. Everyone seems to be burnt out on novel new technology, but this is amazing to me.
The camera's performance is impressive, but to me Google Photos is the biggest differentiator.
> One of the things not mentioned in the article is the support from Google photos. Storage space is now unlimited, and files are uploaded full res
I hadn't heard about this until now; is this for all Android users, or just Pixel users? If the latter, do you lose the unlimited space once you move off a Pixel?
No, free, unlimited full-res is exclusive to Pixel, otherwise full-res photos count against the online storage quota (I think there's 15GB free, and additional storage available for a monthly fee.)
Will this phone be discontinued and unsupported after two years like other Google phones though? I've owned a Nexus 4, a Nexus 5 and now a 5X, I think they're very good phones, but the fact that the Nexus 5 I bought 2 years ago won't ever see the light of Nougat is extremely annoying. I wish Google at least pretended to care about their older lines of phones (which are not cheap phones either, the Nexus 5 cost me about 500 euros when I bought it).
Thanks for this! At least they are being more transparent than in the past.
By my calculations, Apple is doubling this (based on iPhone 5, and OS updates, not security updates). I think in $/month for disposable hardware like phones.
Plus, Apple's model is to charge for software development, while Google subsidizes it with ads/surveillance/platform lock-in. I'm happy to (and did, with the iPhone 6) pay 2x to opt-out of the OS-level surveillance.
So, for me, this phone is 4x more expensive than an iPhone. That takes real "courage". Of course, most people don't think like me, so they'll probably sell lots of these.
Well the Nexus 4 started at $299 at launch, and the Nexus 5 and 5X at $349, so that changes things a bit.
I do think that Google's support lifetime of these phones is atrocious, my comment was in reference to the "At least they are being more transparent than in the past."
If they want me back as a customer, they need to add a "turn off all telemetry" button (just like Microsoft needs one), and they'd need to double the support lifetime or half the price of this phone to be inline with Apple.
I've noticed Apple tended to command a ~2x price premium on Android, even when their phones had shorter support periods. I personally am willing to pay that premium for privacy/security, but not the camera or apps / os features, which are largely comparable between the two platforms.
I would rather worry about the non-replaceable battery and the missing microSD card slot.
You can upgrade a 3.5 year old Galaxy S4 to over 128 GB storage (~35 € for a microSD card) and a fresh battery (~10 € for a new one). And with custom ROMs you can also run Nougat (I'm personally still running Marshmallow on mine though).
Luckily I'm from Germany and we have the international version (with a Qualcomm SoC).
But it's true that you have to be careful which phone you buy if you want to run a custom ROM. For example there are several "Value Editions" of Samsung's phones which can't be rooted.
Yes, that's the one. Unfortunately around the time of the introduction of the Android 5 update on that handset, they also locked down the bootloader. As far as I'm aware (and a quick search of the XDA forums), it seems that it will probably never be unlocked. Such a shame because it is a great phone being left behind.
It worries me that the unlocking of many phones relies on manufacturer websites that might not be there one day. Hell, even the Xiaomi Mi4c required unlocking with "identity verification" via SMS.
People are still impressed with the hardware of my 10 month old Lumia 950xl. Removable battery, microSD card slot, physical camera button and top notch camera.
They are so useful, my next phone will have all these features too.
The Nexus 5 was released October 31, 2013, making it almost three years old (at least it's three generations old - after 5 came 6, then 5x and 6p - now the Pixel its de facto successor).
What is more relevant than when it was released is when it was last sold as a new device through official channels. If a phone is for sale though a legitimate distributor, then I think it's reasonable to expect security updates for 3 years after that point.
I know this is slightly OT on this topic as it's about cameras but...
I'm genuinely not sure what to do now. My Nexus 6 has a crack in its screen, which is expensive to replace, so I was looking at a new phone. Google were supposed (dammit), supposed to release a new phone with cutting edge software, almost-flagship hardware and at a mid-market price. Instead they've gone straight for the high end of the market, and they've made the screens smaller, and not included wireless charging, something I've grown to like a lot.
So now my choices seem to be a galaxy note 7 (I prefer vanilla android), or... That's about it for phones with a good size, good res display that support QI. Without QI there's the P9 Plus and Oneplus 3, but both have comparatively low res screens. The moto Z has no QI, the LG V20 hasn't surfaced yet... Is there another phablet that can tick all the boxes?
I'm in the same boat as you with my Nexus 5. I was excited for the Pixel but at $1,000 CAD for the 32GB that does nothing particularly special I cancelled my pre-order.
What my current plan of action is to find something of last-gen and ride it out for another year. I'm okay spending $300-$400 on something that I'll probably flash a custom ROM into and recycle in a year's time when another round of flagships are announced. Unless there's some segment of the market that's eating the Pixel up the general reception I've been seeing hopefully clues Google into what people were looking for (Nexus iteration)
I've been hanging onto a samsung s4 loaner waiting for the pixel reveal. at CDN$1200 for the flagship, I have to balk.
The oneplus 3 is less than half the price. I can have a very good phone for $520 and save the "leftover" money to purchase the OP5 in 2018 which will probably trump the XL.
I think Google's following this strategy to show they're just as valuable as apple from a mobile device perspective, but they lost me. With the mid-range high-quality chinese phones available i can't justify flagship prices anymore
I think we're the same person :) I too have a nexus 5 that I'd been hoping to upgrade to a pixel, but after the released price yesterday I simply can't justify it. I ended up ordering a 32g Nexus 5x yesterday from newegg for $280 USD.
I am in the same boat (of waiting to update my Nexus 5, which I love dearly). What do you think of Moto Z Play---unlocked version coming at the end of the month? Inexpensive, a giant battery, USBC, quick charge, and reasonable price.
From the presentation and all the hands-on so far, the Pixel is definitely a high-end phone (both in prices, and specs).
And from the reviews the camera sounds pretty awesome (good quality, fast, good low-light performance).
For wireless charging, my understanding was the issue is the metal body. (I used to use Qi wireless charging on my Nexus 5 - but to be honest, it was always flakey and sensitive to placement - and super slow). With the super-fast USB PD charging (7 hours of use time in 15 minutes), I'd honestly prefer that over slow wireless charging:
There internal and case add-ons that add Qi charging to various handsets.
How bad is the screen crack? I had a Samsung S3, which I found a very disappointing handset from the start, and then I managed to crack its screen after two months in a two-foot drop. I hung onto it for 22 more months because I had a grudge going on (it was at least a good opportunity anti-advertise Samsung). After a while I hardly noticed the crack and it didn't affect operation. So maybe you could live with it for some months.
I've been relatively happy with the Note 4 that replaced it, though the headphone jack recently died so I've unintentionally become bluetooth-only.
Oh, and internal addons are only useful where the case can come off!
I have been on the lookout for addons. The only ones I've seen so far for most models have been quite ugly external stickers that plug in to the usb port.
I was hoping the MotoZ would have a 'mod' that provided it, but the only mod they sell that provides wireless charging is also a massive backup battery and adds significant weight and thickness.
It's a single line, top to bottom at a slight angle to vertical, about two thirds of the way from left to right. I've lived with it since late June, waiting for the next Nexus. Doesn't seem to be getting worse!
I might hang on for another month or so, until a couple more potential replacements are released.
I was waiting for the Pixel but after the disappointing price, I just bought a OnePlus 3 yeterday for way cheap. Was also looking at the ZTE Axon 7, but the OnePlus 3 is thinner and lighter. Both are cheap with very similar specs.
dxomark has published their iphone 7 review, but the 7 plus camera review is still pending.
Still very looks like a very impressive camera. The biggest drawback I see from phone cameras now is shutter lag and just how long it takes to get the camera app ready to take pictures. I hope Google has this nailed now.
They mentioned shutter lag in the presentation, saying that they spent a lot of time minimizing it. They didn't give any concrete numbers or a demo though.
Shutter lag seems to be a common problem with Android phones. Is this a hardware or software issue, or what? I've seen it even on newer phones, like the Nexus 5x.
iOS has always tried to simulate zero shutter lag: the camera continuously captures full-resolution images into a ring buffer, and the app goes back in the frame buffer to find the image that corresponds to when you pressed the shutter.
Zero shutter lag is what I love about the iPhone. Compared to my previous Xperia Z5, the pictures on the iPhone are not better (rather worse at bad light conditions), but I never have to wait to take one. The time it can take the Z5 to focus and finally take a picture is annoying.
Presumably it's quite cheap if you have enough RAM and hardware JPEG acceleration; the camera has to capture a string of images to display on the screen anyway.
I have been checking that site a few times per week last month to see if they finally got around reviewing the iPhone 7 Plus, but no cigar. It has been out for over a month now and if you like it or not it's still one of the most popular mobile phone cameras in the world and definitely an upgrade compared to the regular iPhone 7 camera.
And then you see a slide where Google uses the word iPhone 5 times to tell the world why their iPhone is well worth the iPhone price, lacking a score for the iPhone 7 Plus, and the reason for the delay suddenly becomes clear.
DoXMark is probably the only website that has a proper methodology for reviewing mobile phone cameras.
They are consistent, very indepth, have objective scoring metrics and haven't shown any bias towards any brand or maker.
The iPhone 7 plus isn't an easy phone to evaluate because it has dual cameras, reviews of other phones with dual cameras also tended to lag and those were simpler where the 2 cameras were identical and were used to speed up or add additional digital zoom whilst the iPhone 7P uses 2 different cameras.
The iPhone 7 review was up 20 days after it was announced, and effectively about 9-10 days after it has became available in Europe.
It's pretty laughable that pretty much the only objective source out there and the only one that has bothered to take a scientific approach to evaluating the quality of cameras for mobile phones is accused of bias and being a paid lip service just because their current methodology is not compatible with the iPhone 7 Plus not to mention considering that iOS 10 also lacks support for certain modes for the 7P, and they want to actually give it a proper review, which means put it in cases where both cameras can be measured objectively.
I am not saying any of your arguments doesn't hold up and the iOS 10.1 upgrade of course also crossed my mind. But you have to understand that Google got early access to it's review results, permissions to use them in their keynote and to also use competitors results.
This is not free, even if only they received services or free hardware for it in return. Once you start doing that there's no return.
Because they could have reviewed the iPhone 7 Plus using the iOS 10.1 betas. And what about the final number? Isn't the difference between 88, 89 or 90 also up to the personal opinion of the reviewer? How are bokeh foto's and true zoom weighed? If it is 88 instead of 89, how much did the Google bribe influence it? It's still a possible deviation within their rigid testing methodology depending on the reviewer's opinion.
I see a lot of websites that are clearly sponsored in one way or another. Samsung does it, Lenovo does it. I think Samsung and Lenovo products aren't bad but I know they spend a lot of money on massaging online review sources.
Dxomark didn't give me that "might be sponsored in a way" feeling, now I just don't know.
The company's business model is doing testing and publishing (and selling results) the results (as well as selling actual cameras for the iPhone and image processing software).
Their methodology and scoring algorithms are open.
They have evaluated 1000's of cameras, lenses and sensors, and all of a sudden they are biased because Apple doesn't ship pre-production units to get reviewed?
This is beyond pathetic, I love my iPhone but I never considered it to be the king of anything, even as far as the camera quality goes, it was overall one of the best rounded camera's but for quite a long time it wasn't the king.
The iPhone 3/3GS had pretty shitty camera's, like god damn awful, things have started to pick up with the 4 and 5 and the 5 was probably the only period where the iPhone might have been more or less uncontested, but since the 6 there were phones that were getting very close and even beating the iOS devices at certain aspects of the camera, and with this generation things are pretty much dead even as far high end devices go.
P.S.
It's quite likely that their full reports are available to purchase indirectly, this is how many of these niche firms work, this doesn't mean that there is bias, it's just the nature of these things these reviews are extremely expensive.
> because Apple doesn't ship pre-production units to get reviewed
You're guessing just as much as me now. The only fact is that Google definitely had to pay to get these results and that review exactly at the moment of their keynote.
And it was definitely convenient for their slides to not have to show a iPhone 7 Plus score in it. It wouldn't have looked so suspicious if they just were proud about their own score on itself.
That was a big selling point during the announcement of the iPhone 7+, so seems worth waiting for that feature to be ready before completing the review.
Why are all of the example photos so horribly downsized and compressed? The picture of the Eiffel Tower is only 920 × 690. That's laughable compared to the 12.3 megapixels it should be. If you're reviewing image quality, you should give the readers the original files captured by the camera.
There's no way readers can say anything definitive about Pixel's camera quality without real data.
As a hobbiest photographer, this measurebating/pixel peeping is very reminiscent of the MP wars in Digital Cameras and dSLRs.
Photos from mobile phones will be most often viewed on a service (FB, Instagram, Whatsapp) which will almost always do some sort of resizing and recompression which would render that +/- 5 spread between all the top cell phones meaningless.
To counter your point, consider the fact that 4K video looks better when downsampled to 1080p than video captured directly in 1080p: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIf9h2Gkm_U -- the mechanism is different for other cases (social media sharing of images, for example), but the principle is the same.
This doesn't decrease the value of the better camera. What if I print some of my photos later? What if I zoom in and then send that section on whatsapp?
I wish I could use a smartphone camera for everything, but none of them offer depth-of-field control, which makes them unsuitable for portraits. Their tiny pinhole lenses make it practically impossible. One can fake bokeh in software, but it's not the same.
The iPhone 7 Plus will offer depth-of-field soon after a software update. However, the effect is indeed largely achieved through software. Despite that, the results can be pretty astounding. Some examples:
Do people really like that aliased look? Every picture has very obvious aliasing. It's the first thing I noticed, within less than a second. And aliasing is an especially bad artifact because image processing algorithms assume band-limited data. There's no way to get something natural looking from those images.
It seems almost unbelievable to me that a camera supposedly focused on quality would do this, so I wonder if DXOMark, despite claiming to be "The reference for image quality", actually destroyed image quality with terrible downscaling. I know people like sharpness, but if you insist on pushing it this far, ringing is far less objectionable than aliasing.
People seem to like the aliasing, paying more to have the lowpass filter removed from their DSLR's sensors, despite the fact that there is no way to fix the aliasing in post-processing. "It won't happen to me," I guess is the attitude.
Reviewers that check for MTF and end it there are also problematic. There is more to photography than line pairs per millimeter.
A lot of the comments on the linked site, are disappointed (shall we say) at lack of night photographs, as they believe it is the low light conditions that the new iPhones are really quite impressive (so claiming the Pixel is #1 annoys them).
For the record, I've never owned an iPhone, and am very interested in seeing how the Pixel works out, but I just thought I'd mention the comments in case anyone had missed them..!
It's not always needed (or wanted) so in theory, the feature is triggered when software detects a situation where it is warranted. You wouldn't want any unnecessary image processing if lighting conditions don't demand it so it makes sense. But as with anything involving "automatic detection" I imagine there will be false positives or negatives.
Interested to see if there is still the option to toggle it on and off even if "auto" is the default.
The reviewer took several shots in sequence to demonstrate the random nature of the auto HDR.
I'm just pondering how it happens. The HDR flag not a decision the software makes at the instant of capture. While composing the shot, there is a liveview from the sensor plus the processing pipeline, including the HDR processing. Does the user not realize/perceive that HDR is enabled before pressing the shutter?
Images of such high resolution that the human retina can no longer resolve individual pixels. It's an Apple buzzword for High DPI. Back in the day Apple retina displays were way higher resolution than anything from their competitors. They even invested heavily in the manufacturing equipment themselves to push the technology forward, but nowadays screens with those sorts of resolutions are commodity.
It's one of those cases where Apple identifies a technological gap of a few years they can open up between them and the rest of the pack and then invests in stealing a march on everybody else. Eventually the others catch up, but meanwhile if you want the best in that category only Apple has it. Right now in screen tech it's wide colour gamut and 5K desktop displays.
Retina in this sense is an Apple marketing buzzword for high DPI anything. Back in the day they used to have higher DPI items, but today they still put 1080p displays on their 5.5" phones while most other flagships use 1440p in the same size display (and are thus much higher DPI).
You are right but I wonder if it is any improvement at this point. Writing this on a iPhone 6s Plus and I can't possibly see individual pixels. What is the benefit of going higher?
This is a niche answer, but you can put them in a VR headset with lenses that spread out the screen over a much larger fraction of your visual field without looking too pixel-y.
Hold your 6S Plus up next to a Note 7 viewing the same photograph or high resolution video. If you don't see a large difference, head immediately to the optometrist.
What I mean is that getting the label of the "best" phone camera isn't easy. Samsung and Apple basically go back and forth with each release. Then Google comes along with this brand new phone that pips the just-released iPhone 7. Impressive is all.
They didn't test the iPhone 7 Plus yet. The camera there could be better.
And while it's of course great that they built such a good camera, it's the least of what people expect. Cameras seem to be the last domain where phones differentiate. Software is similar, speed is similar, shape and size anyway.
Apple has clearly lost its prior decisive lead in camera quality. I wonder how and why, and what apples comment on these results would be.
On paper, the google pixel should have inferior results, given its slower lens (f2.0 vs f1.8 on the iPhone and f1.7 on the s7). Yet they apparently are superior.
All modern high end smartphone cameras use the same sensors (Sony) with different lenses. Did google achieve this through better software? Or better hardware? Hardware seems unlikely given that both Samsung and Apple likely have much larger budgets and a longer knowledge history.
I just ordered an iPhone 7 plus because of the camera, and this is clearly making me question whether this was the right choice.
You can't make that claim, yet. Reviews are subjective and it's possible other reviewers may have different opinions on photo quality. Additionally, DXOMark still haven't reviewed the iPhone 7 plus.
In any case, 2x optical zoom and iOS 10.1's portrait mode make the iPhone 7 plus a far more versatile option.
When exactly was this decisive lead of the iPhone?
It definitely wasn't the iPhone 1, it had terrible camera even for its time but it also had the most handy camera, so it had the highest usage.
My memory of the time around the 3g/3gs is fuzzy, but I do remember carrying a point and click together with my 3gs.
4 or 4s was when apple claimed parity with point and click, and I remember a lot of buzz around that time.
Looking at the link we see contemporary phones with similar or higher scores from 5s and forward.
I think a lot of that decisive lead had more to do with what Apple was willing to spend time/money on and others weren't (rather than what was or wasn't possible for any major OEM to do). The combination of camera hardware improving across the board and continuing consumer focus on this as a selling point can only lead Google and others to start putting out better cameras if people are using that as a deciding factor in what phone they buy.
If we're going by the benchmark of this website, cheaper phones than iPhones that were released before the generation of the iPhone (meaning they should be worse) have better cameras (and especially so when taking cost into account). This applies to every generation. When was there a decisive lead in camera quality? Most Samsung Galaxy generations seem to consistently be rated higher.
The camera sensor seems to be the same one as the one they put last year in the Nexus 6p and 5x, but the new phones have gotten a major upgrade in image processing performance and in software. They also benefit from a new gyroscope that's used for seemingly very good video stabilization (not clear if it's used for still photos as well). Oh, and it has a faster shutter speed.
Hopefully next year they use an f/1.8 or wider aperture, too.
It's really not weird at all, pretty much all high end phones use sensors from Sony because they make the best sensors for this specific application. Some of the phones I know of that had the IMX377:
Nexus 5X
Nexus 6P
HTC One M10
It looks like the Pixel is using the IMX378 -- I'm not sure what differences there are between the IMX377 and IMX378.
It's also worth noting that there is a lot more that goes into a good camera system than the sensor
Apple, Samsung, HTC, LG, OnePlus and Sony all use sensors from the same manufacturer for their high-end models (and often just the same sensors). They're all Sony.
Well, like someone mentioned above, Sony is really dominating this market with its sensors. Which means it's not that strange to have a bunch of similar sized and prices phones use the same sensor.
They've been using the same SoC, memory, etc for years. To your point, it would be interesting to see a breakdown of how much the major Android phone manufacturers actually use unique hardware.
Mainly going by the camera specs: 12.3MP, f/2.0. And it "makes sense" for a phone maker to use the same sensor for two years in a row. At least I know Apple does that (sometimes even keeps it for 3 years, like it did with its first 8MP camera).
I think it would be weirder and less likely if they ordered a "next-gen" camera that had exactly 12.3MP resolution and f/2.0 lens, just as last year's camera. There's still a small chance I could be wrong, though, so just take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps Google will confirm it either way soon.
There's an easy explanation for it too. Pretty much every single high-end phone released in the last two years uses a Sony sensor. They completely dominate the smartphone sensor market right now.