Timex
3133
I am absolutely on board with Google going back to making flagship phones.
I want a pixel, but I want it to be top of the line.
jsnell
3134
I just don’t see how a flagship Pixel is a good idea. They can’t possibly have enough volume for that custom SOC to make any economical sense, so it’s going to be garbage. And none of the on-device ML they are concentrating on is going to turn into any features I care about. Mid-tier performance for flagship prices, yay. (The YouTube video posted above is totally detached from reality.)
On the other hand, I will need to get a new phone around January, and given Android One is moribund an overpriced Pixel 6 might be the only viable option.
The Pixel 5a might still surprise us as a good mid-tier phone.
Could you explain this, I’m not sure I get the point? If it’s not economical, you’re worried Google will lose money, or overcharge, or abandon the system?
Soma
3137
I just got a Nokia X20 because my old Nokia 7+ has stopped getting security updates. Basically Nokia is the only company who sells low-midrange phones that ISN’T running on Chinese software one way or another (Oneplus, Mi, Oppo etc. are all out of the question in my book). Motorola is borderline but their software update policy is utter crap. You get at most 1 OS upgrade and that’s it. Nokia promised 3 years support.
I thought about Apple but at this point, when it is about a month from new iphone announcement? Yeah nah. And then there is the steep steep price compared with Android phones.
Omg you guys the Titan Pocket has gone into mass production and is on track to arrive next month! Can’t wait!
That’s what I am hoping. :)
jsnell
3140
Really just what I said: I think the SOC will be bad. It will be mid-range performance for high-end prices. Hyping up a massive performance boost or reduced power consumption is just a setup for a disappointment.
The economics of modern semiconductors are harsh. Design is incredibly expensive, and so is setting up the manufacturing. Google has basically no volume for this, they can’t afford to do large amounts of custom design like Apple. They’ll take some off-the-shelf ARM core + GPU, and slap some irrelevant ML cores on the side.
And even so, they’ll still be at a huge disadvantage compared to basically every other SOC maker due to amortizing the fixed costs against so few sold units. So I expect they’ll end up compromising on the die size to get keep the price manageable. Combined with them spending a bunch of their silicon budget on the ML crap, it’ll leave the CPU and GPU will be underpowered.
Now, there is an old adage that there’s no bad performance, only bad prices. But that’s exactly why I think that flagship pricing will be a problem.
Seems like Samsung would fit that bill too? I just don’t want anything to do with their UI.
Thanks for the tip on X20, I thought Nokia was out of the Android One game and hadn’t released anything since the 5.3 almost 18 months ago. But seems it was instead the Android One website being horribly out of date. Should have a few more options to consider when the time comes, then.
Thanks for that explanation
Timex
3142
Why can’t they afford this?
Google has, currently, over $135 billion in cash on hand that they can spend on whatever they want.
Soma
3143
Yeah, Samsung is a viable alternative. But you have to tolerate their ropey onscreen fingerprint sensor. Some of their lower end phone screen doesn’t even do 1080p.
The software I can imagine being on par with Nokia though: bad. Right out of the gate I have to uninstall a lot of Google bloatware on X20. Yes Google nowadays either forces bloatware on even Andriod One phones or paid Nokia to install them.
I have no clue, but I suspect it might be because there are far better ROIs on other investments than on a comparatively risky dive into SOC R&D. I don’t know how many Pixel phones they sell, but it can’t be anything close to Apple’s iPhone sales. No matter how much they put in, the chances of it making as much back as, say, putting that money into some other sector of their business seem slim. Just a speculation though.
Isn’t the entire point of this to leverage whatever they can from their server silicon into a mobile SoC though?
I’m no chipologist, but it’s certainly true that server chips prioritize power efficiency like mobile does. No doubt there are a TON of differences to work through, but as I understand it the Googz aren’t starting from zero here.
Could very well still suck. I’m absolutely prepared to buy a 4a or 5a or some Samsung on sale when this hits and the actual real-world testing comes out.
For my money the most likely scenario is that next year’s 6a equivalent with a v2 chipset is really the phone to get. Early adopting consumer tech, etc, etc.
jsnell
3146
They can and will invest vast amounts of money into something where it can have huge returns, but won’t just burn money for no reason. Neither a new phone SOC nor a new mobile CPU core seem like they fit that bill. Google knows how many phones they’ll sell, because they’ve been making and selling phones for more than a decade. It’s a known and small quantity, so they can’t paint a rosy picture of the hypothetical market size like with things like Waymo or Stadia. And it’s stagnant, so they can’t justify the investment by high growth like with Cloud.
Indeed, it’s about a 50x difference. Apple sold 200M iPhones in 2020, Google about 4M Pixels.
The in-house server ASICs we know they have aren’t very applicable:
- Ethernet NICs - Lanai
- Video-encoding accelerators - VCU
- Security modules - Titan
- ML accelerators - TPU
In particular, they don’t appear to have any custom server CPUs yet.
I’ll fully expect whatever ML bits and bobs this SOC has to be design in-house and to be best in class. Likewise for the security module. I also expect both of those to be basically invisible to me as a user. But maybe they’ll surprise me!
Hard to believe that we’re already talking about the 5a when I’m still using my 3a XL. I guess I have to start thinking about replacing it though, because security updates should be ending soon.
Yep! I notice the battery on my Pixel 3 doesn’t last as long anymore. Needs a mid-day charge now. So this year it is time for an upgrade.
Battery replacement might be easier and cheaper.
No @Chappers No!
The phone is dying and wants me to replace it soon. ;)
The trade-in options for the new Galaxy Fold are pretty good. I was able to purchase the 512GB version for $799 using my Note 20, a galaxy watch, and an old galaxy tablet as trade-ins. Added the new watch and new galaxy buds for a total around $1K.
This doesn’t mean that I’ll actually keep the phone, but it’s priced such that I will give it a shot.
Someday I hope to be in your income bracket, if that’s “fuck it, why not” territory ;)
