Bought a Pixel 2 phone and gave it 24 hours… I finally resorted to comparing it and my 3 year old iPhone 6 side-by-side to prove it is not slower than the iPhone 6.

It isn’t, but then apple crippled the iPhone 6 to sell more iPhone 8 and X’s.

One wonders about this. A big company like Google, releasing into the world, TV commercials and all, a phone that is so very underwhelming.

Maybe it is really really hard to make a good smart phone? I used to have trouble believing that anybody is really trying. Even the iPhones have so many easily fixable flaws… are these rich companies just too rich to try?

But now, after many man-months, I’m starting to believe the mythical man-month! Maybe it really is very hard to make a good phone that mostly works smoothly. Maybe it is hard to make a phone that doesn’t look discontinuous when scrolling or animating widgets. Maybe t is really hard to make a touchscreen keyboard that responds quickly(the pixel 2 keyboard is like 50-100ms too slow after every key imho) when I type too fast for the iphone the keys queue up like it would on a keyboard. When it gets around to it, every character is rendered correctly. By on the Pixel it doesn’t, keys are dropped when I type too fast.

Side-by-side comparison shows that pixel2 actually loads stuff off of the internet and splash them on screen faster than iPhone 6 with iOS 11. By seconds, but in iOS 10 it may be similar speeds.

But this is a 3 year old phone we’re comparing to.

Google lens, a special feature available only on the pixel 2 was no where to be seen. Google assistant (answering to okay google) is okay, the wake phrase takes too long. If I say “okay google, schedule an alarm at 9:30” it likely will miss the entire alarm request, but still wake up and waits for the request.

The camera is very jerky. I think the one problem is that the phone is fast but lacks a natural smoothness that iphone seem to have.

I don’t want to believe this is a collusion between smartphone companies to keep wringing their buyers for years and years. But I can’t escape that thought…

if there is a political reason for this? Perhaps these mobile hardware giants are colluding to stimulate Asian economy? I’m forced to buy a foreign phone due to their thorough incompetence?

Let’s see, google play music for podcast is not as feature full as apple podcast(which itself gives me a headache): it doesn’t play at any speed other than native speed. Doesn’t have nearly as many podcasts. Other podcast apps have features but als does not compare with Apple podcast in content.

There is not one thing I enjoyed about using pixel 2, not the squeeze, or the rear finger print scanner, not the ability to take spherical picture (panorama in 3D).

This phone makes me really sad.

I like google, even worked there briefly during its ipo. I guess I should detach myself emotionally and choose more rationally. Google search is great, along with doc, spreadsheet, YouTube, tensorflow, and of course map. Great keep those.

Pixel phone and chrome book?

I will pass for now.

Thank you Apple for putting in a big those 30-second freezes on my iPhone 6 several times a day–it made me try your horrible competition. Although this doesn’t make me believe that all the bugs in Apple’s system are easily avoidable or repairable–it doesn’t make me believe making smart phones that work is hard–it does prove that I still have to choose iPhone for a functional experience.