Recent content by brettjrob

It's super obvious at this point that the Pixel team doesn't really prioritize hardware design. Behind the scenes, they're probably just tweaking leftover designs from other OEMs like they have for years. It was the same way with Nexus, but at least those were half the cost, so compromises were...

It's going to be a lot harder for OEMs to find excuses for cutting off updates after a year, or delivering them months late, when you consider this: https://developer.android.com/preview/devices/ Several cheap devices from the Asian market are now getting Android P betas the same day as Pixel...

Why 18:9? Same reason why there's about to be a notch on every device for 12-18 months, or why the latest fad in interior design is absolutely mandatory for suburban homes: because it's incredibly easy and cheap for companies to pass off inconsequential trends in consumer products as big...

Oh, I'm totally with you there. In fact, I trust MKBHD more than 98% of reviewers who are just employees of somewhere like The Verge. He's at least a real enthusiast who geeks out over this stuff in his spare time like us.

I will watch MKBHD reviews occasionally if I'm interested in the product, and I enjoy them for what they are. But I've never understood treating his word as the gospel; not now, not 4-5 years ago before money and fame "went to his head." He's just a kid who likes tech and has a talent for making...

This is pretty much what I assume, too. I said it in an iPhone thread recently, and I'll say it again: Apple is the only company with the balls to lead and make design choices that go against the prevailing market wisdom, which is a bad thing for everyone. The more they emphasize aesthetics at...

But, but... this year's LagWiz is so much lighter and snappier than the last 8 iterations! Samsung's software has really arrived. OEM skins are awesome and bring so many value-added features amidst their ugly, unintuitive, arbitrary, for-the-sake-of-it UI changes. Ditto for the host of...

"A ton more features without losing any performance" on shitty OEM skins seems like a pipe dream, based on most of Android's history. The other complaints I can agree with.

I was mainly interested in the price drop on 1st gens. Looks like they're going the Apple route of continuing to sell last year's models at only $100 off. Bleh.

I know some will see this as hyperbole, but it really does cut to the core of a major issue. When debating hardware design, specifically the transition from plastic/utilitarian to unibody/aesthetics-first across the Android market, Apple fans are likely to argue "hey, it turns out that's just...

There's definitely some truth to Apple pushing risky innovations that might be harder sells for a company with lots of similar competition. I will acknowledge that. The multi-touch philosophy of the original iPhone is a good example. At the same time, that's only the good side of the coin. The...

Battery life used to be a main selling point of the Note series, if not the selling point. Now it's middling because Samsung, like most of the major Android OEMs, decided they needed to pivot to form over function and race after Apple from behind, rather than keep playing a game they can win at...

This is all a fair assessment. What scares me is that the "tight vertical integration" model was always a minority niche (Mac) in the age of desktops and laptops. In the age of smartphones as the dominant personal device, it's becoming the dominant seller (iPhone), at least among middle- and...

Saw a display Pixel XL the other day with god awful burn-in... like, Stevie Wonder would've been appalled. I actually thought it was a software error at first when I swiped to the Google Now page. I guarantee this has driven away numerous would-be AMOLED phone customers in stores worldwide over...

While I still probably wouldn't buy an iPhone if they added it, I'm personally less put off by the lack of tweaking than by the lack of filesystem access. I guess that makes me old school these days, somehow, but I don't think I can ever get past it.