TR Forums

Shobai wrote:

Now XDA et al. are finding that some Pixel 2 phones are failing to flash OTA updates and factory images... particularly the non-XL.

Oh joy!

So what's Google's excuse now, with the price argument being dead in the water already?

End User wrote:

As I said before, the only reason we have the iPhone 8 is because of iPhone X production limitations. The iPhone 8 is a legacy product. It is obsolete.

Just like about half the Mac lineup.

Motorola phones get no love! I love mine, bezel and all. The most reliable phone I have owned, plus a darned good phone radio that gets signal where my Samsung never dreamed about. Only gripe I have is the case is a little bendy, and doesn't lend well to putting into a protective case because it already has a grip back and is curved. Oh, and the camera is OK, but nothing special.

Droid Turbo 2.
Battery life? Check! (3 days!)
Grippy case that doesn't slip through your fingers like your 11th beer cup at a frat party? Check!
Bright colorful display? Check!
Non-breakable display? Check! (Seems like a really hard gelatin)
Headphone jack? Check! (Note S/N is surprisingly good for the audiophile in me)
SDCard? Check!
Reasonably priced? Check!
Reasonable software updates and fixes? Sort-of.
Status symbol? Uh, nope.

The newer ones are even nicer.

The newer Lenovorola phones with the unbreakable screen are both quite pricy ($700+) and lack a headphone jack. The battery is also smaller than the previous model.

BTW my Pixel 2 (non-XL) had no problems with the OTA 8.1 preview. It's also a battery champ so far. I was a little nervous about that part, since that was the main thing that made me want an XL.

(pulled from smart phone evolution thread)

derFunkenstein wrote:

Straight from the horse's mouth: burn-in issues on the Pixel 2 XL are comparable to OLED panels used in other premium smartphones. Uh...the LG V30, maybe, but definitely not happening on my Pixel 2 and it's not happening on the Galaxy phones (it'd be widely reported if it was).

I was completely disgusted with their response. While it was thoughtful and they really tried to give good information for those looking for it, I think they made some really, really, really awful decisions with these phones and the accompanying software for them. I still can't believe they released these phones with the current crop of issues. We have seen some BS in the past from Google devices, but nothing close to being this bad.

I guess that's corporate-speak for "someone else released a phone with a crappy panel and got away with it, so there's no reason we can't do the same".

Redocbew wrote:

I guess that's corporate-speak for "someone else released a phone with a crappy panel and got away with it, so there's no reason we can't do the same".

Yeah, except it was LG themselves! This whole Pixel 2 business has really disgusted me. Multiple problems, with both phones, that should have been caught in QC but either just weren't or they thought it was "good enough" to give to the consumer at a 650 dollar minimum. Google has never been THIS bad about it, but this sucks.

DancinJack wrote:

(pulled from smart phone evolution thread)

Whoops. Meant to post it in this one. Thanks, DJ.

Sorry everyone, I was full of it. Memory failure or something. My still-working all-glass 2012 powerhouse (https://www.gsmarena.com/lg_optimus_g_e975-4941.php) was apparently IPS LCD.

Every other phone from that era I owned was OLED (1st gen Moto X, Galaxy SIII), so I probably mistakenly thought they all were.

EDIT: Why and how is a 2012 Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU faster than some of my 2017 8-9" tablets?

Vhalidictes wrote:

EDIT: Why and how is a 2012 Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU faster than some of my 2017 8-9" tablets?

Because the Cortex A53 at the heart of so many "midrange" SoCs is hot garbage that should be purged from the surface of the earth.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Vhalidictes wrote:

EDIT: Why and how is a 2012 Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU faster than some of my 2017 8-9" tablets?

Because the Cortex A53 at the heart of so many "midrange" SoCs is hot garbage that should be purged from the surface of the earth.

I think a more accurate answer would be that you're either buying cheap tablets with crap CPUs in them, or the software on them is crap. I'm not sure i'd call the A53 hot garbage, but it wasn't really meant to be the main event like so many OEMS use it.

DancinJack wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

Vhalidictes wrote:

EDIT: Why and how is a 2012 Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU faster than some of my 2017 8-9" tablets?

Because the Cortex A53 at the heart of so many "midrange" SoCs is hot garbage that should be purged from the surface of the earth.

I think a more accurate answer would be that you're either buying cheap tablets with crap CPUs in them, or the software on them is crap. I'm not sure i'd call the A53 hot garbage, but it wasn't really meant to be the main event like so many OEMS use it.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab E, apparently it's a Quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A53 (AKA Snapdragon 410), and it can't handle more than, say, 10 tabs in Chrome without choking, something none of my phones have any trouble with.

I wouldn't normally care, but since I tend to mainly use it for web browsing...

It's kind of a shame, my work phablet is a Apple iPhone 6 Plus and I could just use that... Except that it wipes out the web browser's state whenever the app is minimized. Go go memory conservation!

Vhalidictes wrote:

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab E, apparently it's a Quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A53 (AKA Snapdragon 410), and it can't handle more than, say, 10 tabs in Chrome without choking, something none of my phones have any trouble with.

That might be the 1.5GB of RAM filling up, particularly if you have the tablet set to request desktop sites while the phone is loading the mobile-optimized version.

ludi wrote:

Vhalidictes wrote:

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab E, apparently it's a Quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A53 (AKA Snapdragon 410), and it can't handle more than, say, 10 tabs in Chrome without choking, something none of my phones have any trouble with.

That might be the 1.5GB of RAM filling up, particularly if you have the tablet set to request desktop sites while the phone is loading the mobile-optimized version.

That's an interesting thought, but don't modern mobile browsers ignore inactive tabs? I thought only the last 2-3 most recent tabs would be resident in memory...

It's mostly just the CPU time that gets yanked. Memory usage can still be a problem for people who really like to go bonkers with their tabs. I just did a quick test where I opened up another 20-ish tabs, and watched memory usage jump by another 2GB. I can't say that all of that was from the browser, but in any case it's probably not much of an issue for a desktop. For a phone or tablet it might be.

Edit: To be clear, there are features in Chrome(and I imagine other mobile browsers) which "discard" inactive tabs, but only when there's significant pressure on physical memory. The process of reloading the required content when that happens is probably going to be indistinguishable from any other page load on a desktop, but could very well be much more prolonged on a mobile device.

Vhalidictes wrote:

DancinJack wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

Because the Cortex A53 at the heart of so many "midrange" SoCs is hot garbage that should be purged from the surface of the earth.

I think a more accurate answer would be that you're either buying cheap tablets with crap CPUs in them, or the software on them is crap. I'm not sure i'd call the A53 hot garbage, but it wasn't really meant to be the main event like so many OEMS use it.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab E, apparently it's a Quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A53 (AKA Snapdragon 410), and it can't handle more than, say, 10 tabs in Chrome without choking, something none of my phones have any trouble with.

FWIW, that tablet was released July 1, 2015. So, it's not necessarily representative of an Android mid-range tablet of today. I'm not certain how much it cost when you got it though so I can't be totally sure. It looks like a lot of mid-range (albeit, brand name) stuff is A72+A53 these days. There are some decent looking ones that I'm seeing now like the Huawei MediaPad M3 8.0 or the Asus Zenpad 3S 10.

I'm definitely not going to tell you how to browse the internet, but with only 1.5GB of RAM on-board you might try scaling back by a few tabs and see how it goes.

DancinJack wrote:

FWIW, that tablet was released July 1, 2015. So, it's not necessarily representative of an Android mid-range tablet of today. I'm not certain how much it cost when you got it though so I can't be totally sure. It looks like a lot of mid-range (albeit, brand name) stuff is A72+A53 these days. There are some decent looking ones that I'm seeing now like the Huawei MediaPad M3 8.0 or the Asus Zenpad 3S 10.

I'm definitely not going to tell you how to browse the internet, but with only 1.5GB of RAM on-board you might try scaling back by a few tabs and see how it goes.

Interesting since I got the thing in June 2017. Must have been old stock, I was initially suspicious of the low price but the specs looked decent-to-okay, and I don't like high DPI anyways because it wrecks battery life.

As far as tabs go, yeah, tablets aren't desktops. I should bite the bullet and use all of the bookmarks. I was resisting the change because new workflows are bad, but in this case you're right.

It's really no wonder Apple had to single source their OLED from Samsung. LGs Plastic OLED is nowhere close to the Sammy AMOLED. These issues would be more of a firestorm on the X, though they're still unforgivable at the also nearing 1K Pixel 2 XL.

Google has fixed the Oreo 8.1 Preview issues, it seems - I'm sure they'll be happy to be able to check off one outstanding issue.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/02 ... ng-system/

I mean, I can't suggest ANYONE touch the 2 XL right now. They have completely wrecked this launch so badly.

I just received my Pixel 2 XL last night and so far no issues. the screen color doesn't bother me, works wonderfully so far. Just adding in that they aren't all horrible.

I second the proposition that midrange A53 tablets should be fired into the sun. Use A73, for the love of God.

DancinJack wrote:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/02/pixel-2-xl-units-shipping-without-operating-system/

I mean, I can't suggest ANYONE touch the 2 XL right now. They have completely wrecked this launch so badly.

< O_o> what the hell

gcrosier wrote:

I just received my Pixel 2 XL last night and so far no issues. the screen color doesn't bother me, works wonderfully so far. Just adding in that they aren't all horrible.

I really hope you're able to avoid the burn/retention issues. The Oreo 8.1 beta on my phone draws the navigation bar in white/gray sometimes (like in the Settings app) and black/white the rest. That might help reduce the issue, or it might exacerbate it when the whole section is dimmer.

derFunkenstein wrote:

I really hope you're able to avoid the burn/retention issues. The Oreo 8.1 beta on my phone draws the navigation bar in white/gray sometimes (like in the Settings app) and black/white the rest. That might help reduce the issue, or it might exacerbate it when the whole section is dimmer.

Yeah, it goes grey when idle for like 5+ seconds or something like that. I'm not sure if that was a burn-in mitigation technique or if it was always a part of 8.1 though. (edit: I don't mean these are the only times it does, but that's probably the most frequent. I think it can change based on app too)

Oh, I didn't even notice the transition until you pointed it out. Black and white goes to black and gray. The lighter theme goes from white and gray to white and a lighter gray.

A few Pixel 2 XL units were shipped without an operating system:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/02 ... ng-system/

tipoo wrote:

It's really no wonder Apple had to single source their OLED from Samsung. LGs Plastic OLED is nowhere close to the Sammy AMOLED. These issues would be more of a firestorm on the X, though they're still unforgivable at the also nearing 1K Pixel 2 XL.

In the twist of irony, LG TV OLED panels almost destroyed Samsung this year in the $1500+ pricing space.

http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?su ... 1507720613

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/02 ... ng-system/

That's some of the funniest **** I've ever seen (until you cry, if you receive one of these lemons)

edited the quote so the link is lickable.

derFunkenstein wrote:

DancinJack wrote:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/02/pixel-2-xl-units-shipping-without-operating-system/

I mean, I can't suggest ANYONE touch the 2 XL right now. They have completely wrecked this launch so badly.

< O_o> what the hell

gcrosier wrote:

I just received my Pixel 2 XL last night and so far no issues. the screen color doesn't bother me, works wonderfully so far. Just adding in that they aren't all horrible.

I really hope you're able to avoid the burn/retention issues. The Oreo 8.1 beta on my phone draws the navigation bar in white/gray sometimes (like in the Settings app) and black/white the rest. That might help reduce the issue, or it might exacerbate it when the whole section is dimmer.

Well so far, when my nav bar shows up it's black and not white/gray. on the homescreen, all I see are the three symbols on the bottom. in any app, all I see is a black bar at the bottom with those three symbols.

gcrosier wrote:

Well so far, when my nav bar shows up it's black and not white/gray. on the homescreen, all I see are the three symbols on the bottom. in any app, all I see is a black bar at the bottom with those three symbols.

You have to be on the 8.1 beta to see the color changes, or wait for 8.1 to roll out officially later this year.