zlacker

The Pixel has like 1% of smartphone market and Google has been making their down devices for 10 years now! I have two questions:

1. Why hasn’t Google pulled the plug and thrown in the white towel yet? People have voted with their wallets and chosen Samsung and Apple.

2. Why is the Pixel devices getting such a massive news coverage? Other smartphone ORM’s with similar market share doesn’t get the same treatment.

>>retskr+(OP)
1. it's not a vote, it's a market. 2. Pixel devices set the standard for every other android phones. the coverage is legit.

>>retskr+(OP)
It is better for all of the Android enthusiasts.

>>Darky+I1
How do pixels set the standard any differenty then samsungs?

>>Xeamek+sV
Samsungs are non-standard by default. They take the AOSP experience which Pixel fully embraces then they hack in cute fonts, water drop overlays, and replace the default tooling that comes with Android to build their samsung experience.

Pixel drives and creates the innovation like cut-out display support, notification APIs that support multi-media control for instance across multiple apps, sound multi-plexing between apps, how calls interact with multimedia apps, foldable display support, app switching, fingerprint unlock support, the android API, etc.

Samsung takes that, twists it into their own.

In that essence, Pixel is the standard experience that Android is meant to be whereas Samsung is a customized experience built on the backbone of Android and in some ways in opposition to Android Open Source Project & Pixel Launcher's ideals.

Samsung android phones are the Ubuntu whereas Pixel is Google's Debian.

>>Darky+I1
"vote with your wallet" is a common expression in American English. Your correction is misplaced.

>>retskr+(OP)
It's now 3%.

>>bmcahr+X21
Except there is no such thing as "AOSP" experience anymore. Why? Because AOSP stopped providing majority of apps that would be considered core for functioning smartphone. There is no more "phone" app on AOSP. There is a Google one, that is closed source, full off unnecessary integration and telemetry. Sure, both are made by the same company (google), but that's not remotely what the original idea of AOSP was about. And we should stop giving google a pass treating it as if it's somehow better when doing the exact same shit as other third party vendors, simply because it has the brand. Either you are part of AOSP, or You are a third party vendor's custom. No in-between.

You are mixing pixel with AOSP, but those are completely separate projects.

Sure, aosp development is sponsored and managed by google, but that doesn't make it synonymous with pixels.

I assure you that people who develop AOSP work with all the major vendors and definitely aren't just driven by what pixel team wants and nothing more.

>foldables Seriously? Samsung had first foldable 4 years ago, while first foldable pixel launched this year. In what world does pixel contributed to foldableAPI more? I mean, I guess in the world we're you treat AOSP and pixel team unanimously maybe, but that's not the real one.

>pixel is standardized experience

Just because google says so? Standardized experience of AOSP is AOSP. Everything else is addition.

Your debian and Ubuntu analogy fails to acknowledge that Google apps are NOT open source.

More apt comparison would be samsung being modern ubuntu 22 with all the bloat that it has, while Google being "only" 14.04 ubuntu with less bloat, but still far from the true purity

>>Xeamek+sV
They do in many ways. Pixels have clean focused software that are excellent at what they do - it makes you want them. Also they dont include bloatware unlike Samsung.

1. Pixel Camera taught Samsungs and iPhones about computational photography pipelines and Night Sight,

2. Recorder,

3. Photos + various editing features (Top Shot / Best take / Magic Eraser),

4. Phone + various features (Call Screening(US) / Hold for Me(US) / Spam Protection)

5. Google Pay (UPI - India specific)

6. Gestures - Flip to Shh / Double Tap to open Camera / Twist twice in camera for Selfie mode.

and many more that I have missed.

>>sprkv5+dx4
That's all cool, but those aren't Android apps (at least most of them). Those are closed source, full of telemetry and unnecessary integration google apps.

Question wasn't about if google apps are better, but how pixels contribute to the growth of AOSP differently then vendors like samsung.

Just because google sponsor AOSP, doesn't mean that any proprietary app they make (which is all of them btw) count as AOSP contribution. AOSP and Pixel are 2 separete things.