6 ms·

I think they spent it perfectly, up to mmWave, which btw is only in US (and maybe Australia?). They managed to add 2GB ram, double default storage to 128gb, inc

I think they spent it perfectly, up to mmWave, which btw is only in US (and maybe Australia?). They managed to add 2GB ram, double default storage to 128gb, increase battery by 50% and still make the phone $200 cheaper. It's the perfect BoM if it wasn't for mmWave. Paying $100 more for mmWave is ridiculous. That's a 15% price increase for something that most people don't need or care for. The fact that you can't buy the non-mmWave version in the US is what makes this a really bad decision. The same is not true for the 4a 5G, which is $500 on the Google Store without mmWave, but has a special $600 Verizon-only version you can get with mmWave. So I have no idea why they didn't do the same for the Pixel 5. Instead you are forced to buy the mmWave version even if you're getting the device through Google Store and will never use mmWave. Meanwhile here in Canada it's $800 CAD ($600 USD), so I'm happy I got the phone for a great price. That being said, if you don't care for 90hz display, wireless charging and waterproofing, 4a is definitely a fantastic deal at half the price.

ashtonkem 6y ago
The article points out that it’s slower than the 4a, which is half the price. That’s ... less than great.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  In most benchmarks they are basically within the error margin, but I have indeed seen a few where Pixel 5 does strangely poorly. I am definitely curious to know what's causing that, Pixel 5 has a slightly newer version of the same chipset (765G/Adreno 620 vs 730G/Adreno 618). The two best guesses I have is either the waterproofing really messes up with the thermals, or there's some unlying bug causing bad performance in those specific benchmarks. That being said, in real-life use, unless you're playing some heavy games, phone devices are generally more memory bound than CPU bound in my experience, so the 2GB extra ram will go a long way.
  - maven29 6y ago
    Waterproofing or not, phones are almost always effectively hermetically sealed from a convection point of view and do not rely on convection in any form for cooling. I do not see how waterproofing would interfere with conducting heat away.
    - foota 6y ago
      Maybe it forces a different internal layout?
      - fuzxi 6y ago
        The pixel 4a 5g uses the same cpu as the 5, does not have waterproofing, and has the same benchmark speeds as the 5. I think the layouts are different too, based on the fact that the 4a 5g is larger than the 5.
- meowster 6y ago
  Pixel 5 owner here, I am disapointed at that metric, but I am not disappointed at the speed of my phone. I can see how that would cause others to second guess a Pixel 5 purchase or have buyer's remorse upon learning that.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  It isn't in the metric that really matters for day-to-day usage which is disk IO. The 5 & 4A have the same GPU and the 5 has a slightly faster CPU. Unclear why the benchmark scores are what they are, possibly a worse thermal profile with the 5, but if you're not gaming the faster storage will have far more impact.
- refulgentis 6y ago
  I'm fortunate enough to have needed a Pixel 5 _in addition_ to a Pixel 4a, results are nonsensical imo, 5 is _definitely_ more buttery
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    I think this is the real point; 90hz is way more important than CPU speed in making it feel like an upgrade.
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Is it correct to say that mmWave is like 5G++? (For those of us that don't know)
- gen3 6y ago
  It’s like 5G part 1; It’s not really an iteration, but a subset.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  The important part to understand is that mmWave is really short range and is blocked by walls, windows, and sheets of paper. Phones with it may need to have "windows" to let the signal make it through the phone case to the antenna. So it basically works outdoors in very busy cities where it's worth it to put an antenna every few hundred feet: Most Americans will never actually benefit from it. It won't work in their houses or anywhere not very dense urban. Some Verizon stores actually put a mmWave antenna physically inside the showroom so you can see the performance... but it won't work when you step out the door.
  - cogman10 6y ago
    Yup. mmWave will make a big difference for the likes of stadiums and theaters. Places with huge crowds. A feature of the high frequency is it doesn't travel far which limits cross talk and allows you to pack in more antennas to serve more people. How often Telecoms will want to deploy it is a different matter. My guess is you'll see it go up most often in places where companies want to optimize customer experiences. Likely as a partnership with the various telcos. For example, I could see the likes of Disney deploying it across disneyworld and disneyland.
    - ufmace 6y ago
      It's an interesting application, but with Covid-19, it may be a while before places with huge crowds are happening again.
      - 6y ago
disillusioned 6y ago
This exactly. mmWave is such an absurd expense for literally no return. I think it came out that basically they were forced to support it in order to otherwise be sold as a 5G device through Verizon, and that forced their hand. But $100 for a service that literally no one can use? Ridiculous. I can't understand the series of events that have transpired where literally anyone in the infrastructure and network and spectrum teams at VZW have been excited about mmWave and think it's a worthwhile investment. The limitations on the technology make it functionally worthless. Its performance suffers depending on your HAND position. It's about as dumb as trying to transmit data to a cell phone over IR and about as practical. It feels like they landed the spectrum and figured they could make some claims about insane speeds, and then the reality around its limitations set in and the core technology doesn't have any way to get around them. At the end of the day, mmWave, by its very nature, will not penetrate almost any surface. How anyone thought that meant it was a candidate for radio transmission on moving devices is completely beyond me.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  Because it's one of the few things you can actually point at and be like "that's why you need a new phone!" Same reason why Apple was all about that 5G during the iPhone 12 announcement. Doesn't matter if it'll never be useful, all that matters is that the feature sheet lists it and a canned demo will show unreal speeds.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    5G in general is important. It means compatibility for the future, access to more towers, and access to more frequencies. So sure, you need mmwave to get gigabits per second, but 5G without mmwave still has a good amount to show off and make sales with.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      In Europe we hardly have proper LTE and HSCSD support outside main cities, I couldn't care less about 5G.
eugeniub 6y ago
> default storage to 128gb You mean only storage. Even the $400 iPhone SE has multiple storage options, maxing at 256gb for $550.
- throwaway314158 6y ago
  At least they had the decency to not offer a 64GB option.
fomine3 6y ago
I think it's perfect mid-high device without 5G.
dorgo 6y ago
>if you don't care for 90hz display, wireless charging and waterproofing, 4a is definitely a fantastic deal at half the price It also misses the ultra wide angle camera, doesn't it?
m463 6y ago
you don't understand. 5G is a trojan horse. 5G is about peer-to-peer unblockable communication. It's the way benign and dumb devices can use phones to phone home. Everywhere that phones go will increase google's data reach.
mekster 6y ago
You forgot to add that the audio quality is sub par with its below the display speaker that makes it unbalanced from the bottom speaker having weaker output, some displays have a slight space between the body and no one can tell how that'll turn out in a year and CPU is throttled on top of being an average one. Compared to 4a (not the 5G one), you get better refresh rate (90Hz not 120Hz), more RAM (but 4a already has 6GB), more battery, more accurate fingerprinting sensor, waterproof, wireless charge, almost the same camera quality, lost audio jack port, got slightly heavier and a better design and tries to be a higher class than 4a with its price tag when 5G doesn't mean anything for most which sound like incremental updates that should be set with a similar price tag.

ashtonkem 6y ago

The article points out that it’s slower than the 4a, which is half the price. That’s ... less than great.

ehsankia 6y ago
In most benchmarks they are basically within the error margin, but I have indeed seen a few where Pixel 5 does strangely poorly. I am definitely curious to know what's causing that, Pixel 5 has a slightly newer version of the same chipset (765G/Adreno 620 vs 730G/Adreno 618). The two best guesses I have is either the waterproofing really messes up with the thermals, or there's some unlying bug causing bad performance in those specific benchmarks. That being said, in real-life use, unless you're playing some heavy games, phone devices are generally more memory bound than CPU bound in my experience, so the 2GB extra ram will go a long way.
- maven29 6y ago
  Waterproofing or not, phones are almost always effectively hermetically sealed from a convection point of view and do not rely on convection in any form for cooling. I do not see how waterproofing would interfere with conducting heat away.
  - foota 6y ago
    Maybe it forces a different internal layout?
    - fuzxi 6y ago
      The pixel 4a 5g uses the same cpu as the 5, does not have waterproofing, and has the same benchmark speeds as the 5. I think the layouts are different too, based on the fact that the 4a 5g is larger than the 5.
meowster 6y ago
Pixel 5 owner here, I am disapointed at that metric, but I am not disappointed at the speed of my phone. I can see how that would cause others to second guess a Pixel 5 purchase or have buyer's remorse upon learning that.
kllrnohj 6y ago
It isn't in the metric that really matters for day-to-day usage which is disk IO. The 5 & 4A have the same GPU and the 5 has a slightly faster CPU. Unclear why the benchmark scores are what they are, possibly a worse thermal profile with the 5, but if you're not gaming the faster storage will have far more impact.
refulgentis 6y ago
I'm fortunate enough to have needed a Pixel 5 _in addition_ to a Pixel 4a, results are nonsensical imo, 5 is _definitely_ more buttery
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  I think this is the real point; 90hz is way more important than CPU speed in making it feel like an upgrade.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

Is it correct to say that mmWave is like 5G++? (For those of us that don't know)

gen3 6y ago
It’s like 5G part 1; It’s not really an iteration, but a subset.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
The important part to understand is that mmWave is really short range and is blocked by walls, windows, and sheets of paper. Phones with it may need to have "windows" to let the signal make it through the phone case to the antenna. So it basically works outdoors in very busy cities where it's worth it to put an antenna every few hundred feet: Most Americans will never actually benefit from it. It won't work in their houses or anywhere not very dense urban. Some Verizon stores actually put a mmWave antenna physically inside the showroom so you can see the performance... but it won't work when you step out the door.
- cogman10 6y ago
  Yup. mmWave will make a big difference for the likes of stadiums and theaters. Places with huge crowds. A feature of the high frequency is it doesn't travel far which limits cross talk and allows you to pack in more antennas to serve more people. How often Telecoms will want to deploy it is a different matter. My guess is you'll see it go up most often in places where companies want to optimize customer experiences. Likely as a partnership with the various telcos. For example, I could see the likes of Disney deploying it across disneyworld and disneyland.
  - ufmace 6y ago
    It's an interesting application, but with Covid-19, it may be a while before places with huge crowds are happening again.
    - 6y ago

disillusioned 6y ago

This exactly. mmWave is such an absurd expense for literally no return. I think it came out that basically they were forced to support it in order to otherwise be sold as a 5G device through Verizon, and that forced their hand. But $100 for a service that literally no one can use? Ridiculous. I can't understand the series of events that have transpired where literally anyone in the infrastructure and network and spectrum teams at VZW have been excited about mmWave and think it's a worthwhile investment. The limitations on the technology make it functionally worthless. Its performance suffers depending on your HAND position. It's about as dumb as trying to transmit data to a cell phone over IR and about as practical. It feels like they landed the spectrum and figured they could make some claims about insane speeds, and then the reality around its limitations set in and the core technology doesn't have any way to get around them. At the end of the day, mmWave, by its very nature, will not penetrate almost any surface. How anyone thought that meant it was a candidate for radio transmission on moving devices is completely beyond me.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kllrnohj 6y ago
Because it's one of the few things you can actually point at and be like "that's why you need a new phone!" Same reason why Apple was all about that 5G during the iPhone 12 announcement. Doesn't matter if it'll never be useful, all that matters is that the feature sheet lists it and a canned demo will show unreal speeds.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  5G in general is important. It means compatibility for the future, access to more towers, and access to more frequencies. So sure, you need mmwave to get gigabits per second, but 5G without mmwave still has a good amount to show off and make sales with.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    In Europe we hardly have proper LTE and HSCSD support outside main cities, I couldn't care less about 5G.

eugeniub 6y ago

> default storage to 128gb You mean only storage. Even the $400 iPhone SE has multiple storage options, maxing at 256gb for $550.

throwaway314158 6y ago
At least they had the decency to not offer a 64GB option.

fomine3 6y ago

I think it's perfect mid-high device without 5G.

dorgo 6y ago

>if you don't care for 90hz display, wireless charging and waterproofing, 4a is definitely a fantastic deal at half the price It also misses the ultra wide angle camera, doesn't it?

m463 6y ago

you don't understand. 5G is a trojan horse. 5G is about peer-to-peer unblockable communication. It's the way benign and dumb devices can use phones to phone home. Everywhere that phones go will increase google's data reach.

mekster 6y ago

You forgot to add that the audio quality is sub par with its below the display speaker that makes it unbalanced from the bottom speaker having weaker output, some displays have a slight space between the body and no one can tell how that'll turn out in a year and CPU is throttled on top of being an average one. Compared to 4a (not the 5G one), you get better refresh rate (90Hz not 120Hz), more RAM (but 4a already has 6GB), more battery, more accurate fingerprinting sensor, waterproof, wireless charge, almost the same camera quality, lost audio jack port, got slightly heavier and a better design and tries to be a higher class than 4a with its price tag when 5G doesn't mean anything for most which sound like incremental updates that should be set with a similar price tag.