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I have to agree that the under-screen speaker in the pixel 5 is awful. I don't know where to "put my ear" every time I get a call, and as a result the audio qu
by mattlondon 6y ago
I have to agree that the under-screen speaker in the pixel 5 is awful. I don't know where to "put my ear" every time I get a call, and as a result the audio quality for calls is terrible - muffled, muddy, unclear, awkward. Switch to speakerphone and it is like someone pulled cotton wool out of your ears so it is not like the network connection is poor, just the speaker. It has been a pain in the backside to use as a result since day one of getting it, and the times when I borrow someone else's phones I am just blown away by their "HD audio" they get compared to the pixel 5.
What were they thinking. This must have been brought up during testing?! Surely?
Its not even like the full-height screen adds anything really as you have a stupid extra-large notification bar as it physically needs to be larger to fit the front-facing camera in.
Finally, it does not connect to 5G where Vodafone UK says there is 5G on their coverage maps (and yes my account is enabled for 5G). Either Vodafone is telling porkie pies on their coverage maps, or the pixel 5 can't connect to 5G and so is a total disaster?
- meowster 6y agoAt first I thought the call audio was extremely bad on the Pixel 5, because I've always put the corner of the phone in my ear. Once I read that you have to place your ear over the phone glass instead, the audio became completely normal-sounding.
- gundmc 6y agoGoogle taking the Steve Jobs "you're holding it wrong" approach.
- meowster 6y agoI remember that debacle. I suppose there is a parallel, but with the Pixel 5, it still is very usable with almost zero adjustment, nothing convoluted like changing how you hold an iPhone to avoid shorting the antenna.
- P_I_Staker 6y agoDisagree that this is anywhere close to as bad. Asking users to place their ear over the speaker is not a huge deal and reasonable IMO, versus having it not work at all when holding it like a normal person. If you don't like the speaker placement, I understand though.
- tigershark 6y agoI would vote for vodafone porkie pies, I never managed to connect in 5G with their giga cube in a week. And the supposedly 5g enabled tower is 100m from my house. You can check the exact position of the tower using cellmapper.net if you have the cell id (under the tools menu there is an ebn id calculator from the cell id)
- mekster 6y agoThe reviews for bad audio totally got me to stay away from 5 from 4a. Why get something worse for much higher price when there seems to only be incremental updates for other parts?