5 ms·

My problem with the pixel, and the only reason I returned it, is the modem. The chip was fine, I don't care that it's "underpowered", but when reception got s

My problem with the pixel, and the only reason I returned it, is the modem. The chip was fine, I don't care that it's "underpowered", but when reception got spotty it chugged power. Google made an excellent SMARTphone, but they seem to have forgotten it's also supposed to be a smartPHONE and it can't always be on wifi where it will stay cool and efficient.

AlotOfReading 3y ago
I would bet quite a bit of money they didn't forget, based on the people I've known on the team. That's just Samsung's modem not being as good as Qualcomm. Choosing Qualcomm would have led to a very different phone where the feature differentiation they were trying to deliver with Tensor simply wouldn't have been possible. There are serious consequences to the middle ground solutions as well.
- runako 3y ago
  > Choosing Qualcomm would have led to a very different phone where the feature differentiation they were trying to deliver with Tensor simply wouldn't have been possible. Would you mind elaborating on this point?
  - crest 3y ago
    IIRC Qualcomm puts their own Hexagon DSP on the SoC which is where they placed their own low precision matrix multiplication accelerator.
- maven29 3y ago
  Has Qualcomm ever engaged in significant semi-custom work? (no, adjusting dvfs for a special "for galaxy" SKU or adding pluton to 8cX gen 3 doesn't count). Samsung was a semi-custom partner for Apple in the early days of the iPhone (to the extent that the M1 still has some Samsung IP in it[0]). I heavily doubt that Qualcomm is even capable of working in such a role. In fact, the C-suite probably believes that their core competency is lawsuits and not modems, anyway. [0] https://twitter.com/calebccff/status/1472517091970494465 https://twitter.com/calebccff/status/1472517091970494465 (Edit: I meant semi-custom SoC design/architecture not cores, like https://www.anandtech.com/show/7281/understanding-amd-semi-custom-strategy https://www.anandtech.com/show/7281/understanding-amd-semi-c... )
  - kevvok 3y ago
    Has Qualcomm ever engaged in significant semi-custom work? Yes, the early generations of Snapdragon SoCs were built using a custom ARMv7 core called Scorpion, which was later succeeded by another v7 core called Krait. The first ARMv8 SoC (the infamously disastrous Snapdragon 810) used stock ARM cores, but the next generation (820) switched to an in-house v8 design called Kryo. Around that time though, the company did massive layoffs, including in silicon engineering, leading to all the subsequent designs using tweaked ARM cores (despite also being called Kryo)
    - maven29 3y ago
      I mean helping others execute semi-custom work based partly on qualcomm designs, to clarify
  - re-thc 3y ago
    > I heavily doubt that Qualcomm is even capable of working in such a role. In fact, the C-suite probably believes that their core competency is lawsuits and not modems, anyway. It's not 1 of capability. They're trying to force everyone to use the full SoC and not just the modem.
- wmf 3y ago
  Apple uses their own SoC with a Qualcomm modem so I don't see why Google couldn't do the same. It would probably cost more than Snapdragon though.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    That's the dangerous middle ground I mentioned. Google doesn't have nearly the same leverage and volume numbers to use against Qualcomm as Apple does, but even for Apple it's a devil's bargain. The licensing terms are incredibly onerous. If they updated them and you didn't agree, they used to just cut off your entire company's chip supply until that was ruled monopolistic and illegal. The royalties (one of the only royalties Apple actually pays) are substantial percentages of the final device price. Getting into bed with Qualcomm needs to be weighed against the risk to the rest of your business. As a consumer, I buy Qualcomm modem phones, but as an engineer Qualcomm is only marginally below the plague on my avoidance list.
    - mgiampapa 3y ago
      Apple also bought Intel's modem unit as either leverage or an escape hatch from Qualcomm. It's like having unlimited dollars to throw at a problem is useful.
      - jprd 3y ago
        No doubt, though it would be useful if they could actually deliver a working modem that they will ship in their phones.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  Totally fair take. As a consumer I have a tendency to forget it's a game of trade-off, but I don't think that it's worth it, which is why I returned the phone, but I hope my opinion won't match everyone's and a lot of people will be happy with the device. It's just a shame, even now I find myself eyeing the black Friday sales prices. I loved everything else about the phone, but I know that the battery life is going to drive me mad and with all the heat and increased number of charge cycles there's just no way the battery is going to last as long as the support does and that's a deal breaker for me.
hypercube33 3y ago
It was exceedingly telling when Google bought moto (at the time a good phone manufacturer and excellent radio within) and gutted and dumped it instead of keeping it on to go wild with the nexus/pixel side of the house.
- b0b10101 3y ago
  iirc that was the plan but it really strained the relationship with samsung who threatened to move to tizen from android...
- roneythomas6 3y ago
  Motorola phones where using Qualcomm modems. There is nothing really special about it. Even the Nexus had the same modems during that time period. Pixel phones didn't have widespread modem issues until they switched to Samsung modems starting with Pixel 6. Not sure what is there to tell about it other than Qualcomm makes good modem. Even the iPhones with Intel modems where inferior to Qualcomm modems and thank god they switched back to Qualcomm with iPhone 12.
  - mjevans 3y ago
    Intel's cable modems also had issues. I wonder if there's some patent they're trying to work around that technically has alternate solutions, but they're all inferior on power consumption?
matheusmoreira 3y ago
I see a lot of people reporting battery drain and overheating on the Pixel 8... Sigh. Why can't they make a good phone? It makes me wish other manufacturers would step their game up so GrapheneOS could support them.
- vodkapump 3y ago
  When I got my Pixel 7 Pro I was shocked at how bad the battery life was, even without google play services. (came from a 5a) I love the phone, but the battery life makes me regret my purchase almost every day. Then my coworker got the Pixel 8 Pro, and it has WAY worse battery life than my 7 Pro, he even went and got a new one at the store because it was so bad it had to be a fault, but no. It just is absolute garbage.
  - rezonant 3y ago
    Opposite of my experience, I daily drove a Pixel 6 Pro from launch until 8 Pro launched and have been using 8 Pro since. I upgraded because I can, my Pixel 6 Pro is working just fine, I've added it to my growing device catalog for testing during mobile development. Over the course of the 6 Pro, I replaced it twice, once for a cracked screen and the second time for cracked back glass using preferred care (both close in time to each other from similarly stupid drops). I do not use a case for my phone. None of those three devices had any issues with battery. My partner is using a 7, two of my friends have 6 Pros, and I just upgraded my parents from 4a to 7a and battery hasn't really been a serious problem from any of them. It's not insanely good but it's also not a pain point for me. As an engineering lead I do a lot of my non-programming work directly on Pixel, including tons of remote desktop, meetings, GitHub/productivity, k8s management, etc. I don't get to write code nearly as much any more, probably around 10-20% of my work week. At least for those workloads, things are fine. But the workload you run can dramatically change things, especially if you've got particularly power hungry apps involved. The OS gives you tools to identify what those apps might be when you dig into the battery area of settings. > even without google play services. (came from a 5a) Since you can't remove GMS from a Pixel without flashing a ROM to it as far as I know, can I assume you are not using stock software? A lot of Pixel's battery performance is made up using the adaptive battery features. When they are off, things are more dicey. Do those work on custom non-GMS ROMs to begin with? To sum it up, battery can definitely be better, but I'm just not seeing the kinds of problems people complain about and that surprises me given my experiences.
neoecos 3y ago
Try using 5G with sim while connected to 4g with e-sim it keeps dropping packages, is impossible to have WA or Google meet. Haven't worked on the pixel 6 neither pixel 8
wnc3141 3y ago
this is a fantastic description
deleted 3y ago
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AlotOfReading 3y ago

I would bet quite a bit of money they didn't forget, based on the people I've known on the team. That's just Samsung's modem not being as good as Qualcomm. Choosing Qualcomm would have led to a very different phone where the feature differentiation they were trying to deliver with Tensor simply wouldn't have been possible. There are serious consequences to the middle ground solutions as well.

runako 3y ago
> Choosing Qualcomm would have led to a very different phone where the feature differentiation they were trying to deliver with Tensor simply wouldn't have been possible. Would you mind elaborating on this point?
- crest 3y ago
  IIRC Qualcomm puts their own Hexagon DSP on the SoC which is where they placed their own low precision matrix multiplication accelerator.
maven29 3y ago
Has Qualcomm ever engaged in significant semi-custom work? (no, adjusting dvfs for a special "for galaxy" SKU or adding pluton to 8cX gen 3 doesn't count). Samsung was a semi-custom partner for Apple in the early days of the iPhone (to the extent that the M1 still has some Samsung IP in it[0]). I heavily doubt that Qualcomm is even capable of working in such a role. In fact, the C-suite probably believes that their core competency is lawsuits and not modems, anyway. [0] https://twitter.com/calebccff/status/1472517091970494465 https://twitter.com/calebccff/status/1472517091970494465 (Edit: I meant semi-custom SoC design/architecture not cores, like https://www.anandtech.com/show/7281/understanding-amd-semi-custom-strategy https://www.anandtech.com/show/7281/understanding-amd-semi-c... )
- kevvok 3y ago
  Has Qualcomm ever engaged in significant semi-custom work? Yes, the early generations of Snapdragon SoCs were built using a custom ARMv7 core called Scorpion, which was later succeeded by another v7 core called Krait. The first ARMv8 SoC (the infamously disastrous Snapdragon 810) used stock ARM cores, but the next generation (820) switched to an in-house v8 design called Kryo. Around that time though, the company did massive layoffs, including in silicon engineering, leading to all the subsequent designs using tweaked ARM cores (despite also being called Kryo)
  - maven29 3y ago
    I mean helping others execute semi-custom work based partly on qualcomm designs, to clarify
- re-thc 3y ago
  > I heavily doubt that Qualcomm is even capable of working in such a role. In fact, the C-suite probably believes that their core competency is lawsuits and not modems, anyway. It's not 1 of capability. They're trying to force everyone to use the full SoC and not just the modem.
wmf 3y ago
Apple uses their own SoC with a Qualcomm modem so I don't see why Google couldn't do the same. It would probably cost more than Snapdragon though.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  That's the dangerous middle ground I mentioned. Google doesn't have nearly the same leverage and volume numbers to use against Qualcomm as Apple does, but even for Apple it's a devil's bargain. The licensing terms are incredibly onerous. If they updated them and you didn't agree, they used to just cut off your entire company's chip supply until that was ruled monopolistic and illegal. The royalties (one of the only royalties Apple actually pays) are substantial percentages of the final device price. Getting into bed with Qualcomm needs to be weighed against the risk to the rest of your business. As a consumer, I buy Qualcomm modem phones, but as an engineer Qualcomm is only marginally below the plague on my avoidance list.
  - mgiampapa 3y ago
    Apple also bought Intel's modem unit as either leverage or an escape hatch from Qualcomm. It's like having unlimited dollars to throw at a problem is useful.
    - jprd 3y ago
      No doubt, though it would be useful if they could actually deliver a working modem that they will ship in their phones.
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
Totally fair take. As a consumer I have a tendency to forget it's a game of trade-off, but I don't think that it's worth it, which is why I returned the phone, but I hope my opinion won't match everyone's and a lot of people will be happy with the device. It's just a shame, even now I find myself eyeing the black Friday sales prices. I loved everything else about the phone, but I know that the battery life is going to drive me mad and with all the heat and increased number of charge cycles there's just no way the battery is going to last as long as the support does and that's a deal breaker for me.

hypercube33 3y ago

It was exceedingly telling when Google bought moto (at the time a good phone manufacturer and excellent radio within) and gutted and dumped it instead of keeping it on to go wild with the nexus/pixel side of the house.

b0b10101 3y ago
iirc that was the plan but it really strained the relationship with samsung who threatened to move to tizen from android...
roneythomas6 3y ago
Motorola phones where using Qualcomm modems. There is nothing really special about it. Even the Nexus had the same modems during that time period. Pixel phones didn't have widespread modem issues until they switched to Samsung modems starting with Pixel 6. Not sure what is there to tell about it other than Qualcomm makes good modem. Even the iPhones with Intel modems where inferior to Qualcomm modems and thank god they switched back to Qualcomm with iPhone 12.
- mjevans 3y ago
  Intel's cable modems also had issues. I wonder if there's some patent they're trying to work around that technically has alternate solutions, but they're all inferior on power consumption?

matheusmoreira 3y ago

I see a lot of people reporting battery drain and overheating on the Pixel 8... Sigh. Why can't they make a good phone? It makes me wish other manufacturers would step their game up so GrapheneOS could support them.

vodkapump 3y ago
When I got my Pixel 7 Pro I was shocked at how bad the battery life was, even without google play services. (came from a 5a) I love the phone, but the battery life makes me regret my purchase almost every day. Then my coworker got the Pixel 8 Pro, and it has WAY worse battery life than my 7 Pro, he even went and got a new one at the store because it was so bad it had to be a fault, but no. It just is absolute garbage.
- rezonant 3y ago
  Opposite of my experience, I daily drove a Pixel 6 Pro from launch until 8 Pro launched and have been using 8 Pro since. I upgraded because I can, my Pixel 6 Pro is working just fine, I've added it to my growing device catalog for testing during mobile development. Over the course of the 6 Pro, I replaced it twice, once for a cracked screen and the second time for cracked back glass using preferred care (both close in time to each other from similarly stupid drops). I do not use a case for my phone. None of those three devices had any issues with battery. My partner is using a 7, two of my friends have 6 Pros, and I just upgraded my parents from 4a to 7a and battery hasn't really been a serious problem from any of them. It's not insanely good but it's also not a pain point for me. As an engineering lead I do a lot of my non-programming work directly on Pixel, including tons of remote desktop, meetings, GitHub/productivity, k8s management, etc. I don't get to write code nearly as much any more, probably around 10-20% of my work week. At least for those workloads, things are fine. But the workload you run can dramatically change things, especially if you've got particularly power hungry apps involved. The OS gives you tools to identify what those apps might be when you dig into the battery area of settings. > even without google play services. (came from a 5a) Since you can't remove GMS from a Pixel without flashing a ROM to it as far as I know, can I assume you are not using stock software? A lot of Pixel's battery performance is made up using the adaptive battery features. When they are off, things are more dicey. Do those work on custom non-GMS ROMs to begin with? To sum it up, battery can definitely be better, but I'm just not seeing the kinds of problems people complain about and that surprises me given my experiences.

neoecos 3y ago

Try using 5G with sim while connected to 4g with e-sim it keeps dropping packages, is impossible to have WA or Google meet. Haven't worked on the pixel 6 neither pixel 8

wnc3141 3y ago

this is a fantastic description

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]