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I have negative desire to get a phone billing itself around AI and LLM features. I turn off every AI assistant feature on my existing devices, I actively don't
by chc4 2y ago
I have negative desire to get a phone billing itself around AI and LLM features. I turn off every AI assistant feature on my existing devices, I actively don't want a phone that ties Gemini and AI photoshop even tighter into it. If Google wanted to actually improve their phones they would add basic software functionality they're still missing instead like, say, a per-app volume mixer that half the 3rd party Android phones I've used have added but is still missing from AOSP and Pixel.
- walterbell 2y agoRecent Pixels support Android Virtualization Framework, which theoretically allows Linux or Android VMs alongside the primary Android OS. Could be good for experimentation.
- sangnoir 2y ago> I have negative desire to get a phone billing itself around AI and LLM features Google has been tastefully integrating AI into phones for a while now using opt-ins. The now-many-years old phone screening feature ensures the fear of spam won't lead to unintentionally missing calls from the doctor/dentist who call from unknown numbers. Screening suspicious calls instead of declining them is a massive quality of life improvement, and having an AI assistant answer your phone and do a live transcription is straight from the Jetsons.
- avidiax 2y agoThere is also "hold for me", where the phone listens to hold music for you, then rings when the operator arrives. And there is a feature now to show you how busy a customer service line is at a particular time, and to give you a text transcript with clickable buttons for the phone tree.
- londons_explore 2y agoAm I the only one who thinks these features really don't add much to the experience? If an annoying phone tree is going to take 3 minutes to navigate by listening to the prompts, then it will also take 3 minutes to navigate by letting the AI listen and write little buttons for me. I didn't really save any time. If on the other hand it could say "other users have seen this phone tree before, so here is the whole searchable tree with no waiting", that would be a noteworthy feature.
- colimbarna 2y agoHold for me is pretty good. I've never used the phonetree feature, but I think it's often the case that I don't know which button I need to press: I have to listen to them all first, then decide which one. Commonly I have to listen to the tree twice: once to decide, and once to find out what to click. I'll probably look for the phonetree next time, so I can just read over it and find what I want. I agree it would be much better to preload it, but that might not be plausible due to privacy concerns or legal reasons.
- londons_explore 2y ago> due to privacy concerns or legal reasons. There are probably only ~10,000 phone trees that cover the vast majority of calls in the USA. If a phone tree is seen by many users and is identical, there is probably no privacy reason not to publish it. Even moreso if the total number of digits typed in quick succession is < 4 (ie. user hasn't entered some password to get in). A human operator could be the final check.
- xur17 2y agoI recently discovered that you can Google "{company} phone number", and in a number of cases it will offer to call, navigate the phone tree, wait on hold, and call you when a customer service agent is on the line. Delta, Allegiant, etc all seem to work.
- dogsledsleddog 2y agoWhat does it do if the company is Google?
- fbrchps 2y agoIt can do that with previously-known phone trees.
- linsomniac 2y agoCorrect, I've had it show all the phone tree options as soon as the phone tree starts playing. So, yes, it will reduce time to navigate the tree in that way. Also, it often prevents me from having to listen to the tree twice, if I am looking for a better option and then decide a previous one was actually the better fit.
- nexxer 2y agoAll of that would be great if it was actually available to me in the smaller country/market I live in, which is less of a priority for Google. I still paid for them as part of the phone.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nacs 2y ago> tastefully integrating AI Tastefully integrating AI involves not uploading all of my photos and speech and text to the cloud and doing who knows what with that personal data. The majority of this data should never leave my device and that's why on-device LLMs/AI are much more tasteful.
- blackoil 2y agoYou can control that.
- privacyking 2y agoTo what extent? Google buries a lot of their privacy options deep within settings of individual apps and the settings menu
- delfinom 2y agoEh? Afai, it prompts you to enable it these days. Heck, Google is removing Location History storage from their side and making it device side only. Users in the past few weeks are getting notified to trigger the migration to device storage or all data is deleted.
- justsomehnguy 2y agoeh? Two years ago they didn't allow MRU in GMaps if you weren't logged on.[0] And with every new phone I always power on it without an account, update, reset and only then add an account; I had my share of 'I did disable that thing' EDIT: [0] and they claimed what there is not enough storage for it. On a fresh phone with 128Gb on board. For the small array of ~30-100 letters. Fuckers.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoExcept Google Photos, which every couple days starts up telling me my phone is backing up (it isn't yet, not until I confirm it on the screen) and presenting an opt-out for uploading photos to Google. That's in Poland, EU, so I'm not sure how is that even legal. Next time, I'll ask my local DPA.
- Sakos 2y agoThe AI editing tools in the Google Photos app (https://blog.google/products/photos/google-photos-editing-features-availability/ https://blog.google/products/photos/google-photos-editing-fe...) also feel like magic and have been very useful/convenient for me, so honestly I can't agree with all the negative comments. It feels like there are plenty of ways to incorporate AI that add value for users and don't require a weird ChatGPT-like interface.
- gvurrdon 2y agoDespite also having no desire to have an "AI" phone, this feature is incredibly useful; however hard I try to avoid it, there are organisations who will insist that they contact me by telephone. Luckily it's available on older devices so I can keep my 6a going for another year.
- throwaway2037 2y ago> per-app volume mixer Is there a free app that you would recommend?
- TiredOfLife 2y agoOn Samsung phones it's Sound Assistant. On Xiaomi and Motorola it's built in.
- clumsysmurf 2y agoNot only are these AI features stuff people don't want, but obviously having a Tensor G4 in the device raises its cost. I'd rather not pay for that. I have the Pixel "a" devices, and hope they can stay at that price point.
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y agoSo buy this phone and install GrapheneOS on it.
- gerash 2y agoI'm with you that AI is overhyped but your suggested feature is "per app volume mixers" like in Windows? What's the use case on a mobile phone to warrant the extra complexity?
- A_Venom_Roll 2y agoAn example I can think of is when you're listening to a podcast or music that has been recorded on low volume. Without a volume mixer you're forced to increase the general volume, resulting in overly 'loud' sound notifications from other apps.
- iron-s 2y agoMedia volume and notification volume have their own sliders
- happymellon 2y agoThe media volume slider is joint across the apps though if they aren't notifications.
- A_Venom_Roll 2y agoUnfortunately this doesn't work for notifications such as 'lap times' from the Garmin app. This is also considered media by the phone.
- gerash 2y agoThat can be fixed with Garmin notification sound being treated as a notification sound. Adding per app volume control is IMHO a really bad UX. It means there's a master volume and then per app volume is like a coefficient the app volume is multiplied by. My car has its own volume control separate from the phone bluetooth volume and I hate the experience of having two volume knobs interacting with each other when all I want to do is to increase or decrese volume
- coolg54321 2y agoSame for me, I feel all those AI assistants are most of the time hit or miss (even though they improved very much in the recent times) + UX is most of the time not that good because of the network latency. But on the positive side i like the new 9 pro because of its smaller size + hardware improvements (better ultrawide, ultra sonic finger print sensor, 16GB RAM...)
- knallfrosch 2y agoFirst world problems. My iPhone can't even split notification and call volume.
- omnicognate 2y agoYep, this is insane.
- FrozenSynapse 2y agowhy? AI is very useful in day to day life, and having a phone with on-device capabilities is crazy useful even for those that like their privacy and are paranoid about big corpos stealing their data. I don't see any reason to hate these features.
- MrThoughtful 2y agoI dislike the bundling of hardware and software alltogether. In the world of laptops, we have a wonderful situation. I can select the hardware that I like, then wipe the whole disk and install the software I like. Which in my case is a Linux distribution and then exactly the applications I prefer. I wish the world of phones was like that.
- pawelmurias 2y agoThe desktop OS are all pretty bad so I wouldn't want to use that as an inspiration for anything.
- MrThoughtful 2y agoI'm very happy with my Linux desktop. I mostly live in the Plasma desktop, Konsole and Firefox. And life is good. What are you missing?
- consteval 2y agoI mean, define bad. Certainly they're much more complex. More susceptible to malware, too. But they're also much more powerful. I can get tasks done 10x as fast. They're much more open, too. They have well-defined interfaces for most things, which means I can automate tasks. Can't do that on a phone.
- devmor 2y agoBad in what way? Most people who aren’t power users barely leave the browser.
- cloudwalk9 2y agoYou can kinda do that with Pixels and Sony Xperias only, because last I recall, they implement Android Verified Boot correctly (or non-draconianly), specifically avb_custom_key. From a security and freedom perspective, I actually like the restrictions of the Android platform if implemented as Google intended, which means allowing you to roll your own ROM and relock the bootloader with your own keys. Android itself has among the strongest security models for a consumer platform, again if implemented as Google intended (which is why GrapheneOS only supports Pixels). You're actually not supposed to root your phone because that opens up a large attack surface. It's inconvenient for customization, sure, but you can still wipe the phone and roll your own system. It's a matter of the workflow to do it.
- thefz 2y agoAI integration in Pixel phones is bland, and all in areas where it can be day to day useful.
- agpl3141592 2y agoRunning ai locally on your device is awesome. Why do you don't like it? And there are other use cases like running your own LLM offline or using it with home assistant.
- eadmund 2y ago> If Google wanted to actually improve their phones … … they would enable swapping button order. … they would remove gestures. … they would improve OS stability. … they would add a hardware do not disturb switch. … they would add hardware camera and microphone switches. … they would add a headphone jack. Their phones are still preferable to iPhones, because at least with a Pixel one owns one’s own phone.
- squarefoot 2y agoI think the best reason to use a Google phone is that turns out it's one of the easiest to Un-Google by installing GrapheneOS.
- snapplebobapple 2y agoThis is the correct answer. Grapheneos is basically the minimum acceptable security standard anyone should put up with from a device they carry around all day.
- mikae1 2y agoThis. I was kind of shocked when I realized I had completed the installation of GrapheneOS via my web browser. I will likely pay a premium for the Pixel convenience when it's time to get a new phone. Will run this 6a until support ends.
- dzikimarian 2y agoI like gestures and would be very upset to see them removed.