Exclusive: Google Pixel 9 processor won't be the ambitious chip we hoped for
The Tensor G4 will be a more minor upgrade than initially expected, but Google's chipset plans still offer plenty to look forward to.
I've been running a galaxy S9 for years and have never run into a bottleneck with it.
Why do y'all keep needing more and more power packed into your phones? It doesn't make any sense to me.
"Why do you guys simply believe things should get better?"
That is how I read this. More power, more efficiency, better tech is not a bad thing to want.
Just because you want to hold on to a 5 year old phone doesn't mean someone else doesn't at least want to see efficiency in our pockets get better for the value we spend on them.
Imagine if someone said, I have dial up internet. Why are you guys constantly wanting faster Internet speeds.
It's okay to want things to get better. You should not have the mentality of, "it's just good enough."
How is this better value? I have a S9+, still full day battery and runs everything.
How is buying a new phone 'value'. What value does this bring exactly? You bring up dialup as a compassion. Well, modern connections don't tie up the phone line and are magnitudes faster (my Internet is 17,857x faster than dialup).
What tangible thing has been added to Mobile phones in the last 5 years? 10 years? What real value. Pretty sure my phone has more features than any 'modern' new phone.
The big reason is that you're choosing to spend several hundred dollars to put your still perfectly performant phone in a land fill so you can have a percentage or two more performance.
Your dial up comparison is not really a fair comparison, either. The S9 is not dialup in comparison to Samsung's new galaxy phones. You'd have to go down to like a BlackBerry or a Nokia flip phone to have that comparison make sense.
I think its more about the power efficiency. Samsung's exynos line as well as their few latest samsung foundry nodes are not known for being very power efficient, so I think people were holding for the Pixel 9 with a custom TSMC manufactured chip in hopes of it consuming less power and outputting less heat
Because I wanted a foldy boi.
That said, I plan on hanging on to my Z Fold 3 for at least the next half decade.
I have a pixel 6 and a OnePlus 7 pro. Between the two of them, the OnePlus runs games much better. That is with a snapdragon 855.
I'm looking forward to upgrading to a better phone for gaming.
That said, the pixel phones right now just don't hold up against snapdragon 8 Gen 2, etc.
But I need to run a web browser at Mach Chicken so I can justify tossing a perfectly good phone for a new $1000 phone.
because i want to play genshin impact on my phone.
Pokemon go chugged on that thing. I ran it alongside my oneplus 8 for a while, and I promise it wasn't running perfectly.
Nevermind that the oneplus 8 ran at 50% higher fps.
Wait until the new iPhone kills the mobile gaming market. It's probably going to be more powerful than the switch 2. Slap on a backbone controller or a dock and you don't need a game console at all.
The current gen android stuff is also pretty capable but nobody makes games that aren't gacha trash for android.
Pushing the leading edge of phone design opens new use cases, it's not always just about "doing the same shit, slightly faster"
Even Apple has to abide by the laws of physics. 3nm is fast, but a small, tightly packed, passively cooled device containing a large, heat generating element powered by a another large, heat generating element is unlikely to outperform a well ventilated, actively cooled device that is able to draw power from an outlet.
This is of couse ignoring the Apple reality distortion field, which in recent memory has succesfully perpetuated the idea that a tiny photo sensor can outperform a large one.
The performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 GPU is already about 10-20% faster than the A16 chip, depending on the benchmark.
Even if Qualcomm only gives the Gen 3 a 10% performance increase, that is enough to beat or even surpass the A17 in gpu performance (rumors suggest something closer to a 30% increase). The Gen 2 already outcompetes the A16 in GPU power consumption and efficiency as well. This may change with the A17 since it’s on TSMC’s 3N node, however this node has been having issues which is why TSMC introduced the 3NE and 3NP so we will have to wait for power usage numbers from the A17 to see.
Overall I’m disappointed with the improvements between the A16 and A17. 10% on the CPU and 20% on the GPU (due to have 20% more cores) doesn’t seem like the type of upgrade I would expect from switching nodes. Hopefully next year they can do more with the improved N3 nodes. I’m also getting the feeling that Apple is trying to deploy more complex transformer models on their devices which is why we are seeing such a focus on the NPU.
I think you hit on the main point which is that nobody will pour money into developing for android. Apple also has the ability to make deals with companies with Capcom and Ubisoft to ensure games come to their platforms. I can’t see Google doing this since they already “tried” and failed to have a AAA mobile gaming platform with stadia. The only other company with enough motivation and money to bring big games to android is Samsung, but their mobile chips aren’t doing too well (despite their RDNA 2 architecture making it easier to port games).
Pushing the leading edge of phone design opens new use cases, it's not always just about "doing the same shit, slightly faster"
It's about creating new shit that runs at the same speed.
The only thing i expect for Google Pixels is for them to have a clean Android install, i couldn't care less if it's hardware was equivalent to my low end Motorola.
You should though. I have a Pixel 7 Pro. I've seen all the reviews/tests showing how bad of a chip it is. But in day to day use it's fast snappy and pretty good.
it does however warm the device a lot and warmth = battery loss.
Tensor G1 and G2 would probably be absolutely fine if fabbed on TSMC.
Mine is borderline unusable compared to my pixel 5.
Is it summer and am I outdoors? Phone will shutdown due to overheating.
Am I using Google maps and the phone is mounted in direct sunlight? It will throttle dark mode to manage overheating .
Have I been using the phone throughout the day? It needs to be charged before I leave work.
Honestly I'd say my p7p is the worst phone I've had in a long time, it's hard to go back without considering how phones were for their time, but my instinct is that the last time I had a phone this comparably bad it was a Samsung Galaxy s3.
And an unlockable bootloader.
Decent CPU and RAM.
High rate screen
Unlockable bootloader
SD card
Removable battery.
Such a phone would be an instant buy for me, but nobody wants to make them
I have pixel 5 and 6. I got tired of my six only lasting half a day without needing a charge so I switched back to the pixel 5 with lineage os. I can routinely get 2 days worth of normal use on a single charge plus I prefer the smaller form factor. An SD slot would be nice, I've got 100+gb of FLAC music on my phone.
The Galaxy S5 is still ahead of its time today. Minus high refresh rate because 60hz was the standard in 2014, but it also had a headphone jack and heart rate sensor built in as well.
I used to buy it and root right away, but always having to dance around safetynet was a pain. havent been rooted in a while :l
and an unlockable bootloader
Such a phone would be everyone's dream to be honest. 🌠📱
My phone (Moto G8 Play) does have a microSD slot and a headphone jack, while in terms of hardware is the bare minimum nowadays (only having 2GB of RAM).
But at the very least having a Motorola is probably the 2nd best thing when it comes to minimal bloatware.
And not the size of an iPad.
are aware that you can just flash plain AOSP on any phone, right?
EDIT: Well, this aged like milk. If you happen to have a phone that is not easily unlockable or that has no well-maintained AOSP ROM, Universal Android Debloater is a pretty decent way to clean up your OS.
I know you probably don't mean it this way, but it's not literally any phone. Also custom ROMs could have their own issues and bugs to deal with.
not any phone. And you have to rely on someone to maintain the build. And hope that it's stable. And the manufacter has to allow unlocking bootloader without sacrificing a goat.
Dude this kind of response is so fucking annoying. Any time someone says they prefer tech that works someone like you shows up to But Ackshually them about it.
Some people want the product to be what they expected out of the goddamn box.
99 percent of phones can't be unlocked nowadays
I did that in the beginning, when Android was new. I do not want that hassle. I just want to use my phone
I've tried and failed miserably.
Any phone? Really? Even the ones with locked bootloaders? How about the ones that don't have any 3rd-party ROMs?
You will inevitably run into various minor issues like the fingerprint sensor not working very well, or face unlock is fiddly, or auto-brightness behaves strangely, or double-tap to wake has stopped working, etc etc.
wasn't it the Pixel 10 that was gonna use TSMC and Google's fully custom design instead of recycled Exynos?
Yeah. This isn't news.
Didn't we already know that the 2025 Pixel will be TSMC and not before?
We don't know anything. I don't see how Google is going to get TSMC fab time though. Unless the purchased it so far back for that time. They are way to small or maybe they'll be on an older node and no the cutting edge on at that time.
