Goodbye, Pixel; Hey, iPhone, I’m Baaaack!
Google Pixel XL with Android 7 versus Apple iPhone 7 Plus with IOS 10. More random comments than a formal review.
Yes, I have given up on my Google Pixel XL, at least as my primary phone, after a mere five weeks. I wrote an earlier post saying, “Goodbye, iPhone”. Read that post to find out what pissed me off about the iPhone enough to get me to buy a new Google Pixel XL and switch my main phone number.
Some people said I would be back, so here I am Joe Beninato. Some of those people might snicker about how it didn’t take me long to come back. Feel free to snicker away, people, because I learned a lot about phones, software and services, and I would still recommend the Pixel to other users, based on their needs and experience.
For me, the bottom line is Google’s hardware and operating system just isn’t good enough to justify the rest of the value. But it’s pretty damned good and the rest of the value is pretty amazing, well worth thinking hard about when you are comparing the two phone eco-systems.
The Google Pixel XL itself is a really good smartphone. It comes close to matching the iPhone 7+ in look and feel, but is not better. The camera seems about as good in resolution and color, maybe even better in the way the camera software handles photos. But the rest of the phone feels cheaper: for instance, you can feel the seam between the glass and the bezel. I also think the glass isn’t as good, particularly after I cracked my screen almost right away by simply dropping it on a wooden floor. (When I went to the Verizon store to ask how to get it fixed, the clerk thought it was an iPhone and told me to take it the Apple store. After I told him it was a Pixel that I bought from Verizon, he said I could take it to ibreak, which is actually ubreakifix, which charges $129.99 to replace the glass. That’s one immense advantage Apple has: 270 stores in the U.S. that will fix your phone on the spot or replace it, if you have a service plan.)
The rest of the fit and finish feels less good as well. For instance, the phone has “haptic feedback”, which means it vibrates when you press the screen or you get a notification. That vibration appears to always be the same two-pulse signal. I think the iPhone can have different kinds of tactile feedback (buzzing and vibrating, with different intensities). This is a small point, but the thing that makes iPhones better is partly the fit-and-finish and attention to detail for which Apple is famous.
Part of my thesis for getting the Google Pixel is that Google makes both the hardware and the software, so they must have taken advantage of that to do a better job of integrating the two. They didn’t. The Android on the Pixel feels like the same Android as on any other device. Google can update the OS immediately when they release a new version, so you always have the latest. But Android is still a pale cousin of IOS.
One big issue: The Android version of apps are sometimes not as good or reliable as the IOS version of the same app. The same app which is rock solid on IOS will sometimes crash regularly on Android. Frequently, the app developers lead with new features on IOS and then does a slipshod job of porting to Android. I even found that Google’s own apps frequently worked better on IOS: Google Maps on IOS is actually better than on Android! Android runs on hundreds of different smartphones, and some phone makers introduce features or configurations that require custom support: I found one app that simply didn’t work on Pixel, but did work on other Android devices. Android is a messy environment that requires the user to keep track of things that Apple takes care of for its customers.
The notification system simply doesn’t work. Android defaults to notifying you about everything that the app developers want to tell you. (App developers on Android are notoriously undisciplined and lazy in their UX design since Google doesn’t manage them closely.) As a result, you start out with hundreds of notifications that are meaningless. The workaround is to turn off notifications for apps that tell you too much; you have to manually turn off notifications for 90% of the apps you have installed to get to a small enough set that the notifications you get are useful. Even then, notifications only come in as icons in a strip at the top left side of the screen and through the haptic interface. There are no icon badges! (I didn’t know this before getting the Pixel and am amazed, even wonder if Apple has patents around badging app icons since it’s so obviously useful.) It got to the point where my wife was upset with me for missing her texts; it’s really bad news for a smartphone to upset the spouse — that’s when I started thinking about switching back to the iPhone.
But Google’s apps and services are SO much better than Apple’s similar apps that it is remarkable. The apps: Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Sheets, Docs, Translate, Youtube. Google, fka Google Now, is a fixed button on the home screen and functions like Spotlight on IOS, but also includes alerts about upcoming events or places nearby and other usually useful information. The company has a bunch of crapps as well. (The only Apple app on Android is Apple Music, which works for Apple Music users. Just one app from Apple on the mobile OS on 85% of the smartphones in the world? Who the heck is running Apple’s software strategy?)
That’s just the apps. Google’s services are world class and getting better and better. As part of discovering Google Photos, I’ve now also discovered Google Project Fi (sometimes called GoogleFi) and Google TV, both of which are really interesting service offerings. The company apparently is clueless about how to market these services, but they could each transform the wireless phone and streaming television markets. (I should write separate posts about each, but need to get more experience with them first.) When you put together everything that Google is trying to do for users, it is a remarkably broad and useful set of services. Problem: They all seem to be easily accessible from any phone running Android and even IOS and Googl often delivers a better experience on IOS than Android, so the company hasn’t figured out how to make them a competitive weapon — yet.
So I gave in and went to the Apple Store and bought a new iPhone 7 RED. I didn’t know why it is red, but I did think I was supposed to feel better because it’s some kind of do-gooder program. (It turns out that RED supports AIDS research.) But it is a nice shade of red! (I had to get a clear case so you can still see the red on my iPhone!)
Right away, I discovered that I loved having my fingerprint sensor in the back of the phone (where Google put it), rather than the front. It took me several days of using my new iPhone to remember to touch the front to get authenticated. I also discovered that Force Touch still sucks. Sucks enough that somebody with balls or authority (or both) at Apple should get rid of it and apologize for making their product more complicated rather than more useful.
I also remembered why I hate Apple Photos. Apple cannot get synchronization right, because it thinks the device should control sync instead of the service. Synchronization is incredibly difficult to do correctly, and the key is keeping it simple: One reference copy to sync from. Google does that: The reference copy is on the server, and Google is really good at showing your photos in the browser and lets you download them to the computer if you want. Apple does not do that, and appears to believe that it can keep track of photos in multiple locations: as a result, you run incredible risk entrusting your photos to Apple. At one point, I lost a whole swath of photos — forever, because Apple synchronized the deletions across all my devices. (This was when the app was called iPhotos, which was even worse than the current Photos app.)
But Apple has me by the gonads. Their sharing features has been masterful. I mentioned the blue coloring of shared iMessages in my original posts. I think I mentioned Photo Sharing in that post as well. These are the ways that I stay connected with my family and close friends, almost all of whom also have Macintoshes and IOS devices. When I was on Google Pixel, I lost most of that. My family wondered where I had gone to. If you imagine how powerful this photo of my granddaughter and me is to me, and how I want to be able to share it with my family? This is not something to trifle with.
I’m not just a reluctant user of the iPhone, since it is still an amazing device and ecosystem. The bottom line: If Google would take seriously the idea of building a world-class phone company instead of treating it as an experiment, I think they have the chance to take business away from both Apple and Samsung.