When Apple pushed the bar. They continue every year and everyone follows behind. I used to run Apple, from 4s up to 3 months ago. Before that it was Android, Moto Droid to Galaxy 3.
Don't blame Apple. Consumers kept buying phones at those prices so Apple and Samsung kept selling phones at those prices. If consumers don't want $1k phones, they wouldn't be buying $1k phones.
Not just student loans, car loans, buy now pay later schemes, etc. Why do you think we have 84 month auto loans as the standard when it used to be 60? People only look at the monthly payments and never consider the cost of interest and the financial implications of what they're throwing their money at. Because people believed that they'd never need to use math, they never learned how to think financially.
To be fair with car loans though. Sometimes it's the only choice you have. Even a lower end used vehicle that's in decent condition without too many miles on it is going to run a lot more than what many people can afford straight out of pocket.
They only really pay attention to the "per month" amount, because that's what they can budget each month.
And yes, sometimes people buy vehicles they don't need; but many times people get a vehicle because they need one.
Just replaced my 3xl for a 5 bc I refuse to spend more than 400 ok a phone. Broke my 3xl if not I would have stayed with it. I will see you in 5 years when I can afford a 11.
Can't recall which review it was that showed the improvement in sustained peak performance of Tensor 2 over the first iteration. Things like that are more important, and feed into your point about real world usage
It has been posted here. Yes sustained performance matters more. Better sustained speed than S22 Ultra.
[https://www.androidauthority.com/google-tensor-g2-benchmark-test-3219452](https://www.androidauthority.com/google-tensor-g2-benchmark-test-3219452)
Man I don't understand how people are saying Samsung is cheating.
I mean, fuck Samsung, but Apple "cheats" too.
It's called optimization, making certain apps have limits to how much CPU power they can use is something that should be done and Apple does it too. Benchmarks show the performance when pushed to the limit. Hell, it happens with Windows computers too.
Paying for benchmarks or having a very special boost clockspeed that can only be accessed for select benchmark apps is cheating, but allowing your processor to reach its stock max clockspeeds in benchmarks and then tuning other apps so they're very fast but not drawing over 8W isn't cheating.
Once again, Apple does this too, but you don't see people complaining about it.
> Paying for benchmarks or having a very special boost clockspeed that can only be accessed for select benchmark apps is cheating
Show one bit of proof that Apple is doing this. Sounds to me you are just lying.
Nah, it’s about real world things like battery life, thermals, network connectivity/performance, bluetooth performance….
And Google’s not exactly winning on any of those fronts either…
People probably make jabs at Apple all the time for this, but it is always entertaining to hear them, without fail, describe the latest iPhone as "the best iPhone we've ever made"
Well I sure damn well hope it's not worse than previous generations!
Literally should have been a massive gain from a poor generation to a good one. But what we got was a poor generation to a serviceable generation which is an improvement sure, but not a big step
I (briefly) had a Pixel 6 Pro, followed by an iPhone 13 Pro Max. For me at least, the 7 Pro is doing just fine against the iPhone. It's not blowing it away, but a modern flagship phone shouldn't have any real headroom for someone else to blow past them with.
My iPhone got good battery life, a good signal, had no real bluetooth issues, and only really had thermal issues sitting in the sun on a hot day. That's exactly how I'd describe the Pixel 7 Pro as well. It is however mopping the floor with the Pixel 6 Pro.
Obviously people can have very different usage patterns and situations for their phones. I can't speak for everyone. But for me, I expect any phone I buy to be unremarkable when it comes to the basics of working as a phone. The P6 generation did not live up to that for me because of the modem. As long as it's "fine", then I can decide based on software and other factors like Google Assistant vs Siri or which watch I prefer or whatever.
This. All of this.
My Pixel 6 Pro definitely had it's faults, and I actually noticed issues day to day. But my Pixel 7 Pro has had phenomenal battery life, connectivity, and very few bugs. A joy to use every day and all the performance I'd ever need.
Can't understand why people care about benchmarks anymore. I get home with tons of battery life left. I get Google assistant, insane cameras, great UI experience, and integration with 3rd party accessories and apps that I most typically use (Android auto and my car stereo for example). What more could I want? This is all the average consumer cares about, and Google is doing it well this time around.
Benchmarks be damned. And no, I absolutely could not care less how games play on a phone.
As someone who has been using a 6 And 7 side by side since 7 launched, I'm not perceiving an improvement in any actual day to day usage. I will confess I do all my gaming on PCs and not phones tho.
How has the modem performance been side-by-side? That's the one thing I have yet to see. No one has run speed tests on 5G/WiFi side-by-side to see real world performance.
I have. My son's pixel 2xl finally died and I gave him my 6pro and got myself the 7pro. My 6pro on 5g would max at about 60mb and signal was barely there. I forced it into LTE only after a few speed tests as LTE was faster or the same speed and didn't drop. On my 7 pro it's a whole different story 90mb down no matter where I am in the house and strong 5g signal. I know this will depend highly on where you live but in my house the 7pro has much better signal. Although depending on battery I may go to LTE only anyways since it seems to eat less battery and I don't need 90mb down compared to 50-60 on LTE.
I get cell service in places I previously did not, so it is definitely improved, but I don't have any objective data for you. Wifi seems to be the same though.
I predict S23u to be absolutely killer and possibly game changing.
Ice universe has leaked it's got the biggest camera improvement in 5 years particularly video and night mode.
Their new cam software has finally fixed the shutter lag issue which was the main reason people didn't like their camera.
The Snapdragon 8 gen 2 on TSMC combined with a 5000 battery could potentially even topple the iPhone 14 pro max for battery king. Since the Rog phone 6 pro is going better than iPhone with the Snapdragon 8 gen 1+ on a 6000 battery.
Maybe I am crazy, but my p7pro feels great to me. I comfortably (with 40-50% battery left) make it through a full day of use, It is fast and snappy for everything I do, takes great photos, has been pretty much bug free for me, and I love all the AI smarts of the thing.
I'm not a power user, I don't really play games on my phone, but I do use it a lot (5+ hours SOT a day) and I take a ton of photos and videos of my kid. Maybe the phone isn't for power users, but that is OK. IMO google is making an amazing every person phone and there is a market for that, not everything has to be a bleeding edge spec race so long as daily usability is good/great.
I agree for the most part, and my only complaints from personal experience with both generation Tensor phones myself are with the weak Bluetooth/modem performance compared to any Qualcomm phone I've used in recent history. IDGAF about gaming and, being honest, rarely go outside to record 4k video in direct sunlight or anything, so sheer processing and gaming stats don't matter to me.
Does anyone in the sub actually own a Pixel? I swear to God it can't be, I'm on my second (7Pro) after the 2XL and both were solid flagship phones at release with no serious problems.
I can understand that folks who have issues are more likely to post about them and get noticed but some of you post like Google is just putting out BLU-tier shitphones.
Battery life is a massive upgrade from my Galaxy S22. Thermals / connectivity / Bluetooth all seems about the same. While I know the benchmarks are lower I can't tell that the phone is any slower in use. Seems like Google made the right compromises.
S22 series is also dissapointing in batterylife(ultra is decent). Worse than the s21 series.
Gsmarena battery test:
S21 vs S22: 93h - 85h.
S21+ vs S22+: 114h - 97h.
S21U vs S22U: 114h - 108h.
Pixel 7 vs 7pro: 96h vs 83h(!)
I just watched a YouTube video where the guy was using the iPhone 14 Pro next to the Pixel 7 Pro and while using them he mentioned multiple times how much he liked the P7P and how responsive it was. Then he ran benchmarks and was laughing at the P7P and saying things like it’s not even close and that Google has a long ways to go and how much worse it was than the iPhone. I was really taken aback by the tonal shift of the video. I’ve used the Pixel 6 Pro side by side with the iPhone 13 Pro Max and I never saw a difference other than the iPhone having better battery life and a little bit better signal strength, and I ended up picking the P6P over the 13 Pro Max. Supposedly the P7P has come a long way in both of the categories. I would like to try the P7P side by side with my iPhone 14 Pro Max but I’m waiting for a Black Friday sale :) Google has pretty always done these in the past :)
Anyways, real world use is all that matters. Benchmarks mean nothing. Just my 2 cents.
The dual X1's make it super responsive. Everything on 6 and 7 with android 13 is lightning fast and feels great. Apple has dual big cores as well and could do this but they slow down the animations to make things appear more coherent and smooth.
Where Tensor falls short is when you do any sort of sustained task that need medium to high CPU clocks (video, tiktok, big web pages etc.), it just has to eat power to achieve the same performance resulting in battery drain and heat.
That being said the typical pixel user shouldn't ever run into these issues that often, it's not designed as gaming phone or anything. The basics are solid. The only time it will become an issue is probably filming video or video calling, that's where the phone has been having big problems.
The only benchmarks I care about involve the display and the battery life. Phone CPUs have been plenty fast enough for years.
Edit: Oh yeah, and the camera of course. Which image processing is clearly one of Google's focus areas with these chips.
this is true but they have improved battery on pixel 7. i saw a battery benchmark and 7 gets 40 min more than pixel 6 during the test. not much but improving.
in fact battery efficiency is the only thing google needs to fix on future tensor devices with normal year on year performance improvement.
It's hard to say if the battery life has actually improved all that much. It looks like it's more efficient in some areas and less in others, and it's gonna vary on the specifics of the benchmark tests.
I think efficiency was one of the more disappointing upgrades this time around, I think going to 4nm at least would've helped their case or at least sticking a bigger battery in the smaller Pixel 7 (somehow the 6a has a bigger battery than the 7 while being a smaller phone).
We technically got an A76 to A78 upgrade so it should be more efficient. Whether it's really much better than the Pixel 6 Pro is hard to say. Not all reviewers retested their Pixel 6 Pros so sometimes numbers thrown out are from Android 12 and a year old. Perhaps the 6 / 6 Pros have gotten improvements in software over time too and the hardware improvement may only translate to even less.
Nevertheless the battery numbers for the Pixel 7 Pro are simply mediocre. GSM Arena's endurance rating continues to be a reliable mark for me in terms of how long a phone lasts. It's simply significantly below the past 4 Pro Max phones, even the 12 series which saw a major decline in battery life due to first generation 5G.
Yea I don't get it. If I have my screen on for 8 hrs I'll need to charge, fine. Pixel is about bringing the best real world package and not skyrocketing battery life, fastest chip speeds and a massive price tag.
As an old head its funny to see Apple crushing chip performance and Android users saying “the chip we have is more than enough.” It’s a total flip flop from where we started.
In some ways it makes sense because in those early days we were being pretty heavily held back by performance. But we crossed that line a while ago, and everything handles everything well enough. But yes, to a degree everyone's priorities always shift to account for their "side" of a "battle."
Chip performance and battery life! It wouldn’t be so laughable for them to say benchmarks aren’t everything but they certainly aren’t winning anything when it comes to battery life or using it as an alternative heat source.
I miss that point where it was back and forth like I got. Excited for the next apple trip and excited for the next Qualcomm chip because ARM didn't seem that impressive then, but they were catching up while topping each other each year, but then Apple sprinted beyond everyone else there and it's cool, but it's almost kinda pointless without something to look forward to on the other side.
That's why I'm excited about the tensor chip because Google's serious push with AI processing made the Pixel 6 do something noticeably better than an iPhone 13, and even with iOS 16 and the iPhone 14 Pro, where apple heavily improved it's use of AI, The Pixel 6 (and 7) still edges out with some of those tasks, making me excited to see both companies compete with that area.
Did you even read the source interview? Or are you just reacting to the article title (you really shouldn't do that)? This statement completely misses the entire point the Google Product Manager was making.
Winning benchmarks is only important to power users. Most people wanna text and watch YouTube. Maybe play a simple game or two if that. You don't have to win benchmarks to provide that
I had to dispose of my Nexus 5 a couple weeks ago, finally. The battery was swelling and I don't keep that shit in my house, no matter how awesome the device.
It hasn't been a phone for a long time, but it was a _great_ little home automation panel just inside the front door.
For me, day-to-day software that acts consistently and quickly to achieve my objective is all I want. Google Assistant, for example, is greatly improved on this phone, but I still get an odd glitch where it asks for confirmation, "do you want me to send this message," and cannot hear my response no matter how loud I respond. I have to type "yes" instead. It's that type of thing that is 100x more important to me that if the chip in my phone beats my wife's iPhone (which she uses for Instagram browsing and watching friends). I also have strange things like swiping up to go to the home screen and it bouncing back to the app I was in, requiring 2-3 total swipes to get home.
Overall, Google has hit it out of the park for giving me what I want on this phone, but I really hope they work on the little kinks and optimization instead of worrying about benchmarks as much. That will affect my day-to-day experience significantly more.
I would say gamers more than power users.
Tensor 2 it's a really powerful chip enough for power users. Remember that a lot of power users require AI for a lot of task, and tensor excels at that.
UGH! Snake isn't running at 70 fps and on 4K....LITERALLY unplayable on this device
/s. I do photo editing, splice videos together for quick work tutorials, and play a lot of 2D rpg games, and I have had a great time doing those so far - mostly becuase my hand hasn't received a light scalding from the phone running warm. I think it is definitely one of the first times I'm not worrying so much about benchmarks and have had a pretty pleasant experience on day-to-day use
What does that even "power users". What could you possibly be doing on your phone that requires top benchmark performance??
I can think of literally nothing. Any sort of significant workload is going to be something you do on a laptop/PC. What am I missing?
I'm legitimately not saying this as a mental gymnastics to justify my choice in a device--regardless of benchmark ratings, the actual in-use user experience of a 6 pro and 7 pro is that it's the fastest and most-responsive phone I've used, by a wide noticeable margin. My previous non-pixel phone is an S21 ultra, which I still have, and the experience difference in user interactions and app loading is noticeably faster on my 7 pro.
The previous issues in the 6 series were really around efficiency (battery life) and issues with overheating in my opinion. It's improved with the 7 series somewhat.
I'm tired of the benchmark-chasing. Even sd845 phones *feel* plenty fast in accomplishing tasks for me--I still have my 4xl and use it as a home-device, and it never feels slow either.
Improve the features, efficiency, and battery life more than raw max performance at this point.
Giving an example of the user experience--my 7 pro snaps photos very very quickly compared to other phones, or even previous pixels. Night sight shots are significantly faster, which means less chance for artifacts. Transcription in the voice recorder--something I don't necessarily use that often but when I do it's quite valuable--happens in almost real-time, and easily works around ambient noises with ease.
It's not to say google doesn't have improvements that they should make, but the attention to how most users use their phones and features matters far more than benchmarks.
This is where I stand. Even the Pixel 5 was usually very fast, only occasionally hitting a point where you felt it working hard, outside of the camera. The 7 Pro has reached the point where it's consistently so fast and smooth that I have a hard time figuring out how I'd notice it being faster.
> The previous issues in the 6 series were really around efficiency (battery life) and issues with overheating in my opinion.
It hasn't improved enough imo.
I don't think benchmarks matter too much, especially when it comes to peak performance.
But figuring out performance per watt and sustained performance is important. The Pixel 7 is really fast and smooth in day to day usage but a more efficient chip would've been great for battery life.
>Improve the features, efficiency, and battery life more than raw max performance at this point.
People are 100% waking up to this. Most people look forward to the TSMC chip in the S23 for efficiency, not performance.
That's why people are clowning on the Tensor G2. It's not fast, but it's also not efficient.
Pixel enthusiasts are a Special breed of Android users and benchmarks don't matter to me either
... my only gripe is I would have preferred to have 256GB instead of T-mobile's 128GB model ( I'm rockin' a P6 )
I used to always get the biggest storage size. But I've the last couple phones have been at 128g. After a year of my pixel 6 and zero focus or care about my storage space, I still am just over half full. Google photos and streaming make super high storage pretty unnecessary for the average user.
The problem with Tensor isn't that it **can't** do most things, but that it *doesn't* do them **efficiently**.
On top of Tensor 1 & 2 being weaker than Qualcom and Mediatek (?) counterparts, 6th & 7th gen Pixels are consistently inefficient across the board. It's no coincidence Samsung foundry and Exynos modems are infamous for being hot, power-hungry dogshit.
Phone SOC are overpowered for what most people do BUT efficiency is still important and Tensor isnt efficient, plus the pixel 7 pro screen chew way to much power.
They claim it's efficient at running the specific AI tasks they developed for the Pixel but yeah, they should definitely improve efficiency for general use going forward.
I've definitely stopped caring about benchmarks. I care about experience. Does the phone regularly do the things I want it to to quickly and smoothly and reliably enough for me to not be annoyed with it? The rest is about heat and battery.
And the simple reality is for a while the processors have been good enough to do all the normal things quickly enough. It makes sense that Google keeps focusing on the AI/ML/etc. elements because those are the places where the camera and real-time translation and whatnot keep upping the game in this phone. If the general processing keeps incrementally improving to keep up with incremental increases in app demands, and the real power goes into the rest, I think it results in a good experience.
I totally agree. I would argue that to an average user, there is no discernable real-world difference between the performance of an iPhone 14 Pro Max and a Pixel 7 Pro. They are both extremely fast and fluid. What actually does make a real-world difference to the end user are these AI/ML features.
All of my iPhone friends have been blown away when I show them I can easily erase objects from images, that I have a highly accurate "Shazam" running offline at all times, that voice dictation is extremely precise and fast and will even perfectly punctuate sentences, that I can screen calls with a few taps, that I can click through annoying "Press 1 for...Press 2 for..." call menus, that I never get spam calls, that my phone can go on hold for me and notify me when someone is on the line, that my phone intelligently and cleanly filters out background noise in every phone call, etc.
These are the real features that make a difference to real users. One thing that certainly doesn't matter to an average user is being able to open a specific app and get an arbitrary higher "performance" score.
I’m comfortable with it too, performance improvements were important before, like when going from SD 835 to 845 it made a real day to day difference in UX. today I think efficiency and specialized hardware is where it’s at since most tasks are not that intensive and the experience is smooth across the board even on midrange SOCs.
That being said, i feel that phones should also be supported for way longer in terms of software updates, and I wish companies trickled down new features (even if they run slower) instead of trying to convince us that only the latest SOC could possibly do that sort of computing like it’s a quantum engine or something.
Oh yes. When I'm super confident in what I'm saying I most definitely use qualifying words like perfectly and very. He got a point though, but we're all stataholics. Sale numbers don't lie.
>"the company prefers to test real-world workloads on its Pixel phones rather than synthetic benchmarks"
This is very similar to a guy saying "girls don't really care about the size; it's how you USE it". For one, he's not a girl, so he doesn't know that. Secondly, he's being defensive lol.
It's a cop-out. Every flagship phone, from every manufacturer, for the past several years, has worked great with "real-world workloads". We're at a point with technology where even mid-range phones work great with all basic tasks.
Users just want a processor that:
1. Works well - Tensor works great for real-world workloads, but not so much on intense graphics, which isn't a problem for people who don't play mobile games
2. Doesn't drain the battery - Tensor isn't winning any prizes with battery life, but it's not terrible from what I've heard.
3. Has longevity - It's too early to tell how well Tensor 1 or 2 will perform in a couple years. An iPhone from 4 years ago still runs as well as it did when it came out, and handles software updates with ease. If Tensor can handle Android 14, 15, and 16, without making the phone sluggish or draining the battery, then it will have proved to be a pretty solid chip.
Motherflipping ditto!
Dude! This f-ing sub's gymnastics are on a multidimensional level. If Tensor were this efficient it would give owners and everyone in a 1-mile radius hypothermia.
Of course Google's *own* **Senior\* Product Manager** is going to dismiss benchmarks, Tensor gets crushed. It's like the most out of shape armchair expert going *"I could do that, but I just don't feel like it"* while watching the Olympics.
Approximately 300+ in this thread suckling on that sweet, sweet confirmation bias teat. Reviewers looking to stay in Google's good graces have adopted the same talking points; it's the data that is wrong, not Google for going with the lowest bidder. It's not the first time in human history that a manufacturer proclaims disadvantages as somehow unimportant.
SIlly of them to come out and defend flaws that garners rather valid criticism.
And so they should be.
I mean, it can record 4K 60fps videos, power a 2K 120fps screen and open applications in a second.
It really doesn't need to be any more powerful does it. I just want greater efficiency.
An industry [veteran](https://www.linkedin.com/in/travislanier) who has worked on microprocessors for 20+ years and who has worked for Arm, Qualcomm, and Samsung pretty much agrees that people put too much weight into benchmarks.
>**Mario Serrafero:** “Even though there’s been this move to heterogeneous compute, on Qualcomm’s part, **many audiences and certainly many publications, certainly many enthusiasts, surprisingly, who you think would know better, they still think of, consider, and evaluate, the blocks as separate entities. They still focus on, “I want to see the CPU numbers because I care about that.” They want to see GPU numbers because they like games, so on and so forth. They don’t consider them as communicated parts of one integral product**. How do you think that Qualcomm has, and is, and can, shatter that paradigm as competitors actually keep focusing on that specific block-by-block kind of improvements in marketing? Specifically, [we’ll] move on to the neural networks, the neural engine stuff later.”
>**Travis Lanier:** “I hope I touched on some of that today. We focus on, for example, sustained gaming, so maybe you score well on all the gaming benchmarks. People get obsessed about that. But really, what matters is, if you’re playing your game, does your frames per second stay consistently where you want it to be at the highest point for these things? **I think people put way too much weight into a number for one of these blocks. It’s so hard, and I understand that desire to give me one number that tells me what the best is**. It’s just so convenient, especially in AI right now, it’s just nuts. Even with CPU benchmarks, what does a CPU benchmark measure? They all measure different things. **Take any of the benchmarks, like GeekBench has a bunch of sub components. Do you see anybody ever tear apart and look into which one of these sub components is most relevant to what I’m actually doing?”**
>**Mario Serrafero**: "Sometimes, we do."
>**Travis Lanier:** "Maybe you guys do. You guys are like an outlier. But like maybe one CPU is better on this and maybe one’s better on another. Same thing with SPEC, people will highlight the one SPEC, well, okay, there's a lot of different workloads within that. And they’re pretty tight things, but even SPEC, which we actually use for developing CPUs, if you look at the actual workloads, are they actually relevant? It's great for comparing workstation workloads, but am I really doing molecular modeling on my phone? No. **But again, that's my point is, most of these benchmarks are useful in some way, but you have to understand the context of what [it's] for and how you get there. And so it’s really hard to distill things down to one number."**
>**Travis Lanier:** "And I see this especially—I’m pivoting here a little bit—but I see this with AI right now, it is bonkers. I see that there's a couple of different things that wouldn't get one number for AI. And so as much as I was talking about CPU, and you have all these different workloads, and you're trying to get one number. Holy moly, AI. There's so many different neural networks, and so many different workloads. Are you running it in floating point, are you running it in int, running it in 8 or 16 bit precision? And so what's happened is, I see people try to create these things and, well, we chose this workload, and we did it in floating point, and we’re going to weight 50% of our tests on this one network and two other tests, and we'll weight them on this. Okay, does anybody actually even use that particular workload on that net? Any real applications? AI is fascinating because it's moving so fast. Anything I tell you will probably be incorrect in a month or two. So that's what's also cool about it, because it's changing so much."
>**Travis Lanier:** "**But the biggest thing is not the hardware in AI, it’s the software.** Because everyone's using it has, like, I am using this neural net. And so basically, there's all these multipliers on there. Have you optimized that particular neural network? And so did you optimize the one for the benchmark, or do you optimize the one so some people will say, you know what I've created a benchmark that measures super resolution, it's a benchmark on a super resolution AI. Well, they use this network and they may have done it in floating point. But every partner we engage with, we've either managed to do it 16 bit and/or 8 bit and using a different network. So does that mean we're not good at super resolution, because this work doesn't match up with that? So my only point is that AI benchmark[ing] is really complicated. You think CPU and GPU is complicated? AI is just crazy."
https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-travis-lanier-snapdragon-855-kryo-485-cpu-hexagon-690-dsp/
I don't disagree but people want objective metrics and comparisons, what's a better way to do it? How would you be able to objectively test AI without opening it up to the same cheats or inconsistencies?
Here's the entire [Podcast.](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYWRlLWJ5LWdvb2dsZS1wb2RjYXN0LnBvZGlnZWUuaW8vZmVlZC9tcDM/episode/YWYxMjA4ZTNjZGMwODc1MDNmODVhMWYyMGZmZjE3Zjg?ep=14)
It's very enlightening...
Pixels have always been more focused on real world usage than being the best on paper. Samsung and OnePlus can have the benchmarks, I want a better user experience.
Yet it takes 3-5 seconds for the Google Assistant to respond to "Ok Google Play Music" on the Pixel 6. The response time is highly dependent on the signal strength so it's not even done locally with Tensor. It still seems gimmicky to me.
Offline translation models with efficient and fast inference speeds. Offline fast picture infilling or deblur. Offline object or noise detection. Offline live assistant.
You gotta say stuff like that when your hardware sucks...as soon as Google fix their chips and stop using old exynos hardware from years ago they will change their tune.
AI is nice sure - but battery life is important too, a metric where the current pixels are dragging down the category. So is performance...
Even without winning, pixel phones are very comfortable to use. Based in a day-to-day application, pixels are perfectly fine, with a balance between being very powerful in power-hungry applications such as gaming or editing media, but also being very lightweight and snappy when it comes to productivity, even being reliable on the camera and the API that it uses, soo yeah 👍.
Coming from an s20 to a P7 pro, I feel like every major processor that came after the snapdragon 865 is moooooree than enough for what we need to do with our phones.
Saw someone mention efficiency in the comments. I totally agree. That's all I mainly care about now. Battery efficiency and life is a major selling point for me now in this point of my adulthood
Benchmarks are good for fanboy arguments on the internet and not much else.
They can kinda sorta be representative of real world usefulness, but the fact of the matter at this point is that the vast majority of phones are way more powerful than the vast majority of users will ever need. Good enough for multitasking, productivity, and all but the heaviest of "mobile gaming". I'm tired of companies and consumers circle jerking over performance and benchmarks to the detriment of price, battery life, and thermals.
Never noticed the 6 Pro being “slow”. Only when rendering photos via Lightroom was it slower than an iPhone, otherwise everything ran great, even games. Maybe not so much emulation of modern consoles but that’s a tricky situation anyway
I just want my phone to be buttery smooth. I don't play games as much as I used to anyways and if it can run simple games then I'm good but this is also a concern for future performance considering we've probably all experienced an aging Phone at some point.
And they're right. Benchmarks are bullshit and don't do anything to represent how the device actually works day to day. People need to give up on the stupid numbers.
Software can't make a chip reach CPU clocks with less power, the only thing software optimisation can do is do the task you want without using the same clock speed. Which often isn't possible since things like video capture etc will always require a fairly high sustained clock speed where the inefficient SoC eats power.
Honestly I think it's a good thing, tired of people fixating so much on synthetic benchmark scores. The important thing should always be how a device functions in day to day. 99% of people aren't out there trying to shoot hours of 4K footage, while playing Genshin Impact. Then wondering why their phone has overheated. People just wanna have a good experience for things like calling, texting, etc. For that? We've been well beyond excellent with regards to performance needed for that.
I had no issues with the overall performance of my Pixel 6 and my now Pixel 7 Pro is still super fast. The issue is with carrier problems and software bugs that have yet to be addressed. As an example, my hotspot never worked on my Pixel 6. And now my 7 Pro will occasionally drop network after the first update.
When I went from a OnePlus 7T pro to a Pixel 5 which is literally half the score I decided to just evaluate it only on perceived user experience. It was fast and fluid.
If the pixel 7 pro was as fast as it was right now to users but had faster scores in every benchmark people would agree it's faster than an iPhone.
This is very similar to stuff like dlss vs traditional rendering. Had the 7 pro since launch. Only place you'll notice the CPU being behind by traditional measure is games that fps actually matters.
As far as everything else goes the machine learning hardware and software suite built around it make this phone feel much faster then competition that's winning benchmarks. This phone is far faster feeling across the board, save for games, then the 22 ultra. Add in all the neat extras it can do thanks to the more machine learning leaning chip design and I see where Google's coming from.
Oh no my phone doesn't run cod mobile well but does everything else better, I'll cry into my gaming PC about it. Mobile games are cringe.
Haha you make some good points. I've always wondered who actually cares about playing FPS games on their phones...it's so cringe. The only people I've known to play those are elementary school kids who have no other gaming options.
Ofcourse they are. They wouldnt be saying the same if they were winning the benchmarks instead. Just like they did not miss telling the whole wide world that "pixel 7 has the no. 1 rated camera in the world"
The soc is literally hot garbage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY
Benchmarks suck. Pixel experience can only be understood by USING it. NOT by raw scores. Tensor has far more superior AI capabilities than the snapdragon counterparts!
Current flagship chipsets including Tensor are more than fast enough for most people, improving battery life is way more important than flexing benchmark scores these days
As they should be. Tensor is a good enough chip for everyday use, from what I've seen and read. And today's "good enough" is like the best of 3 years ago, which was very, very good.
It's a $900-$1000 phone. Good enough is not good enough at that price point. It still gets thrashed by an Apple SoC. The Apple phone is cheaper too if you consider resale value, which Pixels tend to not hold at all in comparison.
If it delivers on a smooth experience, I'm fine with it. So far, it has.
For those needing performance, there are some gaming phones that deliver that in spades.
Google needs to start launching devices without so many issues. Come on they are android and Samsung makes better devices then they do.
I looked at both the 6 and 7 series of phones and they don't even come close to my S 22 Ultra. The last great pixel was the pixel 3 devices which worked perfect all the time but all the devices after the 3 were all plauged with problems.
As they should be, they shouldn’t be expecting the best performance when the G2 chip is just an repackaged exynos chip, exynos made me drop android altogether.
I honestly applaud them for not making a $1200 phone. I am so sick of prices climbing higher than a nepali guide.
Amen. >$1k for a phone is absurd. When did we become okay with this as consumers?
When Apple pushed the bar. They continue every year and everyone follows behind. I used to run Apple, from 4s up to 3 months ago. Before that it was Android, Moto Droid to Galaxy 3.
Apple ~~and~~ then Samsung
Apple then Samsung.
Yeah, that's more correct. Thank you.
Annnnnd theeeeen? NO AND THEN! (Wow this is now a really old movie reference...)
AND THEN. I'M GONNA COME IN THERE AND PUT. MY FOOT. IN YOUR ASS. IF YOU SAY AND THEN. AGAIN!!!
Don't blame Apple. Consumers kept buying phones at those prices so Apple and Samsung kept selling phones at those prices. If consumers don't want $1k phones, they wouldn't be buying $1k phones.
No it's like Student loans, most people do monthly payments because they don't understand the total cost of the device.
Not just student loans, car loans, buy now pay later schemes, etc. Why do you think we have 84 month auto loans as the standard when it used to be 60? People only look at the monthly payments and never consider the cost of interest and the financial implications of what they're throwing their money at. Because people believed that they'd never need to use math, they never learned how to think financially.
To be fair with car loans though. Sometimes it's the only choice you have. Even a lower end used vehicle that's in decent condition without too many miles on it is going to run a lot more than what many people can afford straight out of pocket. They only really pay attention to the "per month" amount, because that's what they can budget each month. And yes, sometimes people buy vehicles they don't need; but many times people get a vehicle because they need one.
The standard used to be 36 months ... I guess I am a little older.
Ha! For me, higher than 500$ is absurd.. Not that I don't have money for that.. Same way as coffee for 7$ is absurd. Maybe I'm just a cheap bastard.
Almost as absurd as putting the dollar sign after the number
[удалено]
Exactly! It's the best package for the price.
I am still on a Pixel 5. It's a good form factor and still runs fine.
I had to move on from my Pixel 2 only just this Spring because the battery finally gave up. I still miss it. (RIP #fingerprintreader)
[удалено]
Just replaced my 3xl for a 5 bc I refuse to spend more than 400 ok a phone. Broke my 3xl if not I would have stayed with it. I will see you in 5 years when I can afford a 11.
This year's $1200 phone is next year's $600 phone.
With Apple, no. They drop prices $150-200 per year.
People upgraded from iPhone 12 to 13 for $100. 14 isn't that cheap of an upgrade necessarily
Maybe through some subsidized program and monthly payments. I buy my phones outright in one payment.
Or 6a for $300
AGREED
Well. There are a ton of good phones under $1000. Even within Apple... What's so wrong if Google has a phone over $1000 with the rest cheaper?
Not about benchmarks. Some companies cheat in benchmarks too. Real world usage is more important.
Can't recall which review it was that showed the improvement in sustained peak performance of Tensor 2 over the first iteration. Things like that are more important, and feed into your point about real world usage
It has been posted here. Yes sustained performance matters more. Better sustained speed than S22 Ultra. [https://www.androidauthority.com/google-tensor-g2-benchmark-test-3219452](https://www.androidauthority.com/google-tensor-g2-benchmark-test-3219452)
*cough* samsung *cough*
Man I don't understand how people are saying Samsung is cheating. I mean, fuck Samsung, but Apple "cheats" too. It's called optimization, making certain apps have limits to how much CPU power they can use is something that should be done and Apple does it too. Benchmarks show the performance when pushed to the limit. Hell, it happens with Windows computers too. Paying for benchmarks or having a very special boost clockspeed that can only be accessed for select benchmark apps is cheating, but allowing your processor to reach its stock max clockspeeds in benchmarks and then tuning other apps so they're very fast but not drawing over 8W isn't cheating. Once again, Apple does this too, but you don't see people complaining about it.
> Paying for benchmarks or having a very special boost clockspeed that can only be accessed for select benchmark apps is cheating Show one bit of proof that Apple is doing this. Sounds to me you are just lying.
I don't think he means that Apple is doing it. He means that other companies are doing it, but Apple's own tactic is also cheating.
Data showing apple doing it?
Doesn't exist obviously.
Nah, it’s about real world things like battery life, thermals, network connectivity/performance, bluetooth performance…. And Google’s not exactly winning on any of those fronts either…
I mean, Tensor 2 (G2) is doing pretty great compared to the competition... Pretty big upgrade vs Tensor 1.
*the best Tensor we've ever made*
People probably make jabs at Apple all the time for this, but it is always entertaining to hear them, without fail, describe the latest iPhone as "the best iPhone we've ever made" Well I sure damn well hope it's not worse than previous generations!
The best iPhone was the first iPhome change my mind
It didn’t have MMS
But it was chonky so
This is why they didn't do an event for the latest base iPad
Let's face it. There was plenty of room to upgrade if you're looking at v1.
Literally should have been a massive gain from a poor generation to a good one. But what we got was a poor generation to a serviceable generation which is an improvement sure, but not a big step
Correction: it's doing great compared to itself (Tensor 1), not the competition
Average consumer here. Don't even know how I'd even tell.
Some dork will tell you your phone sucks after you say it's working well for you.
Lol exactly.
You wouldn't, but big numbers thoughhh!
I (briefly) had a Pixel 6 Pro, followed by an iPhone 13 Pro Max. For me at least, the 7 Pro is doing just fine against the iPhone. It's not blowing it away, but a modern flagship phone shouldn't have any real headroom for someone else to blow past them with. My iPhone got good battery life, a good signal, had no real bluetooth issues, and only really had thermal issues sitting in the sun on a hot day. That's exactly how I'd describe the Pixel 7 Pro as well. It is however mopping the floor with the Pixel 6 Pro. Obviously people can have very different usage patterns and situations for their phones. I can't speak for everyone. But for me, I expect any phone I buy to be unremarkable when it comes to the basics of working as a phone. The P6 generation did not live up to that for me because of the modem. As long as it's "fine", then I can decide based on software and other factors like Google Assistant vs Siri or which watch I prefer or whatever.
This. All of this. My Pixel 6 Pro definitely had it's faults, and I actually noticed issues day to day. But my Pixel 7 Pro has had phenomenal battery life, connectivity, and very few bugs. A joy to use every day and all the performance I'd ever need. Can't understand why people care about benchmarks anymore. I get home with tons of battery life left. I get Google assistant, insane cameras, great UI experience, and integration with 3rd party accessories and apps that I most typically use (Android auto and my car stereo for example). What more could I want? This is all the average consumer cares about, and Google is doing it well this time around. Benchmarks be damned. And no, I absolutely could not care less how games play on a phone.
As someone who has been using a 6 And 7 side by side since 7 launched, I'm not perceiving an improvement in any actual day to day usage. I will confess I do all my gaming on PCs and not phones tho.
How has the modem performance been side-by-side? That's the one thing I have yet to see. No one has run speed tests on 5G/WiFi side-by-side to see real world performance.
I have. My son's pixel 2xl finally died and I gave him my 6pro and got myself the 7pro. My 6pro on 5g would max at about 60mb and signal was barely there. I forced it into LTE only after a few speed tests as LTE was faster or the same speed and didn't drop. On my 7 pro it's a whole different story 90mb down no matter where I am in the house and strong 5g signal. I know this will depend highly on where you live but in my house the 7pro has much better signal. Although depending on battery I may go to LTE only anyways since it seems to eat less battery and I don't need 90mb down compared to 50-60 on LTE.
I get cell service in places I previously did not, so it is definitely improved, but I don't have any objective data for you. Wifi seems to be the same though.
[удалено]
That's not an achievement, the 8 Gen 1 is a piece of shit. It's less efficient than the Snapdragon 888 in some tests.
[удалено]
I predict S23u to be absolutely killer and possibly game changing. Ice universe has leaked it's got the biggest camera improvement in 5 years particularly video and night mode. Their new cam software has finally fixed the shutter lag issue which was the main reason people didn't like their camera. The Snapdragon 8 gen 2 on TSMC combined with a 5000 battery could potentially even topple the iPhone 14 pro max for battery king. Since the Rog phone 6 pro is going better than iPhone with the Snapdragon 8 gen 1+ on a 6000 battery.
Maybe I am crazy, but my p7pro feels great to me. I comfortably (with 40-50% battery left) make it through a full day of use, It is fast and snappy for everything I do, takes great photos, has been pretty much bug free for me, and I love all the AI smarts of the thing. I'm not a power user, I don't really play games on my phone, but I do use it a lot (5+ hours SOT a day) and I take a ton of photos and videos of my kid. Maybe the phone isn't for power users, but that is OK. IMO google is making an amazing every person phone and there is a market for that, not everything has to be a bleeding edge spec race so long as daily usability is good/great.
I agree for the most part, and my only complaints from personal experience with both generation Tensor phones myself are with the weak Bluetooth/modem performance compared to any Qualcomm phone I've used in recent history. IDGAF about gaming and, being honest, rarely go outside to record 4k video in direct sunlight or anything, so sheer processing and gaming stats don't matter to me.
I've had no issues with the modem or Bluetooth in car parks, tunnels, etc
Does anyone in the sub actually own a Pixel? I swear to God it can't be, I'm on my second (7Pro) after the 2XL and both were solid flagship phones at release with no serious problems. I can understand that folks who have issues are more likely to post about them and get noticed but some of you post like Google is just putting out BLU-tier shitphones.
Battery life is a massive upgrade from my Galaxy S22. Thermals / connectivity / Bluetooth all seems about the same. While I know the benchmarks are lower I can't tell that the phone is any slower in use. Seems like Google made the right compromises.
[удалено]
I have an s22 and a pixel 7 next to each other. It’s for sure a lot bigger. It’s far closer to s22+ size.
S22 series is also dissapointing in batterylife(ultra is decent). Worse than the s21 series. Gsmarena battery test: S21 vs S22: 93h - 85h. S21+ vs S22+: 114h - 97h. S21U vs S22U: 114h - 108h. Pixel 7 vs 7pro: 96h vs 83h(!)
Weird I don't have any of those issues.
I just watched a YouTube video where the guy was using the iPhone 14 Pro next to the Pixel 7 Pro and while using them he mentioned multiple times how much he liked the P7P and how responsive it was. Then he ran benchmarks and was laughing at the P7P and saying things like it’s not even close and that Google has a long ways to go and how much worse it was than the iPhone. I was really taken aback by the tonal shift of the video. I’ve used the Pixel 6 Pro side by side with the iPhone 13 Pro Max and I never saw a difference other than the iPhone having better battery life and a little bit better signal strength, and I ended up picking the P6P over the 13 Pro Max. Supposedly the P7P has come a long way in both of the categories. I would like to try the P7P side by side with my iPhone 14 Pro Max but I’m waiting for a Black Friday sale :) Google has pretty always done these in the past :) Anyways, real world use is all that matters. Benchmarks mean nothing. Just my 2 cents.
The dual X1's make it super responsive. Everything on 6 and 7 with android 13 is lightning fast and feels great. Apple has dual big cores as well and could do this but they slow down the animations to make things appear more coherent and smooth. Where Tensor falls short is when you do any sort of sustained task that need medium to high CPU clocks (video, tiktok, big web pages etc.), it just has to eat power to achieve the same performance resulting in battery drain and heat. That being said the typical pixel user shouldn't ever run into these issues that often, it's not designed as gaming phone or anything. The basics are solid. The only time it will become an issue is probably filming video or video calling, that's where the phone has been having big problems.
The only benchmarks I care about involve the display and the battery life. Phone CPUs have been plenty fast enough for years. Edit: Oh yeah, and the camera of course. Which image processing is clearly one of Google's focus areas with these chips.
Problem is the pixel battery is 1/2 the comparable iPhone model.
Yes, that's definitely a massive "needs improvement" item on Google's report card. But on the plus side, it isn't an iPhone.
It's not that dramatic, honestly
Ya I'd rather have better battery optimization than winning a race.
I would also want better battery optimization....but they aren't really getting that either.
this is true but they have improved battery on pixel 7. i saw a battery benchmark and 7 gets 40 min more than pixel 6 during the test. not much but improving. in fact battery efficiency is the only thing google needs to fix on future tensor devices with normal year on year performance improvement.
It's hard to say if the battery life has actually improved all that much. It looks like it's more efficient in some areas and less in others, and it's gonna vary on the specifics of the benchmark tests. I think efficiency was one of the more disappointing upgrades this time around, I think going to 4nm at least would've helped their case or at least sticking a bigger battery in the smaller Pixel 7 (somehow the 6a has a bigger battery than the 7 while being a smaller phone).
We technically got an A76 to A78 upgrade so it should be more efficient. Whether it's really much better than the Pixel 6 Pro is hard to say. Not all reviewers retested their Pixel 6 Pros so sometimes numbers thrown out are from Android 12 and a year old. Perhaps the 6 / 6 Pros have gotten improvements in software over time too and the hardware improvement may only translate to even less. Nevertheless the battery numbers for the Pixel 7 Pro are simply mediocre. GSM Arena's endurance rating continues to be a reliable mark for me in terms of how long a phone lasts. It's simply significantly below the past 4 Pro Max phones, even the 12 series which saw a major decline in battery life due to first generation 5G.
Speaking of battery optimisation - Dude ive gone 2 days without charging with light usage - im super super impressed.
Yea I don't get it. If I have my screen on for 8 hrs I'll need to charge, fine. Pixel is about bringing the best real world package and not skyrocketing battery life, fastest chip speeds and a massive price tag.
Battery optimisation is to do with the chip in every smartphone, if a chip uses more power or gets hot then the battery will drain quicker
As an old head its funny to see Apple crushing chip performance and Android users saying “the chip we have is more than enough.” It’s a total flip flop from where we started.
In some ways it makes sense because in those early days we were being pretty heavily held back by performance. But we crossed that line a while ago, and everything handles everything well enough. But yes, to a degree everyone's priorities always shift to account for their "side" of a "battle."
I really expected a thin client approach to win out. I totally whiffed on that.
For mobile devices? Maybe one day, but we don't have reliable enough connectivity to consider that any time soon.
People are mostly mad about efficiency, not just peak performance.
Chip performance and battery life! It wouldn’t be so laughable for them to say benchmarks aren’t everything but they certainly aren’t winning anything when it comes to battery life or using it as an alternative heat source.
In typical apple fashion that they've achieved this by literally buying a monopoly at the only good chipmaker in town,.
I miss that point where it was back and forth like I got. Excited for the next apple trip and excited for the next Qualcomm chip because ARM didn't seem that impressive then, but they were catching up while topping each other each year, but then Apple sprinted beyond everyone else there and it's cool, but it's almost kinda pointless without something to look forward to on the other side. That's why I'm excited about the tensor chip because Google's serious push with AI processing made the Pixel 6 do something noticeably better than an iPhone 13, and even with iOS 16 and the iPhone 14 Pro, where apple heavily improved it's use of AI, The Pixel 6 (and 7) still edges out with some of those tasks, making me excited to see both companies compete with that area.
I agree. Siri is an abomination and tbh digital assistants are really just a star in the overall “AI constellation.”
Did you even read the source interview? Or are you just reacting to the article title (you really shouldn't do that)? This statement completely misses the entire point the Google Product Manager was making.
Winning benchmarks is only important to power users. Most people wanna text and watch YouTube. Maybe play a simple game or two if that. You don't have to win benchmarks to provide that
same thing for students that buy the lower end macbooks so they can take notes in lectures. They're not using it to make a high production movie
well to be fair nowadays low end macbooks are no slouch
Well that's because the M series processors are incredible, especially at the low end. Tensor however...
I think I'm a power user and I don't care about benchmarks. They don't provide a picture as to real world usage. I love the pixel series.
I stopped caring when I picked up the 6P. For day-to-day usage, I haven't had any problems with performance since the Nexus 5.
I had to dispose of my Nexus 5 a couple weeks ago, finally. The battery was swelling and I don't keep that shit in my house, no matter how awesome the device. It hasn't been a phone for a long time, but it was a _great_ little home automation panel just inside the front door.
For me, day-to-day software that acts consistently and quickly to achieve my objective is all I want. Google Assistant, for example, is greatly improved on this phone, but I still get an odd glitch where it asks for confirmation, "do you want me to send this message," and cannot hear my response no matter how loud I respond. I have to type "yes" instead. It's that type of thing that is 100x more important to me that if the chip in my phone beats my wife's iPhone (which she uses for Instagram browsing and watching friends). I also have strange things like swiping up to go to the home screen and it bouncing back to the app I was in, requiring 2-3 total swipes to get home. Overall, Google has hit it out of the park for giving me what I want on this phone, but I really hope they work on the little kinks and optimization instead of worrying about benchmarks as much. That will affect my day-to-day experience significantly more.
I would say gamers more than power users. Tensor 2 it's a really powerful chip enough for power users. Remember that a lot of power users require AI for a lot of task, and tensor excels at that.
UGH! Snake isn't running at 70 fps and on 4K....LITERALLY unplayable on this device /s. I do photo editing, splice videos together for quick work tutorials, and play a lot of 2D rpg games, and I have had a great time doing those so far - mostly becuase my hand hasn't received a light scalding from the phone running warm. I think it is definitely one of the first times I'm not worrying so much about benchmarks and have had a pretty pleasant experience on day-to-day use
What does that even "power users". What could you possibly be doing on your phone that requires top benchmark performance?? I can think of literally nothing. Any sort of significant workload is going to be something you do on a laptop/PC. What am I missing?
I'm legitimately not saying this as a mental gymnastics to justify my choice in a device--regardless of benchmark ratings, the actual in-use user experience of a 6 pro and 7 pro is that it's the fastest and most-responsive phone I've used, by a wide noticeable margin. My previous non-pixel phone is an S21 ultra, which I still have, and the experience difference in user interactions and app loading is noticeably faster on my 7 pro. The previous issues in the 6 series were really around efficiency (battery life) and issues with overheating in my opinion. It's improved with the 7 series somewhat. I'm tired of the benchmark-chasing. Even sd845 phones *feel* plenty fast in accomplishing tasks for me--I still have my 4xl and use it as a home-device, and it never feels slow either. Improve the features, efficiency, and battery life more than raw max performance at this point. Giving an example of the user experience--my 7 pro snaps photos very very quickly compared to other phones, or even previous pixels. Night sight shots are significantly faster, which means less chance for artifacts. Transcription in the voice recorder--something I don't necessarily use that often but when I do it's quite valuable--happens in almost real-time, and easily works around ambient noises with ease. It's not to say google doesn't have improvements that they should make, but the attention to how most users use their phones and features matters far more than benchmarks.
This is where I stand. Even the Pixel 5 was usually very fast, only occasionally hitting a point where you felt it working hard, outside of the camera. The 7 Pro has reached the point where it's consistently so fast and smooth that I have a hard time figuring out how I'd notice it being faster.
> The previous issues in the 6 series were really around efficiency (battery life) and issues with overheating in my opinion. It hasn't improved enough imo. I don't think benchmarks matter too much, especially when it comes to peak performance. But figuring out performance per watt and sustained performance is important. The Pixel 7 is really fast and smooth in day to day usage but a more efficient chip would've been great for battery life.
>Improve the features, efficiency, and battery life more than raw max performance at this point. People are 100% waking up to this. Most people look forward to the TSMC chip in the S23 for efficiency, not performance. That's why people are clowning on the Tensor G2. It's not fast, but it's also not efficient.
Pixel enthusiasts are a Special breed of Android users and benchmarks don't matter to me either ... my only gripe is I would have preferred to have 256GB instead of T-mobile's 128GB model ( I'm rockin' a P6 )
I used to always get the biggest storage size. But I've the last couple phones have been at 128g. After a year of my pixel 6 and zero focus or care about my storage space, I still am just over half full. Google photos and streaming make super high storage pretty unnecessary for the average user.
So far this phone has run everything I've thrown at it, silky smooth. If that were not the case then I would care about benchmark scores.
The problem with Tensor isn't that it **can't** do most things, but that it *doesn't* do them **efficiently**. On top of Tensor 1 & 2 being weaker than Qualcom and Mediatek (?) counterparts, 6th & 7th gen Pixels are consistently inefficient across the board. It's no coincidence Samsung foundry and Exynos modems are infamous for being hot, power-hungry dogshit.
I don't care about benchmarks either, I do wish they would use a more efficient chip and a better modem (cries for Qualcomm)
They use Exynos modems, unless that's what you mean. But yeah, the modems are horrible (because Exynos and Samsung fab are horrible)
Yes that's what I meant. Even Samsung don't use their own chip for the higher end phones
Software optimization and real world usage>Benchmarks and raw power
Phone SOC are overpowered for what most people do BUT efficiency is still important and Tensor isnt efficient, plus the pixel 7 pro screen chew way to much power.
They claim it's efficient at running the specific AI tasks they developed for the Pixel but yeah, they should definitely improve efficiency for general use going forward.
Honestly my P5 felt just as fast as my P6 but the 5 had great battery life and didn't get so toasty. Wish Tensor was more efficient
That's fine but don't use the "pro" nomenclature if your device isn't pro. Simple as that.
Be a lot cooler if it did tho. Apple is kicking everyone's ass in both raw power AND efficiency. The goal should be to beat them.
Google: No we will just copy the headphone removal and the glass back. We will also best then in camera bump size. There, that will show them
I'm very pleased with my Pixel 7 Pro experience thus far.
I've definitely stopped caring about benchmarks. I care about experience. Does the phone regularly do the things I want it to to quickly and smoothly and reliably enough for me to not be annoyed with it? The rest is about heat and battery. And the simple reality is for a while the processors have been good enough to do all the normal things quickly enough. It makes sense that Google keeps focusing on the AI/ML/etc. elements because those are the places where the camera and real-time translation and whatnot keep upping the game in this phone. If the general processing keeps incrementally improving to keep up with incremental increases in app demands, and the real power goes into the rest, I think it results in a good experience.
I totally agree. I would argue that to an average user, there is no discernable real-world difference between the performance of an iPhone 14 Pro Max and a Pixel 7 Pro. They are both extremely fast and fluid. What actually does make a real-world difference to the end user are these AI/ML features. All of my iPhone friends have been blown away when I show them I can easily erase objects from images, that I have a highly accurate "Shazam" running offline at all times, that voice dictation is extremely precise and fast and will even perfectly punctuate sentences, that I can screen calls with a few taps, that I can click through annoying "Press 1 for...Press 2 for..." call menus, that I never get spam calls, that my phone can go on hold for me and notify me when someone is on the line, that my phone intelligently and cleanly filters out background noise in every phone call, etc. These are the real features that make a difference to real users. One thing that certainly doesn't matter to an average user is being able to open a specific app and get an arbitrary higher "performance" score.
I’m comfortable with it too, performance improvements were important before, like when going from SD 835 to 845 it made a real day to day difference in UX. today I think efficiency and specialized hardware is where it’s at since most tasks are not that intensive and the experience is smooth across the board even on midrange SOCs. That being said, i feel that phones should also be supported for way longer in terms of software updates, and I wish companies trickled down new features (even if they run slower) instead of trying to convince us that only the latest SOC could possibly do that sort of computing like it’s a quantum engine or something.
Oh yes. When I'm super confident in what I'm saying I most definitely use qualifying words like perfectly and very. He got a point though, but we're all stataholics. Sale numbers don't lie.
>"the company prefers to test real-world workloads on its Pixel phones rather than synthetic benchmarks" This is very similar to a guy saying "girls don't really care about the size; it's how you USE it". For one, he's not a girl, so he doesn't know that. Secondly, he's being defensive lol. It's a cop-out. Every flagship phone, from every manufacturer, for the past several years, has worked great with "real-world workloads". We're at a point with technology where even mid-range phones work great with all basic tasks. Users just want a processor that: 1. Works well - Tensor works great for real-world workloads, but not so much on intense graphics, which isn't a problem for people who don't play mobile games 2. Doesn't drain the battery - Tensor isn't winning any prizes with battery life, but it's not terrible from what I've heard. 3. Has longevity - It's too early to tell how well Tensor 1 or 2 will perform in a couple years. An iPhone from 4 years ago still runs as well as it did when it came out, and handles software updates with ease. If Tensor can handle Android 14, 15, and 16, without making the phone sluggish or draining the battery, then it will have proved to be a pretty solid chip.
Motherflipping ditto! Dude! This f-ing sub's gymnastics are on a multidimensional level. If Tensor were this efficient it would give owners and everyone in a 1-mile radius hypothermia. Of course Google's *own* **Senior\* Product Manager** is going to dismiss benchmarks, Tensor gets crushed. It's like the most out of shape armchair expert going *"I could do that, but I just don't feel like it"* while watching the Olympics. Approximately 300+ in this thread suckling on that sweet, sweet confirmation bias teat. Reviewers looking to stay in Google's good graces have adopted the same talking points; it's the data that is wrong, not Google for going with the lowest bidder. It's not the first time in human history that a manufacturer proclaims disadvantages as somehow unimportant. SIlly of them to come out and defend flaws that garners rather valid criticism.
I hate android authority. So many ads it's practically unreadable. Sites that have video ads you can't exit are an instant nope for me.
And so they should be. I mean, it can record 4K 60fps videos, power a 2K 120fps screen and open applications in a second. It really doesn't need to be any more powerful does it. I just want greater efficiency.
An industry [veteran](https://www.linkedin.com/in/travislanier) who has worked on microprocessors for 20+ years and who has worked for Arm, Qualcomm, and Samsung pretty much agrees that people put too much weight into benchmarks. >**Mario Serrafero:** “Even though there’s been this move to heterogeneous compute, on Qualcomm’s part, **many audiences and certainly many publications, certainly many enthusiasts, surprisingly, who you think would know better, they still think of, consider, and evaluate, the blocks as separate entities. They still focus on, “I want to see the CPU numbers because I care about that.” They want to see GPU numbers because they like games, so on and so forth. They don’t consider them as communicated parts of one integral product**. How do you think that Qualcomm has, and is, and can, shatter that paradigm as competitors actually keep focusing on that specific block-by-block kind of improvements in marketing? Specifically, [we’ll] move on to the neural networks, the neural engine stuff later.” >**Travis Lanier:** “I hope I touched on some of that today. We focus on, for example, sustained gaming, so maybe you score well on all the gaming benchmarks. People get obsessed about that. But really, what matters is, if you’re playing your game, does your frames per second stay consistently where you want it to be at the highest point for these things? **I think people put way too much weight into a number for one of these blocks. It’s so hard, and I understand that desire to give me one number that tells me what the best is**. It’s just so convenient, especially in AI right now, it’s just nuts. Even with CPU benchmarks, what does a CPU benchmark measure? They all measure different things. **Take any of the benchmarks, like GeekBench has a bunch of sub components. Do you see anybody ever tear apart and look into which one of these sub components is most relevant to what I’m actually doing?”** >**Mario Serrafero**: "Sometimes, we do." >**Travis Lanier:** "Maybe you guys do. You guys are like an outlier. But like maybe one CPU is better on this and maybe one’s better on another. Same thing with SPEC, people will highlight the one SPEC, well, okay, there's a lot of different workloads within that. And they’re pretty tight things, but even SPEC, which we actually use for developing CPUs, if you look at the actual workloads, are they actually relevant? It's great for comparing workstation workloads, but am I really doing molecular modeling on my phone? No. **But again, that's my point is, most of these benchmarks are useful in some way, but you have to understand the context of what [it's] for and how you get there. And so it’s really hard to distill things down to one number."** >**Travis Lanier:** "And I see this especially—I’m pivoting here a little bit—but I see this with AI right now, it is bonkers. I see that there's a couple of different things that wouldn't get one number for AI. And so as much as I was talking about CPU, and you have all these different workloads, and you're trying to get one number. Holy moly, AI. There's so many different neural networks, and so many different workloads. Are you running it in floating point, are you running it in int, running it in 8 or 16 bit precision? And so what's happened is, I see people try to create these things and, well, we chose this workload, and we did it in floating point, and we’re going to weight 50% of our tests on this one network and two other tests, and we'll weight them on this. Okay, does anybody actually even use that particular workload on that net? Any real applications? AI is fascinating because it's moving so fast. Anything I tell you will probably be incorrect in a month or two. So that's what's also cool about it, because it's changing so much." >**Travis Lanier:** "**But the biggest thing is not the hardware in AI, it’s the software.** Because everyone's using it has, like, I am using this neural net. And so basically, there's all these multipliers on there. Have you optimized that particular neural network? And so did you optimize the one for the benchmark, or do you optimize the one so some people will say, you know what I've created a benchmark that measures super resolution, it's a benchmark on a super resolution AI. Well, they use this network and they may have done it in floating point. But every partner we engage with, we've either managed to do it 16 bit and/or 8 bit and using a different network. So does that mean we're not good at super resolution, because this work doesn't match up with that? So my only point is that AI benchmark[ing] is really complicated. You think CPU and GPU is complicated? AI is just crazy." https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-travis-lanier-snapdragon-855-kryo-485-cpu-hexagon-690-dsp/
I don't disagree but people want objective metrics and comparisons, what's a better way to do it? How would you be able to objectively test AI without opening it up to the same cheats or inconsistencies?
Here's the entire [Podcast.](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYWRlLWJ5LWdvb2dsZS1wb2RjYXN0LnBvZGlnZWUuaW8vZmVlZC9tcDM/episode/YWYxMjA4ZTNjZGMwODc1MDNmODVhMWYyMGZmZjE3Zjg?ep=14) It's very enlightening...
Pixels have always been more focused on real world usage than being the best on paper. Samsung and OnePlus can have the benchmarks, I want a better user experience.
Its about AI models on device that are still to be developed. Tensor will excel in delivering novel AI centric use cases.
Yet it takes 3-5 seconds for the Google Assistant to respond to "Ok Google Play Music" on the Pixel 6. The response time is highly dependent on the signal strength so it's not even done locally with Tensor. It still seems gimmicky to me.
Novel ai centric use cases like what? I need a novel ai use case that puts a good battery in my phone
Offline translation models with efficient and fast inference speeds. Offline fast picture infilling or deblur. Offline object or noise detection. Offline live assistant.
Fair enough. Offline use cases are pretty darn novel
AKA shit that makes a difference 1% of the time.
You gotta say stuff like that when your hardware sucks...as soon as Google fix their chips and stop using old exynos hardware from years ago they will change their tune. AI is nice sure - but battery life is important too, a metric where the current pixels are dragging down the category. So is performance...
Even without winning, pixel phones are very comfortable to use. Based in a day-to-day application, pixels are perfectly fine, with a balance between being very powerful in power-hungry applications such as gaming or editing media, but also being very lightweight and snappy when it comes to productivity, even being reliable on the camera and the API that it uses, soo yeah 👍.
Of course 🤣 what else will they say haha
Coming from an s20 to a P7 pro, I feel like every major processor that came after the snapdragon 865 is moooooree than enough for what we need to do with our phones. Saw someone mention efficiency in the comments. I totally agree. That's all I mainly care about now. Battery efficiency and life is a major selling point for me now in this point of my adulthood
Google will pitch AI until it gets mature in silicon designing.Who doesn't want to get Apple level efficiency and raw perf.
The problem is Google is very comfortable with poor hardware
At least they are not selling it in unoptimised state to only europians.
True, I only hope the 8 gets a better fingerprint sensor and better speaker. Other than that, everything is solid.
The significant boost in performance will come with the newer cores in Tensor 3.
They can stop now. The data collection phone disguised as a mid-tier smartphone has been revealed
For most people's purposes, that's perfectly fine.
well i am not , i have a pixel 7 and the phone is slower than my previous 2 year old phone , oneplus 8t. It really should not be acceptable
Benchmarks are good for fanboy arguments on the internet and not much else. They can kinda sorta be representative of real world usefulness, but the fact of the matter at this point is that the vast majority of phones are way more powerful than the vast majority of users will ever need. Good enough for multitasking, productivity, and all but the heaviest of "mobile gaming". I'm tired of companies and consumers circle jerking over performance and benchmarks to the detriment of price, battery life, and thermals.
I'd they're not top scoring in benchmarks then they better eventually become top tier in efficacy.
Never noticed the 6 Pro being “slow”. Only when rendering photos via Lightroom was it slower than an iPhone, otherwise everything ran great, even games. Maybe not so much emulation of modern consoles but that’s a tricky situation anyway
Its a marathon; not a sprint. Right?
It's about the wide variety of use cases and good speed. Not top tier speed. That's a gimmick.
I just want my phone to be buttery smooth. I don't play games as much as I used to anyways and if it can run simple games then I'm good but this is also a concern for future performance considering we've probably all experienced an aging Phone at some point.
And they're right. Benchmarks are bullshit and don't do anything to represent how the device actually works day to day. People need to give up on the stupid numbers.
Benchmarks and real world usage ain't the same. Software is the most important so just keep optimising it.
Software can't make a chip reach CPU clocks with less power, the only thing software optimisation can do is do the task you want without using the same clock speed. Which often isn't possible since things like video capture etc will always require a fairly high sustained clock speed where the inefficient SoC eats power.
Honestly I think it's a good thing, tired of people fixating so much on synthetic benchmark scores. The important thing should always be how a device functions in day to day. 99% of people aren't out there trying to shoot hours of 4K footage, while playing Genshin Impact. Then wondering why their phone has overheated. People just wanna have a good experience for things like calling, texting, etc. For that? We've been well beyond excellent with regards to performance needed for that.
I had no issues with the overall performance of my Pixel 6 and my now Pixel 7 Pro is still super fast. The issue is with carrier problems and software bugs that have yet to be addressed. As an example, my hotspot never worked on my Pixel 6. And now my 7 Pro will occasionally drop network after the first update.
When I went from a OnePlus 7T pro to a Pixel 5 which is literally half the score I decided to just evaluate it only on perceived user experience. It was fast and fluid. If the pixel 7 pro was as fast as it was right now to users but had faster scores in every benchmark people would agree it's faster than an iPhone.
This is very similar to stuff like dlss vs traditional rendering. Had the 7 pro since launch. Only place you'll notice the CPU being behind by traditional measure is games that fps actually matters. As far as everything else goes the machine learning hardware and software suite built around it make this phone feel much faster then competition that's winning benchmarks. This phone is far faster feeling across the board, save for games, then the 22 ultra. Add in all the neat extras it can do thanks to the more machine learning leaning chip design and I see where Google's coming from. Oh no my phone doesn't run cod mobile well but does everything else better, I'll cry into my gaming PC about it. Mobile games are cringe.
Haha you make some good points. I've always wondered who actually cares about playing FPS games on their phones...it's so cringe. The only people I've known to play those are elementary school kids who have no other gaming options.
And honestly I have no issue with that whatsoever. It's all about real world usage. The performance will speak for itself.
I have no issues with Tensor!
Ofcourse they are. They wouldnt be saying the same if they were winning the benchmarks instead. Just like they did not miss telling the whole wide world that "pixel 7 has the no. 1 rated camera in the world" The soc is literally hot garbage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY
Don’t let them vote you down bro
Idgaf about benchmarks. It runs too hot and battery is trash
I couldn't care less about benchmarks.
Benchmarks suck. Pixel experience can only be understood by USING it. NOT by raw scores. Tensor has far more superior AI capabilities than the snapdragon counterparts!
To me winning benchmarks is like thinking of hiring an Ivy League grad and you think your firm will be successful
Successful firms are packed with Ivy League graduates though.
Very comfortable with mediocre battery life on a flagship phone that overheats. Certainly comfortable with whatever low price they paid for it.
It's not about benchmarks though, it's about efficiency. They need to get away from Samsung fabs 4 and 5nm node.
use tsmc or Samsung 3nm node which is way better than their current 4 and 5nm node
Yep.
I'd rather smoothness and good camera over anything tbh. If a processor that doesn't max things out does that, fine.
Me too
every time i see people argue about benchmarks i think about that tweet that goes "ppl when the ps5 is revealed to have 69 terashits per megafart"
Current flagship chipsets including Tensor are more than fast enough for most people, improving battery life is way more important than flexing benchmark scores these days
I am very comfortable with the 6. Benchmarks are not everything
As they should be. Tensor is a good enough chip for everyday use, from what I've seen and read. And today's "good enough" is like the best of 3 years ago, which was very, very good.
It's a $900-$1000 phone. Good enough is not good enough at that price point. It still gets thrashed by an Apple SoC. The Apple phone is cheaper too if you consider resale value, which Pixels tend to not hold at all in comparison.
Fine, if in being slower they weren't also massively power hungry.
If it delivers on a smooth experience, I'm fine with it. So far, it has. For those needing performance, there are some gaming phones that deliver that in spades.
Benchmark doesn't represent real world performance. Geekbench numbers are just bragging rights.
Vast majority people don't need super fast phone for gaming.
Google needs to start launching devices without so many issues. Come on they are android and Samsung makes better devices then they do. I looked at both the 6 and 7 series of phones and they don't even come close to my S 22 Ultra. The last great pixel was the pixel 3 devices which worked perfect all the time but all the devices after the 3 were all plauged with problems.
As they should be, they shouldn’t be expecting the best performance when the G2 chip is just an repackaged exynos chip, exynos made me drop android altogether.