Google packed the Pixel 9 Pro XL with a punch, as evidenced by its latest leaked specs.

  • Vik
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    5 months ago

    No worries, I’m just ranting at this point.

    The headphone jack is a sore spot for me, I have a few speaker systems around the house and garage with 3.5mm. I use an adapter but wired audio over USB C on android has terrible UX; it’s treated as a generic USB device, so it carries the same security implications (can only route audio with the device unlocked, can cut out if you lock the phone shortly after). Audio quality over type C + adapter has been worse in my experience but this will vary by device.

    The displays are kind of a multi faceted thing for me. I can always see the impact of the pentile sub-pixel layout on text regardless of pixel density. I cannot unsee that sort of screen door effect.

    Compared to LCD IPS, you might notice a smearing effect with UI animations on oled, I believe the same can be observed with desktop displays (in addition to VRR backlight flicker on darker content)

    There’s also the faster rate of degradation it carries as a technology, which has prompted mitigations at the OS level.

    The infinite contrast / per pixel backlighting is nice for sure, though it’s led to AOD replacing dedicated notification RGB LEDs (which feels sort of inelegant; that’s additional content to render on display and it’s generally less functional than addressable RGB at a glance), has enabled under-display fingerprint readers (which pale in performance to conventional sensors). Rounded corners aren’t intrinsic to oled but camera hole punch designs seem to be. Those camera holes will never not look like a design concession to me. 18 months with this and I still think it’s dumb.

    The phone feels pretty solid but the back is glass, the sides are slippery without a case, and the glass on both sides protrudes past the bezel, making it a bit more damage prone.

    None of these things are intrinsic to the pixel, it’s sad to see so little variation out there though.

    • @[email protected]
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      15 months ago

      Hmm, seems like some phones don’t have a DAC anymore and thus, the USB-C adapter need to get the audio in digital form and use its own DAC…

      I guess in that case, it would be a better experience attaching a wifi audio receiver and send the hifi signal over that. Best scenario would be if the music box would have a digital in port you can use, so you would use the DAC dedicated to your speakers, which is better than phone DAC in most cases.

      • Vik
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        25 months ago

        I’ve been looking at several powered adapters as well as Bluetooth receivers with aux output. I’ve also considered a low power dedicated music system, problem for the garage is no wlan access.

        • @[email protected]
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          5 months ago

          Oh, I see, 😄 maybe you can “steal” a car radio from a wrecked car 😁 many of those have great DAC and bluetooth and/or a USB-A port for music input.

          If touch and android car compatible, you’d get a very nice experience, I assume.

          Ah, and of course, what comes out of car radios is an analog audio signal that powers the speakers directly. I think you could use that analog out signal and feed it into the aux port 😇

          • Vik
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            25 months ago

            Hahaha I like the idea of that