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Google Unveils Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL With No Headphone Jack (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the new-shiny-devices dept.

From a report: Google product chief Mario Queiroz today unveiled two new Android 8.1 Oreo smartphones at the company's annual hardware event: the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL. The smaller Pixel 2 sports a 5-inch, 1080p display, with a 16:9 aspect ratio that was until this year the standard on Android flagships. The larger Pixel 2 XL, meanwhile, has a 6-inch, QHD+ display in an 18:9 aspect ratio, in line with 2017's flagship smartphones. The Pixel 2 thus still has a large bezel while the Pixel XL 2 has a noticeably reduced bezel profile, although certainly not the smallest we've seen. As always, smartphone size also dictates battery capacity: 2700 mAh for the Pixel 2 and 3520 mAh for the Pixel 2 XL. Here's the rundown: Snapdragon 835 chipset, 4GB of RAM, either 64GB or 128GB of storage, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, a 12-megapixel rear camera, front stereo speakers, a fingerprint scanner on the back, a USB-C port on the bottom, and no headphone jack. "Use your existing analog headphones with the included adapter," Queiroz said. [...] The HTC-manufactured Pixel 2 will be available in Just Black, Clearly White, and Kinda Blue on October 19. The LG-manufactured Pixel 2 XL will ship in Just Black and Black & White on November 15. The Pixel 2 will be available for $649 (64GB) and $749 (128GB) while the Pixel 2 XL will come in $849 (64GB) and $949 (128GB) flavors.

3 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Ballsy Move by pi_rules · · Score: 4, Informative

    Given that the original Pixel is absolutely horrible at playing back music via Bluetooth I'd call this a pretty ballsy move. Google doesn't appear to have any idea how to fix the problem on the Pixel either. Mine will start skipping during music so bad you'd think I was listening to a CD player in 1994 going down a gravel road.

  2. Re:Misses the REAL story by Albanach · · Score: 3, Informative

    But not to worry. It's all okay. Google says it's not evil.

    That's a pretty serious amount of wild speculation from someone that didn't watch the launch or read any of the followup press articles. The camera does the AI on-board. In fact that was a theme of the presentation - music detection also being performed on board the new pixel.

    I'm not sure if Google has rediscovered privacy, if this is a reflection of more powerful mobile processors now being capable of this type of workload, or a bit of both.

  3. Re:Bye by farble1670 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Can you provide a citation that there is no "disable switch"?

    There absolutely is a disable switch. I'm looking at it right now on my Android 8 Pixel XL. The setting was off by default.