Pixel 3 XL Specs

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

"Confirmed"

Snapdragon 845
4 GB LPDDR4X RAM
1 rear camera, details TBD
2 front cameras, details TBD
6.3" OLED display, resolution TBD
UFS 2.1 storage, 128 GB option confirmed, other options TBD
Dual front facing stereo speakers.
USB type C charging port
No headphone jack
Rear fingerprint sensor
Android 9 (P)
Notch
Glass back, wireless charging TBD

"Not even close to confirmed"

Some details on the above components still TBD
Battery size TBD

 

[RaRa85]

Single lens is a little disappointing to be quite honest although I'm sure the quality will be crazy.

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

Single lens is a little disappointing to be quite honest although I'm sure the quality will be crazy.

Definitely an interesting decision

 

[RaRa85]

Definitely an interesting decision

I'm hoping it's an early prototype since most of the competition has two sensors on the back now.

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

I'm hoping it's an early prototype since most of the competition has two sensors on the back now.

I understand but I also put it in the quote-unquote confirm category for a reason

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

Pretty disappointing.

A lot of 2018 flagships are coming out with 6gb ram and 2 or more cameras. Don't know if this is Google being cheap or the camera has some amazing trick that allows it to do what multi-camera setups do.

 

[TheDonJ77]

Pretty disappointing.

A lot of 2018 flagships are coming out with 6gb ram and 2 or more cameras. Don't know if this is Google being cheap or the camera has some amazing trick that allows it to do what multi-camera setups do.

Yeah don’t understand some of the decisions here but I guess we’ll have to wait and see

 

[RaRa85]

Ok so on the camera front I have one theory if they decide to go with one sensor. Hopefully if that is the case, Google will include a large sensor with say 20mp resolution. That with their software chops would make up for the absence of a dedicated telephoto lens. Now that would be totally fine with me if they did that.

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

Ok so on the camera front I have one theory if they decide to go with one sensor. Hopefully if that is the case, Google will include a large sensor with say 20mp resolution. That with their software chops would make up for the absence of a dedicated telephoto lens. Now that would be totally fine with me if they did that.

That won't make up for a lack of a separate telephoto lens, it just means a larger resolution for images. Digital zooming in an image will always be worse than optically zooming, no matter what the resolution is.

And a 20mp sensor means a smaller physical sensor which means it'll be worse for low light situations.

I don't know what Google's plan is here, but I hope they're going with one camera lens for a reason. What that is, I don't now. But the 4gb ram just come off as cheap and cost savings to me though. No reason why the phone shouldn't have 6gb ram. App reloads are no fun and more ram alleviates that.

 

[RaRa85]

That won't make up for a lack of a separate telephoto lens, it just means a larger resolution for images. Digital zooming in an image will always be worse than optically zooming, no matter what the resolution is.

And a 20mp sensor means a smaller physical sensor which means it'll be worse for low light situations.

I don't know what Google's plan is here, but I hope they're going with one camera lens for a reason. What that is, I don't now. But the 4gb ram just come off as cheap and cost savings to me though. No reason why the phone shouldn't have 6gb ram. App reloads are no fun and more ram alleviates that.

No a bigger physical sensor like Huawei uses. Maybe not the same exact size but definitely bigger than the standard. In that instance you can still get larger pixel sizes on the sensor thus lowlight would still be great on it with a nice wide aperture. Plus if you look at some comparisons between Sony's XZ2 and phones with a dedicated telephoto lens, the XZ2 matches up considerably well with the competition. https://youtu.be/RE_T9xjV8fQ
And the digital zoom with only 12mp on the Pixel 2 is not far behind phones with the telephoto zoom right now.

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

No a bigger physical sensor like Huawei uses. Maybe not the same exact size but definitely bigger than the standard. In that instance you can still get larger pixel sizes on the sensor thus lowlight would still be great on it with a nice wide aperture. Plus if you look at some comparisons between Sony's XZ2 and phones with a dedicated telephoto lens, the XZ2 matches up considerably well with the competition. https://youtu.be/RE_T9xjV8fQ
And the digital zoom with only 12mp on the Pixel 2 is not far behind phones with the telephoto zoom right now.

I don't know if that was the right video to link, I didn't think the XZ2 was very impressive and the low light images/slow motion video looked really quite poor.

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

4 GB RAM isn't a problem unless you're having RAM management issues, which Android doesn't by default. What does one want 6 GB of RAM for? For a reason or just because it is more?

 

[RaRa85]

I don't know if that was the right video to link, I didn't think the XZ2 was very impressive and the low light images/slow motion video looked really quite poor.

That's not what we were talking about.If you skip to 3:54 you can see that the 19mp sensor does better in detail than Samsung's 12mp sensor with more detail and dynamic range. Also the telephoto zoom is limited to good lighting so in lowlight you're just getting a digital zoom anyway.

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

4 GB RAM isn't a problem unless you're having RAM management issues, which Android doesn't by default. What does one want 6 GB of RAM for? For a reason or just because it is more?

Well more ram helps with managing apps and the more you have, the less apps will have to reload, so you can go back to your previous state without the app reloading from scratch.

Also, it just seems cheap that other OEM's can make phones with 6gb or more ram, but Google don't. Just comes off as they're not trying to make their product great value in terms of hardware.

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

Well more ram helps with managing apps and the more you have, the less apps will have to reload, so you can go back to your previous state without the app reloading from scratch.

Also, it just seems cheap that other OEM's can make phones with 6gb or more ram, but Google don't. Just comes off as they're not trying to make their product great value in terms of hardware.

Possible that money is part of the decision, but there's likely more to it. Given the typical markup on components, would you want to pay more for the device for features with no direct value add? Is it worth another $50 to you? Are people complaining about the S9's 4 GB or the iPhone X's 3 GB? I'm going to return to the fact that the first and second generations of Pixels do not suffer from any issues with resource management.

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

Possible that money is part of the decision, but there's likely more to it. Given the typical markup on components, would you want to pay more for the device for features with no direct value add? Is it worth another $50 to you? Are people complaining about the S9's 4 GB or the iPhone X's 3 GB? I'm going to return to the fact that the first and second generations of Pixels do not suffer from any issues with resource management.

Why should adding an extra 2gb ram jack up the price though? Other high-end smartphones have 6gb ram and they're cheaper than the Pixel 2 XL. There should be no reason why the Pixel 3/3 XL would need to be charged at a higher RRP because it has an extra 2gb ram.

Galaxy S9+ has 6gb ram, a second camera lens, comes bundled with headphones and is cheaper RRP than the Pixel 2 XL. If the Pixel 3 XL needs the price jacked up even more than the Pixel 2 XL simply because of the addition of a little extra ram, then something is every wrong.

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

Why should adding an extra 2gb ram jack up the price though? Other high-end smartphones have 6gb ram and they're cheaper than the Pixel 2 XL. There should be no reason why the Pixel 3/3 XL would need to be charged at a higher RRP because it has an extra 2gb ram.

Galaxy S9+ has 6gb ram, a second camera lens, comes bundled with headphones and is cheaper RRP than the Pixel 2 XL. If the Pixel 3 XL needs the price jacked up even more than the Pixel 2 XL simply because of the addition of a little extra ram, then something is every wrong.

The 3GB in the iPhone X and 8 Plus is $25-26 per unit. The 6 GB in the S9+ is $35-40 per unit. That extra $9-15 per unit represents an upfront cash outlay of between $270 million and $4 billion dollars. They're going to pass those costs on to the consumers.

More importantly, retail pricing for devices is typically based on a ratio to the cost to manufacture. As an example, if your phone costs $300 to make each unit and your retail pricing is $750, then your ratio is 2.5:1. That 2.5:1 is being determined by bean counters and is intended to represent the expected profit margin needed to justify the product's existence. If your ratio is 2.5:1 going into modeling and at the end of the process you find out that it's going to cost $350 to make each device, rather than $300 - that extra $50 is going to be multiplied by 2.5 and now your suggested retail just went from $750 to $825. A business decision could be made to reduce the margin on the delta in order to try to drive more sales, but at a minimum they're going to include that extra $50 in the suggested retail, whether or not they choose to recoup all or part of the $25 additional.

Recently phone prices have gone up because component costs have skyrocketed. The companies have chosen to share some of the cost on that, but they have to be smart about the inclusion or exclusion of components from a value add standpoint. Is 2 GB more RAM going to sell enough additional devices to justify the cash outlay? For Pixels, it would mean fronting about $50-60 million in cash. That would require, in your scenario where the price doesn't change, that the 2 GB RAM alone be responsible for driving another 80,000 - 100,000 purchases. Is that likely? IMO, no. But they have better analytics on that then I do.

 

[Nauga]

Some evidence from XDA that makes a case for wireless charging on the Pixel 3s:

https://www.xda-developers.com/android-p-wireless-charging-dock-google-pixel-3/

So, hopefully, that glass body won't be a complete waste of moolah.

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

Some evidence from XDA that makes a case for wireless charging on the Pixel 3s:

https://www.xda-developers.com/android-p-wireless-charging-dock-google-pixel-3/

So, hopefully, that glass body won't be a complete waste of moolah.

The "word on the street" is that Google is getting ready to put 2 wireless charging docks on the Google Store this summer.

 

[osubeavs728]

Well more ram helps with managing apps and the more you have, the less apps will have to reload, so you can go back to your previous state without the app reloading from scratch.

Also, it just seems cheap that other OEM's can make phones with 6gb or more ram, but Google don't. Just comes off as they're not trying to make their product great value in terms of hardware.

If it doesn't need it why would they put it in? Other phones might need 6gb of RAM (although they probably don't) because of their bloated OS. It seems like you're just trying to find things to complain about at this point.

If a phone needs 6gb of RAM to run smoothly then there are bigger problems that need to be addressed with the way it handles its memory and apps.