The word on the street regarding Google’s Pixel 2 and Pixel XL 2 models is one of two manufacturers, no headphone jack and seeming jack-all chance of success.
When flagship phones from Samsung, LG and soon Apple will have 18:9 "infinity display" style screens, should a flagship phone from Google follow, or stick with the same old 16:9 display?
Of course, Apple too is reportedly staying with its 16:9 screens for the upcoming iPhone 7s and 7s Plus, but with the iPhone 8/Pro/X/Edition said to be shrinking bezels like Samsung’s flagships, Google’s reported decision not to go for the largest aspect ratio is baffling.
So too is Google’s reported decision, announced by the well-known leaker, Evan Blass, that it was thinking of going with HTC for the Pixel 2, and LG for the Pixel XL 2.
{loadposition alex08}Blass wonders, in his VentureBeat article whether the Pixel XL 2 might have the 18:9 displays that LG’s own G6 and Q6 handsets sport.
Then he wonders whether HTC’s version of the smaller Pixel will have front facing speakers and squeezable sides called Edge Sense, which on the HTC U11 have reportedly been a solution in search of a problem.
This could mean Pixel 2 devices with different feature sets, with the smaller sporting squeezable sides and a 16:9 screen, while the larger has a longer screen.
If this were true, it would be the kind of fragmentation Android is famous for, but in its very own flagship models!
Google might as well launch Android Nougat on one of the devices, and Android O on the other, just to keep up with the rest of its OEMs doing the same kind of thing across product lines.
Of course, Google actually doing that would be ridiculous. I am sure that the mighty Google, caught up in a masculinist/feminist culture war of business-killing, ending-ending and career-imploding proportions, won’t go so far as to introduce two flagships radically different from the other.
I mean, it would be as stupid as massively promoting the fact that the 2016 Pixel models were "refreshingly" equipped with something not new, being standard 3.5mm headphone sockets, and then deciding in the 2017 Pixel 2 and Pixel XL 2 models, to omit them.
Except that has been reported, too! Oh, the diversity.
So, while I’ll be very keen to see what Google cooks up with its Pixel 2 flagships in comparison with the hugely anticipated new iPhones, alongside with Samsung’s new Note 8, set to make up for the smoulderingly unexpected Note 7 misadventures, one can only hope there are still people at work at Google doing technology stuff, rather than leaking against one another in the hope of everyone being fired.
And that’s at a company that promised to do no evil.
Listen, guys and girls, what you need to do is focus on work. Good work. Leave the evil stuff for North Korea.
Until then, may your pixels be OLED, may your fragmentation be low, may your colleagues work smoothly together, and may you all the craziness, overthrow.