Android The Google Pixel 6 is our 2021 phone of the year |
- The Google Pixel 6 is our 2021 phone of the year
- Google Play app with 500,000 downloads sent user contacts to Russian server
- Early test results: Dimensity 9000 CPU efficiency is >40% better then snapdragon 8 gen 1.
- Google Messages sends MMS video in much higher quality than Messages on iOS
- Current Smartphones with User Removable Battery
| The Google Pixel 6 is our 2021 phone of the year Posted: 18 Dec 2021 06:44 AM PST
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| Google Play app with 500,000 downloads sent user contacts to Russian server Posted: 18 Dec 2021 11:24 AM PST
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| Early test results: Dimensity 9000 CPU efficiency is >40% better then snapdragon 8 gen 1. Posted: 18 Dec 2021 06:20 AM PST
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| Google Messages sends MMS video in much higher quality than Messages on iOS Posted: 18 Dec 2021 12:41 PM PST TL;DR: You can find the side-by-side comparison video here. I recently noticed that videos I sent from my phone (over MMS) were much less blurry than videos sent from iPhones to me. I decided to test this theory, and sent the same 42-second test clip (over MMS) from an iPhone SE on iOS 14.7.1 and from my OnePlus 6T on Android 11 with Google Messages 10.9.360 to my Google Voice number. Some statistics: Original video:
Video sent from Messages on iOS
Video sent from Google Messages
I also made a side-by-side comparison video (also linked above) that shows the quality difference. Analysis: It looks like Google Voice is doing some reencoding of these videos, as the files downloaded were much larger than I expected (my carrier has a 1MB attachment limit, and the GM video I downloaded from Google Voice was 3 MB in size). Google Messages on my device reports the size as 850 KB. Given that the encoder listed for both videos is "Google" and both are in MP4 format, I suspect Google Voice is doing some reencoding to make these videos more compatible. It appears that the reason iOS's video quality is so low is because iOS video is sent in the 3GPP format, which was first introduced in 2003 and designed to send video over 3G networks. Google Messages sends larger video files in the MP4 format, allowing for better quality. Also, for whatever reason, iOS sends videos in 11:9 aspect ratio, no matter the aspect ratio of the source, which means portrait videos are letterboxed (i.e. the video is scaled down to fit the 11:9 aspect ratio, creating empty space at both sides). Thus, when playing these videos back, the video will never completely fill the screen. When held in portrait mode, the letterboxed video is shown at its maximum width on your device, but as it contains hardcoded empty space on the left and right sides, the video appears very small onscreen. Conclusion: It's unclear why iOS Messages still sends videos in the 3GPP format. Perhaps Apple wants to ensure these videos are compatible with older 3G devices or perhaps iPhones have always sent 3GPP video and Apple hasn't considered switching formats. However, it may be that Apple is choosing to keep MMS quality lower than it could be in order to highlight the differences between MMS and iMessage. SMS conversations on iOS have suspiciously lower contrast, and Apple often tries to hide the deficiencies of sent SMSes by hiding sent reaction SMSes and displaying sent videos in full quality (as opposed to showing the compressed version that is actually sent). I suspect Apple is trying to teach its users to expect a higher quality messaging experience than MMS can support, in order to make MMS (and, by extension, Android) feel more broken than it needs to be. This teaches iPhone users that their phone is the one sending high-quality videos and reactions, and that the default texting experience is high-quality. This expectation only leads to disappointment when low-quality videos/reactions are received over SMS, creating an unfair resentment of MMS and, by extension, Android. MMS quality is kept low in order to widen that expectation gap. [link] [comments] | ||
| Current Smartphones with User Removable Battery Posted: 18 Dec 2021 06:59 AM PST Cubot Max 3 - 4GB/64GB/6.95"/720 (ebay $160) Incredibly hard to track down the removable battery options. Help needed to verify or collect info on any other options. Let's band together and say no to planned obsolescence! [link] [comments] |
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