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I am so amused at the “HiLight” feature (lighting up colored LEDs for notifications so you can see them “at a glance” without looking at the screen). This is a feature that was on the Android phones of old (including the original G1) and I loved it, but it got phased out in favor of “always on displays”… which apparently now we want less of!

It’s funny how trends like this are a circle sometimes.

One day I hope for a future innovation that brings back 3.5MM jacks and I can have audio as convenient as it was in the 1950s, but until then my bluetooth can connect to my speakers while I'm not in the same building and switch device automatically with no setting to change it and with no warning deafen the people in my house, where the only way to switch back requires a mere 20 screen taps (which i can partly blame graphene os for, not their fault i can use a wire though)

Maybe I take this a little too close to heart.

This is precisely why I left Android.

Google can't seem to decide on a direction and stick with it. Years of new features that inevitably ended up abandoned 2 versions later resulted in a constantly changing and unpredictable user experience.

It was fun while I had free time in college and enjoyed flashing ROMs, but as I got busier with life this lack of refinement pushed me away.

The RGB leds were one of my favorite features of early Android phones. I even backed a terrible Kickstarter campaign that synced those colors to an RGB wristband (this was before smartwatches were a thing).

My Nexus 5 had that feature and it was really useful to see if the phone had a message pending. They also did the same thing for wireless charging, dropping it and then bringing it back. The PM probably gets paid good money to go in circles.
They had it as a hidden feature up till the nexus 5 or 6 I believe. Someone bothered to include hardware for an LED even if the stock software never supported it.
> lighting up colored LEDs for notifications so you can see them “at a glance” without looking at the screen

My old Blackberry Bold had this feature and I loved it! I had it customized so it would pulse a different color depending on who had messaged me.

I remember my little Motorola flip phones from 25+ years ago had an LED that would blink for things like voice mails or unread SMS. I can't remember if it also did missed calls, and maybe could do orange or green? I seem to recall it did a unary pattern to blink out the number of queued events.

The problem with this kind of feature is that it falls apart if you're the type who leaves things unread or gets them all the time. Then, it is little more than a beacon to say "phone still exists"...

This used to be a critical feature for me I used to customize the colour per-app so I could see what notifications I had at a glance. However always-on displays have supplanted this use case for me.
My Nexus One had that colored trackball, and rooting / custom roms allowed you to set specific colors to whatever type of notification or alert you wanted. Good times.
One day those autostereo displays and 3D cameras from the early Androids will return too.
I remember having this on a Sidekick in like 2007.
been waiting for this feature to come back forever. hope it's still around the next time I get a new phone.
Just wait until phones get headphone jacks!
I used to be a "cutting edge phone guy" where I'd get the latest iPhone ever year and the thought of having the older phone just didn't sit well with me. These days though the upgrades are so marginal I don't even care. I'm looking forward to upgrading my three year old phone this year, but not because I expect it to be more than "better camera, faster and thinner" but just because its time.

These updates are so boring now!

Why is it "time" after 3 years? They should hopefully still be getting software updates, at least security updates.

I'm on an iPhone 13 since launch (almost 5 years ago) and still see no reason to upgrade. There just hasn't been anything 'exciting' in phones in many years.

EDIT: should add, I've only used 50% of the 256GB storage and battery life is still fine (comfortably gets through an entire day+night). But I'm not a heavy phone user so that's perhaps atypical for a 5yo phone.

what a strange comment! It's totally fine, you do whatever you want, but it sounds like "I used to be an alcoholic drinking two 12-packs a day, now I don't even care about beer: I just have 6 a day and that's not because I want to be drunk but just because I feel like it". Like, sure it's quantitatively better but... it's not really qualitatively very different is it
Phone advancements between 2007-2017 was insane. I wonder how much of it was Apple catching up to the cutting edge of phone tech leveraging its iOS advantage, vs just natural pace of innovations. Feels like there had been an invisible war.
I agree; but I'm not sure it is fixable. Without some technological advancement to actually move the needle, most manufacturers are just stuck with marginal hardware changes and then some cheesy software-locked exclusive to the latest models.
As someone that has used pre-paid phones most of my life, starting with TMN Mimo in 1997, I have always replaced my devices when they break down or got stolen, and that was it.

Back in the day there were no updates anyway, until Symbian or Windows CE/Pocket PC became common, and even them had at most a single firmware update during their lifetime, which had to be installed via the developer tools SDK.

These phones are getting larger each release, and it's the opposite of the trend I prefer now. I really am starting to miss the SE phone sizes and not feeling like I'm carrying a literal brick in my pocket wherever I go now. I don't think Apple is cutting back on the phone size either when their Fold comes out, and we're slowly just moving towards the point where a phone is just a mini tablet.
I'm looking forward to when "fold" is not so equivalent to "premium". I'm interested in a folding phone, but I don't think I've spent a cumulative $2000 on my last 4 phones. I'd have a hard time justifying spending even $1000.

I'm also looking forward to nomenclature settling so the horizontal-folding passport-style folding phones (like this, which I find interesting) can be more clearly distinguished from the vertical-folding flip-phone style folding phones (which don't remotely interest me).

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but all the benefits in the video intro are either things that aren't benefits of the hardware (screen calls without looking, Gemini, tap less do more) or they're compensations for the foldable screen (30% more durable, 20% brighter ... than the last Fold, but likely still worse than non-folding phones.)

I don't see that as a product video that's telling me why I need one. It's just telling me that they've iterated on the last model. I mean, congrats, well done, but why should I buy it?

The Fold still has 16GB of RAM. The 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL both got nerfed to 12GB.

You also only get 6 months of a free Google AI Pro subscription (a $120 value) as opposed to the 12 months with the 10 (a $240 value). It's hard to see the 11 as an upgrade.

You know, maybe cameras are good enough, and I don't want a tumor at the top edge of my phone that gets tiresome to hold after 5 minutes.
I am only 75, but in a few years I have thought of downsizing to one device (and a VPS for a little coding). A future version of this phone that is triple fold would work for me.
Why is Google averse to larger batteries? The Chinese makers have been stuffing 8000ish mah batteries in rather diminutive phones for two or three years now, and Google is releasing one in 2026 with about half that.
I was looking forward to this one because of the IP68 dust and water protection rating, but the fact that it has the same cameras as the base Pixel 11 instead of the Pro is very sad. I also wish the HiLight feature was more used at launch - for example, having it glow red while recording.
I still think stylus support (both hardware but especially software) is going to be a killer app for these things. They've gone in the wrong direction for now, but some of the Asian phone companies (Huawei?) still have stylus support.
Does anyone had a good experience with foldable phones? The only people I know that bought one had them broken near the 2 year mark.

My phone from 2018 it's still working perfectly.

I have the pixel 10 fold (got it on offer) and honestly it already feels excessive. I welcome these incremental upgrades but the number dropping in the marketing material and the "moar AI" stuff doesn't appeal to me at all.
I always ask myself why Google's Gemini integration still feels that bad despite the company having full control over Android, the Play Store, and the Pixel hardware stack. If one could fully operate any feature on the phone with Gemini (and combine actions into workflows and tasks), that would at least for me be the next evolutionary step in "smart" phones.
With fewer and fewer interesting things getting added from one generation to the next, freedom, security, and privacy have become my main selling point when deciding on a phone. 7 years of updates, strong hardware enforced security and the ability to run graphene is have been the deciding factors in the last 3 phones I've bought for myself and my family.
New phones are so boring now, bring back Nokia
>The dual screens on Pixel 11 Pro Fold are ideal for real-time translation, especially with our new sign-to-text feature. Developed in partnership with the Deaf community, it lets signers express themselves in Live Transcribe and Gboard in their native language.

That is big news if it's actually good enough to use. People have been trying to build sign-to-text and sign-to-speech systems for decades and they've never been usable.

Here's to fast GrapheneOS support for all the get the 11 line.
seems the big phone makers are going with the phone-2-tablet fold.

very few have gone with the ultra portable and pragmatic fold like razr-ultra.

hopefully apple comes out with a razr-ultra like fold.

I've got a pixel 9, I don't see any meaningful changes here worth upgrading. The hardware looks essentially the same, except for a better camera and a ruby but if more battery. What am I missing?
We need companies able to reimagine the devices we use every day in a more sharp way.
That texting UI is rough, text is way too big and the long input box and split keyboard really feel like the laziest UI.
How many people actually care about phone tech anymore?

Like, of course there are subcultures that love this stuff, and I'm not criticizing that. And these folding phones are neat tech. But at some point phones for the 99% got "good enough", the model to model upgrades aren't even worth it.

somebody pitch me on upgrading my note 10 plus i'm still rocking
I have been using the iPhone for something like 10 years now. I am getting the urge to de-apple since I fell down the slippery slope and now have an iPad, watch, apple TV, MBP, etc.

Exercising less dependence on a single company for everything seems like a good thing, but I'm struggling to really ground that principle against the convenience of just buying "what works." Does it really matter at the end of the day?

What genuinely disappointing result. Long time pixel user here and I've been routinely buying these phones with the argument that you're getting the most value of any modern smart phone. Now? I'm just waiting for the pixel 10 family to drop in price. Happy to just wait.
What would it take for them to add a spring to the hinge? I would love a foldable that opens with a flick of the wrist without the need to pry it open.
- wake me up when you can make a fully transparent phone
Ugly as ever. Bleh. Hire a proper industrial designer.
I am surprised foldable phones have survived. I thought it was a terrible idea how they worked and still think it is. A flimsy screen with a crease looks and feels opposite of what a phone should be.