The Vergecast - Pixel vs Nexus with UrAvgConsumer

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

Every Tuesday this month, Vergecast co-host Dieter Bohn hosts a series of discussions diving deep into tech review season, each focusing on a specific product. This week, Dieter talks with YouTube's UrAvgConsumer about how the recently announced Google Pixel 5 shares some common ground with Google's 2013 smartphone project the Nexus 5. This episode was brought to you by Novartis. To learn more about Cell and Gene Therapy visit vox.com/ad/novartis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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where we talk to other reviewers about all of the hardware that's coming out this season. And this week, I'm very excited. We have got Judner ORA. He's your average consumer on YouTube. What's going on, guys? It's your average consumer.

And we are looking at a review that I've been teasing for a while. It's the Nexus 5 from 2013. The reason I wanted to talk about the Nexus 5 is we just saw the announcement for the Google Pixel 5, and I think they're really comparable devices, low-cost, new kind of wireless network coming into a very interesting phone market. We talked a lot about the differences between the phone markets back then and how they are now. We also talked about what it's like to be a reviewer who works primarily on YouTube, like Judner does. I'm really jealous of the fact that he has all these different formats that he can make. You know, I've got blog posts and I've got reviews on the website and then I make some videos,

whereas he just makes YouTube videos so he can do a lot of really interesting things. We also looked at some of our very, very early YouTube videos. They're kind of embarrassing. I'm just going to say that mine is ten times more embarrassing than Juddner was because mine made everybody who uses Android on Reddit hate me for three years. I'll tell the whole story in the show. I had a really great conversation with Judner. I really think you're going to enjoy it.

Jodnor, thanks so much for joining us. You are the average consumer on YouTube, and I don't believe this, but it may be that some people in our audience haven't seen your videos or heard of you. You talk a little bit about your channel, what you do? Sure.

So I, of course, have a tech channel also on YouTube. I call it your average consumer because I want the videos to be easily digestible for the average consumer. You know, tech for the average consumer. you know, tech for the everyday person, walk away knowing whether or not something is what they want to buy or something they should stay away from.

Yeah, it's a more fun but also like more useful thing than maybe some of the stuff that I do because I'm like hands-on reviews go. We can get into that later. So I had you here and I've been telling people that we're going to be talking about a product they weren't expecting. And if you looked at the title of the podcast, you'll see that we're talking about the Nexus 5 review. Yeah.

Which is ridiculous because that was six or seven years ago. Right? Super long, yeah. But I thought it was interesting because we just got the announcement, official finally after all the leaks announcement, of the Pixel 5 in the Pixel 4A5G. And I don't know. I don't have a review unit yet. Do you?

No. No. No. So since we can't talk about that review till later, I wanted to talk about the Nexus 5, because I think it's really like a parallel device to the Pixel 5. It was really cheap. It was the first Nexus on a new wireless standard. And like just a bunch of interesting stuff.

But before we get there, we should actually just talk about the Pixel 5 stuff. Did you watch Google's infomercial? Yeah. What'd you think? It was good. I mean, it's honestly what I would expect from one of their presentations. It felt right in line. But, you know, the Pixel 5 itself, I like what I saw in certain aspects.

I mean, looks pretty good on paper for, you know, a pixel device. I'm very happy that the front of it at least looks up to date. Right. Just like the screen and everything. It looks like a 2020 device, so I'm pretty happy about that. Yeah, the back, man, I don't know. How do you feel about fingerprint sensors on the back? I initially was like, but then I kind of miss it.

I don't know how I quite feel about it. I've missed fingerprint sensors since they've, you know, vaporized, but it's weird because it feels like a step backwards. You know, we're not used to seeing features go away and when something else comes along, see that go away in favor of the older. future. We haven't really seen that yet. So it feels weird. I feel like I'm

finally starting to get used to face unlock, and now that that's gone, it's like do we know if there's even like an unsecure, like a not very secure version of the face unlock? They might pull it. Android has had a not secure version of face unlock since the

Galaxy Nexus, which was I don't know, 2012 or 2013 or something way long ago. But they, you know, it might still be there, but I guess you could use that, but I would never, I don't know, ever do that. But you're right, it's weird to have a phone where they pull stuff. So the processor is technically, I think, even slower than a Snap 855 if you just do a benchmark on it. Maybe that doesn't matter, who knows, we'll see. But they don't have the pixel neural core image processor,

goes back to the fingerprint sensor. There's a lot of stuff that's like, huh. Yeah, it is just surprising to see the steps backwards. Yeah. But I mean, it is, you know, it's supposed to be a mid-ring. phone. So you review everything. I've watched your Note 20 Ultra stuff that you've done. And you also review like the mid-range phones. How do you, when you're approaching needing to make a video about something that's like in the mid-range, it's explicitly not like the super flagship that everyone wants to know about the cool new tech stuff. Do you approach those kinds of things differently than you do the flagships or is it just you just need to tell people, you know, if it's good or not or what? So for me, mid-range, I'm looking at those,

like, can I complete all the tasks that I'm used to doing on those devices? That's more of the criteria there. Just like, can I get regular stuff done? For flagship, it's like, okay, I know I can get regular stuff done. What more does this product bring to the table? Right. And that's kind of the difference, the way I look at them. I think when you do it, like, when you look at it that way, it makes it a little bit easier.

And when a device has, a mid-range device has a little something extra, that's just like a much bigger bonus. where it's like you get the job done and it's got a couple of cool features too. Does this one thing? Yeah. I guess for the pixel will probably be the camera again. Has to be. Got to be, right? I mean, they actually talked big game about improving video this year, which I was not expecting.

I didn't expect that either. I was actually pretty impressed with the portrait mode and night site combination. That's a lot of, that's a lot of work for that processor, I'm assuming. Yeah. It seems like Google's killing it with the camera. So it was just surprising to see that kind of evolution there with even. back processor. Well, tell you what, we will review it when it, when we get it. But we should actually talk about the Nexus 5. So, okay, this was, it came out in 2013. The Google Nexus 5 is now official.

The LG made device has a 5-inch 1080p display, supports LTE, and runs on the new Android 4.4 KitKat. Besides a few design tweaks, the new OS integrates SMS into Hangouts, upgrades Google Now, and adds search to dialer, essentially turning it into the yellow pages. The Nexus 5 is... What do you remember about the Nexus 5? You know, it's weird. I feel like Google loved that phone. Yeah. For so many years, that was the phone they used as their product images for any kind of software.

That's a Nexus 5 on, like, whether it's Hangouts or I don't know, whatever software they came out with. Yeah, yeah. It was a Nexus 5, even after multiple phones came out. But in particular, that phone, it was interesting to me because it was just, what was it, 400 bucks? It's 350, I think. $350. Wild, right? You hear that price nowadays, and you're thinking, like, you know, super low-tier phone, but it wasn't.

We saw LTE come to it. I actually took a look back at my review, and it's interesting to see that the camera wasn't really like a big thing for the Nexus line back in the day. Watching movies and playing games are a pleasure on this device, as the screen is much better than it was with the Nexus 4. Although there is a drawback that hinders the experience. and that's the speaker. The speaker is very easy to block

depending on how you hold the device and can lead to some completely muffled audio. You got the lightning. Light the bastards up. Muffles out. Okay, so what's funny to me about that, I mean, we should get into the camera in a minute, but the fact that you pointed out

that you can muffle the speaker, every single phone. Like, we had to point it out on the Note 20 Ultra. Why do they keep making them stay? It is the weirdest thing. you would think, I mean, and they watch these reviews, you know, so it's, they know that this is a message that not only are people experiencing, but we're talking about. Yeah. But it just doesn't matter. I guess it's maybe just easier for them to make it that way, but you would think that's a problem that got solved years ago. Well, so they did solve it for a while. It was a thing where you would get front facing speakers on phones and that was the thing. And everyone was like, oh, finally. And then it turns out nobody cares, I guess, except for us. Yeah. Then they're like, you know what? We need more, we need bigger screens. Yeah. Who introduced those kinds?

I think HTC was really big. Yes. What was it? The boom speak? They had the boom sound. So their first one was a Windows phone that had a slide-up speaker that was front-facing, and it was like meant to replace a Bluetooth speaker. And then they had boom sound on the HTC 1, which was a direct competitor to this Nexus 7.

It was the 1M7 technically. Right. We should talk to it. That phone was hot. HTC boom sound, dual frontal stereo. speakers with built-in amplifiers for sharper, richer sound, the new HTC-1. Okay, so besides the speaker, are there any other little things that, like, bother you that people just keep doing it in phones?

Like, fix this one little thing. I'm tired of it. It's been years. Because, like, covering the speakers, like, a big one for me. Yeah, no, definitely. That's actually a pretty good question. One thing that they always do, you got me on that one for it. So for me, it's face-smoving, actually, on the selfie camera.

I don't mind if it's there and I'm happy to turn it on and I actually use it but even on the default you think you've turned it off especially on Samsung phones it smooths no matter what and it always just looks a little bit fake to me I don't know I get really persnickety about cameras I guess I keep using the word persnickety

right? No but I completely understand that sentiment it always just looks so processed you know it makes you like you're in baby mode it's a weird thing to see when we look at ourselves in the mirror every day and then we see this completely different image. And it looks like we did some kind of Photoshop to fix our face up, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I can completely understand that. I'm not a huge fan of those either. Whenever there's an opportunity to turn it off, that's like one of the first things I do. Yeah. Well, I mean, also, I can

fix it in an editor. I know most people don't really like throw it into a full-on photo editor, but they've gotten so good and it's so easy now. Like Google Photos is actually really great now they just updated it. If I want to smooth my face-up, I can always get it done after the fact in an editor, you know? But maybe as camera snobs are the wrong ones that, you know, to really judge. Maybe the average person who, I don't know, has a blemished and they don't want to show. Maybe they appreciate it a little bit more.

Well, reviewing like a phone, reviewing phones is tough because you look at a bunch of Android phones and like a bunch of them are usually going to have the same processor. You know, a bunch of stuff is really sane. And like, you can talk about some software differences, but usually the big thing that's different between each phone is the camera. And so you end up spending way more time than you expect on the camera when really it's not the most important thing on the phone, right? Right. So we played your clip. We're going to play my clip, but I got to set it up, all right?

They're announcing the, we know they're going to announce the Nexus 5. It would leave because everything Google makes leaks, right? And so they call me up. We're having an event. I'm like, cool. We're going to bring four people. We're going to live blog it. We're going to do the verge thing where we like show up.

with a huge crew and do a big live blog and then go to a big hands-on. It'll be awesome. They're like, no, no, no, no. We're going to do a really small event for just like maybe 15 journalists and you only get one person that can come and that's it. And it's not going to be live streamed. It's just really quiet. I'm like, uh, no, that sucks. You got to let me bring somebody. They're like, well, look, like there's this guy that got put in charge of Android not that long ago. And, you know, he just wants, he wants to have a really chill event. His name is Sundar Pichai. Okay. And so he just wants a really chill event. And so I'm like, okay, fine.

But I pushed and I pushed and I pushed. I finally got them to let me bring a video director. Okay? So it's me and this guy, Christian Mazum. So we show up. They announced the phone. We asked some questions. Everything's fine.

Okay, go do a hands-on. We're at, I don't know, some Google office in San Francisco or something. Here's what happened. It was just like 15 people. And the room was deathly quiet, just utterly quiet, super echoey. And everyone was, like, doing their thing and working. So he turns a camera on. I start talking and everyone, like, looks at me.

And I'm like, oh. Oh, this is awkward. And there is an 8 megapixel camera with optical image stabilization, so that should help it take better shots. It has a HDR Plus, which does better HDR shots. We'll see how it goes. Usually Android cameras aren't that impressive. Oh, man.

So this whole video is like maybe a minute and a half tops, and I was so nervous to talk too loudly in that room. I talked really, really quietly and didn't really make my points really well. But here's the thing. Because there weren't other camera people there, there was like maybe one other person. This was one of the only videos on the entire internet for like a few days of the Nexus 5. It was just me like whispering to the camera like ASMR style and not actually testing it yet,

not actually putting it through its paces because I had to do this really fast because I wanted to get it up because we were going to be the first. Of course. And then I say this thing about Android cameras. Right, yeah. We'll see how it goes. Usually Android cameras aren't that impressive. So back in the day, it was.

This phone, there was, I think it was like the S3, maybe it was the S4. HCC was just getting good. But what I meant to say was Nexus cameras, because were Nexus cameras any good before, like, the Nexus 5X or the, even the pixel? They were not, right? They were, like, not that good. They were fine, but they were not, like, the central focus of the thing. No, it wasn't their strong point. Yeah.

But the result of this video being the only thing that people could watch about the Nexus, because people were desperate to get Nexus content was R-Sash-A-R-Sach-A-R-S Android. on Reddit hated me for about three years. I was the guy who hated Android for years. And I founded Android Central. I'd like Android. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I get it.

You're in the moment you're just trying to just get something out there. Yeah. A little stumble of the words. Just all it takes. Oh, that's kind of rough. And the bezels on the side of the screen are very, very thin. So it's actually relatively comfortable to hold in the hand, despite the massive screen.

And we're going to have a lot more with the Nexus 5 soon. But for now, it's just a quick look. Okay, so we finally review the phone. Like, what did you think of the phone? Like, as a phone, did you think it was any good? I liked it, actually. I mean, I liked it. It was back in the day, it was pretty snappy.

Nexus devices were, you know, smooth. It was usually a pretty smooth experience. I think the only thing, I had the bright red version. Which was super red. It was like this orangey red. Exactly. It was like more of an orange, red. It was right in the middle.

You know, you can see it wear a little bit on the back with the material that it was made out of. But for the most part, I kind of liked it. You know, there was always this point of pride back in the day if you're running stock Android. Like, you know, you're getting the full experience here. Yeah. It was nice to have. It's just interesting to see just how things have changed since then. Yeah.

So one of the dramas when it first released is the camera was actually really bad. I was right. Everyone flipped out the reviews were terrible. And then six weeks later, Google put out a software. update that kind of fixed the camera. Google has released the Android 4.4.1 update that brings dramatic improvements to the Nexus 5's camera, including faster focusing, better low light, and less shutter lag. We tested ourselves and came away rather impressed.

By the time of the red one came out, the camera was actually like pretty decent. And now when we're reviewing, like I was saying before, now when we review phones, like everyone pays attention way more to the camera. But back then when we're like, hey, this camera is bad. It was like, oh, wait, people care? Google's like, oh, the camera needs to be good? I didn't know. That's fine.

Now they put all their eggs in that bad. That one bag. Yeah, right? Now it's camera or nothing. Right. I mean, I love that phone. It was my phone for like that entire year, like 2014. I just kept going back to it.

Oh, was it the one that stayed in your pocket? Yeah, it was fast enough. I mean, I broke like three of them. I kept breaking the screen on it for some reason. Oh, wow. That was the, like, that screen was really fragile for whatever reason. That would break my heart. if I, luckily I haven't broken a screen just through normal use yet.

Really? I probably shouldn't have said that out loud. Yeah, it was a really sad thing to say out loud, man. Next thing, you know, my next phone, Pixel 5 is going to happen. Yeah. But yeah, that's never happened to me. That kind of sucks. Well, I mean, it sucks, but it was only $350, I guess, right?

Right, exactly. But, I mean, lots people walk around with broken phones all the time, you know? Most people put, like, do you put a case on your phone? I absolutely do. Yeah, so I don't. Oh. I'm crazy. You're brave.

Well, I don't know. I don't leave the house. Still. Not right now, yeah. I still couldn't do it. You stubbed your toe or something, and then boom, that phone pies out your hand. I guess. Well, I mean, that's maybe, that's why people maybe don't care that much about camera bumps, right?

Because there's always a case on it anyway. Right, right, right. All right. One more thing before we take a break, I played my embarrassing video. I think it's only fair that we play one of your early videos. Is this okay? Yeah, yeah. that this video gets me.

Hey guys, this is your average consumer. And today I have a little video for you guys because all about Mac 27 wanted to see a comparison between the beat mixers, the solo series, and I don't have the studio, so I can't compare those. But I do happen to have the beat. It sounded like someone had a gun to my head and told me to make the video. I mean, my video sounded like a hostage negotiation. They've got me trapped.

I'm stuck here with the Nexus 5. They're going to kill me. It's rough to watch that one because it's just like I'm completely void of energy. There's just, and just looking back at it, there's just so little effort. It's just me just talking. It's so funny because I forgot that a comment, that was like my third, fourth video, I think. Okay. And I was so small back then that a single comment could drive me to make an entire video.

Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of how that video happened. And just looking back at it, even the way it's edited, I thought I was fancy. I had my regular camera, a webcam fired up. I tried to put the webcam footage over my normal camera's footage, and you can still see the sides of my HD camera versus the 4x3 on the webcam. Yeah. horrible editing, low and no energy. It's just at the beginning.

On the other hand, when you're getting started on something like YouTube, you had the headphones you had, right? You're like, I didn't have this other one, but like you work with what you got. You do your best, you talk to the camera. You try something, right? Like, if I'm doing, I'm trying to learn some more camera skills. I'm definitely not a YouTuber. But every single time I make a video, I try and do one thing.

Like one new thing, camera technique or like trying to be more, have higher energy. or whatever. Like, I work on one thing for each video. Like, this video I'm going to get better. I don't try and, like, be perfect all at once. And so the fact that you were trying to switch between, you know, your webcam and your HD cam, like, you should give yourself more credit, man. That's great.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, all that has led to, you know, just what I know now, just practicing. It's always good to, I like your strategy. Just at least give one thing a go every single time. Just get better and better and better. Well, you know what? That's a great place to take a break. and we should actually talk about what it's like to make tech YouTube videos now that, you know, we know what we're doing.

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It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. You can sign up for your website. $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. You can go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. We're back. You know what? I'm sure that you get asked this all the time, but you're a big YouTuber. You got a three million subscribers. How did you get your start? Did you jump? I'm assuming you didn't jump full time right away. So what was your progression from I want to make some tech YouTube videos to your average consumer now today. Okay. So for me, it pretty much started, I think, my senior year of college.

Okay. I was watching a lot of tech videos. Smartphones were fresh. I was following pretty heavily. I think channels like Phone Dog back in the day. Yeah, Noah. Techno Buffalo. Noah was my man. Hey, what's going on, everybody? I'm Noah from PhoneDag.com. And this is the Google Nexus one. This is the best Android phone you can buy right now, at least in the United States. I'd watch these guys, and I just love it. I was just love it. I was just. learning so much. I always had a love for technology, but it's not something I really had. I was able to use and get my hands on all the time. So I was, it was all, I was just soaking it in through YouTube. And after some time, I felt like, you know what? I bought a couple of Android devices.

And I was like, you know what, one day, I think I can do this too. I think I can make some videos. But I remember having to go back and watch those videos, hear what they were talking about and having to do research. It's like, I have no idea what this processor means or what that thing does. I'm going to go research. And I learned. But when I wanted to do my videos, I was like, all right, I wanted to be super easy. I don't want anyone watching my videos to have to go and do extra research like I did. Right. So I's like, all right, I'll call it your average consumer because that's what I'm going to be talking to. Just regular videos, like you walk away knowing it's fast. It does this. It does that. Not super spec. heavy. You'll just know your end experience. And I just started making terrible videos as you

as you saw. And I was driven by commenters who said, hey, we want to see this. We want to see that. It helped me to just keep going. And they just from there became what it became, you know. But that's how I got my start, just wanting to do the same thing I saw so many other people doing. and I fell in love with and just do it on an easier level. One of the things I love about your videos is you never take for granted that people know what a thing is or that people don't want to see it. So, I don't know, like, just like the thing that really struck me, you showed off wireless decks on the Note 20 Ultra. I'm going to turn on decks. And what's cool is that it works with mini smart TVs.

As you can see, I've got an LG TV that I set it up with before. And, you know, Samsung LG, they're not exactly. buddies. We're going to start this. Let's hit allow. And you're like, here's what it is. Here's how it works. This is really cool. And I'm like, you know what? That is really cool. And I like didn't even talk about it because like, oh, Dex was on the S-20. So everybody knows that. And like, that's not true at all. Like, you actually do need to show the thing. Even if it's old hat to me or to you, it actually is really cool. And you should show it. And like, I love that you always, always do that on every new thing. Thank you. Yeah. I think it's so easy for us to

to be a little jaded, you know? Oh, that's clearly a gimmick. We've seen that before. And even though things might come off as a gimmick for us, for someone who's not in the world, they're just like, oh, my phone can do this? I had no idea. I just needed to send a text message or browse the internet.

But there's so much more power there sometimes that people just don't know about. Yeah, well, and you also don't need to always treat it as like, well, should you buy this thing or not because of this one feature? It's like you buy the thing or not if it's good, But if you do get it, you should know about this one cool feature. It's like a nice thing that's extra on it. It might not drive your purchasing decision, but not every feature needs to do that, right?

Exactly. Okay. So the other thing that I love about your channel that I'm actually kind of jealous of is most I do like hands-on videos. I'll do reviews. And if I want to do like a video, I'll make a processor video. That's like, I have a deep thought about the future of computers. But I've got a whole other job. So that's what all I have time for.

But you have just a ton of different formats that you make. You've got some really cool, like, haul-en-boxings. You've got these Day in the Life videos that I love. Thank you. You know, you've got the reviews. You've got, like, your home tours. How do you decide, you know, wake up in the morning. You want to make a video.

You got a new thing in your hand. How do you decide what, like, what format to choose when you're making a video? Because you can do so much more than just hands-on in a review. Okay. So for me, I think it all depends on, obviously, like, the product. So sometimes if it's a product that I think, if it's something I think a lot of people will be interested in, I feel like they'll generally, want to know like the nitty gritty.

Right. You know, so a real day in the life for flagship devices, listen, you'll know exactly what you're getting out of this. It makes sense. And if it's something that they might not know about, I'll try and do something a little bit more creative maybe, you know, just something that may not draw their attention just based on the name of the product itself. But like, let's say it's a lesser known product.

I'll try to spend it as something like an interesting just video in general, like video format and try to just piece it in there. Right. Just so people can get their eyes on it and then be exposed to something new, you know? So if it's like, I don't know, a list of tech that I didn't expect to love. Yeah. You know, it's a nice time for people to just see, oh, okay, so there are these products out there that I probably wouldn't pay attention to.

And, you know, it kind of fits in like that. Right. But yeah, we try so many different things. We know what the, I guess our audience likes. We know what they really engage with. And, you know, it's just a matter of finding what products, you know, kind of just best fit that those formats. And you have, like, our staples. But sometimes we try to go out of the box with that, too.

So the other thing that you do, like your house, your family, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But they're all characters in the video. Like, I feel like I'm looking at you on our chat. I'm looking at, like, I watch you make videos. I watch you do a bunch of unboxing right behind where you are.

What's it like making the place where you live, like a character? or in your videos. So that's actually something that's been, I guess, pretty intentional. Yeah. Because we have a studio as well, but we have studios in, like, an apartment. You know, like a separate apartment. Because I wanted to have, like, that kind of homey vibe. Yeah.

I like the idea of being guy next door, like, the guy you can just come up to ask him about to have very casual. I don't want anyone to feel like, oh, Judd is this stuffy guy who he just stands in front on the camera and spits everything out at you. Nah, I'll let you into my world. That's why I do the real day in the life. I try to have things in my home or try to have like a home setting so people can kind of view themselves in the situations or the way I present the videos.

And having having friends and, you know, family involved too, it just makes it all the better because not only can I be more of myself in front of the camera, but, you know, it adds entertainment and it also adds a layer of like getting other people's opinions in as well. So there's just like so many good benefits to just having family and friends and even just like a setting that feels welcoming. Yeah, no, I love that. That's totally true. I wish I could do more of that, but my apartment's too small.

I'm in a closet right now. Okay, sorry. We were supposed to be talking about the Nexus 5. I totally took us way off track. So we talked about how like tech YouTube has changed. The Nexus 5 came out in this really weird context. Google wasn't making its own hardware yet. And I feel like this is like 2013, 2014.

The smartphone world still felt like it was wide open. Oh, yeah. Samsung hadn't taken over. HTC was still really popular. Nokia. Like, they were still making Windows phones. Yeah. Like, I kind of missed those days a little bit.

It was a very different world. Like you said, it was a lot more open. There was so much variety. and everyone was coming in with this one feature or this one thing that kind of separated them from the rest. It's a little bit, quite a bit different now. Well, it's like everyone sort of figured out what the core stuff is

and they're competing on sort of the same thing. So we were talking about the HGC1, that's boom sound, right? So when you were going out there, you could go, HCC had this thing that was all metal, it had front-facing speakers, and then it had this wacky four-migixel camera. It was like the ultra-pixel.

Yes. Because they figured out that if you have big pixels, you can bring in more light. And they're like, this is it. This is the one. And it's like, well, the camera quality actually was. Yeah. Yeah. In theory, it sounded great.

Yeah. And then there was this Lumia 1020 and there was a 920 before that. Do you remember there were Windows phones and then they had just massive. Yeah, those big sensors. With the Lumia 1020, you will see things you've never seen before. An entirely new, ultra-high resolution, 41-mixel, backside illuminated sensor. The 41-migel sensor.

I kind of think that we are maybe entering another round, hopefully, of weird experiments and not just everybody competing on who can have the best low-light camera performance. Absolutely. Are you keeping up on, like, I guess it's folding phones, right, is the thing? Yeah, I'm immediately thinking of, like, what is it, the LG wing? And this is the LG wing.

Yeah, I know. Looking at the pictures, it looks weird and wild, but LG's done a great job. Oh, man, what do you think of that thing? That thing is wild. I haven't seen it in person yet, and I have so many questions in terms of just like how it is to actually use it on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. And just flipping it open and closed is incredibly nice. It's also way thinner and lighter than you would expect from something with two screens and a weird flipping hinge like this. I think it's the most out there design we've seen so far. Yeah.

Like folding phones, you know, we get it. It makes sense. But flipping. Twisty, whatever. Yeah. I know. It's crazy. So we are starting to see experiments because I don't want to say smartphones have plateaued, kind of plateaued in terms of like just features and new things that we'll see come to them.

So now this experiment of adding extra screens or expanding screens, it's really taking over. The other thing that was different in that era, and we should actually talk about this with. the Nexus 5 is Google had this Nexus strategy where they didn't make the phones themselves. They went to different manufacturers every year and said, make us a phone, and they did it so that they could just make a new version of Android and show off if the new processor could work or whatever. But now we have this pixel strategy. How do you think that's going?

I don't know. It was interesting because back in the day, who they have with the Nexus 5, LG? That was LG, right? I remember every time a pixel came out, I mean, a Nexus. came out, I was always waiting for my favorite manufacturer to get the nod. Yeah, yeah. I always wanted to see HTC, like, is HCC going to make a comeback on the Nexus? Yeah.

With, I think, I like that Google has taken over. I think it means there's, you know, more control and what we're not seeing a second device somewhere out there that looks exactly like it, but with different software. Yeah, I don't know if people remember this, but the Nexus was always basically based on another phone that the company already made. And so you kind of knew that this was just like the Google, version of whatever the other other was it like the g3 for the nexus 5 i can't remember i don't remember either oh it's possible but it might be like the g3 yeah what did they call those versions of

android i mean those phones that always had just like a stock version of android the google play edition yes the play edition and that that came like right around that time and so you could get the the stock version of because back of the day we we thought of it as a stock version it was technically still like it was the google version it wasn't pure stock android but you could get something without touchwiz on it because touchwiz was way too much back then, right? It was so much stuff. Yeah, that was like my least favorite, I would say. And having that option was so cool.

But either way, I digress. Yeah, sorry. I do like that Google has taken it on themselves. Have they made the best choices in terms of like design, all that? Who knows? It's up to each person to decide. But I still like it being in-house. You know, I feel like it's, it gives them more control, whether or not they choose to exercise, you know, really listening to feedback and implementing that, you know.

But I do like the strategy. I feel like we've seen Microsoft do a really good job with that with their hardware. On the surface, like the laptop stuff. Exactly. Laptops. Just seeing them like, all right, you know, we're going to take this in-house, start making our own things. And, you know, we've seen pretty good success. for them. So I like the

idea as just a matter of, like, execute. Well, so I agree with you. I like the idea because Google gets to make what it definitely wants to make. Right? It's not, oh, well, this year the Nexus is not so good because it, you know, they based it on the wrong phone this year, right? Exactly.

The Nexus 6 was a Huawei phone. It had all sorts of bugs. So now, like, what Google makes Google's responsible for, right? There's nobody else to blame. But it also means that there's nobody else to blame, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I love Google.

Don't get me wrong. I love the pixel devices. But one thing, I feel like we see manufacturers kind of learn and change things up a bit. I feel like the pixel's learning curve has been like not the best. Yeah. Just from the hardware perspective, I feel like I haven't been wowed by the hardware in a while. Right. So this is my take on it is they're really conservative right now.

So actually the Pixel 5 is the perfect example of this. They went back to a fingerprint sensor. But everybody else, Samsung has been doing in-screen fingerprint sensors. One Plus has been doing in-screen fingerprint sensors. It's like, it's a whole thing. Google didn't. So part of it is cost savings. But part of it, and their explanation for it is, well, the one on the back is a thousand percent

reliable and it's faster. And they're not wrong. Like, I do still have a little bit of lag sometimes, even on like a super fast, hot Samsung phone hitting that fingerprint sensor under the screen. But it's like, it's like, you know, not exciting. Right. Is the TikTok there. Exactly. And honestly, I'm not with you mentioning that, I remember liking having the fingerprint sensor in the back. It's just so funny how our opinions can change over time because of the way the market goes. But I really enjoyed having the fingerprint

sensor in the back because you could just pick up your phone and like the second you pick it up, your finger can directly go on to the sensor and your phone is unlocked. It's pretty quick and easy experience, honestly. Still, it's still so weird. where to see them take a step back. So with the Nexus 5, they came in at that $350 price point. They had done it with the Pixel, or the Pixel, the Nexus 4. And so they were a little bit cheaper than everybody else. All phones were cheaper back then.

But they were cheaper than everybody else. There wasn't a lot of competition at that price point, at that quality. So the Nexus 5, one of the reasons I loved it is it was cheaper than everybody else, but equal quality. But now with the Pixel 5, there's a lot more competition this year, right, than they had with the Nexus 5. There's the 1 plus 8 out there that's relatively cheap. The 8 Pro can sometimes be that same price.

The Samsung 20FE, it's got the faster processor. It's got like three cameras on it. There's an iPhone 11 that's the same price, and the iPhone 12 is going to be, who knows, probably around that same price. What do you think of like the landscape that they're putting this mid-range pixel 5 in? It's competitive. You know, it's really competitive right now. And I feel like they went down to weight class, but that weight.

classes kind of stacked too, you know? It's not just like bringing down the price. You're not competing with flagship anymore. There's there's a whole group of phones in that area now. And it's going to be a tough battle because in the phone department, there are some really big names out there like Samsung and, you know, Apple. So it's it's not going to be any easier. I like the direction, but it would have been cooler to see things like it, to see those flagship specs or, you know, sort of flagship specs. at that price point, you know, seeing the Snapdragon 865 or something in there, rather than the 765, being able to have those things and kind of call it like,

hey, Google just is slashing prices. That's a more interesting story, you know? But, I mean, it's still, and if it had like 120 hertz, you know, those just those features that we expect from the flagship, if they were able to bring that down, then we're, you know, we're able to compete. That's actually, like, the central conflict of the pixels. Who pays attention to the pixel? Like really, truly, who knows about the pixel?

Tech nerds, right? People that are, like, really into phones and tech and Android are like, oh, yeah, I know about the pixel. I know what that means. I don't know. People know that Google makes a phone now and whatever, but the people that are really paying attention are the people that know the difference

and what might care about the difference between a 90 hertz and 120 hertz screen. So they're making a phone for the masses, but the only people paying attention to them are people that are into tech. And that's a really hard thing for them to deal with. And people in that category, that market is looking so heavily at those numbers.

Yeah, and they're super informed. Exactly. And even if the numbers don't tell the entire story or they don't, you know, exactly dictate the experience, that audience is super driven by those numbers, like, insanely. So it does make it a lot tougher because people will just look at it on paper and just say, hey, this, I mean, this one plus Nord over here has a 40-something megapixel camera, 30-something megapixel.

It just makes it really, really tough. Well, lucky for everybody. There are YouTube channels, like your average consumer, that will tell the people about the specs and about the numbers so that they understand them, but also talk about the actual experience of the thing, and if it's any good, and if the average consumer should want it. Where can people find you if they want to go looking for you?

YouTube. Actually, anywhere. You can find me on all social media. Just type in your average consumer, and I'll pop up. All right, man. Well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast, and I'll be waiting for your Pixel 5 review. Sounds good, man. Can we wait to see yours too?

Thanks so much for General O'Rour for coming on the show. Like he said, you can find him on YouTube. He's at Your Average Consumer. That is, you are AVG consumer. I am on Twitter. I'm at Backlon. And actually, if you wouldn't mind tweeting at me or even shoot me an email, Deeter at theBurge.com,

let me know what you think of these Tuesday episodes. Is there anything like to change? Are there any products you definitely want us to talk about? Really curious to get your feedback. Next week, we have a new guest. I'm very excited to say. We're going to have Marquez Brownlee, you know him as MKBHD, so tune in for that.