www.androidauthority.com/pixel-8a-android-15-audio-sharing-3456334/
Pixel 8a might miss out on Android 15's audio sharing feature
DP over C is enabled now on my pixel 8 pro.
And the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a as well.
Just because a device's Bluetooth chip has firmware support for Bluetooth LE Audio Unicast doesn't mean it also supports LE Audio Broadcast. While yes it's technically capable, it would require a firmware update.
I don't know if the Pixel 8a uses a different Bluetooth chip than the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, but if it does, it's possible that the vendor-provided firmware for the 8a's chip doesn't support LE Audio Broadcast yet. I can't say for sure. But in any case, that's something that Google and its Bluetooth chip vendor would need to work out.
(Google has sourced from Qualcomm and Synaptics [who acquired Broadcom's Bluetooth division] for its devices; I don't know which chip the 8a uses.)
While yes it's technically capable, it would require a firmware update.
Okay so let me have it
While yes it's technically capable, it would require a firmware update.
..and dev costs, QA costs, BT certification costs, possibly regulatory tests depending on countries...
Yes, which is why while it's technically possible, it's not so simple to do. Regardless, that's a problem for the vendor, not the user.
Miracast is a dead standard
It's not. Pretty much all TVs and windows supports Miracast
Most people I know have Samsung TVs. And I can't cast to them with my Pixel, but you can from pretty much any other phone.
Because Google decided to go the proprietary route and took a giant shit on it
Only if you use a Google phone.
It wasn’t dead before
It's the only way to natively "cast" on Windows 10 (and probably 11).
Oh, Google. You try so hard to make the Pixel brand this whole unified marque, but then you do absolutely nothing to support that. Which phones are getting Gemini Nano again? How about Circle-to-Search? How many years of updates is the Pixel Tablet getting?
Almost like they don't care at all or something...
The entire 8 series has Gemini nano now, pretty sure circle to search is going all the way back to the 6 series too. They do suck with the artificial feature locking tho, there's no reason the other models can't access the full res of their cameras or use basic manual controls.
I've got the circle search thing on my 7
And me on 6.
Why are we skipping over the fact that the tablet also got the same years of support (five years) as the entire product line (Pixel 7) released that same year? And the comment has 100 up-votes at the moment, while none of those complaints make much sense.
People just wanna complain without actually knowing what they're saying lol
This is something that greatly worries me with phones (all big manufacturers are guilty of this, Google maybe a bit more so than others).
Getting a new software update "back in the day" was awesome. You got what they told you on their yearly presentations. Now you listen to the presentations they have about their new OS updates (and honestly all this AI bullshit has killed off any excitement for new updates but anyways) and you end up wondering how much of that will make it to your phone. Most likely not that much.
This is especially bad considering they've now committed to 7 years of support. So what do they do instead? They just update these devices for 7 years but keep features from them, so you're essentially "forced" into upgrading if you want the new stuff, despite you being promised 7 years of updates. It's such disgusting behaviour, but big corporations get away with everything nowadays.
As someone who has been a huge tech nerd, and especially phone nerd, these last 2 years have really killed it for me. I want to care and be interested but it's all shit. Half-baked AI that nobody has any real life use for, "fake" 7 years of software support, price hikes every year pretty much, disappointing hardware updates (especially you, Tensor and Exynos). I'm honestly so extremely disappointed. This was a huge passion of mine. Now killed off in the name of greed and infinite economical growth. Thanks late stage capitalism.
I genuinely have no idea what features in Android 15 my P7P will be getting or not. It's crazy.
Outside their ai requirements, I feel like Apple generally is good about backwards compatibility when they are able to do so.
Apple is king of not bringing new OS features to older devices.
Heck, they didn't even backport the charging limit feature to older (2022!) iPads or iPhones despite running the same OS version.
Apple started this stripping features from OS updates for phones in tge the first place, years before "AI" was a thing.
And like always, they became the trend setters for all of the horrible things that happen in this industry. Didn't they start this whole AI bullshit with Siri too?
No you are confused
They're correct. It was always a comeback to the "iPhones get 20 years of updates" that you just didn't get the vast majority of features after a couple.
What do you mean? Pretty sure iOS 17 is the exact same whether you’re using an iPhone 11 or 14. The base model experience is always the same apart from hardware specific features like precision finding, faceID, Dynamic Island, etc..
No, it isn't.
I have both an iPhone 14 and an iPhone 12 here. What features does my 14 have that my 12 does not that isn’t due to hardware?
Battery percentage in icon is hardly limited by hardware.
Can you list some past examples of features coming to one phone and not another?
Limit battery charging os the most recent one.
Nope, Apple invented arbitrary feature segmentation/fragmentation many many years ago
https://www.phonearena.com/news/iOS-6-fragmentation-detailed-which-device-gets-what_id31217
You definitely either don't have iPhones or people with them around you, Apple is the king or arbitrary withholding features to sell you a new phone on every OS update, since the iP6 forward they're getting more egregious in that regard.
iOS updated for older iPhones are nothing more than glorified security updates and a number change in the change log page.
Google normally always brings all the new features to older supported phones (barring hardware specific ones) and even then, they find a way of doing it thru software some times.
I have both an iPhone 14 and an iPhone 12 here.
What features does my 14 have that my 12 does not that isn’t due to hardware?
They're taking notes from apple.
When did Apple start with this?
Over a decade ago.
Mhm. Go on? What did they do?
Not bring new phone features to older iPhones despite running the same OS. They literally "invented" that.
Oh, another thing that they "invented": Hiding the fact that "security updates" don't come with all security updates. If you are running the still supported iOS 16 instead of the latest 17 for example, you miss out on a good chunk of security fixes because many of them don't get backported.
Not bring new phone features to older iPhones despite running the same OS.
Yes, you've told us. Examples please.
AOD and night mode shots are good examples.
Limit charging and battery percentage in the icon are hardly a hardware limitation, huh?
Limit charging isn't years ago lol. That's a new feature.
Battery percentage was likely a design choice. That's a more acceptable excuse.
Now give me an old feature that they did this with. Since you were so adamant on Apple being the first to do this.
Honestly I don't really care. My smartphone is a smartphone, I don't expect new features but I want long software (security fixes) support. Every new feature is great, but don't count on it.
. My smartphone is a smartphone
Keyword. Smartphone. If it's not getting new features it's not very smart. And it's one thing to abandon new features for a device that's quite a few years old compared to a relatively new device (4 years or younger).
Especially when it's used as a way to sell new phones. It's an actual hardware limit, then obviously it's fine. But 90% of these are just arbitrary and added for no reason.
It doesn't have to be smart. Navigation, communication (phone, messages, mail), organisation (notes, calendar), camera and music is all I care about. Not being able to do niche thing X and Y doesn't make it less smartphone.
That's fair, but also your opinion. To me it's not fair and it devalues the phone at a much quicker rate, because people will eventually learn that older phones have far less features and their value will go down.
The value of older phones will go down much quicker if they don't get updates at all like back in those "exciting days" you glorify.
If a phone gets just security updates, it will hold its value much, much, much better.
Well I had iPhones in the past and they weren't abandoned so quickly. So they kept a very high second hand value.
I'm not glorifying them. I just miss when I could look at a presentation and be excited about what's coming, and not search the internet to find out what stuff my device will be getting and what it won't be getting.
If a phone gets just security updates, it will hold its value much, much, much better.
Not really. Very few everyday people give a shit. They want the new cool features they saw on TV and the new emojis. They don't give a shit about security updates. There's a reason most people are behind on updating their phones (and other devices).
Here we go again
7 years of updates
If Samsung and Google are gonna commit to 7 year of updates then they better fucking do it right, I don’t want my 6 year old device getting an update that just changes the number of android I’m on and removes all the features of that update.
My S21 Ultra which still has 1 year left of updates got One Ui 6.1 and the ONLY “AI” feature it got was circle to search, I didn’t even get the off-device features if you want to make the excuse of the hardware being outdated.
Try my A54. Didn't even get circle to search. Though I'm just mad due to the zero care for cheaper devices, not because I'll miss out on circle to search. It's crap.
Heavy disagree on circle to search being crap it literally changed how I use my phone, I use it all the time. But yeah while it is dumb I can kiiiiiiiiiiinda cut them some slack with cheaper devices, with their flagships though? Fuck no
i ran a test side by side and search screen was faster and also automatically selects whatever it thinks you want without any user input, so most of the time it's significantly faster than using circle to search
Huh can you give some examples? My phone has it but I've never used it
I barely used it at the start too, I only used the translate feature but one day I suddenly started it using daily, if there’s anything I want to know more about I just circle it, and so far it has worked with every single thing without me adding anything to the search bar except for two things:
Faces, which makes sense as to not doxx people, even though if you search the picture as a whole and not just the face you can get some results.
And this fairly popular game which I play(dokkan if you’re curious, I have to add “dokkan wiki” to get what I want for that.
Tell us more, how did it change your life?
I didn’t say it changed my life it’s not that amazing, but generally I just search much more stuff now because it’s way easier when in the past I wouldn’t have bothered.
You just said it changed the way you used your phone, sounds like something important considering how much we use our phone in the everyday life.
Ok I don't search much myself, even with the feature.
Not a Samsung user, but as an iPhone 15 user I REALLY UNDERSTAND YOU.
It’s so bullshit that Apple Intelligence will be available only on iPhone 15 Pro…
It’s either a ram limitation, which is apple’s fault for cheaping out on ram, or it’s a “””pro””” limitation. Either way it’s horseshit.
Worst thing is, even on my S24+ most AI features require sending it to their servers lol. I just disabled all of them. There's really no AI use for me. Only tried these when the phone was new. After that, it's like a gimmick.
Yeah if I remember correctly 8 out of the 15 features are cloud based, I hope they focus more on that stuff can be done on device.
if you want to make the excuse of the hardware being outdated.
That's not really a bullshit excuse, S21's SoC is literally too slow to support offline AI models.
I didn’t say it was bullshit
what a werid way to soft force people to buy the pro version google
Why though? The hardware should definitely be able to support it, right?
Google is such a fucking frustrating company
I'm way more interested in when this comes to Android TV than I am any phone.
No bigee.
So the same thing as with Miracast? Or DP over USB-C? Features that are present on the hardware level, but disabled by Google... just because?