On August 12, Google will present the next Pixel, which means another demonstration of artificial intelligence powerful enough to summarise our lives, interpret our surroundings, rewrite our messages and perhaps understand our emotions before we do. There will also be Pixel Glow, HiLight or whatever Google eventually calls the colourful little aura on the back. Wonderful.
I have a simpler request:
Could the phone first learn to rotate the fucking screen?
I like the Pixel. That is the tragedy. I do not want a Samsung phone padded with duplicate applications, proprietary services and enough unwanted software to require its own planning permission. I like clean Android. I like the Pixel’s appearance. In principle, it is exactly the phone I want.
In practice, every Pixel I have owned has failed at one of the most elementary functions of a smartphone: recognising whether I am holding it vertically or horizontally.
Google Maps in landscape mode is atrocious. The interface becomes cramped, the useful map area disappears beneath panels and controls, and the entire application feels trapped in the wrong orientation. So I turn the phone upright.
Nothing happens. 🤬⚡
I tilt it, shake it, tap it, knock it against my hand and occasionally hit it against an edge, hoping that some combination of movement and blunt-force encouragement might remind the device that gravity exists. The screen remains sideways. Google Maps stays almost unusable while the allegedly intelligent phone ignores the physical position in which I am very clearly holding it.
YouTube demonstrates the same incompetence in both directions. When I watch a video, I want landscape mode. When I leave the video and browse for something else, I want portrait mode. I turn the phone sideways for the video and upright for browsing. That is the entire interaction. It should be so obvious that neither the user nor the phone needs to think about it. The Pixel thinks about it anyway, usually reaching the wrong conclusion.
It refuses to enter landscape when I want to watch something, then refuses to leave landscape when I want to browse. I rotate it back and forth like a lunatic while the interface remains stubbornly fixed in whichever orientation is currently least useful. I have no patience for devices that fail at this level. After a few attempts, the continued physical integrity of the phone becomes less a technical matter than a test of character.
This has not happened once. It has followed me through generation after generation of Pixels. I believe three or four of them have met premature and occasionally violent ends over the years. The official cause may have been impact damage. The underlying cause was probably an extended disagreement about screen orientation.
After years of this nonsense, I am considering switching off auto-rotate altogether. Google has made an automatic convenience feature so unreliable that disabling it may be the most convenient way to use the phone. That is an achievement of sorts. A product manager could probably describe it as greater user control.
The alleged water resistance is another small triumph. I am not asking to take the Pixel diving, leave it three metres underwater for half an hour or use it to photograph marine life. I have already experienced a complete failure after brief, minor exposure to moisture. A premium phone surviving a few drops of water for several seconds would therefore be another welcome innovation, although admittedly less glamorous than an AI-generated restaurant recommendation.
So please, Google, spare me the keynote magic. Spare me the generated summaries, the contextual assistance, the synthetic photographs and whatever Pixel Glow is eventually supposed to illuminate. I do not need a phone that understands the universe, anticipates my thoughts and interprets the emotional significance of an incoming notification.
Before teaching the Pixel to think, perhaps teach it which way is up. That is all I want from the next Pixel. Clean Android, the design I already like, a screen that turns when I turn the phone and a device that does not die because water briefly existed nearby.
Google can add the glow afterwards. Just my 5 cents.
//Alex
alexreusch 