It's a nice-looking handset. The screen is going to lead to manufacturing headaches a-plenty, and few Android apps (or more likely, none) will take account of that stupid FFC placement.
But make no mistake - this phone is not competing with the iPhone or Galaxy S.
It's competing with the Google Pixel, and sales of that product line don't keep anyone at Apple or Samsung awake at night. (Apple and Samsung both differentiate on industrial design and software. Samsung's software (which is basically a hedge against Google using Android (via Play Services) as a weapon in the handset market) delivers a lot of additional functionality vs stock and lays the foundation for a world where you don't need to be signed into Google for your phone to work. And (whisper it) it's actually pretty good. Stock Android just means you're giving away a differentiator.
ETA: Google was well chuffed with shipping (not selling) a million Pixels in a quarter. Samsung sold five million S8s in a month (shipping ten million), and probably many multiples of that number across their gazillion different handset SKUs.
And what's with all this "drop test" bullshit? The internet gets very excited about it. What happened to "you've got a £700 device made mostly of glass at least on one side, how about you take care of it and if you can't trust yourself, put a suitable case on it?" Not a significant differentiator, IMO. The iPhone 4 had a glass back, when Gorilla Glass wasn't as good as it is now, and that didn't hurt sales one iota. Sure, you could spot the hamfisted twat in the room by their shattered phone, but whev.
So it's a cool phone, that looks really nice, with an interesting screen/FFC that's going to be a pain in the arse, a camera system that promises revolutionary things but will almost certainly just take pictures that are perfectly acceptable just like pretty much every other phone camera out there, and an interesting magnetic accessory system that'll have about five things made for it ever.
And no headphone jack socket.
But make no mistake - this phone is not competing with the iPhone or Galaxy S.
It's competing with the Google Pixel, and sales of that product line don't keep anyone at Apple or Samsung awake at night. (Apple and Samsung both differentiate on industrial design and software. Samsung's software (which is basically a hedge against Google using Android (via Play Services) as a weapon in the handset market) delivers a lot of additional functionality vs stock and lays the foundation for a world where you don't need to be signed into Google for your phone to work. And (whisper it) it's actually pretty good. Stock Android just means you're giving away a differentiator.
ETA: Google was well chuffed with shipping (not selling) a million Pixels in a quarter. Samsung sold five million S8s in a month (shipping ten million), and probably many multiples of that number across their gazillion different handset SKUs.
And what's with all this "drop test" bullshit? The internet gets very excited about it. What happened to "you've got a £700 device made mostly of glass at least on one side, how about you take care of it and if you can't trust yourself, put a suitable case on it?" Not a significant differentiator, IMO. The iPhone 4 had a glass back, when Gorilla Glass wasn't as good as it is now, and that didn't hurt sales one iota. Sure, you could spot the hamfisted twat in the room by their shattered phone, but whev.
So it's a cool phone, that looks really nice, with an interesting screen/FFC that's going to be a pain in the arse, a camera system that promises revolutionary things but will almost certainly just take pictures that are perfectly acceptable just like pretty much every other phone camera out there, and an interesting magnetic accessory system that'll have about five things made for it ever.
And no headphone jack socket.