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Google Nexus 5x and 6P

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Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#351

Post by raisedbyninjas »

mattmanser wrote: post #321
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife dropped her N5 a few weeks ago and cracked the screen (why are phones still so delicate?). We bought the new Moto G that night from Best Buy. Its pretty much a Nexus 5 but with a 720p screen instead of a 1080p screen. She loves having twice the battery life and the $179 pricepoint was mindblowing. The low and mid range in Android is very competitive. I'm not sure what this new N5 is bringing to the table othe…

Why are screens still so delicate? It's not even been 10 years since the original iPhone.

The design of the Nexus 5 has a razor thin plastic bezel surrounding the edge of the screen glass. Minor bumps push through the plastic and crack the glass from the edge where the glass is weakest. The push for thin phones and tiny bezels is a cancer on phone design.

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#352

Post by dpark »

moultano wrote: post #266
dpark wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for that? I've also been under the impression that HDR in most phones is just a gimmick that operates on a single exposure.

Here's the google research blog post about it. http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and...

Thanks!

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#353

Post by 0xFFC »

georgemcbay wrote: post #316
0xFFC wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for reference . Now you have facts . This makes sense , my next phone definitely will not be a nexus (and believe me I was hardcore fan of nexus since the day they begun nexus program). Getting update for only 2 year ? Give me a break . I will be switch to another platform , definitely , I was waiting for ubuntu phone . I will seriously consider them for my next purchase. I am thinking about ditching whole…

Which platform are you going to switch to exactly that has a better official update policy than this one? Not trying to be snarky, but Google's policy is as good or better than most (perhaps all? I haven't heard of a better option, though they may exist) and at least they are completely transparent about it. They also have good policies around keeping the bootloaders unlockable so if they do EOL it and you want to up…

Think of it like this , in near future (maybe in 2016 holiday) you can buy device with Tegra X1 processor which is almost power full as low end desktop device (which I have 3 of them and I run ARCH on them ). Okay ? but the fun part comes here, these devices after two year will become obsolete , you know why ? not because of their hardware , because their hardware will be more than enough for running ordinary tasks , just because fucking big names like Google,Samsung,etc don't want you to keep your device long enough .

The problem with old devices was their lack of power for new increasing computing even for ordinary people (because this industry was infant). But ARM architecture based SoC and embedded CPU will pass (or passing/passed) a threshold . After this threshold you will be able to run ordinary app (I am not talking about high end 3d 4k gaming, I am talking about browsing internet,chatting , reading) for daily usage maybe for 5 year or even more. but your device will become obsolete , because of these thief's . ( I hate how big corporation ripping people off )

Let me give you an instance , you can have a pc desktop with 2gb ram from 2008 . If you are using your device for reading and ordinary job I bet you can install windows 10-32bit (which is state of art) on it and use it without any serious issue . This is the problem with whole ecosystem of Gadgets. Even if you buy a device with tegra x1 SoC(which is powerful as shit) , You should throw it away after 2 year , or you are sticking to old version of android (put aside how much security threat it has) .They can develop a solution for this problem with spending money. But why spending money when they can rip off people ?

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#354

Post by hatsix »

dmethvin wrote: post #296
munchbunny wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly my problems with it are exactly three things that aren't addressed in the new models: 1. The wireless charging, while seemingly a small thing, was to me a huge improvement in my experience of using the phone. The fact that I can sit down at my desk, plop the phone down, and it'll just work, and when I get up to leave I can just pull it off my desk. Removing the USB cable interaction made the phone a muc…

I really like the wireless charging on my Nexus 5 as well. Going back to the cable would be fine with me but I would prefer something that takes a little less effort to insert and I'm always concerned about breaking the connector. I just found a really interesting MagSafe-like connector for the classic micro USB [1], maybe they will make something soon for the new USB3 that the 5X uses. And before some of you say tha…

I backed this kickstarter for a magsafe-like usbc connector: http://www.znaps.net/ We'll see if it follows through.

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#355

Post by devrelm »

DannyBee wrote: post #108
ForHackernews wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Google and Samsung have decided to ditch sd cards to prevent the user having a shitty experience. I think Google has decided to ditch SD cards to encourage users to keep more of their data on Google's servers.

Right, because they makes more sense than ditching them because they are an unreliable mess that cause more problems than they solve, and are not necessary for the vast majority of users. Do you think apple never supported SD cards because they wanted more people to put stuff in icloud?

> Do you think apple never supported SD cards because they wanted more people to put stuff in icloud?

Uhh... of course? Both companies charge extra for more space — Apple past 5GB and Google past 15GB. They make money by forcing you to upgrade your online storage.

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#356

Post by zuppy »

chrsstrm wrote: post #336
zuppy wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's going to bother to recreate your fingerprint, when it's much easier to beat you with a wrench ( https://xkcd.com/538/ ) until they get access to your phone. It's a huge convenience for you though, to unlock it without doing anything extra, as you're pressing that button anyway to turn the screen on. Much easier than typing passwords.

My worry is that this is a gateway drug to "Fingerprint protect all the things!" My bank emailed me the other day with an announcement that I could access my account through their app via my fingerprint. WTF? My text messages are one thing by now my money is protected by just my fingerprint? I took my bank to task because they allowed my username to be twice as long as the allowed characters in my password. Someone a…

Fair point, it should be used for convenience, not for real security.

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#357

Post by eropple »

mkozlows wrote: post #200
shadeless wrote: post #84

As an owner of Nexus 5 I must say I'm a bit disappointed with this announcement. I was looking forwards to upgrading my almost two year old phone to Nexus 5x, but there doesn't seem to be a good reason unless Nexus 5 stops getting new Android updates. They have the same resolution, same amount of memory, same amount of storage. I don't shoot video, and I probably won't use fingerprint reader - but I do use wireless c…

So the thing is, the Nexus 5 was a near-perfect phone (especially considering it was released two years ago), and it's totally reasonable to think it's still doing the job very well -- it is. But that's a fact about the N5, not the N5X/6P. I mean, what would you want from a new phone that would show up on a spec sheet? Faster? Check, both of these are. The 808/810 aren't gigantic generational leaps over the 800, but…

> Better screen? They're both bigger;

> So that's one downgrade

Two, and one critical. The Nexus 5 was absolutely the biggest phone I would consider, and even that was really too big. Making one phone a dinner plate and one phone a centimeter-larger dinner plate is atrocious.

Apparently only Sony wants my money (and honestly the Z Compact series is still too big).

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#358

Post by georgemcbay »

0xFFC wrote: post #353
georgemcbay wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which platform are you going to switch to exactly that has a better official update policy than this one? Not trying to be snarky, but Google's policy is as good or better than most (perhaps all? I haven't heard of a better option, though they may exist) and at least they are completely transparent about it. They also have good policies around keeping the bootloaders unlockable so if they do EOL it and you want to up…

Think of it like this , in near future (maybe in 2016 holiday) you can buy device with Tegra X1 processor which is almost power full as low end desktop device (which I have 3 of them and I run ARCH on them ). Okay ? but the fun part comes here, these devices after two year will become obsolete , you know why ? not because of their hardware , because their hardware will be more than enough for running ordinary tasks ,…

I don't disagree with any of this... I just don't see what alternatives you have that are superior to what Google offers with the Nexus line.

Even the handsets that are sold on the idea of open source have spotty records when it comes to supported OTA updates beyond a year or so after release.

Given the lack of any ideal alternative, I'm personally sticking with Nexus devices and just going with unofficial builds of the OS when it makes sense to do so.

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#359

Post by shostack »

Brakenshire wrote: post #308
hackuser wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It simplifies managing storage for users. Per Matias Duarte, who I think was Director of Android User Experience at the time: [1] Everybody likes the idea of having an SD card, but in reality it's just confusing for users. If you’re saving photos, videos or music, where does it go? Is it on your phone? Or on your card? ... We take a different approach. Your Nexus has a fixed amount of space and your apps just seamles…

You could say the same thing about cloud storage, couldn't you? As with extra local storage, that has additional UI baggage, which comes along with extra utility for the user. To be able to bring with you all of your music or photos, without requiring a connection, is a massive benefit. That also doesn't explain sticking with the same storage options from two years ago, even though prices have plummeted in the meanti…

Yeah, for me it is hard to take this at face value when Google has a vested interest in cloud storage from the standpoint of data analysis, platform lock-in, and subscription revenue.

Re: Google Nexus 5x and 6P

#360

Post by inversionOf »

DannyBee wrote: post #341
inversionOf wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want A53's "handling the majority of the workload". Yes. You do. If I'm casually browsing non-intensive web pages, e-reading, or watching a Netflix movie, or even encoding a video, the background is doing IO rate limited system updates and basic data logging, etc, the vast majority of the time the CPU demands are very low, but frequent enough that putting a CPU to sleep is completely out of the question. An…

No, you don't. Encoding a video should not be CPU, so let's get that out of there. Most of the rest is more GPU dependent than CPU dependent. The amount of CPU time you should be spending on these tasks is really low. For example, web browsing and reading , the CPU should be asleep most of the time. Now, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of very silly little tasks for A53's to do, but what you listed are not those…

The amount of CPU time you should be spending on these tasks is really low.

Which is exactly the point. They are not CPU intensive, but the CPU is constantly doing a multitude of little things, whether simply moving memory around from the GPU to storage, sending the render buffers for the 60fps display, etc. Another comment mentioned, rightly, that cores are put to sleep in they don't have anything to do in a quantum. A quantum is an enormously huge period of time, and is a macro power management technique, and is the last bastion behind idle frequency scaling, and big.little.

Truthfully, for most A53 cores, this is true only in the dreams of the chip designers.

You have zero expertise to be saying this. I mean, here's how Samsung actually does it on a big/little setup-

http://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-s6-octa-core-processo...

Here's Qualcomm-

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8933/snapdragon-810-performanc...

Here's ARM-

https://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/biglitt...

They favor the little cores, unless the process actually saturates the core at which point it is elevated to a big core, because the power profile for low demand tasks is far better for the small cores.

I'm going to favor the industry's interpretation of this a bit more than your anecdotal, occasional compiler-writer knowledge.

what do you expect the A57's to be doing in this world?

...

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