Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surface beat them by 3 days ;)
Unfortunately it's not running on Linux and it's running Windows.
why is this relevant to the end users?
Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
421–430 of 486 posts
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#422The phone comes with wireless charging built in. Looks like that's a first. Does it come with a charging pad as well? I think I'd buy a phone just for this feature.
It is not included. Optional accessory.
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but the profit made is tiny in comparison to the giant margins they make on iOS devices ($700 iPhones that cost $175 to make really pad the bottom line).
It does not cost $175 to make, that's just the estimated bill of materials (BOM) cost. The actual cost to manufacture includes labour, design, shipping, testing, storage and dozens of other things. Apple's gross margins on its devices, essentially the selling price less the manufacturing costs, is about 30-40% company-wide. That translates into an operating margin (which includes all costs) in the 20-30% range. That'…
ZTE just announced a phone with a retail price of 999 yuan ($160). If they can eek out a profit margin, makes you wonder what the real manufacturing cost is for the big players.
"ZTE U950 smartphone packs a 1.3GHz Tegra 3 chip, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage and a 2,000mAh battery beneath the 4.3-inch display."
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#424In the era of beautiful Surface and iPads why oh why did the Nexus 10 have to be so ugly, when Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 are pretty. The specs on Nexus 10 make me want to buy it, but the shape is just not helping me make that decision.
I don't find it that ugly, but I can't help but think they were just trying to differentiate themselves from the iPad.
The 10" would be far better with the studded back texture of the 7"
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
> LTE is not as important as you make it sound. Except you then go on to explain for a couple paragraphs that it doesn't matter BECAUSE . Here is my process for connecting with my LTE phone: I turn it on. Speed is as fast as WiFi all the time. I have a 6GB plan and have never had to worry about hitting it. That's it. I haven't used a free WiFi network outside of work in a year. LTE is way faster. Just like the touchs…
Let's be honest here, speed isn't as fast as WiFi all the time. It's as fast as WiFi, with much higher latency, in the times you're within good range of the proper cell tower. Sorry, but its not the same as WiFi when you're sitting on the can in the windowless bathroom on the 8th floor of a big office building.
It is almost universally faster than free WiFi (i.e. at a coffee shop), which is what the post said.
I have unlimited data and a ROM that lets me tether, and it really is amazing how useful LTE everywhere is. There's no way this isn't the future of internet connectivity in general. (Unless everyone using it would somehow saturate the available spectrum?)
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
@merrit - Because it has not been a focus of laptop manufacturers. Instead the focus has been faster CPU's or bigger hard drives. Going premium on the display, means you have to cut on something else to deliver the laptop at the same, and I don't think Intel is going to cut on their CPU prices anytime soon. In some laptops, Intel's chips take up to 40% of the BOM price. That leaves little wiggle room for experimentin…
My eyesight isn't great, but I can't tell the difference between the resolution on my "retina" devices and resolution on other screens. Can most people tell the difference? If not, this marketing and competition on resolution may be distracting us from issues that have a bigger impact on our usage experience.
I have slightly worse than 20/20 vision and I see a huge difference. The retina iPad that I had was amazingly clear compared to my 1600x900 17" laptop screen and my 1200x800 tablet. I recently looked at both the retina macbook and an asus 13" ultrabook in best buy last week. The macbook retina's screen was noticably sharper than the asus' 1080p screen, but 1080p on a screen that size still looks absolutely amazing. I would honestly be happy with either one.
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. I upgraded my HP 17" laptop panel to 1920 x 1200 (bought less than $200 on ebay 2 years ago). That was on Windows 7. I don't notice any visual issues. Just upgraded to Windows 8 and all Windows apps look just fine too. So applications aren't real issues here.
1920 x 1200 is nowhere near 2x resolution. Its more like 1.2 or 1.3.
Indeed. 1920 x 1200 on a 17" screen is about 133 dpi, not even close to the 300 dpi on the Nexus 10.
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Typically your strings are a R.strings, colours are at R.colours, etc so it makes it pretty easy to spot if you are passing a string through where you should be passing a colour. Here's the problem. Say you need to pass around a specific resource (reusable code somewhere in your app): void doSomething(int stringResourceId) ^ THIS IS WRONG The problem is that the R bullshit essentially decontextualizes what that actua…
Well, we should aim to do better than 'good enough'. There are some bits of android that absolutely rock: * I really like that the OS can handle so much of the scaling and resizing for you as you move from a 3 inch phone all the way up to 10 inch tablets * I think google is to be commended for building an eco-system that involves so many different hardware devices, manufacturers, etc * The latest look and feel in 4.1…
Agreed for the most part, except for these:
I think google is to be commended for building an eco-system that involves so many different hardware devices, manufacturers, etc and Google HAS to do something about the upgrade story on existing devices.
Disagree on the first part, for one really big reason: the overwhelming majority of those manufacturers are anti-consumer assholes. Like, I would personally much rather that literally-literally every manufacturer who ship with a locked bootloader or who refuse to commit to three years of updates be blocked from using the Google apps on any of their devices (which is why I included the second bit). I realize Google will never do that, and the "screw you, this is how you do it right" attitude of the Nexus line is an okay "toe this line" approach, but I don't think it's sufficient.
The intents system and the way you can link together different apps is very innovative. I wish iOS would copy it!
The idea behind the intents system is groovy. The implementation is terrible. Intents external to my application are great, barring API problems. But within my application--I get the reason, intents are bad for this sort of thing because the information you can pass around is limited and not typesafe. You end up with global state or a lack of type safety and neither option makes me not want to throw things. I think I'd rather see the Activity model be more object-oriented--like, have startActivity() actually take an Activity and allow you to define a constructor.
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
> LTE is not as important as you make it sound. Except you then go on to explain for a couple paragraphs that it doesn't matter BECAUSE . Here is my process for connecting with my LTE phone: I turn it on. Speed is as fast as WiFi all the time. I have a 6GB plan and have never had to worry about hitting it. That's it. I haven't used a free WiFi network outside of work in a year. LTE is way faster. Just like the touchs…
Let's be honest here, speed isn't as fast as WiFi all the time. It's as fast as WiFi, with much higher latency, in the times you're within good range of the proper cell tower. Sorry, but its not the same as WiFi when you're sitting on the can in the windowless bathroom on the 8th floor of a big office building.
Much higher latency? I just tested 22 ms with my iPhone 5 on my home WiFi network, and 44 ms with LTE. Granted, that's a factor of 2, but 44 ms is pretty darn acceptable for any Internet usage, let alone mobile phone usage.
Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other vendors have already failed, except on the low cost. Samsung rules the phone market, it is everyday closer to become synonym with Android and could be tempted to secede like Amazon. That is not a good situation for either Android or Google - and except Google breaking the price, there is little else that can revive the market a little bit.
They already did in China. My wife bought a Galaxy S2 in January, and it came with Samsung Apps instead of Google Play, no Google Maps, no Gmail or Google Talk etc. Yes, it's a legitimate Samsung product, not some Chinese knockoff. She's hugely disappointed with it and refuses to buy any more Samsung products. (It doesn't help that she refuses to let me root it and install CyanogenMod, but you don't expect to have to…
I wouldn't assume that was Samsung's choice. Isn't that a legacy of old disagreements between Google and the PRC?
I know that Asus Transformer Primes sold in China did not come with Google services, either, though buyers quickly learned that using a US/Taiwan/International update file would restore functionality fairly easily.