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Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

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Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#431

Post by yohui »

scubaguy wrote: post #369
klausa wrote: post #3

Flagship Android device, unlocked, without contract, for $299. Impressive. From the marketing video it looks like Android 4.2 gained Swype-like keyboard. It seems that they're no longer using tablet UI, even on Nexus 10 (i.e. it has status bar on top, navigation buttons are in the middle of the screen). That's weird, and I definitely don't like it, but it might not be that big of a problem.

>> It seems that they're no longer using tablet UI, even on Nexus 10 Maybe this is for consistency. I find it a bit of a mental shift when I used the Nexus 7 with the tablet UI. I assume I'd prefer the status on top look & feel on the Nexus 10 as well. I know not everyone prefers status & notification on top, but I'm used to it and I like the consistency of it across phone & tablet.

Status bar up top is probably fine.

I would think though that sticking the navigation buttons in the center while in landscape mode would be aggravating. I would rather have the buttons rotate while the bar stays on the narrow end. That would even be consistent with the actual phone UI.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#432

Post by yohui »

mahyarm wrote: post #401
manishsharan wrote: post #297

Can someone please comment on how PDF and ebooks from Manning's programming books render on Nexus 7 vs. mini-IPAD ? That, for me, is the deciding factor.

PDFs render pretty well on the Nexus 7 with Adobe's reader app. I'd guess better since there is more resolution?

Agreed. I would add that really big (large textbook size) PDFs occasionally hang Adobe Reader. ezPDF tends to handle those better.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#433

Post by kooshball »

RShiki wrote: post #366
_djo_ wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The entry level, 16gb iPhone has a profit margin that is bigger than average, but not huge. The 64gb iPhone on the other hand.. it's like printing money. The markup doesn't even begin to compare to what the bigger storage actually cost to Apple. Apple makes a LOOOOT of money out of the customers who have bigger needs than average. That's been Apple's strategy forever, people who want more have to pay a lot more than…

>If you only look at their entry products, like the 16gb iPhone, the 21" iMac, the 11" MBA, yeah, Apple seems reasonable. Any other Apple product ? the margins on those things is something no one else could pull off without getting lynched.

This is a pretty common case of price discrimination. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

Apple is certainly not the only company that does it. However they do commonly have a higher profit margin than their competitors.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#434

Post by bad_user »

shinratdr wrote: post #391
bad_user wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LTE is not as important as you make it sound. Mobile bandwidth is still expensive, so you only get a couple of GB per month for a decent price and if you want more, you have to shell out a lot of cash. I don't know how it is in the US, but here in Europe (at least in my country, Romania), the 3G connections are pretty good and 4G is coming, but it's not there yet. And I can't picture what you'd want to do with an exp…

> 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…

Except I only do device management because the limited data plan is a problem that doesn't go away - and you have it too, because you're limited to 6 GB and that's not much.

This month I've been following the Coursera course on functional programming with Scala, while listening to other podcasts and stuff I follow. I like doing that in the morning, while drinking a coffee at a nice place. And because I wasn't careful about turning Wifi on (it was off for some reason), I depleted 2 GB of bandwidth in 2 hours, which was the bandwidth I had left - the connection was so good I didn't even realize that I was on 3G.

Also, I'm probably in a much better position than most people, because my monthly plan does not come with a contract, being a PrePay (PrePay plans are very competitive in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, compared to the US at least). So I can recharge as needed.

But other people are not so lucky and once you blow past the allocated bandwidth, the prices are freaking huge on a contract. I have an acquaintance who's kid watched movies on his phone and ended up with a 300 EUR bill.

So btw, if you're telling me that you don't do device management, just wait until you'll be a father.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#435

Post by Andys »

tomjen3 wrote: post #274
dude_abides wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very impressive pricing! On the other hand, it doesn't support LTE. When will Google realize that basic things like fast network speed are more important than fancy things like face unlock and NFC.

Honestly why do you want LTE? You are going to burn through your data alotment very, very fast.

Low latency. Reduction in the 3G "time to first data" lag.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#436

Post by knotty66 »

dazbradbury wrote: post #205
klausa wrote: post #3

Flagship Android device, unlocked, without contract, for $299. Impressive. From the marketing video it looks like Android 4.2 gained Swype-like keyboard. It seems that they're no longer using tablet UI, even on Nexus 10 (i.e. it has status bar on top, navigation buttons are in the middle of the screen). That's weird, and I definitely don't like it, but it might not be that big of a problem.

Unfortunately they are selling it for £239 in the UK, which is more like $380 - Still an absolute steal for a headline retail price, but not quite the incredible £185 I thought it would be initially. So for now, having paid only slightly more for my sim-free S3 months ago, it's not that good a deal. Still patiently waiting for a nexus with a hardware keyboard like the good old days...

That's actually a lot better than the deal the UK got on the ARM Chromebook released last week, which was priced at $249 in the USA and £229 in the UK.

After taking 20% VAT into consideration, that's only a x1.07 premium compared to the US price as compared to a x1.23 premium on the Chromebook, which is actually unusually good. Often we see dollars converted directly to pounds.

Strange that the conversion is not consistent - can anybody speculate why?

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#437

Post by niels_olson »

dbecker wrote: post #305
mtgx wrote: post #227

Earlier 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'm 20/40, and it strike me as amazing up close. Desktop distance -- not so much. I have a 27" iMac, and I can barely tell there are pixels. But since iPhone 4, it's been Retina all the way. The Retina 4G iPad arguably changed my life. All of a sudden I can have a full page of a pdf in bed, triple-clicked to negative color, and the text is still perfect. Naturally as soon as the Retina macbook came out, I was in heaven: I can line up two full-width documents, read one and type another (usually one is in LibreOffice, the other is in Papers or Chrome, but emacs is behind LibreOffice).

So with a briefcase full of Retina, I'm quite happy. But the 27" iMac still feels like the most spacious screen. The other thing the Apple hardware has going for it is that I can tether my MacBook to my iPad's 4G network via bluetooth, so the iPad doesn't even have to come out of the briefcase to be incredibly useful, and saves me having to have another data plan. I note the Nexus 10 does not come in a 4G model. That seems crazy to me.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#438

Post by countessa »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #315
akmiller wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. If I'm not mistaken the new, formerly known as "Metro", UI is vector based and any applications built with the WPF which includes all Windows 8 GUI based applications (at least the non-html one's) are of course vector based so it's simply up to the designer/developer to scale it however they want.

Not completely true. The metro app developer will still have to include pixel art at varying resolutions since these do not scale automatically very well.

unless you develop metro apps using javascript/html - then you can use vector art.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#439

Post by jemeshsu »

ChrisClark wrote: post #407
shinratdr wrote: post #391

Earlier 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…

As fast as WiFi? I'd hope it is faster. My home internet is 15mbps, this phone does 21, LTE does 70 or something. Do you really need to download a song in 0.5 seconds? Isn't 2 seconds fast enough? With the LTE speed of 70mbps, you could use up your 6GB in 11 minutes.

At first I thought LTE is overrated, after using it for 2 weeks, its hard to go back. If you constantly on the go and need to check things out quick on your mobile, LTE makes the experience 'keeping pace with your move', there is less 'little waits'.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#440

Post by pixdamix »

acgourley wrote: post #20
fr0sty wrote: post #14

And someone finally implements the killer-feature for the "Family Tablet": Multi-Account Support: > But what makes Nexus 10 unique is that it's the first truly shareable tablet. With Android 4.2, you can add multiple users and switch between them instantly right from the lockscreen. We believe that everyone should have quick and easy access to their own stuff -- email, apps, bookmarks, and more. That way, everyone ca…

Nice catch, that's a huge step forward. But is that not on the nexus 7?

It may be related to patents:

"Why Android Jelly Bean 4.2′s Multiple User Account Switching Is Tablet-Only? (Hint: Nokia Patented It For Phones)"

http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/29/why-android-jelly-bean-4-2s...

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