Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by randomchars » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 4:03 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #434

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…

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…

Well, I live in Hungary (right next to you) and our pre-paid plans suck. Calling costs 2-3 times as much as on contracts, same with texting. A 3G plan with 3GB unlimited (that is they slow you down until the end of the billing cycle) costs 3500 HUF. For 4190 HUF you can get a 4G plan with unlimited browsing and 5GB for other purposes.

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

#472

Post by shinratdr » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 5:01 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #434

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…

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…

Using your home internet connection for intensive streaming instead of your data connection isn't device management.

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

#473

Post by stordoff » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 5:20 PM UTC

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.

Video and images look about the same, but text looks _much_ better (comparing an iPad 1 with an iPad 3, and a 13" MBP with a retina 13" MBP).

The biggest advantage for me is the ability to change resolution (on the MBP) without having a poor display due to using a non-native resolution.

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

#474

Post by Rastafarian » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 6:32 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #419

martythemaniak wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shameless Plug: Kytephone ( https://www.kytephone.com/ ) adds a de-facto multi-account support to any Android phone or tablet running 2.2 or above. It's aimed at adding accounts for kids and while it's not as extensive as the baked-in one (kids can't have their own gmail account for example) it does come with goodies such as time limits for games.

> kids can't have their own gmail account for example // http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a... Kids [under 13, dependent on region] "can't" have their own gmail account anyway, it's against the rules.

Right, and what percent of the population do you think cares about some rules, some suits from Google made up?

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

#475

Post by Rastafarian » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 6:45 PM UTC

RShiki wrote: post #364

gms wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nexus 7 devices are being sold at a loss, so I suppose in one sense yes, the price there is too good to be true.

It's not sold at a loss, but with a very low profit margin. At a loss would mean that they're actually bearing the cost of manufacturing the device even after they got your money, which is not true. They also get a much higher profit margin on the 16gb (now the 32gb for the Nexus 7) than on the 8gb which is what a lot of people will buy. There isn't a $50 cost in manufacturing a device with 16gb more of storage but t…

When you factor in the huge R&D costs, the cheapest models are definitely sold at a lost.

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

#476

Post by gms » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 6:52 PM UTC

cmatthias wrote: post #229

gms wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nexus 7 devices are being sold at a loss, so I suppose in one sense yes, the price there is too good to be true.

I'm not quite sure whether there was ever an original source for this claim other than a bunch of tech blogs parroting each other, but iSuppli shows that this was false, at least as of July 11th: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/pages/Low-End-Google-N... Sure, if you add in the $25 Google play credit, and leave room for some margin for Asus (since Google is just a reseller), you might get close to breaking even,…

I stand corrected; thanks.

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

#477

Post by shinratdr » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

EwanToo wrote: post #449

shardling wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

A big part of how much faster LTE is than HSPA+ (which the Nexus 4 ships with), is the fact that most LTE networks are massively under-utilised. HSPA+ can run at 42Mbps in theory, but network congestion makes that a pretty much impossible situation in reality. As more people join the LTE networks, they will get slower and slower, just as 3G has in crowded areas.

Hence why I couldn't be happier that Google is continuing to limit the Nexus line to 3G. That's the price of keeping costs low.

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

#478

Post by JonoW » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 10:47 PM UTC

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.

XAML is very vector orientated, most apps will (should) not include pixel based art-work unless really necessary.

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

#479

Post by eropple » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 11:49 PM UTC

vlasta2 wrote: post #326

eropple wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Windows," if defined as "the windowing library", does. Even Explorer doesn't work correctly at 200% DPI scaling (you get a tiny nav bar and a really long search bar). It's junk. What's worse is that VS2012 is nearly unusable because IntelliSense explodes all over the screen. I have many sads when I have to deal with that on my rMBP.

you can drag the splitter between the navbar and searchbar to adjust the sizes as you see fit... VS2012 is still a problem though

At 200% DPI, I can't even find the splitter. Like, my mouse cursor doesn't change to the two-headed arrow.

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

#480

Post by hornetblack » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 11:55 PM UTC

ChrisClark wrote: post #408

illumin8 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure wasn't long before the Google apologists started clamoring that you don't really need LTE anyway.

But I've never thought LTE was necessary, even in the iPhone. Not something I want/need.

That's what I've always thought. A tiny 3-4 inch device with a dual core ARMv7 CPU and 8-64 GB of storage. Why does it need faster internet than what I can get at my house through a Broadband router (ADSL2 here)