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Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

extremetech.com

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Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#141

Post by jonmrodriguez »

Steko wrote: post #69
bane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet that Apple is taking Glass very seriously. Or at least the wearable, always on, always connected computer.

The first NYT article on Glass reported that Apple was also doing a lot of research on wearables. Predictably when they come out with whatever they do everyone will say they are "reacting to Google" but I'm sure many companies have been hard at work on this for years. If I had to bet I would bet on a startup that just takes bluetooth accessories to the next level and leverages the phone in your pocket for the connect…

Shameless but very relevant plug :)

My startup is doing what you describe: http://vergencelabs.com/

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#142

Post by RivieraKid »

shinratdr wrote: post #128
RivieraKid wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant on par in overall user experience, not that they are equivalent in every feature. iPhone has shitty maps, no NFC, worse CPU/GPU (I think), no expandable notifications, etc.

I don't know how two devices, one of which can connect to a data network 5-10x faster than the other, can be considered "on par in overall user experience". And as Taligent noted, as always the PowerVR GPU in the iPhone absolutely without question smokes every crappy Mali GPU in every Android phone ever.

Because on average, LTE does not improve UX that much. For example for me, the UX improvement would be zero (I don't have LTE coverage). It also uses more battery. And for me, 3G is fast enough (about 2Mbit/s where I live).

I don't think that 2x faster GPU improves UX a lot for the average user. Accurate maps are more important IMHO.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#143

Post by SiVal »

shinratdr wrote: post #60
neya wrote: post #50

This is seriously good news. What many people don't realize is how powerful Android is. Open Source doesn't mean shitty quality software, contrary to popular belief. Android can do so many things that other Operating systems still cannot provide. All Android needs is some time, and some iterations and no one can even dream of killing it (like many plan to). Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will…

> Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will eventually win the war. How does that work? Where is the open source OS that "won" the desktop war? Where is the open source codec that "won" the codec wars?

And will HCJ (HTML5/CSS/JavaScript) ultimately win the mobile app platform war?

Right now, native apps do a better job than Web apps, so they tend to be Plan A. You do one if the market justifies it. Plan B is a Web app for market segments too small to write a native app for. But if Android takes enough total market share with its motley crew of incompatible devices, it could push iOS into being just another of the small fragments, and mobile development could become dominated by HCJ.

I would like to see Google use its leverage to actively, explicitly work toward making HCJ the Plan A for the great majority of mobile apps. If they reached the point where enough devices used HTML5/CSS as essentially the native UI, they could even make the Plan A for native apps be browserless HCJ on the client with an option to use compiled Go instead of JavaScript (behind the HTML/CSS UI) where it made sense. The Web app and the native app become nearly the same stack.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#144

Post by bryanlarsen »

taligent wrote: post #119
bryanlarsen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reviews are you reading? Every review I've read has been praising the build quality, the CPU/GPU performance and the camera.

Engadget and Anandtech. Engadget complained that the glass back easily cracked and that the camera was average. And we know from Anandtech benchmarks that the CPU/GPU is about half that of the iPhone 5.

So you'll agree that the iPhone 4 & 4S are also poorly built? Lots of people cracked the back screen on those phones.

Nice cherry-picking on the benchmarks. So the second fastest phone in the world is "slow". Gotcha.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#145

Post by Steko »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #118
Steko wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why Apple is in trouble: 47% of all revenue comes from the iPhone and it's clear that that market has moved past their sweet spot" This is not clear at all. Selling tiny computers with mobile broadband is clearly going to be the biggest hardware business for the next 10+ years and 10 years from now the device that generates the bulk of Apple's revenues will probably still be called an iPhone. It may bear little simi…

>Selling tiny computers with mobile broadband is clearly going to be the biggest hardware business for the next 10+ years and 10 years from now the device that generates the bulk of Apple's revenues will probably still be called an iPhone. It is completely my opinion, but I also suspect the opinion of others that if that's Apple's strategy, they're in for a very rude awakening. They're taking an increasingly smaller…

This misses the point badly.

If you and me owned a unicycle factory... let's say we're #1 in the world for sales and quality and let's say that China's leaders wake up tomorrow and decide to ban bicycles and push unicycles, turns out the new leader of China's nephew runs China Unicycle. Now the fact that we're rapidly losing global market share to China Unicycle is going to be far less relevant to us than the fact that our sales are going to be going through the roof.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#146

Post by bookwormAT »

taligent wrote: post #104
neya wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://source.android.com/

Actually Android is closer to shared source than open source. A typical open source project has an open repository, allows third party contributors, open issue tracking etc. Last time I checked Android had none of these and only released source code after a release.

No, Android is a open source project. Open Source does not require a community driven process. When Google releases a snapshot of Android under the Apache license, then this code is open source.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#147

Post by pook1e »

taligent wrote: post #109
pook1e wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past, I'd agree with you. However, comparing Google's latest lineup with Apple's latest lineup tells a much different story (all 16GB): Nexus 4: $349; iPhone 5: $699 Nexus 7: $199; iPad Mini: $329 Nexus 10: $399; iPad: $499 Of course, Apple and Google aren't in the same business, but they are very much competitors.

Of course just comparing on price ignores some big differences. Nexus 4 has no LTE. Nexus 7 has terrible build quality. Nexus 10 has nearly half the battery life.

Ah, yes. The old game of taking a perceived flaw of a product that is competitive to a product you like, and blowing it way out of proportion. I'll play a round.

- The camera on the iPhone 5 has the 'purple haze' issue.

- The iPad mini has an embarrassingly low resolution display for (almost) 2013, despite also having a larger display than the Nexus 7.

- The iPad 4 doesn't run as hot as the iPad 3, and no longer makes me scrambled eggs for breakfast while I play Infinity Blade.

Seriously. All products have flaws, and therefore there is no perfect product. Pointing out flaws to prove that your favorite company is better than their competitors is counter-productive. I really wish people would stop this childish debate and just agree that both Google (with their hardware partners) and Apple make fantastic, competing products.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#148

Post by myko »

Steko wrote: post #140
myko wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe what _you_ call Android. I don't think most of us fall into that category. What do you call the OS running on the Nook or Kindle?

"I don't think most of us fall into that category." I'm calling bullshit. People all the time refer to Maps as one of, if not the biggest advantage of Android. Same thing with the Gmail client. In this very thread you refer to a Chrome for Android (not Chromium afaik) feature as Android ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734771 ). "What do you call the OS running on the Nook or Kindle?" Properly it's AOSP. That f…

Call bullshit all you want, it doesn't make you any more correct. Android is an open source operating system, saying otherwise is ignorant.

If you want to talk about Google Play, Maps, Gmail, etc., it's pretty easy to install as a user on any non-locked down AOSP based version of the OS that doesn't rip out necessary APIs. In any case I call these 'apps' which are available on Android, the OS.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#149

Post by bryanlarsen »

taligent wrote: post #122
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the first person I've ever heard say that the Nexus 7 has terrible build quality and the AnandTech figures show that the 10 has around 90% of the iPad battery life rather than "nearly half".

Maybe you should Google it because it is pretty common knowledge that Nexus 7 is very hit/miss in terms of build quality. And I stupidly compared battery life against iPad Mini. So it is not half and not 90%. It's about 65% of the iPad according to Engadget. Nexus 10: 7.26 hours, iPad 4: 11.08 hours

You're really good at cherry picking, aren't you? Anandtech for the performance numbers, Engadget for battery life numbers. By Anandtech's numbers, the Nexus 10 gets 93% of the battery life of the iPad, even though the Nexus 10 uses a much smaller battery. Between the lighter battery and the grippy back, Google designed a device that can be safely held in one hand, a tradeoff I appreciate.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#150

Post by bookwormAT »

Steko wrote: post #140
myko wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe what _you_ call Android. I don't think most of us fall into that category. What do you call the OS running on the Nook or Kindle?

"I don't think most of us fall into that category." I'm calling bullshit. People all the time refer to Maps as one of, if not the biggest advantage of Android. Same thing with the Gmail client. In this very thread you refer to a Chrome for Android (not Chromium afaik) feature as Android ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734771 ). "What do you call the OS running on the Nook or Kindle?" Properly it's AOSP. That f…

A propritary software that only runs on Android is for sure an advantage for Android. But that does not mean that it is Android.

One advantage of Microsoft Windows over Ubuntu is that Windows runs Photoshop nativly and Ubuntu does not. But that does not mean that Photoshop is Windows.

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