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Nexus 9

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Re: Nexus 9

#101

Post by sho_hn »

fumar wrote: post #91
ChuckMcM wrote: post #42

And of course the day before Apple announces its new iPad (allegedly). I really like having two very well funded companies in all out competition, it makes for some really great features and options in both products. The size thing is what I'm interested in though. I'm waiting to see if there actually is a 12" iPad pro tomorrow, otherwise I'll pull the trigger on a Note Pro. I get the pocket/purse argument for 9" but…

So far the best PDF annotation device, I have used is the Surface Pro 3. At 12 inches it displays PDFs very well. The pen is pressure sensitive and will reject any outside inputs.

Out of curiosity, have you tried a Samsung tablet with a Wacom digitizer and their S-Pen stylus? I'm currently looking for a device that lets me scribble into language learning work books, I'd be interested in hearing your comparison to a SP3.

Re: Nexus 9

#102

Post by dragonwriter »

aetherson wrote: post #57
WildUtah wrote: post #19

So is it confirmed that there's no new Nexus 7? What is the best new alternative with some kind of clean Android mini tablet?

I don't understand why Google is making a Nexus 9. It seems crazy. Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet? Are they just of the impression that phablets will eat small tablets? (I should say that of course there is SOME market for larger tablets out there. If they were producing a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 9, that would make more sense. But I thought that both expert consensus an…

> I don't understand why Google is making a Nexus 9. It seems crazy. Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet?

No, everyone doesn't agree with your opinion that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet (I don't even agree that there is one right size.)

> Are they just of the impression that phablets will eat small tablets?

Probably. Given that even Apple has given up and gone to big and bigger with its phones, the space for mini tablets is narrowing.

Re: Nexus 9

#103

Post by emsy »

sheldor wrote: post #96
jbellis wrote: post #59

Apple finally admitted that bigger phones are better. Looks like Google is finally admitting that 4:3 is the right tablet aspect ratio. I'm kind of curious what the secret sauce is that makes Google think they are ready to sell a premium-priced tablet. Lollipop may be better than iOS 8 but is that enough to overcome the app gap? (Anecdata: my wife had her ipad mini stolen last week. We have 5 Android devices in the h…

And what exactly would that "app gap" be? I'm genuinely curious.

In my experience, it's not the amount of software, but the amount of quality software. For instance, I wasn't able to find a decent RSS reader that doesn't stutter on the Nexus 7 (2013). Not to mention the ridiculous amount of rights some of the readers want. On my iphone, it's hard to decide which reader I'll use because they are really good (I've tried quite a few).

Music apps are still pretty much dominated by iOS. Also some quality games are only available on iOS or are released much later on Android.

While I do think that the "app gap" does indeed exist, I believe only dedicated geeks/musicians/gamers will notice it.

Re: Nexus 9

#104

Post by lgeek »

szatkus wrote: post #99
Symmetry wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four symmetric cores - all A15s. I don't think NVidia has ever done big.LITTLE even though they had a fifth core with the same architecture but different process/gate sizes for lower power in some previous Tegra chips. But you can see from them all having the same max frequency that all four cores are the same.

32-bit K1 also has the companion core[1] (probaly Cortex A7). [1] http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/tegra-...

The companion core of the ARMv7 TK1 is a low power Cortex-A15, like the grandparent comment says. This is different from ARM's big.LITTLE which uses different microarchitectures for the two clusters, i.e. Cortex-A15 + Cortex-A7 or Cortex-A53 + Cortex-A57.

Re: Nexus 9

#105

Post by leoc »

Sargos wrote: post #83
superbaconman wrote: post #62

What's up with keyboards that lack a right side ctrl key? Is it bad form to type using right-ctrl or something? Can someone shed some light on this? :\

Just a personal anecdote but I've never purposefully hit the right-side ctrl key. It seems redundant to me.

It's not at all redundant for touch-typing.

Re: Nexus 9

#106

Post by macspoofing »

iSnow wrote: post #65
zastrowm wrote: post #28

The price is $400 [1], in case anyone else was wondering: > Google’s Nexus 9 goes up for pre-order on October 17th, and should hit the shelves on November 3rd. The 16GB model will go for $400, the 32GB for $480, and a 32GB model with LTE built in will set you back $600. [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/15/google-nexus-9/

Top of the line is 32GB and costs $600? That's not just a bit dissapointing. How much can another 32GB of flash storage cost at OEM prices, $10? And no, I don't want to store everything on your servers, Google.

>How much can another 32GB of flash storage cost at OEM prices, $10?

The extra cost is a subsidy for the 16gb version.

Re: Nexus 9

#107

Post by macspoofing »

aetherson wrote: post #57
WildUtah wrote: post #19

So is it confirmed that there's no new Nexus 7? What is the best new alternative with some kind of clean Android mini tablet?

I don't understand why Google is making a Nexus 9. It seems crazy. Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet? Are they just of the impression that phablets will eat small tablets? (I should say that of course there is SOME market for larger tablets out there. If they were producing a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 9, that would make more sense. But I thought that both expert consensus an…

>Doesn't everyone understand at this point that 7-8" is the right size for a tablet?

I never liked the 7'' size. I stuck with my iPad 2 over getting a Nexus 7 because of this. This one looks perfect.

Re: Nexus 9

#108

Post by nilkn »

harshreality wrote: post #84
donniezazen wrote: post #77

Where do you guys think Nexus 9 fits? I have gotten used to Nexus 7 for reading and Nexus 10 for writing/media consumption reading graphically rich stuff like magazine. Do you think Nexus 9 replaces both of those different types of works.

I think the onward march of phone sizes into the 6" range is cannibalizing the market for small tablets, and 9-10" for tablets is the remaining sweet spot between phones and laptops.

Given the Nexus 6, I actually think this is too small. If I'm going to have a six inch phone, I'd prefer a tablet that is upwards of 12". I think huge tablets are currently an unexplored niche that could kick off just like big phones did.

Re: Nexus 9

#109

Post by dragonwriter »

nilkn wrote: post #108
harshreality wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the onward march of phone sizes into the 6" range is cannibalizing the market for small tablets, and 9-10" for tablets is the remaining sweet spot between phones and laptops.

Given the Nexus 6, I actually think this is too small. If I'm going to have a six inch phone, I'd prefer a tablet that is upwards of 12". I think huge tablets are currently an unexplored niche that could kick off just like big phones did.

> I think huge tablets are currently an unexplored niche that could kick off just like big phones did.

Huge tablets aren't exactly an unexplored niche; the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 and Microsoft Surface, and even a few bigger tablets, do exist.

Re: Nexus 9

#110

Post by lgeek »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #38

Anyone have experience installing Linux on an Android tablet to use for development work? I'd love to use it with tmux/vim to hack on stuff. Is battery life worth it?

I did a long weekend project a few months ago bringing up GNU/Linux on a low cost tablet. Here's a picture of it running XFCE: http://i.imgur.com/jmh8N0W.jpeg

If you at least have a kernel source for the SoC, it's doable. However, especially if you don't have the source for your specific device (because manufacturers play fast and loose with the GPL), you'll probably spend the first few days getting it working and then many, many weekends getting it to be usable. I did stop before I got to that point.

Here's some of the issues I ran into:

* The parallel RGB to MIPI bridge doesn't have complete publicly available documentation and it requires LCD-specific configuration. I've sniffed it from the Android kernel with a logic analyzer.

* The touchscreen controller doesn't have complete publicly available documentation and it requires device-specific configuration.

* The BMS doesn't have complete publicly available documentation and it requires device-specific configuration

I guess you can see a trend. :) If you have the time, you can RE this stuff with some basic soldering skills and a logic analyzer or scope.

But actually the issues which made me lose enthusiasm were the following:

* Rotating the framebuffer to landscape orientation in software is freaking slow. Android seems to be doing it using OpenGL ES, but I'm not aware of any GNU/Linux window manager capable of this. The display controller didn't support rotation and the only remaining alternative would have been too hacky for my taste, to use the image processing engine to maintain a rotated shadow copy.

* Limited capabilities: processing speed is mostly OK, but only 2 GB of RAM and the slow framebuffer are not great. There's almost no I/O, essentially you only have a USB OTG port. Tablets are not thermally designed to sustain high loads. Battery life will probably not be that great and it seems difficult to upgrade the battery.

Now, some of this stuff doesn't fully apply to Nexus 9. I expect Google to be better at providing a kernel source closer to that's running on the device and the hardware itself it much more capable, it even has OpenGL (non-ES) support. This still leaves quite a few issues. Chromebooks (used for running GNU/Linux, of course) might be worth looking into.

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