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Nexus 9

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Re: Nexus 9

#141

Post by nl »

nl wrote: post #130
polshaw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No nexus has ever had an SD card slot [ED: since the nexus one!]. It's their thing, to push people into the cloud. >dying breed Rubbish, quite the opposite: every (other) flagship android phone has one this year: S5, One M8, LG G3, xperia Z3. Every windows tablet has one. Compare this to the last round when it was pretty much just the S4.

(New) Moto X doesn't.

I assume by the down votes I'm wrong? I checked some reviews and they all say it doesn't have one. Has it changed?

Re: Nexus 9

#142

Post by donniezazen »

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.

Unless apps are specifically designed for 12" screen and they work like traditional desktop I am not buying them. A screen as big as 12" needs to multitask. It has to has a dedicated taskbar not clicking the 3rd button to bring a bunch of backstack windows.

Re: Nexus 9

#143

Post by anigbrowl »

s9ix wrote: post #60
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…

I'm not quite sure the 'app gap' exists still, does it? Recently switched from iPhone 5S > HTC One M8, and nothing reallllly I miss.

It's a big problem for music apps. Android has not delivered low-latency MIDI/audio up to now, allowing Apple to own that market (much like it did with Mac v windows for a long time).

Re: Nexus 9

#144

Post by hoeppnertill »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

Sad to see no SD card slot. I know that's not Google's thing, but Asus and Samsung have defied them in the past to include them in Nexus models and I was hoping HTC would follow suit. That said, I hope this sells well. HTC badly needs some success.

The reason for not including an SD card slot is that this second-class storage is said to confuse users. It mounts after the system sends the BOOT_COMPLETED broadcast and may be removed at any time. Consequently, some operations are (or were) forbidden, like installing apps on the sdcard. Explaining this to users is fairly hard and, by removing the slot, unnecessary.

With 64GB inbuilt, I don't really see that as a problem, but for my 16GB N5 and N7, it's annoying at times. Also, file transfer on Linux is... improvable. I use adb to push my music onto the phone. :P

Re: Nexus 9

#145

Post by peakdarkpattern »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #78
sliverstorm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You find 9-10" is insufficient for reading material? I have a 7" Android I got to test the waters, and reading ebooks/pdfs/textbooks/magazines is my use case so I'm thinking of going up in screen size- but how much?

> You find 9-10" is insufficient for reading material? No, I find 12 - 13" better for reading material. The reason my Retina iPad became my default "book" is because it was sufficient. :-) 12.5" is the 'printable' area of an 8.5 x 11" page with 1" margins. (14" if you include the margins). So especially for PDFs that are 'zoomed to the margins' a retina 12.5" display can be pretty much a 1 for 1 reproduction. And tha…

Reference or casual/fiction reading?

I ask because I found the standard sized Ipad to be slightly heavy for bedtime and commute reading, whereas the small Ipad (no retina) was more pleasant experience.

I would really love a Retina quality smaller sized Ipad as long as it maintains battery life quality but considering just going Kindle for day to day and full sized Ipad as textbook / video replacement.

Re: Nexus 9

#146

Post by iSnow »

Veratyr wrote: post #86
iSnow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree that flash prices shouldn't be as high as they're charging but I also think you should know that they're higher than you think. Here, for example is a pretty raw eMMC module: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code... ($49 for 32GB) and a larger one http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code... ($79 for 64GB). That's a $30 price difference at the OEM level. You need to k…

Considering the Xiaomi Mi Pad 64GB costs only $35 more[] than the 16GB version, I doubt those are OEM prices.

[] http://www.xiaomishop.com/31-xiaomi-mipad

Re: Nexus 9

#147

Post by 72deluxe »

hoeppnertill wrote: post #144
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

Sad to see no SD card slot. I know that's not Google's thing, but Asus and Samsung have defied them in the past to include them in Nexus models and I was hoping HTC would follow suit. That said, I hope this sells well. HTC badly needs some success.

The reason for not including an SD card slot is that this second-class storage is said to confuse users. It mounts after the system sends the BOOT_COMPLETED broadcast and may be removed at any time. Consequently, some operations are (or were) forbidden, like installing apps on the sdcard. Explaining this to users is fairly hard and, by removing the slot, unnecessary. With 64GB inbuilt, I don't really see that as a pr…

But you explained it pretty well in three sentences! Doesn't seem that hard to explain. People cope with SD cards in PCs and laptops and they are subject to the same restrictions / problems, and everyone appears to cope with them.

Heck, even USB sticks can be removed whilst they are in the middle of writing (and I've seen people do it), and the OS will typically warn you. We haven't seen the removal of USB ports from machines with the same defence (although some PC manufacturers like to put clusters of USB ports all together so you can't actually plug in two USB sticks next to each other...)

Re: Nexus 9

#148

Post by 72deluxe »

Pinn2 wrote: post #54
taylorbuley wrote: post #46

It bothers me that we've lost the meaning of "memory" in the technical marketing of mobile gadgets. "Memory: 16 GB & 32 GB." Google, of course, means storage.

At some point we'll have unified memory and storage anyway. Our brains are already unified in our perception of memory, so I have no problem telling people the storage amount as "memory".

I hope not! All that rubbish we put in RAM doesn't need permanently storing! That's why the distinction exists, plus writing to non-volatile permanent storage systems is slower. Much slower.

Re: Nexus 9

#149

Post by crwll »

fatbat wrote: post #36
Trellmor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nexus 6 has 32 and 64GB options. I'm a bit disappointed that they don't match this with the Nexus 9.

Excitedly waiting for a new Android tablet but 32GB max is too little for that price tag. I suppose Google expects more photo/video taking on phones vs tablet hence lower storage?

They might well release a 64GB version later. They released a 32GB version of the N7 2012 some months after initial release and removed the 8GB version.

Re: Nexus 9

#150

Post by josteink »

4ad wrote: post #47
fit2rule wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put Linux on this and you've got a very viable development machine. I look forward to one day running arm64 Go on this machine in the near future! :) (Among other things..)

Yeah, the "put Linux on this" thing concerns me. In principle it's not that hard; in practice someone has to do the work. I don't want to be the guy that does the work :). Hopefully somebody will do it soon.

It boots a perfectly ordinary Linux-kernel, but with a non-standard initrd and init-sequence.

It's a Nexus so the bootloader will be open and unlockable, and you will have the source available for the kernel too.

That's not the same as having access to all the userland utils and a full, ready distro. No. But it's a pretty open end with almost no restrictions, completely unlike anything made by Apple so far.

Yan can boot the device with any kernel and initrd you like, you can transfer files to the devices and test your compiled arm64 binaries from a terminal. You will be met with zero technical restrictions or locked doors.

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