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Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

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Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine if your mouse cursor couldn't keep up with your hand movements, or if >letters didn't appear on the screen until a moment after you pressed your keyboard. Even in my imagination, Android installed base is still growing at nearly 2X of that of the iPhone. Apparently, most people don't care for whatever you're saying they should care about. I have experienced the lag you mention, but I have a big, lovely scree…

Install base is an interesting thing. Android is the new Feature Phone, in some ways. Just because someone buys a cheap Android clone doesn't mean they embrace the features in the way that nearly every iPhone user does. Google need to work exceptionally hard, else I figure even Microsoft will catch up. Android is very inconsistent.

Did you notice how you just no true Scotsman'd smartphone market share?

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#122
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I understand "poor responsiveness" in 2011 is on your list of corners. What else is? What was on that list in 2009?

I like baseball. I get that a lot of people don't, and that's fine, but I do. And growing up where I did, there weren't a whole lot of options for watching baseball; there wasn't a local major-league team, and the ones geographically closest weren't on our list of cable networks. WGN was on our cable, though, so I grew up watching -- and eventually loving -- the Chicago Cubs. Boston fans used to complain about their…

I don't like baseball. It boggles my mind how boring it is. Imagine if the players in a "sport" you're watching spent most of the game standing around. (Ha! Real sportsmen run at least 54.3% of the time.) It's a personal opinion but by golly, I'll state it and tweet about it!

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#123
post #111

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It's the same size as the screen on the Nexus S, but the buttons are now just a part of the screen, so the diagonal is bigger.

The Nexus S has a 4" screen. The Galaxy Nexus is 4.65".

Yeah, it's physically bigger. Nexus S is 124 x 63 x 10.8 mm, Galaxy Nexus is 135.5 x 68 x 8.9 mm. (Both probably with an asterisk on thickness, but...)

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#124
post #97
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I understand "poor responsiveness" in 2011 is on your list of corners. What else is? What was on that list in 2009?

How about: No crashing No virus/malware/spyware Less Crappy apps Better user interface Better battery life

This is a pretty poor list. What is "less" crappy apps? What is "better" in user interface and battery life? Can you quantify or even qualify these?

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#125
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to feel awfully silly when this thing gets reviewed and it's Pentile. If it was RGB, Samsung would have said so by now. It was the whole reason they put the "+" in their last screen iteration. Notice how this one has no "+"? Every AMOLED screen is Pentile unless you hear the magic word: RGB.

"Samsung can't get high enough pixel density with AMOLED" was what I was arguing with. The pixel density is very high. They weren't "forced to just keep making the screens bigger" as you claimed.

Sorry, I would have been more clear if I said "subpixel density".

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#126

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thats all the apple fanboys have, instead of this thread talking about all the amazing new features and improvements, its a bunch of hivemind people trying to convince themselves that Android isn't awesome. I'm sorry but I must of been oblivious the lag as well as the other Android users. Most people want cheap phones and/or cheap plans, a very high quality os, that make calls, send text, surf web, and maybe do some…

Using the word "fanboy" to describe someone who disagrees with you isn't a serious argument. Embrace the cognitive dissonance: I like my new iPhone 4s, and I'm excited about the new Android release! If you don't think the lag is a problem, fine, great. I personally think it's unacceptable. It's one of the reasons my daily use phone is iOS and not Android. Why are we talking about this instead of the other new feature…

sorry for the fanboy, but their are plenty of shortcomings in iOS, and because of the apple reverance on these forums, there was nothing but praise in the discussion of iOS5 but with ICS theres nothing but complaints even though there were some really awesome announcements. Just written because people can't have intelligible conversation about the disagreement in os's. If you don't like android, thats fine but in the article about android's new features and releases and the thread is filled with complaints from people that probably never used Android for longer than a demo period, not really relevant. Like take this lag issue. That was one writers opinion on what could be considered a demo unit. Now the comment underneath links to articles saying how fast it is and responsive. Its a non issue, but its something that most people want to shout about here in these threads. Another issue is fragmentation, the apple community loves to shout about that but from the sales most people don't care. As a former iphone owner, i know of Apple's shortcomings because I used it for a period of 2 years. I doubt any of these people's complaints none of them used a modern Android for that same time.

the sad thing is there's more intelligent conversation about Androids new features in the techcrunch article than here. Its sad once theres a hivemind mentality in a community.

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#127

From the review at This Is My Next: "The subtle, pervasive lag that has characterized the Android UI since its inception is still there." You have got to be kidding me. How is it that Android still doesn't map a user's finger movements with nearly 1:1 accuracy on the screen? Pinch, zoom and flick response times on the iPhone have been superior to Android for years, even with significantly less powerful hardware (comp…

Single reason I got a Playbook over a Galaxy Tab. Lag disturbs me greatly, I have an Android phone and I can't bring myself to use it because of that. Regularly I check in stores to see if they finally made it acceptable and so far they haven't.

It really makes me wonder.

This reminds me of Amiga vs Windows. Many years after Amiga's demise, the bloody mouse cursor still lagged in Windows very noticeably. I guess not many people had done much work in Amiga's workbench so it wasn't a big deal for almost nobody. But it wasn't until Pentium III times that it stopped disturbing me on a daily basis.

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've the feeling that Android doesn't employ the GPU for the OS, I hoped that this will change with 4.0

Android 4.0, Icecream Sandwich, does have a hardware accelerated UI. Honeycomb has been the only other version to have this.

Bad news then, Honeycomb devices also lag very noticeably. :(

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#129

From the review at This Is My Next: "The subtle, pervasive lag that has characterized the Android UI since its inception is still there." You have got to be kidding me. How is it that Android still doesn't map a user's finger movements with nearly 1:1 accuracy on the screen? Pinch, zoom and flick response times on the iPhone have been superior to Android for years, even with significantly less powerful hardware (comp…

I find the lagginess of the stock browser infuriating on my Nexus S. On graphics-heavy pages it can become almost unusable. Pages with mainly text are generally fine. But here's the thing, Opera Mobile on the same phone and on the same laggy pages is smooth as silk. It has remained snappy and responsive no matter how hard I've tried to make it choke.

Kudos to Opera. I would like to ask: has anyone else observed this? If not, could you give it a whirl and see how it compares?

Only downside is that it takes a while to load and seems to lose its state when switching away. Still, it's a much better experience than the stock WebKit browser.

So the question on my mind is, how does Opera do it? Is the WebKit browser simply failing to use GPU acceleration? Why? Clearly Android as a platform can do responsive, non-laggy UX because it's right there in Opera. And yet the WebKit browser lets us, and the many apps that exploit it, down.

Is it purely that GPU support hasn't been baked in yet because of lack of handset support? Or is it something more fundamentally problematic in Android?

One final tangential observation: OS X suffered from similar poor performance when it was first released. I clearly remember the tech press scoffing and ridiculing it in comparison to Windows XP and OS9. But it matured, helped by ever improving hardware, and grew into a great OS known for its style and snap. Is Google treading a similar path?

Re: Google, Samsung unveil Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a very elitist way of thinking of things. Some people just aren't able to afford the luxury of a "good software" as you put it. So does that mean they shouldn't have access to a solid operating system and access to mobile web. In many parts of the world where they buy their phones outright, does smoother animations really justify the extra cost for access to email and web. Get real.

What extra cost? Android is free to license, and the OEMs are benefactors of an incredibly wealthy company that seems to have no qualms about throwing gajillions of dollars into R&D to make a best-in-class mobile OS. Android not being "good software" cannot be in any way spun as a win for the proletariat - because there is no opportunity cost. The cost to engineer the OS is in no way passed on to the consumer, and so…

how ever you want to justify your opinion is good for you, but the fact is look at the cheapest phones offered to countries like africa and china, and they are Android phones. This allows people with probably no other way to access the internet to be able to have the same luxuries through there phone. However you want to try demonize it is fine, regardless Android/Google offers high quality services at the same cost to everyone.
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