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Android for all and the new Nexus 5

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Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#191

Post by zmmmmm »

reustle wrote: post #68
danellis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?? The whole point of getting a Nexus device is that, unlike a carrier phone, it's not supposed to get left behind by updates!

The Galaxy Nexus came out at the end of 2011. It can only handle the latest OS for so long...

> It can only handle the latest OS for so long

That would be reasonable if Google wasn't touting 4.4 as something that can run on devices with half the memory that the GNex has. In the past people have always made hardware excuses for why Google stopped supporting Nexus devices, but this time it's crystal clear: they just can't be bothered. 2 years is the lifespan of a Nexus.

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#192

Post by jimworm »

hbbio wrote: post #104
binaryatrocity wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your not using Firefox on Android, your browser woes are your own fault :D <3 Mozilla

Apart from Mozilla love, what are the good reasons to use Firefox on Android? I tried it, found it slower and less responsive than Chrome. But as this is a completely biased feeling, I'd love to know more.

I use Firefox on Android for its proxy settings, so I can SSH tunnel out of China.

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#193

Post by Recoil42 »

lstamour wrote: post #157
klausa wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>WebView is now based on Chromium Does that mean that there will no more be stock 'Browser' app? I refuse to use Chrome on Android because of brain-dead, non-disablable 'font-boosting' that makes (among many others) Hacker News absolutely unusable. If that means that the same engine is the only one officially supported on 4.4 forwards, then that's really sad and unfortunate.

The font-boosting has tons of known bugs: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?q=Cr=Blink-Te... Once that list gets shorter, it's slated for inclusion in Webkit, though. It's a useful feature if it works consistently. Prevents needless scrolling from side-to-side on tiny screens. (It's a lot less useful on my 21" Android Slate, however)

A lesson to developers here: Don't include a feature before it's ready, even if you think it's really cool.

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#194

Post by orbitingpluto »

Just a tip: Make sure you are logged into your Google account. Until I logged in it was showing as "Out of Stock".

32gb black was available when only the 16gb white was available previously.

Also note that mine is a Google Play Dev Account, which may or not affect availability.

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#195

Post by taurath »

Its too bad the focus isn't on battery life. "7 hours" internet time on wifi, when you're on airplane mode. And they refresh the same page every 40 seconds.

How about a real battery test, where you simulate someone reading HN or reddit, opening gifs, images, web pages with crappy flash video. I'm tired of the same 3 hours of useful battery life I've had since the HTC evo. Maybe I'm just bitter because my galaxy nexus has around 8 hours of idle time if I have 4G on (this after doing a clean wipe not 1 month ago).

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#196

Post by taurath »

csomar wrote: post #25

I had a terrible experience with the Nexus S. I bought it a couple years ago (which seems to be a vety long time in Google terms) and right now it's totally unusable. It's very slow, the battery is sucked up in less than an hour when on wifi, some apps can't work, the play store is a mess and I can go on and on. I experienced the nexus 4 a little bit and though it's a great phone I'm afraid the next OS updates are go…

Same on the Galaxy Nexus. Less than 2 hours of idle time if I'm going through an area with poor service - less than 2 hours of battery life when browsing on wifi.

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#197

Post by deong »

corresation wrote: post #61
eigenvector wrote: post #9

Here's the Android release notes: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html Highlights: * WebView is now based on Chromium * KSM and zRAM integrated into stock kernel * Public SMS framework * Printing framework * Storage access framework

"Android 4.4 introduces platform support for hardware sensor batching, a new optimization that can dramatically reduce power consumed by ongoing sensor activities." This sounds remarkably similar to the M7. This functionality of Android 4.4 requires hardware support, which initially is only provided by the Nexus 5. It allows for continuous sensor measurements, only waking the application processor when it delivers a…

It's very much the same idea, if not the same underlying chips. The Snapdragon 800 SoC includes these sensors, so a lot of new high-end Android phones are going to support this.

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#198

Post by lambda »

hbbio wrote: post #104
binaryatrocity wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your not using Firefox on Android, your browser woes are your own fault :D <3 Mozilla

Apart from Mozilla love, what are the good reasons to use Firefox on Android? I tried it, found it slower and less responsive than Chrome. But as this is a completely biased feeling, I'd love to know more.

I've recently seen more and more ads on pages in Chrome. Just a few days ago, I got fed up and switched to Firefox (with Ad Block Plus installed), and boy am I glad that I did. There are a few places where I feel it's a little slower, and it occasionally frustrates me with links that are close together as it doesn't have the zoom that Chrome does when you hit a link that's sufficiently close to another link as to be ambiguous. But the lack of ads more than makes up for those shortcomings. I've come to realize that I just cannot live without ad blocking any more.

And yes, I do realize that advertising pays for many of the services that I use. It's just that the advertising arms race always makes it more and more intrusive until it's unbearable; I just cannot put up with them. Those services that I value and which offer a subscription plan instead of ads I subscribe to (like LWN). Sadly there's not a lot of content that you can actually choose to pay for rather than receiving via ads, so I just use an ad blocker and move on.

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#199

Post by lambda »

eigenvector wrote: post #9

Here's the Android release notes: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html Highlights: * WebView is now based on Chromium * KSM and zRAM integrated into stock kernel * Public SMS framework * Printing framework * Storage access framework

Did anyone else get a Google internal link for "Chrome DevTools" that gives you an internal Google login page?

https://devsite.googleplex.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/r...

I clicked on that link and got a page that says "moma: inside google. Single Sign On" and asks for a Google login, password, and OTP. It also appears to display a random image; I wonder if that random image is used as part of the authentication process, perhaps as an authenticator that this is a valid Google login page (perhaps something you can verify with your OTP device).

Re: Android for all and the new Nexus 5

#200

Post by lambda »

danellis wrote: post #48
bsimpson wrote: post #5

I'm sad that the Galaxy Nexus isn't supported. My phone has increasingly been running out of RAM lately for reasons I don't understand - hearing Google boast about how KitKat has been optimized for memory had me hoping that it would support more than just the latest-greatest.

What?? The whole point of getting a Nexus device is that, unlike a carrier phone, it's not supposed to get left behind by updates!

I was upset when my N1 didn't get the Android 4 release. Apparently, the whole Nexus thing means you are first in line to get updates when they come out (as opposed to carrier phones which frequently get updates several months after they are released, and may never get updates), but that only lasts for about two years.
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