Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes • Hacker News Board

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#481

Post by kevin_p » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 1:54 AM UTC

yohui wrote: post #430

kevin_p wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already did in China. My wife bought a Galaxy S2 in January, and it came with Samsung Apps instead of Google Play, no Google Maps, no Gmail or Google Talk etc. Yes, it's a legitimate Samsung product, not some Chinese knockoff. She's hugely disappointed with it and refuses to buy any more Samsung products. (It doesn't help that she refuses to let me root it and install CyanogenMod, but you don't expect to have to…

I wouldn't assume that was Samsung's choice. Isn't that a legacy of old disagreements between Google and the PRC? I know that Asus Transformer Primes sold in China did not come with Google services, either, though buyers quickly learned that using a US/Taiwan/International update file would restore functionality fairly easily.

China's situation does have something to do with it (you can't buy paid apps on Google Play here, YouTube is blocked and Google search frequently has 'technical problems'), and that's probably Samsung's excuse, but other manufacturers manage to keep Google services on their phones (although often alongside their own or another 3rd-party app store). I think it's just Samsung taking advantage of the situation to avoid paying Google's fees, not a case of gapps being legally banned in China.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#482

Post by stanley » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 7:37 AM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #200

revelation wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hardware (manufacturing) is a commodity? I think they already know, judging from the inane modified android UIs they put on their handsets. I think it would be more important to break the "you are just a dumb pipe" news to the mobile carriers. They still have illusions.

Our mobile carriers in the UK seem to be getting the message, fortunately.

Mind elaborating on that?

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#483

Post by Arnt » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 12:12 PM UTC

moe wrote: post #396

illumin8 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says who? I've benchmarked my friend's Verizon LTE phone and gotten consistent 20 megabits down and 20 megabits up in a variety of locations across the tri-state area (NY, NJ, CT). This is better than cable modem service in a lot of areas.

That's great and all. And what exactly do you need that for in your phone? To watch youtube in HD?

If you look at what happens after a user action in detail, you'll sometimes see a bit of upstream traffic, then a brief pause for serverside processing, then some downstream traffic.

Responsive interfaces have to do all that in a few hundredths of seconds. Say ten for routine clicks, twenty for actions that seem less routine to the user, as much as fifty for really exceptional actions. Even twenty is not very many, and shaving off one, two or four hundredths helps.

Does it seem stupid to say that a search available in 0.19s is better than one in 0.23s? But these things do matter.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#484

Post by illumin8 » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 6:20 PM UTC

moe wrote: post #396

illumin8 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says who? I've benchmarked my friend's Verizon LTE phone and gotten consistent 20 megabits down and 20 megabits up in a variety of locations across the tri-state area (NY, NJ, CT). This is better than cable modem service in a lot of areas.

That's great and all. And what exactly do you need that for in your phone? To watch youtube in HD?

Tethering. I like having decent speeds when I travel. Have you tried the abomination known as hotel wifi recently? I actually get better performance from a 3G phone with tethering than most hotel wifi.

It's 2012, dammit. Why can we not reasonably expect 100 megabits bandwidth in the continental US? I'd be happy with only 10 megabits, but with hotel wifi you can usually only get around 100kbps or less.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#485

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

Rastafarian wrote: post #474

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids can't have their own gmail account for example // http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a... Kids [under 13, dependent on region] "can't" have their own gmail account anyway, it's against the rules.

Right, and what percent of the population do you think cares about some rules, some suits from Google made up?

Hence "can't".

If you do want to obey the rules there's probably nothing in the rules about not using an account created by a parent, indeed acting as agent for that same parent when creating the account is probably within the rules too.

Re: Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes

#486

Post by ryanpetrich » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 7:40 AM UTC

cma wrote: post #167

ryanpetrich wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Twitter support have to be explicitly activated in order to send any data to those parties. In the case of the optional Facebook contact sync feature, it even warns that the data in your contacts list will be sent to Facebook. When submitting a post to either Facebook or Twitter, including the location is optional and off by default.

Making the location visible on your post is optional and off by default; sending the location is not, as far as I understand.

Location Services doesn't start up until the "Add Location" text is tapped. The best Facebook or Twitter could do would be to geolocate based on the IP address.