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Nexus Prime, And Ice Cream Sandwich, Go For a Video Tour

Posted by timothy on from the slightly-different dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from Examiner.com, citing a report at gagdet.ro, about Samsung's upcoming high-end Nexus Prime, the first phone to be delivered with Ice Cream Sandwich. "This version of the Nexus Series (Google's Android flag bearer) runs the next version of Android: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This version is meant to combine Honycomb (Android 3.0) with Gingerbread(Android 2.3) into one OS, that will run on all devices. In addition to the merger of the two OS's, it also changes the Android UI a bit. One major change, is that the icons and the UI is a lot more sophisticated and clean, making even iOS look old and clunky. Also, it removes the requirement for Android phones to have hard/soft-hard mixed buttons, in favor of allowing manufacturers to use whichever type of button they wish. Also, it adds a soft button on the lock screen, to go straight to the camera app."

6 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Two-handed phone? by joh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even with 4.3" about three quarters of the population won't be able to reach all points across the screen with their thumb when using the phone one-handed without balancing it on three fingers. And not many people will like a phone that NEEDS both hands to use it.

    Maybe I'm totally wrong, but honestly I think that these huge screens are totally idiotic if you really want to go mainstream with a phone. See, half of your potential customers are women (which tend to have smaller hands) and not too few will be teenagers.

    And then have a line of three or four small buttons (on or off the screen) on the very bottom of the face and a screen that stretches 4.3 inches across to the top. Using this thing while walking and carrying something with the other hand is like eating soup with a fork.

    And no, I'm not trolling here. These things are great for males with large hands or for geeks who usually sit down over anything resembling a computer anyway and would love it to have foot switches, too. But how can those companies just walk over the needs of major parts of the population and expect to be sucessful with this? I just don't get it. Or of course Google and Samsung are purposefully limiting their target group to a certain part of the population, because... yes, why would they do that? Any ideas?

    1. Re:Two-handed phone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Even with 4.3" about three quarters of the population won't be able to reach all points across the screen with their thumb when using the phone one-handed without balancing it on three fingers. And not many people will like a phone that NEEDS both hands to use it.

      It's like totally too hard to drive, text and apply makeup at the same time with this phone!

    2. Re:Two-handed phone? by joh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No doubt. But still: Is NOT targeting the majority with your latest and greatest phone a wise move? I mean, this thing is meant to be THE Android Smartphone by Google(TM). Why not targeting it smack at the middle of the mainstream right up against the iPhone? How can you be successful if about all the Android phones that are better than "halfway usable" are fighting over the big-handed technophile geeks, leaving the majority of potential customers to either buy second rate cheap Android phones or an iPhone? How silly is that?

      As The Onion headlined a few days ago: "Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies". How apt.

    3. Re:Two-handed phone? by tknd · · Score: 3, Informative

      NOT targeting the majority with your latest and greatest phone a wise move?

      No sane business plan ever targets "the majority". That's an excellent way to set yourself up for failure. Every marketing strategy first targets a very small group and then new strategies are created to target the next group.

      For example, even the first iphone targeted very specific users. Later it expanded with each iteration. The first iphone didn't have 3rd party app support and the iOS App Store wasn't available yet. It wasn't until 1.5 years AFTER the initial announcement of the first iphone that the itunes App Store was released.

      The basics in marketing are to come up with a marketing strategy that will succeed in a specific target market. Make your target market everyone and you're guaranteed to fail.

      I mean, this thing is meant to be THE Android Smartphone by Google(TM).

      The nexus phones are Google's way of pushing the Android market where they would like to see it. You can think of it as "seeding" the competition.

      For example when Google released the Nexus One, it was the first phone with Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor. During this period, many manufacturers were trying to build the cheapest Android they could get away with so most of the phones came with slow processors and minimal RAM. Google didn't like that, and had the Nexus One built. With that came other "fast" phones (for the time) like the HTC Incredible which shared specs with the Nexus One VERY closely. That wasn't a surprise considering that HTC also manufactured the Nexus One. Immediately following this, all the other manufacturers followed up with their own offerings with similar or better specifications.

      Sometime in the future, perhaps Google will start to compete with their own hardware. But at this point, I don't think that is their primary goal. The primary goal is to push the Android market forward. Secondary would be making money on the hardware since they already are the source for the OS.

      As The Onion headlined a few days ago: "Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies". How apt.

      You do know that The Onion is 100% satire? You've lost a lot of credibility with that kind of statement.

  2. Re:This is why the iPhone is falling behind. by shellbeach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Android doesn't seem to be "winning" in the only thing that counts for a business -- profits.

    Apple also comprehensively won the "profit" war back in the day with Mac computers. Guess which platform 94% of the world isn't using today?

    The current trend is looking very much like the 1990s all over again -- Apple with its superior UI getting overrun by a platform which isn't quite as nice, but is distributed amongst many manufacturers and is much cheaper for end users to purchase.

    And once again, as a geek, I'm not at all concerned, as it's a lot easier to hack the Android platform than the Apple equivalent. PCs brought us Microsoft supremacy, but they also brought us linux; Android's shaping to be much the same, and as long as Google and manufacturers like Samsung openly encourage users to hack their phones, I'll keep supporting them with my dollar. The fact that I'll be paying less dollars in doing so is just an added bonus :)

    (I've never really understood the "more profit" argument from a fanboi perspective -- the fact that Apple is making users pay more for their phones is hardly a reason for the end users to brag. It's a great reason if you're seeking to buy Apple shares, it's not a good reason if you're in the market for a phone ...)

  3. Re:I don't use Android apps anymore by AC-x · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And then there are the Android app developers. Invariably they want access to my contacts, they want to impersonate me, they want real-time access to my GPS location, even for apps as simple as Droid Flashlight.

    iPhone apps do the same, and you don't even get a chance to check what permissions apps use to decide which flashlight app to install (the one that does access your contacts, or the one that doesn't, hmm, tough choice :)