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Google Announces New Nexus Smartphone and Tablets
TheBoat writes In with news that not even a hurricane can keep the Google product announcements away. "Surprise, surprise. It looks like Hurricane Sandy can't hold Google down, as the company has just gone ahead and unveiled the Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet even though its press conference was canceled. Nexus 4 specs include a 4.7-inch True HD IPS Plus display with 1,280 x 768-pixel resolution, an 8-megapixel camera, a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB of RAM and Android 4.2. The phone starts at a shockingly affordable $299 without any contract or subsidies, and it will launch in the United States on November 3rd. The Samsung-built Nexus 10 tablet sports a 2,560 x 1,600-pixel display with a pixel density of 300 PPI, a dual-core 1.7GHz Samsung Exynos chipset, 2GB of RAM, NFC and a 5-megapixel camera. Pricing starts at $399 with 16GB of storage and tops out at $499 for the 32GB model, and both will launch on November 3rd alongside the Nexus 4. Both devices will be available through the Google Play store."
I knew there was a reason I didn't buy the Samsung Galaxy S3. Among the reasons:
1. To get it 'affordably' I would have to buy it from a wireless carrier... oh yeah and extend or buy a new contract with expensive data plan.
2. To get it otherwise, I would have to pay about $500... that's an expensive toy.
3. The darkest color I could get is blue...blue?! Really? Something wrong with black or grey? White is for chicks and Apple users.
4. When you get a phone through a carrier which is carrier branded, unless it's an iPhone, then the carrier is responsible for firmware updates. In cases like that, you will either never get one or it will be extremely late in coming and will contain even more bloatware than before.
Something told me that if I were to just hold off a little longer, I could get my next phone without all the trouble, And there we have it... A new Nexus 4 heading to my pocket in the near future.
As for the new tablet?? Well... that's kinda pricy. I've got a Nexus 7 and I'm pretty happy with it. But then again, the price was extremely reasonable. $500?? That's well within my "balk" range... the $200-$250 range is well within my "I'll strongly consider it" window. And a phone without obligations at $299? And likely to support high speed data options (which I will not likely use or pay for)? It's a no-brainer.
Nope, it is optional. You cannot use the play store without associating the phone with the Google Account though. You could use Amazon App Store, which has most apps. You could side load apps (just copy them to the system apps folder), if you have the apk and you are rooted (I dont know of a reliable site, where you can get the apk file from though)
I don't think you need to be rooted to install APK files ... just drop them on the phone and run them.
All the leaks seemed to indicate the Nexus 4 would have no microSD slot, and none of the news this morning seems to contradict that. I'd pick one up in an instant if not for that fault.
My ancient Nexus One has an 8 GB microSD card in it, and that filled up ages ago. So getting the 8 GB Nexus 4 would be a non-starter, and i don't expect it would take me long to fill up the 16 GB version either. I don't care what Google says, streaming everything off the cloud is not an option. I'm happy with T-Mobile for the price i'm paying, but they don't have the best coverage. (And from what i understand other carriers that have better coverage have stricter limits on data usage instead.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/nexus-best-of-google-now-in-three-sizes.html
Apple's retina displays are also a "lottery". They are not all from the same manufacturer. The lower quality ones have IR (image retention, kind of like short term (a few minutes) screen burn in). The samsung displays are superior to the lg ones, here is a 350+ page thread from fanboys as proof https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4034848?start=255&tstart=0
This is correct. Just check the "unknown sources" option under settings and you can install apps from pretty much anywhere (web, email, etc) -- the system will show what permissions the app needs and obtain permission to install it (or not) from the user.
I'm literally holding an iPhone 4S and Samsung S3 in my hand at the same time (work phone and personal phone).
The S3 has the supposedly crappy pentile display, the 4S has the non-pentile display, with a higher DPI to boot.
Yet text is far crisper and easier to read on the S3 because Apple doesn't know how to do sub-pixel hinting for reasons I can't comprehend.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
It's not that they don't know how to do it; it's that they choose not to.
Jeff Atwood gives a good commentary on why they choose not to here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/font-rendering-respecting-the-pixel-grid.html
You mean that gaping security hole that still requires the user to confirm their desire to install things after they've been shown a fine-grained list of permissions that said things require?
Unlike Apple, other phone manufacturers don't believe that locking you in a padded room with children's safety scissors is an acceptable practice.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
If you want a phone with a small screen, just get an iPhone.
The tablet is a Pentile display.
Nope, RGB subpixels - standard LCD layout. It is *NOT* pentile. Hence the "RGB Real Stripe", which is Samsung marketing for "we didn't fuck with it"