Google's Nexus 4, 7, 10 Strategy: Openness At All Costs

MrSeb writes "There have been plenty of rumors about how the Nexus program was going to grow and change with this year's announcement. Now that we have all the details, it looks like almost none of them were right. There is no Nexus certification program, and the dream of multiple Nexus phones seems well and truly dead. What we do have is a range of device sizes with the Nexus 4, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10. However, the Nexus program has been altered in one important way: we know what Nexus means now. There can no longer be any doubt: a Nexus device is about openness first and foremost. Last year the technology sphere was busily discussing whether or not the Verizon Galaxy Nexus was a 'true' Nexus device. This year we have an answer: a Nexus controlled by a carrier is no Nexus. Rather than get in bed with Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T to produce an LTE version of the Nexus 4, we have HSPA+ only. Even the new Nexus 7 with mobile data is limited to this enhanced 3G standard. And then there's the pricing: The super high-resolution (2560×1600) Nexus 10 tablet starts at just $399; The Nexus 7 is dropping in price to $199 for a 16GB tablet; The Nexus 4 with 16GB of storage is going to sell for $349, exactly the same as the old Galaxy Nexus was until yesterday. To put this into perspective, the LG Optimus G, which the Nexus 4 is based on, sells for $550 without subsidy. Google is pushing the idea of openness with the Nexus devices, but it's not an entirely altruistic endeavor. By giving us cheap and open devices, Google is making sure it's in control — not the carriers. That's better for the consumers, but it's also better for Google."

Comments

No LTE, less space than a nomad

[larry bagina]

Lame.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame.

But perfect for me!

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame.

42MBps is more than enough for a cellphone, IMHO.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure makes the latest Motorola look good doesn't it...

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[shawn(at)fsu]

I had the same knee jerk reaction, but HSPA+ while not LTE isn't just 3g either. I'm I'm still considering picking this up if I can get unlimited data from a provider. I grow tired of big red and having to take what they give me. Having unlimited data with them just isn't worth it anymore. I was going to have to buy my next phone outright anyway just to keep that plan, so if I can buy phone without a contract for 299 instead of having to have one subsidized by a carrier and have to deal with their crap then i's still a compelling offer.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

the back is not glass.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Githaron]

No removable battery? Aside from the fact that I am on Verizon, that killed any desire to get it. Until they create a battery that can go several days without recharging my phone, I want to be able to swap out my battery. If would be awesome if they made a phone where the battery was hot-swappable and cartridge based so I do not need to turn off the phone or remove the back cover to get to replace the battery.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[tuppe666]

No SD cad
No removable battery

You are aware that your Apple phone does not have these either! Seriously Fandroids...that doesn't even work as an insult!

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Artraze]

HSPA+ is just as 4G as LTE is, according to Wikipedia (which is to say, it was decided that while they weren't technically 4G they advanced 3G enough to be called 4G).

What advantages does LTE have over HSPA+ that would make the latter "lame" by comparison?

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Firehed]

Do you actually carry multiple batteries?

Serious question. I hear people gripe about this all the time, but I don't know ANYONE who actually carries extra batteries. I only hear of people either carrying a charging cable or asking to borrow one.

If would be awesome if they made a phone where the battery was hot-swappable and cartridge based so I do not need to turn off the phone or remove the back cover to get to replace the battery.

So, you *actually* want a phone that gets better battery life.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[firesyde424]

Why is the lack of LTE lame? Are you that interested in being able to max your data cap faster than my HSPA+ phone can? Yes, LTE is technically the better service. But, in the US at least, HSPA+ support with a lack of LTE support is only really an issue if you are stuck in an area with good LTE coverage and no/spotty HSPA+ coverage.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, some of us do carry multiple batteries. I typically have 2-3 fully charged batteries with me.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Enry]

I have an HTC Thunderbolt. If I'm traveling and away from an outlet for more than 4 hours at a time, I need extra batteries.

I also have a USB battery that can help in a pinch, but a fresh battery is a lot better.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Mullen]

Do you actually carry multiple batteries?

Serious question. I hear people gripe about this all the time, but I don't know ANYONE who actually carries extra batteries. I only hear of people either carrying a charging cable or asking to borrow one.

No, but I want to replace the small battery with a large on. I used my Nexus Galaxy with the standard battery for 2 months before replacing it with battery that would last 2 days, which is what I need.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[cayenne8]

Is the nexus 10 going to have a microSD slot in it?

I'm wanting to get some sort of Android tablet to play with...but I want to be able to have the ability to use microSD cards to keep my media on and be able to easily change it in and out...

At this point, I'm still looking to get maybe an old Xoom, and root it and put cyanogen mod on it....the verizon models can do 4G I believe...

I'd prefer to have newer hardware, but damn, its like the newer ones are going backwards as far as features go...removeable memory being a big one of them!!!

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[cayenne8]

Do you actually carry multiple batteries?

I hear this too about people griping about the batteries...etc.

Don't most people these days, throw their phones on the charger every night when they go to bed? What's the big deal? I get ready to go to bed...plug my phone in on my nightstand, turn out the light...crash.

I don't have a land line..so, I naturally keep my cell phone near me while sleeping...plugging it in seems natural enough.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[wurp]

I do carry an extra battery.

That said, you don't know me. And I don't know anyone else who carries an extra battery.

BTW, my phone is a Nexus One. And probably will remain so until it dies (which seems unlikely considering all the abuse it's survived so far) or until Google Glass comes out.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[NatasRevol]

Good luck actually getting it.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[nevermore94]

Not on a day-to-day basis when I am only traveling from home to office I don't, because I don't need to. But, whenever I fly somewhere I always had 2 spare batteries with for my old Droid 2. I would use an entire battery on the plane and then pop in a fresh one when we land. Now that I have finally upgraded to a Droid 4 I pack a bulkier 5,000mah usb battery pack that I plug my phone into on the plane. I would much rather just pop in a fresh battery like I used to.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[SirMIPSALot]

Yes, I carry an extra battery (or batteries) when I'm traveling. (Especially someplace like Las Vegas). I might want to use my phone a good bit for an extended period of time without ever really getting sufficient time to charge it. Ever notice how people who have devices with "fantastic" battery life still crowd the charging areas? It's not always plausible to be able to charge up, especially on the go. Having a swappable battery is quite a lot less stressful than figuring that if you don't elbow out the other 150 people on your flight for those 5 charging spots, your phone might not make it through the day. Good for you if you're not traveling from the East Coast to West Coast in a single day and having 20+ hour "days", but that's not me. If you travel, swappable batteries are *nice*. Just ask the Mophie people, who specialize in basically making this functionality available to people with iPhones.
You're also totally ignoring the fact that even high-quality batteries have a limited life-cycle -- usually about 300 charge cycles. In other words, by sealing the battery inside, you've made the entire device disposable. I prefer to just replace the battery after about a year & get back the full battery performance I had with the device when it was new.
Finally, this is a Nexus device. By definition, the people who will be interested in this are tinkerers. This means they may run development software on it, including firmware. Guess what's a key step to reliably resetting the device in the case of bad firmware? You guessed it - battery pull.
Non-swappable battery is a dealbreaker, sorry.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[jigamo]

I think you're right about a lot of people charging their devices overnight. While we could debate the reasons why we've gotten to a place where that's necessary, charging overnight should be as simple as setting the phone down on your nightstand with the Nexus 4's inductive charging dock (called the wireless charging orb). I've always been a fan of docks, and I'm hoping this becomes more mainstream so that a dock like this could be interchangeable with multiple devices (which should already be possible since it's using the Qi wireless charging standard).

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[weszz]

I keep a battery charged in a dock for my Samsung Charge, so if I get home from work and have to go out, I'll swap my battery and go out with a fresh one.

I forgot to bring the backup to a wedding over the weekend, and wished I had, because my battery died, so I was SOL.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[ArtDent]

The back is glass.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Frederic54]

No one understood the reference to the first iPod by Taco?!?

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[kiddygrinder]

probably not what you want for some reason but you can buy battery packs that plug into the usb port

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Cid Highwind]

Score:-1, Didn't Get It

Too bad the mods don't know their slashdot history.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[fredprado]

And that is exactly why LTE is mostly irrelevant.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[fredprado]

I do carry extra batteries when I need to be sure I won't be out of juice, but more than that batteries get bad with time. I use my phone a lot and charge it everyday. The average life time of my batteries is 1, 1.5 years, after that they are holding less than half of the original charge. I usually replace my phones every 2.5 to 3 years or so, so having the option to easily exchange my battery for a new one is necessary,

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[NatasRevol]

Why? You can get that on a cellphone connecting to LTE, in the US.
You can't get anything close to that on a cellphone connecting to HSDPA+, in the US.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[fredprado]

You can't have that reliably in any phone connecting anywhere no matter the technology. The carries do not have the capacity to give you speeds in that level, you will end with a tenth of that in average if you are lucky.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[metamatic]

...but I want to be able to have the ability to use microSD cards to keep my media on and be able to easily change it in and out...

If you put your music on Google Music, you can tap-hold on an album or artist and select "Keep on device", and it'll cache it on the device for offline listening. When you're tired of it, uncheck the same option and it'll be garbage-collected.

Honestly, dicking around with sync programs and SD cards would be much harder work.

They need something like that for movies. I suspect it'll come eventually.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[NatasRevol]

10 Mbps is doable today.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/09/22/att-vs-verizon-iphone-5-4g-lte-speed-test/

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not have an microSD slot. If you want newer hardware than the Xoom with a microSD slot, look into the ASUS Transformer series.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[fredprado]

The question is where and when. At 3 AM in Times Square maybe. At 6 PM in a industrial zone, probably not.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[ilsaloving]

So wait... Reading other posts I'm getting the impression that while it doesn't have LTE, it does have cellular connectivity. Am I understanding this correctly? Everything I've found up till now has given zero indication that this capability is there.

Right now I'm considering buying the new iPad 4 because so far in Canada it's the only cell-enabled tablet that isn't a piece of crap (Samsung *still* hasn't release any OS updates for their existing 3G tablets, so Samsung is off my list of viable options).

I've been waiting to see if Asus was going to release their TF700KL anywhere besides Germany, but so far there hasn't been a peep.

But if the Nexus 10 can do cellular, then that changes things, for me at least.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[spire3661]

Yes but then can i take the song that is on-device and move it somewhere else? Where is the file stored? How do i share it with my friend device to device, ad-hoc?

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[DF5JT]

You can't have that reliably in any phone connecting anywhere no matter the technology. The carries do not have the capacity to give you speeds in that level, you will end with a tenth of that in average if you are lucky.

Rubbish.

For the past 3 months my internet has come from wireless LTE with 100MBit down, 10MBit up at consistent speeds that put my previous cable connection to shame.

All this in a European capital with dense population and one of the highest rates of smartphones per inhabitant in the world. All this at 49 EUR a month with no data limit. And no restriction whatsoever; no URLs blocked, no services disallowed, streaming via p2p, VPN and ssh tunnels.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the post? of course apple phones don't have these features and was roundly slagged of by 'Fandroids' because of it. Now those 'lacking' features are OK because Google said so.

But you're tuppe666, I'm surprised you had time to get off Erics cock to post

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Joe Tie.]

Some people spend a lot of time traveling, often in ways that don't allow for easy long term charging.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Golddess]

Well, I know that I at least would like a user-replaceable battery in order to keep the device going once the battery starts holding a charge like a sieve holds water.

But as far as on-the-go replacing goes, it's not as simple as simply making the battery user-replaceable. My phone, my DS, my PSP, my camera, all have user-replaceable batteries. But only the camera is it actually convenient to carry and replace on-the-go. The other 3 all use batteries specifically designed to work with that device and that device alone. And I am not even aware of devices to charge those batteries outside of the devices that were designed to use them.

If it was more convenient to do so, I likely would carry extra batteries for those devices. But as it is, I simply deal with the occasional lack of power.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[dubbreak]

Check the specs in the google play store. Nexus 10 is wifi only on both models (at least on the Canadian site) but the Nexus 7 is available with cell connectivity (HSPA+ for data). I don't see why you had a hard time finding that out. It's right there on the official site "wifi only" right under the price.

Why do you even need cellular connectivity on your tablet? I have an original ipad (wifi version) and a toshiba thrive I use when travelling. If free wifi isn't available I just create a hotspot with my samsung smartphone.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[TheGratefulNet]

If you put your music on Google Music

never gonna happen with me. why the hell should I upload a list of my music to ANY corporation?

why? why feed their data model, ignore my own privacy and even risk record labels having info on me? none of that can be good.

oh, but you get a shiny! I forgot. its all worth it if they give you a shiny.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Githaron]

Do you actually carry multiple batteries?

Yes I do. I own several extra batteries and I always keep a charged battery in my wallet. It fits quite nicely. I even have a charger that will charge just the battery.

So, you *actually* want a phone that gets better battery life.

Sure but I don't anticipate that battery technology will meet my standards any time soon.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[TheGratefulNet]

n1 owner here, too, and I have a spare battery. if I'm using the phone to demo an app and I'm doing it for 8 hours (I did this just this weekend, in fact!) I may need to swap the battery to keep the phone in operation. I cannot (or will not) want to stop a demo or switch to another phone if only a battery swap is needed.

built-in batteries are a crime against the user. there is rarely a good technical reason for battery lock-in like that. I think badly of any design team that lets a marketing person force this on them.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[TheGratefulNet]

stop changing the subject. many of us do hate on the apple products.

but that's irrelevant here. here, we're talking about the google phones, their 'top end' flagships.

and no swappable battery, and no local storage.

color me unimpressed. the fact that apple is also bullshit does not enter into this.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Githaron]

I use my phone enough throughout the day that that simply is not always enough. When I am work, I charge it if I remember but sometimes I forget. Also, if I spend most of a Saturday or Sunday on the go, I would definitely run our of battery since I wouldn't be charging mid-day. It is also nice to have an extra battery in the event that I forget to charge my phone at night.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Githaron]

I know some phones do have chargers that will charge the batteries outside the phone. My Droid Charge had a battery charger slot built into the dock and my Verizon Galaxy Nexus has a stand-alone battery charger. I wouldn't buy a phone that without a battery charger available.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Githaron]

Currently, I have a battery charger but I have to turn off the phone and pry off the back plate in order to swap batteries.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[ilsaloving]

That's what I saw too. I was hoping that there was a 3G Nexus 10 that just wasn't being advertised.

The reason I want one is because:
a) I want a tablet I can read technical documentation on
b) I make so few phone calls that I want to get rid of my existing cell phone and just use a voip client on a data-enabled tablet. That will drop my monthly cell costs in half.

But Nexus 10 doesn't do it, and Nexus 7 is too small. Looks like iPad 4 is still the only open.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[uM0p ap!sdn]

ROFLMFAO That my friend, is because the US has shit for internet period, whether it's phone or desktop, corporate greed keeps it that way, only in america, (besides the us, I do own a house in europe also, well, the wife does and we are there frequently. I have watched this place go to hell the last 25 years, I feel sorry for the kids that pay for a very overpriced education. I really feel sorry for my grandkids. 9 years I retire, and I will not be doing that in the US.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Jesus_666]

I'm going to replace my second-gen iPod touch soonish on account of the hardware starting to degrade. Given that a current iPod touch with an acceptable capacity would cost a rather large amount of money I was considering to just get a new Android phone instead. The Nexus 4 looked exactly like what I was going for...

...until I saw that I don't get an SD slot so I'm stuck with their storage options. And even the expensive version comes with a mere 16 GB. A 32 GB microSDHC costs about twenty to thirty bucks. Yet somehow they couldn't fit more than 16 gigs onto the logic board of the Nexus 4 and even that costs a whopping 150 bucks more than the 8 gig version. I mean, that's not as ridiculously expensive as the iPod touch 5 but still it doesn't seem like a reasonable offer.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a relatively cheap, reasonably recent Android phone that comes with an SD slot? Nothing subsidized, please; that kind of phone plan isn't cost-effective for me.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Jesus_666]

I have to correct myself; I misread the price. The 16 gig version is only fifty bucks more expensive, which shifts the markup from "ludicrously bad" to merely "bad". Still, for that price difference they could've included 32 gigs.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Krojack]

You can download a single song, album or your entire Google Music collection on your home computer. From there you can do what you want with the mp3 files.

Your phone would just be used to listen to your music, not for downloading and then trading songs with other people.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Krojack]

I have the HTC Bolt also and with the extended battery I can go 3 days idle, 2 days medium usage and 24 hours heavy usage. Maybe you should look into getting one?

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Krojack]

I have a charger in my car, at work, at home and a 4th in my travel bag so I won't forget one when I head out. Unless you're hiking in some mountains for days on end I find it hard that anyone wouldn't be near some wall plug where they can plug in for at least an hour here and there. You gotta sleep at some point.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you actually carry multiple batteries?

Serious question. I hear people gripe about this all the time, but I don't know ANYONE who actually carries extra batteries. I only hear of people either carrying a charging cable or asking to borrow one.

So, you *actually* want a phone that gets better battery life.

Yes, I do, particularly when travelling. As someone else mentioned, it also allowed me to get a battery with better battery life. A longer lasting internal battery certainly will cut into my desire for a replacable battery. But I'm never going to be able to drop a few bucks on amazon and double, triple, or more the length of my internal-only-battery the way I can by just buying 1+ extra batteries. It isn't as important to me as a micro-sd slot, but the more flexible the better.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Man Eating Duck]

So, you *actually* want a phone that gets better battery life.

Yes, I do. An extra charger and a couple of batteries cost something like $13 delivered from Hong Kong. I don't need it every day, but it's handy to be able to use my phone without worrying about battery life if I'm traveling, for instance. Extra phone batteries is a cheap and easy way to alleviate most battery woes encountered in a modern society.

I also have this which I built for throwing in my backpack when needed. It gives med me five-and-something (tested) full recharges with a switching car charger, but frankly the largest usefulness and fun has been for whipping out a powered usb cable from nowhere when someone *else* is out of battery :)

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried installing Cyanogenmod? I find it doubles battery life, Enough to take my Nexus S from 1 to 2 days with normal use.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the post? of course apple phones don't have these features and was roundly slagged of by 'Fandroids' because of it. Now those 'lacking' features are OK because Google said so.

Naturally you'll be able to name at least one "fandroid" who said those things?

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[asdf7890]

Don't most people these days, throw their phones on the charger every night when they go to bed?

My phone will last two days between charges if it has to and I don't use it much other than it being on and idle. I can easily run the battery down in a few hours or talking or worse using to tether my netbook to the Internet - being able to put it on charge when I go to bed is not really useful when it is nearly drained due to long voice calls at two in the afternoon when I'm not near a convenient USB port. That doesn't happen often, but it does happen often enough and no doubt there are a great many people out there with more exciting lives than mine who find many more occasions when they are not near a convenient charging point.

I have a couple or portable battery chargers that help a lot for this though, so it isn't a completely unsolved problem even without spare batteries. Not very efficient of course, charging a battery via USB then using that battery to charge another battery later...

Of course a lot of people are more concerned about what will happen when the battery ages to the point of not holding enough charge at all any more. Personally I'm not so worried about that these days as improvements in battery technology make it far more likely that I'll have a replaced the phone before that becomes a major issue.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[spire3661]

Why not? It is perfectly capable of doing so, trivially. The pocket computer i carry around is FAR more powerful and better equipped then my college PC that i ran an IRC download site from.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Tough Love]

Non-removable battery put me off buying this device. I was on the verge. Good thing I checked.

No micro-sd slot is also a downer, but not a stopper.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, Google might fiendishly introduce you to other music you might like and give you the chance to buy it! Thank goodness you were alert and foiled their diabolical plan!

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[dubbreak]

Personally I prefer iOS to Android for the stuff I end up doing on it. Keyboard is better (of course you can get better ones for android than the stock software keyboard). I am stuck on Honeycomb on my current tablet so take that into consideration (I have some limited experience with ICS) regarding the stock keyboard. I think the aspect ratio of the iPad is way better for documents and viewing in general. All the business related apps I use are on iOS. I love my android phone, but the Android tablet ends up just being a development device (I work on a product that's currently deployed to android tablets.. though it looks like they may drop those and use all-in-one computers..).

You didn't ask, but here it is anyhow.. I use office^2 (office squared) HD for reading and editing documents on flights, toggl for tracking time, Evernote (for notes), an RDP/vnc client (forget which), LogMeIn and that's about it for productivity. Otherwise I use it for media consumption (movies, news, books, magazines). Works great. If I need something more serious I'll pull out my laptop, but I can generally do without.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Scowler]

LTE obviously has higher peak bandwidth, but that isn't a big deal for most people. Given low datacaps by carriers especially.

HOWEVER, LTE has much better latency as well. And that matters a lot to me, personally.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Enry]

Which won't fit my case nor my car dock.

But that still proves the bigger point - the battery is removable and replaceable and there are reasons why people would want to do it.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[saleenS281]

I consistently get 18-24 in downtown Minneapolis anytime of the day.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[saleenS281]

And if you're hiking mountains, I would hope you're smart enough to turn the phone off unless you need it...

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Miamicanes]

> Do you actually carry multiple batteries?

No, I have something better. A big honking 3600mAH Seidio extended battery w/NFC antenna and Active case with kickstand designed around the same battery. They cost a fortune, and they were worth every last penny, because I can now actively use my phone all day without ever having to settle for lag, a dim screen, or care about conserving battery power. A few times, I've gone to bed and forgot to plug it in (something that NEVER used to happen, because I was surgically-attached to my old phone's charger), and IT STILL WAS POWERED UP the next morning.

But since you ask, I also have a small pile of standard batteries I bought for something like $3 apiece from someone on eBay, just in case a hurricane knocks out the power for a few days and I need them for something. Well, also, because I didn't think the Seidio battery was going to be available until November, and I *really* needed them in the meantime. (I used to carry at least one spare with me at all times, and usually had a second one recharging from a charger from an inverter plugged into a cigarette lighter in my car as well).

The Nexus 4's lack of LTE is devastating. Its lack of microSD makes it unappealing. The nonremovable battery renders it completely moot.

It basically comes down to, "If you use your phone mainly for making voice calls, a wimpy Apple-like sealed battery is fine. If your phone is actively online from the moment you crawl out of bed in the morning, you hate lag, you dislike dim displays, and it's practically a second screen for your desktop PC or laptop, nothing less than 3000mAH will do,"

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Simon Brooke]

Do you actually carry multiple batteries?

Serious question. I hear people gripe about this all the time, but I don't know ANYONE who actually carries extra batteries. I only hear of people either carrying a charging cable or asking to borrow one.

I used to carry multiple batteries for my last two phones - an original G1 and a Nexus One. I cycle a lot, and use MyTracks to record my runs; when using GPS neither of those phones could go a full day. My present phone, an HTC One X, doesn't have a replaceable battery, so when doing a long run I have to carry a backup phone - not such a good solution.

Yes, the ideal solution would be a longer battery life in the first place!

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Simon Brooke]

And if you're hiking mountains, I would hope you're smart enough to turn the phone off unless you need it...

Or carry a solar charging panel.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[psiclops]

for convenience?

oh, but you get an evil! I forgot. it's all horrible if you get an evil.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[psiclops]

pubs, clubs, certain workplaces, planes(yes you can use your phone onall planes, some even to make calls), trains, buses or trams do not always have powerpoints available for personal use.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Thumper_SVX]

So Minneapolis now has two selling points? High speed phone data and the Mall of America. Whoo... I really should move. /sarcasm :)

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[ilsaloving]

I have used an iPad, and I used to have an iPhone 3GS, so I'm very familiar with the IOS ins and outs. The main reason I switched to an android phone was a) I got sick of having to jailbreak to do what I wanted, and b) I wanted a removable battery.

But AFAIK there are no android tablets with removable battery, and I've been very unimpressed by the level of support manufacturers give after sale. They may be a lot cheaper, but you can forget about reliable OS updates and patches. Asus seems to be one of the only ones on the ball in that regard, but they refuse to sell the product I want in Canada.

BTW if you read a lot of PDFs, I can't recommend GoodReader enough. Not free, and worth every penny. Best reader I've seen ever, on ANY platform.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[Krojack]

Again, I can go 24 hours of heavy usage. Unless you never sleep and live in all the places you listed then you will be able to charge your phone at some point in time. Anyone saying otherwise is just too lazy to plug in their phone and want some excuse.

Sure I would LOVE to have a battery that last 100 times longer but what we have now works just fine.

Re:No LTE, less space than a nomad

[dubbreak]

Cool. I'll check out goodReader. The Toshiba Thrive I have has a removable battery. They stopped making them (we bought up a bunch from whatever suppliers we could find). I don't think there was a cell version anyhow. Toshiba went on to make thinner tablets (ones without fullsize hdmi, usb, SD etc). It's funny, many different companies contacted Toshiba in regards to getting an OEM version of it since it's a good inexpensive device to use as a control, or POS device or what have you. They had no interest in supporting that. We offered to buy 500 retail version models and they wouldn't budge on price either (places like Newegg and tigerdirect were better prices in quantity).

I'm still waiting on a rep from Askey about their 12" Android tablets they were supposedly launching end of the summer, then Sept, then October. I can't even get my hands on a dev unit (regardless of price) as they keep changing the specs and release date. Oh well.

Openness

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was all about openness, then why no micro sd slot

Re:Openness

[dmacleod808]

I presume "open" refers to the software stack, not the hardware.

Re:Openness

[tuppe666]

If it was all about openness, then why no micro sd slot

What has openness got to do with a micro sd slot!? I in no way defend not having one. I think that cripples the devices. Seriously you could have talked about the APACHE license, or binary drivers. Merging the Linux kernel, opening up the 1st Party proprietary programs on Android, or highlight the GPL programs available on android! [use http://f-droid.org/ ]Not having a microsd slot is about creating artificial different price points for your device. The truth is when compared to the competition it is the most open.

Re:Openness

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If it was all about openness, then why no micro sd slot

What has openness got to do with a micro sd slot!?

Yet again "open" is overloaded with multiple related meanings that seem identical to most of the people using the term.

In this case, the OP is referring to the idea that without viable removable storage a phone like this has the effect of pushing users towards "the cloud."

Re:Openness

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was all about openness, then why no micro sd slot

If Gnu/Linux was all about openness, why doesn't it wash my car?

Re:Openness

[MachDelta]

Several reasons:

1) It's supposed to guide carriers/mfgs away from partitioning the memory on their phones (apps/music/etc). The Nexus standard is for a single volume that the user can fill with whatever they like. Remember, the Nexus line is a "do as I do" standard.

2) Mixing EXT and FAT is silly, since the benefits of EXT are lost when users shift their stuff to the FAT SD card. Since most people think FAT is what you are when you're overweight, and EXT is a trim level on a Chevy truck, they don't realize what they're giving up (like filesystem security) by moving apps and data to their SD card.

3) Forcing MTP mode means the phone can keep it's entire filesystem mounted without having to hand it over to whatever computer it's plugged in to, as well as keeping control (permissions) over the actual data on/written to the disk. It also means that when you trip and yank the USB cable out in the middle of copying files over, you haven't corrupted your data.

4) It saves on hardware (cost, thickness, etc)

5) Fewer interoperability headaches. Not all SD cards are created equal, and someone trying to run a read/write intensive app off their slow-as-dirt cheap SD may blame poor performance on "my piece of shit phone"

When I first got my Galaxy Nexus, I too was concerned about the storage limitations. After all, I wanted to put my entire music library on my phone... never mind that my entire library is literally weeks of playtime, or that there are apps perfectly capable of streaming my own media off a home server for me on demand (with the caveat/concession that I am normally away from WiFi for no more than 30 minutes), or that if I *really* wanted to go gung-ho with music for some reason I had a perfectly capable MP3 player that was even better than my phone (battery life, etc) for that purpose. Nope, I wanted to put the whole thing on my phone because it would make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. The reality is that I don't need to do that, I just wanted to. Once I shifted my expectations to match my reality, it ceased to bother me.

I compare the lack of an SD card to the "range anxiety" you see in EV cars. It bothers us that it's not available even though the majority of trips are well within an EV's range. Once you prove to yourself that you don't really need it (and can work around it in case you do), it's not such a big deal.

Re:Openness

[Miamicanes]

> What has openness got to do with a micro sd slot!?

Internal SPI expansion bus that's trivially easy to program directly with minimal ceremony?

As an embedded hardware guy, I totally get warm fuzzies from SPI. It's just about the easiest low-ceremony bus on planet earth to use, and in a pinch you can even bitbang it with minimal effort. I know there's no room inside a microSD card for useful hardware thicker than a silicon wafer, but you could always use a fake microSD card connected to a ribbon cable to feed hardware built into a thicker replacement back.

Re:Openness

[obscuro]

This was really insightful. Anyone got mod points?

Re:Openness

[amiga3D]

I know I typically format all thumb drives to NTFS which works on my Mac, Linux Boxes and WDTV Live. I have lots of media files larger than 4GB. If the SD card is formated for NTFS or EXT would the system recognize it on the Nexus?

Re:Openness

[tobiasly]

Forcing MTP mode means the phone can keep it's entire filesystem mounted without having to hand it over to whatever computer it's plugged in to, as well as keeping control (permissions) over the actual data on/written to the disk. It also means that when you trip and yank the USB cable out in the middle of copying files over, you haven't corrupted your data.

Of course the big drawback is that MTP was originally a Windows-only protocol that was only later standardized by the USB group and support is very flaky on any Linux-based OS I've used. You're no longer guaranteed that you can plug the device in to any host and have it recognized.

You also can't edit files directly using MTP; you must edit it locally then re-upload in its entirety back to the device.

Re:Openness

[guidryp]

If they didn't charge $100 for 16GB upgrade, I would say those were solid reasons. But since they are gouging massively on the Flash upgrade (just like Apple) those reason carry less weight.

Re:Openness

[mcelrath]

I disagree on the music. I too wanted to upload my music collection to my phone, but thought I'd try to live without it with a Galaxy Nexus phone. Since I bought it I've discovered:

• All the music/streaming/radio apps are ad-laden broken crapware. Half the time they stop after 2 songs, and the other half of the time they're shoveling unwanted ads at me. (Pandora: ads, Spotify: facebook credentials?!?!, WinAMP: ads, only works half the time, the list goes on...) In practice I never use any of these, and I hate every one I've tried.
• You might consider paying for one of the above music services to avoid the ads, but since their free adware versions don't work correctly (broken connections and stopping after a couple songs), I'm loathe to fork over cash.
• When I really want my music is when I'm not connected to the internet: on a plane, camping, etc.

So, yes, I really really do want more storage space on these things, and/or a SD card. Of course FAT formatting is downright retarded (interesting point though). I'm happy if it's EXT formatted...

Re:Openness

[Artraze]

I had a big post but my browser crashed. So I'll post an abbreviated version:

First: MTP on the system partition is a good thing; the partitioning was stupid. However, that is totally orthogonal to having an SD Card with mass storage.

For me, the big thing is that I personally use my phone as a thumb drive that doesn't take up space in my pocket and can view the files on it. SD Card means easily upgraded storage for cheap. Mass storage means not MTP idiosyncrasies like dropping a file it doesn't like or a .svn directory, etc. Support for MTP is also pretty spotty and generally a pain vs mass storage. MTP costs a lot in terms of flexibility and compatibility.

But this:
> If I *really* wanted to go gung-ho with music for some reason I had a perfectly capable MP3 player that was even better than my phone (battery life, etc) for that purpose

Yeah, well I don't. I don't and I don't want to have to buy one and I don't want to have to carry one and charge one and sync one.

> Once I shifted my expectations to match my reality, it ceased to bother me.

This is a total non-point. Why not shift your expectations to be okay with a cheap 2GB music player and a feature phone with a EDGE connection? Or to a string and a carrier pigeon? An SD slot isn't just possible, but present on many devices. Many cheaper devices, even. The fact that people would need to adjust their expectations when their expectations for a several-hundred dollar device are so easy and regularly met elsewhere is ridiculous. It might be a trade-off they are will to make, or a deal breaker that sends them elsewhere, but to pretend that it's their fault for wanting a fairly ubiquitous feature? Outrageous.

Re:Openness

[Anonymous Coward]

1) It's supposed to guide carriers/mfgs away from partitioning the memory on their phones (apps/music/etc). The Nexus standard is for a single volume that the user can fill with whatever they like.

You mean it's better to have one tiny storage area than to have multiple storage areas, one of which the user can make as big as (s)he needs? Wait, what?

Re:Openness

[spire3661]

The problem with your summary is that you learned to live with the limitations. A nice anecdote, but useless for the rest of us that are storage hungry. Its nice that you came to a realization you dont need X amount of songs on your device, that doesnt mean the need for massively more storage on a tablet isnt there. You would deny choice because you are too unimaginitive to figure out what a tablet with a huge local buffer could do.

Re:Openness

[lewiscr]

I haven't noticed any of these problems with Google Play. I'm not a heavy user though.

Re:Openness

[dinfinity]

Yeah, well I don't. I don't and I don't want to have to buy one and I don't want to have to carry one and charge one and sync one.

Yes, exactly. It's simply egocentric and flawed to say "I'd just buy an MP3 player" - as if there is any merit in reason to that statement.

I store offline maps, offline music and offline documents on my 2-year old 32GB microSD card. This means that I always have a PND, an MP3 player and a sizeable USB-stick with me. Reading data off it is easy, always possible and a lot more power-efficient than streaming it from the cloud.

I've even (temporarily, admittedly) used an old 8GB microSD card in an SD adapter as a replacement in a camera (and I'm pretty sure the 32GB will have a similar function in the future). The versatility of dirt cheap internationally standardized little slabs of large amounts of solid state memory is just amazing.

Sure, having an SD slot has some drawbacks, but not having one is unnecessarily stupid.

Re:Openness

[Tanktalus]

Yes, yes, yes ... er, EV what?

Not being able to store all your MP3s on a $500 (or less) phone when you can use a $200 device to do that is not quite comparable to not being able to travel 300km to visit Grandma in your EV, because the "extra device" here is thousands (my last vehicle purchase was $21k for a used vehicle), nevermind the insurance.

Yes, they're both workarounds. But whereas many can consider $100-$200 as a reasonable "workaround" for their phone's inability to do it all (especially if the phone could sell for an extra $50-$100 if it did have the ability to handle your extra collection), few would consider a spare vehicle to be a cost-effective workaround.

Re:Openness

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

few would consider a spare vehicle to be a cost-effective workaround.

Most would consider the occasional rental for the occasional long distance trip to be a perfectly acceptable work around. Kind of like the way we rent a seat on airplane when a traditional car is not fast enough.

Re:Openness

[obscuro]

Insightful? It's the standard nerd argument that everyone except us is a mouth breathing moron and that we need to lower ourselves to appeal to their needs. I think both of those points are flawed.

No he's not. He's just saying that the defaults are there for not technical people. That's not a criticism. Someone's not a "mouth breathing moron" just because they aren't capable of managing a rooted smart phone!

Re:Openness

[ras]

I'll me too this. I have a Galaxy Nexus, and when I got it I also had micro SDCard slot anxiety. It arose partially because I had no way to transfer stuff to and from the device as I use Linux and its MTP was less that stellar (before I could just mount the SDCard as a USB drive), and partially because I wondered if 16Gb was enough.

Turned out the transfer problem was a complete non-issue. There are apps that turn it into a Web Server, an FTP server, a RSYNC server, a CIFS (ie Samba, Windows Share) server, and clients for Drop Box and every other internet storage system known to man. All of these options are faster, more portable, more robust, run over more transports (cable, WiFi, bluetooth, NFC) and are less risky than mounting an SDCard. It's now a case of having to put up with an inferior alternative - its more of a case of hoping I will never have to mount a USB FAT file system again.

As for the storage issue, that is turned out to be slightly more of a concern. I have a whole pile of pod casts I automatically download, an ebook library of 100's of books, 10 or so movies, a couple of complete seasons of TV shows, and a reader application that downs a number of sites for off-line reading. Admittedly the movies and TV shows are transcoded so the play natively, which makes them smaller. (Turns out watching a movie using Android's native player draws less watts than reading an ebook - go figure.) This is enough to keep me occupied for a 24 hour international plane fight. As I said it is a mild concern tight, as I only have a Gig or so spare. But it is difficult to imagine what else I could possibly put on there that is useful on the phone.

Turned out not having an SDCard comes with one huge plus. It makes the whole thing run faster. Even if you aren't using the SDCard, Android has to check it every time a file is opened in case it might be on there, and this ends up making a noticable speed difference. So much so that now I remove the SDCard from any device I own.

So I've gone from having SDCard anxiety, to ripping the bloody thing out in every device I own. Good riddance I say.

Re:Openness

[giostickninja]

It's a $50 upgrade, not $100. Still expensive, but pretty much in line with other android phones.

Re:Openness

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you aren't using the SDCard, Android has to check it every time a file is opened in case it might be on there

That sounds like total bullshit. At the very least, it's a bug.

Re:Openness

[Anonymous Coward]

What has openness got to do with a micro sd slot!?

If it has a micro-sd card, it can be mounted as a USB mass storage device, which is a well-supported standard that works on any operating system. If it doesn't, like my Galaxy Nexus (as I discovered after buying it), it uses some standard called MTP to allow the phone and the connected computer to have access to stored files at the same time - which is part of some Windows Media DRM scheme, and isn't supported on my Linux box yet.

Re:Openness

[vlueboy]

You also can't edit files directly using MTP; you must edit it locally then re-upload in its entirety back to the device.

Had not thought of the merits of MTP but this part of your post reminded me of my issues. I've had to google the real USB-mode hardware trigger for my older MP3 player (Sansa c200) to enjoy my files from the PC. The default is MTP mode.

IIRC the device loads two separate containers in Windows and I have to memorize which is my SD and which is the MTP system. I think Ubuntu circa 2010 was unable to load its MTP and I had no idea what was going on, so I gave up listening to music under linux. I find the abstraction too opaque. I just expect no more than a filesystem, so things like this rub me the wrong way. I never got any music iToys because the forced iTunes middleman-ship for file transfers also robs me of simplicity.

Re:Openness

[s3bastjan]

Is it possible that one of the reasons for not including SD card is that Microsoft charge extortion license fees for FAT, FAT32 and exFAT from every company on the planet and another possible attack option in a lawsuit against Google?

Re:Openness

[BenJury]

Turns out watching a movie using Android's native player draws less watts than reading an ebook - go figure.

Probably from the display being mainly white when displaying an eBook. That and decoding a film is pretty efficient.

Re:Openness

[slim]

All the music/streaming/radio apps are ad-laden broken crapware. Half the time they stop after 2 songs, and the other half of the time they're shoveling unwanted ads at me.

Google Play Music, if it's available in you're territory, is pretty good, and doesn't have ads. Its "make available offline" option is neat.

If it's not available in your territory, it'll still work if you sign up using a VPN to the USA (after signing up, you won't need the VPN)

Re:Openness

[Anonymous Coward]

4) It saves on hardware (cost, thickness, etc)

This is total bullshit. The circuitboard itself has **two** SD connections. They literally just needed to add a 1 cent plastic housing to solder to the contact points (and that's *over*-estimating the price).

The real reason is because it's simply easier to code the OS when you can deal with storage in One Big Chunk (something Apple actually got right).

Re:Openness

[Hast]

Yeah, MTP support in Linux is not really good enough. Hopefully more devices requiring it will push that through faster through.

I work with developing for mobile phones and having to support a storage location which can at any time be removed (ie if the user plugs their phone into the computer and it takes over the SD card) is a big pain. Having a global storage pool makes life a lot simpler. (A decent compromise is perhaps to have a micro-sd in a slot so it's not possible to remove without removing the battery. That makes it easier to handle.)

And while the micro sd card slot in and of itself doesn't really cost that much it does become more expensive when you figure in extra testing, more complex hardware design and new software requirements. (Although some of those only need to be done once, it does typically mean that some other feature is removed.)

Openness Bulshitness

[Anonymous Coward]

Their Google play has regional customized availability. i.e. many apps are not available due to some stupid error or censorship. I had to contact at least 2 app authors including Kaiten email to make it available in the country I am currently residing in. The app ranking is also region dependent...

Security is still a main issue. We used to ramble about Windows, and now Android acts like the old windows system, the swiss cheese of security.

Unfortunately the other alternatives are more sinister than Android so we don;t have other options. Other possible proposed alternatives are not commercially viable since only large companies can venture into this market.

Re:Openness Bulshitness

[dmacleod808]

What other options are more sinister? Obviously iOS is a closed system, but Windows Phone 8 has yet to be tested security-wise. We also have Firefox OS on the horizon as well as hopefully a resurgence of Meego

Re:Openness Bulshitness

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? You're trying to say that Android is less secure than Windows? What utter crap. Android is the most secure OS (mobile or otherwise) and you know it.
 
Since when has Slashdot become a hangout for the Apple shills?
 
Keep loving your walled garden, shill.

Re:Openness Bulshitness

[tuppe666]

We used to ramble about Windows, and now Android acts like the old windows system, the swiss cheese of security.

Apart from its not true. Security is a issue on EVERY platform, and Google have routinely stepped up security while allowing the...and I cannot empathise this enough the *option* of openness. Security has just become one of those words that Apple shareholders user to pretend that a closed ecosystem is somehow better...Its not it just means the company owns the device (and the content) not you. It means you get rubbish maps!

Re:Openness Bulshitness

[postbigbang]

The original poster has the qualities of a shill. The open system actually feeds Google's app control needs, and allows Google to continue its privacy-robbing policies, and total location and usage context control of users of the platform.

Yes, Apple does this, too.

It's why I'm hoping for BootGecko, and other "smartphone" operating systems that aren't built on business models that retain way too much customer information. Even Canonical with Unity is starting to bow to the Dark Side.

Re:Openness Bulshitness

[Applekid]

Their Google play has regional customized availability. i.e. many apps are not available due to some stupid error or censorship. I had to contact at least 2 app authors including Kaiten email to make it available in the country I am currently residing in. The app ranking is also region dependent...

And the rest of the story? Did those authors make it available to your country? If an application author doesn't tick whatever box they need to in order to make it available in your location, whose fault is it? As far as censorship, you could argue that by allowing sideloading all they're doing is refusing to distribute it via their online store. Meanwhile, if Apple doesn't want your app to exist, you'll have to hack your device to get it up and running.

Security is still a main issue. We used to ramble about Windows, and now Android acts like the old windows system, the swiss cheese of security.

I don't recall Windows every explicitly defining the permissions a given application requires when being installed, letting me make an informed decision. The best it currently does is ask if I want to run it as Administrator, basically, don't trust it and close it, or trust it and give it access to everything and anything. The Android model is a pretty good one to copy, IMO.

Unfortunately the other alternatives are more sinister than Android so we don;t have other options. Other possible proposed alternatives are not commercially viable since only large companies can venture into this market.

What do you mean? If you didn't buy your Android device from a company that locked it down, you're free to write your own bootloader. Hell, Canonical is working on a distro now for current Nexus devices, maybe you can lend a hand?

Re:Openness Bulshitness

[SuperMooCow]

And the last thing I've heard about WebOS was "I'm not dead yet!"

That, or we all switch to AmigaOS. Or BeOS. Why must the Davids always fail and the Giants win?

Re:Openness Bulshitness

[larry bagina]

After the Davids win, they grow into Goliaths.

Re:Openness Bulshitness

[idontgno]

Or, taking a lesson from market paleontology, today's hungry scurrying mammals become tomorrow's overbearing complacent dinosaurs.

Market dominance inherently carries the seeds of market abuse and, ultimately, market failure within.

Screen size

[bhunachchicken]

I don't know about anyone else, but I think that the size of the Nexus 4 is too big at 4.7". I was hoping for a 4" to 4.3" screen, but Google have really pushed for that extra big handset.

I had heard a rumour that there were going to be several manufacturers involved in the Nexus 4 - Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony - but apparently it's just LG. A shame, as I think that if Google had managed to score a contract with them to produce a variety of Nexus 4 devices, all controlled by Google, they would have produced the ultimate Android phone.

Well, at least there's Cyanogenmod, with it's incoming OTA update feature.

Re:Screen size

[tuppe666]

I don't know about anyone else, but I think that the size of the Nexus 4 is too big at 4.7". I was hoping for a 4" to 4.3" screen, but Google have really pushed for that extra big handset.

Nobody not one person alive. The only people even suggesting such stupidity are those promoting Apple...and those would be better selling off their shares ;). Seriously Tiny screens are awful they always were. Just for reference dual core is not better than quad-core, Less memory is just that less memory, If you do proper multitasking and want to build next generation applications these things matter NOW! Apple phones last generation phone or as Apple shareholders say "Specs don't matter"

I think its kind of sad that your forced to post in Android posts in the illusion that Apple is still relevant. Its market share has dropped from 23% to 15% says otherwise.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about anyone else, but I think that the size of the Nexus 4 is too big at 4.7". I was hoping for a 4" to 4.3" screen, but Google have really pushed for that extra big handset.

5" is too much (Galaxy Note).
4" is too small for people with big thumbs (iPhone 5).
4.65"/4.7" is perfect (Galaxy Nexus/Nexus 4).

Re:Screen size

[Kethinov]

I don't know about anyone else, but I think that the size of the Nexus 4 is too big at 4.7". I was hoping for a 4" to 4.3" screen, but Google have really pushed for that extra big handset.

Glad I'm not the only one.

To me it's just silly to call a 4.7" phone the Nexus 4. They should round to the closest whole number and call it the Nexus 5 instead.

Re:Screen size

[poet]

I agree completely. I have very large hands and a 4.7" is not a phone. I have a 4.3" phone and that is almost perfect but I could see where my SO would never be able to use it comfortably. All due complaints to Apple but I think honestly the 4" screen of the Iphone 5 is probably perfect for most hands. When I look at the Note 2 and the S3 and now Nexus 4 I am thinking to myself, how can I use this? I can only use it with two hands. That means it is a tablet, not a phone.

Re:Screen size

[Moderator]

I don't know about anyone else, but I think that the size of the Nexus 4 is too big at 4.7". I was hoping for a 4" to 4.3" screen, but Google have really pushed for that extra big handset.

Glad I'm not the only one.

To me it's just silly to call a 4.7" phone the Nexus 4. They should round to the closest whole number and call it the Nexus 5 instead.

It's called "Nexus 4" because it is the fourth Nexus phone (after Nexus One, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus), not because of the size.

Re:Screen size

[TheGratefulNet]

Tiny screens are awful they always were

or, just perhaps, your whole view on how to write gui's for them is all broken.

size matters and if I have to carry the damned thing, I want it small enough to fit in a pocket; a normal human every day pocket.

nexus one is ideal in size for pockets and hands.

the gui is all wrong, the resolution is wrong, but the size is ideal.

bigger is stupid for phones. tablets, I could care less about; but phones should be PORTABLE. you just want a tablet that makes calls; admit it.

Re:Screen size

[Simulant]

I'm with you. Don't really want a phone that's much bigger than the Nexus S. I found the Galaxy Nexus to large to use one handed. If I need a bigger screen I'll get a tablet.

Re:Screen size

[CastrTroy]

I have small hands, and 4.7 inches is definitely not a phone. I have a 4.0 inch screen, and it's about as much as I can handle. People I'm talking to constantly complain about wind noise because it's too big to hold and be able to block the wind using a single hand. I think next time around I'll get the smallest and cheapest phone I can that supports tethering, which will probably end up being great as an actual phone, and then get a nice tablet for consumption. Phones are pretty terrible for consumption no matter what the size, so I might as well just let my phone be a phone, and get a tablet for doing all the stuff they try to cram into a phone.

Re:Screen size

[MurukeshM]

Ah..Seems inconsistent with the names of the other devices (a 7" Nexus 7, 10.something" Nexus 10).

Re:Screen size

[mcgrew]

Seriously Tiny screens are awful they always were

A phone that won't fit in my pants pocket is useless. It might as well be a 1972 landline. My old original Razr had a tiny screen, and it worked fine for texting and internet. The one I have now is bigger, almost too big, and I don't see a lot of difference in the screens.

If you're old and not a cyborg just buy some strong reading glasses.

Re:Screen size

[RandomFactor]

I admit it. About a 7" Phablet is what I'm waiting for.

Galaxy Note II is the closest thing out, wish it was a Nexus device though.

Re:Screen size

[TheGratefulNet]

If you're old and not a cyborg just buy some strong reading glasses.

or, just consider this fact, THE GUI USED IS BROKEN, by design.

they took big screen concepts and the young kids (sorry, but I'm being blunt here) didn't understand all of the user base for the phones.

all of us who are getting older (happens to everyone, just you wait!) can't easily use the gui's that the kids, today are writing. and they don't get it, it seems, since the gui toolkits are not showing any signs of being usable by those who are over middle age.

I should not have to fight with my phone to get it to accept my input. I should not have to magnify everything to get access to controls. if I have to do that, you did the gui all wrong.

I know the young eyes out there will just write this off; but designing for HUMAN factors includes those whose eyes are not as sharp as yours. ignore us and you'll be ignoring yourself soon enough. like I said, we all will be there at some point or another; stop assuming everyone has great vision and great finger motor control over millimeter distances on flat glass.

Re:Screen size

[Miamicanes]

If it fits in the rear pocket of an adult male while encased in an Otterbox Defender, it's not too big :-)

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.
A 4.7" screen not only eats more power, but make the set uncomfortably large to use. I like the Galaxy S2 for size, although it's a bit tall for my taste when used in portrait mode. See, I use my _phone_ as a phone fairly regularly. Now a _tablet_, that's a different story. A 4.7" tablet is useless. So yeah. Some people think 4.7" screens are the height of stupidity. I'm one of 'em.

Re:Screen size

[amiga3D]

I disagree but the that's the point. Everyone has different needs and desires. I need a 5" screen. The smallest I can tolerate is 4.3 but 5 is perfect compromise for me. Obviously some want or need something smaller. This is simple enough as it's easy to make different models in different sizes. A 5" screen is about the biggest I can carry in my pocket and frankly anything bigger is too big for me to use with one hand. That's why I don't use a 7" tablet instead.

Re:Screen size

[SandwhichMaster]

I think the screen size is a reflection of the market. People are migrating towards phones with larger screens. For example, I'm guess that the Samsung S2 and S3 owe their success, at least in part to their large crisp screens. I'm not saying that 4.7" hasn't gone a little too far for the average user, but I bet that screen looks a lot prettier than the competition.

Personally, I have huge hands, so my next phone will be humongous. I avoid texting because I can't help but hit like 5 characters at once. I'm even considering the monstrously large Note 2.

Re:Screen size

[h4rr4r]

Get some glasses grandpa.

My eyes are by nature near useless, I fix this with contacts. You can too.

Re:Screen size

[FictionPimp]

I am with you on size. I think 4.7" is too large. Unfortunately there really no options, you can pick large with good top of the line hardware specs, or small with aging and slow hardware specs. Why can't the Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy mini have the same hardware on the inside?

I don't want a phone this large. I really enjoy the size of my iphone 4. I don't want to even 'upgrade' to a iphone 5 sized phone.

Re:Screen size

[squiggleslash]

So... you're saying you wear really small pants? Pants so small that a phone with a 5" screen wouldn't fit?

For reference, I actually regularly carry my Kindle Fire (that's a 7" tabletette) in my pant pocket. Insert various "That's what she said" type jokes here. The Fire just about squeezes in (shut up) but it does fit, I've not found cellphone large enough to be a problem - and I've had some big ones (I said, shut up) including two models of the Nokia 9000 series.

Seriously, I don't quite understand where this obsession with Zoolanderesque phones comes from.

Re:Screen size

[TheGratefulNet]

actually, not all vision problems are so easily fixable.

but I won't bore you with the details. just please believe that 'get better glasses!' is a cop-out and it avoids the fact that you need (effective) perfect vision to use smartphones.

pushing the bad gui design on the end user, as his fault for not having perfect or perfectly correctable vision is socially irresponsible.

if you want to be that way, be that way, but you'll be an ass.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you propose to make a GUI design that didn't look retarded for the rest of us?

(Meanwhile, you could just as simply go into the settings and bump up the system font size. You can also use Swype or 4.1.2's new swype-ish keyboard so you don't need fine motor control -- just approxiamate locations)

Captcha: retina

Re:Screen size

[Kupfernigk]

I still use a webOS phone (Palm Pre 3) because the UI is so good that I can use it easily despite being over 60 and moderately long sighted. One of the mistakes RIM made is that current Blackberries are almost impossible to use for older people without glasses, and as the platform has aged so have the users.

I don't know what I will do when HP pulls the plug or the hardware dies: perhaps a Note 2. But it is silly that to get the same ease of use as a phone with a 3.6 inch screen, I should be looking at one over 5 inches.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, considering how often I wear cargo shorts to work, or the fact I am 6'4", you'd think I wouldn't care about a bulky phone. But actually I have yet to get a smartphone because when I test-drove them I found them to be a nuisance. I don't want to carry dive weights in my pockets. I keep carrying my old candybar feature phone, hoping it won't fall apart before someone finally enters the market with a small and advanced phone. When I bought it, I considered it a let down that it weighed 96g.

I am the kind of person who spent $500 importing a small (<80g) GSM phone from Europe about 11 years ago because I didn't want to carry a damned Vietnam-era field radio on my belt like everyone else in the US. I scour stores to find small leather wallets that do not look like man purses and have an empty weight or thickness greater than the stack of stuff I intend to carry in it.

I guess I equate quality with elegant, efficient, miniaturization. When did we accidentally return to the 1950s and think more tons of mass and tail-fins was a mark of quality?

Re:Screen size

[knarf]

Well, yes... and no. Yes, there are people - both older people as well as younger ones with visual problems - who are better off with BIG buttons and links and such. On the other hand, there are people - both younger people as well as older ones with good vision - who want to cram as much as possible into the pixels offered by their screens. I'm an example of the latter case, being middle-aged but using a 240 dpi phone at 160 dpi so I can get 50% more (text, links, buttons, etc) on screen. I read books on a 3.7" device (Motorola Defy+ running Jelly Bean, 480*854), one screen contains more text than one normal printed page.

In other words, the GUI is not really broken as long as it can adapt to these use cases. Android is actually quite capable in this respect. The same can not be said for iOS which is totally resolution-dependent and can not adapt at all - it is their way or the highway. I don't know about Windows Phone, never having come across anyone using one of those things...

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that the Nexus One isn't much smaller than a Galaxy Nexus, right?

Wiki says:
Nexus one: 119 x 60 mm
GNex: 135.5 x 68 mm

That's 1.5cm and 0.8cm bigger. To the yankees, that's about 2/3s inch and 1/4 inch.

I also don't see what's wrong with the GUI. The vision that Duarte has is swipe gestures to move left and right (irrelevant how tall or wide it is). Extra uncommon actions should go up top, out of the way.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

He uses hipster skinny jeans with pockets expressly designed for Apple phones.

Re:Screen size

[ChunderDownunder]

That's what a 'smartphone' is - a pocket computer that can make phone calls. Two things killed small screens - onscreen qwerty keyboards and web browsers.

Besides, the android platform still has a number of sub 3" screens to chose from, albeit not with the flagship specs of the Nexus series - there is choice.

Re:Screen size

[Miamicanes]

When our phones became sufficiently powerful, with sufficiently high-res screens, to just forget about 'mobile' sites and hit the 'desktop' site directly. ;-)

Re:Screen size

[Scowler]

We are likely to start seeing significant gender and cultural divergence about what is a good screen size for a phone. Calling someone stupid for prefering a smaller screen size is pretty low.

Performance is defined just as much by software optimization and design as it is by the hardware. Funny that Fandroids forget that fact...

I think Apple is still plenty relevant, just by looking at Slashdot posts.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymatt]

Yeah, well I don't carry my phone around in a purse.

Re:Screen size

[gnoshi]

I was really concerned about the 4.65 inch Galaxy Nexus being too big when I bought it, coming from a 3.7 inch 480x854 Motorola Defy (which apart from being slow and Motorola I loved). I was also pleasantly surprised - the only time it bothers me is when I'm cycling, because it doesn't fit quite as comfortably in the zip-up pocket of my pants.

I really like the 4.0-4.3 inch screen-size range, and would probably still prefer the phone to be that size. However, having now owned a Nexus I don't think I'll be able to go back to other phones. Having official support for the new OS versions almost immediately; being able to build and flash the OS without having to fight drivers and build configurations; not having a bootloader protection stopping me installing what I want - there ain't no giving that up.

Re:Screen size

[msevior]

I can no longer read without glasses. I need my glasses to use any type of mobile phone. I now have to carry around reading glasses wherever I go. It sucks but it much better to be able to see at close distances.

What is your problem with reading glasses?

Re:Screen size

[L4t3r4lu5]

That's interesting, because I have a Kindle Touch (1/2" shorter, same width) and wear a mixture of styles of clothes; Smart work trousers, slim-leg jeans, baggy combat trousers etc. I've yet to find a pair which will hold the Kindle in a hip pocket and remain comfortable. The best I can get is a knee pocket in the combat's, but I'm concerned about breaking the screen while walking. Other than that, it's just not practical or comfortable.

Saying that, though, if I'm carrying my Kindle then I'm going somewhere where I'll have a lot of spare time, and spend a long time there. I'll probably have a snack and drink in a bag anyway, so it makes sense to put it in there.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

How fucking small are your trousers?

I can even just about fit the Nexus 7 in my pockets, and it's not like I'm overweight or above average height.

If you can't fix the Nexus 4 in your pocket, presumably you don't even carry a wallet around? I assume this because it's thinner than a wallet and really no bigger in any other dimension.

Stop wearing skinny hipster trousers or whatever and you'll be fine.

Re:Screen size

[mcgrew]

My eyes are by nature near useless, I fix this with contacts.

When you reach middle age you're going to need reading glasses along with those contacts -- I did, until I had a bionic implant in my left eye tha replaced the natural lens.

Re:Screen size

[mcgrew]

all of us who are getting older (happens to everyone, just you wait!)

I'm 60, but I'm not 100% human; I'm a cyborg. The lens in my left eye was replaced by a CrystaLens implant that cured both my severe myopia and my age-related presbyopia. After wearing glasses all my life, I no longer need them.

the kids, today are writing. and they don't get it, it seems, since the gui toolkits are not showing any signs of being usable by those who are over middle age.

Today's designers are, IMO, brain-dead stupid. Even Google went downhill with their gray on black links at the top of their page. What's worse is some of these dumb kids doing gray on gray.

I know the young eyes out there will just write this off; but designing for HUMAN factors includes those whose eyes are not as sharp as yours. ignore us and you'll be ignoring yourself soon enough. like I said, we all will be there at some point or another; stop assuming everyone has great vision and great finger motor control over millimeter distances on flat glass.

Agreed. Like I said, the kids designing this shit today seem to all have below average intelligence.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

My partner works for Levis, despite the fact I can hence get them at discount, I don't, because they're all designed for people with no penis.

Honestly, they're so tight around the crotch (despite me being of healthy weight) that I can only assume that they're for people who have a micropenis and are suffering from malnutrition or some illness (like Steve Jobs, who always wore them). These people seem to be hipsters for the most part, the iPhone's core market.

So don't go arguing about this sort of thing with these people, they wont get it, because they have a phone designed for their micropenis clothing and that's that. Phones like the Nexus 4 aren't designed for people who have below average penis size and no balls whatsoever such that they can fit into ultra-tight clothing and are instead designed for people with average or larger penis size who wear normal, comfortable clothing, like most the world.

Re:Screen size

[h4rr4r]

I hope to do that, or deal with one eye setup for each task.

Either way saying "Oh noes I am old and helpless everyone must cater to my needs" is not a good solution. Old folks love to bitch about "kids these days " and "welfare bums", but god forbid anything ever inconvenience them. If that occurs everyone must make sure to cater to them.

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

If a 7" tablet fits in your pants pocket you have bigger problems. It's called either being FAT or not average sized. Stop expecting the world to cater to YOU!

Re:Screen size

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the precise reason the Samsung S3 Mini is going to be a runaway hit. Mark my words. Even with the lower resolution display and the slower processor, the S3 Mini is exactly the form-factor that users have been clamoring for in smart phones ever since pre-smartphone days.

Re:Screen size

[Meski]

Obligatory "Is that a Nexus4, or are you just pleased to see me" jokes cued.

Re:Screen size

[mcgrew]

Either way saying "Oh noes I am old and helpless everyone must cater to my needs" is not a good solution.

I'm sure there are old folks like that, but I've never met one. The really old, the ones I'm young in comparison to, hate getting so they need help. After all, they've been doing the helping all their lives and don't want that to change.

Old folks love to bitch about "kids these days " and "welfare bums"

Old folks have always bitched about "kids these days", there's a great rant from one of the ancient Greeks about "kids these days" that pretty much mirrors what geezers say today. As to "welfare bums" I hear that more from the young, especially the monied young who never had to work a day in their lives.

god forbid anything ever inconvenience them

That's human nature. It's also human nature to see it in others but be blind to it in one's self.

They need to expand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google need to expand the Play Store to more countries. Not only apps, but music, books and movies too!
Google should also sell its Nexus devices in more countries too.

USA and Europe are not the only places in the world...

one caveat

[killmenow]

By giving us cheap and open devices, Google is making sure it's in control -- not the carriers. That's better for the consumers, but it's also better for Google.

That's better for the consumers for now. But in the long run there's no more reason to trust Google than the telephone companies where power is currently concentrated. Once all the power is in Google's hands (if they get their way) it's not so good for consumers anymore.

Re:one caveat

[Gary]

Worst case scenario, Google gets all the power. Is that better or worse than the phone companies having full control?

Ideally we'd have good healthy competition, but I'll take Google over AT&T any day.

Re:one caveat

[the_B0fh]

And like most consumers are actually capable of long term thinking...

Re:one caveat

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, since when is it "better for consumers" to have one company in control, rather than to have 3-4 companies in control?

Re:one caveat

[i_ate_god]

It's also not good for business.

Monopolies break capitalism.

Re:one caveat

[AdmV0rl0n]

No, you only need to understand this is at least partially wrong. The carriers *want* you to buy a phone today, and seemingly are happy for it to arrive tommorow, and have problems from the following day. This equates to the idea of contracts where end users can't wait to get a new phone, rinse - repeat. In this regard, the carriers are not your friends, and don't want to be, They only want you to pay them the money, and get a new contract.

Google Nexus devices are likely to get updates and changes, irrespective of the evil shit carriers pull - or lack of effort on their part in none evil cases. I still have Samsung devices that T Mobile either won't update, or the updates come months and months late. Or you simply get told they can't be bothered to work on the update, get a new handset.

So - for now - I'm glad Google are attacking this problem. The carriers need the lesson.

Re:one caveat

[Githaron]

Android can be forked if need be. Sure, Google's services would probably be removed but there is no reason another company could not replace them with their own versions..

Re:one caveat

[bluefoxlucid]

It's a good business strategy. Don't make your business a charity; make your business operate on strategies that are actually powerful business motivators, good for the business, but also good for the consumer. Don't just tempt the consumer; keep them from ever leaving. Make sure only wingnuts have much to say about how horrible you are.

The only concerns about Google are quite constant: they're an information trafficking company. They traffic information. Information to design ad campaigns, information to present ads to the consumer. Their base of information grows with each new service--and every time you opt into a new, useful service, you know the cost. The complaint of Google's ever-expanding reach of information gathering is mostly smoke and mirrors: this is what Google DOES, it's the same as when we were just using search. It's bigger, but not more sinister; if it's inexcusable now, it should have been toxic when they were tiny.

Google's best business plan is to make sure their ever-expanding empire is always profitable, but never really threatening. They need to not scare off the consumer. By keeping strict controls on how they provide their services--their real services--they avoid a greater consumer concern. They don't want to be the source of your six hundred phone calls per week from credit card offers; they want to be quiet, unknown, and harmless. They want to have to hide things just for business reasons, to protect from their competitors; they want as little to hide from the small consumers--who could be offended and then leave and diminish the strength of their product--as possible, so that any discovery and release of information is overall non-offensive.

That's the best way to do it. Make sure your business is good for consumers by merit of being based on a strategy that's good for consumers. Make a man cut off his own arm for the chance to shed some of his own blood, rather than the chance to escape your tyranny. Only the insane will cut themselves off from you.

Re:one caveat

[Nerdfest]

You don't need to trust Google. Don't set your phone up to use their services. It's basically a good phone for a good price, with good, open OS. It integrates nicely with Google's services, but you don't need to use them.

Re:one caveat

[pentadecagon]

Which is why Google carefully avoids collecting too much power. Your Nexus-device is completely open and free, if Google turns evil you are free to take your device elsewhere. Any other device is beyond your control and can be bricked if Ballmer/Cook are in a bad mood.

Re:one caveat

[SandwhichMaster]

I can appreciate your monopoly concern, but I think you're missing the obvious. If Google gets more control, it means that the carriers have less control.

Carriers and phones need to be 2 VERY separate entities. Google is pushing for that openness and separation. They are not asking for their own set of locks and restrictions. So, if Google wins this, it stands to reason that more manufacturerswill be able to build open devices.

Re:one caveat

[metamatic]

Right now my options are:

1. Give complete control to Apple, who are already abusive assholes.
2. Give complete control to Microsoft, who are already abusive assholes.
3. Give complete control to the phone company, who are already abusive assholes.
4. Give very little control to Google, but maybe one day they'll start to be abusive.
5. Do without a phone.

From where I'm sitting, #4 looks like the least bad.

Re:one caveat

[TheGratefulNet]

Worst case scenario, Google gets all the power.

well, first you get the sugar. then you get the power. THEN you get the women.

Re:one caveat

[thetoadwarrior]

I'm not sure you can say it's worse but it certainly won't be better. I'm not sure why anyone would be happy to see a monopoly.

Re:one caveat

[toriver]

Android has been forked. See: Amazon Kindle.

Re:one caveat

[toriver]

Bah, meant Kindle Fire of course. Damn inability to edit posts, you would think it's 1992 not 2012.

Re:one caveat

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you need to fork Android to replace Google services with another?

1: Factory reset if it's not new.
2: Go into the App Manager and pick all the Google services and hit disable. (optional; this hides all applications from the app drawer so you don't accidentally run them, but even if you run them, it'll ask for your gmail u/p. Just back out.)
3. Do not sign in with Google. Instead, go download GetJar market, Amazan store, etc.

4. Profit.

Re:one caveat

[Githaron]

Is Kindle Fire a full fork that is updated independently of Android or is it simply a re-skin?

Re:one caveat

[Thantik]

As if capitalism isn't already broken...

At least Google has done something to change the landscape of the telecom industry.

Re:one caveat

[Scowler]

I don't have a clue what "abusive assholes" is supposed to mean. I'm certain, though, that your usage of it is so incredibly subjective as to not bother with inquiry.

I think I'll assume that one fortune 500 company behaves similar to another, and base my phone purchases by comparing the features, like any rational consumer would.

Re:one caveat

[hazem]

This isn't something I'm too worried about because Google doesn't have a natural monopoly. The old carriers had exclusive ownership/rights to the lines you connected to. If you wanted a phone, it had to connect to their line - and for a while, it had to be their phone that you rented.

With these Google devices, there's a lot of diversity in the marketplace and if a consumer doesn't like what Google does, they can buy from one of their competitors.

The one thing I like about this development is that it may start to re-establish the idea that the devices belong to the consumers and the network providers are just providing pipes and connections.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[fredprado]

Apple and Microsoft do want total control. Google does not care much about total control, they get their money in so many ways that it is unavoidable that they will get it in the end. The proof of that is that anyone can sell apps outside Google Play, be it in other stores or in his own site, instead having to go through the centralizing policy Apple and MS apply to their products.

it's about wrestling control away from carriers &a

[1800maxim]

manufacturers. both neglect their users. what google is doing is providing an open device where the user is in control and no longer bound by limitations of carriers and manufacturers.

Can recommend Nexus again.

[Qwavel]

In some countries and on some carriers one of the promises of the Nexus brand was broken: we didn't get timely OS updates.

I felt this was a breach of trust - the sort of thing we expect from our carriers and some manufacturers - and it meant I couldn't recommend the Galaxy Nexus to others.

Fortunately, it seems that what happened with the Galaxy Nexus was not acceptable to Google either, and I'm really impressed with the lengths they are going to - bypassing the carriers completely in my country - to set things right.

They will probably only sell a tiny number of the new Nexus w/o carrier support but then again, the carriers' were never going to like or promote a phone that came unlocked and with broad carrier support - so they did little to promote the G'Nex anyway.

So, I'm disappointed that the new Nexus doesn't have LTE, but there is some sense in it (see the linked below for a good explanation) and I believe that the Nexus is once again worth recommending to friends*.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569688/why-nexus-4-does-not-have-4g-lte

(*assuming the reviews don't uncover lots of bugs or unexpected shortcomings.)

Re:Can recommend Nexus again.

[ArtDent]

I agree with you completely. The Galaxy Nexus was royally screwed up here in Canada, too. It wasn't available in the Play Store here. Samsung sold it through the carriers, but modified the firmware so that they, not Google, would be responsible for pushing updates. They behaved exactly as you would expect, introducing months of delay, and skipping several of the minor updates completely.

Of course consumers were never warned that they were buying anything other than "Pure Google", and many were rightly pissed. Their only recourse was to flash the original Google firmware, but that's not a reasonable thing to expect of the average consumer.

Watching it all, I was appalled. This wasn't the Nexus experience that I've been enjoying with my Nexus S. I'm so glad to see that Google was equally unimpressed. Verizon is out, Canada is back in the Play Store, and all's right with the world. And the price! Just wow.

Unless there's some giant hardware screw-up lurking, I will be recommending this phone to everyone. Alas, I fear that people won't understand the difference between an unsubsidized price and one that comes with thousands of dollars of contract commitment. $350 is more than $200, right?

Re:Can recommend Nexus again.

[mjwx]

I agree with you completely. The Galaxy Nexus was royally screwed up here in Canada, too. It wasn't available in the Play Store here. Samsung sold it through the carriers, but modified the firmware so that they, not Google, would be responsible for pushing updates. They behaved exactly as you would expect, introducing months of delay, and skipping several of the minor updates completely.

I agree, but it's a minor issue IMHO.

I also bought the "Samsung" galaxy Nexus idetnified as "yakjuxw". The Google device is just "yakju". It's very easy to convert a yakjuxw to yakju as it's the exact same hardware (maguro) with a slightly different firmware. Give this site a read if you want to attempt it, caveat is that it will wipe your device but the application on that site will backup your applications, contacts and SMS's.

Re:Can recommend Nexus again.

[quacking duck]

So, I'm disappointed that the new Nexus doesn't have LTE, but there is some sense in it (see the linked below for a good explanation) and I believe that the Nexus is once again worth recommending to friends.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569688/why-nexus-4-does-not-have-4g-lte

The article notes that it's partly due to "simple economics of building a halo product for a small niche of early adopters" and that it's an "extremely costly undertaking with sharply limited potential markets".

This reads almost exactly like an Apple fan's response to why last year's iPhone 4S didn't have LTE (other reasons/excuses being that LTE tech at the time wasn't miniature or energy efficient enough).

I wonder how many Android users who slagged last year's iPhone 4S for not having LTE, are now using "free and open at all costs" as the justification for not having LTE on Google's own flagship, carrier-unencumbered devices.

Yes, there's a number of Android phones with LTE--but they're tied to the carrier. Google and Android purists apparently want to break that shackle, which greatly limits available choices.

Re:Can recommend Nexus again.

[Hast]

I definitely agree with that. Although I found out that it was easy to just reflash the device with a "region free" firmware and get updates quickly. I have no idea what the hell Samsung Sweden were doing during the 2 months it took them to "verify" the Jelly Bean update. Someone claimed that they were working on a Swedish dictionary for spell check, but there was one included in the generic version as well so I'm doubtful.

where is my hardware keyboard?

[datapharmer]

And if they would just add a hardware keyboard I would be perfectly satisfied... every try working on a server with a touchscreen even in a pinch? Was that backspace or enter you wanted on that commandline? Finger slipped.... whoops!

Re:where is my hardware keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

It supports bluetooth, go get any keyboard you want

Re:where is my hardware keyboard?

[TheGratefulNet]

the person who even SUGGESTED that backspace/delete and enter/return should be ANYWHERE NEAR EACH OTHER on a touch screen should be shot. just summarily shot.

and there would be much rejoicing; there really would.

Re:where is my hardware keyboard?

[Jeng]

Hardware keyboards are getting more rare on phones.

My wife just picked herself up one of these though, and damn it is nice. Almost makes me want to replace my HTC G2.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/27/samsung-galaxy-s-relay-4g-review-t-mobile/

Re:where is my hardware keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

the person who even SUGGESTED that backspace/delete and enter/return should be ANYWHERE NEAR EACH OTHER on a touch screen should be shot. just summarily shot.

and there would be much rejoicing; there really would.

they are just as close together on my computer keyboard... that i touch-type on.

Re:where is my hardware keyboard?

[idontgno]

I'm rockin' my Droid 4 for that very reason. Insisted on a slider, happy with it every day, and that's even in spite of Verizon's tendency towards general-purpose control freakery.

Re:where is my hardware keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same with the people who put

$ crontab -e

beside

$ crontab -r

At the cost of storage, too

[SuperBanana]

Reaction on the Android forums has been pretty swift: no microSD card slot = fail, especially given that there's a paltry 8GB in some of the units. My iPhone 2G had 8GB of storage. It was about enough for my music and some apps. That was also 5 years ago. They're trying to force cloud storage onto you by giving you a pathetic amount of storage and eliminating expansion. Meanwhile, they're forcing Google+ instant-uploads on people to encourage them to use it. All of this means increased data usage and reliance on google for your storage needs, which means they're going to start monetizing it at some point in the near future.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

yawn.....
8GB is not enough for _you_, you mean..... 8GB is bigger than my homedir, and certainly big enough for my phone. Cloud storage? You mean I have to connect to my home server? Perfect, I say.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[TheGratefulNet]

no microSD card slot = fail

indeed!

I would not pay any money (not even free) for a hobbled 'flagship' phone.

fuck your goddamned cloud. I don't want your cloud to be the only place I save things. stupid google!

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats worse is the reason given for it! After all these years, microSD cards were just too confusing for the average user...

http://www.tmonews.com/2012/10/google-head-of-android-user-experience-explains-the-lack-of-sd-cards-for-nexus-devices/

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you install some sort of FTP server on it, and manage it that way? I don't own an Android phone thingy, but have done this with a VirtualBox chromeOS image and a free FTP server app from the GooglePlay.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Reaction on the Android forums has been pretty swift: no microSD card slot = fail, especially given that there's a paltry 8GB in some of the units.

My iPhone 2G had 8GB of storage. It was about enough for my music and some apps. That was also 5 years ago.

They're trying to force cloud storage onto you by giving you a pathetic amount of storage and eliminating expansion. Meanwhile, they're forcing Google+ instant-uploads on people to encourage them to use it. All of this means increased data usage and reliance on google for your storage needs, which means they're going to start monetizing it at some point in the near future.

If it had a lot more storage in it then it would cost more and you would instead be bitching about that.

You act as if you are the representitive for the majority of users on the planet. The majority of the real worlds users dont need a lot of storage. They surf the net, stream netflix, watch youtube, check facebook, take some pictures, maybe a few videos and so on. They arent storing large amounts of data on their and there is no need to for most people.

Youre just bitching because you want to bitch, you feel like you as a single individual user out of billions of people think they should do what you want. Get your head out of your ass.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Githaron]

That depends on how fast your home and mobile internet connection is, what you are doing, and whether or not you have a unlimited data plan.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what I was going to ask. Can I upgade the memory, change out the antenae, upgrade the SOC. Can I upgrade to a new Android, or run some other *nix on it. Because if I can't, then this is just MS open, not real open. Because in real open I can hack whatever I want.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

fail

I don't think that word means what you think it means. iPhones have no microSD. Kindles have no microSD. Nexus S and Nexus Galaxy had no microSD. None of these devices is fail in the sense that they've done poorly with people that fork over hard cash for them.

I haven't missed the microSD on my Nexus S. But then I'm not compelled to archive half a terabyte of music on my phone in case I get stranded on an island for a decade.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[h4rr4r]

You can do whatever you want with it. Upgrading hardware will be hard, but porting other nix should be fairly straight forward.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

All of this means increased data usage and reliance on google for your storage needs, which means they're going to start monetizing it at some point in the near future.

They haven't started, yet (for reasonable amounts of storage), and people have been claiming this slippery slope of data storage monetization for ages. Google's business strategy has been--and continues to be--that it can offer every individual multiple (increasing) gigabytes of free storage, and charge very reasonable prices for ever larger amounts of storage. Their free storage limits have traditionally been larger than everyone else because they can mine the data you're storing for advertising purposes.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to get the 8 GB version, though. There's a 16 GB model available for you. If that's what you need then, by all means, buy the 16 GB model instead. I actually checked on my phone and was surprised. After a year of owning this phone, I'm not even using 8 of the 16 GB available to me. In short, just because something is useless to you doesn't mean it's useless to everyone.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[metamatic]

Meanwhile, they're forcing Google+ instant-uploads on people to encourage them to use it.

No they aren't. You can turn that off.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

That 8gb in your old iphone was practically useless due to ultra slow writing speed. Can't really compare that with the nexus4. Fact is, most of us dont even use 4gb. 8 is hardly an issue.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

My old Nexus One has a 32GB SDcard, and a removable battery. The new Nexus 4 has 16GB, MAXIMUM, and no removable battery.

That's a downgrade.

Google wants to push people to using their "cloud" services so that they can molest, inspect, and possibly loose your data, all while making it slower to and less convenient to access.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

No nexus device will ever have an sd card slot. It goes against the 'nexus philosophy' and google's play for 'simplicity.' I don't think this is going to change.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks "user experience" is a valid phrase, let alone has it in his job title, should just be burnt.

Re:At the cost of storage, too

[Anonymous Coward]

the 8gb model is kind of useless w/o a micro sd card but I have a 16gb model and have no issues at all, micro sd would be nice but it isn't a fail by any means. later models that have a front facing camera and micro sd storage will be cool but for the price (even as it was before this price drop) I don't have any complaints.

Too much sacrifice for openness

[fruity_pebbles]

I'm all for openness, but I'm not going to buy an "open" phone that's starkly lacking in features. The Nexus One had the best hardware of any smartphone on the market when it was introduced. The Nexus S? Nice, but not spectacular. Galaxy Nexus? Nice, not spectacular, crappy camera. Nexus 4? No LTE - that's a deal breaker for a lot of people. Was the Nexus One a fluke, or has Google given up on trying to deliver a Nexus phone with great hardware?

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nexus 4 has the best hardware on the market, combined with the best software. It just does not have LTE, as LTE is not ready yet; and outside US almost completely non-existent.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[TheGratefulNet]

fwiw, my one and only phone is the nexus one.

and (stupidly, I know) I still run the official google OTA image.

and you know what? its unusable due to one showstopper bug. the screen STILL loses the touchscreen location and needs a power off/on to reset it. happens about 10 times a day.

I ask honestly: how am I supposed to respect google when they won't even fix a showstopper bug on what was their best phone for quite a long time? abandon your flagships so soon?

not a classy move by a mega-power like google. can't they find just one person to fix this showstopper bug and get it off the p1 list? with all their people there, no one cares about the n1 anymore? really? sigh ;(

this is why I don't think a lot of google's engineering, overall. they are too fast to abandon their stuff and this leaves users high and dry.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[Miamicanes]

> LTE is not ready yet

Bullshit. Just about every halfway-urban patch of Florida has LTE from AT&T and Verizon RIGHT NOW... and I'm not talking about a few neighborhoods in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. AT&T has rock-solid LTE in Broward County, and I've had working AT&T LTE over the past month in Naples, Holmes Beach/Anna Maria Island (off the coast of Bradenton), and Ocoee (northwest Orlando, off 429, which is about as rural as you can get while still loosely describing the area as "Orlando"). I don't know about Verizon elsewhere in Florida, but I know their LTE is rock-solid in Miami and Fort Lauderdale from coworkers who use them.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[mspohr]

I (and my wife) also have Nexus Ones with the current official OTA image and we just don't have this problem.
Perhaps you have a hardware problem?

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll put out an LTE version, but it will be delayed. With the Galaxy Nexus, they released the Verizon model first, but Verizon decided they'd dick around with Google so they could promote the Droid Razr HD, which caused the Galaxy Nexus to be delayed for *everyone*. This time, everyone else gets the Nexus first, and Verizon and AT&T users get to wait because you've chosen a carrier that acts like a monstrous prick at every given opportunity.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[squiggleslash]

Yes, and you probably aren't able to make phone calls over it, and if you're lucky enough to have a device that supports both Verizon and AT&T's LTE then the engineers had to jump through some hoops to make it work because of the weird decisions Verizon made about how they'd implement it.

I dearly want LTE to be "ready", but at the moment it's really like the major carriers are conducting an experiment, and roping in their customers to do the testing.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[TheGratefulNet]

don't think its hardware. power off and power fixes hardware bugs? in what universe do you live?

I heard about this bug before I even bought the phone, but I refused to believe it. bad me. they were right and this bug still persists.

I run so few apps. I almost don't run anything beyond stock OTA android. I know, I'm boring ;) and nothing outside some very mainstream amazon-store or g-play store apps. nothing side loaded, just really plain vanilla.

the phone stays home most of the time and I don't even have a data plan for it (wifi only works for me). it has not been carried in my pocket and its more a remote control for using wifi than anything else. so, my usage is very light, it has not been outside much or abused, it runs all mainstream vanilla apps (the few that I installed) - and yet the screen loses its mind and just vibrates and does weird things when I touch or try to touch widgets.

100% of the time, a physical press of the top/left power button, press again, swipe to unlock - that always 'fixes' the calibration loss on the TS.

this is software, mate. pure software. and for a few hours, the screen works and works fine.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[Nemyst]

Considering I have a 1GB cap, LTE is utterly unimportant for me. I also know I am far from alone.

You're really looking for something to pick here. The Nexus S was good, the GNex was average, but the Nexus 4 is quite frankly top of the line. Gorilla Glass 2, HD screen, induction coil, lithium-polymer battery, 8Mpx camera, quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM... Honestly, few phones can match that feature set. The lack of LTE is a shame, but a deal breaker? Heck no. Or do you mean to imply all phones prior the arrival of LTE were somehow crippled?

For the average user, 3G is fast enough. It could be better, but if that's the cost to bring the entire phone down to 300 dollars, then it's a price I'm willing to pay.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[thetoadwarrior]

The 8gb of storage and no SD card seems like the worst idea. My old ipod touch has 8gb of storage and even that wasn't enough pretty much from day one.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[greg1104]

They can barely keep the bugs out of the current hardware. Your problem is similar to the Nexus 7 touchscreen bug, which has hit hundreds of people. Maybe the magic 4.1.2 upgrade mentioned there will help you? (There is a bet I wouldn't take)

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[EnglishTim]

don't think its hardware. power off and power fixes hardware bugs? in what universe do you live?

The software runs on the hardware. If there's a hardware fault, the software may run incorrectly and find itself in a corrupt state. Turning on and off would reset the software state, thereby (temporarily) fixing the problem.

In your case, what if there's a fault in the touch sensor controller? Perhaps there's a counter that gets incremented with each tick and one of the bits in it is faulty and won't flip. After a certain number of ticks the counter might effectively reset rather than increment, which could force the controller into an invalid state which might prevent it from sending any sensible values to the operating system. A hardware fault that causes a software failure.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[greg1104]

This might be Nexus One touchscreen sometimes behaves oddly, which has been open for years now and encountered by hundreds of people. If it's a hardware problem, it's a widespread one.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[kqs]

Verizon still cannot use LTE for voice calls, so it is not ready yet. A Verizon phone requires CDMA, which is not open, so it's not n the Nexus. Not sure about AT&, but their LTE network is small compared to Verizon.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[Anonymous Coward]

I too bought the N1 and loved everything about it...except for the damn screen bug which eventually pushed me towards the S3. As far as I'm aware it's a hardware issue, not a software one and they're not able to fix it.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[NorQue]

Had that, too, but I thought it was due to the crappy digitizer used by the N1 (and the HTC Desire). TBH, I loved my N1 to death, but looking back from my GNex it really was a piece of shit device. I always thought that's why Google went away from HTC and launched the Nexus S so fast after the N1.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[Anonymous Coward]

it sounds like a hardware problem. my entire family had a nexus one (some still do), and no one has this problem you described...

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[GuB-42]

I have this problem with cyanogenmod 7.2 (latest stable) and I think if the CM team could have fixed it, they would.
The problem is probably at a lower level than the OS, out of the scope of Google and Android. Maybe it is a bug in the radio ROM (the equivalent of the BIOS/EFI of PCs and under control of the hardware manufacturer) or the hardware itself.

Re:Too much sacrifice for openness

[strikethree]

No LTE - that's a deal breaker for a lot of people.

Hm. Are you trying to say that a lot of people need speeds faster than 6 megabit on their phone? A lot of people do not even get that out of their local ISP so even if you consider tethering as a person's main internet access, I fail to see how lack of LTE is a deal breaker for a lot of people.

I want gigabits or more of bandwidth, but I am happy with HSPA+ for now. For myself, the closest thing to a deal breaker is no removable storage.

Meet the new boss

[EmagGeek]

Same as the old boss..

First of all, to call the Nexus truly open is farcical at best. Nexus devices are not open. They come boot loader locked, no root access, and no factory image restore. That is not open. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Whether it's the carrier or google is irrelevant. You are still computing according to someone else's direction, and not your own, with only very limited access to use the hardware you have purchased in a way they see fit.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Nemyst]

All Nexus devices can also be unlocked and rooted in a straightforward process. That they don't come in this way is a protection for the average Joe who doesn't know what "rooting" even means and who'd just be vulnerable to a malicious app trying to elevate its own permissions.

Nexus devices are still consumer devices.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy smokes, it's not rocket science and the tool is provided by Google. What more do you want? Like Nemyst says, having it locked and no root access by default is a GOOD THING.

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/how-to-unlock-and-root-the-nexus-7-2012081/

Re:Meet the new boss

[Emetophobe]

First of all, to call the Nexus truly open is farcical at best. Nexus devices are not open. They come boot loader locked, no root access, and no factory image restore. That is not open. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

1. When you buy a Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 4 from the play store it comes with an unlocked bootloader.

2. You can restore factory images quite easily, google provides all of them.

3. You are correct about no root access out of the box, you need to do that yourself.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the bootloader is locked and that's good. You can unlock them with 'fastboot oem unlock'. This will delete all user data on the device, making it hard to infect the device with bad code somewhere.

Re:Meet the new boss

[wellard1981]

False: The boot loader can be unlocked using the Android SDK. Boot into Fastboot, then use the command 'fastboot oem unlock'. Rooting is pretty straight forward these days, plenty of how-to's out there on the Internet. Lastly, factory images can be downloaded from https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Tr3vin]

You can unlock all of the newer nexus devices with the "fastboot oem unlock" command. You can also easily add root access (not that I have ever encountered a time when I needed it). Factory images are provided at https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images. I've set up and built my own OS for my Nexus 7 in an evening. This weekend I easily installed the current test image for Ubuntu on it too. And when I was done I switched back to android by using the aforementioned factory image. The only issue I've had was waiting on updates for my Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and that was easily fixed by easily unlocking and flashing a new image built from the source that Google released. I don't see what your problem is.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't that void the hardware warranty?

Re:Meet the new boss

[EmagGeek]

Yes, it's also a straightforward way to void the warranty on the device (as I found out the hard way when my compass went batshit and just started spinning in circles and they wouldn't replace it).

Re:Meet the new boss

[MachDelta]

Unroot and re-lock the thing before you send it in for a warranty.

Since there's no guarantee you'll even get the same device back with a warranty return, what you should really do is make a nandroid (1:1 backup) first and then restore the phone to factory state (bootloader, recovery, rom, data, and all). Then whatever phone you do end up with can be restored to your 'old' phone in a few minutes, and you don't have to worry about who has your data, and unless the FBI is spying on you no one will ever know you did those naughty unlocking and rooting things.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Rooting is pretty straight forward these days, plenty of how-to's out there on the Internet

All of which depend on exploiting a system vulnerability

Come on people, this is NOT a good thing.

What if Ubuntu came without root and people advocated "just use a suid exploit"?

Re:Meet the new boss

[tecmec]

Source here: http://source.android.com/source/index.html

Factory Images here: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images

Not open?

Re:Meet the new boss

[mclaincausey]

I still don't think Android is open. Can you check code into their repo? Is there any peer review whatsoever prior to release? It is still a limited definition of open.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Miamicanes]

Unless Congress has recently repealed the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, no. They can SAY your warranty is invalid, but they can also SAY the moon is made from green cheese. Under MMWA, unless they can prove that the failure was directly caused by unlocking the bootloader, their only recourse is to reflash your phone to stock with a JTAG (which they're going to do regardless) to get it back into a known state and verify that it's a hardware problem & not a software problem. MM does NOT require them to make the phone work using your custom ROM, nor do they have to return it to you after a warranty repair/replacement with anything besides the official firmware. It just means they can't refuse a warranty repair for a delaminated screen, or a volume button falling off, or a cracked USB/headphone jack, because your phone was rooted/reflashed.

Magnuson-Moss rocks. It's one of the most potent pro-consumer laws out there. Even APPLE, in their most arrogant AT&T-exclusive days, didn't dare to mess with the Federal Trade Commission. You don't even have to sue in court. You file a complaint with the FTC, and the manufacturer has a short period of time to respond explaining how they've remedied the situation, or explain why they believe the Magnuson Moss act doesn't apply. If they claim it doesn, and the FTC disagrees, they get fined a HUGE amount of money. Ergo, the manufacturer would have to be completely insane and suicidal to try and press a warranty denial unless their legal department assured them their defense was rock solid. Like I said, not even APPLE dares to fight with them. If you have someone in tech support tell you the warranty is void because you rooted or unlocked the bootloader, tell them you want to speak to their supervisor before filing a Magnuson Moss complaint. The moment a supervisor hears the phrase "Magnuson Moss", they're going to pull out the white gloves and offer you free blowjobs & chocolate to make you happy.

And before you ask... no, you can't be forced to waive your rights under it. If you buy a phone that has an American warranty, and they force you to waive it as a condition of getting an unlock code or something comparable, it's legally meaningless. Check 'yes', get the code, and submit your warranty claim anyway if you need to do it someday. By law, your rights under Magnuson Moss can NOT be waived (because if they could, everyone would just force you to waive them, and render it meaningless).

Re:Meet the new boss

[h4rr4r]

You can't check code into the Kernel repo either. There are always gatekeepers.

Re:Meet the new boss

[h4rr4r]

Not true.
On a nexus device you unlock the bootloader and then you can flash an image with su.

Only on bootloader locked devices is the situation what you describe.

Re:Meet the new boss

[g2devi]

No, but you can't check things into the Red Hat Enterprise repository either. If you want to check something in, you'll need to check into a community repository such a Fedora. Similarly, if you want to check into an Android repository, look into the community supported CyanogenMod.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

All Nexus devices can also be unlocked and rooted in a straightforward process.

I don't know about the newer models, but with the Nexus S, said straightforward process wipes all the data from the phone. "Make a backup first", you say? The slight problem with that is that backup apps on Android aren't fully effective unless the device is rooted....

Re:Meet the new boss

[TheGratefulNet]

I used to quote MMWA to car dealers all the time. when I installed car audio (usually my own) they always used to give you crap at the dealership. scare tactics of 'oh, youll crash the cars CAN bus!' and BS like that.

but have you known anyone to successfully fight against a phone vendor when they initially refused warranty service and the customer cited MMWA? if there is even one winning example, I'll believe that this can work. but until then, I have a hard time believing that any consumer rights exist anymore.

corps are people, now. and our rights, as actual born people, are reduced as each year passes.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

No it does not come with the bootloader unlocked.. at least the Galaxy Nexus devices never did.. and yes I own two of them... but it IS easlity unlocked via a simple fastboot command..

Re:Meet the new boss

[Rich0]

Agree partially - it isn't a community project, but it is fairly open. You can't just check stuff into Debian's package repository either.

Would I prefer to see commits on Key Lime Pie published as they're made, sure! Will I turn up my nose at free FOSS code released after the fact, of course not!

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where you think you went to Law School, but the MMWA does not at all do what you say it does.

Here is what the MMWA does do:

- It requires that warranties be explained fully in plain, understandable language
- It stipulates that any ambiguity in the language shall be found in favor of the consumer
- It prohibits "tie-in" sales of other products in order to maintain a warranty (including a requirement to obtain service from a particular vendor, as an example for automobiles)

The MMWA also specifically does not preempt state Warranty laws. If a State has a different warranty law, that law applies in place of and not in addition to the MMWA. And, your MMWA rights CAN be waived, if you choose to waive them. MMWA does not create an inalienable right.

There is a reason most MMWA claims are unsuccessful, and that is because most people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it does and does not do. It does not give consumers license to abuse the products they purchase.

If you try to hack the PCM in your vehicle and accidentally erase its flash, you will not be able to have that damage repaired under your vehicle's limited warranty, because there is no legitimate or intended use case for the owner to do that.

Unlocking your bootloader is the same legal construct. The manufacturer does not intend for the product to be used in that manner, and attempting to do so may lawfully invalidate the limited warranty on the device.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Miamicanes]

No, you're the one who's omitting its most important point: if the manufacturer wants to deny a claim for some failure that would otherwise be covered by the warranty because you did ${something}, the burden is 100% on THEM to convince the FTC that the failure occurred BECAUSE you did ${something}, not merely that you DID ${something}.

Pre-MMWA, they just had to show the clause in the warranty that excluded coverage if you did ${something}, and prove that you DID ${something}. They could insert language invalidating the car's warranty if you installed an aftermarket stereo or changed the oil and used a non-approved aftermarket oil filter, even if the warranty claim were for something completely unrelated, like body rust.

If you root your phone or unlock its bootloader and reflash to a custom distro of Android, and your warranty claim for a delaminated OLED or cold solder joint on the USB port or headphone jack gets denied, the FTC will hang the vendor from the nearest tree, flog them until they're metaphorically nude and bloody, then hit them with a major fine for good measure after seeing to it that you've been adequately taken care of, because that's EXACTLY the kind of abuse MMWA is intended to stop.

If you brick your phone while trying to defeat the bootloader, MMWA doesn't officially apply. But you'll probably get your phone reflashed for free anyway, because JTAG reflashing is the first thing any repair center is going to try as their first diagnostic step. It comes down to risk vs reward for the manufacturer. If your phone was bricked, and JTAG reflashing fixed it, they'd have to be complete idiots to risk the FTC's wrath by trying to deny the warranty claim.

In theory, they'd have stronger case if you did something, like blow OTP fuses that rendered the phone permanently bricked, or caused real damage requiring real money to fix... but once again, consider that you're talking about a phone that represents (worst-case) a $200-300 hard loss for the manufacturer if they chuck it and send you a remanufactured replacement, vs thousands of dollars in potential fines and compliance costs if they choose to fight. In most cases, they'll probably hedge their bets and cut their losses by offering to replace the phone for $100-200 and call it a day. MMWA doesn't directly FORCE them do that, but it makes it too expensive for manufacturers to risk trying to profit from your phone's nonworking state.

MMWA doesn't give you the right to abuse a product and expect a free repair. It DOES, however, prohibit manufacturers from trying to use the warranty as a weapon to force compliance with its TOS or software licensing policies.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Point 1 is incorrect. It does come locked from the Play store. Unlocking it requires one command from ADB, which is very easy if you are ready to install your own OS image.

Missed Opportunity

[SlashdotOgre]

I believe they missed a big opportunity by not delivering a Verizon LTE capable phone in the $350-$450 range. There is a significant portion of users who are still grandfathered on to "unlimited" data that are approaching upgrade time (e.g., early adopters who bought VZW's first LTE phone, the HTC Thunderbolt back in Dec 2010). There's a large market of people that would choose an unsubsidized LTE Nexus 4 which lets them keep unlimited data for that price. The competitive subsidized phones (i.e. GS3 or Note 2) would only be about $200 or so less but would cost the user their unlimited data plan which a lot of people value more than $200.

Re:Missed Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

you DO realize there's a whole world OUTSIDE the united states of freedom?

Re:Missed Opportunity

[darjen]

I'm also on Verizon and even though I am no longer unlimited, I was still really hoping for another LTE nexus. I guess I will probably be hanging on to my galaxy nexus for awhile longer. If anyone wants to go ahead and say it's not a nexus, that's fine, I really don't care too much. At least it's something with stock Android. I'm happy enough with it.

Re:Missed Opportunity

[fruity_pebbles]

I believe they missed a big opportunity by not delivering a Verizon LTE capable phone in the $350-$450 range. There is a significant portion of users who are still grandfathered on to "unlimited" data that are approaching upgrade time (e.g., early adopters who bought VZW's first LTE phone, the HTC Thunderbolt back in Dec 2010). There's a large market of people that would choose an unsubsidized LTE Nexus 4 which lets them keep unlimited data for that price. The competitive subsidized phones (i.e. GS3 or Note 2) would only be about $200 or so less but would cost the user their unlimited data plan which a lot of people value more than $200.

The HTC Thunderbolt was released in March, 2011. However, your comment is still valid - a lot of people who bought a Thunderbolt then will become eligible for a phone upgrade in November, 2012. A Nexus 4 that runs on Verizon's LTE network would be an attractive alternative.

Re:Missed Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't release anything on Verizon's network (or any other CDMA network incl. Sprint's) without the express approval of the operators (Verizon). With GSM networks, only the SIM is tied to the network and can be controlled by the operator. Put it into any unlocked GSM phone and it will work, whether the operator wants that or not.

With CDMA, the phone itself needs to be registered to the network. Good luck with Verizon approving that.

So, to it sum up in plain terms:
CDMA = backwards thinking and potentially evil
GSM = freedom

Re:Missed Opportunity

[SandwhichMaster]

I was hoping to purchase a Nexus 4, and was very disappointed that I can't get one for Sprint. After a little research, I came across this article explaining the lack of LTE: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569688/why-nexus-4-does-not-have-4g-lte

In short, blame your greedy carrier.

Re:Missed Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Came here to say this. There's no point in getting an "open" Nexus if that means I have to trade in the ability to make phone calls. Verizon still has the best network from a technical standpoint and regardless of how shitty they have become from a service standpoint, I'm not going rush out and buy a phone that effectively stops me from making calls where I once could.

Re:Missed Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are failing to see the big picture.
Verizon - potential market maybe 100 million, max.
3G HPSA+ - potential market 6 billion. Thats 6000 million.

Lack of compatability with US only standards is not an issue in the gloabl market. In fact, it's a benefit. Adding 50 euros to the price of a product to service a small section of the population in one country is a liability.

And remember, all your phones are made in China/Taiwan/Korea.

Oh, that and this: I pay 7 euros/10 dollars a month for 6Mbps 3G with a 1GB data limit, which I have never hit. I'm not paying 400 euros for a phone.

Very good price

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the market for a new phone, and the following youtube.com video has convinced me to give the Nexus 4 a try:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66-4uMQqerA

$299 (8gb) bought outright is an amazing deal for phone of that caliber.

Why not the other competitors?
iPhone5: Price, to buy outright will cost minimum $800, or $199 + plan. iOS is getting a little dated, IMO.
Win8: Poor Google app integration. Sadly I need good Google Bus. software.

I do like the competitor's phones, but it all is about peronal preference and compromise. For example, the Nexus 4 is lacking removable battery(?), LTE, and SD slot, but because these are not critical to me it puts it into the "go buy" zone.

I'm not a fanboi, I've had an iPhone and Android before and liked both.

Paving the way for unlocked handsets

[AlphaEcho35]

I hope to see this as a continuing trend in unlocked, unsubsidized offerings. The Galaxy Nexus was a pretty good deal for $400 (then eventually $350) for an unlocked device with that kind of hardware. Now with an even lower starting cost of $300 for the 8GB Nexus 4 and even better specs than its predecessor, Google has got to be putting some pressure on the wireless carriers. If I had to pick, I'd still take a phone with Google in control than any of the carriers. At least you own the device (as opposed to basically renting it on contract) without all the bloat and crapware that's usually included.

Not much left in the article

[sl4shd0rk]

Most of it pasted into the submission. Still not sure if TFA is supposed to be accolades, gripes, or just web-hits.

Open or Controlled?

[Bob9113]

There can no longer be any doubt: a Nexus device is about openness first and foremost.

By giving us cheap and open devices, Google is making sure it's in control â" not the carriers.

This is even more true when people are using the internet on a device sold and maintained by Google. Mountain View gets to slurp up more of our data, show us more location-aware ads, and drive adoption of its services. Maybe in this case, freedom really isnâ(TM)t free

OK, so which is it? Is it open, or is it controlled by Google? Either of those things might be fine in a given context, but I think the article's author might not realize they are contradictory. Open means I am in control, for better and for worse.

Re:Open or Controlled?

[metrometro]

Google has control over it's own destiny to make new products and services. That requires a competitive mobile arena with low barriers to entry. Google's bet is that its services will be good enough to win in an open(ish) market. The carriers want to win the only way they know how: spectrum monopoly.

Google's approach is better for consumers.

Re:Open or Controlled?

[Bob9113]

I think you may have hit reply on the wrong post -- I was questioning whether the device is open or controlled.

you have no control in the US

[kenorland]

In the US, carriers have full control over which devices they allow on their networks, and even if they didn't, the lack of a single wireless standard means that effectively you are locked in anyway. We need uniform wireless standards and a requirement to let people move freely between carriers.

Re:you have no control in the US

[compro01]

It's not the standard (Everyone is headed to LTE), it's the frequencies. LTE in the USA is scattered over 8 different bands.

Re:you have no control in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

That is only true on the carriers that run CDMA networks (Sprint, Verizon Wireless, MetroPCS, Cricket, etc.) All the other carriers don't care about what devices you use on their network.

Re:you have no control in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

GSM networks are required by standard to allow any GSM device. A carrier cannot ban devices that were originally used on another carrier.

The carrier lock is there to keep customers LEAVING a carrier, not to keep them coming TO a carrier.

Re:you have no control in the US

[Solandri]

The lack of a standard in the U.S. (and Japan/Korea) is what gave us 3G speeds. The GSM standard uses TDMA - basically each phone takes turns talking to the tower. That works ok for voice, but sucks for data - even if your phone isn't communicating, it still eats up its timeslice.

CDMA allows every phone to transmit simultaneously. Each phone transmits using an orthogonal code - kinda like writing on a sheet of paper, while someone else writes on the same sheet rotated 90 degrees from your writing. If some phones aren't communicating, that decreases noise floor thus allowing higher bandwidth use by the phones which are communicating. That's why the CDMA carriers rolled out 3G service before the GSM carriers. Ramping up data bandwidth on CDMA was trivial. GSM on the other hand was stuck with its timeslices. GSM had to graft on an extra radio using a non-TDMA spec in order to compete with CDMA (which incidentally is the reason you can talk and use data at the same time on GSM - it has two separate radios for these functions vs CDMA's one). If the US hadn't allowed CDMA to compete with GSM, we would've all been stuck at 2G speeds simply because it was normal everywhere, and there would've been no competitive pressure to improve it.

That's right - CDMA won. If you use HSPA+ on AT&T or T-mobile, you're using wideband CDMA. GSM simply integrated it into its spec, resulting in people not knowing that it's CDMA and thinking that it's still vanilla GSM. The only part of GSM which is still TDMA is its voice comms.

LTE uses OFDMA, which functions similarly to CDMA except in the frequency domain. It requires more processing power than CDMA to untangle the overlapping signals from each individual phone. Processing power which until recently consumed too many Watts for use on a mobile platform like a phone.

Re:you have no control in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be true for Sprint and others which are using "us native standard"(I do not remember name) but not for GSM carriers.
What is the problem with switching from AT&T to T-Mobile ? 20s for SIM card change.
I do not understand why LTE is deal breaker for some. Is your phone the one and only internet connection?
when I am traveling (over Europe mostly but sometimes US too) I am using one GSM modem/wifi router (Huawei E5830)
which fits my shirt pocket. And that is all.
My phone and laptop, and my wile laptop are sharing one mobile internet connection by default.
I am using local prepaid internet access sim cards. Bye-bye data roaming charges.

When at home/office/fiendly place my phone switches to local WIFI. build in 3G/4G/5G/... is last resort when everything else fails.
But I am not an Social Media addict. it is enough t check email one or few times per day.

Re:you have no control in the US

[phoenix_rizzen]

Not true for GSM networks.

All you need is a phone that supports the GSM bands the carrier uses, and slip in a SIM card from that carrier, and the phone will work just fine.

It's the SIM card that controls access to the network, not the phone.

Re:you have no control in the US

[slinches]

That's really only true for the US CDMA carriers. They don't use SIM cards and getting them to activate a device they didn't sell is very difficult and would be unlikely to be fully functional anyway. The GSM carriers (mainly AT&T and T-Mobile) have very good compatibility with the exception of the 3G HSPA+ channels, but there are several pentaband 3G phones that fully support both networks.

Re:you have no control in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

GSM on the other hand was stuck with its timeslices. GSM had to graft on an extra radio using a non-TDMA spec in order to compete with CDMA (which incidentally is the reason you can talk and use data at the same time on GSM - it has two separate radios for these functions vs CDMA's one).

Nope. Virtually not a single statement above is true.

You should listen to a few less Qualcomm shills.

Re:you have no control in the US

[kenorland]

The lack of a standard in the U.S. (and Japan/Korea) is what gave us 3G speeds.

HSPA+ and LTE development and deployment was not dependent on CDMA deployment in the US: people understood CDMA perfectly fine whether Sprint built a network around it or not. Furthermore, nowhere did I say that the US should have standardized on GSM, I just said that it should have picked a standard, that could have been CDMA.

Nevertheless, in the real world, wireless data in major European nations has always been cheaper and faster than in the US even despite using supposedly inferior technology. Today, even with Verizon LTE, you get 6 Mbps if you're lucky. That's worse than you get with HSPA+ in many places in Europe.

Re:you have no control in the US

[kenorland]

GSM carriers in the US can (and do) discriminate based on devices. For example, some Verizon GSM-capable devices simply cannot be activated on AT&T because AT&T doesn't want it. They also charge different rates depending on whether their system thinks your phone is a smart phone, a dumb phone, or a tablet. So, just because they use a SIM card and run on the right frequencies doesn't mean it will work.

Re:you have no control in the US

[kenorland]

US GSM carriers also use your IMEI number to determine whether they want your phone on their network and what rates to charge you. It is not as simple as just inserting a SIM card.

Re:you have no control in the US

[kenorland]

Frequencies are part of "wireless standards".

Re:you have no control in the US

[slinches]

I wasn't trying to imply that it's an ideal situation, but it isn't impossible one either. AT&T will activate unlocked phones as far as I can tell, but they may require some convincing to unlock a device (even after the contract has expired). If you're looking for a more accommodating provider, T-Mobile has been relatively good about supporting unlocked phones. I know this firsthand since I switched to T-Mobile primarily because of the availability of lower priced plans without the subsidy.

Re:it's about wrestling control away from carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's on Verizon. They pulled google apps for their own when they had the last Nexus did they not?

Nice looking tablet at a nice price.

[gid]

Thank god it actually has front facing speakers---I might actually be able to hear it without cupping my hands around the back of it. Shame the 32GB upgrade is $100 with no SD card slot, although for what I'd use it for 16GB should be enough as long as I don't store too much music or to many movies on it.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Nerdfest]

Control? As faras I'm aware, you do not need to have you device talk to Google *at all*. Google wants an open web so they can push ads. They trade services for personal information, but you're not required to use their services. MS and Apple want what AOL had, and I hope they both end up the same way.

Open to Store on Google Drive

[obscuro]

The absence of a MicroSD slot is a big signal that this device is meant to drive more usage of online storage. It's a portal into GoogleDrive just as Amazon's products are portals into their storefront and storage. The devices are beautiful and they have enough storage available to strike a balance. I, for one, am more tolerant and trusting of Google than of phone carriers (which isn't saying much). We have all kinds of options for open hardware. This isn't totally open, it's a relatively fair balance which is to be expected from Google.

My company, Otixo.com, was created to give people (like iPad users) more freedom in situations like this by using WebDAV. It doesn't replace the MicroSD slot but at least it gives you the choice of any storage provider including any server with FTP or WebDAV....

I'm looking at the Nexus 4 to replace my aging HTC Inspire from AT&T. If I choose it, it will be a hell of a lot more open than what I've got.

Fantastic!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all they have to do is get rid of Google and I'm sold!

Everything

[Kludge]

What has openness got to do with a micro sd slot!?

Additional storage slots give people the ability to store stuff on their own devices, not in Google's cloud. They give people the ability to store data rather than having to retrieve it (and advertising) over a carrier's network connection repeatedly.

I was going to buy a Nexus, but no SD slot, no sale. Sorry.

Re:Everything

[Albanach]

Oh come on, 16GB should be enough for anybody.

Re:Everything

[Cutting_Crew]

what are they going to do next? disallow Wi-Fi so i cant store my stuff on other devices via my own wireless network? Just because you dont have a storage slot get on a wireless network and do what you want.

Re:Everything

[ArcherB]

Oh come on, 16GB should be enough for anybody.

Unless you are storing HD movies on your device, it really should be. Apps are relatively small and 16BG is five non-stop days of music at 320kbps MP3's without hearing the same song twice.

Re:Everything

[Anonymous Coward]

What advertising? I have a Nexus S (on 4.1.2) and never, ever see ads anywhere. Granted, I do not run "Free" games but I'll see more ads visiting Slashdot once than I've ever seen on my phone.

Re:Everything

[Albanach]

Whooosh.

Re:Everything

[spire3661]

I REALLY hope you are being sarcastic. . I want to load up full resolution movies without having to convert because of SPACE restrictions. Nexus 7 plays 1080p jsut fine, but good luck actually storing more then 2 movies at that resolution. (yes i realize the nexus 7 is 720p ish, again, i dont want to to have to process, transcode or maintain separate libraries at different resolutions.)

Re:Everything

[homes32]

Oh come on, 16k should be enough for anybody.

fixed that for ya.

Re:Everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooosh.

It breaks RFC 1337 for a poster to self-tender a woosh.

Cf.

1.3.0 Poster SHOULD NOT woosh replies to their own posts
1.3.1 Scoring heuristics SHOULD reduce putative humor score if a violation of 1.3.0 is encountered

Sorry, dude. I'm guessing this was an honest mistake. However, it seems that you need to lose some of those "Funny" mod points in order for Slashdot to be as RFC compliant as possible at this stage.

Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Headline should say - Bait at all costs, the illusion of openness.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[muon-catalyzed]

Apple.. high margin on hardware.
MS.. high margin on OS.
Google.. high margin on ads shown on subsidized hardware plus free OS.


Google model is so disrupting here, MS and Apple do not know it yet, but they are history.

Why?

[Kludge]

I don't know about anyone else, but I think that the size of the Nexus 4 is too big at 4.7

You worried that it will make a bulge in your strechpants?
Buy an "iPhone" or one of hundreds of other smaller handsets.

Re:Why?

[tlhIngan]

Buy an "iPhone" or one of hundreds of other smaller handsets.

You mean craptacular, right? If you want a GOOD android phone, they're all huge screens. A sub-4" flagship phone does not exist - the only ones are crap ass ones with little memory, poor resolution, a slow processor, or all three. And they run Froyo. Gingerbread if you're lucky.

It seems Android has stratified - 4" and smaller screen - crappy "free" smartphones. Larger than 4" and you can get some nice phones that show off Android.

Re:Why?

[Tukz]

There is a few good 4" android phones.
Most of them spotting a dual core, which is sufficient.

You probably won't find a quad core 4", but do you really need it?
Take a look at these phones, as an example:

Sony Xperia P
HTC Desire X
Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini (coming soon)

All phones running 4.x, with a dual core 1Ghz+.

Though, most of them DO have "poor" resolution, compared to their big brothers.
Not that that really bothers me, but it seemed a concern of yours.

Personally I refuse to go above 4" on my phone.
Currently waiting for SGSIII Mini to hit the market, unless something better hits first.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash: Better hardware requires more battery, more hardware requires more space, bigger battery requires more space.

You want a high performance phone without the bulk added by a large battery? I hope you enjoy dismal battery life.

Re:Why?

[Anonymatt]

Yeah.

I think huge android phones are a manifestation of a collective iphone inferiority complex.

No LTE = sad face

[MetalliQaZ]

This is a deal breaker. Who in 2012/2013 would buy a cutting edge smartphone without LTE?

Re:No LTE = sad face

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who isn't using Verizon.

IE, the rest of the world.

Re:No LTE = sad face

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of this:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569688/why-nexus-4-does-not-have-4g-lte

Re:No LTE = sad face

[squiggleslash]

Anyone on T-Mobile?

Seriously though:

- Yes, I agree it sucks.

- The LTE roll-outs are just beginning and right now we have a mixture of "standards" as to how to roll-out LTE. Over time, I suspect the big four US operators will converge on a single standard, covering two or three different spectrum bands (700, 800, and AWS), and adjust their networks accordingly, but it's not happened yet.

- HSPA+ is about as fast as LTE is, in practice, right now.

I'm very, very, disappointed by the progress of LTE thus far, but I have to say in this case it looks like Google are simply acknowledging the crappy state of the US market. Hopefully by next year, things will have progressed a little.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[pentadecagon]

What exactly do you want? Those things come with an unlocked boot loader. The complete source of the software is available. Everybody can modify it freely. What else could Google possibly do?

Nexus has never been truly open

[richtaur]

I've had a Nexus One since January 2010, bought directly from Google's website. I bought it because it was supposed to be a naked install of Android and be fully open. However, it's got a Facebook application I cannot uninstall (among others). When I think "open" I think of full super user privileges. None of this proprietary uninstallable application crap.

So basically, their definition of open is different from mine.

Re:Nexus has never been truly open

[mspohr]

The Nexus One has an unlocked bootloader so you can install (and uninstall) anything you want (including a completely "bare" Cyanogenmod) if you'll take a few minutes to google-it.

Re:Nexus has never been truly open

[Thantik]

Ice Cream Sandwich added the ability to disable those applications entirely from the Applications menu. And even if you have root, and you uninstall with something like titanium backup, you're not gaining any benefits over the ICS method of just disabling it, because the APK is stored in the /system partition, which doesn't share space with the rest of your applications (which means you're not gaining any usable space unless you repartition /system...and lets face it...who does that?).

Google is laying a smack down

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

You can quibble all you want about details like not having LTE, I mean really, most markets don't deliver full LTE speeds anyways, and most data plans are not going to let you take full advantage of LTE speeds by capping out at some absurdly low amount (maybe its just Canada, but our telcom sucks). Also lack of Micro SD slot and low capacity models is hard to accept. But the reality is that Google is setting a precedent that an unlocked phones should no longer cost $800+.

Its about time someone like Google smacked down the cost of unlocked handsets. We all know Apple makes 2 - 4x profit on an iDevice, its time for a company to set more realistic expectations of what profit on a mobile device should be.

Same goes for their tablets, considerably cheaper than iPads, and if Google (re Samsung) starts offering more features for less money, like uber-high resolutions, Google will be setting the trend for pricing of ALL mobile devices in the very near future.

Its a shame Microsoft chose to follow Apple's pricing and marketing strategy, I think this will hurt Microsoft. When the Lumina 920 is more expensive than an iPhone 5, and Microsoft choose to lock their devices to specific carriers on roll out, this is a huge decision for me not to even bother with the Windows Phone platform. Had Microsoft offered a "Surface" phone, unlocked for $300 - $400, I might have considered.

So, in spite of limited storage and no LTE, the phone is good enough for most people and the unlocked price is attractive to get a near top end Android device. If you feel you can't live without LTE, then enjoy your $800+ phones and your 3 year data plans.

Re:Google is laying a smack down

[Anonymous Coward]

But the reality is that Google is setting a precedent that an unlocked phones should no longer cost $800+.

Solely by setting a precedent that hardware should be sold at a loss or break-even at best, making it up elsewhere. That only works as long as the ad money is flowing. It's not sustainable.

We all know Apple makes 2 - 4x profit on an iDevice

Say what now? Their corporate gross margin is about 40%. Even if they had zero other business expenditures, that's less than 2x net profit.

Google will be setting the trend for pricing of ALL mobile devices in the very near future.

Unlikely. Virtually no one has the boatloads of cash needed to run the Google gambit. All it will do is force some vendors out of the market and start another race to the bottom. Whether that's ultimately good for consumers remains to be seen.

Re:Google is laying a smack down

[Scowler]

LTE has very good latency, which is probably a more important advantage over HSPA+ than peak bandwidth.

Re:Google is laying a smack down

[Rich0]

Yup. Would I prefer an SD slot? Sure! Would I spend $300 more for a comparable phone with an SD slot but whose vendor is unlikely to release updated device drivers for the next 1.5 year's worth of OS updates? I think I'll pass on that.

Bullshit. Explain the whole MTP thing then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be LESS open, sure. But openness at all costs? I'm calling bullshit on that one. Example: MTP for connection in android 3.x,4.x.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[MachDelta]

Your choices are actually:
Apple's hardware + Apple's OS + Apple approved software
or
LG's hardware + Whatever ROM you like + Whatever apps you like

No SD card is a fuck you from Google to Microsoft

[johnny0099]

And hats off to them. Read more here:

http://www.reviewlagoon.com/?p=763

Re:No SD card is a fuck you from Google to Microso

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's a "fuck you" from Google to its customers.

Re:it's about wrestling control away from carriers

[Githaron]

I think that is more because of Verizon than Google. Google had to make compromises to get the last Nexus on Verizon.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

to be fair to Apple, they tried open before. And it ended with them nearly dying. People say they are too closed, I agree, but they have a reason to be worried that someone else might be able to do better on their devices. Today, it's an alternative app store, tomorrow an API-level clone of iOS that is sold for %50 of their phones.

I'm glad for you, Americans..

[Rexdude]

Perhaps Google may succeed in putting the idea of a fully owned phone into the minds of the general American public. We in India and Europe have long since been accustomed to buying cellphones off the shelf from the manufacturer's shop without any contract or any carrier crippling the internals.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Google model is so disrupting here, MS and Apple do not know it yet, but they are history.

Not for me. I would much rather pay more for fewer/zero ads than have some device where the business model depends entirely on squeezing as much money out of me post-purchase as possible. I have an iPhone, and aside from the new update to Skype which added ads, none of my apps show ads. I am more than happy to pay a couple bucks to avoid ads on a mobile device where screen real estate, battery, network data, and processing power is at a premium.

agreed

[drinkypoo]

The lack of storage is what will keep me away. It's ridiculous. Come on, Google. Where I live, cloud storage is effectively unusable, you insensitive clods!

Re:agreed

[Emetophobe]

What's really odd is that the Nexus 4 is based off of the Optimus G, which comes with 32GB of storage. Why wouldn't the Nexus 4 have 32GB aswell?

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Android's been out for four or five years and hasn't generated anywhere close to comparable revenues to Apple. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

The complete source of the software is available

Ooops except the blobs that make the hardware work. Hardware like the modem.

What else could Google possibly do?

Work with a group wuch as OpenMoko to make a truly open phone?

I'll wait for Firefox OS

[thetoadwarrior]

Firefox OS might kinda suck for apps for the awhile but then again so did Android and Firefox will at least really be open where as Google is just open enough to lure you in to snoop on your personal data. Quite frankly I wasn't impressed with the upgrade process or how long Google took even to fix some pretty annoying bugs in Android.

Unfortunately it does feel like Windows for mobiles. Linux hits it big on a consumer computing device for once and it's been less than stellar.

Presbyopia

[Kupfernigk]

Learn some physiology of vision. As we age, our lenses lose adaptation, so we cannot change the distance of focus easily. Contact lenses do not fix this; in fact they are less use than glasses. My resting focal point is about a metre. This means that I can drive, walk around etc. with no problems, but I find it hard to use a laptop screen under 15 inches. If I had contacts to see closer, I would need glasses when walking around or I would bump into things. So I would need two sets of equipment to get the same utility I get now with one cheap pair of reading glasses (actually I have 4 sets, left in the house, office and so on so I don't forget them.)

Re:Presbyopia

[mcgrew]

Learn some physiology of vision. As we age, our lenses lose adaptation, so we cannot change the distance of focus easily.

That's because the eye's lens hardens with age. The muscles that focus still work, but they can't contract that hard lens like they could when it was still young and soft. Get your original lens replaced with a CrystaLens, which sits on struts and is focused by the eye's natural muscles and you'll have 20/25 or better at all distances; I have one and my vision is now better than 20/20 (about 20/16, compared to the previously nearsighted 20/400).

Re:Presbyopia

[h4rr4r]

Contact lenses do fix this. One eye for distance one eye for close up or progressive lenses in both.

Go see an eye doctor.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[thetoadwarrior]

Because Google doesn't care *that* much about selling apps. They're happy know everything you're doing on your phone which helps their primary business which is advertising.

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough*wrong*cough*

IS-95 and its successor, CDMA2000 are both "Code Division" air interfaces. And they thus share some concepts of "Code Division" on the air interface with UMTS's WCDMA - but that's where it's stops. UMTS WCDMA is really based on FOMA from NTT/DOCOMO, which shares little in common with IS-95/CMDA2000.

The UMTS/WCDMA architecture scales signficantly better than IS-95/WCDMA - which is why GSM 3G networks consistently beat the crap out of Qualcomm CDMA networks. Additionally, your statement about everyone transmitting at once? Wrong again. While its possible to do (and was done on earlier UMTS implementations) modern GSM 3G networks use scheduled resources. Each device in a HSPA state has a dedicated control channel, and their transmis receive time is scheduled...

Also wrong is the part about 2G being used for voice communications. In 3G GSM systems, WCDMA is also the air interface for voice.... Which is why can make a voice call and use data on 3G GSM networks, which you can't on Qualcomm CDMA networks. GSM won.

CDMA lost. That is, Qualcomm's CDMA lost. The succesor to Qualcomm CDMA, UMB ("Ultra Mobile Broadband") also lost. Nobody wanted it. When verizon pulled out (who is majority owned by Vodafone - a GSM carrier) and went the GSM 4G route, LTE, Qualcomm gave up and jumped on the LTE bandwagon.

You're like 99% wrong dude. Read some wikipedia articles or talk to those of us who work in the industry, but don't just assume because one stanard shares the acronym of another standard that they're the same thing. They're not, far from it.

Re:it's about wrestling control away from carriers

[thetoadwarrior]

That's an astroturf if ever I heard one. Android is only open for hardware companies. It's not that open for the vast majority of consumers who are not going to root their phone. That just is not an option for most people.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[fredprado]

So?

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[larry bagina]

They're in the hole $13.25 billion for Motorola Mobility (12.5 billion purchase price plus .75 billion in losses the past 2 quarters). And out of all that those patents, they got one injunction for push mail against Apple, but only in Germany.

Yeah but...

[RevSpaminator]

The real test of openness, can we root and reload?

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jailbreaking an iPhone is more or less the same amount of work as installing a custom ROM. Then you can run whatever apps you like on an iPhone too.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[DragonWriter]

Android's been out for four or five years and hasn't generated anywhere close to comparable revenues to Apple.

Just by eating Apple's usage share, its constrained Apple's ability to generate revenue. To be disruptive, Android doesn't actually need to generate any direct revenue of its own as long as it constrains the ability of other mobile OS's to serve as revenue generators.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Scowler]

I disagree with "MS... high margin on OS". If you think that, then you do not understand Microsoft's business model.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple.. high margin on hardware.
MS.. high margin on OS.
Google.. high margin on ads shown on subsidized hardware plus free OS.

Interesting. Let's break this down a little bit. Unfortunately I don't have numbers for hardware cost, but based loosely on BOM figures from tablet devices reported in the past (from HP), let's say the cost of hardware/assembly/distribution/advertising/etc. is in the $300-400 range per handset. So Google is either making a minor profit or taking a small loss.

OS development benefits from an existing code base, plus contributions can come from multiple parties, and ongoing development costs can be shared between Google and manufacturers. While certainly costly, this setup has a huge advantage over Apple's and MS's approach.

Hardware and software costs combined then perhaps results in a small loss for Google (or perhaps a tiny profit, but not enough for a heavyweight like Google for this reason alone). So in this sense the development costs are subsidized, but not in the same way or same scale that carrier phones are subsidized, and they make all that money back and then some through high cost plans. Then, Google most certainly will make money on ads (no surprise).

The Apple approach has a disadvantage in the long run due to higher development costs. It works fine now with legions of consumers willing to endow Apple with high profit margins (2x?), but this approach should be decreasingly lucrative as time goes on, reducing the cost of an iPhone to the ~$400 area.

The MS approach sucks because both hardware and software sides are gonna have to make a profit... hence Windows phone prices comparable to iPhone prices. That's a really hard sell. Even in the optimistic case that MS phones catch on, the approach seems far less sustainable than the others.

So assuming this market exists long enough in its current form to reach a steady state, the Google approach seems the most promising. At some point both Apple and MS will have to reduce phone prices, and rely on advertising to generate revenue. And in this space, it is Google that should come out the winner.

One variable however is consumers' expectations on how frequently they expect a renewed handset. If I want a new phone say every year, Google would have to start charging more while MS and Apple are good with maintaining their current pricing strategy.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Rich0]

Well, a few issues with that analogy:
1. Difficulty to jailbreak - for many Android phones I'd agree with you 100%, though at various points in time some are easier or harder. For the Nexus line, however, I have to disagree - jailbreaking is vendor-supported via a standard tool that works out of the box and on every OS update.
2. Whatever ROM you like - you get a lot more ability to modify the OS on any rooted Android phone, since the OS is open source. It is true that people do modify iOS, but that isn't nearly as flexible.
3. Whatever apps you like - agree, though Android does make it legit to build software without paying for the SDK, for what that's worth.

Hope I don't need a phone contract

[Nyder]

If i buy a tablet.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[saleenS281]

Really? So how would one go about jailbreaking an iPhone 5? I previously had a droid-x, bought an iphone-5, used it for about a week, and returned it. The walled garden, plus distinct lack of google app support made it a non-starter.

vs Galaxy Note 2

[storkus]

I just bought a Galaxy Note 2 last week; now that the Nexus 4 is released, it has made me really question whether I should return the GN2 for the N4. There are a few reasons I decided against it:

1. I *LOVE*LOVE*LOVE* the 5.5" true RGB AMOLED screen! Sure at least one person here is whining 4.7" is too big, but the GN2 fits in my pocket fine, though holding it one-handed can be tough without a case (it's slippery like most modern phones). In any case, this is the #1 reason I bought it and I think I'll have a hard time buying something smaller in the future.

2. All (recent?) Nexus devices have no SD? What's up with that? I agree with everyone else, this is sort of a deal-breaker, and the main reason I never bought the Galaxy Nexus. I do *NOT* want to have to store my crap in the cloud.

3. Not really Nexus, but vs LG, HTC, etc, no removable battery is a total deal-breaker PERIOD.

4. GN2 has 4 cores and LTE built-in, even on the T-Mobile USA version (which future-proofs it from a network standpoint); only the "international" (unbranded) version is lacking it. That said, unless you're tethering, I don't think HSPA+ 21Mbps is going to be that bad unless you're in a fringe area, which LTE handles much better, supposedly (and LTE-Advanced should do better still). Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, and "international" GN2 all have pentaband radios as well, meaning they should support GSM and HSPA+ on every band in the world except 12cm (2600 MHz used for Sprint/Clearwire here in the USA, also Telstra down under according to Wikipedia) and 700 MHz (Verizon and AT&T in USA, but they're only putting LTE there so it doesn't matter).

Now, the one iffy part is Nexus is, by definition, open--what the whole article is about--and the GN2 is not. Being Samsung, rooting should be easy on the GN2, and with Exynos open sourced (still a bit in shock over that, but not as much as Broadcom and the Raspberry-Pi's chip!), hopefully CyanogenMod will be available soon, though I'll probably wait until the warranty goes first.

One last thing: I'm coming from my N900 and I'm still not sure I'll be selling it. I've read numerous times that Android appears clunky compared to Maemo (which is Debian-based), though Jelly Bean is better: after playing for a while, I agree, but it's certainly not horrible unless you're a dev, I suppose. My main worry with Android is security: that you can't revoke app permissions in stock Android and you pretty much have to root. It's not a huge problem for me because I don't trust carrying around Google Wallet and NFC along with lots of personal stuff without much better security, but it's painfully clear that they want to track you: I mean, the Accuweather widgit on the main window won't even update unless you turn tracking on!

I know this is overly-long, but hope it helps someone.

Mike

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[vlueboy]

Android's been out for four or five years and hasn't generated anywhere close to comparable revenues to Apple. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Dates! Released june 2007 the iphone fits that date description.
Android, OTOH turned *exactly* 4 years a few days ago on Oct 22nd Unsubsidized prices are only starting to make it affordable for entry level prepaid markets, a death blow against nokia because of the feature / price ratios sought by the masses. Just you wait. People don't like phones without touchscreens and with horrible feature-phone GUIs anymore because Android can be had for $90 without contract. In first world lands, Android is the death by 1000 paper cuts to feature phones and iPhones.

Broadly speaking, Android hardware and features is to iPhones what Linux Wintels are to Sun Unix Boxes.
Matter of fact, try and find true bluetooth support on an iPad and see where the Apple mentality is failing. I found you can't share files via BT with an iPad owner without jailbreaking. In the android world, BT allows small phone shops to cheaply do the magic address book transfers when you upgrade to a newer Android phone from an older one. It seems pro equipment / software and sync cables cost them money and training.

Apple may be profitable, but at some point wallets win out. Android

So where is the sd port ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opennness without sdport looks strange to me.

Re:So where is the sd port ?

[slim]

Opennness without sdport looks strange to me.

And where's the PCMCIA slot? The floppy disk drive?

I think this is akin to when the first laptops without CD drives appeared. Yes, it's a tradeoff, but it turns out you can do without.

Use an OTG cable

[Pyst]

For those concerned about lack of storage space why not use an OTG (On The Go) cable using a thumb drive? You can pick a cable up on the cheap. I know it's not the most convenient way but it's better than nothing. Personally I would prefer having a microsd slot but I'm willing to overlook it, for now.

Re:This Slashdot post is brought to you by Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would rather pay a high margin on hardware then subject myself to more advertising.

happy to see this after the yakjuxw...

[fredthomsen]

happy to see this after the yakjuxw...