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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."
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.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I presume "open" refers to the software stack, not the hardware.
There Can Be Only One...
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...
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Please help metamoderate.
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?
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.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
It's also not good for business.
Monopolies break capitalism.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
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.
We`re all equal
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.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
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!
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.
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.
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?
More Twoson than Cupertino
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
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?
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.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
After the Davids win, they grow into Goliaths.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
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?
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.
Linux O Muerte!
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.
> 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.
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.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
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.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
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.
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
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.
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.
Good luck actually getting it.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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.
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.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
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.
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.
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).
You can't check code into the Kernel repo either. There are always gatekeepers.
No one understood the reference to the first iPod by Taco?!?
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
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.
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.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
Score:-1, Didn't Get It
Too bad the mods don't know their slashdot history.
0 1 - just my two bits
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.
...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.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The question is where and when. At 3 AM in Times Square maybe. At 6 PM in a industrial zone, probably not.
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.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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?
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.
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.
Good-bye
Some people spend a lot of time traveling, often in ways that don't allow for easy long term charging.
Everything will be taken away from you.
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.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
*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.
I haven't noticed any of these problems with Google Play. I'm not a heavy user though.
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.
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.
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.
It's a $50 upgrade, not $100. Still expensive, but pretty much in line with other android phones.