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Google Partners With HTC For Latest Nexus Tablet

Posted by samzenpus on from the team-up dept.

Rambo Tribble writes The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is partnering with HTC for its upcoming 9-inch Nexus tablet. Shunning larger manufacturers like Samsung, speculation is that Google is trying to mitigate the effects of market dominance by one firm. When asked for comment, a Google spokesperson only responded, "There's room for many partners to do well and to innovate with Android."

74 comments

  1. Uh... by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google Nexus products so far:

    1 by HTC
    3 by Samsung
    2 by LG
    2 by Asus

    This is hardly a new thing.

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:Uh... by MetalliQaZ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This. From the beginning, Google expressed its intention to spread around the Nexus partners so that several companies would get the experience and sales boost. They want a healthy, open platform with lots of innovation. This is how you beat Apple.

      --
      "Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
    2. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The Nexus 7 sold well for Asus. If HTC makes an updated 7" tablet I think it would sell well.

    3. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      This. From the beginning, Google expressed its intention to spread around the Nexus partners so that several companies would get the experience and sales boost. They want a healthy, open platform with lots of innovation. This is how you beat Apple.

      Google beat Apple at smartphones? That's so 2012.

    4. Re:Uh... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      "They want a healthy, open platform with lots of innovation. "

      Then why do they allow cellphone carriers to bake in their crap to the point that you cant delete it. Fricking AT&T installs so much damn crap on the HTC ONE M8 that is baked into the rom that it's disgusting, coupled with the craptastic HTC Sense that is also forced upon you and you have a Worse experience for the end user.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    5. Re:Uh... by MetalliQaZ · · Score: 1

      Open platform. They don't dictate how the phones get software. I'm sure they would prefer to let the market decide that bloatware is bad.

      --
      "Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
    6. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What 'market'?

    7. Re:Uh... by MaryAnnEvans · · Score: 2

      I'm sure they would prefer to let the market decide that bloatware is bad.

      Because that worked oh so well with Windows PCs.

    8. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      open your eyes , and look at future !

    9. Re:Uh... by HermMunster · · Score: 1

      I have several 10" tablets. I have one 7" tablet. The 7" tablet is about perfect. It's the Nexus 7. The issue with the Nexus 7 is the poor camera and lack of flash. The problem with the 10" tablet is the weight.

      --
      You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
    10. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And here I am trying to bypass the "this device isn't supported" message on the app store to get the AT&T apps on my unlocked phone.

    11. Re:Uh... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      I like my Nexus 10. I could never see myself owning a 7" tablet. What would I use it for? It would only be 1.5" larger than my phone anyway.

      I can see why iPhone owners like the 7" tablet - it definitely fills a niche of still being portable but being much more functional than a phone. However, I think the solution to that is to just make the phone bigger since I carry it in a belt case anyway, and it doesn't hurt that I have long fingers.

      I think the 10" tablet is also a potential replacement for a laptop if you add a bluetooth keyboard.

  2. Ecch ... by gstoddart · · Score: 1

    I hope to hell it's the standard Android ecosystem (which it should be if it's a Nexus branded one).

    HTC's desktop software is complete crap from what I've been able to see of it with my phone.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Ecch ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In order to carry the Nexus label it has to be stock android with no "frills".

    2. Re:Ecch ... by flu1d · · Score: 5, Funny

      Anytime I run desktop software on my phone it seems to be very buggy no matter who the manufacturer is.

    3. Re:Ecch ... by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Funny. OK, not really.

      I specifically mean the HTC Sync Manager software. In my personal experience with it ... it's a pile of crap.

      I would hate for that to spill into a Nexus tablet, because it might prevent me from owning one when my current Nexus 7 gets a little long in the tooth.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:Ecch ... by mschwanke97402 · · Score: 4, Informative

      As I recall, in the case of a recent Google Nexus phone, Samsung and Verizon at least insisted upon...ahem...were graciously allowed to pollute the pure Android experience with some of their own crap. I do hope HTC does something cool, like an 8 or 9 inch M8 style tablet. The Nexus flagship device deserves Aluminum clad love!

    5. Re:Ecch ... by glwtta · · Score: 1

      Out of curiosity, what would you use an "HTC Sync Manager" for?

      I have an M7, and I've never heard of such a thing.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    6. Re:Ecch ... by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      In theory, for putting music on my phone.

      In practice, never again.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    7. Re:Ecch ... by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Air Droid is an awesome (free) app, used in local mode and without an account. Definitely check it out, it's made using HTC sync manager so much easier (by making it unnecessary).

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    8. Re: Ecch ... by corychristison · · Score: 1

      I prefer Bittorrent Sync over my local Wifi.

      Create a share on your desktop, add some files to it, add the share to the phone, let it sync.

      The beauty is if your music collection is less than your phone's available storage, simply adding music to your collection will add it to your phone if you set up your collection as a share.

      You can set it up to work over the internet, but I don't do that.

    9. Re: Ecch ... by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      That's great if you only want to sync a few files to a few specific locations, but it's nice to be able to fully manage the device, which Air Droid lets you do. Perhaps a combination of the two methods would provide the best of both worlds?

      Thanks for the tip, though, I was not aware of Bittorrent Sync!

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    10. Re:Ecch ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't people just drag MP3's from their computer to their phone in Windows Explorer? I don't understand the need for music transferring software.

    11. Re:Ecch ... by farble1670 · · Score: 2

      were graciously allowed to pollute the pure Android experience with some of their own crap

      you can disable any android app from running ever and from showing up in the launcher, even if it's delivered as part of the firmware. it's annoying to get a new phone with all that stuff loaded, but it's not the end of the world anymore.

      on the contrary, nexus devices will never have the customized UI elements that you see on every other non-nexus android device. android device manufacturers need to figure it out. let google make the software. they are pretty good at it. you focus on building awesome hardware. delivering an android phone with slightly different UI elements isn't going to differentiate you from your competitor.

    12. Re:Ecch ... by mccrew · · Score: 1

      ...you focus on building awesome hardware. delivering an android phone with slightly different UI elements isn't going to differentiate you from your competitor.

      Problem is that the hardware isn't really all that different. Look at phones and tablets - they're converging to pretty much the same look - thin mostly-black slabs, with rounded edges and big touch screen. Most platforms have the same sensors (accelerometers, GPS, etc.), similar screens, etc. That's not enough differentiation.

      Why do people buy iPhones or Androids? It's all about the apps, the community, the experience, making a fashion statement. Pretty much everything other than hardware. The hardware's just something that's expected to be there to facilitate all the rest.

      --
      Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
    13. Re:Ecch ... by pkinetics · · Score: 1

      I think the only reason I have HTC Sync Manager on my computer is so that it installed the appropriate USB driver doohickey thingymajingys so that ADB and Fastboot would work correctly. Other than that, I only used it long enough to be confused as to what its purpose is. Software to solve problems that don't exist?

    14. Re:Ecch ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then please, please stop buying branded phones from operators. When people keep buying them there is no pressure to change.

      captcha: quagmire

    15. Re:Ecch ... by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      i don't know about you, but the functionality and performance of the hardware matter to me, not just the fashion statement.

      thinner, lighter.
      higher res / higher quality display.
      better sound.
      longer battery life.
      port configurations (HDMI, SD card).
      antenna performance.
      durability / waterproofing.
      screen sizes.

      there's a list of some really very obvious ways that companies can differentiate based on hardware. i'm guessing if i could come up with that list, a hardware engineer could increase that by 100x.

      don't believe it? look what samsung did with the galaxy note. ALL they did was make a phone w/ a really big screen, which was something no one else was doing at the time.

    16. Re:Ecch ... by mlts · · Score: 1

      Bingo. I wish there were a way to fish out the ADB and Fastboot stuff, and leave the Sync Manager app out of the equation, since I never use it I don't need syncing of anything to and from the desktop. My contacts/mail/calendar/reminders are synced to Exchange. My apps are backed up via Titanium Backup encrypted [1], and tossed onto Dropbox. My music winds up coming from Amazon's service. Photos get tossed onto a cloud service. If I want to use the phone as a physical copy mechanism, I can, with PGP/MTP when plugged in, or ssh/nfs/samba/ftp/http/https when on the same wireless segment.

      So, other than fastboot and ADB, I never use my PC for anything phone related except initially tossing on music or when I am doing a complete firmware upgrade or re-ROMming the device.

      [1]: TB has one of the absolute best ways of encrypting backups. It uses a public key for the backup, and a restore, you unlock your private key.

      [2]: Even without drivers, the HTC One M8 will appear as a MTP/PTP device, so one can copy files to and from.

  3. This has been known ... by SirJorgelOfBorgel · · Score: 1

    ... for quite some time now. WSJ posting it doesn't suddenly make it news.

    1. Re:This has been known ... by Luthair · · Score: 1

      This was going to be my comment. nvidia flubbed weeks ago, this article adds absolutely nothing to the story.

    2. Re:This has been known ... by Wikipedia · · Score: 0

      Slashdot has to post lots of articles everyday to keep their karma up and their ads paying out!

      --
      P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
    3. Re:This has been known ... by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

      This was going to be my comment. nvidia flubbed weeks ago, this article adds absolutely nothing to the story.

      That's assuming it was a story to begin with, which it's not. It's not even about a product... there's no product yet! It's about an agreement between to companies two possibly make something at some future date. Why would anyone other than a hedgefund manager care about this?

    4. Re:This has been known ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was going to say "truth", but then I saw the above was posted by the username "Wikipedia", thought about Slashdot having an image of CmdrTaco in the header begging for money like Jimmy Wales and laughed instead.

    5. Re:This has been known ... by SirJorgelOfBorgel · · Score: 1

      Actually this tablet is expected to be officially announced -and available- within weeks.

  4. Tegra based! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Who cares what generic Chinese OEM it came from.

    This may be one of the first tablets to ship with the 64 bit version of the Tegra K1! An interesting chip that uses ditches OOE units for that "run time optimization" technique that Transmeta tried all those years ago.

    I wonder if the technology will live up it's claims this time.

    1. Re:Tegra based! by mlts · · Score: 3, Informative

      HTC isn't Chinese. It is Taiwanese.

      I'm looking forward to seeing their tablet, as I have had generally good luck with their products overall.

    2. Re:Tegra based! by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      HTC isn't a generic Chinese OEM. They have their own line of phones, and some of them are quite popular.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    3. Re:Tegra based! by Luthair · · Score: 4, Informative

      They also released the first Android phone as well as the first nexus device.

    4. Re:Tegra based! by Njovich · · Score: 1, Informative

      HTC isn't Chinese. It is Taiwanese.

      If you knew anything about Taiwan, you would know why that is a silly statement. You may want to start by looking up the official name of Taiwan, which is Republic of China.

    5. Re:Tegra based! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PRC != ROC, no matter how many people try to dispute that. I'm sure mainland China would love to own Taiwan, but as of now, it is a separate country.

    6. Re:Tegra based! by mythosaz · · Score: 2

      While they certainly have more in common than say "New Mexico" and "Mexico," the existence of "China" in both of their names doesn't make them the same thing.

      I'm fairly certain the people of Taiwan consider Taiwan a different place than China -- enough so that they have the whole Taiwan name and all.

    7. Re:Tegra based! by slew · · Score: 1

      I'm fairly certain the people of Taiwan consider Taiwan a different place than China -- enough so that they have the whole Taiwan name and all.

      Actually It's a moving target over 40 years or so...

      From the end of WWII the occupiers of Taiwan (basically the retreating/invading Chiang Kai-shek govt) pretty much considered themselves the exiled government of mainland china, thus calling themselves the Republic of China. The ground started significantly changing in 1971 when after UN resolution 2758 passed, mainland china (aka the People's RoC) was able to reclaim their UN seat which. Eventually, the notion that the RoC (aka Taiwan) was a different place than china all but faded by 1991as by then most in the RoC conceded that mainland china was lost (to the PRoC) by forcing the resignation of the so-called "representatives" tied to legacy captured provinces in the mainland.

      Of course as with most things Taiwanese, it ain't that simple.

      Some of people of Taiwan were repressed by the retreating CKS occupiers from the mainland (not much different than the Japanese), but that distinction is often not understood by those outside of Taiwan (see the 228 incident). If you know people from the south part of the island (e.g, Kaoshung, or Tainan), many still hold a grudge, and think of both remnants of the CKS government and the mainland as the enemy. These folks form the basis of the pan-green coalition (not to be confused with the environmental green party movement, but one favoring Taiwan independence) to oppose the pan-blue coalition (remnants of the CKS/KMT government + other parties favoring close ties with the mainland).

      Of course, the people of mainland china don't see things that way at all. The see it as formosa island/taiwan provence which was historically part of mainland china (except for the time the Dutch and Japanese occupied it, of course). RoC is generally pissed about how the US handled the disposition of Taiwan after WWII (with the Treaty of Peace with Japan aka Treaty of San Francisco to which the RoC and PRoC were not invited). Basically the island of Formosa/Taiwan was treated the same as occupied territory whose responsibility was given to the US, but whose final fate was undecided (much less complicated, but similar to Berlin). In contrast, the Treaty of Taipei (a separate peace treaty between PRoC and Japan) further complicated the matter by obfuscating the issue of Taiwan by reclaiming it for the PRoC even though Japan had no authority to grant it at that point having ceded authority over Taiwan in Treaty of San Francisco...

    8. Re:Tegra based! by mythosaz · · Score: 1

      Thanks. Neat.

      Up next, Hong Kong :)

    9. Re:Tegra based! by slew · · Score: 1

      Thanks. Neat.

      Up next, Hong Kong :)

      Back in 1997, most of the people of hong kong went relatively peacefully into the Chinese fold (or just simply left before it happened like my grandparents)...

      On the other hand, you might think of the people in southern Taiwan as kind of like a mix of US southerners and Texans...

      Even if Taiwan is eventually ceded back to China, some of them will likely still hold a N/S civil war grudge for a few generations, and other will continue to claim some right to secede into a lone star state (mostly in an appropriate alcohol based setting with sufficient lubrication, of course). At least there aren't likely to be many guns involved in taiwan... ;^)

    10. Re:Tegra based! by Njovich · · Score: 1

      Are French and German people both European? Are North and South Koreans both Korean people?

      Well, DPRK != ROK, yet they are both Koreans. The fact is that both the mainland and taiwanese people consider Taiwanese people as Chinese people. You may want to consider that 'Chinese' is a bigger term than just PRC.

    11. Re:Tegra based! by Njovich · · Score: 1

      I'm fairly certain the people of Taiwan consider Taiwan a different place than China -- enough so that they have the whole Taiwan name and all.

      New Mexico and Mexico are not the same thing, but they are both in the Americas. North and South Korea are not the same thing, yet both people are Koreans.

      So how is that possible, if they have their own name too?

      Please ask any Taiwanese person about this, and you will hear the same thing. Taiwanese people consider themselves Chinese. You can try all you want to claim that 'China' is only the mainland part. But that doesn't make it true, and in fact is insulting to both Taiwanese and mainland chinese people.

  5. dangit, he's dead jin! by Wikipedia · · Score: -1

    Taiwan is China. China is the '"People's" republic of verbosity in the land that people including geography and history call china and is known a china'

    --
    P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
    1. Re:dangit, he's dead jin! by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1, Troll

      Taiwan is China. China is the '"People's" republic of verbosity in the land that people including geography and history call china and is known a china'

      In capitalist China, Communist China invades you.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:dangit, he's dead jin! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Taiwan is Formosa. China is the mainland. The two, to most Americans (I can't speak for other nations' general attitudes) are not the same.

      Taiwan was where Chiang Kai Shek fled when Mao & Company chased him off the mainland. He set up shop there, and the US government (and its allies) backed the new Taiwanese government (which was just the old mainland government, incompletely overthrown). It wasn't until very recently that the chill between the US and the PRC began to ease, and mostly it was due to economic pressure rather than any kind of political agreement.

      No amount of propaganda by the PRC is going to change Americans' minds, and the PRC's refusal to accept that Taiwan isn't part of China anymore is viewed as a sort of sad, pathetic, desperate denial of reality.

      Taiwan is not China.

  6. is it going to be buggy as always? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The newest Nexus 7 by asus was full of issues, including with the touchscreen. It was a hardware fault, that Google refused to acknowledge as the seller of that product.

    Google around, you'll find lots of info on it. Typical Google. Very low on the responsiveness scale. I'll *NEVER* buy products from Google again.

    My point? Well, first off, the more people that know the better. I doubt much Google has changed in that respect. So, BE FOREWARNED!

    Don't take my word. Google problems with the Nexus 7 and multitouch.. and, even just plain ordinary single touch events.

    1. Re:is it going to be buggy as always? by marsu_k · · Score: 2

      And anecdotally, I haven't had any issues with my 2013 Nexus 7. Nor have any other people I know that have one. SPREAD THE WORD!

    2. Re:is it going to be buggy as always? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me counter your anecdote with one of my own: my Nexus 7 works perfectly and has worked perfectly for the past 10 months. Not a single fault, glitch, hiccup, bug, problem, whatever you want to call it, in all this time. I use it daily, it has been with me on several (lenghty) trips abroad as my sole means of communication, without missing a beat. Couldnt ask much more, for the price it costed me. Honestly, its the better small tablet I have ever owned and I recommend it to anyone -- cheap and pretty damn good.

    3. Re:is it going to be buggy as always? by queazocotal · · Score: 1

      Exactly the same experience.

      I do hope they don't drop the 7.
      A 9" screen is not nearly as portable, or as convenient.

    4. Re:is it going to be buggy as always? by mlts · · Score: 1

      I've had great luck with the 2013 N7 as well. No bloatware, rooted, has a utility that does a TRIM command every so often, and I can SSH into it if I need a file I'm working on. It is a nice medium size for reading.

      The Android sites also show that Android L is working on the N7, so it should be supported in the next OS rev.

    5. Re:is it going to be buggy as always? by SirJorgelOfBorgel · · Score: 1

      Interesting, that. I've heard a lot of people make similar claims, but the three units I have myself (development purposes) work fine. However, some guys I work with recently started using the N7 2013 as base for a university automation project, and have gotten hundreds of them. Apparently, dozens of their units were dead on arrival, and of those that work out-of-the-box a significant number of them randomly just die. Less than a year after the start of the project, near to a third of the units is dead.

      I had also expected the N7 to stay available alongside the N9, but according to these same guys it is very difficult to still get units in significant amounts. Shops are starting to delist them, which to me indicates that they are end-of-life and the soon to be released N9 will replace the N7, rather than augment it. I sincerely hope I am wrong here.

  7. Support full productivity by sentiblue · · Score: 1

    I would love to see Google/HTC to aim to work with MS to provide a full Office suite for Android on this tablet....

    I'm an Apple fan, but I'd like to see competition so that multiple sides of the competition will strive more for the consumers' benefits.

    1. Re:Support full productivity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would much rather use a LibreOffice product on my Android tablet.

      http://www.techrepublic.com/article/libreoffice-is-coming-to-android/

  8. market dominance? by farble1670 · · Score: 1

    Shunning larger manufacturers like Samsung, speculation is that Google is trying to mitigate the effects of market dominance by one firm.

    yes, because the nexus line has been such an amazing market success? on the contrary, the nexus lines have sold in relatively low numbers, and very thin profit margins. and AFAICT, that's by design. stock is always extremely limited at launch, and advertising is non-existent.

    this is more of a desperation move by HTC. samsung is eating their (and everyone else's) lunch. try something, anything to get a name for themselves.

    1. Re:market dominance? by EvilJoker · · Score: 1

      The Nexus line markets to a very specific demographic, which is often asked by muggles what gear they would recommend. If HTC designs a decent Nexus device, it can greatly increase sales of their non-Nexus devices.

  9. Skynet Foil Hat by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    At first I read it as "Google Partners with LHC", and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  10. Let the Android Market decide by tepples · · Score: 2

    I'm sure they would prefer to let the market decide that bloatware is bad.

    Then why doesn't Google let the Android Market decide by including a line in the CDD stating that if you include X, Y, or Z your phones won't get Google Play Store? Google already does that for certain variants of multi-window mode because Google wants to enforce an all maximized all the time use model even if your 10" tablet is as big as two Nexus 7s or four Nexus 5s.

    1. Re: Let the Android Market decide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because the carriers will say "if it doesn't let us ship it with x, y, z and lock the user from modifying that, then we will not sell it. Have fun trying to dominate the marketplace through Amazon or something!".

      Carriers will just go sell bada, windows phones, and iPhones and people will buy them. Android marketshare disappears in a puff of idealism and hubris.

      Google isn't free and open. They're at&t's bitch.

    2. Re: Let the Android Market decide by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      I DARE AT&T to not carry android phones.

      And please tell me how Apple does not allow AT&T to bake in their crapware yet sold 22 million phones this past week. Yeah they flopped so bad by not allowing the carriers to add in crapware. Oh wait, they are one of the worlds most popular phones.

      Google can certianly tell them, "go to hell, pure android with nothing baked in", and AT&T and Verizon will say... thank you mistress, may we have another.

      What else are they going to sell? Windows phones and Blackberry? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    3. Re: Let the Android Market decide by EvilJoker · · Score: 1

      And please tell me how Apple does not allow AT&T to bake in their crapware yet sold 22 million phones this past week. Yeah they flopped so bad by not allowing the carriers to add in crapware. Oh wait, they are one of the worlds most popular phones.

      AT&T (Cingular then) originally did so as a competitive move against Verizon. Those terms came with an exclusive, which they were not willing to sacrifice. If you'll recall, VZW was given the offer first, and refused it, valuing their crapware (etc) more than the iPhone exclusive.

      Regardless, Google has been attaching more strings to their apps. As I understand it, there MUST be an option to disable/hide all of that crapware. While a phone could be released as an AOSP phone, it would not have (and could not install from a legitimate source) things like GMail, YouTube, Google Maps, and the Play Store. Amazon's trying this, but not having much success.

  11. CDMA2000 in the United States by tepples · · Score: 1

    Then please, please stop buying branded phones from operators.

    Good luck getting any service that way if the only cellular carriers with a usable signal in your area are CDMA2000 carriers like Verizon and Sprint. I'm under the impression that they won't just sell you a CSIM for an unbranded CDMA2000 phone.

  12. Disabled software still takes up space by tepples · · Score: 1

    you can disable any android app from running ever and from showing up in the launcher

    But without rooting, you can't recover the gigabytes occupied by this preinstalled bloatware that you could otherwise have been using to store music and e-books.

  13. Playlists and MTP by tepples · · Score: 1

    Don't people just drag MP3's from their computer to their phone in Windows Explorer? I don't understand the need for music transferring software.

    If you want to transfer only the subset of your MP3 collection contained in a specific set of playlists, then you may need software to construct the copy job, even if it's just a shell script that parses the m3u files. And until very recently, you needed to install software to connect an Android 4.x phone to a PC because some operating systems didn't come with MTP automounting.

    1. Re:Playlists and MTP by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Don't people just drag MP3's from their computer to their phone in Windows Explorer? I don't understand the need for music transferring software.

      If you want to transfer only the subset of your MP3 collection contained in a specific set of playlists, then you may need software to construct the copy job, even if it's just a shell script that parses the m3u files. And until very recently, you needed to install software to connect an Android 4.x phone to a PC because some operating systems didn't come with MTP automounting.

      Actually, it's more like to get around Android's broken MTP implementation. Yes, MTP on Android is horrendous, as in "it barely works" Look at it funny on a Windows machine (to which it appears to be coded for) and it breaks, requiring a unplug-plug to get it working again.

      Unfortunately, it was coded pretty much to work just for Windows and how the Windows MTP driver and Explorer operate. Try other OSes and they can do funny things that'll wedge the Android MTP gadget driver.

      OS X supports MTP just fine, provided it's a proper implementation. A half-hearted implementation like Android gets both ends into interesting states. And Linux a couple of years back required patches to the MTP host side to work with Android.

      As for Explorer to copy music - well, that's fine and all, but having a program that syncs everything is far more convenient. It's why people do use iTunes to manage their music collections.

    2. Re:Playlists and MTP by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Actually the Android implementation is rather good. Samsung tried to do their own thing which had some issues, but then switched to the stock driver and now all is well.

      The system works well not just with computers but also with things like car head units and printers. You can plug in and print directly from your phone just like a camera. No special extra expensive iPrinter required.

      I'll take it over the abomination that is iTunes any day.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  14. Sonic the Hedgefund Manager by tepples · · Score: 1

    Why would anyone other than a hedgefund manager care about this?

    Because it may influence whether Sega decides to port Sonic the Hedgefund Manager to Android or keep it console-only.

  15. WTF no 10" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So glad I picked up a Nexus 10 relative, the Asus MemoPad 10.1".

    It looks to the last of the 10 inchers brought to market.

  16. YESS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I previously heard rumors that google would get out of the nexus/tablet/phone business altogether. This is good news.

  17. 10"? by SuperDre · · Score: 1

    But I don't want a small 9" tablet, I want at least 10" or an 11" Nexus tablet. with small bezels (at least as small as my current Xoom Wifi)..

    At the moment there isn't a great 10" tablet which is just as simple looking but rugged quality. I would like the back to be of the same rubbery kind as the nexus 5, that has a soft feel, and even with a bit of sweaty palms still stays in your hands.. And no hardware buttons other than on/off switch on the back (like the xoom) and a volume control..