The only thing keeping them alive is lock-in technologies and their walled garden, and that'll die out eventually as Samsung surpasses them in every technology avenue.
If Samsung is so great, why does it abandon it's smartphone and tablet users in two years or less since the device announcement date? The price premium of Apple devices is well worth it because your device will be getting timely security updates and OS upgrades for up to five years. The old iPad Mini 2 and iPhone 5S which were available since the late 2013 are still running the latest iOS 11. On the other hand, where are the 2013 Samsung phones and tablets? Most of them are already in the trash can.
I think 500 bucks is a fair enough price of an Android smartphone brand with no history and premium hardware feature. At this price, the smartphone lies almost in the same niche where Google's Nexus phones and the Oneplus phones used to be. Having said that, personally I am not buying once of these because there is no headphone jack. Sorry folks, whoever you are, buy you will never convince me that not having a headphone jack is actually some kind of progress or good for consumers.
So everyone knows there exist several shazam-like apps and services that will identify a song that's playing. I have personally used this service maybe two times within the past four years. The 500MB of storage space wasted on the Now Playing data base is just not worth it..
And how did you conclude that Google encourages fragmentation in the OS? The bottom of this story is that Google's phones are the only ones released with Android 8. There is nothing stopping other hardware manufacturers from shipping phones with Android 8. In fact, Google would only encourage that.
This is not a case of some sort of optimization hidden deep in Google's OS that's meant benefit just Google brand hardware. Pixels and Nexus phones are now running Android 8, and those are the only phones having Oreo, besides phones running custom third party firmware.
Nobody is stopping Android hardware manufacturers from providing Android 8 on their hardware.
Wow, another slashdot "Russia expert" whose basis of expertise is based only on very basic stereotypes and memes?. Why don't you learn something before posting this drivel on a public forum?
For one, there was no such county in the 1920s, and in fact until 1991. There was USSR.
They're not interested in who wins. They just want to cause chaos and to control whoever is left standing.
Second, USSR sponsored specifically communist and socialist dissent in many countries specifically for the purpose of fomenting a communist revolution. So there was clearly an ideologically driven goal to their meddling in other counties.
Quite sadly we don't have much independent, honest, and unbiased news outlets any more. CNN is the scariest and most deceiving, but Fox and MSNBC are close to it. Washington Post is now a complete joke, a platform for the neocons and liberals to trash the Trump administration. When I want to see what goes on in the world, I gotta watch BBC or Al Jazeera (and the funny thing is that these two state owned tv networks deliver certainly far more truth than American cable news or papers).
Sounds like you have no idea about Russian sources of news. Why don't you learn something before spewing ignorant russophibic drivel?
Russia has far more freedom of speech than say China and it has a few very respected news sources. The way it works in Russia, if say under 2% of population reads the source, Putin's administration usually does not consider it as a threat and leaves it alone. They did shut down or take over any big independent TV channels and newspapers.
If Kaspersky wants to continue selling its software in the west, I think the only way they can convince everyone that they're NOT providing a backdoor in their software to FSB is by going open source. That is, they should make their AV engine open source, and but the virus definition data could be provided as a paid subscription.
I think your post is mostly correct except for the part where Russia went out of its way to be an adversarial state to the US.
In reality, the US went out of its way to support two revolutions in Ukraine that overthrew twice the mildly pro-Russian pres. Yanukovich (first time in 2004 before he even took office, and in 2014, already him in office), and invited Ukraine to join NATO, an organization that has always been an anti-Russian alliance. To draw a parallel, I think Washington would certainly go bezerk if Russians actively sponsored some kind of leftist Chavez-like forces that overthrew the legitimate government of Mexico, and then invited Mexico into some kind of an anti-American military alliance.
Why should we always trust what Israel's intelligence says without offering a tiny bit of evidence? And hasn't Israel itself hacked into other's computers and planted nasty time-bombs there? (stuxnet)
In the last 10 years or so I have used a Windows PC with anti-virus software to visit an incredible number of web sites of extremely shoddy origin and appearance and I used various p2p software to download all sorts of content on almost weekly basis. As a result, the AV software caught positives may be two or three times in that whole time, and every time this was "there is a dangerous ClickMe.EXE in your torrent folder! do not touch!" (well, what sort of idiot would click that anyways?). Why haven't I run into more alleged viruses? I guess it's because most of the time I used Firefox with NoScript extension. NoScript is sort of a pain to use, because you first need to teach it to allow scripts from all web sites that legitimately need to run scripts, like a forum, eCommerce, or say your bank.
So now need need to carry this adapter dangling off the phone or every set of headphones we use, or risk losing it. How great.
Personally, I hope we can soon pick up a heavily discounted Pixel or Pixel XL, and still enjoy two years of monthly security updates and a headphone jack, now that Google needs to make room for Pixel 2.
Just wait for Android Oreo to arrive. The Nexus 5X with 2GB RAM was barely usable running Nougat, but after the September update it can't keep any apps in memory at all. So I would assume, with 8.0, 3GB is now the babre minimum you need, and 4GB is the comfortable amount of RAM, while +4GB is for future headroom.
There are plenty of $300-$400 phones on the market. You just don't like them.
The problem is not that there are no 300-400USD smartphones on the market, but the fact that this is a clearly the most unloved segment of the market by the manufacturers. What phones costing between 300-400USD are exactly any good? I could name Huawei Honor 8. It does seem like Huawei did a good job bringing "near flagship" specs and quality to this lower priced device. However, Huawei Honor 8 is a year old now and I haven't seen any alternatives.
On the low-end side of the market, phones costing less than say 250USD, there has been a vibrant selection of phones for years. Sure, they had trade offs, but these days when you have 250USD phones with large FHD screens, SoC built on modern 14-16nm process, and up to 4GB of RAM, you know the manufacturers are trying hard in that segment.
If you also look at the "Ferrari" segment of the smartphone market, there is clearly a lot of good phones there. But frankly, I am not impressed indeed with what we get for 300-400USD. Recall, the impact the Nexus 5 (350-400USD launch price) had in 2013 or Oneplus One (300-350USD) in 2014? Those were smartphones with near flagship specs and yet very reasonable pricing. Sadly, both Google and Oneplus bailed out of the market. Oneplus still sells very good phones with flagship specs, but their price is now closer to 500USD.
Well, half of my connected devices are wired and I don't intend to change that. All BT headphones are tried are either too expensive for what they are or not comfortable to wear. I want to continue using my audiphile grade wired Sennheiser PX-100II or Koss porta pros.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks Obama!
The only thing keeping them alive is lock-in technologies and their walled garden, and that'll die out eventually as Samsung surpasses them in every technology avenue.
If Samsung is so great, why does it abandon it's smartphone and tablet users in two years or less since the device announcement date? The price premium of Apple devices is well worth it because your device will be getting timely security updates and OS upgrades for up to five years. The old iPad Mini 2 and iPhone 5S which were available since the late 2013 are still running the latest iOS 11. On the other hand, where are the 2013 Samsung phones and tablets? Most of them are already in the trash can.
If you're making 50K working in IT in Silicon Valley, you should pack your stuff and move to another state. Why?
1. If you're making just 50K in SV, clearly you have not succeeded at this IT game and
2. Living on 50K in SV is almost as tough at living on a graduate student's stipend of 15K some place in midwest.
And before it, the The Scary Door
I wonder if Putin is hiding underneath your bed. Have you checked there today?
Digital transmission of audio is not susceptible to that.
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik....
Everyone Who Wanted More F-22s Is Being Proven Right. Unfortunately, the production line was shut down a decade ago.
I think 500 bucks is a fair enough price of an Android smartphone brand with no history and premium hardware feature. At this price, the smartphone lies almost in the same niche where Google's Nexus phones and the Oneplus phones used to be. Having said that, personally I am not buying once of these because there is no headphone jack. Sorry folks, whoever you are, buy you will never convince me that not having a headphone jack is actually some kind of progress or good for consumers.
So everyone knows there exist several shazam-like apps and services that will identify a song that's playing. I have personally used this service maybe two times within the past four years. The 500MB of storage space wasted on the Now Playing data base is just not worth it..
And how did you conclude that Google encourages fragmentation in the OS? The bottom of this story is that Google's phones are the only ones released with Android 8. There is nothing stopping other hardware manufacturers from shipping phones with Android 8. In fact, Google would only encourage that.
This is not a case of some sort of optimization hidden deep in Google's OS that's meant benefit just Google brand hardware. Pixels and Nexus phones are now running Android 8, and those are the only phones having Oreo, besides phones running custom third party firmware.
Nobody is stopping Android hardware manufacturers from providing Android 8 on their hardware.
Russia has had a habit o
Wow, another slashdot "Russia expert" whose basis of expertise is based only on very basic stereotypes and memes?. Why don't you learn something before posting this drivel on a public forum?
For one, there was no such county in the 1920s, and in fact until 1991. There was USSR.
They're not interested in who wins. They just want to cause chaos and to control whoever is left standing.
Second, USSR sponsored specifically communist and socialist dissent in many countries specifically for the purpose of fomenting a communist revolution. So there was clearly an ideologically driven goal to their meddling in other counties.
Treason? Most of this looks like routine diplomatic communication, lobbing, etc.
Quite sadly we don't have much independent, honest, and unbiased news outlets any more. CNN is the scariest and most deceiving, but Fox and MSNBC are close to it. Washington Post is now a complete joke, a platform for the neocons and liberals to trash the Trump administration. When I want to see what goes on in the world, I gotta watch BBC or Al Jazeera (and the funny thing is that these two state owned tv networks deliver certainly far more truth than American cable news or papers).
Sounds like you have no idea about Russian sources of news. Why don't you learn something before spewing ignorant russophibic drivel?
Russia has far more freedom of speech than say China and it has a few very respected news sources. The way it works in Russia, if say under 2% of population reads the source, Putin's administration usually does not consider it as a threat and leaves it alone. They did shut down or take over any big independent TV channels and newspapers.
If Kaspersky wants to continue selling its software in the west, I think the only way they can convince everyone that they're NOT providing a backdoor in their software to FSB is by going open source. That is, they should make their AV engine open source, and but the virus definition data could be provided as a paid subscription.
I think your post is mostly correct except for the part where Russia went out of its way to be an adversarial state to the US.
In reality, the US went out of its way to support two revolutions in Ukraine that overthrew twice the mildly pro-Russian pres. Yanukovich (first time in 2004 before he even took office, and in 2014, already him in office), and invited Ukraine to join NATO, an organization that has always been an anti-Russian alliance. To draw a parallel, I think Washington would certainly go bezerk if Russians actively sponsored some kind of leftist Chavez-like forces that overthrew the legitimate government of Mexico, and then invited Mexico into some kind of an anti-American military alliance.
Why should we always trust what Israel's intelligence says without offering a tiny bit of evidence? And hasn't Israel itself hacked into other's computers and planted nasty time-bombs there? (stuxnet)
In the last 10 years or so I have used a Windows PC with anti-virus software to visit an incredible number of web sites of extremely shoddy origin and appearance and I used various p2p software to download all sorts of content on almost weekly basis. As a result, the AV software caught positives may be two or three times in that whole time, and every time this was "there is a dangerous ClickMe.EXE in your torrent folder! do not touch!" (well, what sort of idiot would click that anyways?). Why haven't I run into more alleged viruses? I guess it's because most of the time I used Firefox with NoScript extension. NoScript is sort of a pain to use, because you first need to teach it to allow scripts from all web sites that legitimately need to run scripts, like a forum, eCommerce, or say your bank.
This sounds horrible. Why don't more Dutch people move to Texas.
So now need need to carry this adapter dangling off the phone or every set of headphones we use, or risk losing it. How great.
Personally, I hope we can soon pick up a heavily discounted Pixel or Pixel XL, and still enjoy two years of monthly security updates and a headphone jack, now that Google needs to make room for Pixel 2.
More memory is about headroom for future updates.
Just wait for Android Oreo to arrive. The Nexus 5X with 2GB RAM was barely usable running Nougat, but after the September update it can't keep any apps in memory at all. So I would assume, with 8.0, 3GB is now the babre minimum you need, and 4GB is the comfortable amount of RAM, while +4GB is for future headroom.
There are plenty of $300-$400 phones on the market. You just don't like them.
The problem is not that there are no 300-400USD smartphones on the market, but the fact that this is a clearly the most unloved segment of the market by the manufacturers. What phones costing between 300-400USD are exactly any good? I could name Huawei Honor 8. It does seem like Huawei did a good job bringing "near flagship" specs and quality to this lower priced device. However, Huawei Honor 8 is a year old now and I haven't seen any alternatives.
On the low-end side of the market, phones costing less than say 250USD, there has been a vibrant selection of phones for years. Sure, they had trade offs, but these days when you have 250USD phones with large FHD screens, SoC built on modern 14-16nm process, and up to 4GB of RAM, you know the manufacturers are trying hard in that segment.
If you also look at the "Ferrari" segment of the smartphone market, there is clearly a lot of good phones there. But frankly, I am not impressed indeed with what we get for 300-400USD. Recall, the impact the Nexus 5 (350-400USD launch price) had in 2013 or Oneplus One (300-350USD) in 2014? Those were smartphones with near flagship specs and yet very reasonable pricing. Sadly, both Google and Oneplus bailed out of the market. Oneplus still sells very good phones with flagship specs, but their price is now closer to 500USD.
Well, half of my connected devices are wired and I don't intend to change that. All BT headphones are tried are either too expensive for what they are or not comfortable to wear. I want to continue using my audiphile grade wired Sennheiser PX-100II or Koss porta pros.