You're right. I think alot of that has to do with Froyo or Gingerbread on those old phones though. ICS and Jelly Bean fixed alot of those UI issues. My Nexus S definitely felt like a brand new phone when I upgraded from Gingerbread to ICS.
If you look at the Android phones being sold in China, Africa, etc. they are not phones like the Galaxy models. They are basically phones that are just steps up from feature phones.
China actually has some pretty nice android phones that are on par with the iPhone 5 or the Galaxy S3.
The Xiaomi M2 has a 1.5GHz quad core, 2GB ram, 720p screen, and it runs MIUI 4.1 (Android 4.1 with a custom chinese rom). It costs $310, which is less than half the price of an iPhone 5 (and it has better specs than the iPhone). The Xiaomi M2 is basically on par with the newly released Nexus 4, but it costs $50 less.
There's also the Oppo Find 5 which will have a 1.5Ghz quad core, 2GB ram, 16 or 32GB storage, 1920x1080 resolution (1080p screen!), 2500mAh battery, and it runs Android 4.1. It might also be the thinnest smartphone to date.
They have cheaper phones too, like the Beidou Little Pepper which is only $156, and it has a 1.3Ghz quad core, 1GB ram, 5MP camera, 800x480 screen, and runs Android 4.0. There's also the older dual core variant for only $110.
The HTC Desire is one phone that springs to mind, web browsing like molasses, horrible jerky scrolling, games would get 4-10fps, etc.
That has probably more to do with the terrible skins and bloatware that HTC puts on their phones. The HTC Desire has roughly the same specs as my Nexus S (1GHz single core, 512MB ram on the Nexus S vs 576MB on the Desire), yet my Nexus S runs extremely fast with stock Jelly Bean.
In my opinion the Intel 320 and Crucial M4 are the most reliable. I bought an M4 earlier this year and I'm very happy with it so far. You can get a 128GB Crucial for $100 on newegg, or a 256GB for $200. The intel drives are more expensive, but they come with a 5 year warranty, where as the crucial m4's only have a 3 year warranty.
I agree. I've had 3 Razer mice fail on me in the last 4 years. My original diamondback started to cause blue screens in both Windows XP and Windows 7. My second diamondback's scrollwheel stopped working after a year. I decided to try a deathadder, after 6-8 months it started to register left clicks as double clicks instead of single clicks, which is a pretty common Razer issue from what I've heard.
It sucks because I find Razer mice the most comfortable, but they don't last for more than 6-12 months. I'm going back to Logitech for my next mouse.
From my experience the answer is no. I was a heavy drug user for 10 years, I now have trouble concentrating, I draw a blank all the time, everything is foggy, etc.. I quit doing drugs 5 years ago, but the after effects still linger to this day. I still play around with android and qt and I write apps for myself because I love to program, but it's only a hobby at this point.
I'm probably a fringe case though, I think the majority of people can smoke pot and be perfectly fine. I wouldn't recommend mixing drugs and programming though, you need a clear mind and a healthy body.
You can change the yellow background using the -bg-color command line argument. For example: "C:\Program Files (x86)\SumatraPDF\SumatraPDF.exe" -bg-color 0x444444
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.
MacRumors wrote about an internal clash with Scott Forstall back in September, and now he quits in October... very interesting. Oddly enough that article also mentions iCal which is what AC was talking about.
According to the report, Apple's iOS chief Scott Forstall has long been a proponent of incorporating skeuomorphic features in the company's software, with Steve Jobs having supported and even originated that design direction for Apple's products. But others such as hardware guru Jonathan Ive find the inclusion of such features distasteful, and Apple's designers have reportedly been divided into camps over which direction to take Apple's products.
The Nexus 4 is based off of the LG Optimus G. What I don't get is that the Optimus G comes with 32GB internal storage, but the Nexus 4 is limited to 8/16.
It still is nice! The Evo and Nexus S both came out in December 2010 and they both have identical specs (1Ghz cpu with 512MB ram). The difference is my Nexus S has official JB while my buddy's Evo is still on Gingerbread. That's a problem, and there's no reason why the HTC Evo shouldn't get it either, my phone has the same specs and it's still incredibly fast.
You're right though, that's a problem with alot of vendors, not just HTC.
4) Churning out too many phones (they've released over 12 models/variants so far this year). 5) Not supporting existing phones with updates 6) Beats audio (they spent $300 million buying Beats by Dre, what a massive failure). 7) Locking down their phones 8) Non-removable battery and no sd cards 9) Focusing on thinness instead battery life
The original HTC Evo was nice, and the new One X looks nice, but they made too many variants. They also don't properly support any of them with updates.
When HTC came out with the original Evo they had arguable the best phone on the market. That success was short lived though. They started churning out dozens of phones and they didn't support any of them with updates. They burned their own customers and people turned elsewhere (mainly Samsung).
If they were smart they would've released 1-2 phones a year at most. The Evo was a decent phone, they could've made that their flagship with yearly updates. The new One X looked good aswell, but how many One X variants did they make? One X, One S, One XL, One V. They diluted their own brand.
Releasing 11 different models between April 2012 and July 2012 probably has something to do with it aswell: Source. That's what really killed HTC, releasing too many phones and not supporting any of them.
Two of my friends bought HTC phones a year ago, one bought the original HTC Evo, the other bought an HTC Evo 3D. Now both of them say they'll never purchase another HTC phone again. I was lucky, I almost bought the original HTC Evo when it came out but I ended up waiting and getting a Nexus S instead. Now I'm running official Jelly Bean while my buddies are forced to use custom firmware to get updates.
Google's Android operating system will be used on more computing devices than Microsoft's Windows within four years, data from research firm Gartner showed on Wednesday, underlining the massive shift in the technology sector.
At the end of 2016, there will be 2.3 billion computers, tablets and smartphones using Android software, compared with 2.28 billion Windows devices, Gartner data showed.
You are 100% correct. They have way too many devices, and they don't properly support any of them. Take a look at the list of HTC android phones. They released 10 different models in a 3 month span this year.
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You're right. I think alot of that has to do with Froyo or Gingerbread on those old phones though. ICS and Jelly Bean fixed alot of those UI issues. My Nexus S definitely felt like a brand new phone when I upgraded from Gingerbread to ICS.
China actually has some pretty nice android phones that are on par with the iPhone 5 or the Galaxy S3.
The Xiaomi M2 has a 1.5GHz quad core, 2GB ram, 720p screen, and it runs MIUI 4.1 (Android 4.1 with a custom chinese rom). It costs $310, which is less than half the price of an iPhone 5 (and it has better specs than the iPhone). The Xiaomi M2 is basically on par with the newly released Nexus 4, but it costs $50 less.
There's also the Oppo Find 5 which will have a 1.5Ghz quad core, 2GB ram, 16 or 32GB storage, 1920x1080 resolution (1080p screen!), 2500mAh battery, and it runs Android 4.1. It might also be the thinnest smartphone to date.
They have cheaper phones too, like the Beidou Little Pepper which is only $156, and it has a 1.3Ghz quad core, 1GB ram, 5MP camera, 800x480 screen, and runs Android 4.0. There's also the older dual core variant for only $110.
That has probably more to do with the terrible skins and bloatware that HTC puts on their phones. The HTC Desire has roughly the same specs as my Nexus S (1GHz single core, 512MB ram on the Nexus S vs 576MB on the Desire), yet my Nexus S runs extremely fast with stock Jelly Bean.
In my opinion the Intel 320 and Crucial M4 are the most reliable. I bought an M4 earlier this year and I'm very happy with it so far. You can get a 128GB Crucial for $100 on newegg, or a 256GB for $200. The intel drives are more expensive, but they come with a 5 year warranty, where as the crucial m4's only have a 3 year warranty.
Isn't that what heirlooms are for? You max a char, buy heirlooms, and then power level alts with them.
I agree. I've had 3 Razer mice fail on me in the last 4 years. My original diamondback started to cause blue screens in both Windows XP and Windows 7. My second diamondback's scrollwheel stopped working after a year. I decided to try a deathadder, after 6-8 months it started to register left clicks as double clicks instead of single clicks, which is a pretty common Razer issue from what I've heard.
It sucks because I find Razer mice the most comfortable, but they don't last for more than 6-12 months. I'm going back to Logitech for my next mouse.
You can disable that, I haven't seen any steam ads in years.
View -> Settings -> Interface -> Notify me (with Steam instant messages) about additions or changes to my games, new releases, and upcoming releases.
From my experience the answer is no. I was a heavy drug user for 10 years, I now have trouble concentrating, I draw a blank all the time, everything is foggy, etc.. I quit doing drugs 5 years ago, but the after effects still linger to this day. I still play around with android and qt and I write apps for myself because I love to program, but it's only a hobby at this point.
I'm probably a fringe case though, I think the majority of people can smoke pot and be perfectly fine. I wouldn't recommend mixing drugs and programming though, you need a clear mind and a healthy body.
You can change the yellow background using the -bg-color command line argument. For example: "C:\Program Files (x86)\SumatraPDF\SumatraPDF.exe" -bg-color 0x444444
It's described in the manual here.
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?
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.
MacRumors wrote about an internal clash with Scott Forstall back in September, and now he quits in October... very interesting. Oddly enough that article also mentions iCal which is what AC was talking about.
I'm pretty sure OpenGL 4.0 supports hardware tessellation, and 4.0 was released in 2010.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#OpenGL_4.0:
Nexus 4 also has a dual meaning. It has a 4.7" screen, but it's also the 4th Nexus phone (Nexus One, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4).
The Nexus 4 is based off of the LG Optimus G. What I don't get is that the Optimus G comes with 32GB internal storage, but the Nexus 4 is limited to 8/16.
I wouldn't be surprised if Google doesn't want to deal with Verizon anymore after the Verizon Galaxy Nexus abomination.
It still is nice! The Evo and Nexus S both came out in December 2010 and they both have identical specs (1Ghz cpu with 512MB ram). The difference is my Nexus S has official JB while my buddy's Evo is still on Gingerbread. That's a problem, and there's no reason why the HTC Evo shouldn't get it either, my phone has the same specs and it's still incredibly fast.
You're right though, that's a problem with alot of vendors, not just HTC.
Eclipse can do it. You can setup a formatting style and then have it auto-format on save or do it manually with Ctrl+Shift+F.
Here's a screenshoft.
4) Churning out too many phones (they've released over 12 models/variants so far this year).
5) Not supporting existing phones with updates
6) Beats audio (they spent $300 million buying Beats by Dre, what a massive failure).
7) Locking down their phones
8) Non-removable battery and no sd cards
9) Focusing on thinness instead battery life
The original HTC Evo was nice, and the new One X looks nice, but they made too many variants. They also don't properly support any of them with updates.
Samsung didn't kill HTC, HTC killed themselves.
When HTC came out with the original Evo they had arguable the best phone on the market. That success was short lived though. They started churning out dozens of phones and they didn't support any of them with updates. They burned their own customers and people turned elsewhere (mainly Samsung).
If they were smart they would've released 1-2 phones a year at most. The Evo was a decent phone, they could've made that their flagship with yearly updates. The new One X looked good aswell, but how many One X variants did they make? One X, One S, One XL, One V. They diluted their own brand.
Releasing 11 different models between April 2012 and July 2012 probably has something to do with it aswell: Source. That's what really killed HTC, releasing too many phones and not supporting any of them.
Two of my friends bought HTC phones a year ago, one bought the original HTC Evo, the other bought an HTC Evo 3D. Now both of them say they'll never purchase another HTC phone again. I was lucky, I almost bought the original HTC Evo when it came out but I ended up waiting and getting a Nexus S instead. Now I'm running official Jelly Bean while my buddies are forced to use custom firmware to get updates.
HTC did this to themselves.
Gartner: Android to beat Windows by 2016.
16.0.1 was already released. Release notes here.
You are 100% correct. They have way too many devices, and they don't properly support any of them. Take a look at the list of HTC android phones. They released 10 different models in a 3 month span this year.
This makes me angry and depressed at the same time.