Android!

[Quinton]

N4s bought from the Play Store do not have any usage restriction based on purchasing account -- availability in various countries is related to local certification, etc, but they're all pentaband UMTS phones and will work with any Google account and on any compatible network.

At the moment, I'm not aware of any plans for a 32GB or larger SKU.  It's not inconceivable that one could happen in the future, but it's also quite possible that 16GB will remain the largest storage option for this device.

[Tebonas]

Thanks, as I hoped and as I feared, respectively.

[01101010]

Thanks, as I hoped and as I feared, respectively.

Yeah but that (low on board memory and no expansion slot) fits with Google's push to put everything in the cloud. Music, docs, calendars, etc.

[Quinton]

The lack of sdcard on Nexus devices is not actually some kind of "all in the cloud" conspiracy -- it's mostly due to the UX team not being happy with storage being split between internal and external -- they'd rather not have users deal with file pickers and the like, or have to worry about where things are stored.  There are some thoughts on providing both removable storage and a friendly model for handling it that will hopefully turn up in future OS versions, at which point we should see removable storage being a feature of lead devices again.

Lack of variety of expansion options usually is a result of a desire to keep the total number of SKUs minimized for inventory management sanity.

There are plenty of use cases where more local storage is desirable -- movies or music for viewing while out of coverage (on a plane, etc), games and other applications getting larger over time, etc, etc.  The baseline internal storage is moving up (now 16GB for Nexus tablet devices)

[Tebonas]

I'm frankly shocked by this explanation. They dumbed down the Android phone because they think people are too stupid to work out the difference between internal and external memory?

I thought that was the Windows Phone and/or iOS userbase. Android users at large should be able to realize how for example mount points work and/or how to initialize memory for usage of for example media players.

[Quinton]

We may not always succeed at it, but the goal remains that these devices, as they work out of the box, are as friendly and widely accessible as possible.  The Android userbase is *enormous* (500 million devices activated as of September 2012, 1.3M/day new activations, etc).  There has never been an expectation that the average user should have any idea about mount points, etc, etc.

Of course we don't stop people from installing file managers or whatnot, and we don't prevent OEMs from including removable memory if they want, but the UX team does not feel the removable memory experience is "good enough" yet and has avoided it on Nexus devices once we started including 8GB or more of internal flash.

[Tebonas]

But the average user has an idea about removable media like floppy discs or USB sticks and how to format them. Also, he has an idea about folder structures and creating them.

You are ríght the removable media experience needs to be improved, though. Hopefully your UX team makes some strides in that regard.

[schild]

The average user of anything is plum retarded.

[Salamok]

I would have thought that Android had the ability to create a single logical volume out of multiple pieces of physical media. Not sure about the performance gap between the flash they have internally installed vs. your average external flash card though.

[Ingmar]

But the average user has an idea about removable media like floppy discs or USB sticks and how to format them. Also, he has an idea about folder structures and creating them.

I support a whole bunch of average users using Android devices, and you are wrong wrong wrong about what they have an idea about.

[Quinton]

I would have thought that Android had the ability to create a single logical volume out of multiple pieces of physical media. Not sure about the performance gap between the flash they have internally installed vs. your average external flash card though.

The Linux kernel can definitely do that, but yeah, then you're back to UX -- how do you walk users through installing and formatting the union volume?  Do you migrate data from internal storage somehow?  What if they remove the sdcard later?  Can you even boot with your user data volume not mountable (right now: no)?  And yes, sd/mmc flash performance is entertainingly (or depressingly) highly variable -- much of what's out there is designed for camera style usecases (large streaming writes, not a lot of random tiny read/write access) and often has hideously buggy firmware.

I believe Windows Phone 7 did something like this (union of internal storage and sdcard (under battery to avoid remove-during-use issues)) but heard they moved away from it in later devices.

[Tebonas]

Well, the low memory I can live with, but I also hear the Nexus 4 has shitty battery life (barely one day with moderate use). Anybody knows if this is true?

[eldaec]

I wouldn't have any complaint about the lack of an expansion slot if Google put reasonable amounts of memory in phones to start with and didn't price gouge on upgrades that deliver merely mediocre storage.

I'm sure cloud storage will be very nice. In 2016.

[01101010]

Well, the low memory I can live with, but I also hear the Nexus 4 has shitty battery life (barely one day with moderate use). Anybody knows if this is true?

Outside of the Razor line, what phone has great battery life with moderate use? Even days when I actually moderately use my phone, I get home with at least 20-30% battery left. Then I just plug it in since I am not chained to it. I hear people gripe about battery life, but where the hell are you that you can't plug that thing in for 15 minutes - even coffee shops in Pittsburgh have changing stations.

[MrHat]

Well, the low memory I can live with, but I also hear the Nexus 4 has shitty battery life (barely one day with moderate use). Anybody knows if this is true?

This is true.

My Nexus 4 will be dead by night time with moderate use - internet, maybe some radio streaming, texting.

[Quinton]

Well, the low memory I can live with, but I also hear the Nexus 4 has shitty battery life (barely one day with moderate use). Anybody knows if this is true?

I think it'll depend what moderate use means.  I typically see 2-2.5 days on a charge, and I sync two email accounts and calendar, have gtalk on, but am a relatively light screen-on-active-device user (occasional email checking, web  browsing, phone calls).  Smartphone battery life remains very situational.  I've seen reports of both poor and great battery life on N4, as I have for every other device we've shipped over the years.

[01101010]

Well, the low memory I can live with, but I also hear the Nexus 4 has shitty battery life (barely one day with moderate use). Anybody knows if this is true?

I think it'll depend what moderate use means.  I typically see 2-2.5 days on a charge, and I sync two email accounts and calendar, have gtalk on, but am a relatively light screen-on-active-device user (occasional email checking, web  browsing, phone calls).  Smartphone battery life remains very situational.  I've seen reports of both poor and great battery life on N4, as I have for every other device we've shipped over the years.

WIFI vs Cellular connection play any part? My buddy shreds through his battery in less than 18 hours, but he is mostly on LTE/3G whereas I am always on WIFI given I work ina University which has service pretty much everywhere on campus - even at the bus stop.

[Quinton]

Wifi vs cellular depends on a number of factors:
- some wifi chipsets are more power efficient than others
- some wifi networks (like large corporate networks) can be much busier than others, causing more activity on the device
- some cellular technologies (especially VZW's LTE+CDMA) can be more power-hungry than others
- cellular modems use more power in poor coverage areas (they are asked to transmit at higher power by the towers)
- if you have spotty wifi coverage, your phone may do a lot of handoffs between wifi and cellular data (expensive)

So it can be very device and environment dependent.  I seem to get better battery life (based on not a lot of data, just rough observation) on my N4 and my older Galaxy Nexus when using cellular than wifi, but I have pretty solid TMO coverage both at work and home and the wifi network at work is pretty insane. 

[Tebonas]

My average usage till now.

Iphone 3GS (without 3G or Wifi) ~3 days
Iphone 4S (without Wifi) ~2 days

The first one is what I would love, the second one is what I could settle for.

[apocrypha]

But you can't change the battery in an iPhone can you? I thought that was how they got longer battery life, by eliminating the extra casing around the battery which makes it removable?

[Tebonas]

You can't change the battery in the Nexus 4 either, though.

[Quinton]

Nope.  It is a pretty large battery (2100mAh), but it is not user-swappable.

[apocrypha]

Oh, didn't realise that.

Well that's stupid then.

[Surlyboi]

 

[Quinton]

Not really Android news, but it looks like we released Android-quality Google Maps for some legacy mobile platforms today.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3760770/google-maps-iphone-available-features-navigation-transit

[Tebonas]

Thanks a lot, now I won't get lost with that crappy Apple map while I wait for my ideal Android phone to get built. 

[JWIV]

Not really Android news, but it looks like we released Android-quality Google Maps for some legacy mobile platforms today.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3760770/google-maps-iphone-available-features-navigation-transit

Thanks for that - it wouldn't be a morning on G+ if I didn't have my resident Apple Trollers shitting up everything on some alleged quote about how it's better on the iPhone than Android.

[Engels]

Woot! My iPhone 5 is now complete!

Also, Google voice search thingie is better and less creepy than Siri. It understood and found "cat butt christ" on the first try while Siri brought me this as its first result:

http://christwire.org/2010/08/why-do-rabbits-rape-cats/

Cat Butt Christ is my go-to benchmark for voice driven search engine accuracy.

That said, neither of them could find Steilacoom, WA. Kept on getting Steel Comb shopping choices.

[Rendakor]

Cat Butt Christ

[Tale]

Not really Android news, but it looks like we released Android-quality Google Maps for some legacy mobile platforms today.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3760770/google-maps-iphone-available-features-navigation-transit

The iPhone app should have been called Android Maps for the lulz.

[Quinton]

Not really Android news, but it looks like we released Android-quality Google Maps for some legacy mobile platforms today.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3760770/google-maps-iphone-available-features-navigation-transit

The iPhone app should have been called Android Maps for the lulz.

I think Apple still does not accept App Store submissions that contain "Android" in the name or description.

But, yes, that would have amused me greatly.

I'm actually really happy that we put the effort into building a nice iOS app -- something that always blew my mind about Microsoft back in the day was that they decided to not do mobile office for iOS or Android, presumably for ideological reasons, even though they likely could have made some good money selling it into corporate environments where neither Google docs nor the Apple productivity stuff is strong.

[Ozzu]

My wife was due for a phone upgrade and we went phone shopping earlier tonight. She had an iPhone 4 and ended up with a Samsung Galaxy S3 this time around. It's really nice. I'm not totally sold on the stuff that Samsung puts on there since I like a more pure Android experience (running a Galaxy Nexus), but still very nice.

[schild]

Ended up at Best Buy to get a Note II (for me) and Galaxy SIII for the fiancee. The matched Amazon Wireless' prices so we walked out the door having spent only $303 on both. Getting 22% off through her employer on our monthly service plan also. Seems good. The 4G LTE connection in downtown Austin is as fast as my cable connection, and the battery life on the Note II seems a little out of control. Overall Happiness Level: Didn't Need to get an iPhone.

[schild]

Yea, the Note II is a real real good phone. Basically it's as big as it could get before becoming obnoxiously huge. Their industrial engineers did a great size on the form factor.

[rattran]

I liked the look and feel of the Note, I'm getting tired of carrying around this chunky 4:3 8" all the time.