Android!

[Draegan]

Yeah hell with that price point. Figure it will be $150 by Spring.

The price without a contract is like $600+.  That's fucking high.

[Segoris]

I agree that price with a two year contract is pretty damn high, but price without a contract isn't far off, iirc Nexus One wasn't much lower than that almost two years ago and Nexus S one year ago.

I think the extra $100 with a contract is VZW being dicks though as they charge $299 for all their brand new 4g smart phones I believe, though being able to get double data plans right now is nice - so 4gb plan on 4g LTE for $30 compared to 2gb normally. May make it worth the extra $100 depending on someone's internet usage

[Draegan]

I just wanted a new shiny.  My Droid X is still perfectly fine but is slowing down a bit, but the slow down isn't worth $300.  I'm also still grandfathered into a unlimited data plan, but I don't use that much data.  Just web browsing.

[Segoris]

Yeah, I'm grandfathered as well as long as the old plans are also working for 4g phones, but I'm still on the original Droid and have been looking to upgrade for a while now.

[Nerf]

lets talk had the nexus for $175 on an upgrade earlier, not sure if they've still got any, and amazon should be doing it for ~200ish if they aren't already.  Both let you keep your unlimited data if you're grandfathered, though it's easier to do with Amazon.

Also, plan discounts count for phones too, apparently.  I was outside the Verizon store at 8:50 AM to wait in the incredibly long line of 6 people, and my 25% plan discount knocked the phone down to $249.99 on an upgrade.

It's awesome.  Just fucking awesome.

[Segoris]

Has anyone upgraded through Amazon? This page has the Galaxy Nexus for $150 and you receive a $100 amazon gift card. Landscape vs portrait issues or not at that price it would be worth it if there isn't some crap that I'm not seeing. It just looks like Amazon is selling it less than VZW though.

Also, maybe this is more for Quinton as he may know something, but has anyone else having issues with portrait vs landscape views? I just left the VZW store empty handed as the display phone and 3 different employee phones wouldn't rotate on the home screen, gmail, and text message app. The one time it did was when I was in the gmail app, hit menu, then hit back and it would finally rotate. [edit: maybe that isn't a default feature but me being spoiled by custom roms and a slide-out keyboard from my original Droid, any insight on if stock phones without keyboard rotate in Android?)

[Nerf]

I just tested gmail, it rotated to landscape in ~2 seconds, homescreen appears to be portrait only.  Message app rotates in 1-2s tho.

I'm still pretty fucking giddy about this phone.  It's money.

[Segoris]

Appreciated on the rotation test, still curious why it didn't on the phones I tried then (I did hold it, even tilted and held it in odd positions just to try to get a rotation), oh well. Since that was my complaint of the phone and it's still an awesome phone I'll end up with it, especially since I don't like the bigger keyboard on the Droid 3 and that was my backup plan

Anyways, anyone order a phone through amazon and have feedback on the experience or if they had any issues with their carrier? I'm guessing they're just an authorized dealer such as  best buy and what not but it just feels weird upgrading a phone through Amazon

[01101010]

Has anyone upgraded through Amazon? This page has the Galaxy Nexus for $150 and you receive a $100 amazon gift card. Landscape vs portrait issues or not at that price it would be worth it if there isn't some crap that I'm not seeing. It just looks like Amazon is selling it less than VZW though.

Also, maybe this is more for Quinton as he may know something, but has anyone else having issues with portrait vs landscape views? I just left the VZW store empty handed as the display phone and 3 different employee phones wouldn't rotate on the home screen, gmail, and text message app. The one time it did was when I was in the gmail app, hit menu, then hit back and it would finally rotate. [edit: maybe that isn't a default feature but me being spoiled by custom roms and a slide-out keyboard from my original Droid, any insight on if stock phones without keyboard rotate in Android?)

This sounds very strange... in familiarity. The guys working on ICS for my phone are having these same issues. Rotation of the screen is either not happening or giving some weird graphic glitches. Wonder if it is something with ICS or completely unrelated.

[Quinton]

The ICS homescreen is always portrait-only (UX decision).  The heuristics for auto-rotation were adjusted during ICS, but the impression I had was it was generally working well.  I tend to disable auto-rotation, though, so I'm not the best data point for this.

[Zetor]

As with all new shiny android phones, my #1 question is:

How is the battery life? My HTC Desire (nexus one equivalent) can go for 3-4 days with very light use, but that's still terrible compared to my old Nokia E51. Have they improved on this front?

[TripleDES]

I had a HTC Trophy (not exactly an Android device), which barely managed to play 8 hours of music with relatively light web browsing at work. I usually ended up at 20% battery or below. Eight hours of music with some heavier browsing (got a data volume bump free of charge recently) on the Nexus leaves me with 40%. If you want battery life, don't go with HTC. That's popular opinion.

[Segoris]

The ICS homescreen is always portrait-only (UX decision).  The heuristics for auto-rotation were adjusted during ICS, but the impression I had was it was generally working well.  I tend to disable auto-rotation, though, so I'm not the best data point for this.

I can understand the home screen not rotating, not so much gmail and messaging though (it didn't rotate at all except the one time after I had pushed the back button to remove the menu window in gmail). I didn't think to look while I was in the store for a sensitivity option and am hearing there is only an on/off option, but is there any plan to allow a sensitivity option (or is it even possible)?

[Nerf]

The ICS homescreen is always portrait-only (UX decision).  The heuristics for auto-rotation were adjusted during ICS, but the impression I had was it was generally working well.  I tend to disable auto-rotation, though, so I'm not the best data point for this.

I can understand the home screen not rotating, not so much gmail and messaging though (it didn't rotate at all except the one time after I had pushed the back button to remove the menu window in gmail). I didn't think to look while I was in the store for a sensitivity option and am hearing there is only an on/off option, but is there any plan to allow a sensitivity option (or is it even possible)?

Dude, it works fine on a phone in the wild, maybe there was just something screwy with the display model.  This isn't a reason to avoid the nexus.

[TripleDES]

Personally, I don't understand why anyone would want landscape mode on list based apps, like the inboxes on Gmail. Landscape usually removes content from screen, because there's less list items fitting on the screen, while the added horizontal space is rarely filled with anything useful.

[01101010]

The ICS homescreen is always portrait-only (UX decision).  The heuristics for auto-rotation were adjusted during ICS, but the impression I had was it was generally working well.  I tend to disable auto-rotation, though, so I'm not the best data point for this.

I can understand the home screen not rotating, not so much gmail and messaging though (it didn't rotate at all except the one time after I had pushed the back button to remove the menu window in gmail). I didn't think to look while I was in the store for a sensitivity option and am hearing there is only an on/off option, but is there any plan to allow a sensitivity option (or is it even possible)?

Dude, it works fine on a phone in the wild, maybe there was just something screwy with the display model.  This isn't a reason to avoid the nexus.

The pricepoint alone is good enough for that.

[schild]

Mmmmm, Ice Cream Sandwich on my Nexus S.

[Segoris]

The ICS homescreen is always portrait-only (UX decision).  The heuristics for auto-rotation were adjusted during ICS, but the impression I had was it was generally working well.  I tend to disable auto-rotation, though, so I'm not the best data point for this.

I can understand the home screen not rotating, not so much gmail and messaging though (it didn't rotate at all except the one time after I had pushed the back button to remove the menu window in gmail). I didn't think to look while I was in the store for a sensitivity option and am hearing there is only an on/off option, but is there any plan to allow a sensitivity option (or is it even possible)?

Dude, it works fine on a phone in the wild, maybe there was just something screwy with the display model.  This isn't a reason to avoid the nexus.

Yeah, I avoided it at first because it really felt weird, plus with a $300 price tag it just felt like something was off. I am still getting it though, because I feel it is still worth it. Though, I'd still like to see an adjustment or possible sensitivity option built in.

[01101010]

Mmmmm, Ice Cream Sandwich on my Nexus S.

I hate you so much right now...

ICS is still in alpha on mine.

[Sand]

My nexus s downloaded ice cream sand which yesterday or the day before. I forget which since my days have been a blur since SWTOR started up. I don't like it.
Typing is really horrible with it.
And it keeps giving me a blank white screen when browsing the web.

And what's with the stupid version names?

[Salamok]

So I have 2 android phones and we are going to Disney World.  I was thinking of putting one of them in a fanny pack and strapping it to my 5 year old.  What apps would be best to track her down in the event we somehow lose sight of her?  Should I just use latitude or is there something better?

[Draegan]

Isn't there some kind of "Friend" feature that google maps has?  Or is that latitude? 

[Salamok]

Yeah that is latitude,  not sure how well it will work when 2 people are only 20 meters apart.  I was kind of hoping for some compass/radar type of thing that just provides some simple "look that way" indicator.  So far it seems either use latitude or load some super paranoid spy application that tracks every little thing about your phone.  I did find a wifi radar but I have a feeling it just scans once then assumes those hotspots are not going to move.

[MahrinSkel]

Accuracy of Latitude is mostly going to be dependant on the accuracy of the GPS hardware in the phone, in an open area that should be pretty small (error of a few yards at most).  It would mean a little orienteering to establish a bearing, but nothing that wouldn't be fairly easy and intuitive.

Everything else I'm seeing either has fairly large pricetags, or lots of bitching in the reviews about how it doesn't do anything Latitude doesn't (or both).

Can your 5-year-old answer the phone?  My 3 year old nearly has that figured out now.  If you can teach him/her to answer the phone, most of your worries go away.

--Dave

[bhodi]

Apologies to all.

[Jobu]

I splurged and got myself an android smartphone over Christmas. What are some good sites that occasionally round up and review different apps and fun stuff do with it? So far I've just been checking lifehacker.com, but there are probably much better places out there?

[Yegolev]

I don't know, I have organically found things over the past two years... but I did read some sort of Top Ten list online, possibly Wired.  Otherwise I just look at the Market and Amazon suggestions like a doofus.

[01101010]

I am an XDA junkie...

[Quinton]

Apologies to all.

Did you get an unlimited Data plan?

[01101010]

Apologies to all.

Did you get an unlimited Data plan?

By the looks of it... no. 

[Yegolev]

GROAN

[NowhereMan]

So last night I merrily clicked on the option to automatically update my phone system from a rooted 2.3.4 (since I use Link2SD to manage memory issues) to 2.3.6 and discovered a load of my apps disappeared. Beautiful Weather, Runkeeper, mNote, Swype, Google Maps and a load of others. Not all of them mind and not just all the ones on that had been on the SD card or similar. Does anyone have any idea what happened with that? More importantly (to me at least) is there any way of getting them back short of tracking down all of them and reinstalling? There's 3 or 4 that are showing up in the Market under My Apps as uninstalled but the others just seem to have vanished entirely leaving me with about 3 screens filled with "Widget did not load properly" boxes.

Edit: Also all apps that are reinstalled are popping up with all their settings and skins, etc. in place so the data still seems to all be there.

[luckton]

Still waiting on CyanogenMod to kick out an ICS update.  I mean, any update, really...site hasn't updated since last month 

[bhodi]

Quinton, can you explain why everyone is going bonkers over this?

http://code.google.com/p/qcombbdbg/

[Tebonas]

So it seems once you link a gmail account to a phone, you can't unlink that one again without resetting the phone and are stuck with it.

I find that to be a terrible oversight, especially because my GF has over 4000 adresses on her gmail account that are annoying her on the phone (since you can't tell search to ignore those entries).

WTF google? Why do you make me regret giving her an android phone. Do you personally hate me? What have I ever done to you?