Android!

[Sky]

Bunch of android phones on amazon for a penny. Thunderbolt, Incredible, yada. Verizon only.

[01101010]

Bunch of android phones on amazon for a penny. Thunderbolt, Incredible, yada. Verizon only.

With a new line agreement. 

But if you have a contract up or none at all... that is actually pretty cool.

[MuffinMan]

Depending on how much it costs to cancel your contract at another carrier it still might be worth it if you really want a new phone and want to swtich. Save $200 off a new smartphone and pay say a $200 cancellation fee and it's a wash.

[01101010]

Depending on how much it costs to cancel your contract at another carrier it still might be worth it if you really want a new phone and want to swtich. Save $200 off a new smartphone and pay say a $200 cancellation fee and it's a wash.

Good point. My mind went elsewhere but yeah.

[Quinton]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX4btquQzUE

[Yegolev]

Follow up that pic with a link to the job site.

[Segoris]

WTB Snickerdoodle name!

For the Amazon sale, I was almost tempted by a $.01 Droid 3 or a discounted Bionic, but I think I'll wait with some more announcements. There's a few rumors going around worth waiting on imo right now.

[Sky]

For me it's either get a smartphone or upgrade my pc. Actually, the smartphone would be more than twice as expensive (two year data plan), even with the current amazon sale.

As badly as I want an android phone, I'm upgrading my pc.

[fuser]

http://www.enterproid.com/

I think I'm in love. I haven't seen anything from vmware on this lately but you can signup for their beta and get access. It kills my cheapo phone i'd like to see it on a device with some ram/cpu power.

[TripleDES]

Eh, I'm ditching WP and going back to Android for a while. I don't expect anything mind-blowing from Nokia. I'm going to wait for Windows (Phone) 8 (phone). Will the Nexus Prime be available shortly after announcing it, or is it being tied up in silly delayed carrier exclusives, and some such? There's already talk about being a Verizon exclusive and having a date of mid-November.

[Segoris]

The announcement with Samsung is due on Wednesday, which is when we fill find out more I believe

[Segoris]

Am I missing something or does the Galaxy Nexus seem underwhelming?

Also, ICS looks awesome.

[Trippy]

Other than the camera and participating in the ridiculous race to see who can have the largest screen on a device that's meant to be used with your thumb and fit in your pocket it seems fine.

[01101010]

ICS dump files already available to devs ...

[Quinton]

Other than the camera and participating in the ridiculous race to see who can have the largest screen on a device that's meant to be used with your thumb and fit in your pocket it seems fine.

Surprisingly, it's not quite as hugenormous in person as it sounds on paper (and as far as I can tell, a lot of users *want* hugenormous screens) and pocketability is not really an issue.  The 720p display is pretty fantastic for fullscreen video playback.

Camera is servicable, but not earth-shattering.  I'm annoyed by the megapixel wars.  I'd personally rather have 3MP with larger pixels and better optics, but the market only knows how to compare megapixels, it seems (even to the point of Apple getting into that game).  720p/1080p video is nice.

[fuser]

I'd like to see a battery race, who cares about the screen size/camera resolution/features when you have to charge the sucker every day.

ICS user features is a really nice read.

[Chimpy]

Other than the camera and participating in the ridiculous race to see who can have the largest screen on a device that's meant to be used with your thumb and fit in your pocket it seems fine.

Surprisingly, it's not quite as hugenormous in person as it sounds on paper (and as far as I can tell, a lot of users *want* hugenormous screens) and pocketability is not really an issue. 

The thing is, how can anyone really know? People want the "fastest" and "best specs" etc. from Android devices and, frankly, they only put those into phones with increasingly more ginormous screens. If someone were to release a phone with a smaller screen that had an equal feature set otherwise, maybe we would know better. The only new phones they make with smaller screens all have lackluster non-screen features in comparison.

[01101010]

I'd like to see a battery race, who cares about the screen size/camera resolution/features when you have to charge the sucker every day.

ICS user features is a really nice read.

Where do you live that you can't plug it into a wall before you pass out for the night? I get ~30 hours on my Inc2 with moderate data use, 1-2 voice calls a day, and 2 hours of music playing on the bus/walk to and from work.*

*I am not running the stock ROM or kernal and I do have a governor on to reduce power while in standby and throttle to OC speed while data munching so I can't say anything to the Verizon stock battery life.

[Ingmar]

My trusty old Droid 2 gets through 3-4 days with the extended battery. Having to charge a phone all the time is annoying, especially when traveling. The problem with advancing batteries is it always makes developers think "yay now we can throw more power hogging bullshit on the phone" so you never get a real increase in lifespan from generation to generation.

[Zetor]

I mentioned this a few times in this thread, and I know Ingmar in particular is going to love the next paragraph for the Symbian reference , but...

The S60-based Nokia smartphones in the mid-2000s lasted freaking forever, despite their batteries being lower capacity than the superbatteries in today's phones. My E51 in 2007 easily went for 2 weeks7-8 days with one charge at the same usage as my HTC Desire that needs me to charge it every 3 days unless I don't use it at all. Of course it had a lot weaker hardware (still enough to run a C-64 emulator and a web browser at the same time!), a much smaller screen with no touch surface, etc.

[fuser]

Where do you live that you can't plug it into a wall before you pass out for the night? I get ~30 hours on my Inc2 with moderate data use, 1-2 voice calls a day, and 2 hours of music playing on the bus/walk to and from work.*

Oh come on, expecting to plug in a phone every single night is going backwards. If you compare it to a blackberry its extremely limiting and a hard sell for non technical people. A comparison to a recent blackberry with WiFi/3G easily clocks in 2days. It's my biggest gripe with the iPhone and Android based phones.

I'd just like to see a switch from focus on Mhz/Cores/RAM/display/size to power consumption improvements.

[MahrinSkel]

I get 3-4 days off my Droid 2 with a standard battery, dunno what you guys are doing wrong.  Probably bloatware from your carrier on the phone.

--Dave

[01101010]

Where do you live that you can't plug it into a wall before you pass out for the night? I get ~30 hours on my Inc2 with moderate data use, 1-2 voice calls a day, and 2 hours of music playing on the bus/walk to and from work.*

Oh come on, expecting to plug in a phone every single night is going backwards. If you compare it to a blackberry its extremely limiting and a hard sell for non technical people. A comparison to a recent blackberry with WiFi/3G easily clocks in 2days. It's my biggest gripe with the iPhone and Android based phones.

I'd just like to see a switch from focus on Mhz/Cores/RAM/display/size to power consumption improvements.

Keep waiting for that miracle patch. 

 But seriously, you all have an issue with placing your phone on the nightstand and plugging it in and having it charge while you sleep? Really?

[luckton]

Steve Ballmer thinks we're all computer scientists. 

[eldaec]

Steve Ballmer thinks we're all computer scientists. 

He kind of has a point, I would not, for example, recommend an Android to my mother.

His own phone is a piece of shit, but that doesn't make him wrong.

[Sand]

I dont think you need to be to technically proficient to download Angry Birds and play it.

[NowhereMan]

The only issue with Android phones is there are so many UIs it's almost impossible to find guides to tell you how to do stuff. I know I had a headache figuring out how to merge contacts and it even took me a while to figure out how to add more than one recipient to text messages (which was adding more names like an email to field, other phones usually added in a new recipient field to fill out) This was stock Android and it wasn't really possible to find how to guides or manuals, everything was just telling me how I could unlock my phone or write my own app. The documentation was generally lacking and I'd consider myself pretty familiar with technology. I was able to figure it out through trial and error (usually error ) but I can imagine handing an android phone to anyone not very comfortable with technology would just frustrate them.

[fuser]

But seriously, you all have an issue with placing your phone on the nightstand and plugging it in and having it charge while you sleep? Really?

Not really but it's an annoyance. Digging around it seems the next crop of Snapdragon processors with die shrink from 45nm to 28nm should be launching Q4, and OMAP5 based 28nm SoC will be out in 2012.

[01101010]

I dont think you need to be to technically proficient to download Angry Birds and play it.

Oversimplifying, but i get your point. This is why Apple was so remarkable - they tied everything together to sync. My mother had a Sansa MP3 player and could never figure out how to use it enough to make it worthwhile. Getting music on that thing when it takes more than 2 windows on the computer to do is just wrong to my mother's well being. Gave her my iPod Touch and she plugged it into her computer and *poof, everything on her iTunes magically arrived on the iPod. This compared to Android-based phone OSs is very far apart for the lay user or those people like my mother that fear a misclick on the computer will send their world into the depths of hell. I have a G+ follower who works in the computer dept for PNC here and just now rooted his Tbolt and only managed that when a friend came over and did it for him. He has yet to drop a new ROM on it and is still running the stock bloatware due to this overwhelming fear of screwing something up that can not be reversed. *shrug* Some people just aren't comfortable with tech.

[Sand]

I respectfully disagree.

Im one of the least technically literate guys on the board. I can put a desktop together and figure out most software problems through the power of google, but Im not in the IT industry as it seems half the board is.
Every Google/Android phone I have owned has been utterly simplistic to use and navigate. Everything was fairly intuitive.
And everything I have links together, its one of the best features as far as Im concerned. My home computer, office computer and phone always have the same emails and have my calendar updated no matter where I update it from. Its a thing of beauty.

This guy from Microsoft is just looking for something to bitch about, because Android is crushing their ability to get into the smartphone market. Android did what MS couldnt, compete against Apple in the phone/tablet market, and they are being sore losers.   

[SurfD]

I respectfully disagree.

Im one of the least technically literate guys on the board. I can put a desktop together and figure out most software problems through the power of google.

That right there still puts you ahead of about 60% of the population who own a tech device more complicated then a VCR.

[luckton]

I respectfully disagree.

Im one of the least technically literate guys on the board. I can put a desktop together and figure out most software problems through the power of google.

That right there still puts you ahead of about 60% of the population who own a tech device more complicated then a VCR.

I believe there's a finite difference between someone's cognitive intuition/perception to attack/solve problems and someone's actual technical knowledge.  Having more of the former could apply to anything and make you seem like the smartest guy in the room, yet they may really lack the ladder.

But such is a discussion for another thread 

[MahrinSkel]

It's more than just not getting tech.  My mother was a computer programmer, but on mainframes in the 70's.  She just doesn't "get" PC's, and didn't have a cell phone until I got her a Virgin Mobile bare-bones model in 2004.  Every time she has an issue with either, I get a call.  The endlessly protean nature of the modern tech landscape just moves too fast, and she quit trying to keep up.

--Dave

[Vaiti]

Possible evidence that many of ICS's theme design choices were lifted from a theme called DarkEdge made by a 15 year old

How is that for a sensationalist headline?   But no really, I'd love some context here. Quinton?

edit: p.s. Quinton, if this is looking valid, you should totally get in touch with this kid and hire him. He is 17 now and is also making SentioUI

[Tale]

I have a cheap unlocked Chinese-made Android phone. As well as doing normal phone/internet functions, it's currently acting as a DLNA media server, streaming music and video files from my phone through my PS3 to my TV and hi-fi. Did it this way.

I think that's pretty incredible for $79. Probably going to replace it with a Samsung Galaxy S II soon, but I've had serious value for money.