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This entire article literally only says two things: 1. The Nexus One doesn't have multi-touch. (Is this even true?) 2. The Nexus One can only store 200MB of

by mcantor 17y ago

This entire article literally only says two things: 1. The Nexus One doesn't have multi-touch. (Is this even true?) 2. The Nexus One can only store 200MB of apps. I've seen few articles that stretched further to find something, anything, to write about.

josefresco 17y ago
OS upgrade solves the multi-touch issue. Not sure on the 200 mb app limit, seems like that could be fixed with software as well.
- nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
  There is already a multitouch developer library available that allows developers (at least on the latest Cyanogen build) to work with multitouch gestures and input, and this is on my "aging" G1. AFAIK, there has not been a single non-multitouch-capable Android device released yet, so yes, it could be a simple OTA update to enable it if Google finally mans up to Apple. Regarding the "app limit", there is already a confirmed plan from Google to release an update for Android that will allow storing downloaded apps on the SD card as well as onboard memory.
jpschorr 17y ago
As nickaugust says below, the hardware and the OS support multi-touch. It's just that Google's bundled apps don't use this support. As to the 190MB limit, this is true for executable bundles, but apps and games are free to use the rest of the storage for resources (datastores, textures, models, etc.). Also, at the Nexus One event yesterday, it was noted that Google is working on the ability to use the SD card for app storage.
- ajross 17y ago
  The inability to store applications on the external card is a really frustrating shortcoming. It's trivially fixed in the modding community (for the phones that have been rooted, of course) by just putting an ext2 filesystem on the card and making a few symlinks, but Google doesn't want to support that because it breaks the "SD cards must be unpartitioned FAT filesystems" notion. Still, 190M is a lot of space for apps, most of which are no more than 1-2M. I'm not sure this is as big a crisis as it's made out to be.
  - enomar 17y ago
    I believe they're more worried about making sure paid apps can't be cracked and published outside the market. Also, from the Nexus One has 512 MB of flash, not 200.
    - ajross 17y ago
      No, the apps can be pulled off the filesystem trivially on rooted devices anyway. I was whining to the developers on #android on freenode a while back, and the stated reason was indeed the hassle of supporting a non-standard external storage format. And the 190MB is no doubt the free space available on the internal filesystem. The G1 has much less, actually.
michaelcampbell 17y ago
An iPhone user explained it to me this way, "It's not an iPhone." It's no different than arguing a religious conviction.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  It's no different than arguing a religious conviction. If that's true, then the key variable is who you're arguing with and not what you're arguing about. I've had a few discussions about religion that were great. I've also had a lot that were brain-dead. Heck, discussions about Health Care in the US are the same way.

by mcantor 17y ago

josefresco 17y ago

OS upgrade solves the multi-touch issue. Not sure on the 200 mb app limit, seems like that could be fixed with software as well.

nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
There is already a multitouch developer library available that allows developers (at least on the latest Cyanogen build) to work with multitouch gestures and input, and this is on my "aging" G1. AFAIK, there has not been a single non-multitouch-capable Android device released yet, so yes, it could be a simple OTA update to enable it if Google finally mans up to Apple. Regarding the "app limit", there is already a confirmed plan from Google to release an update for Android that will allow storing downloaded apps on the SD card as well as onboard memory.

jpschorr 17y ago

As nickaugust says below, the hardware and the OS support multi-touch. It's just that Google's bundled apps don't use this support. As to the 190MB limit, this is true for executable bundles, but apps and games are free to use the rest of the storage for resources (datastores, textures, models, etc.). Also, at the Nexus One event yesterday, it was noted that Google is working on the ability to use the SD card for app storage.

ajross 17y ago
The inability to store applications on the external card is a really frustrating shortcoming. It's trivially fixed in the modding community (for the phones that have been rooted, of course) by just putting an ext2 filesystem on the card and making a few symlinks, but Google doesn't want to support that because it breaks the "SD cards must be unpartitioned FAT filesystems" notion. Still, 190M is a lot of space for apps, most of which are no more than 1-2M. I'm not sure this is as big a crisis as it's made out to be.
- enomar 17y ago
  I believe they're more worried about making sure paid apps can't be cracked and published outside the market. Also, from the Nexus One has 512 MB of flash, not 200.
  - ajross 17y ago
    No, the apps can be pulled off the filesystem trivially on rooted devices anyway. I was whining to the developers on #android on freenode a while back, and the stated reason was indeed the hassle of supporting a non-standard external storage format. And the 190MB is no doubt the free space available on the internal filesystem. The G1 has much less, actually.

michaelcampbell 17y ago

An iPhone user explained it to me this way, "It's not an iPhone." It's no different than arguing a religious conviction.

stcredzero 17y ago
It's no different than arguing a religious conviction. If that's true, then the key variable is who you're arguing with and not what you're arguing about. I've had a few discussions about religion that were great. I've also had a lot that were brain-dead. Heck, discussions about Health Care in the US are the same way.