6 ms·

Google Designing 'X Phone' to Rival Apple, Samsung

83 points by Pr0 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
loceng 14y ago
This could easily start to kill Apple - or at least start taking big bites out of them.
- cmelbye 14y ago
  Easily start to kill Apple? That's a pretty strong claim.
- bdcravens 14y ago
  Did you read the article, and not just the title? The article talks about all the challenges that Motorola is dealing with to deliver such a phone. Moreover, the article discusses Samsung as more of the competitor to beat, to ensure that there's more than one big player in the Android space.
- supercoder 14y ago
  I realise you're probably just excited to think android might have something better than ios, but remember Apple are also hard at work. So you can't just compare a rumour against the current offering.
michael_miller 14y ago
I'm really glad this is happening. Hardware companies have long been stingy and focused on the bottom line. One of the things that annoys me to no end about most PCs is that they have "Intel Inside" and "Designed for Windows" stickers. Hardware companies get maybe $20 from putting these stickers on the computers, and another $20 to put crapware on the computers they ship. $40 profit on a (say) $700 computer. As a consumer, I absolutely despise this. If I'm spending $700, I don't want to have to use rubbing alcohol to remove stickers. I don't want to have to spend several hours uninstalling trial versions of software I didn't want in the first place. I'll pay the $40 out of pocket, just give me a clean usable computer. It's really a shame that only one company has realized this. I'm glad that Google has wised up and is taking a stand against the race to the bottom that has pervaded the hardware industry. With both major platforms having high quality hardware, the pressure will be on for the third-party manufacturers to up their game.
- wvenable 14y ago
  > $40 profit on a (say) $700 computer. If you're willing to pay $740 instead of $700 then you might get that -- but most people aren't. It's not that only one company realizes it, it's that one particular company also charges you a lot more.
  - CountSessine 14y ago
    Who's making that $740 PC without crapware right now? I know I can buy a Mac and have a usable machine out of the box, but who is doing this in the Windows PC world?
    - awa 14y ago
      You can buy any pc from store.microsoft.com or the physical microsoft store and that would come with no crap/bloatware
      - beagle3 14y ago
        Story time: Two years ago, I bought a Lenovo IdeaPad with the intention of running Linux. I bought it from the Microsoft Store website, because it was $200 cheaper than buying it from Lenovo (even with discount codes from dealnews.com) So, as I was checking out, the store asks me if I would like to pay $80 more for "Microsoft Signature" setup. Given that I was going to run Linux, I was already upset at the implicit Windows tax, and declined without even checking what "Microsoft Signature" was. Especially since the whole thing was $650, so $80 is almost a 15% increase. Three days later, I get the thing, and the box says "with Microsoft Signature". I first looked to see that they did not charge me for it. And then, just before calling to shout at them for installing crapware I didn't ask for, I checked what "Microsoft Signature" really means. Lo and behold, it means "Lack of manufacturer crapware". Microsoft was offering to charge me $80 more so that I would only get Microsoft software out of the box. (The Intel Inside and Win7 stickers were still there, however)
      - vibrunazo 14y ago
        Neither are available in most countries.
krschultz 14y ago
It is shockingly simple to get at least near the level of Apple products: don't let your vendors ship crapware on the device. When you play with a Nexus device with vanilla Android and no crap apps installed by default, it's great. It's very comparable to an iPhone experience. If Google installed more of their 1st party apps by default, it would be even better. Yet most devices shipped by Verizon have 7-10+ apps that are absolute garbage and distract from the experience. It's entirely analogous to laptops. Windows isn't terrible. Windows combined with the 20 apps that Dell shipped by default is terrible. Don't let the middlemen (Dell/HP for Microsoft, Verizon/AT&T for Google) define your user experience.
- peterevans 14y ago
  You really think that the OEM-installed apps on a Windows machine make it terrible, and the OS contributes nothing? It's hard to control the user experience when you don't control the hardware. Apple's been saying that for years, in deeds if not in so many words. Maybe Google, Microsoft, et. al have felt that licensing is a better business model than selling, and who am I to say otherwise? I do agree with you that one shouldn't let the middlemen dictate the user experience. But I think the problem Android has is that they get stuck on some crappy phone hardware, on phones where you aren't using (or can't use?) the latest OS (forgive me, I'm not a regular Android user); don't you think that's much worse than being stuck with OEM pre-installed apps, even if they are crapware?
  - dkl 14y ago
    You really think that the OEM-installed apps on a Windows machine make it terrible, and the OS contributes nothing? I have a friend that really loves Sony laptop hardware. Every time he buys one, though, he has to spend a day cleaning off the bloatware. It literally goes from a sluggish Windows filled with crap to reasonable OS. As for the "controlling the hardware" comment, I completely agree. How many Windows laptops have I had that had terrible close-the-lid-and-sleep behavior? Every single one of them. A colleague had a laptop overheat and almost catch fire because he closed the lid, and after assuming it slept, putting it in his laptop bag. A couple of hours later he removed it only to find the thing was too hot to touch. This kind of thing is much rarer on Macs because Apple owns the whole stack and can make sure everything plays well together.
taeric 14y ago
I still feel the dominant position of the iPhone is an understanding of marketing as much as anything else. People aren't necessarily buying iPhones because they are better, but because they want an iPhone. That is a huge distinction that carries a ton of weight. I understand the belief that if you make a significantly better option, it will sell well. I question the validity of this belief. As well as the ability of anyone to do so.
- alayne 14y ago
  Apple has a very high customer satisfaction rate. You don't get there with just clever ads.
  - taeric 14y ago
    And marketing is more than just advertising.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- barredo 14y ago
  Samsung spends way more in advertising than Apple http://www.asymco.com/2012/12/05/the-mystery-of-samsung-electronics-sga/ http://www.asymco.com/2012/12/05/the-mystery-of-samsung-elec...
  - bdcravens 14y ago
    Very true, but isn't Samsung more spread out than Apple? I'd like to see it broken down by product segment. (Even then Samsung has a number of phones, many that are positioned other than as iPhone competition)
- bdcravens 14y ago
  I have both an iPhone 5 and an S3. As I've written about in other threads, the app ecosystem is what keeps me on the iPhone (I have one main line, a second for testing; either phone could be flipped into either role if I wanted), even though I think the S3 has superior hardware and OS.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
I was just sitting here thinking that I wouldn't upgrade my Galaxy Nexus with 4.2.1 until it breaks given how it literally handles everything I need it for, but if Motorola put out an unlocked AOSP device, I'd be all over it. Though, I also remember how much I enjoy VZW coverage and how unlikely it is that Google is going to play ball with them anymore. - >For the X phone, an initiative being led by former Google product manager Lior Ron who specialized in mapping, Motorola wanted top-notch features for the phone's camera and photo software, such as better color saturation and the ability to take panoramic shots, two people familiar with the situation said. But some of the features were found to drain battery life or already have been incorporated into popular new devices, such as the iPhone 5 that launched earlier this year, they added. ....... uhm, what? Android beat iOS to panoramas and Photosphere was part of 4.2. I can't understand how "color saturation" drains the battery constantly. (Frankly the 4.2 stock camera kicks ass, especially combined with the new lock screen widgets. Very slick. One gesture, one tap to take a picture from a locked phone.) I also don't understand the implication that this is Google hedging bets in case Samsung gets disappointed. Samsung is beginning to eat Apple's lunch in Android sales... why would they turn their back on Android?
- barista 14y ago
  Unless Samsung is thinking of turning its back on android for any reason.
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Which Tizen and Bada are designed to do. They're shipping alternatives today that can let them juke if it gets hairy, taking their investments with them.
  - eliben 14y ago
    They're involved in efforts like https://www.tizen.org/about https://www.tizen.org/about, but I don't really see this one lifting.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    That seems extremely unlikely in the short term given the revenue Samsung is bringing in from their Android sales.
barista 14y ago
Working with your hardware partners to develop more choices for customers while also providing a premium experience that you have full control on... Interesting that Google is copying Microsoft's strategy that people feared might backfire for Microsoft.
Apocryphon 14y ago
What does this mean for the future of the Nexus brand?
- eliben 14y ago
  Did anyone say it could not be "Nexus X" ?
mtgx 14y ago
I for one hope they also let manufacturers create many more "Nexus" devices, if they are going to pursue this with Motorola anyway. They need to create a Nexus program with much stricter guidelines than the typical Android phone (no skins, no extra crapware, lag-free, and which gets at least two dot-oh upgrades - like 5.0 and 6.0), and also allow them to make $100 (unlocked) Nexus devices, too. I wouldn't buy the cheap one for myself, but I could recommend them to people who just want a cheap smartphone. I'd much rather recommend them a clean Nexus device, than a skinned custom-software one, with an unpredictable user experience, that also doesn't get upgrades. All of these Nexus devices also need to have all of their upgrades handled by Google alone - just like the Chromebooks. In fact, this Nexus program should be handled almost like the Chromebook program. Nobody gets to touch the Chrome OS but Google. I think these devices would become increasingly more popular thanks to the word of mouth of the people who actually know what they are and recommending them to all their friends. This would clean up the Android ecosystem a bit by having exactly one user experience across Android devices, and having a major portion of the Android ecosystem be upgraded on time and for a longer period. As for this X-devices strategy from Motorola, they could use it as "iPhone-killers" - as hero devices of their ecosystem, like Nexus has been until now. But they need to be devices of highest quality, and they shouldn't try to also compromise on price, like they did with Nexus 4. I'm not saying that Nexus 4 suffered from it, but to be honest that strategy started to worry me a little because Google might want to get to lower and lower price points in the future, and forget about making the very best devices in the market. And I think that would be a very bad idea. Google needs to excite "influencers" in the tech world, and they can't do that with sub-par cheaper devices. But with the X strategy, they can deliver these hero "best in the market" devices, while the Nexus program would allow for a sub-group of the Android market, to have devices from $100-$600, from different manufacturers, but under very strict guidelines, and with Google handling all the upgrades. Basically the Nexus program should become what Android should've been if Google could restart Android today. tl;dr - Nexus = Windows/ChromeOS strategy, with one UX and all upgrades from Google for at least 2 years. X-phone - iPhone strategy; Google's hero device for the year, the one that's made to excite the tech-insiders, and push the ecosystem further, and the one that always comes with the dot-oh versions, not dot-one (e.g. 5.0, not 5.1).
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
arrrg 14y ago
Hopefully. Android may be good enough for the vast majority of people, for myself it's just rage inducing. You know, I was sort of jaded from Apple's stupid antics. When my dad asked me what phone his employer should buy for him I told him to get the Samsung Galaxy SII. It got great reviews and was widely praised, it also runs a somewhat recent version of Android. Now I'm visiting my parents for Christmas and helping my dad configure it. Holy shit, what an unbelievable piece of crap! There aren't enough expletives to describe that train wreck. Running Android 4.0.4, no less. Wow. It's just awful, no better than those crappy feature phones from five years ago, making all the same idiotic mistakes. How anyone can deal with this crap is a mystery to me. (I now just feel bad for my dad who has to deal with it.) Apple, I may hate your antics, but you do blow Samsung out of the water. Google still has to step it up. I thought they were on a level. They still are not. All they have going for them is price and diversity. (Not that anyone but me care. But holy shit, what a piece of crap. I'm really wondering what all the gushing reviewers were smoking. Also, what the hell is wrong with that awful display? Why is white so green?)
- Offler 14y ago
  Could you back up your statement with some examples? I have friends with the SII and they are very happy with it.
  - arrrg 14y ago
    Thousands of dialogs pop up all the time telling me stuff I'm not interested and that is not important or useful (e.g. explaining some gimmicky and useless gestures). I was told that deleting crapware from Android phones would be easy, however, it seems to be very hard. Even then, there is no way to know which apps you can delete and which you cannot. I gave up on it. It seemed like too much of hassle. The settings are a mess, unorganized, not explicit, confusingly vast, with very bad descriptions and many options on a same hierarchical level That Play Store! Thousands of confirmation dialogs, updating apps is an ordeal. I gave up. I think I have to take another stab at it tomorrow. Scrolling inertia is wrong. Ugh. That's real ugly. Contacts crashed, showing a black screen for a good 20 seconds. When iOS apps crash you are back to the home screen immediately. (Apps crash. I have no problem with that. But they shouldn't crash like that.) That inconsistent back button! You never know what it will do (since it's not consistent, there is no rhyme or reason). Sometimes it means back in the app hierarchy, sometimes it takes you back to the last screen you saw, independent of app hierarchy. That damn menu button! It hides tons of crap, you never know what there will be. It's seemingly used by lazy UI designers to throw in everything they thought they needed and couldn't fit into the normal UI. The translation to German of the interface is atrocious. Apple make their fair share of embarrassing mistakes, Samsung/Google puts it on a whole new level. Labels that don't fit and are cryptically abbreviated and so on. Those may seem like small things, but those are things that tick me off. I have to note that I'm talking about my personal taste here. Others may be able to deal with it. I noticed that I can't. Even though I thought I would like it. I'm honestly shocked now. I thought Android would be pretty awesome by now. That's what everyone told me – and I believed it. At least for me personally that's sadly not true (but I still want to try one of those Nexus phones, Samsung, however, is dead to me now).
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
SODaniel 14y ago
Of course, they would be rivaling Apple/Samsung if they would just produce enough of the Nexus 4 and market it better. But that just seems TOO EASY I guess.
- CountSessine 14y ago
  if they would just produce enough But that's why this is so hard. Google and LG completely fucked up the Nexus 4. They so completely misjudged market demand for the N4 that they didn't have their supply chain in line to produce enough. That's why even now you can't get one. It takes a while to get all of the downstream suppliers in line and they're probably scrambling to do that now. That's why this business is so hard. It's not that they just didn't produce enough - they didn't produce enough and they're not very good with contingency planning and supply chain management and so the Nexus 4 isn't an option for most consumers who would want one. Don't underestimate just how good Apple and Samsung are at this.
- jodrellblank 14y ago
  What's that Dilbert management quote? "I can't do it so it must be easy".
edyang 14y ago
As an owner of a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, I just have three words for Google: more battery life. Seriously, I love the phone but it sucks down the juice like there's no tomorrow. And that's with an extended capacity battery pack and App Killer set on Aggressive.
- joonix 14y ago
  The battery life on the Note2 is phenomenal. Helps that it has a 3100mah battery.
pretoriusB 14y ago
>It is shockingly simple to get at least near the level of Apple products: don't let your vendors ship crapware on the device. Well, you also need to get the actual hardware on par. Cheap plastic won't do. Get the machining and the materials right. Oh, and let the users UPGRADE between versions of Android. What the duck is up with that?
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  > Cheap plastic won't do. I have never doubted that my Android phones are tougher than iPhones. I drop my Galaxy Nexus constantly on concrete without issue. Every single one of my family members has broken an iPhone screen in the last year, year and a half.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    It's the feel, not the toughness when people constantly drop them. That said, the glass back panel on iPhone 4 was easy to break. The solid metal iPhone 5 not so much.
tluyben2 14y ago
Let them first fix their supply chain; buy a ton of factories or whatever, because here (in the EU) Nexus 4 and 10 are still sold out (before xmas; how smart...). Many people I know now went for the SIII or iPad 10 inch instead of waiting any longer. That's incredibly lame. Edit: in my country (Netherlands) they haven't even started selling the Nexus 10 in the first place, but I usually order that kind of stuff in Spain because they are apparently 'important enough' for second (behind the US) launches most of the time.

83 points by Pr0 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

loceng 14y ago

This could easily start to kill Apple - or at least start taking big bites out of them.

cmelbye 14y ago
Easily start to kill Apple? That's a pretty strong claim.
bdcravens 14y ago
Did you read the article, and not just the title? The article talks about all the challenges that Motorola is dealing with to deliver such a phone. Moreover, the article discusses Samsung as more of the competitor to beat, to ensure that there's more than one big player in the Android space.
supercoder 14y ago
I realise you're probably just excited to think android might have something better than ios, but remember Apple are also hard at work. So you can't just compare a rumour against the current offering.

michael_miller 14y ago

I'm really glad this is happening. Hardware companies have long been stingy and focused on the bottom line. One of the things that annoys me to no end about most PCs is that they have "Intel Inside" and "Designed for Windows" stickers. Hardware companies get maybe $20 from putting these stickers on the computers, and another $20 to put crapware on the computers they ship. $40 profit on a (say) $700 computer. As a consumer, I absolutely despise this. If I'm spending $700, I don't want to have to use rubbing alcohol to remove stickers. I don't want to have to spend several hours uninstalling trial versions of software I didn't want in the first place. I'll pay the $40 out of pocket, just give me a clean usable computer. It's really a shame that only one company has realized this. I'm glad that Google has wised up and is taking a stand against the race to the bottom that has pervaded the hardware industry. With both major platforms having high quality hardware, the pressure will be on for the third-party manufacturers to up their game.

wvenable 14y ago
> $40 profit on a (say) $700 computer. If you're willing to pay $740 instead of $700 then you might get that -- but most people aren't. It's not that only one company realizes it, it's that one particular company also charges you a lot more.
- CountSessine 14y ago
  Who's making that $740 PC without crapware right now? I know I can buy a Mac and have a usable machine out of the box, but who is doing this in the Windows PC world?
  - awa 14y ago
    You can buy any pc from store.microsoft.com or the physical microsoft store and that would come with no crap/bloatware
    - beagle3 14y ago
      Story time: Two years ago, I bought a Lenovo IdeaPad with the intention of running Linux. I bought it from the Microsoft Store website, because it was $200 cheaper than buying it from Lenovo (even with discount codes from dealnews.com) So, as I was checking out, the store asks me if I would like to pay $80 more for "Microsoft Signature" setup. Given that I was going to run Linux, I was already upset at the implicit Windows tax, and declined without even checking what "Microsoft Signature" was. Especially since the whole thing was $650, so $80 is almost a 15% increase. Three days later, I get the thing, and the box says "with Microsoft Signature". I first looked to see that they did not charge me for it. And then, just before calling to shout at them for installing crapware I didn't ask for, I checked what "Microsoft Signature" really means. Lo and behold, it means "Lack of manufacturer crapware". Microsoft was offering to charge me $80 more so that I would only get Microsoft software out of the box. (The Intel Inside and Win7 stickers were still there, however)
    - vibrunazo 14y ago
      Neither are available in most countries.

krschultz 14y ago

It is shockingly simple to get at least near the level of Apple products: don't let your vendors ship crapware on the device. When you play with a Nexus device with vanilla Android and no crap apps installed by default, it's great. It's very comparable to an iPhone experience. If Google installed more of their 1st party apps by default, it would be even better. Yet most devices shipped by Verizon have 7-10+ apps that are absolute garbage and distract from the experience. It's entirely analogous to laptops. Windows isn't terrible. Windows combined with the 20 apps that Dell shipped by default is terrible. Don't let the middlemen (Dell/HP for Microsoft, Verizon/AT&T for Google) define your user experience.

peterevans 14y ago
You really think that the OEM-installed apps on a Windows machine make it terrible, and the OS contributes nothing? It's hard to control the user experience when you don't control the hardware. Apple's been saying that for years, in deeds if not in so many words. Maybe Google, Microsoft, et. al have felt that licensing is a better business model than selling, and who am I to say otherwise? I do agree with you that one shouldn't let the middlemen dictate the user experience. But I think the problem Android has is that they get stuck on some crappy phone hardware, on phones where you aren't using (or can't use?) the latest OS (forgive me, I'm not a regular Android user); don't you think that's much worse than being stuck with OEM pre-installed apps, even if they are crapware?
- dkl 14y ago
  You really think that the OEM-installed apps on a Windows machine make it terrible, and the OS contributes nothing? I have a friend that really loves Sony laptop hardware. Every time he buys one, though, he has to spend a day cleaning off the bloatware. It literally goes from a sluggish Windows filled with crap to reasonable OS. As for the "controlling the hardware" comment, I completely agree. How many Windows laptops have I had that had terrible close-the-lid-and-sleep behavior? Every single one of them. A colleague had a laptop overheat and almost catch fire because he closed the lid, and after assuming it slept, putting it in his laptop bag. A couple of hours later he removed it only to find the thing was too hot to touch. This kind of thing is much rarer on Macs because Apple owns the whole stack and can make sure everything plays well together.

taeric 14y ago

I still feel the dominant position of the iPhone is an understanding of marketing as much as anything else. People aren't necessarily buying iPhones because they are better, but because they want an iPhone. That is a huge distinction that carries a ton of weight. I understand the belief that if you make a significantly better option, it will sell well. I question the validity of this belief. As well as the ability of anyone to do so.

alayne 14y ago
Apple has a very high customer satisfaction rate. You don't get there with just clever ads.
- taeric 14y ago
  And marketing is more than just advertising.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
barredo 14y ago
Samsung spends way more in advertising than Apple http://www.asymco.com/2012/12/05/the-mystery-of-samsung-electronics-sga/ http://www.asymco.com/2012/12/05/the-mystery-of-samsung-elec...
- bdcravens 14y ago
  Very true, but isn't Samsung more spread out than Apple? I'd like to see it broken down by product segment. (Even then Samsung has a number of phones, many that are positioned other than as iPhone competition)
bdcravens 14y ago
I have both an iPhone 5 and an S3. As I've written about in other threads, the app ecosystem is what keeps me on the iPhone (I have one main line, a second for testing; either phone could be flipped into either role if I wanted), even though I think the S3 has superior hardware and OS.

drivebyacct2 14y ago

I was just sitting here thinking that I wouldn't upgrade my Galaxy Nexus with 4.2.1 until it breaks given how it literally handles everything I need it for, but if Motorola put out an unlocked AOSP device, I'd be all over it. Though, I also remember how much I enjoy VZW coverage and how unlikely it is that Google is going to play ball with them anymore. - >For the X phone, an initiative being led by former Google product manager Lior Ron who specialized in mapping, Motorola wanted top-notch features for the phone's camera and photo software, such as better color saturation and the ability to take panoramic shots, two people familiar with the situation said. But some of the features were found to drain battery life or already have been incorporated into popular new devices, such as the iPhone 5 that launched earlier this year, they added. ....... uhm, what? Android beat iOS to panoramas and Photosphere was part of 4.2. I can't understand how "color saturation" drains the battery constantly. (Frankly the 4.2 stock camera kicks ass, especially combined with the new lock screen widgets. Very slick. One gesture, one tap to take a picture from a locked phone.) I also don't understand the implication that this is Google hedging bets in case Samsung gets disappointed. Samsung is beginning to eat Apple's lunch in Android sales... why would they turn their back on Android?

barista 14y ago
Unless Samsung is thinking of turning its back on android for any reason.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Which Tizen and Bada are designed to do. They're shipping alternatives today that can let them juke if it gets hairy, taking their investments with them.
- eliben 14y ago
  They're involved in efforts like https://www.tizen.org/about https://www.tizen.org/about, but I don't really see this one lifting.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  That seems extremely unlikely in the short term given the revenue Samsung is bringing in from their Android sales.

barista 14y ago

Working with your hardware partners to develop more choices for customers while also providing a premium experience that you have full control on... Interesting that Google is copying Microsoft's strategy that people feared might backfire for Microsoft.

Apocryphon 14y ago

What does this mean for the future of the Nexus brand?

eliben 14y ago
Did anyone say it could not be "Nexus X" ?

mtgx 14y ago

I for one hope they also let manufacturers create many more "Nexus" devices, if they are going to pursue this with Motorola anyway. They need to create a Nexus program with much stricter guidelines than the typical Android phone (no skins, no extra crapware, lag-free, and which gets at least two dot-oh upgrades - like 5.0 and 6.0), and also allow them to make $100 (unlocked) Nexus devices, too. I wouldn't buy the cheap one for myself, but I could recommend them to people who just want a cheap smartphone. I'd much rather recommend them a clean Nexus device, than a skinned custom-software one, with an unpredictable user experience, that also doesn't get upgrades. All of these Nexus devices also need to have all of their upgrades handled by Google alone - just like the Chromebooks. In fact, this Nexus program should be handled almost like the Chromebook program. Nobody gets to touch the Chrome OS but Google. I think these devices would become increasingly more popular thanks to the word of mouth of the people who actually know what they are and recommending them to all their friends. This would clean up the Android ecosystem a bit by having exactly one user experience across Android devices, and having a major portion of the Android ecosystem be upgraded on time and for a longer period. As for this X-devices strategy from Motorola, they could use it as "iPhone-killers" - as hero devices of their ecosystem, like Nexus has been until now. But they need to be devices of highest quality, and they shouldn't try to also compromise on price, like they did with Nexus 4. I'm not saying that Nexus 4 suffered from it, but to be honest that strategy started to worry me a little because Google might want to get to lower and lower price points in the future, and forget about making the very best devices in the market. And I think that would be a very bad idea. Google needs to excite "influencers" in the tech world, and they can't do that with sub-par cheaper devices. But with the X strategy, they can deliver these hero "best in the market" devices, while the Nexus program would allow for a sub-group of the Android market, to have devices from $100-$600, from different manufacturers, but under very strict guidelines, and with Google handling all the upgrades. Basically the Nexus program should become what Android should've been if Google could restart Android today. tl;dr - Nexus = Windows/ChromeOS strategy, with one UX and all upgrades from Google for at least 2 years. X-phone - iPhone strategy; Google's hero device for the year, the one that's made to excite the tech-insiders, and push the ecosystem further, and the one that always comes with the dot-oh versions, not dot-one (e.g. 5.0, not 5.1).

drivebyacct2 14y ago

arrrg 14y ago

Hopefully. Android may be good enough for the vast majority of people, for myself it's just rage inducing. You know, I was sort of jaded from Apple's stupid antics. When my dad asked me what phone his employer should buy for him I told him to get the Samsung Galaxy SII. It got great reviews and was widely praised, it also runs a somewhat recent version of Android. Now I'm visiting my parents for Christmas and helping my dad configure it. Holy shit, what an unbelievable piece of crap! There aren't enough expletives to describe that train wreck. Running Android 4.0.4, no less. Wow. It's just awful, no better than those crappy feature phones from five years ago, making all the same idiotic mistakes. How anyone can deal with this crap is a mystery to me. (I now just feel bad for my dad who has to deal with it.) Apple, I may hate your antics, but you do blow Samsung out of the water. Google still has to step it up. I thought they were on a level. They still are not. All they have going for them is price and diversity. (Not that anyone but me care. But holy shit, what a piece of crap. I'm really wondering what all the gushing reviewers were smoking. Also, what the hell is wrong with that awful display? Why is white so green?)

Offler 14y ago
Could you back up your statement with some examples? I have friends with the SII and they are very happy with it.
- arrrg 14y ago
  Thousands of dialogs pop up all the time telling me stuff I'm not interested and that is not important or useful (e.g. explaining some gimmicky and useless gestures). I was told that deleting crapware from Android phones would be easy, however, it seems to be very hard. Even then, there is no way to know which apps you can delete and which you cannot. I gave up on it. It seemed like too much of hassle. The settings are a mess, unorganized, not explicit, confusingly vast, with very bad descriptions and many options on a same hierarchical level That Play Store! Thousands of confirmation dialogs, updating apps is an ordeal. I gave up. I think I have to take another stab at it tomorrow. Scrolling inertia is wrong. Ugh. That's real ugly. Contacts crashed, showing a black screen for a good 20 seconds. When iOS apps crash you are back to the home screen immediately. (Apps crash. I have no problem with that. But they shouldn't crash like that.) That inconsistent back button! You never know what it will do (since it's not consistent, there is no rhyme or reason). Sometimes it means back in the app hierarchy, sometimes it takes you back to the last screen you saw, independent of app hierarchy. That damn menu button! It hides tons of crap, you never know what there will be. It's seemingly used by lazy UI designers to throw in everything they thought they needed and couldn't fit into the normal UI. The translation to German of the interface is atrocious. Apple make their fair share of embarrassing mistakes, Samsung/Google puts it on a whole new level. Labels that don't fit and are cryptically abbreviated and so on. Those may seem like small things, but those are things that tick me off. I have to note that I'm talking about my personal taste here. Others may be able to deal with it. I noticed that I can't. Even though I thought I would like it. I'm honestly shocked now. I thought Android would be pretty awesome by now. That's what everyone told me – and I believed it. At least for me personally that's sadly not true (but I still want to try one of those Nexus phones, Samsung, however, is dead to me now).

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SODaniel 14y ago

Of course, they would be rivaling Apple/Samsung if they would just produce enough of the Nexus 4 and market it better. But that just seems TOO EASY I guess.

CountSessine 14y ago
if they would just produce enough But that's why this is so hard. Google and LG completely fucked up the Nexus 4. They so completely misjudged market demand for the N4 that they didn't have their supply chain in line to produce enough. That's why even now you can't get one. It takes a while to get all of the downstream suppliers in line and they're probably scrambling to do that now. That's why this business is so hard. It's not that they just didn't produce enough - they didn't produce enough and they're not very good with contingency planning and supply chain management and so the Nexus 4 isn't an option for most consumers who would want one. Don't underestimate just how good Apple and Samsung are at this.
jodrellblank 14y ago
What's that Dilbert management quote? "I can't do it so it must be easy".

edyang 14y ago

As an owner of a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, I just have three words for Google: more battery life. Seriously, I love the phone but it sucks down the juice like there's no tomorrow. And that's with an extended capacity battery pack and App Killer set on Aggressive.

joonix 14y ago
The battery life on the Note2 is phenomenal. Helps that it has a 3100mah battery.

pretoriusB 14y ago

>It is shockingly simple to get at least near the level of Apple products: don't let your vendors ship crapware on the device. Well, you also need to get the actual hardware on par. Cheap plastic won't do. Get the machining and the materials right. Oh, and let the users UPGRADE between versions of Android. What the duck is up with that?

drivebyacct2 14y ago
> Cheap plastic won't do. I have never doubted that my Android phones are tougher than iPhones. I drop my Galaxy Nexus constantly on concrete without issue. Every single one of my family members has broken an iPhone screen in the last year, year and a half.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  It's the feel, not the toughness when people constantly drop them. That said, the glass back panel on iPhone 4 was easy to break. The solid metal iPhone 5 not so much.

tluyben2 14y ago

Let them first fix their supply chain; buy a ton of factories or whatever, because here (in the EU) Nexus 4 and 10 are still sold out (before xmas; how smart...). Many people I know now went for the SIII or iPad 10 inch instead of waiting any longer. That's incredibly lame. Edit: in my country (Netherlands) they haven't even started selling the Nexus 10 in the first place, but I usually order that kind of stuff in Spain because they are apparently 'important enough' for second (behind the US) launches most of the time.