10 ms·

+1 re: phone nerds. I had an HTC Apache (AKA Verizon XV6700) at the time, and I wouldn't give up on the idea of a physical keyboard. I was running my customized

+1 re: phone nerds. I had an HTC Apache (AKA Verizon XV6700) at the time, and I wouldn't give up on the idea of a physical keyboard. I was running my customized ppc kitchen BuildOS image (Win Mobile 6.1 stripped down iirc) before upgrading to the original Droid because of the much-higher-res screen. I ran Bugless Beast on the Droid and painstakingly updated it usually within 24 hours of a new release. Before the Apache, I had a Nokia 6600 with Symbian S60, and even as a kid I wrote VB5 for my 3Com Palm Pilot Professional. I'm typing this on an iPhone 5, and I'll be pre-ordering the 6+ as soon as I can. This is my second iPhone; I started with a 4S. Fighting with Android became less and less appealing over time, and I currently only jailbreak iOS to get bluetooth / wifi tethering and because my physical mute switch is broken after a swim in the sink which I've worked around using Activator to toggle silent with a long-press on the status bar.

NicoJuicy 12y ago
Why didn't you just buy a Nexus? (i used to battle Android updates to, but it's not Google's fault... The Nexus proves that) (1st smartphone was a iPhone 3GS, the rest were all Androids)
- guelo 12y ago
  Who gives a shit. They're both converging on the same form-factors and features. It's good we have at least two successful smartphone platforms. If there were only one there would be less innovation and more price gouging.
  - fastball 12y ago
    > converging on the same features > if there was only one there would be less innovation Does not compute.
    - guelo 12y ago
      Competition spurs innovation. Samsung copies from Apple whatever is successful there, Apple copies from Samsung/Google whatever is successful there. Would Apple have created a phablet if Samsung hadn't innovated and proved the market? Probably not. Samsung doesn't have the fingerprint reader, but it's probably coming. And then they'll have to think of something new to differentiate themselves.
      - arm 12y ago
        “Samsung copies from Apple whatever is successful there, Apple copies from Samsung/Google whatever is successful there.” That doesn’t really sound like innovation. EDIT: Never mind, I didn’t pick up on the actual gist of your comment, that being the copying done by each company forces the other to come up with new, possibly innovative ideas to one up the competition.
      - zimpenfish 12y ago
        Samsung didn't innovate the phablet, many people had released 5" devices before them. They have, however, sold many more than anyone previously ("proved the market").
      - kayge 12y ago
        >> Samsung doesn't have the fingerprint reader FWIW, I think the latest Samsung devices (or at least the S5) have fingerprint readers.
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  I think only the Nexus 5 started to catch up with the 4/5S in terms of speed and build quality. And it's only with CM11 on the N5 that it begins to reach the "smoothness" of Apple's UI (and yes, I know there are some tricks used).
  - psbp 12y ago
    I love the way my Nexus 5 runs. I use it just as much as my iPhone 5 and although it doesn't have the same UX niceties, it's still plenty smooth and fast. What really frustrates me is the camera. Some photos are great, others look like the image has been made deliberately bad. I don't think the Nexus phones will deliver a great camera experience any time soon, and there's only so much compensation that G+ can make to a dull, blurry photo.
    - gniv 12y ago
      Do you have HDR+ on? It makes all the difference.
- 27182818284 12y ago
  >Why didn't you just buy a Nexus? I'm trying really hard not to start a flamewar, but as someone who has exclusively used (and still uses) Android since the first Moto Droid, Google cannot be trusted, even with the Nexus brand. Take the Galaxy Nexus as evidence, where a similarly aged iPhone was still receiving the latest iOS updates. Or take NFC: Android users have been quick to mock Apple for using NFC, but every time I asked a clerk at the one store nearby that supported paying via a phone and NFC the clerk had never seen it used. Google doesn't tend to "finish the job" for lack of better words. With respect to the grandparent and the "Fighting", I have to agree with the grandparent. There is NOTHING NEW in the iPhone 6 and yet I'm thinking about getting it and making it my first iOS device because I'm sick of fighting everything from updates to not having the latest apps (which are iOS first usually https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332000#up_4332278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332000#up_4332278). The same thing happened with me and Linux as a desktop OS after years of use: http://xkcd.com/619/ http://xkcd.com/619/
  - yincrash 12y ago
    The Galaxy Nexus had a chipset that had been orphaned by TI (due to their total withdrawal from the industry), so Google kind of got the short end of the stick with that one.
    - wpietri 12y ago
      That's short-term balance-sheet thinking. Which isn't a terrible way to make business decisions, but it definitely isn't the kind of thing that builds long-term consumer trust. There's a reason that Apple has tight supplier relationships and even makes a lot of their own chips: having committed to long-term value delivery, they work backward to make sure they can do that efficiently.
    - lhl 12y ago
      That's an often bandied about excuse, but actually completely wrong - TI has continued to support existing customers and not only did Google go on to use an OMAP4 in Google Glass, but the Moto360 actually uses an OMAP3. Google simply stopped supporting the Galaxy Nexus because they didn't feel like it.
- derekp7 12y ago
  Here's an example: recently I wanted to get a route around a traffic jam. So, I tried to tell Google Now (on my Nexus 4) to "navigate to work". All of a sudden they took this feature away -- the only thing that comes up is a Google search trying to answer why this doesn't work. And nothing conclusive -- some people are having issues, others not. Android / Nexus was pretty good, but they keep on fixing it further till it's getting more and more broken.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    Yes! They "fix" things that don't need fixing. Like their old Android Maps application - how does typing "OK Maps" logically mean you want to save offline maps? Why remove a menu item? I keep the old one on my phone and resist installing the new one. Also, Google Local has gone? That's the problem with cloud services I suppose, but at least if they had the decency to keep cloud services going whilst there were obvious users of them (without breaking things), that'd be appreciated. I mean, how long has MobileMe been going for OSX?
  - fphhotchips 12y ago
    And in maps you can't just type "Location to Location" anymore, either.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    Really irritates me that I've put my home address (or an address very close to my home) in Google Maps, explicitly marked as home, but I can't type "home" as a destination. I have to start typing the address, then Google says "oh, you mean your home? Yeah I can do that".
- rayiner 12y ago
  My Nexus 5 is OK for $350, but after two years of trying the competition I'm going back to iOS next month. I like Apple's approach of getting the UX right and worrying about the other stuff (extensibility, standards compliance, filesystem, etc) after. Whatever incredibly nonstandard thing Safari does with text reflow is better than what Chrome (in 4.4) does, even if its more compliant. Having documents being able to open up in different apps is a huge pain in the ass. I download a PDF and for some reason it always asks whether I want to open it in Adobe or HP ePrint. But other times I'm stuck always opening documents in some app I don't want. Should I open this in YouTube or Chrome? Maps or Chrome? Just do the right thing and don't ask me! I still don't understand how the filesystem works. Older apps seem to have a different download folder or something than newer apps? I'm not dumb. I used to write highly multithreaded network code for a living. I took Diff Eq in college! But Android makes me feel dumb, so I'm selling the N5.
  - Aloha 12y ago
    Yes, this. You just gave a far better explanation than I did in favor of the appliance-phone device.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    I like being asked what to open it in. It means you can stop certain application pinching file associations, as typically happens in Windows (and iTunes is notorious for doing it on OSX). But I can understand why it would be annoying.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      When I used a Nexus 4 (stock), I could never figure out the opening in different apps. It would ask me if I wanted to open a reddit link in Chrome or Firefox or the reddit app. I would select Chrome and hit the "always do this" button, and the very next time it would ask again. The next time, it wouldn't ask. Then it would ask five times in a row. It's almost as bad as "do you want to view this site in the tapatalk app?".
      - 12y ago
spitfire 12y ago
Wait when did VB5 run on a palm pilot? I used to write apps for palm pilot and it was a hell of resource constrained C.
- bas 12y ago
  Perhaps a decade ago, I was roped into maintaining Palm apps written in VB and deployed with AppForge (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/appforge-palm-development-vb-style/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/appforge-palm-developmen...). In a sense, tools like these were the precursors of today's mobile cross-compilers and cross-platform development environments (e.g. Unity).
  - spitfire 12y ago
    Okay. Wow. That actually is pretty cool for the time. It came after I had stopped playing around with palm dev (1999).
mbillie1 12y ago
> Fighting with Android became less and less appealing over time This rings true to me. I was long a diehard Android/Linux guy - even an explicitly anti-Apple person. 5 years of professional development later and I'm typing on my 15" MacBook Retina Pro which I have not had to restart in something like 42 days, thinking about which iPhone I'm going to dump my Galaxy SIII for in a few weeks' time. I still run a GNU Linux on any desktop I have, and I actually don't see that changing anytime soon (my Linux complaints are generally with built-in peripherals on laptops which is hardly Linux's fault but still makes for a bad experience), but Apple has really won me over. I've got an iMac in my bedroom, an iPod I climb/bike/run/ski with. I can't see becoming a watch-wearer with the Apple Watch (I haven't worn a watch ever really) but it's not outside the realm of possibility. I'm curious to see if Apple can do what Google couldn't, and make wearables a significant presence in the market, thus forcing other companies to react. If we leave other companies to break trail, as it were, I think the acceptance of wearables is still a little further off.
- jcrites 12y ago
  > make wearables a significant presence in the market I think the next phase on wearable computing will include around-the-neck wireless devices. These are an example: http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=around%20the%20neck%20bluetooth http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&fiel... I've seen a lot of folks recently wearing around-the-neck Bluetooth headphones. I was really skeptical of them and considered them a fad, but then received one as a present. I have subsequently been blown away by the value and convenience, and now believe that around-the-neck will be an important part of the future in wearable computing. I think the innovation was a combination of being small, light, well designed, effective wireless, long enough battery life, and an unobtrusive place to rest on the body. Advantages: - The absence of wires between my pocket and my head is a HUGE benefit. I now wear the wireless headphones by default, which are super convenient while doing routine activities like chores around the house, or changing clothes, or while traveling between house and car, etc. Wires get in the way and are inconvenient enough to stop me from using headphones (e.g., while buckling a seat-belt, or moving laundry around). Neck headphones are convenient enough to wear by default, and don't get in the way. - The device overall is so convenient that I barely notice I'm wearing them. I frequently fall asleep while wearing them after listening to a book or podcast. They are small and light enough to evaporate from your senses. - They're small enough to fit inside most shirts if needed - Being continuously present around my neck removes the pain of unbundling wires from one's pocket. Those wires are always tangled. The neck device's wires are short and can't get tangled. The device magnetically contains its earbugs when not in use, so no dangling wires. - Battery life is good enough that I can use them the whole next day even after leaving them on overnight (assuming audio isn't playing all night) - While tethered to a primary device (smartphone or tablet), I can roam almost anywhere within my house within audio reception I'm listening to audio substantially more now as a result of the device. While I think glasses would be far too intrusive, I've started wearing wireless headphones all day long by default now. I see many people doing it too. I could see these devices either replacing glasses or complementing them (move the processing units out of the glasses frame, and down around the neck, perhaps with an easily detached wire - a wire to the neck is probably doable). What's not easy is finding new audio content dynamically while wearing them. I'm a big audiobook and podcast fan, so I listen to Audible and NPR and the like. But I have to prepare all my content ahead of time on another computing device to which the headphones are tethered. If the headphones were interactive, and commands were available by voice, to find and listen to books, podcasts, or the news, then I think they could form quite the electronic companion. A full phone could probably be designed with that form factor (but no screen). Or imagine if I could control appliances within my house. TV, turn on. Search for "<the latest movie>". The headphones relay the command to my device, which instructs the house. There's a lot of potential there.

NicoJuicy 12y ago

Why didn't you just buy a Nexus? (i used to battle Android updates to, but it's not Google's fault... The Nexus proves that) (1st smartphone was a iPhone 3GS, the rest were all Androids)

guelo 12y ago
Who gives a shit. They're both converging on the same form-factors and features. It's good we have at least two successful smartphone platforms. If there were only one there would be less innovation and more price gouging.
- fastball 12y ago
  > converging on the same features > if there was only one there would be less innovation Does not compute.
  - guelo 12y ago
    Competition spurs innovation. Samsung copies from Apple whatever is successful there, Apple copies from Samsung/Google whatever is successful there. Would Apple have created a phablet if Samsung hadn't innovated and proved the market? Probably not. Samsung doesn't have the fingerprint reader, but it's probably coming. And then they'll have to think of something new to differentiate themselves.
    - arm 12y ago
      “Samsung copies from Apple whatever is successful there, Apple copies from Samsung/Google whatever is successful there.” That doesn’t really sound like innovation. EDIT: Never mind, I didn’t pick up on the actual gist of your comment, that being the copying done by each company forces the other to come up with new, possibly innovative ideas to one up the competition.
    - zimpenfish 12y ago
      Samsung didn't innovate the phablet, many people had released 5" devices before them. They have, however, sold many more than anyone previously ("proved the market").
    - kayge 12y ago
      >> Samsung doesn't have the fingerprint reader FWIW, I think the latest Samsung devices (or at least the S5) have fingerprint readers.
voltagex_ 12y ago
I think only the Nexus 5 started to catch up with the 4/5S in terms of speed and build quality. And it's only with CM11 on the N5 that it begins to reach the "smoothness" of Apple's UI (and yes, I know there are some tricks used).
- psbp 12y ago
  I love the way my Nexus 5 runs. I use it just as much as my iPhone 5 and although it doesn't have the same UX niceties, it's still plenty smooth and fast. What really frustrates me is the camera. Some photos are great, others look like the image has been made deliberately bad. I don't think the Nexus phones will deliver a great camera experience any time soon, and there's only so much compensation that G+ can make to a dull, blurry photo.
  - gniv 12y ago
    Do you have HDR+ on? It makes all the difference.
27182818284 12y ago
>Why didn't you just buy a Nexus? I'm trying really hard not to start a flamewar, but as someone who has exclusively used (and still uses) Android since the first Moto Droid, Google cannot be trusted, even with the Nexus brand. Take the Galaxy Nexus as evidence, where a similarly aged iPhone was still receiving the latest iOS updates. Or take NFC: Android users have been quick to mock Apple for using NFC, but every time I asked a clerk at the one store nearby that supported paying via a phone and NFC the clerk had never seen it used. Google doesn't tend to "finish the job" for lack of better words. With respect to the grandparent and the "Fighting", I have to agree with the grandparent. There is NOTHING NEW in the iPhone 6 and yet I'm thinking about getting it and making it my first iOS device because I'm sick of fighting everything from updates to not having the latest apps (which are iOS first usually https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332000#up_4332278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332000#up_4332278). The same thing happened with me and Linux as a desktop OS after years of use: http://xkcd.com/619/ http://xkcd.com/619/
- yincrash 12y ago
  The Galaxy Nexus had a chipset that had been orphaned by TI (due to their total withdrawal from the industry), so Google kind of got the short end of the stick with that one.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    That's short-term balance-sheet thinking. Which isn't a terrible way to make business decisions, but it definitely isn't the kind of thing that builds long-term consumer trust. There's a reason that Apple has tight supplier relationships and even makes a lot of their own chips: having committed to long-term value delivery, they work backward to make sure they can do that efficiently.
  - lhl 12y ago
    That's an often bandied about excuse, but actually completely wrong - TI has continued to support existing customers and not only did Google go on to use an OMAP4 in Google Glass, but the Moto360 actually uses an OMAP3. Google simply stopped supporting the Galaxy Nexus because they didn't feel like it.
derekp7 12y ago
Here's an example: recently I wanted to get a route around a traffic jam. So, I tried to tell Google Now (on my Nexus 4) to "navigate to work". All of a sudden they took this feature away -- the only thing that comes up is a Google search trying to answer why this doesn't work. And nothing conclusive -- some people are having issues, others not. Android / Nexus was pretty good, but they keep on fixing it further till it's getting more and more broken.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  Yes! They "fix" things that don't need fixing. Like their old Android Maps application - how does typing "OK Maps" logically mean you want to save offline maps? Why remove a menu item? I keep the old one on my phone and resist installing the new one. Also, Google Local has gone? That's the problem with cloud services I suppose, but at least if they had the decency to keep cloud services going whilst there were obvious users of them (without breaking things), that'd be appreciated. I mean, how long has MobileMe been going for OSX?
- fphhotchips 12y ago
  And in maps you can't just type "Location to Location" anymore, either.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Really irritates me that I've put my home address (or an address very close to my home) in Google Maps, explicitly marked as home, but I can't type "home" as a destination. I have to start typing the address, then Google says "oh, you mean your home? Yeah I can do that".
rayiner 12y ago
My Nexus 5 is OK for $350, but after two years of trying the competition I'm going back to iOS next month. I like Apple's approach of getting the UX right and worrying about the other stuff (extensibility, standards compliance, filesystem, etc) after. Whatever incredibly nonstandard thing Safari does with text reflow is better than what Chrome (in 4.4) does, even if its more compliant. Having documents being able to open up in different apps is a huge pain in the ass. I download a PDF and for some reason it always asks whether I want to open it in Adobe or HP ePrint. But other times I'm stuck always opening documents in some app I don't want. Should I open this in YouTube or Chrome? Maps or Chrome? Just do the right thing and don't ask me! I still don't understand how the filesystem works. Older apps seem to have a different download folder or something than newer apps? I'm not dumb. I used to write highly multithreaded network code for a living. I took Diff Eq in college! But Android makes me feel dumb, so I'm selling the N5.
- Aloha 12y ago
  Yes, this. You just gave a far better explanation than I did in favor of the appliance-phone device.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  I like being asked what to open it in. It means you can stop certain application pinching file associations, as typically happens in Windows (and iTunes is notorious for doing it on OSX). But I can understand why it would be annoying.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    When I used a Nexus 4 (stock), I could never figure out the opening in different apps. It would ask me if I wanted to open a reddit link in Chrome or Firefox or the reddit app. I would select Chrome and hit the "always do this" button, and the very next time it would ask again. The next time, it wouldn't ask. Then it would ask five times in a row. It's almost as bad as "do you want to view this site in the tapatalk app?".
    - 12y ago

spitfire 12y ago

Wait when did VB5 run on a palm pilot? I used to write apps for palm pilot and it was a hell of resource constrained C.

bas 12y ago
Perhaps a decade ago, I was roped into maintaining Palm apps written in VB and deployed with AppForge (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/appforge-palm-development-vb-style/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/appforge-palm-developmen...). In a sense, tools like these were the precursors of today's mobile cross-compilers and cross-platform development environments (e.g. Unity).
- spitfire 12y ago
  Okay. Wow. That actually is pretty cool for the time. It came after I had stopped playing around with palm dev (1999).

mbillie1 12y ago

> Fighting with Android became less and less appealing over time This rings true to me. I was long a diehard Android/Linux guy - even an explicitly anti-Apple person. 5 years of professional development later and I'm typing on my 15" MacBook Retina Pro which I have not had to restart in something like 42 days, thinking about which iPhone I'm going to dump my Galaxy SIII for in a few weeks' time. I still run a GNU Linux on any desktop I have, and I actually don't see that changing anytime soon (my Linux complaints are generally with built-in peripherals on laptops which is hardly Linux's fault but still makes for a bad experience), but Apple has really won me over. I've got an iMac in my bedroom, an iPod I climb/bike/run/ski with. I can't see becoming a watch-wearer with the Apple Watch (I haven't worn a watch ever really) but it's not outside the realm of possibility. I'm curious to see if Apple can do what Google couldn't, and make wearables a significant presence in the market, thus forcing other companies to react. If we leave other companies to break trail, as it were, I think the acceptance of wearables is still a little further off.

jcrites 12y ago
> make wearables a significant presence in the market I think the next phase on wearable computing will include around-the-neck wireless devices. These are an example: http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=around%20the%20neck%20bluetooth http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&fiel... I've seen a lot of folks recently wearing around-the-neck Bluetooth headphones. I was really skeptical of them and considered them a fad, but then received one as a present. I have subsequently been blown away by the value and convenience, and now believe that around-the-neck will be an important part of the future in wearable computing. I think the innovation was a combination of being small, light, well designed, effective wireless, long enough battery life, and an unobtrusive place to rest on the body. Advantages: - The absence of wires between my pocket and my head is a HUGE benefit. I now wear the wireless headphones by default, which are super convenient while doing routine activities like chores around the house, or changing clothes, or while traveling between house and car, etc. Wires get in the way and are inconvenient enough to stop me from using headphones (e.g., while buckling a seat-belt, or moving laundry around). Neck headphones are convenient enough to wear by default, and don't get in the way. - The device overall is so convenient that I barely notice I'm wearing them. I frequently fall asleep while wearing them after listening to a book or podcast. They are small and light enough to evaporate from your senses. - They're small enough to fit inside most shirts if needed - Being continuously present around my neck removes the pain of unbundling wires from one's pocket. Those wires are always tangled. The neck device's wires are short and can't get tangled. The device magnetically contains its earbugs when not in use, so no dangling wires. - Battery life is good enough that I can use them the whole next day even after leaving them on overnight (assuming audio isn't playing all night) - While tethered to a primary device (smartphone or tablet), I can roam almost anywhere within my house within audio reception I'm listening to audio substantially more now as a result of the device. While I think glasses would be far too intrusive, I've started wearing wireless headphones all day long by default now. I see many people doing it too. I could see these devices either replacing glasses or complementing them (move the processing units out of the glasses frame, and down around the neck, perhaps with an easily detached wire - a wire to the neck is probably doable). What's not easy is finding new audio content dynamically while wearing them. I'm a big audiobook and podcast fan, so I listen to Audible and NPR and the like. But I have to prepare all my content ahead of time on another computing device to which the headphones are tethered. If the headphones were interactive, and commands were available by voice, to find and listen to books, podcasts, or the news, then I think they could form quite the electronic companion. A full phone could probably be designed with that form factor (but no screen). Or imagine if I could control appliances within my house. TV, turn on. Search for "<the latest movie>". The headphones relay the command to my device, which instructs the house. There's a lot of potential there.