Why the Nexus One can't compete with the app experience of the iPhone
edibleapple.com
edibleapple.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, from the Nexus One has 512 MB of flash, not 200.
And the 190MB is no doubt the free space available on the internal filesystem. The G1 has much less, actually.
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.
Beyond that it's got a really good screen and if that allows google to come up with some android specific tweaks to google.com then there is plenty of reason to take this serious.
The memory issues are a bit silly, but nothing that can't be fixed in a 2.0 release.
For a first time entry in to a market that it had no previous experience with I think they did pretty well.
The mobile phone market is huge, HTC has proven in the past that they can re-tool for upgrades pretty quickly so I think this will work itself out.
As for the multi-touch issues, I've never owned an Iphone, so it would be hard for me to 'miss' that which I don't know, and if the major uses are (the article suggests) gaming and zooming on stuff then I probably never will.
What would be more important to me is very long stand-by time, reliability and the ability to roam across the globe without switching phones.
Probably I'm not a typical consumer.
If I can find a discounted android, unlocked and without a plan I think I'll get one just to fool around with to see what it's like, but whatever extra bits and pieces it will always be a phone first.
There are plenty of phones that fulfill your main requirements (long battery, quad band GSM, robust design), but they are cheap, have a low profit margin and thus the company that make them would rather you bought something else. So while they'll make the phones they won't go out of their way to market or hype them.
No, it isn't. It includes a phone and you can make calls with it.
> What would be more important to me is very long stand-by time, reliability and the ability to roam across the globe without switching phones.
I'd like to think that if a company like Google decided to focus their efforts on a device that really was "just a phone" it'd have this feature.
> Probably I'm not a typical consumer.
Probably not, but there's probably a market for people like you that seems woefully underserved.
A huge group of consumers are buying phones based on their preferred network - or the network where they have a current contract.
I know plenty of people who ended up with a blackberry over an iphone (self included), or a droid over an iphone because they want to stay on Verizon. These people are not "jailbreaking" anything.
I only recently decided to pay the bucks to get into an iPhone because I just couldn't take it anymore.... I had to have the apps.
After a few weeks, I have 1.6GB of apps on my phone, several pages worth.
So, back on point, Droid stinks because:
1) You can't just pick your network and still pay only $200 for the phone. (or any good phone)
2) There is almost no space for apps.
3) You have to use Google Checkout to buy an app.
4) There are only a fraction of the apps available and they haven't gone through a rigorous approval process, so you don't know what you are installing.
Please. Any process that has let dead baby apps through only to revoke them later, or denied bugfix updates to applications (after waiting weeks for approval) that have been previously approved, cannot possibly be called "rigorous". "Arbitrary" and "draconian" are much more apt.