Are Google and Samsung Announcing a "Nexus Two?" | Hacker News Reader

Are Google and Samsung Announcing a "Nexus Two?"

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I'm betting it's just that new Verizon phone with the useless second LCD. I spoke with someone months ago at Google who said they were working on a "Nexus Two" device, but he could have been referring to the G2 for all I know.

Here's what I've been waiting for in an Android phone since they started pumping them out: thin, no keyboard, responsive touchscreen, iPhone4-quality camera, accurate GPS and stock Android or easily rootable. Pretty much, I don't want any compromises, and no one seems to want to do it. Every single model skimps somewhere. If it's got a nice camera, the GPS doesn't work. Otherwise, the camera is crap or it's 3/4 of an inch thick with a keyboard I won't use. The Nexus One is so close, but the touchscreen sucks and the camera is beyond terrible.

+1 for stock Android. I sure as heck don't want carrier modifications. Note to carriers: your job is radio frequencies and call routing. That's all I want you for. You are not a software company. It sucks to be a commodity, but it sucks more to be an anchor on an airplane, which is what you are for the quality of your phones. Give them a connection and free reign.

I was under the impression that the carriers and manufacturers modified their phones so they could differentiate themselves. There's the revenue opportunities, sure, but they have to do something to stand out.

Now here's the crazy part: no one is selling a device with stock Android. If your phone was straight Android 2.2, it wouldn't look like any other phone on the market. The minute Motorola or LG realize this, they get 100% of the nerd phone market.

It's usually not up to Motorola or LG. It's the carriers that add (or ask to add) these additional/non-stock features. I'm curious what the state of Android is outside of the US - do carriers in other countries add the likes of V-Cast or a NASCAR app?

In Australia, the biggest carrier Telstra generally adds a tonne of crapware, and several people I know with htc desires have links to various telstra features that are broken on the default firmware. I seem to recall the reason telstra didnt get into the iphone game until significantly after the other carriers was because of the iphone impeding sales of telstra 'services'.

We also have the more budget oriented virgin mobile who have generally little to no customization depending on the phone.

There is no need for differentiation when serving up bits and bytes. There is a need for competition on quality of service, customer support and pricing.

EDIT: Clarification, I'm referring to the carriers. The manufacturers need differentiation, but would be better served doing so through hardware.

The G2 is pretty stock.

Yeah, but totally locked down. It does look like a great phone, though.

The question is how do you make them listen?

just root and put vanilla android on yourself. I don't see what issue is.

Aside from (A) rooting never being supported, (B) some phones not having a hacking community around them, and (C) the lack of a vanilla ROM even for those that do have hacking communities, it's just a hassle.

There aren't more than a couple phones that have a vanilla Android ROM floating around for them. Cyanogenmod and similar are far from vanilla AOSP.

Not possible on all phones... the g2 for instance is unrootable.

...for now.

"iPhone4-quality camera"

The iPhone 4 hasn't been around that long. My guess is you will always find something that could be better and hence you'll never buy an Android phone.

I've got a Nexus One. And is it too much to ask that at least one Android device be up-to-date technologically? I'm not asking for things now that will show up in the future. I want the things now that are available now.

No device is ever up-to-date, as technology progresses all the time.

So far the closest I've found is HTC Droid Incredible: thin, no keyboard, responsive touchscreen, quality camera (don't have an iPhone 4 so can't compare), accurate GPS (saved my ass in a ghetto) and easily rootable (maybe? I've heard its not hard, but haven't felt the need to).

The Samsung Galaxy S would be exactly that phone if it weren't for the bugs that make it lag badly. Root it and install Froyo, though, and it is a beauty.

I don't know how true the rumours of a Samsung-made Nexus are, but I wouldn't be surprised given the quality of the Galaxy's hardware.

Look for "Ryan's One Click lag fix" in the market, run it and you are done.

With that it's been fine for me - I still haven't bothered to install Froyo.

Too bad the GPS is still worthless.

There's a fix for that too: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=728894

(TL;DR: Use the google service instead of whatever they replaced it with. Who could have guessed..)

Yes, I did that, and it fixed the lag. Froyo is even better.

Droid Incredible, but you have to root it. Does 720p with the froyo update, and has the same touch sensor chip as the EVO, etc. (not the crappy one on the original Droid)

Samsung Galaxy S.

It's thinner than an iPhone 3GS, about the same as an iPhone4

No keyboard, touchscreen is the best I've used.

The camera is good. Only downside is it doesn't have a flash - but the low light mode is surprisingly good.

The GPS is accurate (some people have had to change some settings to get quicker startup for it though)

It's not stock Android, but it's easily rootable (as in "install an app from the market and press one button)

My biggest gripe with Galaxy S (at least the I9000) is that it doesn't do OTA firmware upgrade. It also needs Samsung Kies which runs only on Windows and on top of it fails to upgrade the firmware with a "Failed to convert to upgrade mode" message.

Official firmware upgrade is just too much of hassle on this phone.

It was indeed a horrible upgrade experience and it really blows my mind how Samsung can create such a great phone and so horrible Windows-software. If you want to give it another try, I covered how I got it working in this thread over at reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/dscb6/samsung_galax...

Basically: Downgrade to a specific version of Kies not containing the buggy FW updater. Upgrade your phone. The upgrade to 2.2 is definitely worth it.

I had a Captivate and the GPS was useless.

The iPhone4 camera oversaturates and has problems with the white balance. The N8 camera is the leader of the pack right now.

I certainly hope so. And it makes sense that they'd focus more on Europe this time, which hasn't been as infected with phone subsidies and lockins as the US has.

what makes you think it would be focused on europe? the event is in NYC.

Not Europe exclusively, but more available there, as indicated by the potential Carphone Warehouse deal. IIRC Google didn't sell the Nexus One directly to Europeans, even though they're much more willing to pay up front for unsubsidized phones than Americans are.

"more" focused in Europe. Samsung as a company. Not the event.

I hope it has a keyboard and a front facing camera.

Those are the two differentiators I'm looking for to pick an android phone.

I like the front facing camera idea, but I actually hate having a physical keyboard on my phones nowadays. Seems to just make the phone bigger and heavier. I also had the original Verizon/Motorola droid which had a completely worthless excuse for a keyboard. Perhaps that soured me on physical keyboards.

Now that I have Swype, not to mention the normal android keyboard, I'm pretty satisfied.

As much love as Swype gets, I still prefer the feeling of typing on a physical keyboard. They seem to be going out of fashion, but I really hope there's still an option for them. The main reason I picked my Droid was because of the keyboard.

Well, I want the phone also as a mini laptop. I read that it's hard to do things like ctrl-s on the virtual keyboard.

Is a bluetooth mini-keyboard good enough?

It might be actually. Are they small enough that I can fit both the phone and the keyboard together in my pocket?

Wouldn't it be smaller if the keyboard was integrated into the phone?

Why front facing camera? Does anyone actually use FaceTime? I will never ever video chat. I find it unnecessary. It will make using my phone for talking to someone even more annoying (yes, I understand how ironic that sounds).

My kids like to skype video chat with family members in other states that we don't see often.

I sort of agree. I see the potential for video chatting, and think it's going to take off in a big way. That said, given the typical lifetime of a smartphone (ie. 2-3 years), I don't see a front-facing camera as a priority right now (despite the fact my aging Motorola and SE phones have them...). In a couple years, when (or if) video calling takes off, then it'll be a priority.

Two things killed the Nexus One for me: 1. Two versions of the device. I travel to the UK a lot and I wanted to pick up a Nexus One so I wouldn't have to unlock my iPhone. Being forced to choose between 3G in the US (on AT&T) or 3G in the UK made me choose neither. 2. Skype is a Verizon exclusive. Yay artificial fragmentation!

#1 can hopefully be fixed by the Nexus Two. Not so sure about #2.

What aspect of skype is Verizon only? It's in the marketplace for me, and I'm on Sprint.

I'd like to see a front-facing camera but what I need the most is larger internal memory.

I want to install more apps but with Nexus One's meager 512MB flash memory, I hit the limit already. Now, I don't even install apps that are more than 2MB. A lot of developers also have not enabled SD card storage for their apps.

What? They can't even put a reliable date on Froyo for the Galaxy S line in the US but they're already shifting resources to a new hotness?

Could this be interpreted as a call to abandon the Galaxy S ship?

For what it's worth, Engadget's original article about the Samsung press event suspected that it would announce the Samsung "Continuum" - a Galaxy S branded phone with two OLED displays. Considering the stock tickers in the background of the press image, and the fact that the secondary OLED display on the Continuum is called the "Ticker", I think this makes the most sense: http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/25/samsung-to-unveil-new-and...

The Google experience devices are developed hand in hand with Google, whereas most other devices are developed after the respective OS sources have been released.

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Though nexus one's selling theory was (proved) wrong, the phone was/is quite good.

And as a reference device it was very useful for establishing what a pure Android device would be like. I'm hoping that eventually the Android UX will evolve to the point where customers won't tolerate the service providers and manufacturers gumming it up with novel interfaces.

That is why I'm interested in it. I find that I like the pure Android experience much better than Sense/Motoblur/etc.

It's a shame, too. They sold the phone with two novel methods bunched together: selling it sans-carrier-lockin, and selling it exclusively online.

The former is interesting and somewhat unique in the US. A lot of geeks want this, and it's the reason I bought my Nexus One.

The second is something that apparently nobody wants, and I think is what tanked sales.

But the problem with the phone (in the US) is also that there were still two types to buy - 3g on att or 3g on t-mobile. Those that wanted a carrier-less phone were undoubtedly stymied by having to choose a carrier anyway, the exact opposite of what they were trying to do.

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