Nexus S
google.com
google.com
Thank you. Thank you for ensuring that a clean, root-able, modern phone is available for developers and all those who like to fully own the devices they purchase.
That's the trouble with America; many of my favourite pickup lines are unusable there. For instance:
"Have you ever tripped over a log?" "No" "How about a root?"
Also, The nexus one barely was (in the sense that you couldn't replicate a os Build as done by google with the provided source code)
1. The Nexus One was.
2. This phone will be targeted at devs once again, many of which can use such functionality.
how many samsung ones are? that was my main point
That having been said, CM had a build running on his Nexus One within hours of source being released...
(Forums currently down because everyone must be flocking there)
that is still impossible and show how little google is willing to give. (and that's even after i gave them $500 for the phone and $50 for a desktop dock that they will not even let me pair it with non-nexus one bluetooth devices)
$16. even charges a second battery. way better than the crappy official cradle i got.
the usb audio feature of the official cradle is cool at first, until you remove the phone and audio stops! mind blowing that something wireless got turned off when you remove the device. then the fanboys here will downvote me because you can enable it in a way that it does not turn off. but then you have to manually turn on, loosing all the appeal of just putting in the cradle to turn it on.
It even adds a new "Cyanogenmod settings" to your settings panel where you can do stuff like alter cache size, etc.
CM removes the default launcher and replaces it with the ADW launcher. CM also incorporated the AAC+ bug fixes much before Google.
In conjunction with the DroidBasement overclocked kernels (http://droidbasement.com/db-blog/), I have my ole MyTouch 3G performing better than stock 2.2
Could you cite why you say that it is impossible to "to do a custom build with the same qualities as the google provided one" ?
Find instructions at http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Pa...
(Just making the point, you don't HAVE to buy a Nexus line of phone for this)
I'm still going to get a Nexus S, though; Google keeps their software more up-to-date.
It won't be surprising if these "security" measures keep escalating as carriers try to find new ways to extract revenue, such as charging extra for tethering.
That said, it's not much of a stretch to believe it was a nefarious attempt to block rooters from rooting either.
See here for details: http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/index.php?title=HTC_Vis...
Not true. The Vision was NAND locked like previous HTC phones. What was actually happening was that if you tried to write to internal storage, the Linux kernel would tell you it was making the changes, but never actually committed the writes to storage. That's why the changes 'disappeared' after a reboot.
For the record, I came to Android from WebOS, and the experience has been very painful. I want my Pre back.
In short, they try to neuter the no-contract option in any way they can. I am actively regretting it right now, and the only upside is that I'm looking for a different carrier, and I don't have to worry about early-cancellation fees.
What do you mean, you can't sign up for a contract? They're actively turning down more money for the same service?
shrug That's what they told me-- my account would be flagged and I wouldn't be allowed to sign up for a contract with them ever again once I went the no-contract route. It didn't make any sense to me at the time, and still doesn't, except for cynically suspecting that it was a scare-tactic to chase me back to a contract option.
I'm curious if anybody knows of any legitimate reasons why this would be their policy.
However, another friend of mine did the same thing, then decided he wanted to go back on contract. He called them asking for it and, when they declined, said he wanted to cancel and go for another provider. They routed him off to the retention department who apparently do have the authority to get him back on the contract plan and did so with minimal fuss. Of course, YMMV, but it worked out just fine for him. In the meantime, I'm still saving money over two years by going non-contract.
That said, when there are hundreds of people who could take your call, don't be afraid to just hang up and roll the dice on someone else. 50% of reps are below average. if you're pretty sure you're a standard deviation or two off center, just call back.
I called them up and said they had better refund it. They said it was standard policy where there was no contract. I pointed out that I brought my phone to them, the account was profitable from the moment it was opened, and that it would make for a more than usually compelling internet consumer tantrum. I got a crawling apology and a month of free service to substantiate it.
I pay $70 at the beginning of each month. I get unlimited data and have never hit the 600/mo. minute limit, if I did the next rung of the plan is $75 or $77. It's reasonable and more importantly, predictable.
Almost nobody I talked to had any idea what was going on or what they were talking about. I was billed for all kinds of crazy stuff I never signed up for, and I have been billed an activation fee of ~$120 for three months running. I'm also being billed for phone insurance I've cancelled at least four times.
I want to state that every phone rep I've talked to has been unfailingly polite, which is marginally nicer but doesn't fix any of my problems. Bad but obsequious customer service is still bad customer service.
I've since been told not to bother with T-Mobile's phone system; apparently walking into a T-Mobile store is a much less stressful and faster way of dealing with them. I plan on trying that, if I ever feel the need to contact them again.
I keep hearing that T-Mobile is #2 in customer satisfaction, and I wonder how. Looking at changing providers, I worry that other providers are actually that much worse. That, or that my experience is dragging down the average that's keeping T-Mobile out of the #1 spot. :)
(1) Cool phone! (2) Sure, here you go.
I'm paying about $20/month less than I did on my AT&T/iPhone plan. It's nice.
Can you elaborate on this, specifically what extra fees or services they charged you for?
With contract, I had (iirc) 200 SMSes a month; going no-contract I have to pay $10/mo. for the smallest text plan they offer. I don't get a lot of texts, the few freebies were plenty for the little bit I used.
Looking back at my data plan, I now realize they've grandfathered in my data plan on my line at the previous rate ($25/mo) rather than the new rate ($30/mo) which they told me that they would not be able to do-- still a screwup, but one in my favor this time. :) I just hadn't looked at that part of the bill, so that's one that I thought had gone up, but hadn't
Additionally, there's the phone insurance I'm still being billed for-- it's $4 a month now, but I'm so sick of fighting with them that I'll try one more time, but I'll probably just keep paying it until I go with someone else.
The SMS problem i worked around with sms->email services. and can't wait to have a solid SIP client on the phone so i can also ditch the call problem :)
Also what happens if I find out tmobile doesn't work well in my area? Is there a return policy?
If you don't like it, then just throw out the sim card and don't refill your account. ;)
Furthermore, if you walk into the store, they also have an extended payment plan for your phone, thus you can get a Contract Free plan, which will save you $20 a month, for example Even More Plus 500 (Unlimited Data, Unlimited Text, Nights, Weekends, and 500 minutes) for $59.99 (equiv contract plan is $79.99) a month. Then they have an extended payment plan for your phone where you can pay $20 a month with 0% interest and no fees until your phone is paid off, thus giving the best of both worlds, no contract, no big upfront costs for phone, and once your phone is paid off you don't have that added cost per month. Really excellent and saves you around $400 - $1000 versus a contract.
They apparently have legendarily bad customer service though.
On the subject, does anyone know if there are any high end sprint targeted phones that are exploitable to the point of being able to change whatever UMTS/WCDMA uses for identifying numbers that you might be able to convince a hardware specific MVNO like this to enroll a phone that wasn't their own?
If google really wanted to win over people who feel trapped in the walled garden of iOS, they should have made some sort of announcement about this phone back in June/July when millions of people were exiting their 2 year iphone 3g contracts. I know I certainly would have waited for it if I had known, but as it is now I'm stuck with AT&T for another cycle.
Further, NFC means the device also has it's own RFID tag. Visa: please replace my credit card with an app. Your card readers already have the near-field hardware!
Also, Gingerbread does not support writing from the device (i.e., your phone cannot act as its own RFID tag), I'm supposing the hardware support is there, though.
So the ability to both emulate a contactless smartcard and interrogate passive rfid devices. Pretty damn cool - the ability to open doors/start cars/unlock computers/pay for stuff just with your phone without resorting to bluetooth/wifi hacks or addon hardware. Also opens you up to lots of potential applications for extra information in the real world on things that otherwise don't have barcodes.
Another reason why Android badly needs proper security like encryption of the whole system. I am really scared about losing my phone already and it only contains private information, no keys or money or anything like that.
I'm reticent to cache any passwords on there or store useful but sensitive data on my phone since I can't easily encrypt it (unlike my laptop).
I understand the ease of system encryption, but then your files are still available to other apps/exploits or if the attacker roots the phone. For instance the iphone AES-256 is easy enough to jb and get at a full unencrypted fs even without knowing the PIN.
It's been live for a few years, so I'm pretty sure it's not a trial run.
However, I do imagine that the AMOLED display will not draw as much power, so it might indeed last longer.
My Evo can go at least a day and usually most of 2 days on a single charge. I use FreshEVO Firmware, but there are other options too.
from a recent review by Anand:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4045/lgs-optimus-7-samsungs-fo...
Also, AMOLED will only be more efficient if you view dark screens more often than bright ones, which I don't think would be true for most web browsing.
Update: eliminated shortened urls.
Edit: Thanks for changing it!
US pricing is $529 unlocked and $199 with two years on T-Mobile
And the fact that google gave zero support for the phone, to the point of shutting down the community help forum.
Amazing.
or we have some 13 google employees here (who should be fixing those bugs instead of wasting time here :D) or your phone are really better than mine and some hundreds that complain about that. just check youtube.
thank you
FYI - my touchscreen worked fine.
every time i contact google about it (i bought my nexus one via their store, with google checkout) i'm 100% ignored.
just contacted them again about the touch screen not working when i read the first comment here, and again, ignored so far.
It happens to me maybe once or twice a week.
mostly when i'm writting a lot.
now that i'm using swype (not sure i like it yet, but everyone should try it!) i can see that it sometimes draw a line caming from the bottom of the screen, right above the menu button.
BTW.. you mentioned problems while charging. Do you keep the phone in the little neoprene pouch while charging? My N1 generates quite a bit of heat when charging with the supplied AC adapter. Doesn't seem to be a problem when the phone is just lying on my desk or my nightstand plugged in, but initially I used to leave it in the pouch at night while charging and it would get alarmingly hot in the pouch. Just an FYI.
In short: N1 and HTC Desire have major, unfixable multitouch issues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU0R9tdodw8
Quite a simple/beautiful HTML5 design, IMO.
<!doctype html>
HTML 5 is great and all, but please let's not turn it into a marketing buzz-word when it's not really necessary.
I think it's about a year late for that.
One hand wasn't enough, though (some of these rests were over 100 measures), so I practiced counting on both hands, though. I didn't have any rests over 1023 measures.
[Edit: data attributes]
The site does have simplicity going for it. Apple just seems to execute so much better in this area.
I'm still not convinced that you couldn't drive an IRDA diode with TV remote data and have it work, though, at least on consumer units running at 870nm.
http://www.google.com/phone/detail/sony-ericsson-xperia-x10
If it is a marketing page, it is marketing for Android as a whole, not specifically for Google branded Android phones.
The marketing page for this particular phone is here:
The tech spec there doesn't list missing features
The Nexus S looks identical to my girlfriend's Sprint Samsung Galaxy S but hers has a flip out keyboard and this doesn't, but the dimensions are pretty similar. I was expecting this to have that too when I first saw a picture.
It's Contacts -> <Contact> -> Menu -> Share -> Barcode Scanner.
Er, no, not at all (well, possibly for the very old?). Roman characters are everywhere in Japan, no-one has any problem dealing with them (pronouncing the words they form? different story).
It's more that exchanging contact details is a lot more work in Japan - number, mail address, name in kanji, name readings (yes, you need these, even if you're Japanese/a native level speaker). Mail addresses are frequently really long and sprinkled with non-alphanumerics. Name kanji are a pain too - there's lots of homophones, so if someone tells you their name you often need to check with them which kanji it is.
Basically: it's almost impossible to convey your contact details verbally, so without IR, you usually wind up just swapping phones for a few minutes (luckily, in Japan you can be pretty carefree about handing your multiple-hundred-dollar phone to a stranger).
Contrast with the situation until recently in the west, where it was usually just a person's name (that you probably knew how to spell already) and a number, and you can kind of see how IR would be a big deal in Japan and not elsewhere.
iPhones have seriously broken contact exchange for young people in Japan, since almost everyone has one, and thus no-one has IR anymore. There's probably money to be made fixing it but so far the only solution I've seen other people actually have on their phones is Bump, and it's never really worked well for me.
Because you're wrong. It is a comparison matrix, and not a product page. http://www.google.com/phone lists many different android phones, by many different manufacturers, and offers comparisons.
The Nexus S product page is http://www.google.com/nexus
Edit: Okay, it seems they know about the problem and apparently the new version of Google Maps for Mobile will have some sort of offline caching capabilities. Hurray!
Yes, let's figure out a backup system.
iPhone 4 added one too: http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
The iphone 4 also has it http://www.apple.com/iphone/design/
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/nfc/package-s... is looking VERY sparse. Hopefully it gets completed soon.
Now, if only Samsung would upgrade the GalaxyS owners to 2.2 (as promised) or 2.3 (wishful thinking).
I always waited for the opportunity to use a stock Android on my Galaxy S. Hopefully this will be possible soon.
Quad-band GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900
Tri-band HSPA: 900, 2100, 1700
HSPA type: HSDPA (7.2Mbps) HSUPA (5.76Mbps)
AT&T doesn't work on any of these bands in your area? Which frequency do they use?
It's a little odd that a phone which clearly has the antennas to run on 850 and 1900 can't use them for 3G. (Yes, I know it's common. It's still odd.)
AT&T doesn't work on any bands, period, in the poster's area - he's in Canada. Rogers, Telus, and Bell in Canada, and AT&T in the US, all operate HSPA (3G) networks on the CLR and PCS (850MHz and 1900MHz) bands.
900 and 1800 are Europe only GSM and DCS bands. 2100 can mean either the European IMT band or the US/Canada AWS band. 1700 denotes that US/Canada AWS band.
Anyways, it appears that the Nexus S only supports the GSM, IMT, and AWS bands for modern wireless communications (HSPA). That sucks because it means that in Canada you're stuck with Wind Mobile who have a terrible network.
TL;DR
The Nexus S isn't much of an option in Canada. Thanks, Google.
"Talk time 6 hours Standby time (max) 428 hours"
Aside from that, I just don't like the fact that even though my phone is unlocked, I can really only use Tmo or wifi for fast data.
Edit: okay, the actual images don't look that bad.
The Nexus One already has the 800×480 screen, the 1GHz processor (though it's an older Snapdragon instead of the newer Hummingbird SoC), the 512MB of RAM... Where's the dual-core CPU? The higher-resolution screen? The extra RAM? There's not a lot of incentive to upgrade here unless you need a curved screen or NFC.
Galaxies also have higher-resolution touch detection and better graphics chips; they offload a lot of the UI rendering to hardware, which makes the experience very smooth.
Unfortunately, Samsung is dragging their feet on upgrades. Current Galaxy owners are stuck on 2.1, with no news about 2.2. A Google-branded phone, with Galaxy hardware, is exciting.
That said, it's a $600 phone; if you've already got last-years $600 phone, do you really need to upgrade?
None of them is worthed 600 pounds over my nexus one. Mobile phones development exploded in the last 3 years, now I have the impression they may just get a bit faster but I don't see anything really innovative coming. It's a legitimate observation, isn't it?
As for feels great in the hand: that's really a minor improvement.
I am happy about what google is doing with android. More than happy, enthusiastic. I think we reached that point where most of the difference between competitor mobiles will be played at software level, not hardware.
After December 16, Nexus S will be sold unlocked and carrier-independent initially through Best Buy stores in the U.S. and after December 20 at Carphone Warehouse stores in the UK.
{update} It looks like instead of selling the unlocked phone themselves, and selling carrier-locked phones in carrier-controlled retail outlets, they are using external partners to push the unlocked phone this time. At least they are learning from their mistakes. Presumably Best Buy will do some marketing for the phone (compared with the lack of marketing for the Nexus One).
Buying the Nexus One without feeling one first definitely was a little weird for me, but the return policy assuaged my misgivings.
Pre-ordering is available later today from www.carphonewarehouse.com or www.bestbuy.co.uk and this is almost certainly the only way you’re going to get hold of one before the new year. The handset will be free on £35/month contracts, or available SIM-free for £549.95.
I'm not sure of US/T-mo pricing though.
EDIT: My bad. Looks like the screen resolution is identical.
I'm really confused about buying a phone plan after I buy the phone.
Are you sure? For comparison the iPhone uses a Broadcom BCM4325 http://www.broadcom.com/products/Bluetooth/Bluetooth-RF-Sili... for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, this chip also can also do FM Rx. Of course that functionality isn't exposed...
Not the clearest phrasing. 16GB solid state, 512MB RAM.
I'm currently paying Verizon $40/month for an extra line on a family plan, and unlimited data with no tethering (though I do for free via CM6.1). I could have my own account with T-Mobile and get unlimited data for $50/month with no voice minutes.
I can use Google Voice and the Gizmo SIP Provider to be accessible via Voice Calls. I want the Nexus S. I am tired of Verizon, Motorola and HTC's nonsense with the locked NAND and the locked Bootloader. No new VZW phones have custom roms, in fact, hardly any since the Droid 1.
Go Google. Go T-Mobile. Thanks for not being (as) evil (as everyone else).
The U.S. arm of the German phone giant is a big supporter of Google’s Android OS, and last week, when I asked a T-Mobile USA representative if there were plans to add UMA to Android phones, he said T-Mobile will continue to support UMA on the current and forthcoming BlackBerry devices and Nokia E73. That’s four models in total. In other words, T-Mobile has no plans on adding UMA to Android phones.
http://gigaom.com/2010/09/13/is-t-mobile-backing-away-from-u...
Or does tmobile have some sort of official VOIP service now that allows you to receive calls on your cell # if you are up on wifi but aren't on the carrier network?
I know I could use gv+sip provider to get voice at home but at least in my mind the femto setup we have with verizon is nice - low muss, works with feature phones, people who visit etc. Well you can't have everything.
Sound quality is a little worse than 3G calling, IME, but it works very well. It's been handy in my office where T-Mo signal is a little spotty. (Yet, I step outside the front door and have 5 bars ;)).
Now, that could just be the N900, which I'm growing more and more irritated by, but I think in this case it's more reasonable to blame the network than the phone.
Kind of sounds like the iPhone 4 (from July) with NFC support and a built-in VOIP client.
By comparing it to the iPhone 4 are you implying that it shouldn't be release because Apple 'scooped' them on these specs. They should just kill the project and redesign with better specs in an attempt to 'beat Apple?'
What's your point?
impressive... I have a snapdragon 1ghz in my phone and it is pretty decent. Would be interesting to see the difference if any on normal phone tasks.