Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich: Android's inflection point | Hacker News Reader

Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich: Android's inflection point

extremetech.com

75 pointsmrsebastian33 comments

So many times now when reading reviews of new Android releases and the accompanying phones I read "THIS finally is the Android phone that's really usable/better than $then_current_iphone".

And now I hear it again: "Galaxy Nexus is the real first Android phone that's really usable. It's even better than the iPhone 4S".

Honestly though, by now I lost the trust in these reviews and the phones. I have my doubts that my Nexus S will become a better phone once/if it gets ICS. I have my doubts that I'll actually prefer ICS to iOS. I tried so many times, but I never managed to stick with Android.

Also what where they thinking when calling the phone "Galaxy Nexus"?

There's a Nexus One, a Nexus S, a Galaxy S, a Galaxy S2 and now the Galaxy Nexus- all released within the last two years. When I was talking to coworkers over lunch, we quickly drifted into utter confusion when trying to compare phone features.

Since 2.2 I have much preferred Android to iOS, since then I have always thought it was a better platform and enjoyed using it more, however there has always been little niggly warts around that can be brought up, against the bias of the hacker new crowd it seems like the market has agreed, Android phones outsell iPhones, my non techy friends mostly prefer their android phones.

I get the feeling from most reviews that it isnt so much that this is finally the android phone that usable' as much as 'this is finally the android phone that is almost unarguably better than the iphone', or at least the one that doesnt have the warts that android detractors like to bring up in these comparisons

One of those niggly warts, namely UI stuttering, is significantly reduced on my Galaxy S-derived phone when I terminate any services (like IQ) not specifically related to the apps I'm running.

I agree with your naming gripe, but beyond that it sounds like you personally just like iOS. Different people have different opinions of what phone has really "made" Android. If the Nexus One took the place of the iPhone, I guarantee there would be at least one review for each iPhone model saying "THIS finally is the iPhone that beats the Nexus One".

What we have heard with every release of Android is that this one is more usable than it's own predecessor. Not iPhone or iOS. And that is factually true - 2.1 was way too laggy, 2.2 was better, 2.3 was even smoother and ICS now is, for the first time comparable / exceeding iOS in overall usability. That's what the Verge review claims and as far as I know, before ICS, they have always complained about Android from usability standpoint, preferring iOS as the gold standard.

Have you used ICS? They don't have a consistent icon theme, there's multiple messenger apps with different look and feels, the UI favors Tron era styling over actually using the capabilities of a modern display, and the widget adding has a strange 3d effect that means your not quite sure where you're putting something anymore.

> Also what where they thinking when calling the phone "Galaxy Nexus"? There's a Nexus One, a Nexus S, a Galaxy S, a Galaxy S2 and now the Galaxy Nexus- all released within the last two years. When I was talking to coworkers over lunch, we quickly drifted into utter confusion when trying to compare phone features.

Anecdotally, I didn't actually know that all of the phones with Nexus in the name weren't the same phone until I read this. And I am an Android user.

Have you heard it from the same specific people? Because if not I don't understand what the fuck your point is. :)

With every release, android will get a little bit better. And every time that happens, some people will decide they now like it better than the current-gen iPhones.

"So many times"...

Can you point at such a review? Because I don't think such a pre-ICS review exists, whether Gruber wrongly claims so or not.

Every prior Android review has been full of asterisks and disclaimers. Most tended to be negative. Sure, they talked about the positives (and there always have been positives), and they talked about the benefits over its Android predecessors, but I've never seen one that openly held it as the leader. Until now.

I think it's going to take a while for some people to realize where Android has come from and where we are today. The game has completely changed, and the dated narrative is gone.

When I first equipped up with a G1, there were almost no apps, and the few that existed tended to be horrendous. The performance and usability of the device was terrible.

But I knew where it was going.

Then I got a Nexus One and it improved some aspects of the platform, but I was still left out in the cold for a lot of things: No angry birds. A terrible market. No Skype. No Netflix. And on and on. iPhone-only apps appeared for mainstream services and products and organizations.

Today I have a Galaxy S II. It isn't perfect, but the experience with 2.3.4 is pretty damn good. I have Netflix, and Hulu, and endless games and countless top-rated apps (some of which are starting to lead on Android). This is a device I would recommend to a layman.

And all of the above was the foundation on which Android captured 55% of the market.

And ICS only improves that n-degrees more? Incredible. If Android got such acceptance and loyalty before, this is quite incredible really.

Sure. The HTC hero was considered phone of the year by T3, the biggest gadget magazine in the UK, over the iPhone.

ICS's core apps can be as slick and beautiful as they want, but app developers need to keep up, and I'm not convinced they will.

I have a Windows Phone, largely as an experiment at seeing if I like it or not. The UI is amazing on the core apps. The People, Music and Email apps are second to none. But almost every third party app I download gets something wrong (often most things wrong), and it's very jarring when you're expecting things to match a very defined UI flow.

The fact that Android already has a ton of existing apps might make this even worse. Ditching the menu button and swapping it for an action bar is a great idea, but how long until all the app makers change their apps over? I think this is less of a problem on the iPhone because Apple vets their apps so heavily (and rejects ones that do not obey UI guidelines), but neither Google nor Microsoft seem to do that.

WinPhone has the "problem"[1] of going down a rather different UI path vs. Apple and Google. You see this in a less extreme form on Android quite a bit, where apps will use (often badly-made) custom iOS-style widgets (the bottom nav bar, usually) that just don't fit in Android's patterns. WinPhone has even fewer patterns in common, thus when a dev tries to bring over iOS or Android patterns, it shows.

[1] It's a "problem" as it's not what devs/users are used to working with, not a problem because of flawed design (FTR, I rather like it)

> Ditching the menu button and swapping it for an action bar is a great idea, but how long until all the app makers change their apps over?

If you don't go the ActionBar, ViewPager (swipe between views) route, your app will quickly begin to look dated. For the definition of "dated", I am using Google Music as the reference for current Android user experience.

Plus, upgrading the app forces the developers to move to the current state of the art Loader (instead of AsyncTask) and Fragments (instead of activities)

Eagerly awaiting dismissive "human" commentary from A-list Apple bloggers.

I've done a lot of iOS dev, and have a great many iOS devices on my desk to test with. I've personally used an iPhone for years.

Recently I got a Samsung Galaxy S2, as well, and I can safely say I'd recommend the iPhone to non-technical users every time. (I'm looking at you, mom and dad.) The iOS interface is a lot simpler, easier to use, more straightforward, and more self-consistent. The device is physically tough, relatively inexpensive for the older models, and well-curated. And the home screen scrolls more smoothly than on the S2. You cannot do any wrong for the most part.

Which is a restriction that I hate. For me, myself, personally, it's clear: the Galaxy S2 kicks the iPhone's ass into the dirt and leaves it lifeless in an expanding pool of gray smoke. I shook off iOS like a wet paper sack. But this is because I love geeky devices that aren't afraid to show me their underbellies.

Oh, and it does. You can use the built-in file manager to browse /sdcard/Android/data/! Hell, you can probably even delete stuff in there! What normal user would want to do that? I don't even want to do that, but I'm so happy I can! Merely the abstraction between the Apps screens and the Home screens is more than most people want to deal with--but I love it! Sure there're plenty of things to complain about (why is the ringtone set in the Settings, but the texttone set in the Messages app?) but the raw power of the thing more than makes up for these shortcomings. For me.

My long-winded point is this: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We cannot properly rate these devices outside the context of the person using it. If you agree with the criteria put forth as superior in any particular review, it could very well be the device you're looking for.

The Verge has rated the phone 8.6/10, not 10/10 as this article claims.

It got 10/10 on a couple of sub-scores (performance and hardware) which seems to have confused them. Low points were the camera and battery that both got 7/10.

The link is also broken...

Thanks - fixing.

The Samsung Galaxy SII has been the inflection point for me. Such a great device, beats the iPhone in hardware and matches it in software (except in polish of some apps).

Huh? Slower GPU, lower resolution screen, Pentile... that's better hardware? And Touchwiz? Really?

SII does not have pentile. The screen is bigger and much brighter than the iPhone's, which is more useful to me than 300+ppi (which was only done for technical reasons anyway, to get backwards compatibility with the old apps due to the 2x factor) The phone is snappy no matter what you do (it's quite amazing to see 10+ app updates download and install in parallel, and complete in 30 seconds). GPU, I don't care about (not much of a gamer), Touchwiz I don't like either (I use the MIUI ROM). I agree for people without any tech expertise iPhone is still the best choice.

SII does not have pentile

Ah - my mistake.

The screen is bigger and much brighter than the iPhone's, which is more useful to me than 300+ppi

I don't watch movies on my iPhone, I mostly read text and surf the web - and type on the retina display looks much better than on the S2s that I've used.

(which was only done for technical reasons anyway

If by that you mean that type looks much better than at 800x480, then yes, this was done for technical reasons.

The phone is snappy no matter what you do

We have a different definition of snappy.

it's quite amazing to see 10+ app updates download and install in parallel, and complete in 30 seconds

I agree. And IOS 5 does this too.

I agree for people without any tech expertise iPhone is still the best choice.

Your condescension is misplaced. I have 20 years of programming experience and am currently employed as an embedded systems engineer. I want a smartphone that just works, and my 4S fits the bill.

Android in a carrier flavor, in my experience, is dreadful. Android on a nexus device works well enough - its just not as good as iOS. It's not that Gingerbread is bad - its just that IOS 4 is better, and IOS 5 widens that gap. I have no experience with ICS and neither do you, so we'll see whether this changes. It sounds as though perhaps Android has finally caught up - indeed, that's the whole point of this article.

And while I've never installed a custom ROM on an android device, I've concluded that with all the glitchiness, poor battery life, and instability that my friends customized android phones suffer, this doesn't constitute a working smartphone.

But if you really want an android device, more power to you. But when you say that an iPhone is still better for someone without any tech expertise, I certainly hope you're not implying that Android is necessarily better for anyone with tech expertise, because you'd be quite wrong.

Frankly I think using a custom rom wipes out all your arguments.

Using the custom ROM is more a matter of taste and not functionality. I don't like the design of Touchviz personally, but there are many people who do and use it.

Better than the 4S? For the 4S siri was the shot across the bow of android IMO. For android to come back they will have to one up apple in this dept. For me, siri is a huge step in the right direction for what I want in a smartphone. Before siri, carrying around something that would have been a supercomputer a couple decades ago seemed pointless. What I really want to see from google is something that's as big a step beyond siri as siri was against previous personal digital assistants. Tight integration with calendar and gmail would make such a thing a gigantic killer app.

An inflection point is where progress starts to decelerate ahead of a possible reversal in direction.

An inflection point is where the curvature (second derivative) changes sign. For example, it is where a function changes from concave to convex. It can apply both ways.

An inflection point is the point where a function changes sign. This can be both a positive or a negative indication.

This article carries a positive tone, so what they probably mean is that ICS to Android is the point where people start saying more positive than negative stuff about Android.

I think it's actually where the second derivative (concavity) of a function changes sign; but you're right in that it can be a positive as much as a negative indication.

No it's where the second derivative changes sign. You can think of the first derivative as the motion, and the second derivative as the "force" that's driving the motion - the force is changing direction.

Equivalently it is where the second derivative is equal to zero -- which implies the first derivative is at a local extrema.

In the context here, it's clear that the inflection point would be the point of greatest change.

Well not quite equivalent exactly - the second derivative could just touch zero and then go back whence it came :) That wouldn't be an inflection point I think, I'm not sure what you'd call that...

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