Rumor: Nexus tablet is a “done deal”
androidandme.com
androidandme.com
"a tablet of the highest quality"
"quad-core Tegra 3 processor is out"
"target price has been lowered to $149"
It seems to me that you can have one or the other. You can make a solid $149 tablet with many compromises. Or you can make a tablet that has top (ipad) quality hardware. You can't really do both without shoveling money into the toilet.
Indeed Asus already makes a tablet with top quality hardware. It sells for $499.
Which is why I expect Apple to continue to own the top end of the tablet market but continue to lose overall marketshare to the greater diversity of increasingly acceptable Android alternatives. I particularly think that the 7" form factor is going to be more than a niche and the pain Android developers have suffered up front in coding to multiple screen sizes and form factors is going to pay off.
You may not be able to undercut apple on cost, but Apple products carry ridiculously high profit margins. You don't have to sell at a loss to beat Apple's retail prices, you just need to sell at a lower profit margin.
I'm not even trying to be sarcastic. I can't figure out why I should be excited about this. Okay, Google's cooperating with some unnamed hardware manufacturer and some unnamed wireless carrier to produce this device, but what does that mean for me?
Nexus doesn't mean that it's produced with a given hardware manufacturer, or even a given set of hardware (beyond the implication that it's generally the best available at the time). For phones, it doesn't mean that it's tied to any given carrier, though it also doesn't necessarily mean that it can be used between carriers either (thanks to the GSM/CDMA incompatibility). It doesn't mean that the device won't have carrier bloatware on it. It doesn't mean that the device will be the first to receive updates (for proof: take a look at the angry Nexus S users who still don't have ICS). It doesn't even mean (anymore) that the device will receive updates directly from Google! Since Google's now apparently establishing a two-versions-per-year schedule for Android, those once-valuable promises mean absolutely nothing.
I have a Galaxy Nexus, and I love it - I'm glad I upgraded. But I honestly don't know what Google thinks the Nexus brand means - maybe they have some idea, but they're not doing a great job of communicating it to even a tech-savvy Android user. I'm glad that Google took the UI to the next level on ICS, but unless they solve this problem very soon, Android's in trouble.
edit: The other pieces of software is My Verizon Mobile.
If that does not go far enough, you can flash the stock firmware from Google http://code.google.com/android/nexus/images.html
And even if that were the only difference, then there's not much to be excited about.
If you really want that, you're one of the 2%, and you're probably interested enough to go through the now-painless process of rooting/unlocking and flashing a custom ROM to get a 'vanilla android'.
And the other 98% of Android users don't care if they have bloatware/Sense/TouchWiz/Blur, because they don't even know the difference.
So even though the Nexus is not always a stock Android phone anymore, even if it were, that's not enough to get that excited about, either as a developer/modder/tinkerer or as a casual user.
So Nexus devices aren't updated sooner, and they don't even receive more than one major version update. With a six-month release cycle, that means that even the Nexus devices will have a very short shelf life and will be behind very quickly.
If that's the case, then the only advantage is being able to unlock the bootloader - but that's not specific to Nexus phones, and if you still have to install a custom ROM to keep your phone up-to-date after only 6-12 months, how much of an 'advantage' is that?
The point is not whether or not there exist Nexus S devices that have received an update - the point is that most Nexus S devices have not yet received it, and are still unable to update through any official means.
And don't blame google for the messed up market in the US. Best of all is that you are not locked in some vendor version of android. Even if some carrier managed to install bejeweled on your device (again, sucks to be in the US?) that's it, you don't get a vendor specific phone-application etc. etc.
Nexus devices are getting updates sooner, they get longer support, they don't get ruined by bloatware (you might still argue that they don't get enough support, or get updates soon enough but you can't get anything better in the android world). You've tried but you seriously can't point to a single exception to that (surprised it took samsung so long to get ICS out for SGSII, it took HTC what, two weeks to roll out Froyo for the Desire?). Given the current situation the only reason I'd ever not chosing a Nexus was if I intended to use a custom rom from the get go, with a Nexus I don't have to fiddle with that.
A lot of phones released after the Nexus S will never get ICS. Regardless of whether their hardware can take it or not. HTC won't update the Desire Z (pretty much same hardware as the Desire HD (which will get ICS)) because they don't feel like updating sense for it, and without sense they can't possible give you ICS...
Can anyone even point to a phone that was released before the Nexus S but will still get ICS?
-- Nexus S 4G owner.
2) Apple upgrades older hardware with "lite" versions of their OS update. See iOS 4 for 3g (not an iOS expert, expecting corrections). No reason Google couldn't do this or at least release an optional experimental update. Sheesh, it's not like the rest of their stuff isn't beta.
They really need to get their house in order. The Nexus brand has erroded even with the hardcore fans (such as myself)
Here I am holding my beautiful but abandoned N1.
...and yet, five months later we still have no idea when Google will update the Nexus S to ICS. And unlike the carriers, they're the ones who developed the entire system, so it makes you wonder what devices they were using, and why it would be so hard to make sure ICS could run on the most recent publicly-available device.
If it takes Google 5-6 months to update their own phone, then by the time the Galaxy Nexus is upgraded to Jelly Bean, it'll already be out-of-date anyway.
So even if the Google Wallet mishap were a mistake, if having an unmodified-but-unupdated stock phone is the only difference, I'd rather just scan the market for the best available phone with an unlockable bootloader and install a custom ROM myself. No carrier bloatware, and then I actually get the updates before the updates themselves are made obsolete by the new version.
It should be noted that only the Nexus S 4G doesn't have ICS, the normal Nexus S does.
Personally I think Apple is going to come to regret refusing to cater to users that want a phone bigger than the iPhone or a tablet smaller than the iPad.
I'm not a big fan of the Kindle Fire (I own one) or the Blackberry playbook. The 7" size is great for reading books but the weight is too heavy for prolonged use in many sitting positions considering the size. I would expect the smaller devices to be much lighter than they are.
The reason for this is, I think, kind of obvious: everyone needs a phone. Most people buying new phones opt for smartphones, and the cheapest smartphones are droids. They serve the market.
Tablets, however, are a luxury item. They're not a necessity like a phone, nor are they a productivity item in the same way a laptop is. The people who buy them are buying them as luxury/status items, and that means Apple. Just as those who buy phones for status buy iphones, so too do those who buy tablets buy ipads.
The only people who buy luxury phones and tablets, but opt for android, tend to be the technorati which is a much smaller market than Apple appeals to.
iPads replace laptops for many people which explodes your hypothesis. I've never purchased a laptop in my life due to expense but I did buy an ipad. New category =/= luxury.
Apple has won this category because (among other things) they were the first successful entrant, their software is more refined, their ecosystem is better and their distribution is leagues better.
Like a lot of people I'm working on the go all the time and as much as I like tablets for certain things I need a real laptop.
You're pivoting to a very circular definition of luxury here. A laptop is something that would have been very useful to me, as it turns out it always ended up one lower then other things on the budgetary priority. That doens't make it a luxury/status item as you said 3 up.
Ultimately there's a contradiction in your claim that a laptop in general is not a luxury/status good ("sign of affluence" - wiki) but a cheaper iPad, which often functions as a laptop substitute, somehow is.