This is Google’s Nexus 10 by Samsung With Android 4.2 | Hacker News Reader

This is Google’s Nexus 10 by Samsung With Android 4.2

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40 pointsco_pl_te49 comments

Sigh, I really wish it had some local storage. I know, I know, the 'cloud' is my storage, and I get the whole Google meme that someday the world will have 4G LTE type speeds everywhere and we'll have fixed legislation such that we don't have to worry about non-local data being seized next to someone's illegal content. But that time is not now. And my pain is not psychosomatic. I really like to have some local stuff.

Yeah, the 16GB option is a joke for anyone who plans on installing more than a couple of games on one of these things. The lack of SD card is boneheaded.

>The lack of SD card is boneheaded.

How so?

It seems the Nexus 7 and an entire lines of Apple devices have done just fine without expandable storage.

I certainly understand why folks want the option, but as demonstrated, being able to charge a premium for different tiers of internal storage works wonders for profit margins.

I have the Nexus 7 and as I replied to another comment it is extremely frustrating dealing with only 16GB of space. Being able to pop in a 32GB SD card would alleviate a lot of my issues, especially during travel.

This annoys me a bit less on my Galaxy Nexus as I don't typically install large games (> 1GB) on it.

Devices can do fine without expandable storage, sure - but it's an easy differentiator for Android to make, and is one of the reasons I bought into the platform to begin with.

No it's not. You could do fine with 8GB. I used to have a device with that capacity, and it had a lot of games on it.

Now I, on the other hand, have to deal with a (Samsung) android phone running Gingerbread, which with the Facebook app installed, and all Android updates installed, complains about having run out of internal storage.

I have the 16GB Nexus 7. Installing Batman (1.83GB), Horn(1.74GB), and Bard's Tale (3.5GB with best graphics) at the same time hits me pretty hard. It's pretty frustrating to shuffle apps just because I want to play a different game, especially when the downloads are in the GB.

Apps are that big now? I guess it being a Tablet makes the filesizes huge.

It does have local storage--it just doesn't have an SD card slot for storage expansion.

It's safe to say this will come in 16GB and 32GB varieties, and hopefully there will be a 64GB option.

My Galaxy Nexus has 32GB, and my Nexus 7 has 16GB, and I've never hurt for storage, even with movies (Nexus 7) and Spotify playlists at "extreme" quality (Galaxy Nexus.)

I too run with the Nexus duo and likewise have never felt constrained by the amount of local storage.

Of course, I'm not in the habit of carrying around dozens of movies or a library of 600MB+ games as some might.

It's not only about having enough storage. It also enables interoperability. I love being able to take a whole bunch of snaps with my camera, rip out the micro SD card and then shove it in my tablet and show everyone the photos instantly - no silly syncing, transferring, copying etc.

Given Google's strategy of competing with aggressive pricing, one can understand why they're skimping on built-in local storage. What I don't fully understand is the lack of even a micro SD card slot, which could have been added to the device at minimal cost. (Customers who don't care about having more local storage will use Google's online storage services regardless of whether the device has such a slot or not, but customers who need more local storage won't buy the device at all!)

In response to this and incision's comment as well. Lets look at two things 'cost' and 'value'.

SD cards use a protocol called 'SPI', its a serial protocol and requires a total of 5 I/O lines to the processor. The connector [1] is less then 10 cents. I can't really speak to the cost of milling a slot in the side of the case. So we're not talking a large expense, or even a nominal expense. There are consumers for whom its a deal breaker that it isn't there, and few of whom which won't buy a tablet if it has a card reading slot. By that reasoning I conclude that it only expands the market (and doesn't contract it) assuming a 5x markup cost->market (50 cents), Lets assume Google makes $150 in 'profit' per tablet, so selling one to me with a card reader pays for 299 (($150 / .5) - 1) card readers in tablets where the customer didn't care if it existed. 1/299 is 0.3%. So if adding a card reader expanded the sales by more than 0.3% it would be a net gain for Google. That seems pretty achievable.

Now lets talk about "but I never needed any more memory." (more of incision's point than yours) there are two benefits to a card, one is expandable space, but more is 'rapidly replaceable content' I can take a 16GB micro SD, or a 64GB SDXHC card, and swap it out in a 3 seconds. That is equivalent to a network between 5.3 and 21.3 GB per second (53 or 213 gbps) If I rip a few movies into a card to carry with me on the plane where there is no decent internet, and then when I arrive I can pop them out and put my books back in, or what ever content or app data that I need locally. That is a user model that may eventually change (although keeping a copy of a movie in the cloud to watch on your tablet probably gets you in trouble) but for now its being held hostage by a 10 cent connector.

[1] http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/656158231/ST9S008V4AR1500_...

The cost is going to be larger than 10 cents since it'd expose the device to Microsoft's VFAT patents. That's about the last thing Google wants.

$150 in "profit" per tablet is beyond ridiculous. I have no idea of where you could pull a number like that from. The common wisdom is that the gross margin on Nexus hardware is around 0. Google's cut from what little content they manage to sell can't amount to much. And the incremental ad revenue from the average Android tablet user isn't going to be more than a few bucks a year either.

"$150 in "profit" per tablet is beyond ridiculous. I have no idea of where you could pull a number like that from."

Fortunately for you I generally can show my reasoning on the things I put out there :-) In this case there was data from the Apple vs Samsung trial [1] which if you recall said 775k Galaxy Tab's generated 325M$ in revenue. Doing that math gives you about $448 per tablet in revenue. iSuppli calculated the original Galaxy Tab cost Samsung about $214 to make. That would suggest a gross profit in the neighborhood of $234 per tablet. I was assuming that there was some sort of "OS/License" fee on top of that which is why I didn't suggest it might be as high as $200 each.

[1] "Samsung sold 725,000 units and generated $325 million." - http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57490740-37/samsung-tablet...

[2] "When the $9.35 manufacturing cost of the Galaxy Tab is added in, the combined materials and production cost amounts to $214.57." - http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Samsung-Galaxy-T...

Sorry, I thought the discussion was about Nexus devices. The original Galaxy Tab wasn't exactly a cutting-edge device, and it was retailing for a significantly higher price than the iPad. Almost double the price for a long time after the launch. It's hardly surprising that the gross margin was high.

That's a very different case to the much more aggressive pricing used for the Nexus 7 (publically stated to be selling with no margins) and the Galaxy Nexus. And the new Chromebook too, come to think of it. I guess it's possible that they're switching strategies again. So yeah, if these are priced at $600, I'm sure there's a healthy margin on the few units they manage to sell. But until prices are announced, I see little reason to think that there is such a strategy change.

>SD cards use a protocol called 'SPI'

While all SD cards are SPI-compatible no one really accesses them that way (it's way too slow). Almost all SD cards in electronics today use the proprietary SDIO bus.

From the article: 10.1-inch Super AMOLED display 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution

Why can we have a 10" display w/ 1600p at a very reasonable price but I can't a get a 22" + monitor at the same resolution without shelling out over $1000 :C

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CROSSOVER-27Q-LED-27-Monitor-2560X14...

I'm writing this to you on one right now. I got the slightly more expensive version that swivels. 27" for $363 shipped. LG LCD panel (I opened it and confirmed). A number of dead pixels, but none in the center and they are only visible if you're 2" from the screen. At any reasonable distance, I can't make them out.

If you want an immaculate, brand name, warrantied monitor ... yeah, it's 1K. If you're willing to compromise on a few things, there are other options.

I imagine the disparity in availability has to do with the manufacturing technology. It's probably very difficult to make a zero-dead-pixel screen that is high resolution and very large.

Dell's Ultrasharp monitors go on sale quite often. Here in Canada they have their top-of-the-line 27" monitor on sale for $899... and actually it was $750 a couple of days ago.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Monitors_Flat_Pa...

I unboxed that about 10 minutes ago. :) Now I have to race to Best Buy to grab a dual-link adapter.

Hopefully these high resolution tablets and phones will lower the prices of these panels and will create this trend in laptops, too.

Because you can make more money selling four+ tablets than one desktop monitor at sizes/resolutions that continue to have very low total sales?

For one, the nexus is pentile, so the actual vertical resolution is only 2/3 that, and upsampled.

At the same resolution, bigger pixels are still harder to manufacture correctly than smaller pixels.

Androd devices are subsidized.

Go on ebay and search for 2560x1440 monitor. There are tons of IPS displays under $300 of various brands - ACHIEVA Shimian, Matrix, Catleap, LG.

Ugh. The bezel is very, very ugly.

A result of the Apple lawsuit, I imagine.

When Apple said Samsung could avoid infringing by making their tablet ugly, I didn't imagine Samsung would take them seriously. :-(

The button bar + notification bar looks strange on a 10" screen. It was OK on the Nexus 7, but does cramp the screen in portrait. I wonder what their rationalization for it on a 10" screen is.

This is only one of several things that make me think and hope that this isn't the version to actually ship to consumers.

Front facing speakers, finally.

On iPad I presume speakers are not facing front due to form trumping function. On other pads, I presume it is due to copying Apple's focus upon form?

Excellent. The first tablet designed entirely by lawyers.

I simply don't get why they'd centre the on-screen buttons. Surely the ergonomics don't support such a move?

Pentile? Bleegh. Hopefully the many pixels can mask that deficiency.

Given the resolution, it's not going to be an issue. It isn't on the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus10 is at a much higher pixel density.

The pentile display is a real frustration for some people on the Galaxy Nexus. It isn't for others. Even at a higher resolution for the Nexus 10 (presuming it is pentile), some people would not buy it because they will find it noticeably ugly.

For it to be a problem, you need to physically be able to see the jaggies (have good eyesight, or be short-sighted, but not long-sighted), and you need to find the jaggies disturbing (plenty of people who can see them don't mind them).

Personally I notice it on my Galaxy Nexus, but it doesn't particularly bother me (it did bug me on the Galaxy S).

A bigger problem with the OLED displays is the slow degradation in output of the blue LEDs, leading to burn in or yellowing of the screen. Maybe they have improved the tech, but I would be worried about a device that got more use than my phone. When in landscape, my 1 year old Nexus has a white band where the soft buttons are in portrait (because the rest of the screen has burned the blue LEDs more and has yellowed compared with the unburned white. Unburned band because soft button area is usually black). Even worse is the ugly unevenness in colour for solid grey or red. And sometimes there are ghost after-images that fade within say a second. Occurs in high contrast areas because of localised heating, which when changing to an even white, the LED output is uneven due to the heating. I accept these defects as compromises for other features I want in a phone.

Basically, I think it behooves one to always view a real device before buying a pentile display device, especially if one is sensitive to aberrations and one has good eyesight for tiny detail. YMMV.

I own a Galaxy Nexus, and I dislike the pentile display. The nexus 7, which has the same resolution but is 2" larger, appears sharper. The pentile display also causes noticeable grain (to me) on solid colors.

the site crashed. it's also on droid life

http://www.droid-life.com/2012/10/26/samsung-nexus-10-poses-...

A million more pixels than the iPad 3/4, yet it wastes a bunch of them on those stupid on-screen virtual buttons instead of differentiating with real physical buttons. Also no micro SD, and it looks like more cheap plastic, just like the Nexus 7.

I really want to get on board with a modern Android tablet, but they're not making it easy.

Have you actually held a Nexus 7? I was surprised at how little I cared about the plastic casing. Also, physical buttons present something of a slippery slope: realistically, I'd like more buttons than the iPad. About 4 is sufficient (plus power and volume) based on other Android handsets I've owned. But trying to find a non-awkward place to put four hardware buttons would be an exercise in frustration. Especially when you support two orientations.

Those "stupid on-screen virtual buttons" are smart

* They conserve bevel space and let you have a larger screen overall. * They're only visible when you're using apps that need them. * When you're doing something which needs the whole screen, like playing video, they're hidden giving you a larger usable screen area. * Because they're implemented in software, their behaviour can be changed later and they can also be context sensitive.

The non-existent microSD card is just Google's way of trying to get people to use more of their cloud based services (Drive, Play, etc) and has been a "feature" of almost all Nexus devices till date. This is one of the biggest negatives about this device.

True, SAMSUNG devices feel like cheap plastic, but the same cheap plastic becomes very helpful when you drop your device: I've dropped my cheap plastic Galaxy Note several times with nary a scratch on the thing, but a friend's iPhone's cover shattered with a single drop.

What on Earth do people put on their SD cards? I use Subsonic, I give it the whole phone as a cache storage and I stream my music over 4G. Anytime I don't have internet, I have 16GB of music at my finger tips.

Unless you're out of Internet range for days at a time, I don't understand the need for over 16GB of local storage.

I don't know what people are talking about when they talk about build quality anymore. My Droid 1 was TOUGH. I dropped it repeatedly and it never broke and it held up for 3 years. But even when it was new, they were inconsistent. The sliding action was different, the button quality varied from one to the next, but it was heralded as tough and "feels good". On the other hand, my Galaxy Nexus has no flaws and has been dropped just as hard (I slung it out of my hand across a concrete parking lot once on accident) and has never had a case on it and is in pristine condition.

Well, I guess it also depends upon "where" on Earth people put stuff on their SD cards. The (mobile data) speeds I get here (in India), even on 3G aren't good enough for streaming video. Keeping that in mind 16G isn't too much.

My apologies. I think of my comtemporary peers' mocking of my phone when I hear others make the argument and forget that circumstances may vary. I can see why swappable storage would be valuable, especially in places where an Android phone may be a more primary computing device.

I know it's still a compromise, but that all having been said, the Galaxy Nexus can be a USB host device so you could use a reader or a jump drive or other USB devices (mice/keyboards/etc)

> "A million more pixels than the iPad 3/4"

I know it's something of a running joke that people like to see escalating numbers on spec sheets, regardless of what they mean in objective reality.

But in this particular case it strikes me as particularly silly.

The entire trumped-up definition of the "Retina" classification is based on the idea that the human eye literally can not distinguish individual pixels beyond a given threshold (at a given distance). Striving to go beyond that limit is... quite an interesting endeavor.

Not only does it sound particularly pointless, but actually self-defeating as it would seemingly only add busywork to the GPU.

* For most people, natch. I'm sure the discussions of devices at "higher than retina" resolutions will fill up with people claiming better than 20/20 vision, or uniquely short arms, or whatever.

It turns out that Steve Jobs was not in fact an opthamalogist.

> For most people, natch. I'm sure the discussions of devices at "higher than retina" resolutions will fill up with people claiming better than 20/20 vision, or uniquely short arms, or whatever.

I wonder, will we soon see a group of "visiophiles" (visual-philes? videophiles?) emerge to take their rightful place besides the audiophiles?

So there is an interesting bit you're overlooking perhaps, which is 'gamut'. The additional pixel density can be exploited to provide "pixels" which have more subtle variations in color. In color printing the printer is capable of some number of dots per inch, but there is another number (sometimes called the 'screen resolution' as a kick back to the silkscreen printing process) where the color gamut peaks (the maximum number of different colors the printer can print). Generally screen gamut in 'sub-retina' displays is fixed by the ability of the electronics to modulate the component colors, but with additional pixels you can 'squeeze out' more colors by using a group of four, or nine, pixels that are colored to simulate a single pixel.

Not a huge deal yet, but no doubt it will become one with '4x' and '8x' oversampled displays.

I love my Nexus 7. The build quality is phenomenal and then rubbery feeling on the back is great.

About the only thing I'm missing is the ability to insert a SIM card in this model and the 10 inch update seems to have the same limitation.

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