Google Android Director on Nexus Strategy
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
Jeers to the blogopress for piling on iPhone 4s for making the same right call a year earlier, and to Apple for putting out iPhone 5 that is less "world compatible" than the 4s in order to offer the LTE buzztech.
// disclaimer: own Google Galaxy Nexus and iPhone 4s
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6425/google-nexus-4-and-nexus-...
> As always we test across multiple air interfaces (3G, 4G LTE, WiFi), but due to the increased network load we actually find that on a given process technology we see an increase in battery life on faster network connections. The why is quite simple to understand: the faster a page is able to fully render, the quicker all components can drive down to their idle power states.
If you compare the Nexus 4 on 3G (4.18) and the iPhone 5 on 3G (4.55), the scores are actually very close.
In this particular benchmark, it is very clear that LTE is the winner across the board. In 'real world usage', I have to disagree. I'm sure anyone with an LTE phone will tell you that disabling the LTE radio absolutely gives a boost in day-to-day battery life.
This has been my experience as well. I find that in every day use, especially in areas not saturated with strong LTE, it can become a battery suck.
I'm certain downloading a 200 mb PDF over LTE in Manhattan takes less power than downloading that PDF over HSDPA+, GSM, or GPRS. But in my experience with several devices, having LTE on all day in Fairfield County, finding it sometimes but often not, takes more power in so-called "standby".
But what about the Nexus 10? It's price point is high enough that the price difference against the iPad is not as significant, and it's expensive enough that you can't buy it as easily on a whim and assume that "the apps will come". It's biggest advantage against the iPad is that it has an open ecosystem, but that's not an advantage unless there are apps that take advantage of that.
Any thoughts on potential "killer apps" for the Nexus 10?
XBMC may be it for some.
Another might be its potential as a laptop replacement for developers. Some people use an iPad for remote development, but a Nexus 10 should be powerful enough and open enough to support local development.
However, stubborness will probably prevent me getting one because here in the UK there is a delta of £40 between the 16GB and 32GB Nexus 7, but a £70 delta between the 16GB and 32GB Nexus 10 - all else being the same (I think getting a 16GB device is a bit risky with increasing app sizes).
Yep. Rather than LTE or OIS, this is in fact the killer feature of the Nexus lineup for this year and it's going to make a huge difference to a lot of people.
The form factor seems to be right in the sweet spot for portability versus usability, i.e. it's much less bulky than a full-size tablet, is much less expensive and also offers substantially better battery life, whilst retaining a screen large enough for pleasant video watching, gaming and especially web browsing and ebook reading, criteria which even the largest smartphone cannot compete with.
I'd love it if there was a Nexus 6.5 and a Nexus 6 to compare with the Nexus 7 though, as I think 7" is definitely right at the upper end of the ideal size range.
You are not the only one: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57491099-1/google-nexus-...
An important constraint IMHO is whether the user can pick it up with one hand when the device is lying flat on a horizontal surface.
The iPad does not meet this constraint: although my hands are very large compared to most men's and although I can technically pick up an iPad this way, doing so is very uncomfortable and my grip cannot be particularly secure. Even the Surface RT is smaller (.54 inches smaller to be exact) in the relevant dimension (the dimension that has to be spanned by thumb and middle finger) despite its screen having 1.166 times as much area as the iPad's. (This is possible since the Surface RT has an 16:9 aspect ratio versus the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad).
ADDED. Most heavy users of computers will of course want at least one device that meets that constraint (namely, being able to be picked up and held comfortably with one hand) e.g., a smartphone or a 7" tablet or a 7.7" tablet (like the Samsung Galaxy 7.7 or the Toshiba Excite 7 -- the only 2 shipping tablets with AMOLED btw) or (if they have big hands) a 7.9" 4:3 tablet (the iPad mini). I predict that in the years to come many of them who want a second, bigger mobile device will prefer a device with a 11.6" screen (like the small Macbook Air or one of the many Windows 8 tablets with an Atom or Intel Core processor) or a 13.3" screen (like a lot of popular clamshells or the announced-but-not-yet-available Android-ARM-powered Toshiba Excite 13 tablet) over an Asus Transformer (with their 10.1" screens) or an iPad (with their 9.7" screens).
Interesting article you linked to. Add a comprehensive range of productivity applications and improved voice recognition, and we could also replace laptops as well (at least for most use cases, and with a docking station perhaps for all use cases). I can't wait!
Google is clearly just peeing in the pool with Android. Their goal is to disrupt the industry by sucking margins out.
From their perspective it makes sense. It may even be a positive thing for consumers. But it is really bad news for other companies trying to make a profit from hardware, especially Apple and Samsung.
But I would argue that the emergence of a commodity alternative to Apple was inevitable and every OEM would need to choose at some point whether to play against Apple or to try and become the new Dell.
I, for one, am very pleased with this Nexus lineup (disclaimer: I work for Google).
The Nexus 4 for $299-349 seems to be outstanding value given the competition is typically ~$600 unsubsidized. I also consider the lack of LTE to be a feature. LTE chipsets are still immature, to the point I'm almost surprised Apple has adopted them. I don't know what they add in cost but they certainly, by all accounts, drain battery life.
The Nexus 7 for $199 seems to be outstanding value. Google Play isn't quite the iTunes ecosystem yet but it's getting much better. I also think it's better than an iPad Mini in that it's widescreen not 4:3. I've lined up a Nexus 7 against my iPad playing Netflix. Playing widescreen the Nexus 7 is only marginally smaller. 720p seems to be a good baseline to aim for on this size of device (IMHO).
I'm also pleased to see the Nexus 10 for $399. It looks like a very nice device.
I also think Android is starting to coming into its own. I've often been critical of it compared to the consistency, ease of use and general pleasure of iOS but that shortcoming is rapidly disappearing.
I compare it to the Motorola Droid, which I have. It's a terrible phone. Everything about it is just bad.
My only gripe with Android phones these days is that they continue to get bigger. I like the form factor of my iPhone 4S.
Plus the Nexus devices has the vastly superior Google Maps. :_ I for one like having public transit directions on my maps.
This sort of spin is inaccurate at best and disingenuous at worst. It subtly reminds me of the hackneyed "it's not a bug, it's a feature" spin. Attempting to transform what is almost universally considered a positive into a negative is not what is going to lead to Google selling many of these units; it's the very competitive price point. It seems like an extremely solid device, and I think that Google consciously made the trade off between price and networking capabilities. I doubt they would have been able to sell these handsets at such a low price if they had LTE capabilities.
It also explains why the Nexus 4 come only in 8 gb and 16 gb capacities. Google has decided that pushing the price is down their primary objective. It's a very smart strategy. I'm sure Apple is very afraid. Their business is built on making high margins on hardware. I wouldn't like being an Android handset maker right now though either. It seems like Google is on a mission to make low margins and low prices the norm for tablets and handsets. One only needs to ask Dell or HP how that sort of market turns out for the hardware manufacturers. Google has nothing to lose, because their ultimate goal is marketshare. They aren't worried about slim hardware profits, because that's not where their core business is.
Not to mention the speeds with LTE are not actually that much faster than T-Mo's HSPA+, especially now that there are lots of iPhone 5s in the wild using up LTE bandwidth: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3582684/the-nexus-4-the-v... (the data in the post is pre-iPhone 5, so the LTE speeds will be much slower than even that now)
On three bars of LTE, I get 20.92 megabits down, 15.60 megabits up. This is roughly equivalent to the fibre connection I have to my home.
Typically, when I'm outside on full bars of LTE, I get closer to 30 megabits down, 30 megabits up. This is significantly better than my fibre connection at home.
So I would say the LTE speed difference is pretty impressive. Whether networks have sufficient coverage is another question entirely, and LTE on different frequencies can have severe penetration issues which can negatively impact your signal strength and download/upload speeds. Still, the numbers reported in that Verge article are pretty depressing and speak less to LTE as a technology and more to the poor situation that US mobile networks are in.
Thus: If you are targeting a purely US audience, then LTE might not make sense, but if you're selling to people outside of the US's broken mobile situation, LTE is a huge boost.
> You would think that Verizon LTE is ubiquitous the way some talk about how important it is and that its speeds are absolutely crushing the competition, and you would be correct on the speeds if you counted upload speeds as equally important as download speeds. For the most part though, when people talk about speeds, they are concerned with download speeds, and that is when facts get seperated by perception quite a bit.
The difference is much less perceptible for downloads, which is what most people want.
More importantly, your one piece of anecdotal data is not particularly relevant when compared to the extensive data collected in a statistically significant manner by PC Mag.
Edit: and like bryanlarsen said below, 3G ≠ HSPA+. HSPA+ has a maximum speed of 42 Mbps.
Sure it's nice for users when they are first in an empty network but you have to be aware that carriers are working as hard as they can to sell their bandwidth and take it away from you.
It always puzzles me that they advertise their new network as a feature to users when it's at best a temporary one.
If they were to give guarantees that they wouldn't oversaturate their network with too many users THAT would be worth something and would be a feature to advertise.
If all they sell is LTE phones this year, the other networks will actually become the fast ones as devices are retired from them and the bandwidth is freed.
At this point it's obviously a bit obsolete.
I understand the reasons for the choice, and I endorse them completely, but there's not pride in ignoring your own shortcomings, while pointing them out on others. Simply put, the Nexus 4 is an exceptional phone for HSPA+ networks, and considering the price, it is even more so. People complaining about missing LTE can just pick another phone that meets their specifications.
Photospheres, as well, are nothing revolutionary, they've been doing them for years on WPs and iPhones using photosynth. Nevertheless they are neat, and I enjoy a lot the fact that I can now use them, share them, contribute to street view, etc.
I'll be getting a Nexus 4, even though I think it's too big. If it was 4", it'd be perfect.
As a Verizon user who lives in a heavily LTE-saturated area, I have to disagree and am actually quite sad that this phone won't be compatible.
If it was LTE-capable, I would buy it in a heartbeat but now it looks like I'll be waiting for the next-gen and hoping that one supports it.
We simply believe there’s a better way of doing it without extracting that much payment from end users, because there are other ways to drive revenues. Patents were used as a weapon to try to stop that evolution and scare people away from lower-cost alternatives.
Of course it's Google, the only company other than Amazon with such a non-SW/HW revenue stream that takes this position. (Google's revenue stream being ads, and Amazon's being content)
What's he trying to achieve by not mentioning Apple? It's not as if anyone interested in the article wouldn't know exactly who he's referring to.
That said when discussing tablets not sure whether the Seattle guys are Microsoft or Amazon...
Otherwise interesting piece - in tone the price pitch feels a lot like Amazon when they talk tablets.
That's disingenuous. Without LTE this phone does not have the latest generation technologies. I think Google screwed up with the Nexus 4. The previous Nexus phones were definitely flagship, top of the line devices. This one is already obsolete before it even ships.
1 - http://www.phonearena.com/news/T-Mobiles-HSPA-42Mbps-network...
Yes, if you're somewhere with decent LTE coverage, you may want to consider alternatives, but that's not a concern for most of us.
Though I can afford a $500-700 device, but I can't justify it. Meanwhile, one of the big battery life tips for smartphone owners is to disable 4G. So, no Google has not screwed up.
I'd say that's pretty significant. I get that Google maybe can't fit an LTE chip into a phone cheaply, and that LTE is the card that carriers are willing to withhold playing to get concessions out of Google, but saying that LTE unavailable, unreliable, and inconsistent just sounds like the sort of apologetics that iPhone users have been accused of for years (since back when LTE was unavailable, unreliable, and inconsistent).
I didn't realize how much faster LTE was until I downloaded an ubuntu ISO in 7 minutes. It's far superior to any sort of wired internet connection I could reasonably afford.
I'm not saying google should have included LTE, but in some regions like mine, it turns out to be pretty important.