Nexus Phones Are "Ringers"

Eating your own dog food is using your own product, which Google does without question

Devices not sold on the Play Store are not Google's product. Those products performing poorly, purchased as you stated, are the fault of the carriers.

I also wouldn't call the Nexus devices "ringers". Maybe if Play customers had faster processors or better displays than our carrier cousins, sure; but that's not the case. We are just purchasing our tiny little computers straight from the manufacturer, rather than buying from a third part.

The Nexus devices have their own history of problems as well. I still have no WiFi calling on my Nexus 4, despite T-Mobile Nexus 4's having the ability to do so. Of the 3 Nexus 7's I purchased for Christmas 2012, there's only one that will charge any longer: the one I rooted and run Cyanogen Mod on.

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking for with this post, for Google to run the bloated device you paid twice as much for from the carrier, as opposed to buying straight from Google (the Nexus 4 case study).

Uhhh... No? If my employer, or its customers, insisted I used my mom's computer to develop their software I would tell them to fuck right off.

This article is pretty silly. The example of "ringer" offered by the author specifically refers to instances of products that are made way better than what's available to the customer in order to mislead people about what the customer is getting. But the topic is the Nexus phones, which ARE available to any customer who wants one...it's just that a lot of people don't buy them. Claiming the Nexus is a ringer for Android because people buy other things is like saying Bently is a ringer for cars because a lot of people will buy a Toyota Corolla instead.

I'll agree that judging all Android phones based on the Nexus experience is silly since you miss the vendor bloatware and lack of timely (or any) updates common in many Android products. But I'm not convinced many people are doing that, and the author certainly doesn't do anything to support the idea that they are. People might be buying a lot of bargain basement crapware Android phones, but are they doing so with the expectation that they're getting the optimal Android experience?

That's a little disingenuous...

A hand tweaked car is something that you can't get unless you're a GM exec, or have work done (at your own expense) after buying the car.

It may be true that nexus devices aren't leading the pack in popularity for various reasons, but they are at least available.

So if the Android team realized that Samdroid and Motodroid and HTCdroid suck... what could they do about it? As he says, the fragmentation is inherent in the business model.

Shitty article. It's not Google's fault that some OEMs suck, or offer a different experience. Also, I would bet that Google engineers are eating their own dog food, it's not as if Nexus devices aren't available on the market.

My wife has a Nexus 7, and it's great. I have an HTC phone, it's also great.

This whole article seems like a bad attempt at discrediting Google and Android....

This article is totally off base. The best Android experience you will can currently have is using a Samsung Galaxy S4 (Google Play OR Samsung Edition). I know this is just an opinion but it is widely held in the Android community. I haven't had personal experience but I believe the HTC One and the Note 2 are also generally considered better experiences than the N4 as well. Another issue is that Verizon has essentially made it impossible to have a true "Nexus" experience with a phone on their network. So this article doesn't even apply to the largest US carrier. And finally, I believe the Android market share is around 80%.