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Comment by bsimpson | Hacker News Reader

I'm sad that the Galaxy Nexus isn't supported. My phone has increasingly been running out of RAM lately for reasons I don't understand - hearing Google boast about how KitKat has been optimized for memory had me hoping that it would support more than just the latest-greatest.

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I am sad as well given KitKat was supposedly designed to work well on devices with 512MB RAM. Given the GNex has 1GB and over the time they've added bit of bloat with 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 - I was very much expecting that KitKat would be the last release for the GNex.

But to be fair it was released with 4.0 and got 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 - 3 major releases and more minor ones. So yeah I think I'll give them a pass and hope CM team will have 4.4 for the GNex sometime down the line.

Also no news on the integration of French startup they bought - forgot the name, but they had a native code converter for Android apps which helps further with low RAM low power devices - hoping that they release it to the Play Store (DroidBooster?).

Not to nitpick details, but really.

> But to be fair it was released with 4.0 and got 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 - 3 major releases and more minor ones

It only received one major update: ICS to Jellybean. If google calls all of 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 "Jellybean", getting updates from one version of Jellybean to another can hardly be called "major".

This is different from how Google did things back in the Gingerbread era, where these incremental updates were version 2.3.3, 2.3.4 etc.

But just because Google changed numbering scheme for Jelly Bean doesn't change that these were indeed minor updates. Almost nothing changed in the OS.

The Galaxy Nexus is the first and only Nexus device so far (sans the pointless Nexus Q) to only receive one major upgrade. That's less than most consumer-devices receive.

That's an insult to each and every buyer of that phone. I doubt you'll see them lining up for a new "Nexus" anytime soon.

>It only received one major update: ICS to Jellybean.

I am not sure people will agree with that. Even if Google called all 4.{1,2,3} releases JellyBean they did introduce significant new features in every version. Take a look - http://www.android.com/about/jelly-bean/ . 4.2 brought new camera with PhotoSphere HDR etc, full Braille accessibility services, stock browser HTML5 Video support and better performance and Gesture Keyboard. 4.3 brought Restricted User Profiles, OpenGL ES 3.0, Bluetooth LE/AVRCP etc. Not more of the same IMHO. (Now some of these required HW support not available on the GNex but still the point is it will work well at least another year on 4.3 giving it a 3 yr lifespan - not bad for that piece of crap hardware - it uses a TI SoC and TI isn't in that business anymore.)

What?? The whole point of getting a Nexus device is that, unlike a carrier phone, it's not supposed to get left behind by updates!

The Galaxy Nexus came out at the end of 2011. It can only handle the latest OS for so long...

For less than 2 years? That's worse than Apple, and not just a little.

I have an iPhone 4S, but I guess I could buy a new Nexus phone every year and it would cost me less. :-)

They seeded the Galaxy Nexus to developers at I/O in 2012. Presumably they'll seed the Nexus 5 at I/O in 2014. For the next seven months, developers who rely on Google-seeded devices will be using out-of-date software. That defeats the whole point of seeding devices.

I know Apple is heralded as the company that builds planned obsolescence, but until about 2 months ago an 4 year old iPhone 3GS was still able to run the latest iOS without issues.

Yeah I wouldn't say Apple goes out of their way to screw users, but compared to Microsoft in their heyday they have traditionally been pretty terrible. On the other hand, in the age of startups and smart phones Apple seems to be screwing over customers less than almost everyone.

Well, the older Android will receive Google Play Services which includes many API updates. New OS functionality will be missing of course (as is Siri on older iPhones) but that's just what happens.

That said, I feel like the Galaxy Nexus should be more than capable of running a release specifically created to handle lower end devices, let alone a flagship not even 2 years old.

This is in stark contrast to iOS, which runs on a phone released in June 2010.

The most recent iOS only now deprecated the iPhone 3GS which was released in June 2009.

Up until two months ago a 4 year old device was still running the latest version of iOS. Why is Google unable to do the same?

Because every Android device running an certain version of an OS all have exactly the same functionality for the most part.

iOS might have everyone on the same version, but features are pruned for older hardware. As if getting through one software revision wasn't difficult enough through manufacturers and carriers to a magnitude of devices...

users who are determined can still get the latest version of android on whatever phone they please.

> Because every Android device running an certain version of an OS all have exactly the same functionality for the most part.

Google seems to be encouraging the opposite:

"A new API, ActivityManager.isLowRamDevice(), lets you tune your app's behavior to match the device's memory configuration. You can modify or disable large-memory features as needed, depending on the use-cases you want to support on entry-level devices.”

http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html

It's not about user-facing features. It's about the damn API version! Fragmentation is a problem for users AND developers. With the news about the Galaxy Nexus, Google is basically telling developers to keep targeting old version of Android and avoid the latest APIs. As far as I'm concerned, the Android Support Library is the one true API.

Android API version isn't as big of a deal anymore, since they've been moving to offload everything onto apps which are updatable separate of the OS.

It's not about Google.

It's because each OEM would have to obtain, merge and release a new Android image for each of their old phones that have the specs to run the new Android. And the images originate from chip makers (because Android needs kernel and probably some userspace support for a particular chipset). And same merging and releasing process applies for the chip makers as well.

I would suppose that all OEMs and chip makers are currently busy porting the new Android for their new phones that will be out in the spring or the summer.

For Apple, the backporting process is linear rather than NM.

Based on history, it seems that some* chip makers and OEMs are willing to port a new Android to their previous-generation devices sometimes.

The Linux kernel 3.10 in Android 4.4 should support "device tree". I wonder if that will make it easier for OEM's to make "master images", at least for their own devices, which should make upgrading their own devices easier. But even if that happens, it will happen only from now on, and not with past phones.

Even my iPhone 5 feels as laggy as the original 2G iPhone did, now that I've updated to iOS 7. I wish I could hit the undo button on that 'upgrade.'

Yeah, but KitKat is supposed to run on low-end devices. Call me disappointed, but I'm a happy camper with my Galaxy Nexus and will be looking at possibly rooting my phone in the near future with 4.4. But am really disappointed Google didn't support Galaxy Nexus with 4.4 since the phone still rocks! :(

Really? My iPhone 5 and my friend's iPhone 4 feels as fast as ever in iOS 7.

My iPad however, has jaggy animations when opening multitasking interface.

Weird, the iPhone 4 test devices in my office on iOS 7 are sluggish to the point of unusable. I guess they get used in a different manner than a normal user since they are test devices, but still, I'm shocked to hear an iPhone 4 being called 'fast', even with iOS 6 - I would say extremely slow with 7.

The iPhone 5 runs great on iOS 7. Perhaps you're referring to the long animations for certain tasks, but those can be turned off.

The iPhone 5 runs very well on iOS 7. The iPhone 4S runs fine, but not quite as smooth. The iPhone 4 is a bit slow, and I highly recommend anyone with an older iOS device to turn off the animations and other effects. It makes for a smoother experience.

My 4S runs great on iOS 7.

>stark contrast

7 months difference doesn't seem that stark.

In the world of mobile phones? That's almost an entire device cycle.

iOS 4 was such shit on the 3G it ruined that phone for nearly everyone who bought it, only a year later...

I have iOS 7.0.3 on my iPhone 4S. Released a month before the Galaxy Nexus.

Have you gotten all the features, the iPhone 5S got? Do you have the nice blurred Control Center background?

Android's Problem is fragmentation, and it wouldn't help at all to just backport some functions to older devices, because then developers coulnd't be sure about tthe availability of any API.

Quite to the contrary, the whole point for iOS to be supported on "old" devices like iPhone 4 is reduce fragmentation: developers can focus on building for the latest iOS using the latest API and generate one binary. For god's sake, you can even target both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms with one build. You only need to deal with "availability of any API" when you hit hardware limit, like features that only work when there is Bluetooth LE or Dual Band Wi-Fi.

> Do you have the nice blurred Control Center background?

You get this on the 4S, yes, just not on the iPhone 4 or the iPad 2/3.

> because then developers coulnd't be sure about tthe availability of any API.

iOS 7 running on the iPhone 4 has the same APIs as on the 5S; it just doesn't have all the UI features (notably, the blurring stuff).

My iPhone 4S benefited immensely from iOS7 (UX-feel not withstanding). The biggest difference for was in the camera software. I can't describe how much better it is performing in filming things as they happen.

By contrast, my Galaxy Nexus has become slower and slower with each upgrade. With the last update, my keyboard started to crash... I was really looking forward to the 4.4, hoping things would improve.

And yes, I use two phones and most of the time have both with me... GN is no longer used as a camera though.

It's not about user-facing features. It's about the API and OS bug fixes. I upgraded my iPhone 4S from iOS 5 to iOS 7 not because I wanted iOS 7, but because I was unable to download new apps. Everyone in the App Store was already targeting exclusively iOS 6 and I didn't want to get further left behind. In the iOS world, developers target the latest and greatest API, taking advantage of new features and bug fixes. That's a good thing (tm) for users.

Contrast that with Android, where developers are still targeting Gingerbread and are unable to take advantage of any of the bug fixes in ICS, JB or KK.

> It can only handle the latest OS for so long

That would be reasonable if Google wasn't touting 4.4 as something that can run on devices with half the memory that the GNex has. In the past people have always made hardware excuses for why Google stopped supporting Nexus devices, but this time it's crystal clear: they just can't be bothered. 2 years is the lifespan of a Nexus.

I don't know how accurate this is but I've read that the TI OMAP processor division no longer exists so the Galaxy Nexus can't receive updates that it may need to support 4.4.

I was upset when my N1 didn't get the Android 4 release. Apparently, the whole Nexus thing means you are first in line to get updates when they come out (as opposed to carrier phones which frequently get updates several months after they are released, and may never get updates), but that only lasts for about two years.

Although 3rd party developers eventually brought ICS (and Jelly Bean for that matter) to the Nexus One with a lot of hacking, there were good technical reasons why there was never an official release. ICS needed drastically more space on NAND than Gingerbread, as evidence by 3rd party ICS ROMs requiring you to repartition your NAND as well as mount /data on the SD card if you wanted to install more than two or three apps, which then led to greatly reduced I/O performance.

The Nexus One couldn't install ICS or JB because Google and HTC made the stupid decision to give the system only 256 MB of storage--relying instead on the "endless potential" of SD storage to store apps. <facepalm> I can wipe my Nexus One, return to a clean copy of Gingerbread and will still only have about 30 MB of space for apps. What a joke.

Didn't the GN use an OMAP processor? TI doesn't make those anymore. Maybe there were problems getting drivers, etc because of that.

Galaxy Nexus isn't supported? Got a source on that? If so, that's really disappointing :\.

Android 4.4, KitKat, which comes on Nexus 5, will also soon be available on Nexus 4, 7, 10, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks.

> "Android 4.4, KitKat, which comes on Nexus 5, will also soon be available on Nexus 4, 7, 10, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks."

Hopefully they get it working for the Galaxy Nexus somehow, mine has been a crapshoot for memory recently with Chrome just randomly restarting at times.

We'll see ports to the GNex by various teams soon enough, although it is a bit of a shame Google are not supporting it themselves, that leads me to believe they tried and failed to make it work properly.

That's a bit odd, though, as 4.0 works almost perfectly on my Galaxy S, and 4.3 runs "okay". The smaller memory footprint should make 4.4 work great in theory, but it might not be a memory issue at all.

Google stated they have a 18 month support period in one of their posts, so it's just a matter of not committing to too much.

That statement doesn't mention the Galaxy Nexus one way or the other. I imagine it's just a listing of the devices that Google has direct control over that they'll update in the near future. Since updates for the Galaxy Nexus have to go through the carriers, Google can't really say how soon the updates will go through, or if they ever will.

The Galaxy Nexus doesn't go through carriers unless you're on Verizon (or maybe Sprint). It was sold through Google Play (and given away at developer events like I/O) completely unlocked.

Here are the images Google has supplied for this device in the past:

https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images#takju

Leaving it out of Google's announcement feels a lot like an implicit deprecation to me.

My bad, I have the Galaxy Nexus through Verizon and assumed it was the same for other carriers. I forgot it was available unlocked through the Play store. I'm used to ignoring all of the news from Google and waiting an extra 6+ months for every update.

There is a FAQ page that confirm the deprecation of the support of the gnex : https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/3468085

Well, I'm a little bit disappointed, I hoped to have the update too.

That says they support for 18 months, but the Galaxy Nexus was available from Google Play as late as July 4[1] - that's less than 18 months.

[1] http://www.redmondpie.com/galaxy-nexus-pulled-from-google-pl...

This statement pretty much covers it:

https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/3468085

Thanks for the link. That's really a shame considering they titled the post "Android for all" and made a big deal out of Kit Kat's small memory foot print. Memory has been pretty tight on my Galaxy Nexus, those optimizations would have been nice. I guess I'll have to wait for the modding community to get it working.

"Android for most"

"Android for some"

"Android for the 1%"?

"Android for all ... unless you have a Google phone that's older than 18 months."

... which has been Google's stated policy for quite some time now, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to be sarcastic about it.

Just because it's a stated policy doesn't make it a justified policy or even a good policy. To reiterate what's already been said in other comments here... iPhone 4S, iOS7, etc. etc.

I'm not making a value judgement on the policy. But claiming that Google is contradicting reality is silly given that stated policy.

Using Chrome brings older phones to exhaustion. When I switched back to the stock browser, my SII became much more responsive in general.

The problem is even chip makers don't support their own devices that long. For example Qualcomm only supported their own chip the Snapdragon S3 only for 18 months, which is why when HTC used it in the HTC One S in 2012, it was already on its last legs for support, and then HTC couldn't update it anymore in 2013 because they said Qualcomm wouldn't update the drivers for it anymore.

So it seems it may not be just OEM's fault, if their component suppliers won't support their components for longer either, although I guess you could make an argument for OEM's making their own drivers for everything, or Google trying to introduce another layer of abstraction for hardware, and upgrade everything themselves.

or you know, open sourcing the drivers, or providing the specifications so we can write our own.

Im aware of the torrent of weak excuses why this wont happen, save it.

Me too. I really wasn't planning on getting the Nexus 5, but I don't want to be on a phone that no longer sees operating system updates.

That's ok, Google can keep their OS for themselves. I look forward to taking some time later this year to put Ubuntu Touch or Firefox OS on my phone, and weaning off their services altogether.

Thank you very fucking much Google. 4.2 and 4.3 trashed the experience for GNex users, now that 4.4 is "butter smooth" again it ain't coming to the phone. Excellent

God bless CyanogenMod.

4.3 runs quite well on my Galaxy Nexus. 4.2 was a disaster though.

4.3 is okay, but 4.1 was pretty damn quick. Oh well...

You should get at least some of the memory benefits, as they'll be supplied in apps or play services or in better profiling tools for 3rd parties.

There will be a ROM for you somewhere.

Unacceptable. I put up with way too many buggy ROMs and crappy user experiences with my previous non-Nexus devices. The whole reason I bought a Nexus phone was so I'd receive timely updates and not have to worry about being left behind. The correct course of action for me now is to jump ship to iOS despite how invested I currently am in the Android platform. Luckily, owning an iPad (older than my GNex and running iOS 7!) makes it a little easier.

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