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Comment by king_magic | Hacker News Reader

What exactly makes this a killer? I'm having a hard time seeing it. It just looks liked any one of a dozen similar Android phones, with more power/memory/horsepower?

Calling something a killer by itself does not a killer make.

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My favorite feature of Cyanogen now is that they have Whisperpush enabled by default, which secures all text communications from a Cyanogen phone to another or to a TextSecure app.

http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/whisperpush-secure-messaging...

I hope they will be willing to integrate RedPhone by default in it, too, eventually.

As someone who's more technical, I don't necessarily "need" Whisperpush, since I could just use TextSecure directly - however I think it's great that anyone who would be buying this phone would have secure communications by default (without even having to care about it - which is the brilliance of it), and the more people buy it the higher chance they will be communicating with a TextSecure user (or with another TextSecure federated client, since I think you can use the TextSecure protocol like you can with OTR).

Last I heard, Whisperpush on CyanogenMod only actually worked if you had the GApps package installed which isn't entirely legal and certainly isn't something they could get away with including as standard.

Maybe can't get away with including as standard, but is it really not entirely legal to install it?

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Google_Apps

The best disclaimer sentence I've found here is: The Google Apps packages are NOT SUPPORTED in any way by Cyanogenmod. Not exactly a huge endorsement, but saying it's not entirely legal is something else entirely.

Would like someone who has expertise to somehow reconcile the above comment to an article like this if possible: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/19/the-oppo-n1-is-offic...

It depends. If you are installing CyanogenMod on your phone, then installing GApps is not very legal. However, Cyanogen team has been working with Google to get devices like the OnePlus One certified by Google and preloading them with fully legal GApps package.

Source for that?

Not sure what makes people think it is illegal. Not supported, sure, but illegal? Is there a source for this statement?

this device will have Google CTS and therefore google apps pre-installed.

Basically, you get 90% of the features of the best Android smartphones at half the price.

The Nexus 5 is only $350. This phone is nominally cheaper, but I wouldn't say 'killer'. I will think about getting it next time I purchase a phone though (I use a Nexus 5 now).

OnePlus has 64GB of storage for $350, Nexus 5 only 16GB. It also seems to have a significantly better camera and much faster, too (Rear: f/2.0 13 MP Sony Exmor IMX 214 sensor, w/4K video recording. Dual-LED flash. 0.3s shutter speed) It also has a 3100 mAh battery vs 2300 mAh for Nexus 5.

The processor I don't care about since 801 is just a repackaged 800 anyway, like all of Qualcomm's new processors.

That stuff is nice, but this phone is significantly newer (as far as mobile phone go). It looks like the Nexus 6 is coming out in November. I would expect it to have similar specs.

They're short shifting themselves here by not having a microSD slot. The biggest check against Nexus 5 I know of is no microSD, and that very small memory. 3G isn't as fast or as available as Google wants to believe.

Personally, my main reasons for not buying a Nexus 5 were the battery, the camera, and that I wanted a slightly bigger phone. The OnePlus One seems to take care of all three (although I'm still waiting for in-depth reviews).

Curious- do you know if Cyanogen-based phones have access to all the Google services like the Play Store, Maps, etc.?

Yes, if you install the apps.

edit: maybe not what most people are looking for, so I'll elaborate. To install google apps, you'll need to unlock the device and flash the gapps package. Some people don't want to go that route, so in that case there are two possibilities:

a) You can't have google apps.

b) If OnePlus gets Google CTS certified, then they can bundle the play store and other apps, signed, and bootloader locked. Oppo did so for the N1, so the N1 is a cyanogenmod phone with official google apps support.

OnePlus is Google CTS. The One comes bundled with Google Apps.

Yes! The phone will come with Google services installed.

slantyyz: yes, but you have to download the google apps package separately to get around the legal issues.

Download it from whom?

Not needed, the Phone will be Google CTS certified so it will come installed with Google Services.

Having a reasonably priced 64GB version removes much of the need for an SD slot though, at least for most people. Plus given the direction Google is going, the external storage is becoming less and less useful.

I used to hate not having a MicroSD slot on my Galaxy Nexus. Then I realised that I don't really need to have that much music/videos/games (the only things that challenged my 16GB capacity) readily available on the phone. It is good enough for me that I can connect a USB storage device (thanks to USB-OTG) and access any large files from there -and that's something I actually find myself needing to do only in rare cases.

This has a much bigger battery than the N5, which addresses one of the N5's key weaknesses.

I have a Sony Xperia Z1, which has a 3000mAh battery, and while the battery life is pretty good, it doesn't really last a whole day. So I don't know about that 3100mAh with the 5.5" screen.

I have a Sony Xperia Z1 as well and the battery lasts over 3 days. Make sure to enable the stamina mode http://developer.sonymobile.com/2013/11/26/power-management-... it actually works pretty well.

I have stamina mode activated most of the time but I will check out the tips. Thank you.

I've read that the Nexus 6 is coming out around November and will have a 3,200 mAh battery.

Or there is always the Moto G. 90% of the features at a quarter the price.

It's aiming to compete feature by feature with high-end Android phones and the iPhone, at a substantially lower price point. Not looked closely enough at it to know if it's likely to succeed at that.

Their cheapest model is threading close to the mid-range cheap MTK based Android phones coming out of China.

Ah got it - that makes a lot more sense. I didn't get that impression from their site, so I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. I'm an iPhone user, so I'm probably not exactly their target market, but I sort of still am I suppose, and not being able to understand where a particular Android phone lies on The Grand Scale of Android Phones (without doing a ton of research) has always been one of my frustrations with the Android world.

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