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I’d love it if this were true, but I’m worried that history proves otherwise. I remember feeling that the nexus one pushed the envelope for android hardware. But since then I’ve always felt that nexus phone stayed one step behind the flagships, on purpose it seems. Screen size and resolution has always been one generation behind, since 1080p is still top of the line they might stay at 720p. LTE and battery life are really the only problems I can think of otherwise though.

1 day ago on HTC One 'Google Edition' with stock Android reportedly in the works

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Not to be a jerk but maybe you should look at switching carriers. we pay these guys an arm and a leg and not having data signal during a part of your regular daily routine seems like a bit of a nuisance to have to go through

2 days ago on Best New Apps: Google Hangouts 1 reply

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I’m no silicon aficionado (is that what they’re making chips out of still?). But even I know that chips can be clocked higher and lower. Laptops need em clocked low and for consoles you can slap a huge fan in it and let the GHz fly. At least that’s my understanding. Besides the footage Microsoft was showing off at the Xbox event looked amazing.

2 days ago on AMD Jaguar: the Xbox One and PS4 guts that could power your next cheap laptop 2 replies 1 recommend

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Everything has a reason for happening. Maybe the android market isn’t as terrible to be in and HTC is collapsing simply because they grew too fast. Designing phones for other to making them by themselves was a rough transition. That and they have no real foothold in the industry far as I can see (meaning they don’t produce any components) I would say I hope Vizio can enter the space to fill in for HTC but they would suffer from the same disadvantage, even though they are (and probably would continue to be) better at handling those kinds of restrictions. Others may be struggling to gain foothold, but their business isn’t dying; I would say that LG, Sony, and other companies are suffering from how hard it is to get carrier relations in the US. If HTC were to actually fall, maybe that would open the way for one or two more companies to snag some of those awesome Verizon marketing dollars

3 days ago on HTC Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik joins executive exodus

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We live in a world where phones are getting 5 hours of screen on time before dying. And the people making them want us to be playing games and reading and watching films. I say to let the market decide if it has a place. If someone makes a thinner phone than the RAZR maxx and can still advertise it as having by far the longest battery life of any smartphone, I believe the message will resonate with someone out there ( i.e. me). That said, I haven’t seen any close up images of the display yet. I tend to wait to judge till seeing things in real life.

3 days ago on Qualcomm resurrects Mirasol reflective displays with new 576 ppi smartphone panel

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I’m not trying to say that higher resolution displays aren’t awesome. I’m just saying on my ~12 inch screen, I played a blue ray copy of a movie and it looked amaaazziing. In this Netflix, hulu, YouTube world … I don’t know that a lot of people get content rich enough to even utilize a high res screen. Having said that tho; now I’ve seen the difference between “streaming HD” and blue ray on 1366:768, I can only begin to imagine how it would look on a better screen. I just wish I had more content taking advantage of such a resolution

4 days ago on Samsung beats Chromebook Pixel and Retina MacBook with new high-res laptop display

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Is the surface really the best option tho? Even if you stick to Windows, you’ve got other choices with larger screens, battery including keyboard, or they’re thinner, cheaper, etc. And its not like with Android where you have to worry about updates from the OEM’s, because you get em direct from microsoft no matter who made the device

6 days ago on Help Picking a Tablet 1 reply

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the thinkpad tablet 2 or the asus vivotab 810 are maybe better option. thinkpad for lenovo’s pen support prowess and the vivotab cuz it has a larger screen that makes laptop use easier and it’s dockable keyboard has built in battery extension. But that would be if windows were even a consideration. Dockable keyboard and android screams asus, only other option I can think of is that new HP tablet. Personal recommendation would be to go windows tho, but I love one note for school so I’m totally biased

6 days ago on Help Picking a Tablet

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Your answer is correct for the most part. But it no longer has to be. Google play services includes game data backup now, so the true interesting question is how long till all the games support it? I now angry birds does

6 days ago on My Nexus 4 has a Battery Problem

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not kidding, for sure. I may not be able to speak to other countries but i know we in the US buy phones on contract. I’ve hear the same from Canadian friends of mine. I don’t think ( and this is just my presumption) that there is a larger market for smartphones than North America. For that reason I’d venture to say that our numbers tend to have the greatest effect on these OS marketshare battles. Unless you wanna look at the rest of the world in a single bucket instead of breaking it up into regions also

7 days ago on Windows Phone overtakes BlackBerry to claim third place in 2013 smartphone shipments

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I disagree with your premise and here is why. Given a choice between high, mid, or low end, iOS and android both cover all the bases. Majority of people buy their phones on contract, and that means prices of 50, 150, and 250. In essence, carrier subsidizing levels the playing field. As long as apple sells iPhones at all those price points through carrier subsidy, it can’t be said that android is winning because of cheapness

9 days ago on Windows Phone overtakes BlackBerry to claim third place in 2013 smartphone shipments 1 reply

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Guy, android phones had panorama first, and noise cancellation was in the og droid if I’m not mistaken. If you’re trying to argue about innovation u are hurting your case

11 days ago on Apple to add Galaxy S4 to second Samsung patent infringement lawsuit 1 reply 2 recommends

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I have heard of HTC. They’re the company that tried to beat Samsung at their own game (producing butt load of sku’s and flooding the market) and failed. Now they are back to the drawing board actually taking risks with the One. Sony’s waterproof feature is not a risk, it is a popular feature in their home market, and has been in devices in the past. I’m not gonna tell you the S4 takes any risks (aside from the risk of me not buying it), but why should they. They’re at the top of the heap with Apple, and history shows that top dogs play it safe. Who else is there? LG (given that square 5incher they made I’d rather they stray from risk taking) or Nokia (the only risk they’ve taken since 2000 was switching to windows phone)? Risk taking is not something that people in control of million and billion dollar companies engage in.

12 days ago on The Reason smaller phones fail?

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I agree, I’m not suggesting that they were expected to run legacy programs, but rather that the absence of the ability to do so when placed against some similarly priced Atom tablets merits a lower score in comparison. And without the legacy support, you go heads up against apple’s huge store of apps with only what has recently been put onto the windows app store, which I’m assuming is lacking

16 days ago on New Sony Windows 8 convertible revealed, shows off slim design in leaked video

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yeah, I can’t rationalize away a score of 9 for windows 8 on the pro, while the latest ipad gets a 10. Maybe it’s a tired example, but nothing beats one note for office productivity in my experience. That alone seems to trump anything in the iPad’s chest of drawers. Only thing I can think of is they are subtracting a point for the state of the windows app store?? Still seems a stretch to me tho

16 days ago on New Sony Windows 8 convertible revealed, shows off slim design in leaked video 1 recommend

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That, i definitely can’t answer for you, just trying to make sense of the question/situation that was posed about disparate rankings. I thought they kinda fell in line. I can’t speak to Atom’s ability to run any kind of legacy app as I don’t own one, so on that end i’m just going on hearsay

16 days ago on New Sony Windows 8 convertible revealed, shows off slim design in leaked video

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Funny, the best picture I’ve ever taken with a galaxy nexus was taken at night with flash on. N=1, and it was probably a rare combination of factors that allowed me to get that shot

16 days ago on Topolsky in 2011: "The [Galaxy Nexus] camera takes incredible looking photos"

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I think your post just highlighted the rating correlation. I see RT and atom devices receiving 6’s, while the core devices receive 9’s. I remember them mentioning in a review of an atom tablet that it struggled to run desktop chrome browser. If the hardware cant run the most popular browser that’s gonna effect the software score for sure. And i think its clear that RT is being dinged for its lack of legacy support

16 days ago on New Sony Windows 8 convertible revealed, shows off slim design in leaked video 2 replies 2 recommends

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The kind of update you’re describing … I have a hard time believing it’d pass any of the US carriers approval process. There argument would be that their customers paid for play store and such ecosystem. As far as ease of portability, they could always make Bada capable of running android apps. The benefit is that they wouldn’t be beholden to Google’s update cycle or inherit whatever limitation or design paradigms are present in android. We can see from their Touchwiz skin that there is a lot about Android that Samsung currently dislikes

18 days ago on I'm starting to think that Android will eventually be more Google and less freedom in the future.

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They have been and still are developing their own OS that many have described as an android clone. Unless they were doing it just to keep their software team active, forking android is nonsensical. All they’d have to do is start putting out bada phones with the galaxy name and stop making android phones. Better yet they could call them universe, or cosmos, or anything else that has nothing to do with phones an exudes an air of greatness. Just like they beat HTC with marketing, they could beat any press backlash against a move like this with more marketing. And people will line up to buy the new next big thing. Look at their sales numbers for the S2-4 and tell me if developers wouldn’t follow them. They’ll just wait until android stales a bit, find a desperate carrier and launch there (kinda like how Google and apple both launched their respective platforms)

18 days ago on I'm starting to think that Android will eventually be more Google and less freedom in the future. 1 reply

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Maybe I’m just super picky, but are these gonna be getting any OS level updates? Last I read they were still on ice cream sandwich?

23 days ago on Nook HD and HD+ get full Google Play support for Android apps 2 replies

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I’m sorry but no. Just no. If you are thinking about this tablet even beginning to hold up for 8 months, you can’t be content with ice cream sandwich. Its two updates behind. With another one surely on the way THIS month. Consider how much you’ll be paying for this device, at that price you deserve specs AND support. I just don’t think Sony will give you that.

23 days ago on Should I hold off on purchasing the Xperia Tablet Z? 1 reply 1 recommend

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This is one of those rare instances where Microsoft wins out. The think pad tablet 2 and vivo tab 810 both have full digitizer support, including built in eraser. If you’re a one note junkie its hard to pass on that. I was dead set on a 10 inch android tablet b4 these came out, now I’m just waiting till I need a laptop upgrade and by then atom processors should be much more capable. To change my mind at this point android would have to introduce multi window features (two apps snapped to the sides is enough really) as well as start making tablets in the 12 inch range that windows 8 ones currently occupy.

23 days ago on Ok Developers...Now can we get some better tablet support?

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Except it was totally mentioned in the vergecast as a definite negative along with many other things. You know you’re reaching when you claim that the verge has a bias towards the gs4. This is two years running now they’ve called Samsung’s flagship ugly and buggy and named an HTC phone the best of the year. The truth is that windows phone tries to be the happy medium between iOS and Android, but fails to capture what’s best about either. Then, it also has a straggling app ecosystem to boot. As far as comparing storage woes in a phone to the surface? One can be had for 200 bucks while the other costs from 500-1000+, I think the increased cost warrants the increased scrutiny.

23 days ago on Remember when the Surface was thrashed for limited storage?

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If it truly is gonna become an integration of all the messengers, then it should come as a play store update to google talk. then when it eventually rolls in voice and the OS level messenger app, they can just stop offering upgrades for those. maybe send legacy users a subtle push to use the new babel (used to be talk) app?

24 days ago on What do you REALLY hate about Android (ICS+)? 1 recommend

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That argument can get circular really quickly. For example you suggested a chrome book. I could say for 50 dollars more just get a base model laptop or get a nexus 10 or get an Asus transformer. These can all be had for less than or at 400 dollars. The key is that choice is the only good option. If companies thought like you’re suggesting, there’d be no 5 inch phones, “just get a tablet”. There’d also be no gaming laptops perhaps, “just build a rig”. I prefer these seemingly fringe cases existed because they give me options, so I can decide whether my primary machine should be an atom windows 8 tablet or a chrome book or transformer android setup. And, after I’ve made my choice, I can still find other complementary devices to fit whatever holes are left in my particular use case

24 days ago on Another "Android" laptop: with a price that just feels right

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Nexus 7 is a fine tablet but i definitely don’t think i wanna be doing any document editing on a screen that size, nor do i think that anybody using that for docs would find it a pleasant experience

24 days ago on Another "Android" laptop: with a price that just feels right