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Android Hardware Thread - 2010 Edition

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Futureman said:
Top phones right now would be any of the Galaxy S's, Droid X, Droid 2, G2, Epic 4G, and EVO 4G. That's U.S., not too familiar with other territories.

Nexus 2 is only a rumor right now. No solid info really. Though the head of the Open Handset Alliance tweeted today that the next version of Android, 2.3 codenamed Gingerbread, will be coming to the Nexus One this week.

I really doubt anything coming in the next 6 months will really be SIGNIFICANTLY better than the top of the crop now. It seems a Nexus 2 is really the phone that would be worth waiting for as it would be stock Android and get the latest Android updates first, but as I said, Nexus 2 is only a rumor right now.
Click to expand...

Ah thanks for the info bro. Looks like I am getting the Nexus one and the wife is set on the captivate (which from what I understand is the same as the galaxy s?)
 
Sent said:
Isn't the Incredible HD supposed to be released this month?
Click to expand...

March

Just ordered a refurb Droid X off the VZW website for 100 bucks. My Storm couldn't wait any longer and finally quit out after 2 dedicated years.

The refurb has a good warranty and I'll send the fucker back if there is anything on it. Can't wait to root and dive in!
 
NH Apache said:
If you look a page back, I was hoping for the same. But, I'll "settle" for the Droid X.
Click to expand...

i'm really trying to wait for a high resolution 4" LTE device. Seems like i'll be rocking my N1 until March... then i jump ship and give ATT the finger on the way out.
 
Apparently, visionary is going to update tomorrow so that you can just use that to do the perm root, instead of doing all of the steps yourself.
 
I am thinking of picking up a Desire Z / G2, I see it can now be rooted does this mean that future android releases can be ported over by the community? For instance if 2.3 were released tomorrow can that be ported across or do we have to wait for HTC?
 
www.bgr.com said:
The shining star this quarter was Google’s Android operating system, which saw unbelievable growth compared to last year. Approximately 20.5 million Android devices were sold in the third quarter of 2010, accounting for 22.5% of the global smartphone market. In the same quarter last year, less than 1.5 million Android phones were sold, making up about 3.5% of the market. The increase in Android phone sales amounts to a staggering 1,440% swing, year over year. If there was any question that Android is well on its way to becoming the most popular smartphone OS in the world, the answer now seems fairly apparent.

smartphones-q3-2010.jpg
Click to expand...

O_*

Edit:

Has this beaut been posted:

ANZU3a.jpg


http://www.xperiax10.net/2010/11/10/more-details-and-pics-of-the-sony-ericsson-‘anzu’/
Hit the link for more details.

ANZU2a.jpg


ANZU1a.jpg


If only Sony Ericsson would release vanilla Android on their phones and just have Google update them I would be in heaven.
 
^ I just noticed it says 1080p video recording if Sony goes with Qualcomm again, the only Qualcomm chipset which does 1080p record is the dual core variant. This kinda jives with the dual core phones coming in Q1 stories.
 
What is Sony's deal with not putting a search button on their phones? I thought that was part of the Android spec, that you had to have Menu, Home, Back, and Search buttons?

I use the search button all the time on my Droid X. That new Xperia looks just like the Droid X, except no search button and a shiny casing. I love the soft rubber thing the X has going on.

As far as that marketshare stuff...

GO ANDROID!!

Apple this time last year had 17.1% share, now 16.7%.
Android this time last year had 3.5% share, now 25.5%.

Is it now a matter if when, not if, Android vaults to #1?
 
Futureman said:
What is Sony's deal with not putting a search button on their phones? I thought that was part of the Android spec, that you had to have Menu, Home, Back, and Search buttons?

Is it now a matter if when, not if, Android vaults to #1?
Click to expand...

hard to say once the Iphone hits Verizon and/or Tmobile. Android is great, but a lot of the gains have come from the iphone simply being nonexistant on 3/4 of US carriers.
 
Futureman said:
What is Sony's deal with not putting a search button on their phones? I thought that was part of the Android spec, that you had to have Menu, Home, Back, and Search buttons?
Click to expand...
Hold down Menu, it'll bring up the search prompt.

I love that they kept hardware buttons. I do not love that they went with a glossy back.
 
Manmademan said:
hard to say once the Iphone hits Verizon and/or Tmobile. Android is great, but a lot of the gains have come from the iphone simply being nonexistant on 3/4 of US carriers.
Click to expand...

iPhone is insanely popular yes, and will get even more popular when it reaches more carriers in the U.S., but I think only having one model will preclude them from ever reaching #1 world-wide marketshare.

Nokia has traditionally dominated the low cost phone market, but when we have phones like the Comet selling for $10 on contract at T-Mobile... we can't be too far behind from these crazy cheap, pretty damn nice Android models being cheap enough for emerging markets.
 
ep85 said:
Hold down Menu, it'll bring up the search prompt.

I love that they kept hardware buttons. I do not love that they went with a glossy back.
Click to expand...

oh thats good to know. i don't think i've ever used the search key on either of the android phones i've owned. so i think they're smart for excluding it
 
Manmademan said:
hard to say once the Iphone hits Verizon and/or Tmobile. Android is great, but a lot of the gains have come from the iphone simply being nonexistant on 3/4 of US carriers.
Click to expand...

its not really a question of android beating apple anymore, the question is if they could catch nokia. with only one available piece of hardware, iOS won't be able to stick with Android, no matter if/when they move to other carriers
 
Between now and Christmas.....what should I get? My og Droid has had a cracked screen for 2 months but I've been holding out for this holiday crop. I think I love the Droid Pro but not sure.

My contract isn't up til July so I'll have to pay full price for the thing no matter what I get. However, that also means I can upgrade cheap in 6 months!
 
xtop said:
oh thats good to know. i don't think i've ever used the search key on either of the android phones i've owned. so i think they're smart for excluding it
Click to expand...
Gotta disagree - in stock Android, hold down the search button to go into voice commands/dictation. It's indispensable.
 
kaching said:
Gotta disagree - in stock Android, hold down the search button to go into voice commands/dictation. It's indispensable.
Click to expand...

isn't that what the voice command button on the keyboard is for?
 
kaching said:
Gotta disagree - in stock Android, hold down the search button to go into voice commands/dictation. It's indispensable.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Also, hold menu key shows/hides the keyboard. Sometimes it doesn't do it automatically like it should and not every keyboard has the "hide" button on it.

xtop said:
isn't that what the voice command button on the keyboard is for?
Click to expand...
I like holding search because you don't have to look at the phone. Often times when I want to use voice search/commands, I am not in a position to use the touchscreen to a great degree. And it's quicker that way. ;)
 
xtop said:
isn't that what the voice command button on the keyboard is for?
Click to expand...
Yea but not every command is coming from a keyboard, I do searches from the home screen all the time, it's so much easier having a search button at your disposal.
 
Jesus, Gizmodo just published the most scathing review of the Galaxy Tab calling it "a pocketable train wreck."

This thing is just a mess. It's like a tablet drunkenly hooked up with a phone, and then took the fetus swimming in a Superfund cleanup site. The browser is miserable, at least when Flash is enabled. It goes catatonic, scrolling is laggy, and it can get laughably bad. When better browsing is half the reason to go for a larger screen, that's insanity.

[...]

Typically, the point of a compromise is to bring together the best of both sides. The Tab is like a compromise's evil twin, merging the worst of a tablet and the worst of a phone
Click to expand...
 
xtop said:
isn't that what the voice command button on the keyboard is for?
Click to expand...
No, that's voice to text only. Voice commands allow you to initiate calls, send text messages, play music, search the web, load an address on a map, etc. And Google plans to keep expanding the available voice commands in the future.
 
OriginalThinking said:
Hmmmm, it's a hit grabbers dream. Given that the Engadget review was very positive it does seem like the reviewer was being a bit extreme.
Click to expand...

I think they make a good point that when browsing the web is half the reason you buy a larger tablet like this, the browsing better be damn near perfect.
 
OriginalThinking said:
Hmmmm, it's a hit grabbers dream. Given that the Engadget review was very positive it does seem like the reviewer was being a bit extreme.
Click to expand...

I dunno...I agree that Gizmodo is just pure link bait fodder but I'm not sure if Engadget's gospel on the Tab either. It seemed strange to me that they would call the Tab's browser "rock-solid" while TechRadar complained about the poor browsing performance.

Despite the 1Ghz processor, there are some significant performance issues here and in many cases they hamper the usability and performance of the Tab to treacherous levels. The problems are most evident when browsing the web. Scrolling down your average website is quite juddery. The smoothness of the iPad is nowhere to be seen, and our fingers had often swiped and left the screen before the device responded and began to scroll.
Click to expand...

Isn't this basically running on the same hardware as the Galaxy S (which has an incredible browsing experience)? Does the bump in resolution really account for these performance hiccups?

And as I typed this TechCrunch just came through with a far more positive review (despite saying the browser is slow):

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/11/10/review-samsung-galaxy-tab-on-sprint/
 
Futureman said:
I think they make a good point that when browsing the web is half the reason you buy a larger tablet like this, the browsing better be damn near perfect.
Click to expand...
I really don't remember Engadget saying the web browsing was poor, neither the Android specialist sites (though they may be biased) He says that Flash ruins the browsing experience (hint it can be set to on demand). The very fact it has flash actually means it's closer to a full web browsing experience than the market leader aka the iPad. Now before anyone calls fanboy on me I just typed this very post on an iPad. Honestly I think he may have over reacted. Let me dig out the Engadget review to see what they had to say about it....

edit

For the most part, the browsing experience on the Tab is rock solid -- pages loaded quickly over WiFi and scrolling / zooming on most pages was snappy. When loading a few sites -- like this very technology site -- we did notice the scrolling to be a bit jittery and not as smooth as on the iPad. However, we do like that there's the ability to change the brightness within the browser. But, obviously, the Tab differs from that other tablet with its full Flash support. So, is it everything you've been waiting for? Thanks to its 1GHz processor, the experience isn't as slow as we've seen on other Android 2.2 devices, but we can't really say we took advantage of the feature all that much. While it's nice to be able to load videos within sites and not have to battle that blue lego block, we were repeatedly given the "this video is not optimized for mobile" message when we hit play. Overall, videos played just fine, but Flash definitely slowed down the rest of the browsing experience. What about other Flash heavy sites? Well, as you can see above, Hulu is a dead end -- we got the same error message even when we logged into our Hulu plus account in the browser. (Hulu, please release a Plus app for Android ASAP!) On that same vein, we had no issues loading a Flash game site like Canabalt, but because it was built for mouse and keyboard environments we couldn't figure out how to jump and avoid death by bricks. What does it all mean? The Tab's Flash capability is a nice fallback, but if you've been thinking it's the killer tablet app you should think again. Not to sound like Steve Jobs or anything, but scaled-up smartphone apps and Flash compatibility alone don't create a well-rounded tablet platform -- it's going to take native apps for the Tab to be truly competitive.
Click to expand...

That's Engadgets take, nothing potentially ruinous it would seem. Sure the scrolling isn't always 100% smooth but it certainly wouldn't appear to be the disaster that Gizmodo would have you believe. The biggest issue is the price. Samsung made it too expensive.
 
dream said:
I dunno...I agree that Gizmodo is just pure link bait fodder but I'm not sure if Engadget's gospel on the Tab either. It seemed strange to me that they would call the Tab's browser "rock-solid" while TechCrunch complained about the poor browsing performance.
Click to expand...

Apparently, the browser's suck performance is due to flash...when you switch it to "on demand" it gets a lot better
 
Manmademan said:
hard to say once the Iphone hits Verizon and/or Tmobile. Android is great, but a lot of the gains have come from the iphone simply being nonexistant on 3/4 of US carriers.
Click to expand...
I'm not really sure where you get that idea. The table posted earlier is about worldwide smartphone market; iPhone going to Verizon won't change global smartphone market in any significant way. There is no way for iPhone to catch Android in any foreseeable future. There is no doubt that US is an important market but it is not that important - this year will probably end with around 300 milions of smartphones sold - this is equal to the whole population of US.

Android has almost two times bigger marketshare in US than iPhone (44% vs 23%) acording to NPD in 3rd quarter of 2010, so Apple would have to double sales of its handset to even win the US market. I don't really see it coming true even with Verizon on board.
And its not like Apple has the same policy with sticking with one carrier in other countries as it has in US. In Poland (which I happen to live) iPhone is avalible in each of 4 major carriers and from what I know its also sold unlocked in some other EU countries.
The selection of Android phones on the other hand is not as good as it is in US. There is not Droid 2 or Droid X, no Samsung Epic or Evo 4G (there is somewhat similar HTC Desire HD but it was released just recently).
 
eznark said:
Between now and Christmas.....what should I get? My og Droid has had a cracked screen for 2 months but I've been holding out for this holiday crop. I think I love the Droid Pro but not sure.

My contract isn't up til July so I'll have to pay full price for the thing no matter what I get. However, that also means I can upgrade cheap in 6 months!
Click to expand...

Go for it, from the looks of it the software is like the one on the Droid 2 and Droid X, which isn't that bad from what I've seen. There doesn't seem to be too much info on the Pro though.
 
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