Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 29th Oct 2012 18:14 UTC
While Microsoft is unveiling all about Windows Phone 8, Google ruined the party a little bit by 'leaking' all about Android 4.2, the Nexus 10 tablet, and the new Nexus phone, the LG Nexus 4. There's some pretty awesome stuff in here from Google - except for the fact the devices themselves are kind of ugly.
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Member since:2005-11-13
I agree with everything that you said except for the LTE part. The new Nexus 4 supports 42Mbps+ HSPA+. It's actually faster than almost all LTE networks in current existence now and for the next two to four years.
How does that equate to real-world speeds though? When I was on Verizon and had their Galaxy Nexus, I could get 15-20mbps when the reception was good. However, the radio on that phone was ass, so I switched to the GSM version.
On my GSM Gnex with AT&T, the fastest I've managed is about 4mbps, and that was after tweaking the APN settings a bit, with 4 bars of HSPA+. A friend of mine with the same phone can sometimes hit 5-6mbps on his Gnex with T-mo, but a lot of times, his speeds are lower than mine.
So you see, that's a pretty big difference. It's not a huge deal for day-to-day usage, but really sucks when tethering
Edited 2012-10-30 05:58 UTC
Member since:2008-06-03
HSPA+ varies wildly from country to country. Obviously, no one is going to get 21Mbps, let alone 42Mbps. Thing is, I've noticed (from Speedtest rankings and whatnot) that many European and Asian 3.5G/HSPA+ speeds are pretty close to what the average American gets on Verizon LTE (though I can't speak for latency).
Where I live, I can get the equivalent of 10Mbps+ quite often, and around 14 during the early morning hours, and I live in a very saturated city. LTE just rolled out here a few months ago, and from what I've read, users get around 20Mbps if signal permits. So, yes, LTE is obviously faster, but it's not really 4G speed like many telcos claim, and our 3.5G/HSPA+ speeds aren't all that bad here. There's obviously much more room for LTE to get faster though (4x4 MIMO - 20MHz supposedly goes up to 325Mbps), but I suspect most telcos will have moved on to totally different tech before that.
Edited 2012-10-30 14:47 UTC
Member since:2005-11-09
Member since:2009-05-19
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2005-11-10
I agree with everything that you said except for the LTE part. The new Nexus 4 supports 42Mbps+ HSPA+. It's actually faster than almost all LTE networks in current existence now and for the next two to four years.
Outside of the US, a lot of mobile carrier companies will not be making truly significant upgrades in LTE until LTE Advanced (real 4G by ITU standards instead of marketing buzz) because current (3.9G) LTE carries little benefit compared to advanced UTMS networks for the majority of use cases outside of those that depend on lower latency. LTE upgrades make sense in the US because it is a major upgrade for CDMA based networks, such as those used by Verizon, Sprint, and many of the minor regional operators which make up over half of US carrier operations.
Outside of the US, focusing on improved UMTS/HSPA makes a lot more sense.
LG should probably just release a CDMA/US focused version that incorporates CDMA/LTE support.
Edited 2012-10-30 05:46 UTC