Linked by Alexey Eromenko on Fri 1st Feb 2013 21:52 UTC
Many people think that all Androids are equal and it's a race to the bottom where the cheapest vendor wins. This could not be farther from the truth. For me, it all began half-a-year ago, when I bought the Samsung Galaxy S III and was absolutely stunned by it, then exploring and comparing it with other Androids. Now that Google has fired a shot across the bow with its low pricing for the unlocked Nexus 4, where does that leave Samsung and its flagship handset?
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RE: Positives for S3 should only be for unique features
by WorknMan on Tue 5th Feb 2013 00:29
in reply to "Positives for S3 should only be for unique features"
Member since:2005-11-13
It seems to me that a lot of these S3 plus points can be replicated with free or cheap apps added to a vanilla Android 4 phone. Or if you're technical, a rooted phone with a custom ROM actually provides a lot of these and a *lot* more configurability than the S3 does.
Exactly. For me, a fully-loaded custom ROM gives a lot more value than NonSense, Bloat-o-blur, etc. Plus, when Keylime Pie is announced in May and starts rolling out to Nexus devices, those of us who own these devices can upgrade to it immediately, or whenever we want. If you're using a FrankenAndroid device like the S3, you're going to be stuck with 4.x until at least January 2014, and you'll probably be lucky to ever get anything greater than 4.2. I really wouldn't mind much of vendors would give people the OPTION of sticking with stock and quick upgrade paths, but most don't.
So, yeah... you can have your shitty vendor bloatware. I'll stick with unlocked vanilla, thank you very much
One thing I WILL agree with him on is the gimped hardware on the Nexus devices. (No SD card slot, no removable battery, no LTE, etc) Google really needs to step it up and give people more options in the hardware department. Can I get a Nexus 7 with HDMI out, PLEASE??
RE[2]: Positives for S3 should only be for unique features
by _txf_ on Tue 5th Feb 2013 03:19
in reply to "RE: Positives for S3 should only be for unique features"
Member since:2008-03-17
One thing I WILL agree with him on is the gimped hardware on the Nexus devices. (No SD card slot, no removable battery, no LTE, etc) Google really needs to step it up and give people more options in the hardware department. Can I get a Nexus 7 with HDMI out, PLEASE??
-Blame MS for lack of SD
-Blame the consumer for lack of removable battery
-Blame the carriers, and economics for lack of LTE
Seriously, if you want these things you're welcome to go to those phones whose manufacturers have paid the respective extorsion fees. I'm quite happy with the cheap Nexus 4, thank you very much.
Seriously what is it with people and LTE? It is only a way to eat more battery and hit your download limits more quickly. The other points I can understand griping about...
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
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.More News »
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Member since:
2005-07-06
It seems to me that a lot of these S3 plus points can be replicated with free or cheap apps added to a vanilla Android 4 phone. Or if you're technical, a rooted phone with a custom ROM actually provides a lot of these and a *lot* more configurability than the S3 does.
For me, the perfect phone or tablet is:
* Rooted running CM 10.1. The configuration options blow every other mobile OS away. If you're using CM on a tablet, the Paranoid Android variant goes even more berserk with custom phone/phablet/tablet modes not only globally, but also per app if you want. +50 points for the flexibility of CM over anything else.
* NOT running any manafacturer's custom launcher/skin. None of these custom layers provide an enhanced experience, so I'd give -50 points immediately to any device not running vanilla Android.
* Not costing hundreds of dollars more than rival top-end phones. S3 may be top of the hill in terms of hardware specs, but the Nexus 4's introduction with only slightly worse specs has shown it up to be overpriced for those specs.
There you go - the stock S3 now scores 100 points less than a rooted vanilla Android 4 phone :-) Guess what? Samsung have been *awful* with the CM devs for the S3 phone, showing that the S2 giveaway to devs was a pure publicity stunt. Things are so bad with CM on the S3, that devs are now telling people not to use it on the S3 (too many things broken because of Samsung's lack of co-operation)!