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"Last year's phone""Last year's phone"Posted May 15, 2012 22:46 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054)Parent article: Tasting the Ice Cream Sandwich
Sorry Jon, but your Nexus One is almost 2.5 years old now. It's no longer last year's phone. And it just doesn't have the memory for the modern stuff.
You're still right that it's different from the old Linux tradition of keeping old systems alive for years and years and years, but smartphones are different in two major ways. First, they're advancing more rapidly than our desktops ever did, so even your (6-month-old) Galaxy Nexus is now being overshadowed by the Galaxy S III and HTC One X. Second, they're also not as upgradable. If you could add another 512MB of RAM to the phone, like you could with your old desktop machine, then you could probably run the latest Android on it.
Maybe in a year or two the phones will catch up to the desktops in memory, and then maybe they'll be able to have a longer lifetime. But of course all the vendors have an interest in making sure the phones go obsolete quickly, especially in the US where buying a new phone usually means being locked into another two-year contract.
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"Last year's phone" Posted May 15, 2012 23:41 UTC (Tue) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link]
FWIW, "desktops" (by which I assume you mean Desktop PCs) went through a period where they grew by three orders of magnitude in CPU efficiency (4.77MHz -> 3GHz plus caching/pipelining), RAM capacity (< 1MB to > 4GB), storage capacity (< 20MB to > 2TB), etc. It used to really make a huge difference to buy a new Desktop PC every year or two. Now it really doesn't make that much difference; Desktop PC hardware has been basically stable for the last 5 years. Phones, primarily due to their battery-induced and size-induced limitations are less far along this growth curve thus far.
That said, I have a 2.5 year old phone which is still getting vendor OS upgrades, including two major OS version upgrades in the time I've owned it. (No it's not Android based. Granted I did deliberately buy the highest end model available at the time. And they are still selling the same model now, as their lowest end model, which probably helps. But it has received new OS features every year, even if not all the features are available on the older hardware design. Showing that given some planning/effort it is possible to provide a "cut down version" of new major OS versions on older hardware designs.)
Ewen
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 3:33 UTC (Wed) by thisisme (subscriber, #83315) [Link]
I'll take the bait... can you share with us which phone manufacturer and OS you are referring to?
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 4:00 UTC (Wed) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link]
Apple. iOS. In this case, an iPhone 3GS. (I chose "based on FreeBSD, locked in to vendor, data sync locally" over "based on Linux, nearly as locked in to phone manufacturer/telco, send all information to Google" as the lesser of two evils; I'd rather not give all my calendar/contact/etc information to any megaplex, kthx.)
Ewen
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 4:55 UTC (Wed) by thisisme (subscriber, #83315) [Link]
>I'd rather not give all my calendar/contact/etc information to any megaplex
Too true... My Nokia N900 has started to show signs of the infamous Micro USB port problem, and I have been really struggling to identify a replacement.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 17:53 UTC (Wed) by dsommers (subscriber, #55274) [Link]
Hear, hear!
I have an N900 which really begins to behave unreliably (had a nasty vfat failure, which wiped most of /home/user/MyDocs) ... since that, it has been rather unstable. I'll try to reflash it and hope it improves.
But I'm really struggling to find a *real* alternative. Nokia ditched the MeeGo platform, which could have been a real alternative. No way am I going to support Nokia by buying their devices when they're not committed to MeeGo or Tizen. And the only interesting Nokia device with MeeGo can't be bought in the shops even, the N950.
One of my requirements I probably have to forget about, is a hardware keyboard. As I'm using my N900 for a lot of SSH stuff, I can't imagine the pain a touch-keyboard would be. I hope an external bluetooth keyboard may become my "plan B". Motorola have a few models, which is not available in Northern-Europe, and then there's HTC's Desire Z which is outdated.
I considered webOS - but its future is also vague/unclear, and devices with the right specs isn't easy to come over where I live. And there haven't been much happening around Tizen either. So the most open alternative left is Android - which is really a big pity ... but I'd rather go straight for CM instead, as I don't trust Google enough. CM seems more like a more real Android community than Google's Android, no matter how oddly that might sound.
If just a device with specs similar to HTC One S comes arrive a hardware keyboard ... I would jump to that boat rather soonish. But I doubt that will happen. And I wonder how long I can keep the N900 alive in the mean time.
If anyone have some good suggestions, I'm all ears.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 17, 2012 8:56 UTC (Thu) by thisisme (subscriber, #83315) [Link]
> One of my requirements I probably have to forget about, is a hardware keyboard. As I'm using my N900 for a lot of SSH stuff, I can't imagine the pain a touch-keyboard would be.
Amen to that.
Given the sad fact that my N900 will eventually die, probably sooner rather than later, I won't have the option of waiting who-knows-how-long for Tizen / Boot2Gecko / a future open-source WebOS device. And of course there are no guarantees that any of the above three will actually materialize, let alone survive as a viable alternative in the long term. Let alone producing a compelling device with a HW keyboard, which seems to becoming more and more of a niche.
In my mind, that leaves Android as the only option, despite all misgivings I have about the Google mothership. Sadly, as you pointed out, there aren't many phones with a keyboard. I have sort of half-decided to get the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro. It appears that it is possible to get the latest CM working on that, even though it doesn't appear on their "official" list of supported devices.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 7:43 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]
> nearly as locked in to phone manufacturer/telco
Only if you choose to buy a subsided phone.. nothing comes free. Buy an unlocked android phone like galaxy nexus.
> the lesser of two evils
If you consider and 98% closed source iOS lesser evil than a 90% open source system...
> I'd rather not give all my calendar/contact/etc information to any megaplex, kthx.)
No need to: https://android-client.forge.funambol.org/
Even better, you can actually build your own galaxy nexus aosp build without any apps that talk back to the google mothership. meanwhile, your iphone is still sending all kinds information to apple..
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 8:27 UTC (Wed) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link]
FWIW, the "lesser evil" was being locked in, rather than having data sync being via storage on servers out of my control.
Thanks for the pointer to non-Google data sync with Android. It's definitely useful to know that the situation has improved over 2-3 years ago when I was last making the decision (where AFAICT at the time it was "sync via Google, or no sync at all" -- neither of which was desirable).
Ewen
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 9:43 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Again, this is simply not true. Data is local to the phone unless you give permission otherwise. The situation was identical 2 years ago when I bought a phone. The Google account part is strictly optional (although I expect most users to opt in, much like they are on Facebook).
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 9:58 UTC (Wed) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
The Google account really isn't optional if you want to use any of the features of the phone. Just to install apps from the marketplace^WGoogle Play requires you to set one up!
- Sent with disgruntlement from my HTC Desire
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 12:25 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
"Any of the features on the phone" is simply not true. The only thing missing is the Play Store, and of course any attempts to sync, chat, email or locate friends using the Google apps fails (but that's what desired in this case). Everything else works perfectly.
You can still make calls, send SMSes, use the GPS, use the browser, and install as many third party apps as your heart desire. What else could you want? I know I didn't run into any other limitation.
The fact that Google requires an account to use for example Latitude or Gmail is not something you can hold against Android. They don't offer Gmail anonymously on any platform.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 12:40 UTC (Wed) by yaap (subscriber, #71398) [Link]
Having a Google account doesn't mean that all your information will be synchronized. You still have some control on what is synchronized and where. And depending on the kind of data, sync can use other services than Google's ones.
For example, my device is registered (for Market/Play access) but the only data seen from my Google account dashboard is the phone id and list of downloaded applications. There's no calendar information because I don't use Google calendar but my company groupware instead. Other services are equally blank as I don't use them either.
So there's some amount of granularity in what you want to show Google.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 26, 2012 17:41 UTC (Sat) by djao (guest, #4263) [Link]
Apple iOS is no better in this regard. It's impossible to install apps from the Apple App Store unless you have an Apple ID.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 26, 2012 19:12 UTC (Sat) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
It's actually a lot worse. Without iTunes you can't install apps at all on the iPhone. On Android you can at least install the apk-files directly from the web browser or a file manager. The only problem is getting hold of the package files, as many authors do not distribute their software outside Play, but for those that do (including all free software) it's totally painless.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 20:03 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Hmm. There's the CalDAV Sync and CardDAV Sync programs that I've been using with my own davical install for a while. Email still needs to be migrated away from Google, but that's a larger issue than the Andriod side but K-9 is fine with IMAP sync. These apps work with my Incredible which is going on 3 years old now (though I now have/use a Galaxy Nexus).
Not without your permission! Posted May 16, 2012 7:50 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
No data syncs in Android without your permission. Entering your Google account at first boot is completely optional. In that case information is only stored locally on the phone and you have to use adb to backup.
If you want to sync calendars and contacts over the air to your own server, there is third party software available for this. It works beautifully.
I ran my phone without the account and the functionality loss I suffered was the Play Store. It's a pain installing software manually. There is multiple replacements, including F-Droid for free software, but none that come close in number of packages offered. Other services, such as Maps, works.
So "big G 0wns your data" is really a red herring. Android is perfectly usable without a Google account, something that can not be said about Apple, where the iPhone is pretty much an expensive brick without an iTunes account.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 17, 2012 9:21 UTC (Thu) by rwst (guest, #84121) [Link]
>It used to really make a huge difference to buy a new Desktop PC every year or two. Now it really doesn't make that much difference;
And Apple is especially guilty of dragging their feet, which is why I switched from a Mac Mini Core Duo 2GHz to an AMD Phenom 6 Core 3GHz/SSD with Linux (again, the 3rd time) to get some performance win with a new machine.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 24, 2012 8:50 UTC (Thu) by bawjaws (guest, #56952) [Link]
I think the "update" argument is somewhat unfortunately framed to favour one business model over another.
You seem quite pleased to have got some portion of the new features of iOS 4 and 5, yet the last time I checked my cheap ZTE Blade was still getting updates to all the core apps direct from Google. Youtube, Market/Play Store, Maps being just three apps that have received *major* overhauls since I bought the device, with no need (or desire) for ZTE or my carrier to be involved in the rollout. I would have thought this decoupling would be hailed as a good thing, but it seems if you don't increment the OS version number then no-one cares about new user visible features.
You're also lucky you had the 3GS, I had the 3G and switched to the ZTE Blade after the iOS4 update rendered it nearly unusable. Clearly not enought planning and effort went into providing that cut down version.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 24, 2012 10:28 UTC (Thu) by Fowl (subscriber, #65667) [Link] Yes, Google Maps/Navigation is quite amazing, it would be great if they could ship and maintain the browser in the same way!
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 5:46 UTC (Wed) by pj (subscriber, #4506) [Link]
The issue is actually internal flash, not RAM. IIRC, both the Nexus One and the HTC One X have 1GB of RAM. The Nexus has a 1GHz processor vs the OneX's 1.5GHz, but the big issue is that the Nexus only has 256MB internal flash (196 usable) where the OneX has 16G (12 usable).
So I don't buy the RAM argument. And I doubt that the Nexus One is actually *limited* to only 26MB of flash - a rework shop could potentially probably slap at least a 4GB chip in there, if the obvious easy answer of figuring out how to use the microSD card as 'internal' flash turns out to not be so easy. Owait, someone's done that; see http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1366897
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 7:37 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
No, the Neuxs One has 512 MB RAM and 512 MB internal flash. (One X has 1 GB RAM and 32 GB flash.) I don't know which is more limiting for ICS.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 11:12 UTC (Wed) by Fowl (subscriber, #65667) [Link]
It's about flash. 512MB leaves less than 100MB for user data, which once you put on the "essentials" ie. top 5 or 6 apps that are actual used is cutting it quite fine. Use of the SD card solves this.
ICS works acceptably even on hardware like the HD2, released 2009, which originally came with Windows *Mobile*.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 16, 2012 12:15 UTC (Wed) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]
It is rather shocking just how much flash Android uses.
Does anyone here remember GPE (the "Gnome palmtop environment")? This fitted linux, busybox, X, Gtk, and some basic apps into 11 MB of flash.
Yes, android is prettier, but we make a terrible performance tradeoff. Even a basic "flashlight" app is hundreds of kB, and something like a train-timetable app is ~ 4 MB.
Then again, why code for efficiency? CPU and Flash are now really cheap, and battery life is dominated by the backlight anyway.
Android App Bloat?? Posted May 16, 2012 23:38 UTC (Wed) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Richard_J_Neill Even a basic "flashlight" app is hundreds of kB... I don’t understand how you come up with that figure. Here is an app of mine that does something reasonably interesting, and includes built-in help, in a package that is just 59kB in size. And the built APK for this sample app is just half of that. Dalvik is a very compact byte code—half the size of Sun JVM bytecode. And all the additional XML resources for your app are stored in a compressed binary form. So I don’t see where the bloat should come from...
Android App Bloat?? Posted May 17, 2012 16:57 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]
Don't some of the package formats for Android preinstalled software include the byte-code AND the compiled code?
Android App Bloat?? Posted May 17, 2012 22:30 UTC (Thu) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] I don’t understand what you mean. The byte-code is the compiled code.
Android App Bloat?? Posted May 17, 2012 23:49 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]
Android version 2.2 (I think) introduced an optional JIT compiler which compiles the byte-code into machine-code.
I thought that the ODEX (Optimized DEX) format can contain a cached copy of the JIT-compiled machine code. I also believe that the ODEX format is commonly used for all applications which are included in a ROM, because each ROM is hardware specific anyway.
Android App Bloat?? Posted May 18, 2012 1:09 UTC (Fri) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link]
None of which is relevant to ordinary apps like you or I might write.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 17, 2012 12:46 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
Well, "hundred*s*" is a bit exaggerated... LED Light has 119 KB.
"Last year's phone" Posted May 31, 2012 15:49 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
> battery life is dominated by the backlight anyway.
What? How can that be? Are you using your phone with the display on constantly, while still using nearly zero CPU?
Have you actually tested this, or is it just an intuitive assumption? If the former, what kind of screen does your device have? If the latter, your intuition is incorrect.
Unless I'm using the power-guzzing Google navigation, 'cell standby' is always at the top of my battery usage list, followed by 'phone idle', followed by 'Wi-Fi' if I've had it enabled, usually followed by 'Android system', with perhaps a few other entries, and 'display' dead last - and that's if I've had it on for the hour or so that it takes to even show up in the list (I think there's a threshold of 1 or 2 percent).
If I do nothing after unplugging the phone but tap the screen every now and then to keep it on, 'display' will go up to 20%, with 'Android' system in the 60s, so if that were more efficient it would have a substantial impact on battery life (although in the real world case 'cell standby', 'phone idle', and 'Wi-Fi' tend to come to around 90% of the total battery use).
"Last year's phone" Posted Jun 1, 2012 9:17 UTC (Fri) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]
Interesting.
Mine says:
The screen is most certainly not on most of the time. Also I didn't realize Dolphin uses that much power; from the stats you'd think I do nothing but surfing the web all the time, which is not true at all.
The phone is a Samsung Galaxy S (GT-I9000) running Cyanogenmod 7.1 (but I seem to remember that the start where more or less the same when the phone still had the stock software).
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