

Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich: Android's inflection point - mrsebastian
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/105815-galaxy-nexus-and-ics-androids-inflection-point

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pilif
So many times now when reading reviews of new Android releases and the
accompanying phones I read "THIS finally is the Android phone that's really
usable/better than $then_current_iphone".

And now I hear it again: "Galaxy Nexus is the real first Android phone that's
really usable. It's even better than the iPhone 4S".

Honestly though, by now I lost the trust in these reviews and the phones. I
have my doubts that my Nexus S will become a better phone once/if it gets ICS.
I have my doubts that I'll actually prefer ICS to iOS. I tried so many times,
but I never managed to stick with Android.

Also what where they thinking when calling the phone "Galaxy Nexus"?

There's a Nexus One, a Nexus S, a Galaxy S, a Galaxy S2 and now the Galaxy
Nexus- all released within the last two years. When I was talking to coworkers
over lunch, we quickly drifted into utter confusion when trying to compare
phone features.

~~~
daleharvey
Since 2.2 I have much preferred Android to iOS, since then I have always
thought it was a better platform and enjoyed using it more, however there has
always been little niggly warts around that can be brought up, against the
bias of the hacker new crowd it seems like the market has agreed, Android
phones outsell iPhones, my non techy friends mostly prefer their android
phones.

I get the feeling from most reviews that it isnt so much that this is finally
the android phone that usable' as much as 'this is finally the android phone
that is almost unarguably better than the iphone', or at least the one that
doesnt have the warts that android detractors like to bring up in these
comparisons

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nitrogen
One of those niggly warts, namely UI stuttering, is significantly reduced on
my Galaxy S-derived phone when I terminate any services (like IQ) not
specifically related to the apps I'm running.

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untog
ICS's core apps can be as slick and beautiful as they want, but app developers
need to keep up, and I'm not convinced they will.

I have a Windows Phone, largely as an experiment at seeing if I like it or
not. The UI is _amazing_ on the core apps. The People, Music and Email apps
are second to none. But almost every third party app I download gets something
wrong (often most things wrong), and it's very jarring when you're expecting
things to match a very defined UI flow.

The fact that Android already has a ton of existing apps might make this even
worse. Ditching the menu button and swapping it for an action bar is a great
idea, but how long until all the app makers change their apps over? I think
this is less of a problem on the iPhone because Apple vets their apps so
heavily (and rejects ones that do not obey UI guidelines), but neither Google
nor Microsoft seem to do that.

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ConstantineXVI
WinPhone has the "problem"[1] of going down a rather different UI path vs.
Apple and Google. You see this in a less extreme form on Android quite a bit,
where apps will use (often badly-made) custom iOS-style widgets (the bottom
nav bar, usually) that just don't fit in Android's patterns. WinPhone has even
fewer patterns in common, thus when a dev tries to bring over iOS or Android
patterns, it shows.

[1] It's a "problem" as it's not what devs/users are used to working with, not
a problem because of flawed design (FTR, I rather like it)

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revorad
Eagerly awaiting dismissive "human" commentary from A-list Apple bloggers.

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beej71
I've done a lot of iOS dev, and have a great many iOS devices on my desk to
test with. I've personally used an iPhone for years.

Recently I got a Samsung Galaxy S2, as well, and I can safely say I'd
recommend the iPhone to non-technical users every time. (I'm looking at you,
mom and dad.) The iOS interface is a lot simpler, easier to use, more
straightforward, and more self-consistent. The device is physically tough,
relatively inexpensive for the older models, and well-curated. And the home
screen scrolls more smoothly than on the S2. You cannot do any wrong for the
most part.

Which is a restriction that I hate. For me, myself, personally, it's clear:
the Galaxy S2 kicks the iPhone's ass into the dirt and leaves it lifeless in
an expanding pool of gray smoke. I shook off iOS like a wet paper sack. But
this is because I love geeky devices that aren't afraid to show me their
underbellies.

Oh, and it does. You can use the built-in file manager to browse
/sdcard/Android/data/! Hell, you can probably even delete stuff in there! What
normal user would want to do that? _I_ don't even want to do that, but I'm so
happy I _can_! Merely the abstraction between the Apps screens and the Home
screens is more than most people want to deal with--but I love it! Sure
there're plenty of things to complain about (why is the ringtone set in the
Settings, but the texttone set in the Messages app?) but the raw power of the
thing more than makes up for these shortcomings. For me.

My long-winded point is this: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We cannot
properly rate these devices outside the context of the person using it. If you
agree with the criteria put forth as superior in any particular review, it
could very well be the device you're looking for.

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blub
The Verge has rated the phone 8.6/10, not 10/10 as this article claims.

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alexholehouse
The link is also broken...

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mrsebastian
Thanks - fixing.

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mrich
The Samsung Galaxy SII has been the inflection point for me. Such a great
device, beats the iPhone in hardware and matches it in software (except in
polish of some apps).

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CountSessine
Huh? Slower GPU, lower resolution screen, Pentile... that's better hardware?
And Touchwiz? Really?

~~~
mrich
SII does not have pentile. The screen is bigger and much brighter than the
iPhone's, which is more useful to me than 300+ppi (which was only done for
technical reasons anyway, to get backwards compatibility with the old apps due
to the 2x factor) The phone is snappy no matter what you do (it's quite
amazing to see 10+ app updates download and install in parallel, and complete
in 30 seconds). GPU, I don't care about (not much of a gamer), Touchwiz I
don't like either (I use the MIUI ROM). I agree for people without any tech
expertise iPhone is still the best choice.

~~~
jackvalentine
Frankly I think using a custom rom wipes out all your arguments.

~~~
mrich
Using the custom ROM is more a matter of taste and not functionality. I don't
like the design of Touchviz personally, but there are many people who do and
use it.

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nazgulnarsil
Better than the 4S? For the 4S siri was the shot across the bow of android
IMO. For android to come back they will have to one up apple in this dept. For
me, siri is a huge step in the right direction for what I want in a
smartphone. Before siri, carrying around something that would have been a
supercomputer a couple decades ago seemed pointless. What I really want to see
from google is something that's as big a step beyond siri as siri was against
previous personal digital assistants. Tight integration with calendar and
gmail would make such a thing a gigantic killer app.

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gujk
An inflection point is where progress starts to decelerate ahead of a possible
reversal in direction.

~~~
div
An inflection point is the point where a function changes sign. This can be
both a positive or a negative indication.

This article carries a positive tone, so what they probably mean is that ICS
to Android is the point where people start saying more positive than negative
stuff about Android.

~~~
sixbrx
No it's where the _second derivative_ changes sign. You can think of the first
derivative as the motion, and the second derivative as the "force" that's
driving the motion - the force is changing direction.

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starwed
Equivalently it is where the second derivative is equal to zero -- which
implies the first derivative is at a local extrema.

In the context here, it's clear that the inflection point would be the point
of greatest change.

~~~
sixbrx
Well not quite equivalent exactly - the second derivative could just touch
zero and then go back whence it came :) That wouldn't be an inflection point I
think, I'm not sure what you'd call that...

