Google Nexus lineup

I want both really: a high resolution, fully calibrated 7" 1080p display that can show at least full the sRGB color gamut would be well worth the extra coin (but sadly because your average person wouldn't appreciate such a display, it'll never get made). Tegra 4 or a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 will do. And microSD as well. And $299 price point. And thinner bezels.

We'll see, I guess.
 
zed said:
also the nexus has wireless charging (major turnoff)
now if they got rid of that (& perhaps increased the price by 50$) I may be interested but ATM wireless charging == no sale
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ha I think I might buy a nexus 4 today, bummer about the wireless charging but it just looks better than the competition
 
Some more rumors about the next Nexus phone, due in October:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/rumor-mill-gets-rolling-on-next-nexus-handset/

Better availability and support for as many LTE carriers as possible would make the product more compelling.

Of course while maintaining the low price.

There was an article in the WSJ a few weeks ago about how Google, including Andy Grove who is leaving, were becoming more concerned about the growing power of Samsung, the only Android manufacturer making money.

The concern was that Samsung would demand more money for the Google services installed on their phones, though it sounds like with new S-Voice and S-Translate features, they're rolling their own versions of services/features that Google has been offering on Android.

Nexus phones could undercut some of Samsung's market power but it seems Google doesn't want to launch a full-on assault where they not only price lower but market the Nexus heavily and ramp up production and distribution.

Because that would probably kill off weaker manufacturers like HTC.
 
Yes, Rubin, the father of Android.

They say he's more entrepreneurial so he will go and think of some new product.
 
New Nexus 7 announced as expected. Slower Snapdragon than many phones have but of course expected given the pricing.

1080p for a real high DPI with 30% wider range of colors. Is it IPS?

And the US 4G version will support LTE on AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, which I believe is a first. Very attractive price of $349 for 32 GB of storage as well as the 4G.

Now the question is, how many other LTE bands does it support? Will it work throughout Europe and Asia as well or would Americans who want to travel abroad need to look for some international SKU?

Has Qualcomm released a new LTE chipset which supports more global bands? Galaxy S4 claims to be global LTE phone so is there a chance?
 
Very impressed, looks awesome too be honest, Asus build quality, stereo speakers, surround sound, 4.3 out the box with no overlay crap weighing it down, instant updates, adreno 320 and 2 gb ram, 320 ppi rgb screen with likely ips, ridiculous low price..

Seriously weighing up whether to get one of these and use it as my phone...no really, xperia z ultra is not far off the size and you can pair up a bluetooth le watch or handsfree, batterylife should be at least as good as most phones im guessing as well.

I wonder where I could just plug in my smartphone sim and use the radios to make phone calls?
If not I might go the 3g/4g voip way via google voice.
 
wco81 said:
New Nexus 7 announced as expected. Slower Snapdragon than many phones have but of course expected given the pricing.
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There aren't really that many phones out there with faster SOCs, though yes some high-end smartphones have snapdragon 600 by now (also comparing to other SOCs used in smartphones I'm not sure there's actually anything faster really out in the wild except the troubled Exynos 5410). And quite a lot of smartphones have exactly this SOC (as far as I can tell all with the same clock too).
1080p for a real high DPI with 30% wider range of colors. Is it IPS?
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Google says yes: http://www.google.com/nexus/7/

And the US 4G version will support LTE on AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, which I believe is a first. Very attractive price of $349 for 32 GB of storage as well as the 4G.

Now the question is, how many other LTE bands does it support? Will it work throughout Europe and Asia as well or would Americans who want to travel abroad need to look for some international SKU?

Has Qualcomm released a new LTE chipset which supports more global bands? Galaxy S4 claims to be global LTE phone so is there a chance?
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Looks like there's two versions, one for US, one for Europe. So I guess nothing new there (though some bands are of course the same).

Looks like a decent upgrade to me. Better display, more memory, rear camera, BT 4.0, faster cpu, way better gpu, and it even has 15% less weight (and is less thick), so the higher price seems quite justified. Absolutely hate the name though, selling two quite different products under the exact same name is just lame (and just makes it unnecessarily difficult to get the right version), looks like google learned a trick or two from nvidia there.
 
Well the specs show support for more LTE bands than the iPad Mini. Presumably there has been more integration of different bands in the LTE silicon.

But if you get the US one, you can't use in Europe and if you get the Europe one, you can't use on the biggest LTE networks in the US.

I guess for big markets, they will always have dedicated SKUs and no real global roaming supported.

Americans will probably have to import the European version, pay a much higher price?

Is there any movement towards producing global LTE chipsets or do we have to wait for networks to settle down -- I know a lot of carriers are still building them out.
 
brian klugg from anandtech has put up a mini review of the new 2013 nexus 7-2.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7176/nexus-7-2013-mini-review#comments

Seems pretty smashing to me, highlights include brilliant 323 ppi ips rgb screen from japan display inc, that brian tested and is more accurate and close to srgb than the ipad mini and only second to the ipad 4.

The snapdragon inside is badged an s4 pro ...but actually it runs with krait 300s...seems to be either a down clocked or lower binned version of the s600.
Even better is the inclusion of high bandwidth dual channel dd3l @ 800 drr (1600) instead of lpddr2.
IO performance is vastly improved, partly down to the improvements to android 4.3, and partly down to qualcomm.

Wireless QI charging is included right out of the box and works a treat, charger is able to put out 5w.

Stereo speakers with 5.1 virtualisation is a nice addition, as well as a decent 5mp rear camera.

Starting at £199 ive got to say im blown away.
 
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Anandtech's listing 750 as a lte band. Didn't think there was such a thing.

Canadians are better off with the euro version though as we have lte 2600 while the 700 mhz still haven't been auctioned off.
 
Seeing a "Snapdragon 600" in there is indeed quite shocking. I am wondering if other devices using "S4 Pro" are also really also going to use that chip - I guess Qualcomm is just essentially using the old name due to branding reasons, that is it's not meant to be high-end. Yeah ok so it has a tiny bit lower clock, but still this is way closer to a Snapdragon 600 than to a S4 Pro (the new cores are a nice update, and on the gpu side I suspect any clock differences are really not making much difference compared to now having ddr3 memory).
 
Can North Americans get the euro version at us prices?

Or do we pay like 349 euro, which is at least 30% more than $349?
 
Here is a break down by ifixit which matches up with what brian klugg wrote.
http://blog.gsmarena.com/ifixit-tak...it-a-good-score-chromecast-also-disassembled/

Another shock...chrome cast..for a start im going to hold my hands up and say I haven't the foggiest what it is..but it looks like some kimd of usb tv dongle.
Want another revelation? ..chromecast dongle has its own separate dual core A9-like cpu @1.2ghz, 512mb ddr3 (L?) and 2gb nandflash storage...impressive!.
(I just need to go read up on what it does with all that.)

About the only mildly disspointing stuff is the average 3900+ mha battery. .but thats being picky. :)

Edit fixed.
 
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Chrome Cast appears to be a much simplified but very limited TV stick. OK for the casual user, perhaps, but somebody with a bit more technie nous would be better off buying one of the cheap Android TV sticks around. You can install XBMC or Plex on these and there are even Linux intallations available if you want to go a step further. You can buy these within the UK for about 30 quid, the price point at which I expect Chrome Cast will be sold here.

Thinking about buying one of these for myself just to have a new toy to play around with.
 
Mariner said:
Chrome Cast appears to be a much simplified but very limited TV stick. OK for the casual user, perhaps, but somebody with a bit more technie nous would be better off buying one of the cheap Android TV sticks around. You can install XBMC or Plex on these and there are even Linux intallations available if you want to go a step further. You can buy these within the UK for about 30 quid, the price point at which I expect Chrome Cast will be sold here.

Thinking about buying one of these for myself just to have a new toy to play around with.
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Can you expand more on some of these Android sticks. or provide links? I've been looking for a cheap XBMC solution for a while now.
 
BadTB25 said:
Can you expand more on some of these Android sticks. or provide links? I've been looking for a cheap XBMC solution for a while now.
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I would go to eBay or AliExpress and search for rk3188 tv... Why 3188? Because I think that's the best SoC that is used for cheap android tv (I think it's a quad A9 with Mali 400 mp4... Basically on par with Exynos 4). It's probably around $50 for the stick only. I don't know about the compatibility with XBMC, but the previous rockchip SoC (3066, dual core A9) is supported.
 
It seem more around $100 than $50. Main draw of these sticks would be the price?

For $229, Nexus 7 has nice screen, faster SOC and presumably can run all the software that these sticks could?

Though no way to send video to big screen unless you get a Chromecast? Or does it have a mini HDMI out port?
 
BadTB25 said:
Can you expand more on some of these Android sticks. or provide links? I've been looking for a cheap XBMC solution for a while now.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the late reply. Busy, busy, busy...

As Rurouni notes, the Rockchip RK3188 sticks are the most performant around with quad-core Cortex-A9s at good clocks giving quite a lot of grunt for relatively cheap devices.

However, I'm personally more likely to go with a cheaper device and there are plenty of RK3066 sticks around (dual-core A9s).

However, there is a slight issue at present as GPU video acceleration on both of these chips is not natively supported by XBMC so most people who would like to use one of these sticks as a media player may have issues. To get these devices working with XBMC, you need to start playing around with experimental versions of XBMC using libstagefright. Actually, I've just read that the libstagefright stuff has been merged onto the XBMC nightlies so, although in beta, hopefully support will become more stable soon:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=168268&pid=1474907#pid1474907

As for the Linux implementation on these sticks, it's named Picuntu and further information can be found here:

http://code.google.com/p/rk3066-linux/

One of the biggest issues with these Android TV sticks is that different devices from the Chinese manufacturers often use different chips here and there (for wifi especially), so you need to make sure you have the correct modules installed to get them working correctly.

If I ever get around to buying such a device, I'm going to have to learn a good bit about Linux, I'd imagine!
 
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