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[Android] Thread v.2015: Google tries to hardware. Effort: A+. Grade score: C-

wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done?Registered User regular
edited November 2017 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
This is the new android thread. I may make the OP less crappy another time, but Google I/O starts in about a half an hour and I figured 104 pages on the old thread was enough.

Personally, what I want is Android M to be a bugfix release, a new Nexus 5 that's not the $700 N6, and basically I just want them to fix the dumpster fire of bugs that 5.x has been. If that is all they do I'll be happy. (We won't see the new N5, that's just a dream).

We'll also likely see Android Pay, more VR/AR stuff, more talk about wear, more ChromeOS/Android integration, some stuff about cars, and maybe if we're lucky someone will jump out of an airplane again.

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Posts

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    edited May 2015
    Yeah, new Nexus phones will be announced in October, probably.

    5.1.1 apparently finally fixes/helps the Lollipop memory leak issues, but who knows when it will show up on non-Nexus devices.

    Also, here's a link to the livestream of the keynote:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V-fIGMDsmE

    a5ehren on
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    I literally just got the 5.1.1 update on my N5 half an hour ago. 5.1 was supposed to fix the 5.0 problems, and while it fixed some it created others. I want 5.2 Marshmallow that is whwat 5.0 should have been.

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  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    Oh hey, they're finally doing granular app permissions.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    a5ehren wrote: »
    Oh hey, they're finally doing granular app permissions.

    Funny, my reaction was "oh god I don't want iOS style permissions"

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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    the new standalone google Photos does free unlimited storage for images up to 16 megapixels, and video up to 1080p.

    Pretty incredible.

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  • NaphtaliNaphtali Hazy + Flow SeaRegistered User regular
    I know 5.1.1 was supposed to be an improvement, but so far on my Nexus 9 I'm seeing worse battery life post upgrade vs 5.0.2, mostly during standby (even with wifi off)

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  • NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    Hey guys, can anyone recommend a good ICE/In Case of Emergency app? I had a good one on my Windows Phone, but the ones I've found in the Play Store look like ugly, poorly organized messes.

  • HooverFanHooverFan NCRegistered User regular
    Android M Developer preview is now out and installable on Nexus 5, 6, 9, and Player.

    https://developer.android.com/preview/download.html

    Currently backing up my 6 and will install it to play around with it some.

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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    everyone should go to android police and look at the posts for the last day. Android M looks to be everything Lollipop should have been.

    customizable notifications again (you can tell and app it can't do the heads up notification)
    priority/dnd mode is fixed.
    customize quick settings
    SD card support changes again, it looks like you'll be able to fully integrate it so it treats the SD card as part of internal storage
    a flashlight api (I mean, sure I guess)

    and a ton more little things.


    I'm of two minds on the SD card thing. SD cards die. We use them in phones where I work (we have a lot of people who take pictures and video in the field), we buy class 10 sandisks usually and the failure rate since I started here is in the 15% range. What will happen if an SD card that's integrated into main storage that dies? Also, even the fastest cards are still significantly slower than internal storage. That could affect system i/o, which is actually already a problem on a lot of devices.

    On the other hand, this will keep encouraging OEM's to build phones with 8 and 16GB of built in storage, when it literally costs companies like samsung, LG, HTC, apple, etc a penny or two to go from 16 to 32GB. The price of flash memory has come down so much there is zero reason for a manufacturer to not include at least 32 other than planned obsolescence. This just gives them another excuse.

    I guess I'm glad that the feature will be made available. but really the answer should be to put more built in storage into phones, not having to implement this.

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  • bloodatonementbloodatonement Registered User regular
    So any idea if Gen1 MotoX will see lollipop, or M?

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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    moto apparently stopped work on 5.0 and is going straight to 5.1. It's allegedly still coming.

    I think whether the 2013 moto x gets M is 50/50, maybe 60/40 for yes.

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  • HooverFanHooverFan NCRegistered User regular
    So any idea if Gen1 MotoX will see lollipop, or M?

    Brazil version is soak testing 5.1 and "pure" version just got it... knowing Verizon it'll take another 2 years to approve it *sigh*

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  • KrieghundKrieghund Registered User regular
    Having a strange issue with my second gen Moto X. It doesn't want to turn itself off after the time I've specified. I can turn it off, but then why have a sleep timer at all?

  • zerzhulzerzhul Registered User, Moderator mod
    you mean the screen? or the whole device?

  • KrieghundKrieghund Registered User regular
    The screen. I reset it and that seems to have done the trick for now, but I have no idea what I might have done to get it to do that.

  • NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    Nightslyr wrote: »
    Hey guys, can anyone recommend a good ICE/In Case of Emergency app? I had a good one on my Windows Phone, but the ones I've found in the Play Store look like ugly, poorly organized messes.

    If anyone is interested, I found one called ICEcard that is pretty good.

  • BlazeFireBlazeFire Registered User regular
    5.1.1 is terrible for my Nexus 5 battery. Very slow charge, very fast discharge. Tried power on/off, draining to 0% then full charge before turning off. No luck.

    Ampere tells me the charging current is ~160mA with the screen on but the percentage is incrementing very slowly.

    I should stop doing these updates.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    5.1.1 does not see to be kind to the battery on my N5 either.

    the 5.x releases are really starting to get to me.

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  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    BlazeFire wrote: »
    5.1.1 is terrible for my Nexus 5 battery. Very slow charge, very fast discharge. Tried power on/off, draining to 0% then full charge before turning off. No luck.

    Ampere tells me the charging current is ~160mA with the screen on but the percentage is incrementing very slowly.

    I should stop doing these updates.

    Let me know if there's anything you'd like me to compare on my 5.1 N5.

  • Ed GrubermanEd Gruberman Registered User regular
    I think I'm going to jump on these Oneplus One flash sales this week.

    I was thinking I would wait for the Oneplus 2 supposedly coming sometime between July and September, but then it's a whole invite thing and I don't know how much it will cost and all I really use my phone for is browsing, streaming, texting and the occasional picture.

    Is there anyone who wants to talk me out of it or should I go ahead? I think I just feel like lately, my phone is my phone and I need to get a new tablet too. The other option is to go big on the phone and just ditch my tablet altogether but I don't know how playing things like Xcom/The Banner Saga/Shadowrun and reading work on something as big as a Note 4 or Nexus 6.

    Is there anyone who games and reads on their phablet that can say whether or not they miss having a slightly bigger tablet?

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  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    FWIW, the Asus Zenphone 2 has been getting very good reviews since it was released recently. And it's only $299 US via Amazon.


    Also with what you guys are reporting, I'm going to hold off updating to 5.1.1 on my N5. I just want the Notification to go away. :(

  • Ed GrubermanEd Gruberman Registered User regular
    That's another one I was looking at. I just put a bid on a Nexus 6 that closes in a few days. It's a little more than I would pay for a Oneplus but I figure it's worth a shot.

    The other thing I'm wondering is, what are the good Android tablets? I feel like an NVIDIA Shield might be the way to go if I like to game on my commutes but honestly, I haven't really heard of any good Android tablets since the 2nd gen N7 and my 1st gen one is getting old. For the money I would save keeping my current phone plan and getting a cheap phone, I can probably fit a wifi tablet in the savings but I haven't heard anything about the ones I see.

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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    I have the shield tablet and I really like it but I don't game on it nearly as much as I thought I would, especially controller based games. I think it is a good solid all around tablet though. It is a bit on the heavy side but even with not gaming on it a ton I still like it for general use.

    tl;dr; don't buy an android tablet just for games.

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  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    I may try to convince my wife to look seriously at the Zenphone and ignore the S6. Everything's up in the air, and her phone is still working fine.

    I am very close to wiping my kids' Samsung tablets and putting stock Android on, just to free up some memory on the damn things. There so much crap that you can disable but can't outright uninstall; so I get low storage/memory warnings constantly.

  • Ed GrubermanEd Gruberman Registered User regular
    The reason I want the Shield is for things like The Banner Saga, Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall and XCOM as well as working as an e-reader. I'm not sure which android tablets are out that actually have the horsepower for those and don't suck.

    Another plus for the Shield is the expandable memory. Especially with Android M coming where it will be able to recognize the SD Card as Internal Memory and actually have things on it.

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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    You'll enjoy the irony of this: xcom doesn't work on the Shield tablet. it's marked as incompatable and won't install from the play store.

    as for the expandable memory, again especially in a gaming sense I'm not sure if it's something we'll want. I had the shield portable and games that were on the MicroSD card took longer to load and didn't run quite as well, and the same thing will happen. SD cards, even the fastest ones, are much slower than the internal SSD it's likely you'd see a performance hit integrating SD storage into main storage. You wouldn't see it as much on media, but on games it might be noticeable.

    I just ended up buying the 32GB shield tablet and turned off the cell radio. I'd always rather just have the built in storage, and 32GB has been enough.

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  • Ed GrubermanEd Gruberman Registered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    You'll enjoy the irony of this: xcom doesn't work on the Shield tablet. it's marked as incompatable and won't install from the play store.

    as for the expandable memory, again especially in a gaming sense I'm not sure if it's something we'll want. I had the shield portable and games that were on the MicroSD card took longer to load and didn't run quite as well, and the same thing will happen. SD cards, even the fastest ones, are much slower than the internal SSD it's likely you'd see a performance hit integrating SD storage into main storage. You wouldn't see it as much on media, but on games it might be noticeable.

    I just ended up buying the 32GB shield tablet and turned off the cell radio. I'd always rather just have the built in storage, and 32GB has been enough.

    That's really helpful. Especially that Xcom part. I wonder why they say it's not compatible.

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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    You'll enjoy the irony of this: xcom doesn't work on the Shield tablet. it's marked as incompatable and won't install from the play store.

    as for the expandable memory, again especially in a gaming sense I'm not sure if it's something we'll want. I had the shield portable and games that were on the MicroSD card took longer to load and didn't run quite as well, and the same thing will happen. SD cards, even the fastest ones, are much slower than the internal SSD it's likely you'd see a performance hit integrating SD storage into main storage. You wouldn't see it as much on media, but on games it might be noticeable.

    I just ended up buying the 32GB shield tablet and turned off the cell radio. I'd always rather just have the built in storage, and 32GB has been enough.

    That's really helpful. Especially that Xcom part. I wonder why they say it's not compatible.

    apparently there is a way to get it working, but it looks kludgy https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/791979/xcom-enemy-within-how-to-get-it-working-on-nvidia-shield-tablet/

    And yea, the SD card thing is something I'm torn on. I'm sure it'll be good for low end devices that have slow internal storage anyway, but on the high end devices....the samsungs of the world should just be putting at least 32GB in already. And their storage is usually faster. high i/o actions could be slowed down by it.

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  • CormacCormac Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    I woke up this morning seeing there was a system update for my Moto X 2013 thinking it was 5.x. Nope :x

    Just a small update from Verizon for some bugs. Way to get my hopes up Verizon.

    I highly doubt it will ever get M at this rate of updates.

    Cormac on
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  • BlazeFireBlazeFire Registered User regular
    I've never been "that guy" but I'm eagerly awaiting the new Nexus 5.

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Cormac wrote: »
    I woke up this morning seeing there was a system update for my Moto X 2013 thinking it was 5.x. Nope :x

    Just a small update from Verizon for some bugs. Way to get my hopes up Verizon.

    I highly doubt it will ever get M at this rate of updates.

    When 5.1 comes for the Moto X, rest assured that Verizon will be the last to get it :P

    Don't get your hopes up until you start hearing about international GSM rollouts, then add 6 months.
    I've never been "that guy" but I'm eagerly awaiting the new Nexus 5.
    I'm interested to see what they do. If they aim for the ~$300 space again, then I'm on board.

    Honestly, I'd be pretty happy with a minor refresh of the 2013 N5. Don't really need a performance boost, just better battery life and camera. Keep the screen at 1080p, maybe make it a bit thinner?

    a5ehren on
  • HexDexHexDex Registered User regular
    I posted in the tech thread on SE++ , then realized this is probably the better place.

    Got a Google Fi invite, so ordered my Nexus 6. It arrived yesterday, should have my Fi sim by the end of the week.

    Anyone got any thoughts on Fi?

    Any must have apps for the N6? It's so much larger than the N5, it's glorious!

    If you are reading this add me.
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  • bloodatonementbloodatonement Registered User regular
    Well looks like there is an update for my Gen 1 Moto X available from VWZ. It's listed 212.something rather, so I'm not sure what Android version I am getting just yet.

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  • CormacCormac Registered User regular
    It's still 4.4.4 and it's just a bug fix for the phone. No 5.x for us quite yet.

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  • bloodatonementbloodatonement Registered User regular
    Cormac wrote: »
    It's still 4.4.4 and it's just a bug fix for the phone. No 5.x for us quite yet.
    Just saw that upon reboot. <Hopes dashed> :(

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  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    "Fixed a bug where users were incorrectly receiving OS updates in the same year they were released"

  • mtsmts Dr. Robot King Registered User regular
    Krieghund wrote: »
    The screen. I reset it and that seems to have done the trick for now, but I have no idea what I might have done to get it to do that.

    @Krieghund
    that happened to me also and a reset seemed to fix it. i think it was an app update somewhere., but it was weird

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  • firewaterwordfirewaterword Satchitananda Pais Vasco to San FranciscoRegistered User regular
    @Ed Gruberman I'm a pretty big fan of the 1+1, which I posted a bit about in the last thread. My only real issues so far have been with CM12 (and most of those issues were resolved with a full factory reset) and t-mobile's so-so coverage. I still get overheating issues if I run maps (with my phone in direct sunlight on my dash) for more than an hour or two, but it's no problem as long as I take it out of the case and make sure to keep it out of the sun.

    As far as the 1+2 goes, I don't think there's enough solid info out there yet to really say if holding off is worth it. I will say that a sale for $250/300 is a crazy deal.

    Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
  • Ed GrubermanEd Gruberman Registered User regular
    I'm almost definitely going to jump on that 1+1 deal if my bid for a Nexus 6 falls through which I will find out about in about 1 day :)

    The only other temptation is actually getting a Nexus 6 from Google since they are also on sale but that's going to be at least $200 more after taxes and stuff.

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  • firewaterwordfirewaterword Satchitananda Pais Vasco to San FranciscoRegistered User regular
    Yeah I was pretty tempted by the N6; I loved (still love, actually) my N4 but I couldn't get over the price disparity between the N6 and the 1+1.

    Full disclosure: I am also a total sucker for the sharkskin back plate.

    Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
This discussion has been closed.