A few days ago
OPTUS upgraded my phone to 4.1.2 (yeah, butter!). I'm not expecting 4.2.2 any time soon. (Not that it matters - the changes are not significant.)
Owners of Google Nexus devices have reason to hover anxiously over their System Updates screens once again, with reports surfacing that the Chocolate Factory has slowly begun rolling out the latest update to Android 4.2 "Jelly Bean". A Reddit user going by the handle "WeeManFoo" was among the first to report receiving the over …
Have the missus galaxy nexus on CM10 final which is 4.1.2. I tried an upgrade to latest CM10.1 (4.2+) milestone and in addition to taking out her contacts (oops fail on my part) she didn't like the new UI changes at all so rollback it was which probably will be permanent (CM10 final darn stable). For many as the stats show latest greatest is not only not important but may not even be desired.
Nothing here as of yet, but not holding my breath for anything spectacular. So far, my Nexus 7 is hohum. Nothing I could have done without. I'm glad I didn't buy an Ipad, not because of Apple, I'm just not impressed with tablets in general. And spending big money on an Ipad and coming to the same conclusion would have made me sick. And yes, I have tried an Ipad. No matter what I do, I find myself going back to my laptop. Typing or doing any actual productive work on a tablet is.......cumbersome. Surprised at how many software companies have not created an app that integrates with a tablet. All in all, it's a techie toy. Even the geeks who swear by them are lagging behind in productivity compared to others using standard laptops or PCs.
So now that my rant is over, let's see how many downvotes I get and smartass quotes from others stating how wrong I am. doesn't matter, I won't be reading the comments.
Horses for courses though isnt it? I mean I wouldnt use my tablet for "serious" work, it's a consumption device so I use it that way, when I have any "real" work then I resort to the laptop, I couldnt imagine trying to do any of my real life day to day tasks on my iPad, it just means I can check my email from the sofa instead of having to nip upstairs every so often when I work from home :-)
For a 7" tablet this is true - but for a 10" tablet, I'd still prefer an ultra-portable laptop even for those tasks. Barely any bigger, but it sits on my lap, rather than me having to constantly hold it in both hands (and awkwardly use it at the same time too), or lay it down flat, and strain my neck awkwardly. Checking emails and browsing often involves having to type (replying/writing emails, commenting on articles, even something mundane like Facebook involves updating and commenting), which a laptop keyboard makes far easier.
Not that they don't have some uses (e.g., useful if you need a device when walking around, like in some work environments), but almost all uses of 10" tablets that I actually see, for me are less efficient or useful than the alternatives. But then, most of the people I know use them talk about how it's much better than their desktop PC, so they seem to be people only impressed because they missed the whole idea of ultra-portable laptops/netbooks. (Perhaps similar to the way that the people impressed by the original Apple phone were those who had only owned dumb phones before.)
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I love my N7. But then again, I don't use it for work, but as a media device.
Kindle, Netflix, surfing, casual gaming: it does all of those things will aplomb and it's light enough to hold comfortably on the tube, or when lying on my side in bed. The battery life is more than adequate too.
So I agree, it's a toy of sorts. But I've always loved toys, and this is a good one...
It did indeed come with 4.2 on tablets.
Just checked on my N7, if you go under settings, there's a "Users" option about half-way down the menu list (at the bottom of the Device section). Click that and it lists the current user details, with the option of adding a new user via the button at the top-right of the screen.
If I remember correctly from reading net articles you can then switch via the lock screen, although I cannot be 100% there as it's a feature I don't use on my machine.
My Android Honeymoon is most definitely over. I don't really want to go Apple though.
I don't really see a better alternative, but I think the regressions Google makes in it's products hurt it the most. When you have something that works and it starts not working after an 'update', it's a really sore point.
The Nexus 4 doesn't have the 'old' Android browser, it has Chrome baked in. You're right in that the old browser had very nice reflow.
Every 'upgrade' I've seen; Froyo -> Gingerbread -> ICS -> JB, has removed useful functionality from the device.
The Froyo -> Gingerbread update removed the ability to have local/private calendar events.
Gingerbread -> ICS did something that pissed me off but I worked around it and have forgotten what it was.
The ICS -> JB update removed the ability of the OS to recognise phone numbers in text and html files and then feed them to the dialler when you touched them. That pissed me off because it meant that my local 'telephone and e-mail directory' didn't work anymore. I've moved to Colornote which has built in phone number recognition and active links between notes.
Also, in JB, the Google Play Services now form a key part of data synchronisaton and _must_ be active, as I found out when I disabled it. The reason I disabled it was to stop it pushing crap music and old books onto my phone. Eventually I found out how to dig deep into the Chrome synchronisation settings to stop it doing that.
I won't be accepting the latest 'upgrade' until it's been out for at least a few weeks and I've read the comments and discussions on the serious techie forums.
Every change of this nature is geared towards removing the user's ability to have local storage and privacy, away from Google's oversight and control. I'm getting pissed off with Google and disenchanted with Android, but I suppose that I'm not really part of their target market.
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I feel somewhat similarly about iOS, finding iOS 6 to be slower and more glitchy than 5.xx on my iPad 3. I especially hate that the simplest UI features like pressing the home button to return to the home screen often don't work first time any more, necessitating locking and unlocking the screen a few times, or re-enable multitouch gestures (which break other things).
I am not that fond of the dual quick menus on my Nexus 7, either, it seems clumsy and irritating.. There seem mostly seem to be mild UI regressions for me, rather than functional ones. Wakelocks are definitely better-behaved now (in the Google-supplied stuff), and everything seems very smooth for me.
A lot of things get a bit cluttered over time, though as an iOS and Android user, I am preferring the vector that Android is following. If I were buying a ten inch tablet today, it would certainly be a Nexus 10 rather than an iPad.
YMMV, as ever.
Sadly it seems this sort of lack of "quality" doesn't get mentioned a lot on sites like this. It's all "Android this" and "Android that".
Anyone who has just bought something will tend to stick with it and say it is good only to replace it and then say their previous phone/tab was rubbish.
But you can see the problem with Android, it has the most features and functionality, but this complexity results in a much harder to QA product. Every little change could break numerous features, so if a lot of functionality is hanging off one API and you make a small change you have to test a huge amount of features extensively to be sure they are okay.
Fall into bed with Blackberry! I think anyone who moves over to BB10 will have the last laugh in 1 - 2 years. The Z10 I played with is fast, communication centric and doesn't mess about like iOS6 does on my iPhone 4. iOS and Android have become too content centric and development OS usability as you notice has suffered as a result.
I'll always keep an iPad by my side, but phones are phones. Phones are not fully fledged computers and the application generation is spoiling the stable mobile phone experience we once had.
Good. I RMA'd my original January-purchased Nexus 10 and the battery life is better on the new one but still not great. Turning off wi-fi when sleeping makes a big difference but i don't think that explains all of it. Previously it could consume 100% charge when sleeping overnight.
Also would be nice to see Chrome memory usage reduced. The Nexus 10 out of the box seems to eat all memory as fast as it possibly can with Chrome using nearly half.
Hope the push it to my nexus 4 soon.
The wifi to 3g bug is annoying ( After beeing connected to WiFi for a couple of hours the phone does not switch back to 3g after losing wifi connection, need to put the phone in airplane mode and back to pick up 3g.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=40514)
and changelog indicates there is a FIX
Shambles, dear friends.
I can attach the N10 as a drive on my XP machine, and my wife can't (it's her N10).
No clear source for drivers for MTP mode in XP. Vague hints that som USB hardware on PC will not handle MTP mode, and no clear defiinition of which hardware it is.
We regularly need to drop large numbers of large files onto the N10 for her to take with her, and we've ended up using the utterly crappy file manager apps on the N10.
Apart from that, it's a gorgeous gadget, better screen than an iPad, better battery life, and cheaper too.
I don't know if it is anything more than coincidence, but I was checking for updates on my Galaxy Note 1 yesterday using Kies on my Vista-equipped* machine , and the MTP driver crapped out twice. A search and download seemed to cure the problem.
* I know, I know - I haven't got round to changing it yet! I can't make my mind up what to put on instead.
It's true that Apple users are in a much better position for updates than non Nexus Android users.
I have a friend with an iPhone 3G which sounds really ancient now, it came out in July 2008 and it's stuck on iOS 4.2.1. And it sounds like that's too much for it really - it's very slow. Anyway - my point being that, assuming iPhones generally last more than 4 years, there will be quite a few with 4.2.1 at best.
Not much of a point as I agree that the general update slowness does exist for Android! Not that most normal users care.
I doubt the same would be true of iOS - probably the opposite - i.e. 3/4 running iOS 6.x and the rest running iOS 5.
I wouldn't bet on it. I personally regard Apple's major OS updates as a form of forced obsolescence. When iOS 4 hit the iPhone 3 back in the day, for example, it made it basically unusable. Every time the model previous (or two-previous) to the iPhone gets its first major OS update, it seems to become painfully slow and difficult to use. I wonder why...
Firstly you may want to check your use of "literally" :) From http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html , Android 4.0+ share is 42.6%.
Though iphone users tell me that Apple disable features that don't run on old phones, but still call it the latest OS version.
Android takes the route of not giving OS updates at all for older phones that can't handle it.
Windows Phones takes the same route as Apple, but labels the cut-down version for older phones with a different name (7.8 rather than 8).
It's just different ways of dealing with the same thing, really. And to be honest, I think it's bad when older hardware that used to work fine suddenly gets bogged down trying to run the latest software.
As for not many running 4.2, remember that most phones don't run vanilla Android - it's unreasonable to expect Samsung to have updated their TouchWiz OS, fully tested it, and so on, shortly after the Android 4.2 update coming out. (And if you're someone who doesn't care about TouchWiz etc, then get a Nexus phone.) Also on Android, updates have to go through the networks - I used to think this was annoying, but yesterday's news about IOS updates jamming the network, hurting not only those users but others too, shows why actually it's a good thing after all. I don't mind waiting for an update a bit, if it means it's tested for both my use and others.
Just got a Nexus 7 today for out-of-hours emergency stuff (I'm not lugging a bloody laptop everywhere just to get to a console when someone shouts "jump"). Sod this Android stuff though - I'm hacking Linux onto it. Was surprised to see a number of choices for what I could install. Given my love of KDE and MeeGo, I think I'm going with Plasma Active.
So I did - wow, Plasma Active is bleeding edge! I mean, I knew it was alpha, but man is it rough. At its core it looks like it will be great, and there's some really neat ideas in there, but it's got some catching up to do. If I can't patch it up, I might grudgingly go with Ubuntu/Unity for now.
Either that or get my developer freak on and help out.
My apologies to the Plasma Active team. I located the package manager (never really used SUSE) and ran a full update set. All the graphical glitches are gone, and it appears to be a bit snappier. The interface still needs a fair bit of work - lots of "desktop" feel in there - but that's much improved it from the image distributed earlier this month.
Apparently these are rolled out first to people who've bought their stuff from the Play Store, later to those (like me) who bought from Carphone Warehouse et al. I've read this somewhere and observed that my colleague (who bought from the Play Store) got the last update before me so could be true. Why the haste though? I don't mind others testing for me and waiting a bit longer, potentially avoiding some frustration.
Not so. I got mine direct from the Play store and waited quite a while for the last update to come through.
I had a call from google support (in the USA) over another issue, and he was telling me his Nexus 7 on his desk still hadn't had his update come through while a colleague sat next to him had his only about 10 minutes before.
This was at the same time people on XDA and other forums in the UK had already received it OTA
It doesn't appear that Goggle has fixed the most pressing issue with 4.2.1:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39673
That clock is *so* ugly, I'm embarrassed to let my friends see my Nexus 7. What idiot thought that displaying the hours in a different font than the minutes was a good idea?
....living in Saskatchewan and I got my OTA update today. Installed in less than a minute. No real changes so far, but if there is one feature I am SO thankful for in 4.2.x...it is the magnification anywhere just by tapping three times! For someone visually impaired like I am, this is a GODSEND. :Or...GOOGLESEND....or....well you get the idea.
Back to hovering over my phone for Android 5.0....
Tablets tend, I think, to be at their best as media players. Though, if you spend the extra money, you can use a decent Bluetooth keyboard. The Nexus 7 is maybe missing a few useful features but, like the iPad Mini, it's a good balance between screen size and pocketability.
I doubt I would spend money on a smartphone. I have a mobile phone, but it's not something I use a lot.
Some of the tablet fanbois are talking about stuff that, as far as I can tell, depends on having more energy storage than the average hand grenade. Boeing Dreamliner, I mutter. Some are making wild assumptions about continuous access to the internet: even in the cities there are black spots.
And, while I have decent broadband, I am not convinced that the internet in San Francisco and Silicon Valley can be relied on as an example of what the actual paying customers have available.
The problem is though lately they've again taken to blocking a few select APIs etc which actually lessen the usability. The latest one I've hit since 4.2.1 is that they seem to have blocked the API for the sound output.
This means that there is no way to boost the sound output volume beyond 15 by using any of the many apps out there that used to do it (and do it well). It wouldn't be an issue, except that at full stock volume the sound is a shade on the quiet side in a silent room, but somewhere with noise like in an aircraft (and when using headphones of course) it's barely possible to hear anything. Hence anyone who wants to listen to music or watch a movie whilst on a plane (for example me) is stuffed.
And from what I've seen elsewhere no-one seems to know why that block got put in place, nor anything that can be done about it except moaning via the bug report site or rooting.
Exactly my main problem with my Nexus 7 (32).
One of the main reasons for buying mine was to use it for watching TV/Movies while on a treadmill at the gym.
Since the volume level is so low it's no use for me whatsoever.
Obviously it has other uses, but that was my main intention. Unfortunately no-one had mentioned it in any of the *many* wonderful reviews at that stage.
Anyone want to swap for an ipad mini? (obviously with some cash incentive) :/
My Nexus 7 seems a little bit zippier after the update. Fewer lags and momentary hangs that seemed to get introduced with the previous 4.2.1 update.
Can't beleive they messed up something so simple as the long-presses on the settings drop-down, though. A long press should bring up settings/more information whereas a single press should toggle. That's the sensible way to do it (employed elsewhere and on Cyanogen).
All it required was a little bit of thought. Hopefully it'll get fixed in the next update, so everything's consistent and logical.