All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

Someone found a way to unlock the HTC First without buying a code: FREE SIM unlock for the HTC First Facebook Phone ← Android Fan Network

 

Project Shield becomes NVIDIA Shield, launches for $350 this June

I have to admit, I'm rather surprised the Shield got the approval for going retail. Not interested in one as I can't see what it can offer above what a good smartphone plus Bluetooth controller can't already do, and at that price, it distances itself too far from being able to take any sales away from the Vita and 3DS. Quite a niche product.

 

Oh good, I can't wait to spend 350 bucks to play Vice City on a 5 inch screen.

 

Is that thing running Android?

 

Yeah, there's no reason the screen needs to be so small when it's connected to a controller like that. And it's not exactly like Android is a premier gaming platform. It's got a fine selection for smartphones--I enjoy playing Final Fantasy III on my phone when I have time to burn--but it's not exactly an ecosystem that can compete with the Vita and 3DS.

 

Yep. We'll see how well nVidia sticks to their promise of monthly OTAs with this one.

 

Wow, the screen resolution has been bumped up to 1280x720. I remember is was going to be 940x540 and kept thinking why Nvidia would put a 5 inch screen with such crappy resolution. But I'm with Miltov. I have FF3 on my SGS3. I also bought a cheap PS3 controller for $20 and the GameKlip for another $20. So now my SGS3 can do whatever the Nvidia Shield can for just a fraction of the price. I also downloaded Fpse and coded all my old PSX games so I can load them on to my phone whenever I want to play them.

 

Samsung Galaxy S4 “Google Edition” to be announced at Google IO | Android | Geek.com

Take this with a huge bag of salt, but it would be awesome if this rumor turns out to be true. I/O will be starting tomorrow.

 

Bag? I have a giant salt lick! :lol:

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk 2

 

If true:

Spoiler

 

I'm throwing money at my screen but it's not doing anything! If that rumor is true it might be my next phone.

 

I don't think people are willing to pay 500 over upgrade price to get stock Android.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

But if they were going to buy unlocked anyway...

 

NEC decided to implement a heat-pipe cooling system for their new Snapdragon 600-bearing Medias X 06E. Despite that, it's still running at 1.7GHz instead of 1.9GHz like in the GT-I9505. Think they're targeting the right crowd with this feature?

Spoiler

I thought the battery getting hot was the bigger problem anyway.

The Verge
Engadget

 

It will help spread the heat elsewhere in the phone and ideally prevent a "hot spot" as their picture shows. I do wish NEC, Panasonic and Toshiba would offer their smartphones outside of Japan, NTT Docomo has the best lineup of Android phones.

 

All measures taken towards reducing heat are more than welcome in my book and I do realise that the battery will be exposed to a significantly smaller portion of heat generated from the CPU since its dispersed elsewhere. What I wanted to have confirmed or rejected was my assumption that the majority of the heat in today's phones stem from the battery being drained quickly, not waste heat from the SoC. Is it not true that today's battery technology is lagging behind advances in architecture and chip fabrication? Of course it would be relative to how big a breakthrough we'd see in either field, but can't it be said that current battery technology limits the feasibility of high performance chips in phones more than the performance-per-watt we're seeing from the chips themselves? Both amount to quite a bit and NEC's approach is a lot easier than reinventing the battery but I'd like to know more about how the figures from these two heat sources stack up against each other.

 

https://developers.google.com/events/io/

This is, by far, the best format for a live streaming event ever. Love it. You can live stream from YouTube in up to 1080p, you have an live schedule on the right, photos, and major announcements tabs. Very well laid out.

 

Well, uh, that Riptide 2 demonstration did not go to plan. I love how he can just ignore it and still flog the API, but it's new. Teething issues to be expected.

But Android Studio makes up for it. Music all access looks like it will obliterate Pandora. Poor unfortunate Pandora.

 

Oh snap, the Google Edition S 4 is real. SIM Unlocked, AT&T and T-Mobile LTE, bootloader unlocked, same update schedule as the Nexus line. $649 on Play Store on June 26th.

Where's the pre-order?

 

My soul is sold. Get in my pocket AOSP GS4!!!!

 

Want.

That's pretty steep though. I wonder if they'll drop the price a few months later like they did with the Galaxy Nexus. I don't think I've ever spent that much on a phone.

 

Just announced the touchwiz free gs4. looks nice. wonder if someone will port it to the existing s4 models, that way we can get stock android feel.

 

Now all Samsung ducks because TW arguments are invalid. This is great, exactly what most of the user base wanted : a blazing fast Nexus phone with expandable storage and removable battery. Although... Nexus HTC One pl0x.

 

What I want to know is if this is the Exynos version or the S600. If it's the S600, it has LTE capabilities.

 

Yeah it's not cheap, but I didn't expect them to undercut the AT&T/T-Mobile versions either off-contract. It's $10 more than the AT&T 16 GB model, and if you're buying a phone off-contract, it's a no-brainer unless you just like TouchWiz.

Sadly, this nor the Developer Edition of the HTC One would be my most expensive phone purchase. The Xperia X1 still holds the crown at $799 plus tax. :doh:

Even if the image can't directly be flashed to these phones, a lot of ROM flashers/developers would benefit from the binaries that can be pulled from this device's image alone. The 13 MP Exmor RS camera sensor is on a lot of the current high end phones such as the Xperia Z/ZL, Oppo Find 5 and of course the S 4, so having the binaries available from AOSP will now get CyanogenMod ROMs that much closer to a fulling functional build.

 

He said it supports LTE, so it must use the S600.

 

It's going to be a mad house on the Play Store on June 26th. High price tag or not, I can see this phone selling out within minutes. In many Android enthusiast's eyes, this phone has just been perfected and the price tag isn't going to stop them.

 

Sweet, LTE support. Hopefully it'll be directly flashable!

 

Most probably the S600, the Exynos should only get LTE in the Note 3 giving their release pattern.

 

I think Google+ just leapfrogged Facebook in terms of site design. The new layout is just beautiful, but also extremely functional.

 

It's not hard to kick Facebook's butt in the UI department right now. Shame I have 350 friends who regularly use Facebook and two who regularly use Google+.

 

Verizon pushes up Samsung Galaxy S4 release date to May 23rd

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/13/4327454/verizon-samsung-galaxy-s4-release-date-now-may-23rd

Looks like I'll be getting mine next week.

 

Strikes me that a lot of hardware will go to waste with AOSP on there - all the stuff for Air View, Air Gestures, S-Health etc.

 

So if the Stock S4 is on TMobile, will they do a payment plan like their other phones? $170 down and $20 for 24 months isn't bad.

 

Even paying 100% up front isn't so bad if you aren't being charged twice like other carriers do when you bring your own phone (i.e., when their monthly service charges include a hardware subsidy even if you bring your own device). If T-Mobile had good coverage where I live, I'd jump over in a heartbeat. I much prefer their new business model.

 

I can't believe no one has mentioned "Hangouts" yet. It replaces Google Talk, finally.

For me, that was a MAJOR highlight of the keynote.

 

Music All Access doesn't compare to Pandora. Pandora is a different, more passive, experience geared toward discovery of new music you might not have thought of to click on in say...All Access or Spotify. IMO.

I guess that's the good thing about android. Choice, Choice, and more Choice.

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk 2

 

Hangouts looks great, unless you're like me and your girlfriend/family/friends all have iPhones

 

I'm switching to All Access from Spotify. I started the 30 day Spotify trial a week or two ago, and I planned on continuing my subscription. Google All Access does the same for $2 less, I'm sold.

 

Did you see the radio feature? See your upcoming playlist, swipe away songs you don't like, reorder them. Sounds like my cup of tea.

 

Sounds a lot like the Smart DJ function on Zune and Xbox Music.

 

Which is perfect 'cause my Zune is long in the tooth.

 

What I think is interesting about GPMAA (besides the unusually long name) is that it's a radical departure from Google's normal business model. Apple and Microsoft sell users stuff. The customer IS the user of the service, and they pay for the privilege. Google has traditionally provided free services, gathered user's info, and used that for targeted ads. The user isn't Google's customer; the advertiser is. All Access switches that around. Unlike Google Drive (where you can use some for free and you need to pay only if you want to use it a lot), EVERY All Access user is going to be paying Google $10/month. I think this is unprecedented in Google's history.

 

Overall, great move by both Google and Samsung, I think. Google gets a great, new truly-flagship-worthy phone to carry the Nexus/AOSP banner. Samsung gets to reach out to the developer/techie audience, for which the bootloader-locked AT&T S4 was a bitter pill to swallow. An AOSP, entirely unlocked and open S4 is perfect.

I was thinking the same thing. It'd be interesting if a lot of those features were still included, possibly as options in the Settings, and some of the functionality were preserved in system apps included with the phone? That does take away from the whole pure Google experience, though...

Most of those people probably don't mind TouchWiz all that much either, so I don't think that's going to lose many people at all. The techies who really appreciate the Nexus AOSP install probably also will have much less of a problem shelling out $650 off-contact for this phone.

 

You can all but guarantee they won't.
As you say, it wouldn't be stock Android then, not to mention why would Samsung help Google copy features they'd worked hard to develop?

 

The way I see it, only 1 group of people would even consider this, power users. But power users would just root their GS4 and put on a ROM they liked. Only way I see it selling is if you were planning on buying it unlocked anyway, but IMO spending more than 400-500 on an unlocked phone is ridiculous. Who puts a bet it will flop as bad as the First?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

Correct.

True.

I'll take a bet on it, $50 is yours if this device isn't sold out on day one. As flawed as the HTC One and Xperia ZL is, HTC was able to sell all of their pre-orders three hours into it being available for their $649 Developer's Edition. The $579 32 GB unlocked model's pre-order was capped out by the next day. Sony's Xperia ZL, as ridiculous as it was starting at $759, still managed to keep itself in short supply until the end of April.

The predecessors to your phone, the Nexus One and Nexus S, was also sold for $529 from Google's website and I'd say they did well. As odd as it may appear to spend $500+ on a phone in the U.S., this is nothing new for the folks in Europe and Asia, which actually has to deal with higher costs as well. A U.S. Galaxy S 4 can be had for as 'little' as $639, while in Europe they may have to shell upwards to $730-$750 for an equivalent model. When I used to sell most of my phones on eBay, a lot of them ended up going overseas for that exact reason.

 

I mean compared to the average joe who would buy it on contract for as little as 200 dollars at least here in the States. Again if you were already planning to buy it unlocked, then 20 dollars more than the normal unlocked price for the Samsung variant, then so be it. But I don't expect this phone to be selling anywhere near the Nexus 4.

 

You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Lots of people routinely spend more than 500 bucks on an unlocked phone. Then you take it to an MVNO that gives you a discounted rate for bringing your own hardware. Don't look at it from the perspective of a contract buyer.

And flopping as hard as the First is literally not possible.

 

I am taking a bet that people who buy contract phones far exceed people who buy unlocked phones (for the US). Overseas I bet that Google Galaxy S 4 will be even more expensive.