Google X Phone

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The reason they're not stealing more market share from iPhone is the software.
-It's simply not intuitive.

Well I'd argue 2.x was quite unintuitive. 4.x has been a major step forward. I do agree some things don't make sense still.

-Their upgrades are a step backwards a lot of the time.

This one definitely bugs me. JB stated linking notification volume and ringer. There were apps to do that previously, but it was nice to separate them. Now JB links system volume too. Sorry but I might want a loud ringer to hear my phone at times, but I don't want the keyboard sound being 500 dB either.

4.2 has the audio issue where vibrate mode is a global vibrate and in app vibrate settings are ignored. I'm not sure why we're losing control of our individual apps. I thought Android was all about choice and not having Google decide. This was one of my biggest gripes with Windows Phone and that if I want vibrate mode, everything vibrates, like chats, emails, everything. The only way to disable that is to go silent and miss everything.

4.0.3:
-complicates task switching
-laggy task switching and other things when it renders the tiles
-settings menus in apps change from buttons (easily pressable) to vertical list (harder to find which one you want, harder to remember where it's located spacially on the screen, which is how people learn and "get fast at" using computer products (Microsoft Word, for example, nobody cares under which menu the settings are located, as long as they can remember where to move the pointer).
-laggy experience wasn't fixed until JB (wtf!)

It's still not fully fixed. My Nexus 7 and 10 are still slightly laggy compared to my Nexus 4. The 7 lacks CPU, and the 10 is too high res. Project Butter to me isn't a complete solution. It's a brute force method. Ramping the CPU up is just excessive and just throwing needless power at a basic task. For example, the Nexus 4 gets warm just web browsing. Why? It cranks the CPU to 1ghz on any touch event just to keep it smooth looking. A bit overkill right? I'd appreciate a more elegant solution that doesn't heat my phone up doing basic tasks.

In general:
-They waste updates (Gingerbread), failing to accomplish anything noteworthy

I thought gingerbread was a minor update, but it was still an update. For the 1 year it was out there was no major progress, but you can probably see their teams were heavily invested in developing ICS.

-they take steps backwards in proven-working apps (Voice to Text for example, printing out words 5 seconds after you speak them is very distracting to what you're trying to say currently)

Yeah. Taking steps backwards to me is a really big issue. You could point to Apple and their step backwards to me was iOS Maps, but at least it's now rectified with Google Maps. In general Google needs to think it through what updates they're doing because to me it seems like poor execution is dominating a lot of the complaints.

-their manufacturers release buggy phones and unpolished software (Sense 3.6 is ho-hum, unlike previous Sense versions (particularly for Froyo builds) which were delightfully executed)

Meh. I suppose an advantage of Android is that manufacturers CAN do whatever they want. The unfortunate part is they have piss poor execution across the board. Sense, TouchWiz, Motoblur, LG's crapskin are all horrendous.

I'm glad Google's finally stepping up the plate with decent Nexus devices, although they still have a way to go. AOSP is quite sexy. I hope they respond better given that there's already a huge community running AOSP ROMs like CM and AOKP.

Essentially all my phone tweaking is just trying to get a fully working AOSP ROM on my phone.

-They fail to execute on their "me too" apps like Google Now-- it works, but not reliably enough that you can depend on it.

SO TRUE. Google Currents was absolute trash for a year. The latest 2.0 update makes it half decent, but in general Android has been a ME TOO execution. It was so unpolished for years before Google finally semi caught up to Apple.

Google Now (Voice), Google Currents, eh... those are total copycat apps and not only did they have a piss poor launch, it took over a year and some more to crank out something decent.

-They fail to innovate (just follow what Apple does), and the things they do innovate on, like their "me too" apps, are only 85% working (face unlock, for example), and they leave it like that for at least a year (Google Now) before fixing it to what it should have been on release day.

I am probably wasting my time. Feel free to disagree with me but I am fairy confident if someone put me in charge of HTC and UI direction at Google I could produce an iPhone killer.

No I read you loud and clear. I don't think the situation is as dire as you make it but Google still has some serious polish issues 3 years later.

I think every single one of us could dream of of an iPhone killer and put it on paper, but execution is another thing.

 

[bearxor]

I'd be excited for this if google completely took the software portion of this out of Motorola's hands. I've got a Droid Bionic and it's going to take a lot of good press from this phone to get me to buy anything from motorola again.

You should try another Moto phone with ICS. The newest version of MotoBlur is fairly close to stock, and even makes some changes that I agree with. For instance, rather than give you 5 home screens where some of them are blank and your "home" home screen is in the middle, MotoBlur starts you off with one screen all the way to the left, and if you swipe to the right, you get the option for a blank screen or some template. Swipe left for quick controls. Makes more sense to me, anyways.

 

[Muyoso]

Google Now (Voice), Google Currents, eh... those are total copycat apps and not only did they have a piss poor launch, it took over a year and some more to crank out something decent.

I'm sorry, but what? Google Now (Voice) is a copycat of what? The instant I read this, it invalidated anything else you said. First of all, Google Voice Actions has nothing to do with Google Now. Google Voice Actions has existed WAAAAAAAAAAAAY before Siri. If you are going to claim the inclusion of Knowledge Graph into Voice Actions is a copycat of Siri, then you simply MUST call Siri a copycat of the original Voice Actions.

 

[Eug]

Meh. I suppose an advantage of Android is that manufacturers CAN do whatever they want. The unfortunate part is they have piss poor execution across the board. Sense, TouchWiz, Motoblur, LG's crapskin are all horrendous.

I really dislike TouchWiz, and I just checked out an LG Optimus G today. Unimpressed. Gimmickskin.

However, I like Motoblur in the Razr HD. I've always said everyone should leave things stock and let us decide, but now that I own a Motoblur ICS machine, I'm willing to take a step back from that statement. You can modify the OS, as long you're not Samsung or LG.

You should try another Moto phone with ICS. The newest version of MotoBlur is fairly close to stock, and even makes some changes that I agree with. For instance, rather than give you 5 home screens where some of them are blank and your "home" home screen is in the middle, MotoBlur starts you off with one screen all the way to the left, and if you swipe to the right, you get the option for a blank screen or some template. Swipe left for quick controls. Makes more sense to me, anyways.

Yeah, the Moto Quick Settings in ICS actually make it decent. I also like the included weather, time, and battery life widgets. Interestingly, those widget functions are the ones I added to Jelly Bean before I even owned a Moto phone, but these included ones are much nicer.

I have high hopes for a Motorola RAZR Nexus. In the meantime, I just ordered a 32 GB microSD card for my Android 4 Goog... errr... Motorola smartphone.

 

[podspi]

I'd be excited for this if google completely took the software portion of this out of Motorola's hands. I've got a Droid Bionic and it's going to take a lot of good press from this phone to get me to buy anything from motorola again.

I'd like to hear your reasoning on this. I know a few people with Bionics and they love them. I have a DROID 4 that is pretty much identical, and I really like that too (though it just suffered a hardware failure about an hour ago so that makes me sad).

Motoblur is not bad at all, and some of Motorola's enhancements are quite nice.

 

[bearxor]

I'm sorry, but what? Google Now (Voice) is a copycat of what? The instant I read this, it invalidated anything else you said. First of all, Google Voice Actions has nothing to do with Google Now. Google Voice Actions has existed WAAAAAAAAAAAAY before Siri. If you are going to claim the inclusion of Knowledge Graph into Voice Actions is a copycat of Siri, then you simply MUST call Siri a copycat of the original Voice Actions.

Apple debuted Voice Actions with iOS 3 on the 3GS in 2009. Google Voce actions didn't show up until August 2010, nearly a year later and only 1 year before Siri. But, you're correct in that Google Voice Actions have nothing to do with Google now.

Google Now and Siri are evolutions of these headed in completely opposite directions.

And of course, lets not worry about mentioning voice actions that were around for decades before either of these. What make Siri and Google Now different are that they make decisions for you based off context and prior information, not just simply telling it what to do with no context.

 

[Eug]

Siri was a purchase of a 3rd party company. Siri actually first appeared in iOS in Feb. 2010, and was bought by Apple a couple of months later.

 

[bearxor]

Sure. Does that matter? I thought we were just talking about incorporation in the OS.

 

[Eug]

Maybe, but Apple already had control of the Siri technology - as an app - before Android had it integrated in the OS. I'm just say it's a more complicated situation than the dates of OS incorporation may suggest.

P.S. I'm on Android with my phone now, but the only place I use voice control is in the car.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I'd like to hear your reasoning on this. I know a few people with Bionics and they love them. I have a DROID 4 that is pretty much identical, and I really like that too (though it just suffered a hardware failure about an hour ago so that makes me sad).

Motoblur is not bad at all, and some of Motorola's enhancements are quite nice.

It took over a year of owning the phone for it to finally be able to hold a data connection for more than 30 seconds. With the ICS update it's become infinitely more usable, but they released this phone is a storm of hype and then abandoned it in short order.

I bought it about a week after release in like September 2011, and in October of 2012 I finally got an update that actually fixed the problems with the phone. It also had the nasty side effect of halving my battery life. Funny how the radios actually working draws more power. Anyways, like I said, I do not trust motorola at all now. The build quality is nice, but all their phones are dated in terms of design. Couple that with their horrible support post launch and I don't see myself buying another phone from them unless google takes the reins.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

It took over a year of owning the phone for it to finally be able to hold a data connection for more than 30 seconds. With the ICS update it's become infinitely more usable, but they released this phone is a storm of hype and then abandoned it in short order.

I bought it about a week after release in like September 2011, and in October of 2012 I finally got an update that actually fixed the problems with the phone. It also had the nasty side effect of halving my battery life. Funny how the radios actually working draws more power. Anyways, like I said, I do not trust motorola at all now. The build quality is nice, but all their phones are dated in terms of design. Couple that with their horrible support post launch and I don't see myself buying another phone from them unless google takes the reins.

if you have old old phone like razr or bionic, just get a new phone...

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I'm sorry, but what? Google Now (Voice) is a copycat of what? The instant I read this, it invalidated anything else you said. First of all, Google Voice Actions has nothing to do with Google Now. Google Voice Actions has existed WAAAAAAAAAAAAY before Siri. If you are going to claim the inclusion of Knowledge Graph into Voice Actions is a copycat of Siri, then you simply MUST call Siri a copycat of the original Voice Actions.

Ok so Android did have VOICE SEARCH. I pointed out specifically at Google Now voice as a copy. I'm sure Google would've put in the weather question that everyone loves if Siri wasn't launched. Sure thing.

Yes I realize Google Voice Search was there, and the iphone had voice dialing too long before Siri. But the fact is with Siri's launch (and I don't think it's a game changer), the whole personal assistant concept started coming up. Oh great you can ask it questions and it'll fetch the answer for you. Weather, sports, etc.

I'm glad Google took it a step further with Google Now cards. Those are nice, but how is the whole voice answering questions not a rip of Siri?

That said there are things that Apple's stolen like the Notification Bar, while Google's stolen slide to unlock.

Apple debuted Voice Actions with iOS 3 on the 3GS in 2009. Google Voce actions didn't show up until August 2010, nearly a year later and only 1 year before Siri. But, you're correct in that Google Voice Actions have nothing to do with Google now.

interesting..

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I really dislike TouchWiz, and I just checked out an LG Optimus G today. Unimpressed. Gimmickskin.

However, I like Motoblur in the Razr HD. I've always said everyone should leave things stock and let us decide, but now that I own a Motoblur ICS machine, I'm willing to take a step back from that statement. You can modify the OS, as long you're not Samsung or LG.

Surprisingly Moto's come a long way in improving its skin. I still think that's nothing to be too impressed over, but I suppose relative to Samsung and HTC who have really just torpedoed all their phones now with their horrible skins, Moto looks golden

As for TouchWiz, I think it was fine for the 2.x era phones when they looked like crap, but ever since ICS, I think a new interface is needed to embrace the Holo UI. Sense is a notch above TouchWiz in terms of looks but feels 10x bloated. Each iteration promises to be less laggy, but with new hardware, HTC adds more features. Thus, the HTC One X+ barely feels faster than the HTC Sensation.

 

[soccerballtux]

It took over a year of owning the phone for it to finally be able to hold a data connection for more than 30 seconds. With the ICS update it's become infinitely more usable, but they released this phone is a storm of hype and then abandoned it in short order.

I bought it about a week after release in like September 2011, and in October of 2012 I finally got an update that actually fixed the problems with the phone. It also had the nasty side effect of halving my battery life. Funny how the radios actually working draws more power. Anyways, like I said, I do not trust motorola at all now. The build quality is nice, but all their phones are dated in terms of design. Couple that with their horrible support post launch and I don't see myself buying another phone from them unless google takes the reins.

It's Motorola, this behavior is to be expected and is why their phone sales are terrible.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

It's Motorola, this behavior is to be expected and is why their phone sales are terrible.

i have gs3 and id much rather have razr maxx hd.

 

[dguy6789]

It's Motorola, this behavior is to be expected and is why their phone sales are terrible.

Moto's sales are terrible because of poor marketing primarily and maybe one generation (Bionic and Razr) of not so hot phones. The Droid X was the best Android phone on the market at the time and the Razr Maxx HD(and the non Maxx version for that matter) is better than the Galaxy S3. When your devices are the best and sales are not so great marketing is pretty much always the reason why.

 

[gorcorps]

Moto's sales are terrible because of poor marketing primarily and maybe one generation (Bionic and Razr) of not so hot phones. The Droid X was the best Android phone on the market at the time and the Razr Maxx HD(and the non Maxx version for that matter) is better than the Galaxy S3. When your devices are the best and sales are not so great marketing is pretty much always the reason why.

It also doesn't help when you're basically on a single carrier while the competition is on all of them (including pre paid). I would have bought the maxx hd over the gs3 if I had the option on att, but I don't.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

if you have old old phone like razr or bionic, just get a new phone...

At what $600-700 dollars because it's not upgrade time? Luckily for me my next upgrade will be sometime in september and I hope that battery life and phone speeds will be much better around that time. Maybe this Xphone will even be out by then.

 

[Eug]

Samsung's ads are sometimes a little too centred on dissing Apple, but nonetheless they're often quite amusing. Samsung overall has a good ad campaign, but Moto not so much.

The RAZRs are also single-carrier in Canada, sort of. They're on more than one carrier, but all owned by the same company using the same network. Meanwhile, they have both the iPhone 5 and the GS3, as do all of their main competition.

 

[hans007]

im pretty happy with my first motorola phone. a droid razr m so i'm hoping this one is pretty good. honestly theres really not much more companies can add to phones. they are super light already, have super fast cpus and screens that you can't put anymore useable resolution on. if they put 1080p on a 5" vs 720p can you really even tell the difference?

anyhow, personally i love my droid razr m 1000 times more than my previous galaxy nexus even if it cant be rooted (i dont even care, it never crashes unlike the nexus with its reboots, and the skin is barely different from stock so i dont have any real reasons for wanting to root/flash) . if this X phone is a razr M with a quad a15 or S4 cpu, 2gb ram, and say a 720p 4.3" screen and a 2500 mah battery i'd probably buy one. other than that and say fancier materials (like ceramic casings, or unbreakable screens) i'm not really thinking itll be mind blowing in anyway.

 

[Eug]

if this X phone is a razr M with a quad a15 or S4 cpu, 2gb ram, and say a 720p 4.3" screen and a 2500 mah battery i'd probably buy one. other than that and say fancier materials (like ceramic casings, or unbreakable screens) i'm not really thinking itll be mind blowing in anyway.

That's almost exactly what I said in another thread. Great minds think alike.

I have the 4.7" 720p Razr HD, but what I really want is a 4.3" 640p-720p Razr M. (The current Razr M is 540p.) Quad-core + 2 GB, but with great battery life, and a good build quality with improved aesthetics like the Razr HD, and near-stock Android would be perfect.

In essence, I'm asking for my Razr HD to get 2 GB RAM and quad-core but slimmed down into a phone with a 300+ ppi 4.3" screen, with near-stock Key Lime Pie.

 

[zerocool84]

im pretty happy with my first motorola phone. a droid razr m so i'm hoping this one is pretty good. honestly theres really not much more companies can add to phones. they are super light already, have super fast cpus and screens that you can't put anymore useable resolution on. if they put 1080p on a 5" vs 720p can you really even tell the difference?

The pixels aren't invisible just harder to see. I have a phone with 318ppi @ 4.7" and I can still see the pixels on it to a certain extent. Holding my face closer to my phone while surfing this forum on tapatalk for example, I can see many pixels in text. 720p @ 5" is even less ppi so that'd definitely benefit more from higher resolution.

 

[s44]

That's almost exactly what I said in another thread. Great minds think alike.

Given the proliferation of 1080p 5" panels, I doubt any brand-revamping flagship is going to stick to 720p (or lower).

 

[Eug]

Yeah but like I said, I'd love to see a 4.3" flagship. 540p isn't enough on a 4.3" phone, but 720p is definitely enough. 640p is borderline.

And it doesn't have to be limited to a single 4.3" model. They can release a say 5.2" 1080p model or whatever at the same time. I agree, 720p isn't quite enough for a 5.2". However, 900p is more than fine for a 5.2", so I'm not sure what the big reason is for the push for 1080p, other than marketing.

I'd much rather have 900p with perfect colour balance, than 1080p without proper optimization. Google often falls down on the screen optimization side.

 

[s44]

so I'm not sure what the big reason is for the push for 1080p, other than marketing.

I agree with you... but marketing makes not keeping up impossible.

The non-flagship CloudMobile already has 4.3" 720p...