Sure. People aren't playing with or buying Nexus to figure out about its features. They are likely reading about it. They have partners now that make their HW so they can use those same partners to demo their OS. What did MS do before it decided no one knew how to make a tablet? They sold their OS without making and selling a WinPC that competes with the OEMs.
Google doesn't compete with their OEM's either, which should be abundantly clear with the limited promotion efforts for Nexus devices coupled with spreading the reference hardware builds around to licensees who don't actually build em themselves. It would be easy enough for Google to go straight to FoxConn or Quanta or some other Asian factory if the intent was to build a hugely successful and profitable handset in competition with licensees. It's really all that hard to figure out? No. I wouldn't have thought so.
So the logical explanation is the one Google offered: Nexus devices are meant as reference platforms, properly showcasing new OS features while getting the attention of excited fans and the bloggersphere. Regular Joe goes for the flashy screen, added software features, improved speakers, colors selection, and shiny surfaces that shortly follow from the Android licensees. Only the most devoted users forego the shiny stuff from Sammy, HTC, LG and others for stock Android.
For those that aren't going to read [@]Relic[/@]'s 4,000 word paragraph…
[QUOTE]I really like the new iPad, it’s fast, beautiful screen, great apps, etc.[, but does] the K1 really need to be faster than the A8x to not to be called Junk.[/QUOTE]
DED must be nervous about the new Nexus line considering all the benchmarking articles he's been writing! It's interesting how benchmarks are suddenly very important.
Don't worry DED. The iPad will outsell the Nexus handily even if Lollipop provides a better user experience.
So you honestly don't have a clue as to the purpose, and/or have no intention of saying what YOU think the Nexus line is intended to accomplish..
To help clear up your confusion here's what Google says about it, tho I'm pretty sure you already knew but trying your best to avoid admitting as much.
"Advances in computing are driven at the intersection of hardware and software. That's why we’ve always introduced Nexus devices alongside our platform releases. Rather than creating software in the abstract, we work with hardware partners to build Nexus devices to help push the boundaries of what's possible. Nexus devices also serve as a reference for the ecosystem as they develop on our newest release."
Close to shouting .... temper, temper ...
BS is BS even in (gasp) heavy black fonts.
People I think we have the man on the defensive. (I assume he is a man ... no idea to be honest. I've known just as eloquent ladies who hate Apple).
GPU benchmarks in the absence of image quality comparisons are meaningless. You'd never catch AnandTech reviewing a desktop discrete GPU without considering what's being rendered. What kind of texture filtering quality is PowerVR vs K1 doing? What kind multisampling or super-sampling? How is performance of geometry shaders or tessellation?
What DED conveniently glosses over in his cherry picking, is that GFXBench shows the A8 PowerVR is roughly 50% worst than the K1 in Rendering Quality PSNR tests. This indicates that the PoweVR pipeline is taking shortcuts with image quality.
We used to tolerate this on the desktop, but we don't anymore, because it allowed GPU vendors to get away with claiming the benchmark crown by lowering image quality. Many vendors used to cheat (ask for tri-linear filtering, and get a trilinear approximation instead)
The PowerVR Rogue which the A8X has inside of it is a DirectX 10 class GPU, whereas the Tegra K1 is a DirectX 12 class GPU, which is another difference. K1 simply has to spend more transistors on having a more powerful, general purpose rendering block.
One reason why the PowerVR lost on the desktop was that they could not deliver performance with equality quality to traditional immediate mode renderers, and this was especially true as you scaled up the geometry workload, so I'd be really interested in A8X's tesselation performance vs the K1.
The story is not cut and dried. if you want to see a real comparison between the A8X and Denver K1, wait for someone like Anandtech to do it, rather than someone intent on cherry picking facts to meet a preconceived agenda.
I tried to write a few novels and my wife does exactly what Soli did to you.
I used Word on the iPad to write up my comment, my new keyboard case arrived this morning so I wanted to break it in. Anyway, word deleted all of the line breaks, but I immediately started to edit when I saw the post, took me all of a minute to do. He could have given me the benefit of the doubt that I wouldn't have left it like that. I like to write, one of my favorite things to do is write manuals. I wrote a O'Reilly type guide to Unix once, 265 pages, finished it in 5 days.
I used Word on the iPad because my new keyboard case arrived this morning. Got to to break it in, anyway, Word deleted all of the line breaks. I immediately started to edit when I saw the post, took me all of a minute to do. He could have given me the benefit of the doubt that I wouldn't have left it like that. I like to write, one of my favorite things to do is write manuals. I wrote a O'Reilly type guide to Unix once, 265 pages, finished it in 5 days.
not sure the lack of paragraphs was the main issue there ... if it could be condensed into one sentence ... but I'm no one to judge
not sure the lack of paragraphs was the main issue there ... if it could be condensed into one sentence ... but I'm no one to judge
Yea, I was about to say, you've posted some books your self. Nah, I'll leave it, besides you guys, no one is going to read it anyway. The longest you can hold someones attention is about 4 lines, unless it's full of pictures. I can't sleep, these meds are making me loopy as all hell, very trippy.
Yea, I was about to say, you've posted some books your self. Nah, I'll leave it, besides you guys, no one is going to read it anyway. The longest you can hold someones attention is about 4 lines, unless it's full of pictures. I can't sleep, these meds are making me loopy as all hell, very trippy.
It's minor software update with a slightly different appearance that's just enough to make existing apps look like they don't fit. Also, it's unlikely that a new rev of Android will turn around the collapse of Samsung, anymore than a new version of Windows could turn around HP or Dell's PC business. And Samsung is more than half of Android world wide.
Android 5.0 will be unlikely to reach more than 20% of even active Google Play users by the time iOS 9 ships next year. And according to Android Enthusiasts, Android has been on an "equal footing" with iOS for years, even as its market share has peaked and its share of premium devices has stagnated. How will another new version entice Android users to buy more Android products at higher prices than the bargain Moto X and Nexus 5 of last year? Seriously, do you even believe that?
Also, please cite any examples of having "always criticized [performance benchmarks] as being unrelated to real usage." That's just not true at all.
I have seen Lollipop, but I haven't gotten to use it myself since it's not available for consumers for a few more weeks (I don't have a Nexus 5 or a 2013 Nexus 7 to test the preview builds).
Lollipop is a huge update in the same way that iOS 7 was. It's redesigned from top to bottom, as you mentioned, but also has a multitude of low-level changes. You can read the basic overview of changes here http://www.android.com/versions/lollipop-5-0/ in case you haven't yet. A few that stand out are improved power efficiency, SELinux enforcing by default along with encryption by default, the ART runtime, 64-bit support, drastically reduced audio latency, completely revamped camera software, and increased modularity to bring more system-level programs into the Play Store as apps for quick updating.
You might be right about the slow rollout of 5.0. 4.0 took quite a while to make its way to devices, but how many devices run 5.0 is irrelevant to a discussion about progress in the OS itself. As for being on an equal footing, I think that there are people who honestly can't see a difference in the touch latency or the frame rates. On Android flagships from the last year or two, the difference has become quite small, but I can still see a difference. Some people are just more attuned to details while others don't notice a difference until it hampers their use of a device. I'd argue that Android has been refined enough to not hamper the use of a device since Jellybean debuted in 2012.
I don't believe Android has peaked, even in the US. I think that consumers love choice and that the wide variety of Android models provides them with that. Even the bad models are passable these days as far as the average consumer is concerned (Moto G anyone?). I don't think that Android will pull in people as much as iOS will push them away in the long run. iOS has been far too stagnant in appearance and operation, and I think that people, other than the Apple enthusiasts and the older generations, will become bored with it. Android is not controlled tightly enough to have that problem. An HTC looks entirely different from a Samsung, and only the savvy consumers know that they're the same deep down.
I may have been wrong about you opposing benchmarks. A quick search didn't reveal any articles where you wrote in opposition of them, and I'm not going to devote the time to search your posts.
I have seen Lollipop, but I haven't gotten to use it myself since it's not available for consumers for a few more weeks (I don't have a Nexus 5 or a 2013 Nexus 7 to test the preview builds).
Lollipop is a huge update in the same way that iOS 7 was. It's redesigned from top to bottom, as you mentioned, but also has a multitude of low-level changes. You can read the basic overview of changes here http://www.android.com/versions/lollipop-5-0/ in case you haven't yet. A few that stand out are improved power efficiency, SELinux enforcing by default along with encryption by default, the ART run-time, 64-bit support, drastically reduced audio latency, completely revamped camera software, and increased modularity to bring more system-level programs into the Play Store as apps for quick updating.
You might be right about the slow rollout of 5.0. 4.0 took quite a while to make its way to devices, but how many devices run 5.0 is irrelevant to a discussion about progress in the OS itself. As for being on an equal footing, I think that there are people who honestly can't see a difference in the touch latency or the frame rates. On Android flagships from the last year or two, the difference has become quite small, but I can still see a difference. Some people are just more attuned to details while others don't notice a difference until it hampers their use of a device. I'd argue that Android has been refined enough to not hamper the use of a device since Jellybean debuted in 2012.
I don't believe Android has peaked, even in the US. I think that consumers love choice and that the wide variety of Android models provides them with that. Even the bad models are passable these days as far as the average consumer is concerned (Moto G anyone?). I don't think that Android will pull in people as much as iOS will push them away in the long run. iOS has been far too stagnant in appearance and operation, and I think that people, other than the Apple enthusiasts and the older generations, will become bored with it. Android is not controlled tightly enough to have that problem. An HTC looks entirely different from a Samsung, and only the savvy consumers know that they're the same deep down.
I may have been wrong about you opposing benchmarks. A quick search didn't reveal any articles where you wrote in opposition of them, and I'm not going to devote the time to search your posts.
Thanks for posting, it is more than obvious that @Corrections hasn't used Android 5. Well I have had it installed on my Nexus 5 since, Preview "L" was released. The update is substantial and to refer it as a minor upgrade is nothing but poppycock. Not only in appearance which for the first time Android actually is starting to look, well good, but the Google apps have undergone a major facelift as well, with third party apps to follow. Underneath is where things have improved the most, I immediately got almost a %35 jump in battery life, performance was greatly improved as I haven't seen so much as jerk, or sudden pause that Android is notorious for. I'm not going to compare iOS 8.1 and Android 5.9 as I believe it's a futile endeavor, especially on a board like this, as it would take magic powers granted to the person who uses Lollipop for most here to even try it, let alone use it.
Here are some screenshots to show you how much of a difference there actually is;
The NVIDIA K1 of the Nexus 9 is not much slow and that isn't bad because the Apple chip is also much smaller and therefore there is a lot of room for NVIDIA to improve on.
So you honestly don't have a clue as to the purpose, and/or have no intention of saying what YOU think the Nexus line is intended to accomplish..
To help clear up your confusion here's what Google says about it, tho I'm pretty sure you already knew but trying your best to avoid admitting as much.
"Advances in computing are driven at the intersection of hardware and software. That's why we’ve always introduced Nexus devices alongside our platform releases. Rather than creating software in the abstract, we work with hardware partners to build Nexus devices to help push the boundaries of what's possible. Nexus devices also serve as a reference for the ecosystem as they develop on our newest release."
Close to shouting .... temper, temper ...
BS is BS even in (gasp) heavy black fonts.
People I think we have the man on the defensive. (I assume he is a man ... no idea to be honest. I've known just as eloquent ladies who hate Apple).
I presume he's a guy as that's part of his name. Couldn't be clearer.
Comments
Google doesn't compete with their OEM's either, which should be abundantly clear with the limited promotion efforts for Nexus devices coupled with spreading the reference hardware builds around to licensees who don't actually build em themselves. It would be easy enough for Google to go straight to FoxConn or Quanta or some other Asian factory if the intent was to build a hugely successful and profitable handset in competition with licensees. It's really all that hard to figure out? No. I wouldn't have thought so.
So the logical explanation is the one Google offered: Nexus devices are meant as reference platforms, properly showcasing new OS features while getting the attention of excited fans and the bloggersphere. Regular Joe goes for the flashy screen, added software features, improved speakers, colors selection, and shiny surfaces that shortly follow from the Android licensees. Only the most devoted users forego the shiny stuff from Sammy, HTC, LG and others for stock Android.
[QUOTE]I really like the new iPad, it’s fast, beautiful screen, great apps, etc.[, but does] the K1 really need to be faster than the A8x to not to be called Junk.[/QUOTE]
edit: Paragraphs added. Praise the Jesus!
Oh please.
Lollipop, schlollipop.
Thank you so much. My eyes glazed over. No it wasn't the G & Ts
Oh is that the latest , good to know... I gave up at spam sandwich, scham schamwich ... I cannot keep up with all this Gargle / Adenoid baby talk
Close to shouting .... temper, temper ...
BS is BS even in (gasp) heavy black fonts.
People I think we have the man on the defensive.
For those that aren't going to read @Relic's 4,000 word paragraph…
edit: Paragraphs added. Praise the Jesus!
Yep, pretty much sums it up.
Fixed that for you.
Haha, that was cool of you.
I tried to write a few novels and my wife does exactly what Soli did to you.
I don't take it as well ...
GPU benchmarks in the absence of image quality comparisons are meaningless. You'd never catch AnandTech reviewing a desktop discrete GPU without considering what's being rendered. What kind of texture filtering quality is PowerVR vs K1 doing? What kind multisampling or super-sampling? How is performance of geometry shaders or tessellation?
What DED conveniently glosses over in his cherry picking, is that GFXBench shows the A8 PowerVR is roughly 50% worst than the K1 in Rendering Quality PSNR tests. This indicates that the PoweVR pipeline is taking shortcuts with image quality.
We used to tolerate this on the desktop, but we don't anymore, because it allowed GPU vendors to get away with claiming the benchmark crown by lowering image quality. Many vendors used to cheat (ask for tri-linear filtering, and get a trilinear approximation instead)
The PowerVR Rogue which the A8X has inside of it is a DirectX 10 class GPU, whereas the Tegra K1 is a DirectX 12 class GPU, which is another difference. K1 simply has to spend more transistors on having a more powerful, general purpose rendering block.
One reason why the PowerVR lost on the desktop was that they could not deliver performance with equality quality to traditional immediate mode renderers, and this was especially true as you scaled up the geometry workload, so I'd be really interested in A8X's tesselation performance vs the K1.
The story is not cut and dried. if you want to see a real comparison between the A8X and Denver K1, wait for someone like Anandtech to do it, rather than someone intent on cherry picking facts to meet a preconceived agenda.
Haha, that was cool of you.
I tried to write a few novels and my wife does exactly what Soli did to you.
I used Word on the iPad to write up my comment, my new keyboard case arrived this morning so I wanted to break it in. Anyway, word deleted all of the line breaks, but I immediately started to edit when I saw the post, took me all of a minute to do. He could have given me the benefit of the doubt that I wouldn't have left it like that. I like to write, one of my favorite things to do is write manuals. I wrote a O'Reilly type guide to Unix once, 265 pages, finished it in 5 days.
not sure the lack of paragraphs was the main issue there ... if it could be condensed into one sentence ... but I'm no one to judge
not sure the lack of paragraphs was the main issue there ... if it could be condensed into one sentence ... but I'm no one to judge
Yea, I was about to say, you've posted some books your self. Nah, I'll leave it, besides you guys, no one is going to read it anyway. The longest you can hold someones attention is about 4 lines, unless it's full of pictures. I can't sleep, these meds are making me loopy as all hell, very trippy.
Sleep tight
Have you actually seen Lollypop?
It's minor software update with a slightly different appearance that's just enough to make existing apps look like they don't fit. Also, it's unlikely that a new rev of Android will turn around the collapse of Samsung, anymore than a new version of Windows could turn around HP or Dell's PC business. And Samsung is more than half of Android world wide.
Android 5.0 will be unlikely to reach more than 20% of even active Google Play users by the time iOS 9 ships next year. And according to Android Enthusiasts, Android has been on an "equal footing" with iOS for years, even as its market share has peaked and its share of premium devices has stagnated. How will another new version entice Android users to buy more Android products at higher prices than the bargain Moto X and Nexus 5 of last year? Seriously, do you even believe that?
Also, please cite any examples of having "always criticized [performance benchmarks] as being unrelated to real usage." That's just not true at all.
I have seen Lollipop, but I haven't gotten to use it myself since it's not available for consumers for a few more weeks (I don't have a Nexus 5 or a 2013 Nexus 7 to test the preview builds).
Lollipop is a huge update in the same way that iOS 7 was. It's redesigned from top to bottom, as you mentioned, but also has a multitude of low-level changes. You can read the basic overview of changes here http://www.android.com/versions/lollipop-5-0/ in case you haven't yet. A few that stand out are improved power efficiency, SELinux enforcing by default along with encryption by default, the ART runtime, 64-bit support, drastically reduced audio latency, completely revamped camera software, and increased modularity to bring more system-level programs into the Play Store as apps for quick updating.
Check out these links for more information:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/unwrapping-lollipop-ars-talks-to-android-execs-about-the-upcoming-os/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8231/a-closer-look-at-android-runtime-art-in-android-l
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8274/understanding-androids-camera-hal3
You might be right about the slow rollout of 5.0. 4.0 took quite a while to make its way to devices, but how many devices run 5.0 is irrelevant to a discussion about progress in the OS itself. As for being on an equal footing, I think that there are people who honestly can't see a difference in the touch latency or the frame rates. On Android flagships from the last year or two, the difference has become quite small, but I can still see a difference. Some people are just more attuned to details while others don't notice a difference until it hampers their use of a device. I'd argue that Android has been refined enough to not hamper the use of a device since Jellybean debuted in 2012.
I don't believe Android has peaked, even in the US. I think that consumers love choice and that the wide variety of Android models provides them with that. Even the bad models are passable these days as far as the average consumer is concerned (Moto G anyone?). I don't think that Android will pull in people as much as iOS will push them away in the long run. iOS has been far too stagnant in appearance and operation, and I think that people, other than the Apple enthusiasts and the older generations, will become bored with it. Android is not controlled tightly enough to have that problem. An HTC looks entirely different from a Samsung, and only the savvy consumers know that they're the same deep down.
I may have been wrong about you opposing benchmarks. A quick search didn't reveal any articles where you wrote in opposition of them, and I'm not going to devote the time to search your posts.
I have seen Lollipop, but I haven't gotten to use it myself since it's not available for consumers for a few more weeks (I don't have a Nexus 5 or a 2013 Nexus 7 to test the preview builds).
Lollipop is a huge update in the same way that iOS 7 was. It's redesigned from top to bottom, as you mentioned, but also has a multitude of low-level changes. You can read the basic overview of changes here http://www.android.com/versions/lollipop-5-0/ in case you haven't yet. A few that stand out are improved power efficiency, SELinux enforcing by default along with encryption by default, the ART run-time, 64-bit support, drastically reduced audio latency, completely revamped camera software, and increased modularity to bring more system-level programs into the Play Store as apps for quick updating.
Check out these links for more information:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/unwrapping-lollipop-ars-talks-to-android-execs-about-the-upcoming-os/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8231/a-closer-look-at-android-runtime-art-in-android-l
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8274/understanding-androids-camera-hal3
You might be right about the slow rollout of 5.0. 4.0 took quite a while to make its way to devices, but how many devices run 5.0 is irrelevant to a discussion about progress in the OS itself. As for being on an equal footing, I think that there are people who honestly can't see a difference in the touch latency or the frame rates. On Android flagships from the last year or two, the difference has become quite small, but I can still see a difference. Some people are just more attuned to details while others don't notice a difference until it hampers their use of a device. I'd argue that Android has been refined enough to not hamper the use of a device since Jellybean debuted in 2012.
I don't believe Android has peaked, even in the US. I think that consumers love choice and that the wide variety of Android models provides them with that. Even the bad models are passable these days as far as the average consumer is concerned (Moto G anyone?). I don't think that Android will pull in people as much as iOS will push them away in the long run. iOS has been far too stagnant in appearance and operation, and I think that people, other than the Apple enthusiasts and the older generations, will become bored with it. Android is not controlled tightly enough to have that problem. An HTC looks entirely different from a Samsung, and only the savvy consumers know that they're the same deep down.
I may have been wrong about you opposing benchmarks. A quick search didn't reveal any articles where you wrote in opposition of them, and I'm not going to devote the time to search your posts.
Thanks for posting, it is more than obvious that @Corrections hasn't used Android 5. Well I have had it installed on my Nexus 5 since, Preview "L" was released. The update is substantial and to refer it as a minor upgrade is nothing but poppycock. Not only in appearance which for the first time Android actually is starting to look, well good, but the Google apps have undergone a major facelift as well, with third party apps to follow. Underneath is where things have improved the most, I immediately got almost a %35 jump in battery life, performance was greatly improved as I haven't seen so much as jerk, or sudden pause that Android is notorious for. I'm not going to compare iOS 8.1 and Android 5.9 as I believe it's a futile endeavor, especially on a board like this, as it would take magic powers granted to the person who uses Lollipop for most here to even try it, let alone use it.
Here are some screenshots to show you how much of a difference there actually is;
Multitasking app switcher;
Notifications and Quick Toggles;
Dialer;
Contacts start page;
Google Mail;
Keyboard;
Some others;
Www.futuremark.com/hardware/mobile
I presume he's a guy as that's part of his name. Couldn't be clearer.
Relic is our resident doll.
Od that there's no mention of the Futuremark 3Dmark benchmark which favours the Nvidia chip. http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/mobile