Battery life the possible exception.

ie the most important thing.

miketually – Member
At least with most Android phones it is possible to buy a second battery, so you can double the battery life

More and more are becoming sealed now though. My Xperia T is. It was one of the things that took me a while to decide on whether to go with it or not. But £18/month for more minutes & texts than I will ever need and unlimited data swayed it for me.

Thing is, there are so many of those piggy back battery-powered charger things out there for ALL phones, that this isn’t really a problem anymore. You can get a £25 power pack that will recharge a phone 5x from dead.

Sealed? What happens when you need to pull the plug after it locks up?

@houns;

[video]http://youtu.be/U-V-KCY7SMU[/video]

My Nexus 4 has not locked in a year, unlike my Desire. But a key combo cuts power and will force restart. Think it’s just long press on power.

I think you could make a giant kit Kat out of chunkies by welding them together. You can weld chocolate.

But when you need to replace an expired battery…

You can weld chocolate.

yes you can

You can print chocolate, like 3d printing; the place I last worked at was doing a research project for a company who wanted to print it…!

D0NK – Member
Battery life the possible exception.
ie the most important thing.

I’m not saying it’s now worse, it’s just stayed roughly the same. A HTC desire or Galaxy S lasted about a day, or maybe two. So does my gnexus, except it’s thinner, has a bigger and better screen and performs better.

Reading a few rumours that no new hardware or os as part of tonight’s announcement. Apparently tonight’s purely an intro to the new play store. the nexus 5 and kitkat announcements are possibly coming on 28th?

Retro all the new apps and whizzy gadgets use more and more GPS and data tho don’t they? 2 things that’ll kill your battery and a phone without juice is a very expensive brick in your pocket.

Piggybacks are a rubbish fix, IMO a phone that can’t last 24hrs with all background apps switched on, an hour web surfing and a few calls/texts ( when the handset is 12 months old – most contracts are 2 years now) is a failure.
and doesn’t that cover about 90% of the market?
Thicker phones with more oomph please, slim fones are a bugger for dropping too IME.

On the plus side, Lucrative market for the charging stations at festivals, kerching!£!£!

Well, it’s out today and the GNex ain’t getting it:

Is Google releasing Android 4.4 as a system update for Galaxy Nexus?

No, Galaxy Nexus phones won’t be receiving the update for Android 4.4 (KitKat).

Why isn’t Galaxy Nexus receiving the update to Android 4.4?

Galaxy Nexus, which first launched two years ago, falls outside of the 18-month update window when Google and others traditionally update devices.
https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/3468085

Not too happy as it leaves me with precious little available that isn’t Apple.

HTC = good hardware buggy software. Samsung = buggy hardware, buggy software, crap customer services, Google = okay hardware, don’t answer bug reports, drop device support within a year of its last sale.
Oh well, I’ll stick Cyanogen on it I suppose.

is it me or is Google going from cool, to big corperationany type corporation.

Well, it’s out today and the GNex ain’t getting it:

You must be mistaken. miketually personally guaranteed that it would happen. 😀

You must be mistaken. miketually personally guaranteed that it would happen.

🙂

As I understood it, you generally get the two OS updates after the one the device shipped with. The GNex shipped with ICS, so should have got JB and KK.

It’s not officially available, but there’ll be a custom ROM available I’m sure.

A lot of the updates are part of apps, like Hangouts gaining SMS, so might be available anyway.

Apparently, the company that makes the chip in the Galaxy Nexus (Texas Instruments), doesn’t make new or support their old mobile chips any more, which makes it difficult for google to guarantee a reliable working port for the phone (and therefore not commercially viable, as they don’t want a reputation for putting out broken software).

However, as it’s a Nexus, it’s fairly likely that if a port is possible, one will be made for it, as there should be a lot of people on XDA etc that have one and know how to do that sort of thing, so if you’re willing to take a bit of a risk it may still be possible to get KitKat on your phone.

However, as it’s a Nexus, it’s fairly likely that if a port is possible, one will be made for it,

Right, but if there’s no version of 4.4 for an OMAP (TI) device, the low lever drivers won’t be there.

There are kernel changes in 4.4, so a partial port might be problematic.

I’m not saying it won’t happen, just that it’s not straightforward (if it was, google would probably have done it).

back2basics – Member
is it me or is Google going from cool, to big corperationany type corporation.

No it’s not just you, fact is it is a major public company now so inevitable, same’s true of Apple IMO

100!

Not too happy as it leaves me with precious little available that isn’t Apple.

HTC = good hardware buggy software. Samsung = buggy hardware, buggy software, crap customer services, Google = okay hardware, don’t answer bug reports, drop device support within a year of its last sale.

Google have said that they support devices for up to 18 months and as mentioned above it is likely due to the TI issue that the GNex isn’t getting this update rather than any set time frame.
Plus based on the criteria you have mentioned above I seriously think iPhone would be your best bet as they have great hardware, pretty good software, fantastic customer service and will support the device with software updates for around 3 years.

muggomagic – Member

Google have said that they support devices for up to 18 months and as mentioned above it is likely due to the TI issue that the GNex isn’t getting this update rather than any set time frame.
Plus based on the criteria you have mentioned above I seriously think iPhone would be your best bet as they have great hardware, pretty good software, fantastic customer service and will support the device with software updates for around 3 years.

They’re saying that now, this is the first I’ve heard of this policy. The nexus s was still receiving updates when I bought my nexus so how should I have known this?

The ti chipset support getting dropped upstream is a PITA, and I think that’s probably the real reason. I understand this but it’s still pretty poo.

Apple is looking more tempting now.

As Mike says, quite a few updates are app level.

Android Police have some apk’s out already, like email and clock:

http://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=23203820527944685

A quick Google search says there are already 4.4 ROMs ported for Galaxy Nexus 🙂

Just as miketually says.

link

Kitkat has just arrived for my Xperia Z!

Despite Sony saying kitkat would be rolled out today on Xperia Z1s and my phone receiving a large system update today it seems I still have jelly bean. D’oh!

Got a 688mb update currently installing on my S4 on tmobile/ee

Kitkat is rolling out for Nexus 7 (wifi only) and Nexus 10, nexus 4 and nexus 7 with mobile still “coming soon”.
I read a few comments which suggest the kitkat launcher is not part of the update, so no change to the black bars top and bottom of the screen etc which if true would be a real shame.
Just need to get my nexus 7 back from Asus now so I can start bashing that check now button…

Link

Looks like the Google experience launcher is not included in the update (rumours that it may make its way to the play store in the future), but I found a few apk of it so should be able to add that once the update is available.