Google has opened a new site dedicated to showcasing some of the best and most interesting projects coming to Android. Amongst the projects are: several Android wear watch faces, a beautiful digital world and many 3D projects. A few even involve external hardware such as a drawing bot, and an Android powered rover.
Streaming services have become a convenient and popular way to enjoy the latest music on the go. Unfortunately, using such a service means you need to use multiple apps if you want to keep your local music separate, or that you have to settle with the service’s official app even if it lacks features you want.
Developed by Fastboot Mobile with XDA’s own Senior Recognized Developer XpLoDWilD as the lead developer and visionary, Encore Music aims to solve this problem. You can have the best of both worlds in a single app. Your online and local music will be in one place, and you can even seamlessly switch between them and mix both in your playlists.
That’s not all: the Recognition tab will let you recognize music playing on the radio, TV, in concerts or even music you hum. You can then search your library for the match and play it. It’s an alternate and easy way to search, one that’s pretty useful when you know that song but just can’t remember its title.
We’re still not done yet… Want to sing along your favorite songs? The Lyrics tab will let you do that, thanks to the ChartLyrics integration. What about keeping track of recently played music? Just go to the History tab to replay the songs you enjoyed earlier. Fancy listening to your music on another device? Encore Music can cast your music to any compatible cast receiver like Chromecast. Audio effects? Yup, that’s also supported: a bass booster is included by default, and you can install the DSP Suite plug-in from the Google Play store to use the equalizer and more effects.
On the subject of plug-ins… that’s probably the best part of Encore Music. It’s extensible via plug-ins other developers can create using the Encore Provider Library. Two types exist: music sources, which add support for streaming providers or services, and sound processing plug-ins for audio effects. To add online music streaming services, the Spotify and Google Play Music plug-ins are already available, with more coming on the way. The latter is paid and you can choose to buy it for a dollar if you think it’s worth it.
If you’ve been looking for a new tablet, Expansys-USA has the Nexus 9 on sale for $289. Google’s own play store still has the 16GB table for $399, so this is a pretty heavy discount for the only current Nexus tablet option. If you pick one up, be sure to check out our forums!
The Sony Xperia M5 features a hybrid autofocus setup which gets demoed on this hands-on video. The system combines traditional contrast-base autofocus with the newer phase detection for its 21.5MP rear camera to give really quick focusing speeds, which are claimed to be as low as 250 milliseconds.
Well-known insider OnLeaks has taken to Twitter today to share supposed details about the upcoming Nexus handsets from LG and Huawei. USB Type-C and fingerprint scanners are mentioned on both, whilst LG’s device appears to be a little larger to make room for front facing speakers and a protruding camera.
ZUK are a relatively new sub-brand of Lenovo, who had previously enjoyed press through multiple rumors about their impending release of a CyanogenOS smartphone called the Z1. This has turned out to be off the mark; the company announced the very same handset today, although it’s running a custom implementation of Android 5.1 called ‘ZUI’. We’ll be bringing you a more in-depth preview of the device once we get our hands on it, but at this point we already have a full list of specifications and a number of interesting details about this very reasonably priced first effort.
With its $280 price tag, ZUK is going head-to-head with a number of other thrifty Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Meizu and Elephone, and especially with the infamous OnePlus Two. Considering the similarity of the designs and features present of this new handset when compared to the LeTV Le 1 Pro or OPT, there could even be reason to believe that they share a common physical core, but this would be difficult to prove given the amount of derivative Chinese models that already exist.
On the outside, the Z1 looks similar to another commonly-copied smartphone, with its rounded metal edges, obvious home button, and circular drilled speaker holes on the base. This might prove annoying for some consumers but in general it’s an attractive phone, featuring a thickness of 8.9mm at the center, and a slight taper down to 6.1mm at each edge. This chassis manages to make room for a huge non-removable 4100mAh battery, and ZUK claim that by using a new method of charging they can extend the lifespan of the unit, whereby once fully charged with the included 2.5A adapter, the phone diverts all power to the system to avoid the damaging trickle-charge scenario. Another particularly attractive element is the Z1’s implementation of a USB 3.1 type-C port, allowing for a very high-speed yet reversible connector, something that close rivals OnePlus will not be pleased about, having used a similar port limited to only USB 2.0 speeds.
This USB port also works as a headphone-out when using ZUK’s proprietary included pair, that also feature adjustable noise-cancelling circuitry along with the bonus of not interrupting the normal 3.5mm headphone jack, meaning that two users can listen to audio on the device simultaneously. This is a novel advantage, and one that will be difficult for other manufacturers to copy quickly, although its day-to-day usefulness will obviously be limited. A fingerprint scanner is also present within the home button that works in some additional functionality inside ZUK’s custom ROM, under the moniker of ‘U-Touch’. Interestingly, these functions seem to replace the ‘back’ and ‘recents’ capacitive keys commonly seen in handset design, meaning that all of the normal actions are performed by interacting differently with this button. A press takes you back for example, whilst swiping left or right quickly takes you between recent apps, a longer press takes you home, and a double-tap brings up the more familiar ‘recents’ screen. It’s not clear yet whether this will also support Google Now integration or whether you’ll need to rely on a simple homescreen shortcut to the app itself.
Looking at the specifications, the Z1 comes with a large 5.5″ 1080p display, still competitive in today’s market, 3GB of RAM, and 64GB of non-expandable storage. The front-facing camera is a 8mp unit with large 1.4μm pixels, whilst the rear-facer is Sony’s popular 13mp IMX214, found on many handsets like the Nexus 6, Moto G 2015 and Oppo’s Find7/a, although including an OIS module and dual-tone LED flash. This is a fairly promising camera set-up, where the front facing Omni-Vision camera should capture lots of light for good selfies, and the rear module has demonstrably good performance, supplemented by some extra physical stability. The only surprising choice on the spec list is ZUK’s decision to go with the quad-core Snapdragon 801 chipset from 2014, clocked at 2.5GHz, although when you consider the furor over this year’s 810 overheating properties, and the 801’s good reputation for performance and efficiency, this will be seen as a good move by many. Combined with the large battery in this device, we’re hoping for excellent longevity from the Z1.
ZUK have made a bizarre choice in marketing the Z1, with it having been announced today in-line with the hosting of a brand new website, which allows for pre-ordering, here. However, ZUK are still holding a press event in China next week just after the Z1 goes on sale officially on August 18th, which we’ll be attending in order to bring you our first hands-on with the handset. Stay tuned for that and a review in the future, on what could be a very disruptive smartphone indeed if it can be made easily available in Western markets.
Starting from version 16.5.4, Pushbullet now supports end-to-end encryption for its notification mirroring, universal copy-paste as well as its SMS features. To enable this, users need to manually add a password through the settings screen of pushbullet apps on desktop and mobile, labelled “End-to-end Encryption”.
The self-proclaimed Flagship Killer of 2016, OnePlus 2, is now available for purchase in India via Amazon.in from 4pm IST today, as announced in their blog. As people following the OnePlus 2 are no doubt aware you still need an invite to purchase the phone from Amazon, with the first batch of invites scheduled to roll out today. The invites will be prioritized for early supporters, specifically including registrants at pop-up stores and fan meets as well as early forum members, early purchasers, and the “most active OnePlus One invite evangelists.” – Next in line for invites will be the winners from contests and other promotional activity held by OnePlus.
If you do not belong to the categories mentioned above, OnePlus still cares about you. For the people who simply want to buy the phone, there is the reservation list. All you have to do is enter your email address and wait. The line moves forward on a first come first serve basis, and you can jump the queue if you get more people to add their names in the reservation list. Or you could run scripts to do the jumping for you. Either way, the reservation list currently stands at an approx 3.5 million at the time of writing, so be prepared to wait for a while.
Sadly, for users in North America, the wait keeps getting longer. Shipments to the USA and Canada have been delayed due to production schedules, and as such, OnePlus fans in these areas will receive their OnePlus 2 two to three weeks after shipments commence for Europe. The silver lining to this news is that fans can still receive and claim invites, i.e. make their purchase for the OnePlus 2 in these areas.
To recap, the OnePlus 2 will be priced at Rs. 24,999 ($390 at current exchange rate) in India for the 64GB storage variant. The 16GB variant, priced at Rs. 22,999 ($360), will be available for sale later in the year. International price for the 64GB variant is $389, while the 16GB variant would cost you $329.
We hope that OnePlus does indeed stand true to its promise of making more invites available overall, and that purchasing the OnePlus 2 remains a smooth and pleasurable experience.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Further Reading:
The OnePlus 2 Announcement, Specs, Price and Details
The OnePlus 2: Not A Phone For The Future
The OnePlus 2: The Year Of SmartPhone Compromises
Back in 1998 when Sergey and Larry founded Google, they were working from a dorm room and later Susan Wojcicki’s garage. It was here that the foundations for what would become one of the most powerful companies in history were laid down. Today one of the largest changes to the company since then has been announced. Larry Page has now created a new company called Alphabet with himself as CEO and Sergei Brinn as President.
Explaining what Alphabet (www.abc.xyz) is, Larry stated that it is for the most part a collection of companies, the largest being Google. All the companies that existed away from Google’s main internet based product line are now contained with Alphabet instead. These include such companies as: Life Sciences the company responsible for the creation of glucose-sensing contact lenses and Calico who are attempting to extend the human life span. We can expect to see other companies like Boston Dynamics (robotics) join as well, Google’s X lab which focuses on new technologies such as self-driving cars will also be moving to Alphabet. This process is aimed at providing greater management and independence of the companies. Each company will now have its own CEO, with Sergei and Larry managing from above as needed. As part of this new structure it was also announced that Sundar Pichai would become the new CEO of Google, a move that was happily agreed on by the board. Other parts of Google such as Youtube will continue as they have done, with the aforementioned Susan as CEO.
Regarding the future of the stock market, Google Inc will be replaced by Alphabet Inc as a wholly owned subsidiary with all shares converting automatically. The conglomerate will still continue to trade as GOOGL and GOOG on the Nasdaq and shareholders will continue to have the same rights.
Public opinion on the changes has already started emerging, with thoughts ranging from disbelief to claims that the changes are all part of a tax relief plan. One reader of the announcement requested that alphabet take the stock ticker symbol AABC, just to take Apple (AAPL) from the first spot. Several members of staff at Google have posted their thoughts on Google+ stating comments such as “Looks like I no longer work for Google” and “I used to work for Google Inc. Still do, but I used to, too.”
The official announcement can be read at Alphabet’s new site here
What do you think of the reorganization and Sundar Pichai’s new title? Leave a comment below!
A little over a month ago iOS got a new and redesigned Hangouts 4.0 update. Today, Google has finally released the same version upgrade for Android. The new Hangouts sports a new design, improved speed, and other features. Check out Google’s linked blog post for more info, APKMirror will follow shortly!
Join us in a fun Sunday Debate on Flagship Death. Come with your opinions and feel free to read some of our thoughts, then pick your side or play devil’s advocate to get your voice heard and engage in friendly discussion. You can read our food-for-thought or jump straight into the fray below!
The blogosphere at large has written several articles about 2015 flagships and all of their compromises, regressions, and ultimately, disappointments. The industry has undoubtedly changed dramatically in the past two years, and the rise of the affordable phone in emerging markets meant new focus points for OEMs to concentrate on — ones where high-end flagships weren’t the best bet.
In this sense, the so-called “flagship killer” phones (like the OnePlus One) did add to the fire and contribute to what seems to be a slow decline in flagships’ year-after-year improvements. The middle-range is becoming an increasingly competitive segment, with fierce OEMs trying to find the perfect formula of bang-per-buck. Sony, for example, is now trying to further expand in emerging markets with their M5 and C5 Ultra mid-range devices. In an article on the matter, I questioned whether this would be yet another sign of “the slow death of flagships”, at least as we know them. XDA Developer Admin & Portal Editor pulser_g2 recently published an excellent article on the topic as well, where he too concluded that the flagship is dying.
It is no secret that many of the newer flagship phones are too similar to their predecessors when it comes to design and specifications, and those who radically alter either of the two tend to do so by compromising key selling-points of previous iterations. The new middle-range is advancing with devices like the new Moto X models and the OnePlus 2, which compete at flagship level with a much lower price point. So we want to ask you: can “flagships” move to the middle-range? Should the industry continue its focus towards the middle-range at the expense of the progress of high-end flagships? Is this a good move for Android in terms of technological developments and consumer satisfaction? As always, feel free to skip our food-for-thought and head down to the comments below.
While we’ve seen a big focus on keeping costs down this year (be it through watering down specifications, adding bloatware and shameless advertisements, or sacrificing build quality or design), we also saw some devices up their game. An easy example would be Samsung’s Galaxy S6, which improved upon many components and capabilities, added new technology and achieved a stunning new look. None of this came without compromises, though, and many mourned the loss of removable batteries and expandable storage. However, with this expensive yet premium device Samsung might have reminded us and the competition that there is still a good market for high-cost devices. Expensive flagships still drive technology forward in terms of hardware and features, and as long as there are people wanting the best of the best, there will be a market for them.
As prominent markets reach their saturation points and more developing economies begin to emerge as profitable markets, the middle-range gains a stronger ground and becomes a desirable focus for OEMs looking for profit. We first saw the rise of budget and middle-range devices when manufacturers flooded stores with poorly built and weak phones that nobody (that knew better and could do better) would buy. Now that various hardware components are approaching their performance plateaus thanks to technological progress and software optimization, affordable devices like those in the popular Moto G series can deliver great experiences that are enough to satisfy most casual consumers. Android does not need the best hardware anymore, especially if the ROM is slim and close to stock, and alternatives like Android One allow consumers to experience Android services the proper way and for low prices. The more affordable phones like the Moto G are getting better, and flagships like the Moto X models are getting cheaper. Eventually, a middle ground could be found and the market might shift its focus, full-force, towards this segment, turning flagships into a niche even in affluent countries.
Android’s growth and current dominance wouldn’t be what it is without affordable devices, and its future is not sustainable without appealing to unsaturated markets. With more users having access to the platform, services could improve for all of us. Moreover, OEMs expanding in emerging markets with strategies that offer well-polished and well-performing middle-range devices means that more users will get a great (and in the future, perhaps even more stellar) Android experience. Under these conditions, new exciting technologies could emerge to turn the smartphone into a primary and central device through projects like Andromium and the Internet of Things.
If high-end or premium devices cease to be a manufacturer’s’ main focus (or the most important one), we might see yearly advancements in hardware progressively slow down, and in some cases, retrograde sacrifices might be made in order to compete in a lower price bracket. These compromises could trickle down and impact the experience of several users, although perhaps not too substantially. Flagships allow OEMs to charge a premium and be safer when testing new technologies in high-end packages. Mid-range and non-flagship devices used to come with interesting features (and gimmicks) in the past as well, such as fingerprint scanners, but it was not until high-end flagships and their re-envisioned and improved technology brought them to the mainstream that they became popular standards.
Flagship phones were enthusiasts’ Holy Grails for a long time, but with flagship killers, affordable phones, Chinese manufacturers and the rise of emerging markets, many are finding their Holy Grails at much cheaper prices. In a few years, we might see the industry put most of its attention on the affordable segment, and judging from what we see at the moment, the trend will only accelerate. So, all things considered, we want to know what you think is best:
We have previously reported on the upcoming BlackBerry Venice, which is supposedly being announced later this year as the first Blackberry device to come with Android. Today new renders have emerged, showing an 18 MP camera, a material design BlackBerry Hub and Chromecast support. BlackBerry 10 never supported Chromecast, and as such, the Venice could be a nice addition to the OEMs lineup.
The device has been rumoured to be coming to AT&T and T-Mobile by @evleaks who leaked the original renders. A sliding keyboard was also hinted at — however, there has been no sight of one so far as the renders we’ve seen do not feature one.
You can find the renders below. Keep in mind that, as is the case with all leaks, these renders might not be representative of the final product.
It would appear that the back of the phone will feature a similar back style to the BlackBerry Z30 and an 18MP camera.
The new BlackBerry hub in all its material glory; this was first shown at the Mobile World Congress back in March.
What do you think so far? Could BlackBerry be about to make a comeback? Leave a comment below!
Via: CrackBerry
This has been a rough year for the leading provider of Android chipsets: Qualcomm’s much talked about Snapdragon 810 has been plagued with issues in multiple devices. For some of us, the awaited Snapdragon 820 sequel cannot come soon enough. Among other changes, the 820 is also planned to be manufactured on a 14 nm process, which should help with the heat generation and power consumption present in the 810.
Perhaps lining up with a rumored Nexus device release from Huawei, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 was previously rumoured to be revealed on August 11th of this year. These rumors stemmed from a series of press invites to a curious Qualcomm event in Los Angeles… As it turns out, the invites were for a “computer graphics and interactive techniques” conference: SIGGRAPH 2015.
The conference may have various graphics or gaming-related technologies from Qualcomm, but it looks like we will have to wait a bit longer still to learn more about the 820.
Keeping in mind that the 810 was allegedly rushed: Would you want the Snapdragon 820 to come sooner rather than later? Discuss below.
ComScore have announced the U.S. smartphone market share for June 2015: unsurprisingly, Apple hold the top place with 44.1%, with Samsung trailing behind with 28.1%. Following these we have Motorola and LG competing for third place; confirming recent troubling news, HTC are losing their share quickly.
As a result of allowing smart devices to easily communicate with each other, ZigBee has inadvertently made it possible for people to take control of your smart home devices. Because ZigBee is also used in smart door locks this presents major concerns as many devices only meet the very minimum standards to pass certification.
Reputable leaker @evleaks has uploaded an image of a Huawei device that many people believe could be of the upcoming Nexus, which has long been believed to be coming from Huawei. Other conclusions are that this could also be the Mate 8 due to a striking resemblance to last years’ Mate 7. What do you think?
Apps are at the front and center of any smartphone experience, and with over a million apps on the Google Play Store and new apps being submitted to our forums every day, staying up to date on the latest apps and games can be a hassle. At XDA we don’t discriminate apps – if it’s interesting, innovative, original or useful, we mention them. The XDA Portal Team loves apps too, and here are our top picks for this week.
Notable updates:
That is it for this week. We hope that you might have found some of these apps as interesting, useful or entertaining as we did. Whether you are a student, a developer, a designer or a gamer, Android has you covered. We will try to reflect that each week with a variety of picks to spark your interest, and if you see (or publish!) any new apps that you think are worthy of a feature, be sure to send us a tip and we’ll give it a look. Until next time!
Recent headlines have talked much about the future of smartphones. We hear the phrase “flagship” banded around, a moniker typically reserved for a company’s “headline” product release, used to lead the company flag forward into battle in the marketplace. Back in 2009, when Android first began to gain a sensible level of traction, a flagship was a manufacturer’s main handset for the year.
OEMs had clear product ranges, and there was a clear “leader”. That was the flagship – the big brother of that year’s phone releases. Each manufacturer would compete to be that year’s best flagship – and we even recently did a nice run down on the flagship history of Samsung, Sony, and HTC.
Look at devices over the years, though, and you’ll see this for yourself. The HTC Hero was probably the first “mainstream” Android device that you could buy easily at launch (previous devices like the G1 were not so easy to get hold of, unless you went out of your way to try to buy one). The Hero shipped in June 2009 with a 528 MHz single-core CPU, and only 288 MB of RAM (a non-negligible portion of which was reserved for graphics, if memory serves your aging editor correct). Only 9 months later, in March 2010, HTC announced the Desire, with its 1 GHz CPU, and 576 MB of RAM!
Taking a step back here, we saw what amounted to almost double the CPU, and double the RAM. In a 9 month period, across a single product generation. These kinds of performance improvements offered customers genuine progress, and made an upgrade compelling. With hindsight, 9 months is a rather short interval between flagships – users are unlikely to be willing to part with their cash twice in 12 months for a new handset, but nonetheless, this model continued, as 9 months was the shortest cycle they could manage, while having enough time to polish a product off, and move onto the next one, before marketing took over the product to sell it to customers.
The one thing flagship devices had in common was their price. These were not low-priced handsets. Manufacturers and carriers were almost certain at the time that they were pricing a large number of customers out of the market. They were aware that smartphones should have been selling more units, but customers were being expected to either pay a large amount more for handsets than they were used to (if buying a handset on its own), or to take out a monthly contract (possibly with an upfront contribution to the handset), with a higher monthly fee than they were used to. Word filtered through to OEMs, and their product teams were told that the customers (carriers) wanted to have handsets they could retail at around half the price.
When buying my own first smartphone, I recall facing a decision between the expensive HTC Hero, and a much cheaper (around 1/3 of the price) carrier-rebadged version of an anonymous Huawei handset. Ultimately, I ended up with the Hero, partly thanks to my ability to drive a hard bargain with the carrier, and partly because of a small subforum on a website that I had found. That website was XDA-Developers, and it led me to realise that there was more to a phone than specifications and price.
In the months that followed, though, the main manufacturers started to realise they were at risk from the cheaper handsets, and their product development resources ended up split, with some working on the traditional top-of-the-range devices, and others working on lower-priced models, for the more cost-sensitive sectors of the market. At some point in this process, though, someone had the idea (which I feel was terrible, but which I can only presume they thought was brilliant) to create more of these lower-priced handsets, with different appearances and innards, to cater for all of the possible different price-points on the market. This led to the usual flagship devices continuing as before, but with an increasing number of rushed, poor quality (and frankly junk) devices brought to the market in a rush, by OEMs eager to reach price-conscious buyers.
This led to the market being watered down. There was still the “big” product being launched each year, with impressive specifications to match its impressive price tag, but there were growing numbers of lower-end devices being released. Often, to capitalise on the “fame” of the flagship, OEMs sought to associate their new, lower-end devices, with the existing flagships by using similar names. This is what has led us to seeing devices like the Galaxy S3 Mini which, despite its physical appearance, has a 1 GHz dual-core NovaThor CPU with almost nothing in common with the quad-core 1.4 GHz Exynos CPU of the “real” Galaxy S3.
Today, flagship devices continue to exist. HTC’s latest device in the One range would be their flagship. Sony’s Z3+ (or Z4, depending on market) would be their flagship. Samsung’s would be their Galaxy S6. And LG’s would be the G4. It’s rather intuitive and obvious to those in the industry, but there’s no official designation from each company, showing what their flagship is. That’s because the market is now saturated with phones, as we just discussed. The market is now awash with so many different handsets that companies are struggling to build a viable marketing campaign for all their different product ranges. Even after HTC said they would stop releasing endless mid-range devices, they continued to do so, apparently unabated. OEMs flooded the market with cheap, commodity handsets.
This was naturally good for the market, as consumers wanted cheaper handsets, and the free market simply ensured they had sufficient supply (and competition) to drive down prices. Such highly competitive marketing, along with high hardware costs (and low margins) led to problems which we continue to see today, however. Software Updates…
Yes, software updates. To the average user, these are relatively unimportant, until something stops working on their phone, and they either blame their last update, or decide their device needs an update to fix it. Updates are expensive, and require significant engineering resources to get right. Getting software right is hard, as OEMs are expected to make software which works on every one of the hundred-plus countries in which their device was sold. The problem is that the engineers are already working on the next mid-range handset, about to be churned out. This makes it very difficult for OEMs to produce software updates for their older phones. This rears its head when major security issues are found, and manufacturers take months to send out a tiny update to fix the bug (and many will never even release such an update, simply deciding it’s too much effort!)
This has led to hardware becoming a commodity, however – companies now ship so many devices, and at such a high pace, that there’s little special about a device launch – there is another one coming up shortly! The sheer competition has turned the very handsets we use into commodities, rushed out of the hands of the engineers and designers, so the next one can be launched. And this leads to devices which are near-identical being released, one after the other.
I could have chosen almost any OEM here, but I chose Sony, since the stagnation of their product line is probably clearest to show. Let’s look at their last three flagships. The Xperia Z2 was released in April 2014, with a Snapdragon 801 (MSM8974AB CPU), which is quad core, 2.3 GHz. The Xperia Z3 was released 5 months later, in September 2014, and boasted a Snapdragon 801 (MSM8974AC), with 4 cores at 2.5 GHz. If you blink and re-read the last sentence, you’re not alone – to spare you the effort of seeking a magnifying glance, the different between these two handsets is a slightly different stepping of CPU, and a boost of 200 MHz (on a device which is already at 2.3 GHz). The devices are otherwise pretty much identical, to the extent that I’ve seen a Z3 go into a Z2 case and look fairly comfortable.
Sony Xperia Z4 and Xperia Z3
With the Z3+, Sony moved to the Snapdragon 810 radiator, ahem, CPU. To be precise, the MSM8994. This is a bit different, having 4 low-power cores, and 4 regular 2 GHz cores. Otherwise, the device is pretty much the same. There’s really very little difference between any of them. I was tempted to place a link here to some comparison between the devices based on synthetic benchmarks. Instead, I chose not to, and to simply point out that there’s very little difference between any of the devices. And arguably the Z3+ (with its inbuilt egg-fryer capabilities) would be slower under certain conditions (such as those that don’t involve sitting idle!).
Putting aside those yolks (sorry, last one, I promise), there is a serious point here – there is almost no compelling difference between 3 subsequent generations of Sony devices. Why would someone with a Z2 upgrade? What does the new device have, which the old device doesn’t have? With hardware having reached commodity status (as discussed above), we’re at the point where the answer frankly is “nothing”.
2015 has been a somewhat boring year for phones. The biggest excitement to the market probably came from Samsung, who decided to grind the corners off the glass of an S6, and call it the S6 Edge. While there’s no doubt customers find it a nice-looking phone, I’ve heard many argue it’s a gimmick. It’s certainly not something which interests me. Yet in a stagnant market, it’s captured the interests of customers, and led to record demand. Indeed, I believe at one point, Samsung’s glass-edge-removal process couldn’t keep up with the demand!
Why? Because the software is rushed, and everyone is focusing on the commodity hardware. Nobody is taking the time to do some proper quality assurance, and actually sit down and test out the phone with a fresh pair of eyes over the experience. Android, even on 5.1.1, is slower and more sluggish than a recent iPhone. And I say this as a devout Android user. We don’t need any more CPU cores, or any more GHz. And heck, we don’t need integrated frying pans on our phones. What we need is proper, high quality, well-tested software, written by expert embedded systems engineers. Ones who are paid to be perfectionists. Who will refuse to create a shippable version of the software until they are happy it’s just right. And that will never happen, as the commercial pressures are just too great, to get yet another phone out of the door, and move on.
That’s not an option for your new commodity hardware though – a replaceable battery would make your phone last too long! Much better to seal that battery up, and stop you from replacing it, to force you to buy another phone down the line. But hey, maybe by then they will have fixed that horrific memory leak, which plagues your current phone? As it’s not like you’re realistically going to get a fix for that any time soon, as the firmware developers are already having the whip cracked over them to get ready for the next generation of phones for the holidays, and for CES and MWC in early 2016.
What we need is a moratorium. A year where nobody releases a single new handset. There are already more than enough to choose from. Let’s try to get things right first! Let’s fix software on phones, and make it reliable. Let’s work out a way to separate the hardware from the OS, so we can make an operating system which is properly abstracted (like an operating system is on your PC), that doesn’t require the wheel to be reinvented each time. OEMs won’t like it – they will feel they’ll sell less phones. But if they launched less phones, and spent more time getting their existing ones to work properly, perhaps we’d actually see some real innovation on the market?
Users want a high quality experience. I can see that. You can see that. Just the OEMs can’t. They would rather churn out a new phone for the sake of it, than fix their existing ones. It’s wasteful, and it’s expensive, and it ultimately drives up their costs and prices. LG recently reported it makes an average of just 1.2 cents profit per phone they sell. That’s not a lot! It’s not sustainable.
Manufacturers are starting to wise up, and realise they can’t say the solution to every problem is to buy a new phone. That’s why it’s good news to hear that Samsung and LG will join Google in pushing monthly security updates, and working with carriers to get this to happen. Users are no longer willing to tolerate the idea of “there’s a security bug in the software on your phone, time to buy a new one.” And about time too — perhaps this will be enough to focus OEMs back onto innovating, and creating a quality experience for their customers, rather than trying to sell 2 new near-identical handsets per year, and putting off even their most loyal fans in the process, always waiting on the “next one”.
There’s always something new, just around the corner, about to hit the shelves. That’s the way of the technology industry. But given the low margins in mobile, if customers continue to feel hoodwinked by perpetual “same” product releases, and wait for the “next one”, there might not be a “next one”. Companies can no longer compete on specifications alone, and are going to instead need to innovate. A cynic could argue this explains the popularity of sealed batteries and non-upgradeable storage. But given that 2014 and 2015 flagships are incredibly capable in their own right, we could well see users entrenching themselves and waiting out for better. And heck, it’s not like you’d be suffering by doing so.
Or heck, get a glass grinder and grind the edge off the screen of your current phone, and leave it in the sun for a while. You’ve just built your own flagship! (Please don’t actually do this, or this may happen – see folks, removable batteries are important after all!)
