Android this week: Nexus Prime launches; tablet sales data; Android 4.0 arrives

Googles next flagship phone, long called the Nexus Prime, was introduced as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Wednesday morning this past week. The phone debuted at a Samsung press event in Hong Kong and confirmed many rumors circling around the handsets hardware. Even so, the news has led to some questioning how cutting-edge the Nexus actually is.

A quick run-down of thespecificationsfor those who missed the announcement:

  • 4.65-inch 1280 x 720-pixel Super AMOLED HD with curved glass
  • TI OMAP 4460 dual-core Cortex A9 processor clocked at 1.2 GHz
  • 1 GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal storage
  • 5 megapixel rear camera with 1080p video capture, 1.3 megapixel front facing camera
  • LTE / HSPA mobile broadband
  • Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, NFC support, barometer sensor

The Galaxy Nexus is the first handset to use a Samsung Super AMOLED display thats 4.65-inches in size. With a computer-like resolution, the screen should be stunning. However, detailed analysis of the technology by FlatPanelsHD shows that the display uses sub-pixels, which means some pixels are shared. Ill have to see the screen for myself, but I suspect only the most discriminating users will see any issues.

Some enthusiasts are also disappointed by Samsungs choice of a 5 megapixel rear camera sensor. I agree that Samsung missed an opportunity here at least for th! ose who care mostly about megapixels but as the iPhone 4 has shown for more than year, with the right image processing software and camera sensor, a 5 megapixel camera can shoot excellent pictures. Well get a better feel for the camera quality soon, as Verizon has announced it will carry an LTE version of the Galaxy Nexus before year end.

Hardware of course, is only part of the equation for any mobile device. Along with the new phone, Google introduced Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich, which is the version that will run on the Galaxy Nexus. Everything you need to know about Android 4.0 is here, but a basic summary from what I saw during the introduction includes:

  • A cleaner, more consistent user interface
  • Roboto, a new system font
  • Notifications in the lock screen
  • Facial recognition for unlocking the phone
  • Improved cut/copy/paste
  • Voice recognition in near real-time for text input
  • Updated core apps, i.e.; Gmail, Calendar, etc
  • Detailed data usage monitoring with customizable alerts
  • Contacts are now People, with social network integration
  • Android Beam: a method to share data wirelessly via NFC proximity

Android 4.0 looks far more like a finished product than Honeycomb, or Android 3.0 and it should unify Google-powered smartphones and tablets. Ultimately, that could help Android tablet sales, although some think theyre selling just fine.

A research report from Strategy Analytics this past week suggests that Android tablets now hold more than a quarter of the tablet market and are quickly eating into Appl! es iPad sales. Upon closer inspection of the analysis, there are severaldiscrepanciesand interpretations that simply dont make sense to me. I outlined some data points that indicate Android tablets still arent selling well.

Perhaps with Android 4.0 in combination with quad-core chips, well see an uptick in Android tablets next year.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Samsung asks ITC to ban the import of Apple devices

Image
The back-and-forth in the patent dispute between Samsung and Apple continues, with Samsung filing a request for a U.S. import ban against the iPhone, iPad and iPod, FOSS Patents reports . The complaint was filed with the International Trade Commission (ITC) on Tuesday. The ITC is a government regulatory body, which acts independently of the courts. Apple seems to be gearing up for a preliminaryinjunctionrequest in its legal case against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, but it hasnt sought any action from the ITC, unlike in previous cases against competing smartphone manufacturers such as HTC . Samsungs move is a clever way to beat Apple to a potentially hobbling import ban, since the ITCs decision is independent of the ongoing court case, and a final decision is reached within a fairly set time frame of 16 to 18 months, once the ITC agrees to investigate. Apple is likely to respond with a complaint of its own, according to FOSS Patents Floria...
Keep reading

China to make Tesla the next BMW

Image
Tesla's China business is booming Hong-Kong traded Tencent, a company best known for its WeChat messaging app, disclosed in a Tuesday filing that it's  taken a 5 percent stake in Tesla for $1.78 billion.  The investment follows Tencent's new stake in taxi-hailing app Didi Chuxing, which can be accessed through WeChat. "I think Tencent likely wanted exposure to a company that was growing very quickly in electric and autonomous" vehicles, said Tasha Keeney, an analyst on the  ARK Industrial Innovation ETF (ARKQ) , whose top holding is Tesla. "We think the autonomous mobility as a service market could be $10 trillion in gross sales globally by the early 2030s, and companies like Tesla or  Baidu  could take a cut of that," she said. Tesla declined to comment to CNBC. Tencent did not respond to emailed requests for comment. A Tencent spokesperson  told The Wall Street Journal  that "Tesla is a global pioneer at the forefront of new te...
Keep reading

Who Will Create iTunes for the Cloud?

Image
If youre like me, your digital media life is messy. If I were to take inventory of where all my digital media resides, the list would include Flickr, Facebook, iTunes, Android, Netflix, YouTube, Picasa, Flipshare, Amazon, Kindle, iBooks, Windows PC, Mac, iPad and so on. Like I said, a mess. And while Im an early adopter, Im probably not very different from tens of millions of consumers who face digital media anarchy every day across the various screens, accounts and software populating their life. Apple is the first company to even come close to helping us manage this chaos, with iTunes. After it was first introduced a decade ago, the service becamehugely popular partly because it was the first cohesive management tool for first music, then later other types of media. But iTunes has gotten flabby with age , and the creaking has gotten more noticeable lately as the cloud becomes more and more important for digital media storage. In a way, iTunes has become the Windows of consumer medi...
Keep reading