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Andy Rubin's Essential Products Announces Modular Smartphone and Amazon Echo Rival
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Because even with 4GB, and the 835 processor, my Samsung S8 stutters and lags more than I like. So I keep going back to my iPhone 7. (Galaxy S8 was a "curiosity buy" for me). The experience with iPhone 7 is smooth like a fluent flow, it just works, no matter which app I use. The S8 has frustrating hiccups.
That experience, with 2 gigs of RAM, really shows how polished iOS is, and the apps that run on it.
I'm eagerly waiting for the "iPhone 8", as the only thing I'd want from the S8 is the bigger screen in a smallish form factor. The 4.7" screen seems so tiny after using the S8. And about the curved edges? No thank you. It looks like a nice design, but the curves are not practical at all.
Apple excels at creating this type of elegant closed system. They're so big now that I don't think standardization across all makers is as much of an issue as you make it out to be. The lightning connector, iTunes, App Store, etc are all standardized inside the garden walls and there are plenty of 3rd party vendors reaping profits. If Apple built this sort of thing the 3rd party monitor and input device manufacturers would continue to follow suit, because there are enough participants in the ecosystem to make it very profitable.
If what you say is true, then Apple's marketshare should be close to 100%, or near it. But it isn't.
Even if Apple added support for some kind of KVM docking station, what makes you think most employers that currently use Windows would suddenly switch to Apple? If they haven't already switched to Mac or iPad as the main worker-bee workstation of choice, they aren't going to suddenly switch to Apple's proprietary docking station solution.
Only if, for some reason, the docking station product was standardized across all platforms, where the station made by Dell worked equally well with an iPhone and vice-versa, would people be able to use my Apple smartphone for work at work.
And offices are just one example. Imagine being the designer of Starbucks locations. How do you choose which KVM docking station to install for your use of your customers? Apple? Dell? HP? Lenovo? Picking one would exclude all others. A mix based on local usage shares? But that would only represent one slice of time, and the usage shares are constantly changing. Picking none of them is probably the way to go, until one emerges as the dominant standard.
More RAM does not fix that issue. I could get into a long conversation about it, but basically it's the OS.
It's irrelevant how Jobs viewed Rubin. In many ways, Android has surpassed iOS and the UI design is actually close nowadays. To me, it seems that the last few iterations of iOS have been mostly adding features found on Android (it used to be the other way around).
I use both, although my daily phone is a Galaxy S7 Edge, primarily because of the considerably better camera when compared to the current iPhone. If this has a better camera, I am in.
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Hint: the camera. Longer zooms, even better quality pics and video. Apple has some catching up to do in this area and I really hope they do it with the iPhone 8. If not, they better have a new secret product....
The Echo/ Google Home competitor seems interesting, although with my Alexas I never bother to get close enough to look at a screen, so I doubt it'd be all that useful. The Alexa screen is at least large enough for video calls.
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I agree. Most of these smart phones resemble each other one way or the other. Eventually, the physical appearance of the Phone wears off and it comes down to experience and internal features. A lot of times, it's the smaller features that are less hyped than the whole redesign of a phone that matter in the long run.
The problem is that you used an Samsung phone... Samsung phones are loaded with bloatware and unnecessary background processes that make their decent modern hardware run worse then older, less bloated phones. I own a goggle pixel as my daily phone and can say it is on par if not slightly faster in day to day tasks then my family member's iPhone 7. The point I am trying to make here is that Samsung is a very poor example of the capabilities of the latest Android operating system.
Two things companies haven't figured out in this rush to make their phones bezel free - where to put the fingerprint scanner and where to put the front facing camera. This unfortunately flubs both. It's a shame too, I had high hopes for it.
Once someone figures out the best solutions, the rest of the industry will flock to it. Just hope someone does quickly.
Once someone figures out the best solutions, the rest of the industry will flock to it. Just hope someone does quickly.
A very nice first attempt. Especially interested in Ambient OS and keeping as much of the AI as possible on the device vs the cloud.
Background should not go to the top of the screen since it makes it look weird. Top of the screen should be reserved signal strength, battery indicator, etc.
no round bezels, good design besides the rear fingerprint sensor.
Android needs way more memory than iOS.
I have to say I am one who is not on board with fingerprint sensor on the back. I easily unlock my phone with one hand while not even looking at it, so by the time I have lifted it to see, its unlocked. Now, maybe I could get used to doing that with it on the back but.........here is just one of MANY examples I could list why it still wouldn't work for me. I have my phone mounted just under the radio on my dash. Its a good location to see and use maps and play music. Many times I make a stop, like a gas station. Pause music, run in, come out. Start driving and you know what happened??? The phone locks while I was out of car. So, no big deal, I just rest my finger on home button. Mind you, the phone is sitting in landscape and it STILL recognizes my finger even sideways. I now just touch my finger to home button....done. While Im driving, dont need to look down, just feel for home button and done.
Now if the sensor was on the back, I would have to remove phone from how its sitting as I cant get to the back of it. Annoying. Again,on back I would have to take it off of mount, unlock, replace. Is this a end of the world scenario? No, just a little thing. But there are about ten of those just off the top of my head. They start to add up and then it becomes a big deal. So I personally would be really disappointed if the sensor was moved to the back.
Now if the sensor was on the back, I would have to remove phone from how its sitting as I cant get to the back of it. Annoying. Again,on back I would have to take it off of mount, unlock, replace. Is this a end of the world scenario? No, just a little thing. But there are about ten of those just off the top of my head. They start to add up and then it becomes a big deal. So I personally would be really disappointed if the sensor was moved to the back.
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Well I just listened to the "reveal keynote" if you could call it that... Have to say I am rather disappointed. The design is great but it uses a traditional LCD instead of OLED and aside from the connector it does not really seem like it has anything else that differentiates it from the rest of the phone market. I would be ok with this except for the fact that it costs $700... I do like the titanium build but LCD instead of OLED is the deal breaker for me.
Foldable devices with responsive screens. Meaning they adjust their UI layout depending on how much of the screen is folded out. Devices that are both full blown 12" tablets and fold up to the size and thickness of an 5" iPhone...
That Essential Home is essentiallywhat I expect Apple to do for the Siri Speaker. Something between an AppleTV and a Google Home, using a circular display on the top just like that.
If the Apple Watch is any indication, we won't see a circular display on an Apple device.
Especially if the intention is to support video calling, as with the Amazon Show, where people are more used to rectangular TV like screens for such calls.
And/or his company cannot possibly afford to match the huge cloud capabilities of Amazon or Google, nor does he wish to pay for renting such access.
I just got my S8 for last few days and it is pretty fast and smooth. I think one reason there are stutters sometimes is because Android can scroll much faster than IOS. So the loading of data needs to catch up with the scroll. If you scroll at the slow speed of Iphone then it will be buttery smooth. Personally, I rather have the fast scroll with occasional stutters than Iphone slow buttery scroll.
I like the looks of it, especially the vanishingly thin bezels. But will it measure up performance-wise? Considering how crowded the smartphone market is, and how labor-and-research-intensive new entries to the available offerings are, at least if they are to offer a distinguishing user experience, you gotta hand it to Andy for even attempting.
Definitely curious to see some reviews on it, and if it measures up, I would consider one.
Yes I also noticed this on the iPhone. At first I thought it was broken lol, then I looked up why scrolling is so slow and it seems that's the iPhone way. It would drive me crazy.
I much prefer Android's scrolling - I scroll very fast, and my phone does it generally very smoothly. It can stutter a bit when loading stuff on the fly, but then again, in these scenarios my iPad stutters a lot more and crashes its browser window quite frequently, so I think iOS has no lessons whatsoever to teach in respect to scrolling, being rubbish at it and giving the fake perception of smoothness simply by artificially limiting scroll rates.
Apparently Apple is changing their scrolling for iOS 11. It should be faster inertia scrolling like the rest of their apps. Only Safari scrolls like this.
I just gave my Pixel to my kid and am back using my Nexus 6 so this launch is pretty much perfect timing to replace the Pixel
Yep, back at the beginning, iOS preloaded all the scroll info, whereas Android loaded it on the fly as needed.
With long lists, this caused stuttering on Android. It also caused crashes on iOS if the list grew too long.
Good to know. Of course, this won't help my older iPads since they don't get OS updates any more.
On Android, core apps like the browser are kept updated separately from the OS.
I did not say that. Nor I know if they need or not, I am mentioning the competition and tech out there. Please don't manipulate me or my words.
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thanks for clarification
