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[thespot84]

And what if you could tell the difference?

Well it gets tricky. Can I tell the difference in the store, side-by-side? Will I actually know the difference when it's at home in my living room and I have not against which to compare? If I actually could see the difference during normal use at home (ie the viewing distance was too close) then it changes the calculus, and I'd have to decide what was more important to me, resolution or the aesthetic. I'm a hi-fi kinda guy (fidelity has to be good enough, no tv speakers for me), so it would be a serious consideration, sure.

You've said you can tell the difference on the moto x, and the reviews seem to confirm as much. Given that you haven't used the phone as a daily driver I'm still skeptical that you or the reviewers would be pining for more PPI without something side-by-side to compare to, but that's just a guess.

The fact remains that moto maker is a big reason this phone is the same price as the other flagships. Without manufactur in the US customized phones would take 4-6 weeks to deliver (by boat) or be $100 more (via air freight). It is my suspicion that the hardware in the phone is on the order of ~$10-20 cheaper on the BOM (I did a quick and dirty analysis on this previously), while the US manufacturing at least makes up the difference, hence the retail price. That aesthetic is important to some people, and not important to others. For those of us who value the customization, it's no skin of our back to "give up" the extra hardware specs, the argument being that we'd never notice much of a benefit from the extra specs to begin with.

What I'm still confused about is why I haven't seen any moto X commercials. With a $500MM budget I expect to see ads on my fucking toilet paper, yet I've seen almost nothing. Maybe they'll launch this thursday during the NFL season opener. Either way, I find the story compelling, and I suspect a lot of other "normal" people will too, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Vanillalite]

It's gonna be hilarious when Apple releases theirs and then all of a sudden everyones smartwatch starts looking different. Just sad right now.

Even the pebble looks miles better, and that is already out.

 

[vivftp]

So Sony release a new phone in Japan, Xperia UL SOL22 , its basically a Xperia Z with different radio options and a 2300 mah removable battery. While we lost LG to the dark army of non-removable battery, Sony may come around to the light side.

For the most part Sony seems perfectly happy to put removable batteries in their phones, so long as they don't have a glass back. There are instances where this isn't true, and it is kinda perplexing as it'd be nice if they had one design choice on the matter. Anyways, so long as they go with the glass rears, I don't think we'll see removable batteries on those phones.

Holy fuck Samsung you need to hire a new design team...

LOL!

It looks like a monstrosity compared to the Sony Smart Watch 2

To be quite honest I wanted to get that Sony watch, but it just doesn't seem like a large enough upgrade over the previous versions to convince me to get it. Now that I'm seeing what the competition is rolling out and the rumors saying Apple won't have theirs ready until late next year, I guess Sony went with the conservative route because there wasn't going to be much in the way of good compeition this year. By the time Apple is supposedly going to roll out their new watch the Sony Smart Watch 3 should be good to go.

 

[Junior Mint]

Can't believe they just put a shrunken down S3 on a watch band. Same ugly ass shiny purple too.

 

[gcubed]

That's such a horrible horrible idea Samsung

 

[Cipherr]

Piss poor design on it all around. Sonys looks great to me. The Samsung one is garbage.

 

[The Faceless Master]

Holy fuck Samsung you need to hire a new design team...

 

[Liquidus]

Holy fuck Samsung you need to hire a new design team...

Bwahahaha. Holy shit. Typical Samsung. Throw in terrible design, terrible materials, a shitty AMOLED screen and Touchwiz and you have their entire mobile product line.

 

[BootlegSnackz]

I love using YouTube on my phone but why hasn't Google caught on to the fact that you don't have the ability to click on links to other videos within the video? Hopefully they have a fix coming soon for that...

Not really familiar with the tech but does it have something to do with html5 video? And what does the mobile app use?

 

[Vanillalite]

God I use the shit out of my 2013 Nexus 7.

 

[Bboy AJ]

That watch looks like crap. There's no way that's it. ...right? It's such rubbish.

I'd want my smart watch to be e ink.

 

[Cipherr]

That watch looks like crap. There's no way that's it. ...right? It's such rubbish.

I'd want my smart watch to be e ink.

Its a prototype from the article, but still, I wouldn't imagine it being that much different.

 

[Groof]

Holy fuck Samsung you need to hire a new design team...

If I was by my computer this is where I'd insert a slow clap .gif

 

[Vanillalite]

Anyone creating a thread for this weeks mega show in Berlin?

 

[Ephemeris]

Just bought both my parents Nexus 4's.

welp.jpg

Got my mom a Nexus too.

I'll be keeping a close eye on Sammy's watch. I'm 100% for wearables but I'm concerned that they're not going the Google Play Route

 

[The Faceless Master]

OK, let's revisit this SD card situation again. It's been about a year. What do you guys actually store on there?

In my situation, it's only worth it for pictures. Music is worthless since Google All Access doesn't let you store on the SD card. Pictures I could manually move over but with G+ autoupload, it's not that big of a deal. Everything else can't be used on the SD card, thankfully. I'm glad we're finally moving toward being civilized. Now if only 32GB were the standard, things would be great.

revisit? did you not notice the #1 Android OEM is PUTTING APPS FROM SD BACK IN THEIR FIRMWARE IN THE LATEST UPDATE due to consumer demand? how many people have you seen in the Nexus and Moto x threads really excited for the device then they find out there is no SD card and they sigh?

in my situation, i'm rooted and use GL to SD..

 

[Vox-Pop]

Anyone creating a thread for this weeks mega show in Berlin?

Hope we get some 5.0 and N10 info.

 

[gcubed]

so... can someone tell me something wrong with AIO Wireless once it goes nationwide this month?

$55 - 2Gb
$70 - 7Gb

Sounds awesome to me

 

[GatorBait]

OK, let's revisit this SD card situation again. It's been about a year. What do you guys actually store on there?

In my situation, it's only worth it for pictures. Music is worthless since Google All Access doesn't let you store on the SD card. Pictures I could manually move over but with G+ autoupload, it's not that big of a deal. Everything else can't be used on the SD card, thankfully. I'm glad we're finally moving toward being civilized. Now if only 32GB were the standard, things would be great.

I think it is mainly useful for people that: 1) Haven't bought in to using "the cloud" on a day-to-day basis (or their data caps make it prohibitive), or 2) just enjoy the convenience of having the extra storage and never having to mess around with file management.

With both an Android phone and tablet, I've been seeing more and more the benefit into using Google's cloud-based services. All my music is uploaded to Google Music and most of my computer documents are uploaded to Google Drive. Soon, I'll upload all the pictures on my PC to G+, as well.

I've gotten into the habit of pinning music when I know I'm going to want to listen to a certain album (at the gym, for example) to help cut down on data usage, so that took a little bit of a change in my typical routine compared to just having all my songs on my phone all the time. I also suspect I'll take a lot more pictures once I turn auto-upload on. Honestly, the old school method of uploading pictures to your PC manually and sorting through them on their was always so annoying to me. Now I can just auto-upload, hopefully get some cool auto-awesomed pictures, and I'll be able to sort and manage photos anywhere (10 min wait at the barber? Might as well clean up that massive stash of pictures I took during my vacation in Germany).

Until we have no data caps and high-speed wireless coverage all over the country, there is still going to be some use for removable SD cards. However, I suspect a decent chunk of SD card proponents would be fine with leaving them behind if they gave some cloud-based solutions a trial run.

 

[this_guy]

so... can someone tell me something wrong with AIO Wireless once it goes nationwide this month?

$55 - 2Gb
$70 - 7Gb

Sounds awesome to me

I used AIO for 2 months, then just recently switched to Metropcs (Tmobiles service and LTE but cheaper pricing). AIO gives you AT&T service with throttled speeds - up to 8mb/s on LTE and 4mb/s when on hspa. They do use a proxy server so ping times are higher than using AT&T directly, most of my speed tests have ping times of 250ms+. In real world usage its plenty fast and I have no issues streaming videos with those speeds. The only thing that I didn't like was AIO does not support premium SMS/SMS short codes. I have dual authentication for my Gmail and Facebook account, so whenever I try logging in from a new device I receive a text to authorize the log in. Same thing with my online bank account. Since AIO doesn't support this those texts never come through, so I have to change my privacy settings.

Other than that, if AT&T has good coverage in your area then its a good service to use. With all of the prepaid options out there nowadays I don't ever plan on signing a contract with the big 4 carriers.

 

[mingoguaya]

I must be in the minority here, but I definitely welcome the idea of a smartwatch. I work as a delivery driver, and thus is not as easy as "taking the phone out of the pocket in 2 seconds when a notification arrives". My eyes need to be focused on road most of the time, but to be completely honest, Im still checking notifications when they come by doing exactly the way I just described. Imagine a 45 min drive, lets say I get 10 notifications. Multiply these by 5 seconds (2 seconds to get out, 1 second to read/dismiss, 2 seconds to put back on pocket). That is 50 seconds that I spend NOT looking at the road (and thus at a much greater risk of having an accident).

And yeah, I know a lot of you will say: "Wait until you get to a stop or pull over to verify your notifications, etc" but lets be honest here, a lot of us will just check them as they arrive. Now, if I had a smartwatch and I received a notification, it will take me less than half a second to verify whatever just arrived at my device, and decide if I want to dismiss or pull over to reply etc.... multiply that by 10.... and its only 5 seconds. And yeah, I know some will say that : "Yeah, it takes less than a second of someone having their eyes off the road to have an accident, etc" but if I can cut my time spent looking at notifications by 90%, for me, personally, it is worth it.

Now, about that Samsung..... 3 inches? Really? Thats almost a freaking iPhone 4 on your wrist, for God's sake!

 

[Junior Mint]

Why the fuck did Twitter get rid of tweet sharing. Now it just links you to a tweet when you share it. Why the fuck would I want to link to a 160 character message?

 

[ThatObviousUser]

I must be in the minority here, but I definitely welcome the idea of a smartwatch. I work as a delivery driver, and thus is not as easy as "taking the phone out of the pocket in 2 seconds when a notification arrives". My eyes need to be focused on road most of the time, but to be completely honest, Im still checking notifications when they come by doing exactly the way I just described. Imagine a 45 min drive, lets say I get 10 notifications. Multiply these by 5 seconds (2 seconds to get out, 1 second to read/dismiss, 2 seconds to put back on pocket). That is 50 seconds that I spend NOT looking at the road (and thus at a much greater risk of having an accident).

You are a bad person and you should feel bad.

 

[gcubed]

I used AIO for 2 months, then just recently switched to Metropcs (Tmobiles service and LTE but cheaper pricing). AIO gives you AT&T service with throttled speeds - up to 8mb/s on LTE and 4mb/s when on hspa. They do use a proxy server so ping times are higher than using AT&T directly, most of my speed tests have ping times of 250ms+. In real world usage its plenty fast and I have no issues streaming videos with those speeds. The only thing that I didn't like was AIO does not support premium SMS/SMS short codes. I have dual authentication for my Gmail and Facebook account, so whenever I try logging in from a new device I receive a text to authorize the log in. Same thing with my online bank account. Since AIO doesn't support this those texts never come through, so I have to change my privacy settings.

Other than that, if AT&T has good coverage in your area then its a good service to use. With all of the prepaid options out there nowadays I don't ever plan on signing a contract with the big 4 carriers.

hmmm, well the proxy causing up to 250ms ping times on LTE is a bummer. I don't mind the 8mb throttle, but the biggest benefit was the response times with LTE. I dont think ATT Go Phone has those limits, correct? I'd rather spend a few more dollars and go that route.

 

[tino]

Whoever first figure out how to make non retangular LCD will make tons of money with smart watch.

But until then, smart watch is not taking off.

 

[vdlow]

Why the fuck did Twitter get rid of tweet sharing. Now it just links you to a tweet when you share it. Why the fuck would I want to link to a 160 character message?

It gets worse when you think that it's actually 140 characters.

 

[jobber]

Are any of the current Google TV set top boxes better than getting the LG TV with the Google TV built in?

I know some are getting 4.3 later this year...the one I have now isn't. All support for this Revue has ended and the latest Google apps are breaking it >_>

Sony has an expensive box but it does nothing better than the rest of the current set tops. Plus you have to pay another $50 to get a remote that supports voice commands.

Don't you say Chromecast. I ranted about that shit in the Chromecast thread. Not the television experience I was looking for.

Vizio co-star looks nice since it supports OnLive out the box, but that shit has been out for a year.

 

[Sqrt_minus_one]

You know you can connect your phone to your car via Bluetooth and read notifications that way.

IMO there is room for a smart watch but it should not be a full scale android device but an extension to your phone. So the ability to connect via BT to the phone and a headset, so can read notifications out loud to the headset and act as a remote for the phone no need for it to have WiFi or try and provide a full scale android experience. Would be very interesting if Google integrated that always on listening tech into it so it can fwd requests to your phone via bluetooth. Basically function like a remote and secondary display no need to have anything more powerful than a single core cortex A7.

Also battery life and conservation is going to be a big issue it needs to last days to be viable in my opinion.

 

[CygnusXS]

I understand that there are use cases for smart watches, I just don't ever see it being more than a niche market.

 

[mingoguaya]

You are a bad person and you should feel bad.

Am I really? Lets be honest, EVERYONE does this (and I have a vantage point because of the height of my vehicle, trust me, I've seen some stuff!!). If anything, Im a sincere person.

You know you can connect your phone to your car via Bluetooth and read notifications that way.

Do you know of any delivery driver truck that has a bluetooth system? Because, I dont, and I've been in the business for 14 years. Most of the trucks dont even have a lighter adapter to put your charger into.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Am I really? Lets be honest, EVERYONE does this (and I have a vantage point because of the height of my vehicle, trust me, I've seen some stuff!!). If anything, Im a sincere person.

 

[Junior Mint]

It gets worse when you think that it's actually 140 characters.

I always get the SMS and Twitter character limits mixed up

 

[Jintor]

Just got my Nexus 4 delivered and am trying to transfer over my contacts without having to do it manually.

I can't use the SD card method (obviously) and I butchered my SIM card to turn it into a MicroSIM so some apps aren't working. I tried to use NQ Sync but it refused to actually upload anything to the external server. I tried to use Rainbow Contacts but it persistently crashes whenever it gets a Bluetooth connection. I tried to use the Google sync but my old phone refuses to actually sync for god knows what reason.

Any ideas?

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Enter them manually?

What doesn't work about Google Sync? You haven't been keeping your Gmail contacts in order?

 

[Jintor]

I ended up just importing them through export to storage media and then juggling plugs.

I have no fucking idea why google sync wasn't working. I normally don't sync because I don't need to, so I had it turned off. I turned it on and then it just said "Not working, try again later" which is not what I wanted to hear and is also extremely unhelpful in troubleshooting to boot.

Really sucks Rainbow Contacts didn't work though. that seemed cool.

 

[VanMardigan]

Am I really? Lets be honest, EVERYONE does this (and I have a vantage point because of the height of my vehicle, trust me, I've seen some stuff!!). If anything, Im a sincere person.

What notifications are you getting that are important enough for you to pull your eyes off the road? Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Life or death text messages?

Just put on a podcast and relax, there is absolutely nothing that your phone will make a stupid notification sound for that is more important than you driving safely.

I know a lot of people do it, it still ain't right and its still not worth it. I drive around with a three month old, a two year old, and a seven year old. Please stop.

/PSA

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Agreed. Don't check and drive.

 

[mingoguaya]

What notifications are you getting that are important enough for you to pull your eyes off the road? Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Life or death text messages?

Just put on a podcast and relax, there is absolutely nothing that your phone will make a stupid notification sound for that is more important than you driving safely.

I know a lot of people do it, it still ain't right and its still not worth it. I drive around with a three month old, a two year old, and a seven year old. Please stop.

/PSA

Agreed. Don't check and drive.

I understand you guys completely, and even though I readily admit to doing this from time to time, its not something that I want to do, hence why I think the smartwatch would be something that I would really welcome. It will be a lot easier to glance at a watch for a split second than to actually do the whole phone thing. And I know its not right, trust me, and Im not trying to justify what I do (which is wrong, and Ive been trying to actively minimize the practice), but there are a lot worse people out there doing the same thing.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

I rarely ever look at my phone while driving. Sometimes during red lights, and only the ones I know last a long time, but even then I make sure to not be the idiot standing there when the light turns green because I'm looking down instead of forward.

Looking at every notification is ridiculous.

 

[mingoguaya]

My example was just that, an example. What I wanted to convey was that it would be way easier for someone that is driving and need to check a notification if he/she had a smartwatch than the traditional way that is being done now. And for that specific example, a glimpse at the wrist would be better than pulling out the phone.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

I'm not grilling you I was just sharing what I do

The more glance-able information the better.

 

[this_guy]

hmmm, well the proxy causing up to 250ms ping times on LTE is a bummer. I don't mind the 8mb throttle, but the biggest benefit was the response times with LTE. I dont think ATT Go Phone has those limits, correct? I'd rather spend a few more dollars and go that route.

Yep GoPhone is better because there's no throttle or proxy, and pricing is the same if you look around for discounts. If you're a heavy data user AIO is better because of the higher data limit rate plans.

 

[tino]

I understand you guys completely, and even though I readily admit to doing this from time to time, its not something that I want to do, hence why I think the smartwatch would be something that I would really welcome. It will be a lot easier to glance at a watch for a split second than to actually do the whole phone thing. And I know its not right, trust me, and Im not trying to justify what I do (which is wrong, and Ive been trying to actively minimize the practice), but there are a lot worse people out there doing the same thing.

I think that if you have to see the notification or a txt message, it would be a lot "legaler" to check the watch instead of a phone.

Last time I had to drive for a long road trip, I setup the gesture control so I could swipe 3 fingers on the screen to advance or rewind a music track. But it was more of a pain to use than I thought. There was lag and inconsistency. If I have to make my living on driving all day, I would go back to old iPod mini with all the hardware buttons.

 

[vivftp]

Whoever first figure out how to make non retangular LCD will make tons of money with smart watch.

But until then, smart watch is not taking off.

Well in the meantime I suppose they could use a square LCD/OLED screen and use the frame of the watch to make it look round. Here is my 5 minute concept of how such a thing would look:

I suppose OLED is the better option than LCD as those hidden parts of the screen can be unused and won't draw any power.

 

[Bboy AJ]

OLED dies in the sun, too, doesn't it? I know my Vita is hard to use in sunny rooms without brightness being turned up. That's an instant no to a watch, then. E ink is the best, IMO.

revisit? did you not notice the #1 Android OEM is PUTTING APPS FROM SD BACK IN THEIR FIRMWARE IN THE LATEST UPDATE due to consumer demand? how many people have you seen in the Nexus and Moto x threads really excited for the device then they find out there is no SD card and they sigh?

in my situation, i'm rooted and use GL to SD..

GL to SD looks cool. I didn't know about that. But again, I'm truly wondering why people want an SD since it seems like Google has done their best to make them irrelevant. All Access not being able to pin to the SD is killer for me. Anyway, I'm not trying to change people's minds. I'm just curious. Every year that goes by, the less relevant these things are to me.

 

[Ollie Pooch]

Am I really? Lets be honest, EVERYONE does this (and I have a vantage point because of the height of my vehicle, trust me, I've seen some stuff!!). If anything, Im a sincere person.

At least you're honest These smart watches, for me, sum up everything wrong with how smartphones just take over people's lives. I go out with friends and they're constantly checking for messages, they don't even hear a tone and check if something has come through, like fucking phantom messages or something. It's like a compulsion. And now there's another device to report every piece of mail or text or message that comes through?

Some of them text while driving, with me or others in the car, which I think is hugely irresponsible. Imagine you wiped someone (or yoruself) out because you checked a text or an email while speeding along. EVERY single notification can wait until you aren't on the road.

Luckily this thing looks like shit, so less people will buy them.

 

[brotkasten]

Seeing how Samsung turned smartphones into huge face slappers, where a 4.3" phone is now considered "mini", I wonder if they will do the same for (smart) watches. Can't wait to see everyone wearing 3-4" devices on their wrist in the coming years.

 

[Bboy AJ]

Seeing how Samsung turned smartphones into huge face slappers, where a 4.3" phone is now considered "mini", I wonder if they will do the same for (smart) watches. Can't wait to see everyone wearing 3-4" devices on their wrist in the coming years.

I understand phones getting bigger. There's a lot of content on screen. But watches? All I want are notifications.

 

[Zeppu]

Seeing how Samsung turned smartphones into huge face slappers, where a 4.3" phone is now considered "mini", I wonder if they will do the same for (smart) watches. Can't wait to see everyone wearing 3-4" devices on their wrist in the coming years.

Never in a thousand years.

 

[Groof]

Seeing how Samsung turned smartphones into huge face slappers, where a 4.3" phone is now considered "mini", I wonder if they will do the same for (smart) watches. Can't wait to see everyone wearing 3-4" devices on their wrist in the coming years.

Honestly, at this point it wouldn't surprise me if smartphones ended up becoming smartwatches.