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No more Nexus?

ArsTechnica's Ron Amadeo mentioned his thoughts on the whole "Nexus is dead" thing, in a post he titled "Dumb Things in the News Today":

"The Nexus line will be discontinued." Google needs a piece of hardware that they control to develop Android on. Google does a little more work and turns those development devices into production devices.

I'll quote +Dave Burke "as an engineering team creating a mobile platform — we can't [develop Android] in the abstract. We need to do it on a real device that we're carrying with us. When people ask me about the Nexus line, I like to joke that if you need to create a few hundred polished and usable devices for Google engineers, why not make a few hundred thousand more and sell them to hardcore users?" The Moto X proves Google still needs the Nexus program | The Verge

Until Google controls some other phone platform the Android team is still going to need to make phones. Might as well release them.
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i am banning myself indefinitely because i am dumb. yesterday i predict moto is the next nexus. today moto is the next lenovo.

no more stupid prognostications from here for a period of 30 days.:mad:
 
boathead said:
i am banning myself indefinitely because i am dumb. yesterday i predict moto is the next nexus. today moto is the next lenovo.

no more stupid prognostications from here for a period of 30 days.:mad:
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That was definitely a curveball that I don't think many saw coming.
 
Indeed. For almost 2 years we are told that Moto are working through the pre-Google models. Last year the first 2 Google-era designs are released. A few months later they sell the company.

Yeah, they really know how to see a strategy through...
 
Most of the rom devs i know have nexus 5s. Some of them (Paranoid Android for example) only officially support nexus' now.
Is this because they prefer nexus to develop on or because theyre cheaper than the GPEs? Is it easier to port a rom developed on a nexus to other devices vs one developed on a GPE?
Ill maybe ask a few of the friendlier ones :)
Dibblebill for example :beer:
 
funkylogik said:
Most of the rom devs i know have nexus 5s. Some of them (Paranoid Android for example) only officially support nexus' now.
Is this because they prefer nexus to develop on or because theyre cheaper than the GPEs? Is it easier to port a rom developed on a nexus to other devices vs one developed on a GPE?
Ill maybe ask a few of the friendlier ones :)
Dibblebill for example :beer:
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One of the reason's it's easier is because Google posts the binaries for the device right on their website, thus reducing the need for developers to reverse engineer some of them to create AOSP roms. Even on GPE devices, the binaries aren't published.
 
So by scrapping Nexus, google would be doing 3rd party devs a mis-service?
How about app developers. could it make things harder on them?
 
funkylogik said:
Most of the rom devs i know have nexus 5s. Some of them (Paranoid Android for example) only officially support nexus' now.
Is this because they prefer nexus to develop on or because theyre cheaper than the GPEs? Is it easier to port a rom developed on a nexus to other devices vs one developed on a GPE?
Ill maybe ask a few of the friendlier ones :)
Dibblebill for example :beer:
Click to expand...
Thats kind of the way its always been. Most AOSP development happens on a nexus device, simply because its the easiest. Google gives them all they need to get to work--- They have the source readily available, always an unlockable bootloader, a crazy easy root method, the binary's, and the factory image in case things go wrong.

After that, developers will attempt to port the ROMs to other devices, with mixed success, depending on how open those devices are.
 
App developers are independent of that, but as already stated, its easier to build for a Nexus 10 than, say, a One, evne though a GPE exists of the One.
 
I asked Sean Hoyt from Liquid Smooth and he doesnt mind as long as there are GPE phones (and presumably as long as they get swift updates)
 
funkylogik said:
I asked Sean Hoyt from Liquid Smooth and he doesnt mind as long as there are GPE phones (and presumably as long as they get swift updates)
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That's what I'm worried about. The OEM's are responsible for the updates to those devices which means they might not hold up that end of the bargain. We also haven't had a GPE device reach the age for EOL and how long it will last compared to a Nexus device. Needless to say it makes me nervous.
 
funkylogik said:
I asked Sean Hoyt from Liquid Smooth and he doesnt mind as long as there are GPE phones (and presumably as long as they get swift updates)
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From a non developer standpoint...

The issue with GPE for me is that the cost is outrageous... There's no way I could float that every year like I could with the nexus devices.

The hardware and the software aren't in sync- The ONE or the S4 both come out with IR blasters.... something that AOSP didnt support until just recently. So you're paying for hardware you can't even use.

The software is severly lacking from its non-GPE counterpart. If I'm going to buy an HTC ONE, I want to take advantage of HTC's awesome camera software. All of that get nix'd on a GPE device. You lose the "ultra pixels".

And you're still paying basically the same amount as the phone that isn't missing all of that.
 
Yeah i defintely agree about the price. Google should be encouraging development. Or maybe now that android is mature they dont care about upstream (downstream?) development?
Whats EOL jhawk mate?
 
funkylogik said:
Yeah i defintely agree about the price. Google should be encouraging development. Or maybe now that android is mature they dont care about upstream (downstream?) development?
Whats EOL jhawk mate?
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End of life, typically 2 years for a device.

Basically the point at which manufacturers stop updating.

Google updates nexus phones until the hardware can't take the update.

Other manufacturers end much sooner because they'd rather have you buy a new device
 
Yeah, the Galaxy Nexus would have likely received KitKat if Texas Instruments didn't stop supporting OMAP chipsets. I foresee EOL for the first gen Nexus 7 coming somewhat soon because I think NVIDIA has stopped supporting Tegra 3 chipsets last I checked.
 
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