Google X Phone

[Eug]

Given the very nice Motorola Razr HD, and the fact that Motorola has never produced a Nexus, and the fact that Google owns Motorola, and the fact that Moto's skin is very Nexus-like, I figured one of the next Nexus phones in the very near future had to be from Motorola.

It seems that figuring might be correct.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/22/us-google-xphone-idUSBRE8BL01B20121222

Google Inc is working with recently acquired Motorola on a handset codenamed "X-phone", aimed at grabbing market share from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

This is the way it should be done. I haven't been overly impressed with Google's hardware development methodology in the past, which in large part was modifying existing 3rd party designs and throwing Android on top.

 

[lothar]

Motorola has had Nexus device in the past...It just wasn't officially called "Nexus".
Moto Xoom was pretty much a "Nexus" tablet.

Hopefully they will either use Samsung's rounded corners or some derivative and not Motorola's razor sharp corners.
Won't mind having a Motorola Nexus Razr Maxx at all.

 

[ImDonly1]

Hopefully we won't have to wait until end of 2013 for it.

 

[bigrash]

Hopefully we won't have to wait until end of 2013 for it.

I wouldn't be surprised if it took that long to come out.

 

[Eug]

Hopefully we won't have to wait until end of 2013 for it.

I personally am expecting fall 2013.

Motorola has had Nexus device in the past...It just wasn't officially called "Nexus".
Moto Xoom was pretty much a "Nexus" tablet.

Except it wasn't.

Hopefully they will either use Samsung's rounded corners or some derivative and not Motorola's razor sharp corners.
Won't mind having a Motorola Nexus Razr Maxx at all.

I have the Razr HD and it's nice. The Razr Maxx HD would be even nicer. Although not perfect, I much prefer its physical design over the Galaxy S III.

For the X-phone (Quick, Apple, sue for the use of "X"!), I hope they seriously improve the camera, because the one in the Razr HD isn't very good. And I hope they do the Maxx super-battery option again.

Oh, and I still would like to see a physical home button and loss of the three software buttons, but I don't think they'll do it. That's one advantage the Samsung Galaxy S III has over the Razr HD.

 

[TuxDave]

Man, I really wish Google bought another company. On one hand, I hope they come up with something great. But on the other hand I'm still bitter over the several crappy Motorola dumb phones that I bought way back in the day. Made me swear off Motorola for close to a decade now.

 

[Mopetar]

Man, I really wish Google bought another company. On one hand, I hope they come up with something great. But on the other hand I'm still bitter over the several crappy Motorola dumb phones that I bought way back in the day. Made me swear off Motorola for close to a decade now.

Weird, I had the exact opposite experience. Both of the Moto dumb phones that I had lasted 4+ years each and were as good or better than anything else I could get at the time in terms of dumb phones. Even the Droid was pretty damned solid and one of my friends who had one got a lot of life out of it with CM. It was really only after that that Moto seemed to stumble and fall behind HTC and Samsung.

 

[TuxDave]

Weird, I had the exact opposite experience. Both of the Moto dumb phones that I had lasted 4+ years each and were as good or better than anything else I could get at the time in terms of dumb phones. Even the Droid was pretty damned solid and one of my friends who had one got a lot of life out of it with CM. It was really only after that that Moto seemed to stumble and fall behind HTC and Samsung.

Lucky you. My very first phone was a Nokia candy bar and that outlived both Motorola phones that I got over the next 2-3 years. They were horrible! I kept my old Nokia around as my backup all those years and it came in handy.

I would like to think that I was one of the first person to come up with rebooting a dumb phone to make it speed up. After 3 days of use it would lag. A dumb phone! Lag! And by the fourth it would not hold a call and you had to pop out the battery. I wish I could remember the model number but it was a serious turd.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

I personally am expecting fall 2013.


Except it wasn't.


I have the Razr HD and it's nice. The Razr Maxx HD would be even nicer. Although not perfect, I much prefer its physical design over the Galaxy S III.

For the X-phone (Quick, Apple, sue for the use of "X"!), I hope they seriously improve the camera, because the one in the Razr HD isn't very good. And I hope they do the Maxx super-battery option again.

Oh, and I still would like to see a physical home button and loss of the three software buttons, but I don't think they'll do it. That's one advantage the Samsung Galaxy S III has over the Razr HD.

off screen buttons are better, they dont take up screen space

 

[thecapsaicinkid]

This doesn't seem like a Nexus phone to me but an exercise in making something completely different.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

This doesn't seem like a Nexus phone to me but an exercise in making something completely different.

agreed, like a google iphone that will sell for a lot more than a nexus phone. they want too make apple bucks

 

[thecapsaicinkid]

agreed, like a google iphone that will sell for a lot more than a nexus phone. they want too make apple bucks

Everyone reporting this seems to be regurgitating the original article's quote of a 'Google phone to compete with the iPhone'. Erm, Nexus 4?

I'm guessing what they mean is that even though the Nexus 4 is clearly an iPhone for people allergic to the Apple ecosystem, it probably isn't going to move IPhone people to Google devices. Hence the need for this new X device. Something different enough to entice Apple people, some far-out gesture recognition etc. etc.

Or just slap a stupid high sticker price on the Nexus 4 and be done with it.

 

[ultimatebob]

Motorola has had Nexus device in the past...It just wasn't officially called "Nexus".
Moto Xoom was pretty much a "Nexus" tablet.

Hopefully they will either use Samsung's rounded corners or some derivative and not Motorola's razor sharp corners.
Won't mind having a Motorola Nexus Razr Maxx at all.

Yeah... the original Motorola Droid was stock Android, no?

 

[bearxor]

I don't think any Android device is going to move a significant number of people off iPhones.

I don't think any iPhone device is going to move a significant number of people off Android.

The two platforms are fighting more over converting feature phone users, or those with Symbian or BlackBerry than they are over trying to poach from each other right now. Not saying it DOESN'T happen, just that it's not where the focus is.

My favorite phone, before I went Smartphone with the Toshiba 2032SP in 2003, was my Sprint single-band Motorola StarTAC. It just looked so good and was well laid out and easy to handle. It was a very "wearable" device. I still keep it and it still works if I plug it in to charge it. I was never a fan of the Vader or the RAZR. The closest I ever came to switching was the TimePort. But it was way too silver for my tastes. Ahhh, memories.

 

[Eug]

Oh and Google, no excuses about LTE please.

PS. I guess I was out of the Moto loop for a while, but I don't understand the Moto hate. In fact when I went looking for the RAZR HD, the salespeople kept steering toward the Galaxy S III, and I saw some of them were GS3 owners. Odd for me, because I've always disliked the phone. Maybe the hardware button is that much of a draw? Or maybe a big advertising budget and early time to market are more important? If so, maybe summer 2013 is a preferred target date for Google for marketing purposes.

I also wonder if they left out the hardware button to avoid litigation.

 

[soccerballtux]

The reason they're not stealing more market share from iPhone is the software.
-It's simply not intuitive.
-Their upgrades are a step backwards a lot of the time.
4.0.3:
-complicates task switching
-laggy task switching and other things when it renders the tiles
-settings menus in apps change from buttons (easily pressable) to vertical list (harder to find which one you want, harder to remember where it's located spacially on the screen, which is how people learn and "get fast at" using computer products (Microsoft Word, for example, nobody cares under which menu the settings are located, as long as they can remember where to move the pointer).
-laggy experience wasn't fixed until JB (wtf!)
In general:
-They waste updates (Gingerbread), failing to accomplish anything noteworthy
-they take steps backwards in proven-working apps (Voice to Text for example, printing out words 5 seconds after you speak them is very distracting to what you're trying to say currently)
-their manufacturers release buggy phones and unpolished software (Sense 3.6 is ho-hum, unlike previous Sense versions (particularly for Froyo builds) which were delightfully executed)
-They fail to execute on their "me too" apps like Google Now-- it works, but not reliably enough that you can depend on it.
-They fail to innovate (just follow what Apple does), and the things they do innovate on, like their "me too" apps, are only 85% working (face unlock, for example), and they leave it like that for at least a year (Google Now) before fixing it to what it should have been on release day.

I am probably wasting my time. Feel free to disagree with me but I am fairy confident if someone put me in charge of HTC and UI direction at Google I could produce an iPhone killer.

 

[Eug]

Yeah I'm currently on ICS 4.0 with a dual-core CPU and while apps themselves are mostly responsive, I'm definitely noticing OS lag, as compared to Tegra 3 on Jellybean 4.2 on the Nexus 7.

In fact, while the single core iPhone 4 feels even slower (particularly with iOS 6), the dual core iPhone 4S feels less laggy overall, despite having a much slower (but dual-core) CPU than this 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon 4 Plus.

And, the email app on this ICS 4 Moto phone just looks positively ghetto. Memories of MySpace...

 

[zerocool84]

The reason they're not stealing more market share from iPhone is the software.
-It's simply not intuitive.
-Their upgrades are a step backwards a lot of the time.
4.0.3:
-complicates task switching
-laggy task switching and other things when it renders the tiles
-settings menus in apps change from buttons (easily pressable) to vertical list (harder to find which one you want, harder to remember where it's located spacially on the screen, which is how people learn and "get fast at" using computer products (Microsoft Word, for example, nobody cares under which menu the settings are located, as long as they can remember where to move the pointer).
-laggy experience wasn't fixed until JB (wtf!)
In general:
-They waste updates (Gingerbread), failing to accomplish anything noteworthy
-they take steps backwards in proven-working apps (Voice to Text for example, printing out words 5 seconds after you speak them is very distracting to what you're trying to say currently)
-their manufacturers release buggy phones and unpolished software (Sense 3.6 is ho-hum, unlike previous Sense versions (particularly for Froyo builds) which were delightfully executed)
-They fail to execute on their "me too" apps like Google Now-- it works, but not reliably enough that you can depend on it.
-They fail to innovate (just follow what Apple does), and the things they do innovate on, like their "me too" apps, are only 85% working (face unlock, for example), and they leave it like that for at least a year (Google Now) before fixing it to what it should have been on release day.

I am probably wasting my time. Feel free to disagree with me but I am fairy confident if someone put me in charge of HTC and UI direction at Google I could produce an iPhone killer.

Yup, Android is doing so horrible. They need someone to come and save them before they fail. It's not like they're the #1 platform in the world or anything.

 

[bearxor]

Soccerballtux, I disagree with a lot of what you said and agree with a few things. I don't feel the need to discuss them because they're mostly just personal preference and experience.

However, I wholeheartedly agree with putting someone else in charge of UI design. But I feel like that on an iPhone too. There's a lot they could learn and take from each other.

Lets take iOS for instance. One of the biggest complaints about it is the inability to choose a default application. Android does this. It's a valid complaint. The argument is that Apple can never be as sure about privacy rights for applications they don't produce.

But this is easy to solve. Instead of charging $99/yr for every developer in iOS, charge a significant amount for a new tier and call it premium developer or whatever. Make it a significant amount, say 10k a year.

Now, give these developers the right to submit an app as a "trusted app". Make them submit the source code to Apple under NDA. Have a team at Apple specifically designed to tear these apps apart and really vet them. Give these apps access to the "undocumented API's" or at least a large set of them. Finally, instate a clause that these apps can't be given away for free, there must be a minimum price charged to the consumer, say $4.99. That way, Apple also makes up some money on the back end they might lose out on from not using a default app (like maps or something). Finally, put a new menu item in the settings called "trust center", where these apps go. It shows a list of apps and you click on whatever you installed and are presented a list of "actions" that the app has been approved to be the default action for. If an app does something "wonky" or not quite on the level, make the punishment banishment from the App Store permenantely and disable the app remotely, which apple has had the power to do since 2008.

So what we've done here is made sure that developers want to be a real "Default app" and are not trolling, by making the "cost" of submitting an app significantly increased, and the risk of doing something wonky is high. We make sure Apple gets paid to vet the apps more thoroughly, and we've also made sure that the end users are serious about what apps they want to use by not making them free so that people aren't just randomly downloading everything and fucking things up and making sure they have to go the extra step of "allowing" the app to be default (don't let the app ask).

There, I just solved one of the largest complaints on iOS and I did it in what I feel is a very "Apple-like" way. How is this so hard, Apple?

I am so off topic now...

 

[WelshBloke]

Motorola nexus phone sounds nice but Google will gimp it by putting in too little storage and no SDslot.

Shame as Id like to give a moto smartphone a try, you hardly ever see them over here (in fact I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild!).

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Motorola nexus phone sounds nice but Google will gimp it by putting in too little storage and no SDslot.

Shame as Id like to give a moto smartphone a try, you hardly ever see them over here (in fact I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild!).

They do that intentionally because they want you invested in their google cloud services.

 

[WelshBloke]

They do that intentionally because they want you invested in their google cloud services.

Yeah I appreciate that, and I like their cloud services, but I also want a decent amount of storage space so nexus phones have been a no go for me lately.

Pity as otherwise a moto nexus maxx would be pretty epic.

 

[gorcorps]

If that means I can get the battery life of a maxx on a gsm carrier I'm excited.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

They do that intentionally because they want you invested in their google cloud services.

yes and so does apple but at least a 32gb, 64gb iphone exists and has existed for some time.

I think we'll be lucky to see a 32gb model next year, and I doubt they'd extend past that too far even though the 32gb iPhone has been around forever...

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I'd be excited for this if google completely took the software portion of this out of Motorola's hands. I've got a Droid Bionic and it's going to take a lot of good press from this phone to get me to buy anything from motorola again.