Technology Android

[dilla]

The only wearable I got into was a heavily discounted Jawbone UP3. I'm not sure I'm ready for a Watch just yet but maybe in a year or two. Some of them look really nice, like the Huawei watches.

Did Xiaomi ever come through with that Nexus Player successor? There was a teaser for it, I think, right around the time Google IO happened. Never heard much after that.

 

[Casey]

The only wearable I got into was a heavily discounted Jawbone UP3. I'm not sure I'm ready for a Watch just yet but maybe in a year or two. Some of them look really nice, like the Huawei watches.

Did Xiaomi ever come through with that Nexus Player successor? There was a teaser for it, I think, right around the time Google IO happened. Never heard much after that.

No, not yet. I expect it will get officially announced at the same time as the new Nexus phones. Maybe Google Home will show up at the same time too.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

So there was a problem with my Mi Band 2 order. I got a refund. I might just wait a few more years until smartwatches get better as I'm sure they'll be more competitively priced for what they offer and I know Xiaomi should be able to do exactly that and hopefully by that time they distribute more products to the UK.

 

[dilla]

No, not yet. I expect it will get officially announced at the same time as the new Nexus phones. Maybe Google Home will show up at the same time too.

Cool. I think I'm fine with my ASUS until it decides to die. I actually bought a pair of Xiaomi headphones (Piston III) and they were pretty nice for the $17 they were. That was my first experience with Xiaomi and I still haven't used a Huawei device, but those two brands seems to be big in Europe. I guess they're just now getting into the US so we don't see too much of their stuff.

 

[Pittsey]

I was dying for home automation. I think I'm over it now.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

I was dying for home automation. I think I'm over it now.

I would really like something that I can install to control the opening/closing of my curtains/window blinds with, preferably using my phone and a Wi-Fi connection so I can do this remotely from wherever I am in the world, similar to how I can check my CCTV and control it from anywhere.

If anyone can introduce me to or guide me in the right direction, this would very much be appreciated.

 

[dilla]

I was dying for home automation. I think I'm over it now.

Yeah, I remember that. When I saw the announcement at IO, I thought of you.

I wonder if having so many players in the game would ruin it due to compatibility. Apple and Google seem like the first ones to get into it. Amazon has that Echo machine so I think they'd be third. I doubt Apple would allow Android devices to control their automation system and then comes each brand and the features their systems have and which one people want. If Apple had the most feature-rich system but didn't allow non-iOS devices, it'd suck. Same for Google. Amazon already kind of does this with its Prime Video app for Google TV to keep people on the Fire Stick and other streaming devices.

Might have to be some third party company that comes through and is compatible with all OSs.

 

[Pittsey]

Samsung bought SmartThings a couple of years ago. That was head and shoulders above the other offerings. They haven't really done a lot with it though.

 

[dilla]

Yeah, I see ads for it at Home Depot. You have to buy the hub for ~$100 and then buy a smart LED bulb for ~$20 each. I don't know anyone with it and a lot of tech sites don't mention it or similar services .

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Nest unveiled their outdoor security camera.

 

[masta247]

Nothing interesting is happening. No great new devices or techs. Minor coolness is the Iris scanner on the new Note (which otherwise is alright but brings nothing new). Sad face.

I was thinking of building a new PC here in Canada since I didn't ship mine, and was staggered at how apart from GPUs and SSDs (which I kept up to date in my old PC) not much has changed for years. I can't even buy a new PC monitor since display quality.. regressed compared to what was there 5-8 years ago in many significant ways, and the only exception being the Dell OLED monitor costing insane money. I am now shipping my now what I thought was old PC and monitor here, the board on it is 8 years old, while the CPU is over 5 years old, yet the biggest I could increase the CPU performance or whatnot if I bought a brand new setup would be by.. maybe 20-25%. More sad face.

Looking forward to AMD Zen bringing in some push to the market and neat competition. We've been seeing ARM chips doubling their performance every 2 years, when Intel's chips have been making mere 5% jumps per year or two. The last ARM-like jump was now over 10 years ago when Intel replaced their crappy Pentium D with the Core architecture, which since then only had a boost of more than 5% when Sandy Bridge came out in 2011.

Heck, only now Intel reached the point where the first dual core Core 2 Duo from 2006 overclocked to 4ghz is only 50% as fast as the newest 2016 Skylake quad core i5 at 4ghz. In hindsight then, maybe we should appreciate the progress we are getting in the mobile area, even if it seems so much slower than it was a few years ago.

 

[masta247]

btw, if anyone here games on their PC, it's a good time to go for a GPU upgrade. GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD finally made the jump to the 14/16nm processes, down from 28nm, along with recent, significant architecture improvements. That is the biggest generational jump so far since the early GPUs era, and AMD came up with an awesome bang for the buck gpu, the rx480. It's on par with last year's upper mid-range, is good enough for VR, while costing 199$. Pretty much doubled-to-tripled the performance per dollar. That's an amazeballs deal.
On Nvidia's side of things, you can have the GTX1070 which will soon go down to its suggested 400$ price, and is pretty much what last gen's fastest, gaming studio grade graphics (all the Titan X and Fury cards) were in performance, while cutting the power consumption by half and being offered for a fraction of their price. And then there's the GTX1080, less of a sweet spot card, but by far the fastest GPU in existence, and it's the first single GPU card that's enough for maxed out 4K gaming.

 

[dilla]

Seems like the hype around the Sailfish and the other device both Nexuses, has been picking up. All these leaked images and talk of Nougat.... I wonder when my S7 will get Nougat. Gonna bet on next Spring if the Note 7 doesn't even ship with it.

 

[dilla]

Goodbye, Nexus line

http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/0...oogle-home-daydream-vr-viewer-on-october-4th/

 

[masta247]

Goodbye, Nexus line



http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/09/01/google-will-announce-pixel-phones-4k-chromecast-google-home-daydream-vr-viewer-on-october-4th/

Yeah, I sort of understand the move - might be hit or miss like the Pixel tablets seem to be.

I will miss the Nexus line. It's been a while since I last had a Nexus device, but I've had strong respect for that line. It defined Android and brought many major changes in how the industry worked, with those flagship-grade 199$ Nexus 7 tablets in the era of 500$+ crappy tablets. Or the original Nexus One, or Nexus 5 bringing the by far most advanced smartphone of its time for 349$.. yeah, those were the days.
Remember the Google I/Os, when they would announce major new Android features AND brand new, market defining Nexus devices in one day?

There's not much in the mobile device market happening to this scale these days. Apple brings minor evolutionary changes even in "major" OS releases and device releases, Android brings tweaks and optimizations, while Windows Mobile is dead and Microsoft is completely misguided. Devices seem to be more alike these days, while the biggest push comes from still lower quality Chinese brands, but at much lower prices, while entering the mainstream, because the big companies are stalling and are easy to catch up to.

I miss the days when upgrading your OS or a 2 year old phone with a new one was so exciting and felt like discovering a completely new and so far superior piece of technology.

The sad part is the downward spiral - the markets are slowing down (PCs, notebooks, tablets, even smartphones in the developed countries) because people don't see enough progress compared to the devices they already have, while the fact that the markets are slowing down makes them less appealing to the "Excel table" clueless investors. That severely harms our technological progress and further damages those markets. The point is that everyone uses those devices, and as soon as there is a product that brings substantial innovation or technological progress it would be a hit in the market. Such thing is badly needed.

 

[dilla]

Yeah, that's been my complaint in this thread, too. For both, WWDC and Google IO, nothing was ever as groundbreaking as the ones from 2010, 11, and 12. New Nexus devices really pushed the envelope with each subsequent release. Now, each release is getting more and more expensive. Was it the Nexus 5 everyone liked or the Nexus 6? I can't remember, but I do know that as nice as the 6P is, people still have major issues with the price and even the bending issue it had as well.

I guess it's understandable. We've hit a wall in terms of what's truly revolutionary in the mobile world and it's been stagnant the past few years. But yeah, that's going to diminish interest and people are going to hang on to their phones for longer. I upgraded from an S3 to an S7, so that was a world of a difference but my sister and dad are rocking iPhone 6s and their upgrade is due this Christmas after two years. Aside from Force Touch introduced in the 6S, there's not much they're going to be missing to upgrade to the 7. In fact, they'll be losing their headphone jack. But that's more of an Apple thing, but even Apple hasn't "improved" any existing features to freshen up the market.

Oh well. I am happy with my phone so I can't be too worried about what the Pixel phones bring. But it does suck that expectations are as low as they are compared to just a few years ago. Efficiency tweaks are nice and all for improving battery, but they're not as flashy or gratifying as a new feature that involved hardware upgrades as well.


Also, sidenote, I need to adb my S7 in order to activate some Greenify features, like shutting down the sensors to make Doze happen a lot more often. The Android SDK on my Mac is screwy, especially since I'm running a dev beta of Sierra. Short of repeating the whole process on a Windows PC, is there anyway to just do the adb stuff using another device, like my S3 to my S7, or on the S7 itself? I was using these instructions: https://greenify.uservoice.com/know...o-grant-permissions-required-by-some-features

Or is there just simply an easier way to do this? I hear if you are not rooted, these settings reset after every reboot.

 

[Pittsey]

I'll probably be getting the new Nexus (Pixel) device. I am still on my G3. And I think I am going to get an upgrade. Although.... Removeable SD card and battery are still key for me. So you never know, I might stick with the G3 after all.

 

[dilla]

LG has to be the only major manufacturer still using removable batteries, right?

I know the whole Note 7 snafu had people calling for Samsung to not use integrated batteries.

 

[S O F I]

is there something you want do now with your phone that you can't? full-on vr/ar is around the corner.

 

[Pittsey]

is there something you want do now with your phone that you can't? full-on vr/ar is around the corner.

Nothing really. But it's getting a little tired. I don't use a case and treat it like a phone should be treated