Google's Nexus S, A Look At Gingerbread 129
MojoKid writes "Google's Nexus S smartphone has a lot of interesting features, but the one that attracts the most attention is the fact that it ships with the latest version of the Android smartphone operating system, version 2.3. Otherwise known as Gingerbread, this OS is said to be the fastest version of Android yet. In addition to Gingerbread, the Nexus S touts a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, and 16GB of internal memory. Its network performance numbers turned out to be relatively impressive as well."
Really? (Score:5, Informative)
The phone has been out for almost three months now.
Way to be current.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and I've had Gingerbread (2.3.2 currently) on my first gen Droid for about a month now thanks to the folks at CyanogenMod. So even if this were a piece about the OS alone it's still horribly old news.
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How is Gingerbread working on your Droid? Performance ok? I have a Droid X currently running Froyo. Is there an overriding reason to upgrade? What are the new features?
(We might as well talk about this, the original article was pointless.)
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It runs wonderfully.
Gingerbread is mostly FroYo with a few UI tweaks and some general performance tuning. Battery life on a nightly test build of CM7 is better than stable FroYo was.
The new additions to the Android codebase that came in with it (NFC, etc) aren't of use to most devices, but the rest of the changes are worth it.
Ice Cream Sandwich will be a fun one to see when that comes out.
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Performance is super, but there's a few little bug left.
And btw, my phone is HTC WIldfire
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Absolutely, I just got froyo on my samsung phone last week, after it was promised to arrive before thanksgiving last year.
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However a Gingerbread leak for the i9000 Galaxy S phones has shown up, so hopefully they're working faster on that than they did getting you guys FroYo.
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possibly, sprint had to cripple tethering so they can charge extra on top of the huge delay samsung had for delivering froyo for the epic.
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If I were the CEO of a carrier or handset maker why would I invest R&D that would enable you *not* to buy the latest phone or another contract? That would cost money and would not return anything of value. Infact I would lose money as you probably just buy another more up to date phone and I could make more money by another contract.
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Following this model the carriers shouldn't care what updates they push out since their major customers are effectively barred from upgrading.
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Ha, that doesn't sound so bad...
On T-Mobile, I'd been waiting for an update from Android 1.6 to 2.2 (for an HTC myTouch 3G). They'd been saying it'd be out "just next month" since I bought it in 3/2010. The OTA update finally hit on 12/2010. Still no sign of 2.3 Froyo.
Sounds like you haven't been waiting very long in comparison ^_^
Yes, on my other phone (HTC myTouch 3G Slide) I simply CM6'd it.
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On T-Mobile, I'd been waiting for an update from Android 1.6 to 2.2 (for an HTC myTouch 3G). They'd been saying it'd be out "just next month" since I bought it in 3/2010. The OTA update finally hit on 12/2010. Still no sign of 2.3 Froyo.
FYI, 2.2 IS Froyo.
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Ooh, yeah... then I meant we have 2.1 now ... and still waiting on 2.2 OTA (my CM6 device is already running 2.2.1 or something)
I can never keep all my desserts straight in my head :P
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No you're not. 2.1 was Eclair, and MT3G never had that one (oficially anyway). It went straight 1.6 (Donut) -> 2.2 (Froyo) (and then consequently 2.2.1)
2.3 is Gingerbread.
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Yeah, you're right, just confirmed it on my wife's phone last night.
I just remember thinking at some point about how she finally got the upgrade after months of waiting, and it was still missing something I had under CM6 (I thought it was "Move Apps to SD", which was a Froyo feature). But I admit I don't pay all that much attention to her phone. She was actually quite happy with 1.6 and doesn't even bother upgrading any of her installed apps.
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Cliq XT had a similar issue, but it was 1.5
Fortunately TMO hooked people up with G2's or MyTouch 4Gs if they called.
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I have an original-recipe Cliq, and it took Moto until October of last year to finally go public with the 2.1 upgrade. Really, the Cliq hardware is stressed trying to run 2.1; I'm surprised (if only slightly) that it apparently was worse on the XT since you would think that the next-gen would be Bigger! Stronger! Faster! Glad Magenta hooked up the XT users that actually complained, though.
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Oh it is out.
Just buy the newer version of the phone at the local store with the latest upgrade and sign another 2 year contract.
Thanks again
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Nice Slashvertisement - note the user's profile link, and the site both in-article links point to.
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Nice Slashvertisement - note the user's profile link, and the site both in-article links point to.
We like blinkie things that cost money. When isn't there a Slashvertisement?
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No, it hasn't.
It's been out for the Nexus One for about a week. The summary clearly says the Nexus S. Which has had Gingerbread since it launched in December.
And as I noted in my reply to my own post up there, I've been running Gingerbread on my first-gen Droid thanks to 3rd party ROM makers for about a month. So even if it's Gingerbread only, it's still not news.
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I can't confirm that Google has released OTA updates for the Nexus One anywhere.
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They have. In fact, they both got 2.3.3 at the same time:
http://twitter.com/#!/googlenexus/status/40221838743179264 [twitter.com]
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I can.
I got the OTA on my N1 last week on Thursday.
Thousands of others did.
Read some of the Android and Nexus One forums!
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I can't confirm that Google has released OTA updates for the Nexus One anywhere.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/01/nexus-one-android-2-3-3-update-arrives-ota-breaks-google-voice/ [engadget.com]
Confirmed.
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Indeed they have. My Nexus One updated itself last night to Gingerbread (and it is *sweet*).
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The Nexus S isn't really new, although for any modders, it is the only game in town for making ROMs that don't require kexec() tricks to get around signed kernels and other crap.
What I'm looking forward is Google's next reference model with the hardware to support the 3.x Android versions. Hopefully this model will have a SDXC card slot, a decent amount of RAM, multiple cores. Maybe even a model with a sliding keyboard, which makes a life a lot easier when doing some serious UNIX commands.
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Maybe even a working touch-screen..you know, with multitouch? And a fix for some of the other shit like floods of events when you touch the screen. Oh, and fix that slow float directbuffer put. Put some effort into making Android gaming platform. That way you might get some games which don't completely suck. Angry Birds is ok, but jesus fucking christ - is an public domain quality Amiga game the best we can do on a 1ghz+ platform 20 years on?
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Doesn't look fastest to me... (Score:2)
Otherwise known as Gingerbread, this OS is said to be the fastest version of Android yet.
Based on what? If 2.3 is the fastest android yet, why does the Nexus S fare as the 2nd worst in Javascript performance, fare worse than 2 Android 2.2 phones on Linpack and only narrowly edges out Android 2.1 phones in FPS on An3dBench. So unless the Nexus S is causing all these performance issues, these numbers don't anywhere at all show 2.3 to be faster in any sort of definitive way.
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Nexus S scored 2nd BEST in Javascript performance. In that chart smaller numbers are better.
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Okay, my bad on that. Still, it's only narrowing edging out 2.1 phones in An3dBench, and is behind in every other metric in the article behind a 2.2 phone.
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You do understand that applications can play a far, far bigger role in application performance than the underlying OS...right? Well, for most applications anyways.
Your question appears to be rather loaded with the intent to troll. Even if it did get slower, the article is about OS,not web browsers. Furthermore, regressions are hardly unheard of. But, as someone already pointed out, the browser is pretty fast despite what appears to be a trolling effort to misdirect people.
Measuring application performance
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Your question appears to be rather loaded with the intent to troll. Even if it did get slower, the article is about OS,not web browsers. Furthermore, regressions are hardly unheard of. But, as someone already pointed out, the browser is pretty fast despite what appears to be a trolling effort to misdirect people.
How am I trolling? Saying something you don't like or disagree with is not trolling. The article was saying that Gingerbread "is said to be the fastest version of Android yet" yet all their benchmarks with Android 2.1 and 2.2 phone show them to be faster in almost every case. The only case the Nexus S was faster was by a fraction of a percent in one benchmark. Their data can't substantiate the initial claim.
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No, its not a question or liking or disliking what you said. Its how you said it. They way you said it came across as a loaded question with the intent to misdirect and derail the thread. That is trolling if true. But you'll also note my verbiage was soft and I wasn't (still am not) if that was truly your intent despite how it appeared.
Their data can't substantiate the initial claim.
Many times, "fastest", when used in a laymen context, means many different things. Faster at what is the real question. While JIT improvements were made, latency improvements
Crappy Colors in Gingerbread (Score:3, Interesting)
I got the update last night on the nexus one. I was p*issed when it rebooted and the theme was totally different. I am not fond of a bright green LED colors on a black background. give me back my silver and gray. These colors do not work well with natural scenes in wallpaper like the golden gate bridge shot.
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I don't have an opinion on the green icons, I can give or take them, but the black notification bar is great. When using my phone at night I didn't like being blinded by the unnecessary white.
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One of my biggest problem with phones (and UI's in general) is that the wonderfully bright pastel colour scheme some coloured crayon dreamed up whilst sipping his low fat-decaf mochachinno is that I will be viewing this in low light conditions. Iphones are the biggest offenders, the SMS system (because if I'm waking
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Yeah, someone changing the back ground is worth getting pissed about. Sheesh, spoiled much?
Sure it's frustrating, maybe inconvenient, but pissed? please.
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They didn't change the background, they changed the color temperatures of the AMOLED display.
How do I deprogram myself? (Score:2)
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and that you give a damn about clear thinking and clear communication.
However, the very fact that he could see so quickly that there was an error and deduce what it should say does tend to indicate that the apostrophe has very little value. There are things that affect communication clarity far more than apostrophe use (like good sentence construction) which I wish people would focus on instead. The apostrophe will be gone in 50 years.
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The apostrophe will be gone in 50 years.
Like the comma? I don't think either will.
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Nah, the comma has a use for breaking up sentences into parsable chunks. There are very *very* few occasions where a misplaced apostrophe genuinely causes confusion (ie, not people who are deliberately flexing their smug-muscles).
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6 months on crack & meth aught to do it...
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See the three little dashes at the end of my comment?
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speed test numbers are worthless (Score:1)
Progress (Score:3)
A machine with twice the firepower of my first computer but which can't do even half of what the computer did.
yay.
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I'm pretty sure a USB controller has more firepower than my first computer did.
Even if you limit me to my first IBM compatible my Droid still blows that out of the water, both in terms of firepower /and/ functionality.
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I could transcode video, compile a kernel, had an office suite, write code, etcetcet on 433MHz celeron with 128MB.
the functionality-to-specifications ratio is abysmal.
and don't get me started on what people pay for, today. A tea timer is an "app" ? I *pay* for that? For what i can do with my calculator and two lines of code? Or what my featurephone does on its own?
It's a fucking joke.
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Phones can do everything your first computer could.
The same thing could be said by anyone in theior field.
A carpenter could say:
"and don't get me started on what people pay for, today. A spice rack is an "wood work" ? I *pay* for that? For what i can do with my tool in two minutes?"
I wouldn't pay for one, but yes, some people would. I can't comment on the app you mention because I am not familiar with it. I assume it doesn't have any graphic, or notification, or animations feature. Otherwise you couldn't do
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Phones can do everything your first computer could.
Can they, now? i mentioned 4 things i could do on my first computer that i couldn't do on my milestone. I could make a bigger list, but it would be all for naught since you're not even reading.
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What a cop-out. You know what? The shuttle was built in the 70s, but my new modern phones can't even take me to the Space Station. Maybe they ahve different purposes?
The real point is that you're a whiny bitch that gets his dick hard from being a myopic non thinker.
Enjoy your irrelevancy.
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Stop complaining, download SL4A [google.com], and build your own tea-timer in 2 lines of the scripting language of your choice. One of the examples is a two-line script that scans a barcode and looks it up on Amazon - did your 433MHz Celeron do that?
Seriously, there will of course be many things your phone cannot do relative to your PC (lack of keyboard, small screen blah blah) and conversely many things your phone can that your PC hasn't a hope of (mobility, GPS, camera blah blah). People write phone apps based on what
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Frankly
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No one pays for simple apps. At least no one with any intelligence levels to speak of. Searching the marketplace for 'egg timer' returns dozens of free timer applications. I'm perfectly willing to admit that not having a simple timer as one of the basic apps that come with the phone seems like an oversight, but it's one that, thanks to the ability to download and instal new (and generally free) software, is easily remedied.
I'm confused why you would want to write code, edit office documents, or compile a
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> Why on earth you'd want to do those things with a tiny screen
i can compile, assemble, debug dissassemble and decompile on my fucking calculator.
a device with three orders of magnitude more powerful should do these without even a question.
it's waste of hardware, at the very least.
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Did you miss the part where I pointed you to software that allowed you to do these things on your phone?
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I can name 4 things I can do on my phone that your computer couldn't do.
Most of those things can't be done because no one wants to write the software for it.
Though, if I wanted those things, I'd install Debian on the phone.
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I could transcode video, compile a kernel, had an office suite, write code, etcetcet on 433MHz celeron with 128MB.
the functionality-to-specifications ratio is abysmal.
and don't get me started on what people pay for, today. A tea timer is an "app" ? I *pay* for that? For what i can do with my calculator and two lines of code? Or what my featurephone does on its own?
It's a fucking joke.
Install gcc toolchain on the iPhone [google.com]
DocumentsToGo [dataviz.com] office suite for iPhone.
Nimbus [nimbustouch.com] source code editor for iOS.
ffmpeg for iPhone [google.com]
You can do whatever you want on these phones. It's just that people haven't bothered writing polished applications to do most of the stuff you're suggesting can be done better, faster and easier on other platforms, for now at least.
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I can do all that on my phone. What is the problem?
Heck, I had a full ubuntu running at one point on it.
Most apps are racing stripes (Score:1)
When I look at Android Market I see Tucows, you know the ancient shareware site? I see a car store filled with go-faster stripes and furry dice. When people are young or a tech is new they tend to go wild and add all sorts of crap that is useless for the wow of it. Remember when marguee and the blink tag were the hot new thing? When every pixel of a webpage had to have an animated gif?
It is like "xeyes" on linux. Useless but who when they first got a desktop running didn't run this app?
And you are forgettin
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my *own* first PC was a celeron. the first computer i used was a grundy newbrain.
> When I look at Android Market I see Tucows, you know the ancient shareware site? I see a car store filled with go-faster stripes and furry dice. When people are young or a tech is new they tend to go wild and add all sorts of crap that is useless for the wow of it. Remember when marguee and the blink tag were the hot new thing? When every pixel of a webpage had to have an animated gif?
set aside most apps have spam in them.
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android is a bloody mess. just take a stroll at http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list [google.com] and look at the list of *defects* only. SMSs getting deleted en masse, delivery reports wrong, SD card corruption...
compared with my 10+ year old hp48gx which has a single digit number of bugs (all of which you are able to circumvent with one liners, say instead of XRECV use > ).
shoddy engineering. ... who the hell places the speakerphone on the REAR of the device? do i really want to project the sound *away* fro
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You are comparing a phone to a general purpose computer? Why not compare it to your first phone and see how it fares? A phone isn't supposed to do everything your desktop does, but the stuff it can do is pretty amazing.
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And how can you differentiate between a "general purpose computer" that has an intel architecture, ram, a screen and a keyboard and a "phone" that has a more powerful cpu, more ram, a screen and a keyboard? It certainly has the horsepower, what does it do with it? ... nothing.
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Nothing?
Ah, the real problem here is that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
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yet it manages to not implement fucking SMS delivery notification properly, which is what a normal phone 10 years old could do. Set aside i don't trust it to send an sms to the proper receipient.
plus, no coordinates are transmitted. The GPS sats don't send coordinates... how could they know your location anyway? So no.
> identify any song you are currently hearing just by letting your phone listen too
was (and is) a standard feature of $100 featurephones.
Things you consider so amazing, i consider pointless
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Unique (Score:1)
The most unique things about the Nexus S aren't even mentioned in the summary, how pathetic.
1) The display is curved (to match the contours of your face).
2) It has an NFC chip...hence, the need for Gingerbread.
I believe that for both, it is a first.
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1) Curved display is a non-feature. Seriously, I don't notice it at all.
2) There's nowhere I can use the NFC chip yet. Apparently soon I'll be able to interact with billboards or some crap. Until its ubiquitous, NFC likely won't be much use.
Still a great phone though.
N1a better deal (Score:2)
haven't seen a bigger advertising campaign (Score:1, Informative)
Still horrid for audio (Score:4, Interesting)
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What do you mean by "guitar app"?
A tuner, an app to show chord charts and demonstrate their sounds should work fine regardless of latency. Do you mean you want to simulate playing a guitar with your phone? what the heck for?
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What are you talking about? in order to be low latency it must be 45ms or less. Not, all low latency apps are 45ms.
It's a spec issue, not a device issue.
and for a global broad definition, 45ms is fine.
Re:Still horrid for audio (Score:5, Informative)
According to this thread [google.com], the new hardware specifications provides 10ms "low latency." The "45ms" number is the number bring thrown around to get people upset without actually knowing what that number means.
Basically, 45ms allows for the audio pipeline to already be filled, and remains filled, and perhaps (likely even) by other applications. That's hardly unreasonable. The 10ms number, AS PROVIDED BY LATEST HARDWARE SPECS, means the pipeline is available for immediate use. For dedicated applications, which largely covers the low latency audio demands of current developers, the 10ms number is what everyone actually wants, and seemingly is provided.
Meaning, existing hardware may or may not be able to satisfy real "low latency" demands, but, new hardware will.
It appears Gingerbread really does address low latency demands, however, it also appears existing hardware (drivers) are not capable of doing better. Looks like things are looking up for next gen hardware and low latency audio requirements.
To summarize, android hardware requirements define two audio latency numbers which pertain to your complaint. One is continuous audio. The second is warm audio. The first is for a continuously filled audio pipeline; seemingly from any source. The second is for an empty pipeline. The former requires 45ms. The later requires 10ms.
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As a sidenote, I'm irritated that my doghouse isn't designed to fit a wolly mammoth.
Nexus One was pretty good (Score:2)
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One thing I hate about N1 (and all phones with OLED displays) is that crappy PenTile matrix, where the actual resolution is, on average, 1/3 less than what the specs claim. Looks like this is finally getting fixed in Galaxy S II, but I wonder if there will be a corresponding Nexus S II. I'd buy that.
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> But it has every sensor in the world
Bah I have one too and I wish it had gyros. And there are other things missing, like proper multi-touch, HDMI, a front-facing camera, and a camera button.
> I'm also quite fond of having vanilla Android, because it means upgrade immediately (I got a gingerbread upgrade notification today, actually)
If by 'immediately' you mean 'in three months', then yes! (Yeah I know... Cyanogen, etc.)
The Nexus One is great (helps that it was free!), but let's not distort the facts
"Memory" is not Flash (Score:3)
>"...16GB of internal memory."
No, it has 16GB of internal flash storage, not "memory". I believe it has 512MB of memory, like most high-end Android phones (Evo, DroidX, etc).
Android BREAKS audio AGAIN with 2.2-2.3 (Score:1)
Sure, 2.3 really is faster and more responsive than 2.2, with better battery life and a sexier interface to boot.
But WHY does the dev team INSIST on BREAKING streaming and AAC+ audio on EVERY release?
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=13715
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9308
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That's really weird.. what is this [google.com] then?
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If you have a custom bootloader it's always possible to root (because it can take modified upgrade packages)
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The Nexus S, which came with Gingerbread, has been rooted... I've also rooted my Droid and am running Gingerbread on it as root, running root apps--admittedly, the former is the better proof that you can root Gingerbread. I don't know where you heard that, but I don't see logic behind it other than someone bullshitting people for whatever reason. Now, if you get certain phones with Gingerbread when they come out (Motorola is probably the biggest name here, unless they decide to take their Xoom strategy to t