Before returning to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs said that there was one thing wrong with Apple, "The products suck! There's no attraction in them anymore!" what he meant was that they had become boxes with generic designs and some chips thrown inside for good measure. They failed to induce lust within the consumer, did not make them wait in lines for their release, did not make them think about selling vital organs, apendages, wives, anything, just to lay their hands on a new Apple product.
Android OEMs seem to be suffering from a similar fate as Apple in its Jobs-less era. Though it has become highly successful in the low and middle-end market, Android has been unable to usurp the iron throne of the iPhone on top of the high =-end market, where all the large profit margins reside. A few phones are able to make a splash, but none of them have had as huge an impact as the iPhone. Even developers are getting tired of the highly fragmented platform and journalists are getting bored of reviewing similar looking devices coming out of a thousand different camps, as everyone and their mother, maybe even their grandmother along with a few nephews, think that it’s a good idea to 'develop' a new Android device.
What Android needs is a super sexy halo device, a flagship that through amazing design, stands out in the crowd and attracts customers towards it in droves. The iPhone was such a device and now even Microsoft’s Windows Phone has such a device in the shape of the Nokia Lumia 800 and it’s upcoming follower the Lumia 900.
The iPhone offers a perfect mix of stellar hardware married to beautiful, yet simple software. People are attracted by the design, and once they get it in their hands and explore the UI, it’s the begining of a love affair. With its latest iteration, Ice Cream Sandwich, Android has, for the first time, gained as beautiful an interface. All Android needs at this point is for some OEM to build a design, attractive enough to give consumers that initial push to fall in love with their OS and to take them to the level of sophistication, as their competitors.
Here are a few of my thoughts about what leading OEMs in the Android world can do to have any hope of being as sexy as their competition:
Samsung
Of all Android OEM’s, none have been as successful in the Android arena as Samsung. Owing to the fact that they produce their own chipsets, they are able to optimize their software much closer to their hardware and are thus able to create a blazing fast user experience. Even their designs are mostly serviceable, but they lose out on one key aspect: material quality. They tend to make all of their phones with cheap looking plastic, which is not preferable for customers who are spending exorbitant amounts of money to purchase their high-end phones. We need more metal, glass and polycarbonate, people!
HTC
Initially, HTC were on the right path; they made some pretty cool devices, like the Nexus One, the Desire S and the Legend, which proved successful for them. But they took that success to heart a little too vehemently. Now, all their devices seem so similar that one would need a microscope to differentiate them, the same wide speaker grills and curved edges; do not make a sexy device! Add to that the sheer volume of devices they produce, customers can get confused far too easily. Guys, churn out low to mid-end devices, all year, but focus all your attention and all your design chops on one high end device per year and build a brand around it. Fortunately, their new One series seems to be on the right track, let’s see what kind of impression it makes.
Motorola
Motorola, just needs focus! They are being acquired by Google, which is a huge deal! One would think that their collective vision of software would be better. After their ridiculous experiments with MotoBlur, their new skin is a major improvement, but there’s still a long way to go to achieve design parity with their competition. Also, they need to maintain the integrity of their brands; it wouldn't exactly inspire customer loyalty to have their newly minted devices one-upped just months after they bought them. For example, the Droid Bionic was released in September 2011, the Razr, two months later and the Razr MAXX a mere three months later, all at the same launch price of $299.99 on a two year contract. Such tactics do not inspire customer loyalty, as customers buy high-end phones with the assurance that theirs would be the best phone on the market for the foreseeable future. Again, focus on one flagship slab phone, coupled with another flagship QWERTY slider per year, and you're golden.
Sony
Sony is one of the strongest Android OEMs, right now in terms of design. Both the Xperia Arc and the newly announced Xperia S are pretty well-designed phones, but Sony always commits one fatal error, it does not iterate fast enough! The fact that the Xperia S is going to be launched with Gingerbread, instead of Ice Cream Sandwich and that it is using last year’s silicon (i.e. the Snapdragon S3, instead of the S4) cumulatively makes it a bittersweet deal. Good design needs substance as well, so ramp-up your game Sony, catch up already!
Android has now evolved into a pretty compelling platform with the advent of ICS. OEMs need to do justice to such attractive software and combine it with, simply put ‘amazing hardware’, to make sure that this sweet lass called Android, finally becomes sexy enough to attract as large a cult following as iOS.
Basically you've addressed the strategy each of the major players in Android need to take. I have generalised it a bit more other threads, saying that they need a strategy close to Sony and HTC, meaning more polish and support on a range of fewer phones. Although I do agree about Sony being behind on both OS and tech. While churning out numerous various iterations each year seems to be profitable, it is conversely damaging to these companies. The company's reputation becomes tarnished, and when they perfect the 'smaller range of phones with more polish' strategy, the companies should see more profitability.
Samsung while needing to put better build materials, also needs to reduce the sheer range of phones they put out each. Galaxy S series (1, 2 and upcoming 3) Galaxy Note, and Ace series really comprised the quintessential range of Samsung Android phones. The Galaxy Beam could be included when released. However you can't say that about the Galaxy R, W, Fit, Mini, Gio etc. It fails to really bring meaningful variation. Android is about options, but the difference in choices should be substantial or tangible.
I, often, go as far to say you have three level for consumers; high end, mid level, and budget. Now the major players excluding Sony, usually like to intergrate the lastest tech, which means that 4 - 5 months later the manufacture can introduce a new phone on just two levels or all three. So you've got a base range of 9 phones more or less each year. You might have a catergory of Special phone category for unique features like the Galaxy Beam or Xperia Sola or Padphone. A company should easily be able to provide excellent support for 9-10 phones. It might be a little more with 4g(or next gen)/International variations but is a new budget phone every 4 months necessary?
I really think customers would get this, but what do you think.
Agreed with pretty much all of it. Ever since after the Nexus One (arguably, before it as well), there have been too many Android devices that are practically clones. Although this is good because the more phones there are the more people will use Android (I guess), it's just overcrowding crap. And yes, Samsung's phones major downside is the stupid plastic they use, haha!
charmthief88 said:
Basically you've addressed the strategy each of the major players in Android need to take. I have generalised it a bit more other threads, saying that they need a strategy close to Sony and HTC, meaning more polish and support on a range of fewer phones. Although I do agree about Sony being behind on both OS and tech. While churning out numerous various iterations each year seems to be profitable, it is conversely damaging to these companies. The company's reputation becomes tarnished, and when they perfect the 'smaller range of phones with more polish' strategy, the companies should see more profitability.
Samsung while needing to put better build materials, also needs to reduce the sheer range of phones they put out each. Galaxy S series (1, 2 and upcoming 3) Galaxy Note, and Ace series really comprised the quintessential range of Samsung Android phones. The Galaxy Beam could be included when released. However you can't say that about the Galaxy R, W, Fit, Mini, Gio etc. It fails to really bring meaningful variation. Android is about options, but the difference in choices should be substantial or tangible.
I, often, go as far to say you have three level for consumers; high end, mid level, and budget. Now the major players excluding Sony, usually like to intergrate the lastest tech, which means that 4 - 5 months later the manufacture can introduce a new phone on just two levels or all three. So you've got a base range of 9 phones more or less each year. You might have a catergory of Special phone category for unique features like the Galaxy Beam or Xperia Sola or Padphone. A company should easily be able to provide excellent support for 9-10 phones. It might be a little more with 4g(or next gen)/International variations but is a new budget phone every 4 months necessary?
I really think customers would get this, but what do you think.
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My Personal opinion differs for every company,
1. HTC - Last year, they produced many handsets, but none of none them was able to catch up with Samsung's flagship. They even produced two variants of their previous flagship Sensation which are Sensation XE and XL. In terms of design, XL was just a re-branded sensation with the beats logo, colored grills and increase in the CPU speed, while the XL was Xtra Large and was really costly. This played a major role in their loss of profit or revenue last year, Although i liked the Explorer, it was quite cool handset and showed improvement over it's predecessor Wildfire S.
2. Sony- Previous year, they just focus on their Xperia line of phones, one by one they just released Xperia series phones. They completely forgot their legendary series viz Walkman, Although the xperia smart phones were good- looking, sony's strategy failed to appeal to consumers much.
P.S. Sorry, it was Sony Ericson previous year.
3. Samsung- They are the most successful company in the Android smart phones arena. Producing smart phones like Galaxy SII and Galaxy Note, i think i don't need to say much about them. But, whereas they produced great phones, they also made some goofy mistakes, like producing clones of their previous flagship like Galaxy S Plus, Galaxy S advance and the recent Galaxy S blaze. In my opinion, Samsung currently holds a powerful portfolio of smartphone varying from Low-end droids to high end. But they also have some obsolete stuff in their portfolio which they should clean viz. Pop, fit, mini etc.
VOTING SORRY IT WAS MISLEADING ( VOTE YES! FOR HELPFUL) ( VOTE NO! FOR USELESS )
First of all Not sure if this is where it should be i thought putting this in off topic was too far from the point and reading through other threads it didn't seem to fit anywhere, Anyway i'll post it here anyway i would like to think most people on this website would appreciate this and see if i have to valid points and some cool things to show you maybe.
I would firstly like to start with some cool Android game consoles being developed by a company called JXD http://www.jxd.hk/ they're other companies doing this (not as good and more expensive) in my opinion but i'll supply information for you do to your own researched at the bottom of this thread.
Anyway This is the newest console released the S7300 just released a day ago it's quite amazing system and extremely cheap ( older models if you have a budget to test these out starting as low as $20 - $40 USD) This latest one is about $150 it's android the specs are listed here
As you can see the device has possibility for some good gaming and a start to some innovative ideas and maybe bigger companies creating devices similar to this.
What is the point?
Well i was a huge user of my Xperia play and Galaxy s3 which i recently sold for a Android iphone 5 rip off mainly because it looked good worked great and was light enough to go jogging without it annoying me, but this gave me a lack of gaming which i love about my android mobile so i decided to look for an android gaming device it took an hour or so but i found hundreds some on ebay some on random websites, after separating the over priced devices and the ones with poor design and bad hardware i found a website or 2 with the device i was going to purchase, and after looking all day i found there is a good start to this android gaming, but how come it hasn't set off bigger or faster yet, i find it a shame.
What to do?
Well many may disagree but this is the only website i use for anything remotely android related, but i was thinking if XDA could add apart of the forum for unpopular devices such as these underground branded ( Non rip off android devices and the emerging gaming android console and devices ) to increase the speed it picks up i believe if we have people talking about it more and helping sharing in customized apps themes etc... it might help set off the community to use it more which may encourage developers to add more support.
I mean Why Not! we have tablets but everything seems to be big brands Sony, Samsung, Apple, Nokia, i thought this was a website for unlocking your device for better use and doing things with it the majority of us think is "Cool".
I might add more later But for now i'll leave some links to a few devices i looked through and website to purchase or compare prices for your curiosity.
Developer jxe website all their devices are listed there but no purchasing options but good to get the names to Google
Another product i thought would be good to mention just for the hell of it if you go jogging like me or like high quality sound with less wires and cheap at the same time would be to purchase a MW600 it's a Bluetooth headset and you just plug your headphone into it and it connects wirelessly to you phone.
http://www.willgoo.com/ - This website seems to sell any modded gaming android devices from all the companys making them at the moment at the cheapest price and a vast collection to choose from.
The latest device out is http://www.willgoo.com/jxd-s7300-du...ons-8gb-p-306.html?referrer=CNWR_771331638507
Reason i liked this among the rest?
for one the touch screen isn't the out dated touch resistant most others use.
First to have an actual dual analog joysticks! and not like the xperia play with the stupid touch slide which i found tedious after a day of use.
2 back buttons and simple nice thin design.
highest resolution offered.
and does say it has 3G i don't know if it's via a sim card or it means through wifi tethering with another device who knows but i'm happy either way
another product i thought would be good to mention just for the hell of it if you go jogging like me or like high quality sound with less wires and cheap at the same time would be to purchase a MW600 it's a Bluetooth headset and you just plug your headphone into it and it connects wirelessly to you phone.
Unmarked android phones.
I'll list a few android phones i think are semi decent and can be cheap and stilll good looking on a budget here is the top 2 websites i trust and can be cheap if you search well
eForChina and Dhgate
These 2 websites have plenty mobile phones people could check out at a cheap price, the one i purchased because i wanted a decent phone that runs android but looks like an iphone 5 is zophone 5
It's a little more steep in price than the others but i managed to get it for £120 off ebay but its light and does what i need it to do.
Done more research the website most china branded (unbranded) mobiles are released to http://android-sale.com/
this website's most famous brand seems to be the goophone for the iphone 5 android clones but they also make some really good unique none clone designs packing quad core 2gb ram models, would be good if you're looking for some unique designed phone you won't see any friends using.
That thing looks slick. Will do more research.
Yeah it would be nice to see games compatible
liamguest said:
Yeah it would be nice to see games compatible
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It has a dual core mali 400, and a dual core a9 clocked at 1.5, it should run most games other mali 400 devices run. I pre ordered one and now waiting for it. I hope it gets popular enough to have a community and a few custom rom builds. It has quite decent specs for emulation(main purpose its being promoted for) and should run almost every game on the android market. The main issue with JDX devices is battery life (is why I hope for custom roms), but the device claims to come pre rooted, you can see pictures of it supposedly having play store support, so if a community does surge for it it could be as popular as the kindle in terms of a dedicated community interested in custom android builds that support better battery use and remove some of its bloatware. im replacing the free 8g card ill get for pre ordering with a 32(64 if it takes it) card and have a decent 40gig snes/ps1 emulation device with touch controls that will let me do the basic things i do on my phone. Since i plan to tether it from my phone, I'm aiming to keep my phone pocketed the whole time, Headset calls, redirect texts to the JXD, and play/browse on the 7 inch screen so if a call comes in my gaming wont be interrupted something that ruins some games that reboot when a call comes in.
Maybe Padone 2 ? over 7k mAh, four core etc... Nothing but fine gaming devices with possibilities
They should make a special section in the forum for JXD Devices. Especially for developers that wants to help with making the device easier to use.
Sent from my HTC Rezound 4G LTE Smartphone
Hi guys !
I bought before a lot of things from Energy Sistem, a Spanish company and they rocks. 3 years warranty and great quality,
I was surprised today when I visited their website to search for a card reader (it looks that they are not selling things like that anymore) to see they are manufacturing smartphones. I have friends with tablets and all works just fine and fast.
It looks like they will release this month three smartphones (two of them octa-core).
The specs are great, even if I'm not a fan of the Mediatek cpus.
I'm giving here the link:Mod Edit: Commercial links removed
The expensive one specs are great. Those smartphones are just great for those who don't want to spend a lot of money but have a great phone.
The cheaper one looks like an iphone, the expensive one like a HTC lol
Just in case any of you plans to buy one, please share the experience Really curious how this things works and if are reliable as their tablets. I thought will be nice to share here.
This is from a article I was just reading. I just had to share it.
The iPhone 6 from an Android user's perspective
http://www.appy-geek.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=1&articleid=28711005
I went trough the article and all what it reads it is true and correct.
Anyhow Apple is not just about phone specs, it is a philosophy, a different way of thinking.
They are always on research of perfection, their devices are stylish and perfect in details.
No matter how much ram they put on their devices (1Gb?), the OS runs always smooth.
Instead, to have Android OS running nicely you need to buy a top device with good specs, otherwise you will always see lags etc.
Apple may me behind compared to Samsung on pure specs, but Apple does in a perfect way what it promises to do, this at least till new version of iOS come out... but that's marketing... otherwise who would buy new device?
This said, I am now using a Samsung S4 PLUS after several years of iPhone and that is because I can now get a top device, running nicely with 1/3 of the price of a new iPhone. Till Samsung S3 this was not the case, but Samsung S4 is a big step forward and I am pleased with it.
I compared iPhone just with Samsung devices because they are the biggest in the market, of course there are other Android top device to take into consideration as well, but then this would get too far
J1897 said:
..., to have Android OS running nicely you need to buy a top device with good specs, otherwise you will always see lags etc.
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That's not a fair comparison between Android and iOS. To have iOS running nicely you need to buy a iphone or ipad which have top specs and are always priced among the highest
I like many many things about iOS, iphones and ipads. I just hate Apple's walled garden approach, closeness, and super greediness. That's why I buy Android devices over and over still. Apple's attention to details however is something all its competitors should emulate. Top notch components that may not have the top specs on paper but are indeed very very high quality e.g. camera, cpu, battery, screen. Little to no lags, smooth operation all around, just solid overall. Can't say about most Android devices even high end ones. My Asus Transformer Prime had a ton of lag, GPS problem, short battery, slow storage. It was $500, though with more storage, had the same price as iPad2 yet nowhere near iPad2's performance in almost any category. I felt it's shameful for Asus to release such a product. To compete with Apple, you have to be God damn serious. A lot of vendors sneak in second, third grade components or have poor software in their flagships that ruin otherwise perfect devices, e.g OPO (screen issue), Moto X (poor camera and rather bad screen). My Note 3 is excellent and have more capabilities than iPhone 5S but still needs to be better to level with iPhone 5S's smooth operation.
Last point I want to make is Google needs to drive the market better. Take mobile payment as an example. Google Wallet and NFC came long time ago. I just didn't find a lot of merchants having POS terminals to accept Google Wallet. Now Apple is looking to be taking over the world of payment by a mobile phone. Whose fault is it that Android mobile payment hasn't caught on fire? Google. They seem to lack the business or marketing savviness to drive a business initiative. It takes convincing merchants to get POS terminals to support mobile payments. If Apple truly succeeds, that's just shame, shame, shame on Google.
Some the "new" things have been years on Android and even on Symbian. Like week numbers in calendar..
Is there a 'best phone for gaming'? I know it's a broad question, but I want my next phone to be really good for gaming in terms of tech specs and ideally in terms of community, exclusives etc.
If someone asked me what the best console setup is, I would say PS4 and for PC, Alienware is debatably the PC for gamers/gaming. Somewhat surprising that there isn't a best for mobile gaming. Suggestions?
When it comes to gaming on mobile devices, your choices are Android and iOS. There's lots of really cool games that are exclusive on iOS, so if you want the most variety, an iPhone (the Plus sized one) or iPad will give you the most games. That's a lot to spend just on a device to game on though.
Android obviously has the most variety of devices. My choice right now is the Nexus 6. Big screen, powerful front-facing stereo speakers. Hardware is slightly aged, but will still play any game I can throw at it. Previously I used a OnePlus One, and I can tell you that I'll never go back to bottom-firing speakers.
Interesting, I just read on techcrunch that the founder of Atari is working on a phone for gamers called wonder. Doesn't say when it will be out yet.... and doesn't look like techcrunch has a ton of faith in it. Hopefully this is what I'm looking for.
As much as I really love Android - as a developer, I have plenty of phones and tablets here! - I will have to say... if gaming is a priority, just get an iPhone. Mind you it's not about the "quality" or even performance (since most apps are cross-platform now anyway) but the different approach to monetization that's still present in many many titles. Most iPhone games can do just fine with 2$ versions and fair ads, while the Android equivalent doesn't make much from regulars users and needs to target whales instead (heavy grinding unless you pay).