What can we expect for the next Google Nexus phone ?

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Zorachus

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I am very curious what Google has in store this November for the new Nexus line ? There were rumors back in May, that Google does indeed plan a big "Nexus" launch on November 5th this year.

#1; What version of Android ? Still 4.1 Jellybean, or slightly updated 4.2 or all new 5.0 Key Lime Pie ?

#2; Still a Samsung made Nexus, and only one phone again like previous years ? First will be the GSM Unlocked on the Google Play store ?

#3; Rumors of up to 3 new Nexus phones all coming out in November ? Does that mean certain versions go on specific carriers ? Like a CDMA Nexus just for Verizon + Sprint made by like HTC ? And a Samsung version for ATT + T-Mobile, and the international market ?


Also read something back in Spring, that Samsung has again been tapped to make the next Nexus phone. That was before the rumors of 5 new Nexus devices launching in November. What do you all think will really happen ? I would say the safe bet is a Samsung made Nexus, built off a tweaked Galaxy S3 spec phone. Would love to see the "+" version of Super AMOLED in 720p HiDef.
 
1) i knew it was a Zorachus thread from title ...

onto the questions:

1) I would assume probably 4.1, maybe a small update, I personally doubt we will see 5.0, but judging from past releases that they may do 5.0
2) Possibly Samsung, but it could be any of the others, I dont think ive seen any rumors on what will be coming out
3) I dont see 3 new phones for the simple reason of the 5 device thing....we have so far: Nexus 7 and nexus Q, there are rumors of a Nexus 10" (which I personally would love to see), so that leaves 2, which could be a GSM and a CDMA version .... maybe two models from different manuf. though ... that would be pretty good IMO.
 
LOL, you know any Nexus threads are mine :cool:

Good points, I could see just two different Nexus phones this Fall. One for CDMA carriers, and the main for all the GSM crowd. Also agree will just be 4.2 most likely, with the Google Now voice assistant being beefed up, doubtful to see an all new 5.0 major update only a few months from now.

Too bad, I don't think we will see Google use Motorola yet for a Nexus, for fear of scaring the rest of the manufacturers thinking Google showing favoritism to their newly purchased Motorola. But a Motorola MAXX Nexus would be amazing. I bet we see one in Fall of 2013 though.
 
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i mean, a 5.0 is very possible ..... large milestone updates have always happened in nov time correct? (with nexus S and g.nexus ..... i didnt follow much before that)
 
Key Lime Pie in Nov doesnt make any sense.

Whats the figure, like 10% of the phones are on some version of ICS currently? That might skyrocket between now and Nov as more official releases happen, but there is no way that even half the phones by then will be on ICS. I have the Evo 3D and just recently flashed a ICS rom, but there is still no official update to it.

I just dont see it happening.
 
Why we don't need another version of Android this year
http://www.androidcentral.com/why-we-dont-need-another-version-android-year

So with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean due to be open-sourced in a matter of weeks, some are already pontificating on what might be coming in the next version of Android, rumored to be nicknamed “Key Lime Pie.” Conventional wisdom suggests that, just like Gingerbread in 2010 and ICS in 2011, the next version of Android could make an appearance sometime in the fourth quarter of 2012. But the current state of the Android ecosystem indicates that this might not be the best course of action for Google, its OEMs or their customers. In this article, we’ll take a brief look at why Google should stick with Android 4.1 until 2013, and push Android forward with hardware, not software later in the year.

But that doesn’t mean we won't see a new Nexus smartphone built from the ground up around Android 4.1...The next Nexus can compete on hardware alone still running Jellybean
 
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I heard rumors that other manufacturers were working with Google on Nexus devices, even LG. I hope there are at least two different types of Nexus phones, one from Samsung and HTC or Motorola. It's time they made Nexus into a real brand!
 
Zorachus said:
Why we don't need another version of Android this year
http://www.androidcentral.com/why-we-dont-need-another-version-android-year
Click to expand...
I'm sure there are things about android that Google wanted to do with 4.1 but couldn't finish on time.
Update the google apps, improve google now, further improvements from google butter, add wifi-direct (instead of bluetooth) to the beam API, and you've got enough to call it Android 4.2.

I can see Google doing that, even without any foundation level changes.
 
GLSauron said:
I'm sure there are things about android that Google wanted to do with 4.1 but couldn't finish on time.
Update the google apps, improve google now, further improvements from google butter, add wifi-direct (instead of bluetooth) to the beam API, and you've got enough to call it Android 4.2.

I can see Google doing that, even without any foundation level changes.
Click to expand...

Totally agree, and I bet that's what we will get. All on brand new hardware :)
 
It might actually not be Key Lime Pie. The easter egg in Jelly Bean shows a candy cane. Who knows!

I think the next Nexi will basically be the same internals but different screen by multiple oems. (duh)

Whether it's OMAP5 or Snapdragon S4 Pro, I don't know. Personally, since WP8 is long rumored to be using the S4 Pro and Prime in Q4, I wish that Google use the OMAP5 to differentiate.

I also wish for a dedicated camera button.

If only that Tegra 4 with Kepler could be available...
 
dedicated camera button could be nice, but bleh on OMAP5.
S4 Pro, maybe. Or Exynos. Just not more Tegra.
I'll be satisfied as long as its next gen GPU with an A15 dual (or quad?) core and not made by nVid,

Honestly the only big improvement in 4.1 is project butter. ->4.2 doesn't need to be gigantic, either.

edit: you know, if Samsung was smart, they'd volunteer to do a nexus phone each year and just stagger it with their Galaxy S line by 6 months. Those who want pure Google get a Samsung option and Samsung gets Google's help with the design and code, those who want touchwiz (and Samsung's marketing department) get an official Samsung flagship.
 
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GLSauron said:
dedicated camera button could be nice, but bleh on OMAP5.
S4 Pro, maybe. Or Exynos. Just not more Tegra.
I'll be satisfied as long as its next gen GPU with an A15 dual (or quad?) core and not made by nVid,

Honestly the only big improvement in 4.1 is project butter. ->4.2 doesn't need to be gigantic, either.

edit: you know, if Samsung was smart, they'd volunteer to do a nexus phone each year and just stagger it with their Galaxy S line by 6 months. Those who want pure Google get a Samsung option and Samsung gets Google's help with the design and code, those who want touchwiz (and Samsung's marketing department) get an official Samsung flagship.
Click to expand...

Tegra 4's Kepler graphics has the potential to revolutionize mobile graphics as we know it.
 
CHANG3D said:
Tegra 4's Kepler graphics has the potential to revolutionize mobile graphics as we know it.
Click to expand...
If its made by nVid and trying to run on a linux kernel nobody cares.
(Much as kepler rocks on desktop/laptops, their linux drivers are horrible from what I've heard.)
 
GLSauron said:
If its made by nVid and trying to run on a linux kernel nobody cares.
(Much as kepler rocks on desktop/laptops, their linux drivers are horrible from what I've heard.)
Click to expand...

+1....

also, speaking for myself, I don't really even need a powerful GPU in my phone... "good enough" is.... good enough for me, I'm not playing Crysis on my phone...
 
kilik64 said:
Key Lime Pie in Nov doesnt make any sense.

Whats the figure, like 10% of the phones are on some version of ICS currently? That might skyrocket between now and Nov as more official releases happen, but there is no way that even half the phones by then will be on ICS. I have the Evo 3D and just recently flashed a ICS rom, but there is still no official update to it.

I just dont see it happening.
Click to expand...

That line of reasoning doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Google delaying the next release won't speed up OEMs updating their devices any. I keep seeing people say things like that, but there's never any logical reasoning provided. It reeks of "if I can't have new shiny why should anyone else?"

The solution to the update problem is definitely not "just don't make any updates". Yes, technically there would no longer be any phones on old Android versions - but it would also be idiotic.
 
kllrnohj said:
That line of reasoning doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Google delaying the next release won't speed up OEMs updating their devices any. I keep seeing people say things like that, but there's never any logical reasoning provided. It reeks of "if I can't have new shiny why should anyone else?"

The solution to the update problem is definitely not "just don't make any updates". Yes, technically there would no longer be any phones on old Android versions - but it would also be idiotic.
Click to expand...
Agreed, Google doesn't need to slow down updates the oems need to get their acts together
 
Jellybean makes some great strides in that Google incorporated features that separates proprietary hardware dependent code from base android code. Hopefully once the slow move to ICS is over, JB updates will come at a much faster pace.

In the mean time, they should wait until 2013 for Key Lime Pie and concentrate on the tablet market for the rest of the year. Not sure if another Nexus phone is quite necessary
 
ComputerBox34 said:
Jellybean makes some great strides in that Google incorporated features that separates proprietary hardware dependent code from base android code. Hopefully once the slow move to ICS is over, JB updates will come at a much faster pace.

In the mean time, they should wait until 2013 for Key Lime Pie and concentrate on the tablet market for the rest of the year. Not sure if another Nexus phone is quite necessary
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I expect we'll see a 10" nexus, but I do hope we see a new phone as well. The GNexus will be a year old in November and it wasn't top of the line when it came out. Sure, butter makes it fluid, but more powerful hardware isn't a bad thing.
 
We can expect it to be a vanilla experience on slightly outdated hardware. Tegra 4 is supposed to launch on tablets in Q4 this year, smartphones in Q1 2013. So, I'd exect a Tegra 3 device in Q4 this year, just before the Tegra 4 phones launch.
 
ROFL at all the nVidia hate.

whatever nVidia does with Kepler, you know it'll be massively stronger than the new Mali, PowerVR, or Adreno (definitely true on this one... why you think Qualcomm stole an AMD engineer?). And it'll be power efficient too.

with all these mhl phones connecting to a tv, I don't see why not let your phone also be your game console.

sure, it's easy to say you don't need it. but I bet you'll feel jealous with at people with cellphones that has more power of than Xbox 360 (which isn't saying much) while your style happy with your N64...
 
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CHANG3D said:
ROFL at all the nVidia hate.

whatever nVidia does with Kepler, you know it'll be massively stronger than the new Mali, PowerVR, or Adreno (definitely true on this one... why you think Qualcomm stole an AMD engineer?). And it'll be power efficient too.

with all these mhl phones connecting to a tv, I don't see why not let your phone also be your game console.

sure, it's easy to say you don't need it. but I bet you'll feel jealous with at people with cellphones that has more power of than Xbox 360 (which isn't saying much) while your style happy with your N64...
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And exactly what gives you that idea? Every single product in their Tegra line has been disappointing compared to the competition. They're out of sync with all the other SoC makers and its obvious. The only reason they've gotten design wins is the fact that they've released multicore designs slightly ahead of the game, but they've made compromises elsewhere to do so, so by the time other manufacturers come out with their mature designs, Tegra has been rendered obsolete. Case in point: nV releases "latest greatest quad-core" Tegra 3... is shortly thereafter outclassed by S4 with the supposedly inferior (according to you) Adreno 225 GPU in basically every single test. But hey, if you want to be a fanboy and ignore their track record, go ahead, but I won't be holding my breath for Tegra 4
 
Activate: AMD said:
And exactly what gives you that idea? Every single product in their Tegra line has been disappointing compared to the competition. They're out of sync with all the other SoC makers and its obvious. The only reason they've gotten design wins is the fact that they've released multicore designs slightly ahead of the game, but they've made compromises elsewhere to do so, so by the time other manufacturers come out with their mature designs, Tegra has been rendered obsolete. Case in point: nV releases "latest greatest quad-core" Tegra 3... is shortly thereafter outclassed by S4 with the supposedly inferior (according to you) Adreno 225 GPU in basically every single test. But hey, if you want to be a fanboy and ignore their track record, go ahead, but I won't be holding my breath for Tegra 4
Click to expand...
if we're going by track records, after the Galaxy S, why would anyone want to buy a Galaxy S2? nVidia isn't using their own GPU technology. They will starting with the Kepler. I think it's healthy to give them a benefit of the doubt.

How am I being a nVidia "fanboy" by talking about OMAP5 and S4 Prime superphones? Geez. People, stop the fanboy accusations. I'm just talking about technology!
 
I'm hoping for a powerhouse but in reality all we're going to get is another reference phone. I'm beyond happy with my GN so I'll probably sit the next iteration out.
 
GLSauron said:
dedicated camera button could be nice, but bleh on OMAP5.
S4 Pro, maybe. Or Exynos. Just not more Tegra.
I'll be satisfied as long as its next gen GPU with an A15 dual (or quad?) core and not made by nVid,

Honestly the only big improvement in 4.1 is project butter. ->4.2 doesn't need to be gigantic, either.

edit: you know, if Samsung was smart, they'd volunteer to do a nexus phone each year and just stagger it with their Galaxy S line by 6 months. Those who want pure Google get a Samsung option and Samsung gets Google's help with the design and code, those who want touchwiz (and Samsung's marketing department) get an official Samsung flagship.
Click to expand...

Saying bleh to the omap 5 means that you don't know what it is. The omap 5 is crazy good. Arm cortex a15, powersgx 544mp2.
 
CHANG3D said:
if we're going by track records, after the Galaxy S, why would anyone want to buy a Galaxy S2? nVidia isn't using their own GPU technology. They will starting with the Kepler. I think it's healthy to give them a benefit of the doubt.

How am I being a nVidia "fanboy" by talking about OMAP5 and S4 Prime superphones? Geez. People, stop the fanboy accusations. I'm just talking about technology!
Click to expand...

Fanboy.
 
GLSauron said:
If its made by nVid and trying to run on a linux kernel nobody cares.
(Much as kepler rocks on desktop/laptops, their linux drivers are horrible from what I've heard.)
Click to expand...

I've heard (and experienced to a very limited extent) the exact opposite.

The drivers are fine (better than virtually anything else available), they just aren't open source.
 
BigJayDogg3 said:
I've heard (and experienced to a very limited extent) the exact opposite.

The drivers are fine (better than virtually anything else available), they just aren't open source.
Click to expand...

for linux, both nvidia and ati are pure shit....

Intel's graphics are the only ones with proper open source drivers, and they are fantastic in Linux...
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
for linux, both nvidia and ati are pure shit....

Intel's graphics are the only ones with proper open source drivers, and they are fantastic in Linux...
Click to expand...

ATI has proper open source drivers *and* open hardware specs.

CHANG3D said:
if we're going by track records, after the Galaxy S, why would anyone want to buy a Galaxy S2? nVidia isn't using their own GPU technology. They will starting with the Kepler. I think it's healthy to give them a benefit of the doubt.
Click to expand...

Yes they are. All of the Tegra chips have been using nVidia's own GPU technology. Are you getting confused with Intel and Medfield, perchance?

CHANG3D said:
ROFL at all the nVidia hate.

whatever nVidia does with Kepler, you know it'll be massively stronger than the new Mali, PowerVR, or Adreno (definitely true on this one... why you think Qualcomm stole an AMD engineer?). And it'll be power efficient too.

with all these mhl phones connecting to a tv, I don't see why not let your phone also be your game console.

sure, it's easy to say you don't need it. but I bet you'll feel jealous with at people with cellphones that has more power of than Xbox 360 (which isn't saying much) while your style happy with your N64...
Click to expand...

All of the Tegras so far have sucked. Nvidia doesn't know what they are doing in this space, and they keep making trivial mistakes (like no NEON in Tegra 2, and totally memory bandwidth starving both Tegra 2 and Tegra 3), not to mention their Tegra GPUs are slower than the competition. Things like the companion core in Tegra 3 show Nvidia is at least trying, they just haven't really figured things out yet.
 
I would like to see a Moto-made nexus that harkens back to the lovely Droid design language.
 
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CHANG3D said:
http://www.androidauthority.com/nvidia-tegra-4-specs-kepler-architecture-70626/

Leave the emotions out of it...

compare that to the S4, what we know if the exynos, and what we know if the omap5, if 32 or 64 cores of Kepler with quad A15 doesn't make you excited, I don't know if you being on a hardware enthusiast forum... just saying.
Click to expand...
The question will be what kind of compromises will be necessary to implement those cores into Tegra 4? I see absolutely no hard data (yes i know its a rumor) or any reason to believe that Kepler will make a great transition to mobile. If you want to leave the emotions out of it, you'd leave your love of the kepler desktop architecture at the door and recognize that mobile SoC's are a different beast. Kepler may have much lower power consumption than old nV architectures, you're talking about an architecture that runs at 1ghz and consumes 150+W on the desktop scaling down to the mW range. Its going to take some work and theres no guarantee.

So compared to what we know about the S4 Pro, Exynos and OMAP5, what we know about Tegra 4 isn't enough to get me excited.. because we don't *really* know shit about any of their GPUs and they'll all be using the same CPU (with the exception of S4). And nvidia's track record after 3 iterations of Tegra doesn't exactly give me hope that they won't screw something up. To respond to your previous comment, at least Samsung came back with 2 home runs (GS2/GS3) after the flawed but respectable GS1
 
Activate: AMD said:
To respond to your previous comment, at least Samsung came back with 2 home runs (GS2/GS3) after the flawed but respectable GS1
Click to expand...
What was wrong with the GS1? That was one hell of a phone at the time (minus the carrier screwups)
 
All I want is for the phone to launch on time simultaneously on multiple carriers (no more 6 months delay), be unlocked (this is guaranteed right, or can VZW still lock a Nexus bootloader?), and not have alast gen cpu/gpu like the Galaxy Nexus.
 
DirtyB said:
I hope motorola or HTC makes it or I'll probably be disappointed.
Click to expand...

Not motorola..they make nice phones but lock their phones down so you cant do shit to root it. I would take another one of their phones if they stopped with this bullshit of locking down their phones. I want to root damnit :D
 
Blown 89 said:
What was wrong with the GS1? That was one hell of a phone at the time (minus the carrier screwups)
Click to expand...

Defective GPS? That was a big problem for alot of people, although its possible to hard mod and fix it now (I'm gonna do the hardware fix on my Vibrant this weekend actually...)

xIronCrossx said:
Not motorola..they make nice phones but lock their phones down so you cant do shit to root it. I would take another one of their phones if they stopped with this bullshit of locking down their phones. I want to root damnit :D
Click to expand...

A Nexus phone can't have a bootloader that can't be fastbootoemunlocked.... sooo Motorola making it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing...
 
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