Google reveals Nexus program has “seen a decline”
In a time when low-priced handsets were generally equated with less-than-impressive specs, the LG Nexus 4 arrived on scene, shaking up our expectations for ‘budget priced’ offerings. Since then, we’ve seen a number of OEMs undertake a similar quest to offer us excellent Android experiences without paying typical flagship prices.
While the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2012 and 2013) continued Google’s low-price-high-spec mission, their most recent Nexus offerings have gone down a very different path. Instead, the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 give us bleeding edge specs with fewer compromises and more upscale aesthetics. Another big difference between the Nexus 6 and its smartphone predecessors is that the former has seen a much bigger carrier push than ever before.
So how’s this new direction treating Google? According to Google CFO Patrick Pichette during the company’s Q1 2015 earnings call, it seems that the Nexus program is seeing some decline in performance.
As a little background, the Nexus sales are part of a category called “other revenues”, alongside other Play Store (Now Google Store) products. The “other revenues” category was up 23 percent year over year, reaching $1.8 billion, but that revenue was down 3 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. While that might not sound bad for Nexus all, Pichette noted that the year over year increase was driven by
While that might not sound bad for Nexus all, Pichette noted that the year over year increase was driven by growth of the Play Store, “offset by decline in Nexus, and the currency fluctuations. Year over year it hasn’t been as strong given the strength of the Nexus 7 last year.”
Does that mean the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 have been unsuccessful?
It’s easy to take the news of a “declining sales of the Nexus” as a sign that Google shouldn’t have abandoned its low-price-high-spec mission, and while I absolutely loved this direction personally (as a N7 and N5 owner), it’s probably not as simple as that.
First off, we can’t say what’s responsible for this slow down. Pricing seems like an obvious factor, but the reality is that the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9’s form factors were a bit more niche than the 5-inch Nexus phone and 7-inch Nexus tablet released in 2013. The size of the displays could just as easily attributed to the less fervent reception. Personally, I would have paid premium pricing for a 5 to 5.5-inch Nexus, but have yet to make a switch to the Nexus 6 for fear it’s just too big for my own tastes.
It’s also important to remember that Pichette doesn’t mention the Nexus 5, only saying that performance isn’t as good as the Nexus 7 (2013). In a time when tablets were seeing substantial growth, the Nexus 7 (2012 and 2013) were excellent, low-cost options that helped really make the 7-inch category grow in popularity. Since that time, most consumers that want a tablet already have one, or have switched to a large screen (phablet) device as an alternative. Considering the fact tablets are a secondary device, existing tablet owners are less likely to upgrade yearly, and many tablet owners keep these devices for several years.
Bottom-line, even if the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 had continued on with 2014 refreshes, there’s no guarantee that we’d be seeing any different results from the Nexus program. We really don’t have enough data to say if returning to their former direction would be positive, negative, or result in similar numbers now that the tablet market is slowing down a bit.
Nexus videos
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With all that out of the way, I personally believe that pricing did play a big factor, it just may not have been the only factor. What do you think?
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Lenovo K80 offers Intel processor, 4GB RAM, and sub-$300 price tag
The Asus Zenfone 2 may have been the world’s first smartphone to offer 4GB RAM, but it’s far from the only option heading our way. Lenovo has now announced its own 4GB RAM-packing handset, the Lenovo K80.
Like the Zenfone 2, the K80 is powered by a 64-bit Intel Atom processor, with other specs including a 5.5-inch 1080p display, 64GB storage, a 13MP camera with OIS, a 4,000 mAh battery, and Android 5.0 Lollipop running Lenovo’s custom skin. The Lenovo K80 is priced aggressively at 1,799 CNY, or about $290. There will also be a cheaper variant with less storage and just 2GB RAM.
Read also: Asus Zenfone 2 full review
While the Zenfone 2 is slowly making its way to more countries, with a possible US release sometime in the future, the Lenovo K80 is currently only announced for China with a release slated for April 30th. It’s possible that the K80 could reach at least a few other markets, but we can’t say where at this point.
What do you think of Lenovo’s latest, who do you feel it compares to the Zenfone 2, based on specs, pricing, and looks?
Google Easter Egg or hoax? There’s an Android pissing on the Apple logo in Google Maps
Google has been know for some pretty clever Easter Eggs, but if what I am about to tell you is yet another one, Google may have crossed the line. If you open Google Maps and go to an area near Rawalpindi, Pakistan (link below), you will find our lovable bugdroid pissing on the Apple logo.
Would Google do this? I highly doubt it as it’s probably some manipulation using Map Maker. Whomever it is, has to be happy with themselves because they definitely made some noise this morning. Speaking of noise…….Is that Larry Page’s phone ringing? “Hello Larry, this is Tim Cook……” You can finish the rest.
source: Google Maps
via: Team Android
Come comment on this article: Google Easter Egg or hoax? There’s an Android pissing on the Apple logo in Google Maps
Google admits that Nexus devices aren’t selling so well, but that’s not what they said 3 months ago
Well how things can change in 3 months time. In an earnings conference call back in January, Google CFO Patrick Pichette stated that they couldn’t keep up with Nexus 6 demand. That implied that the demand was so unbelievably high, but as we have learned with supply and demand, even if demand is low, supply could still be an issue. When I reported that story, I titled the post….They have to be kidding: Google admits they can’t keep up with Nexus 6 demand….because it was obvious that the Nexus 6 couldn’t be selling that well.
Fast forward three months to yesterday and Patrick Pichette is singing a different tune. He is now saying that there has been a “decline in Nexus” year over year. He didn’t call out any specific device so it doesn’t mean the Nexus 6 is the culprit. The Nexus 6 is probably part of the issue becsause I seriously doubt the Nexus 9 is lighting any fires either. The Nexus 6 is priced $300 over ($649 vs $349) what the Nexus 5 went for and the Nexus 9 is a big square 4:3 tablet that is also overpriced. There is also the Nexus Player, but let’s not even talk about that because those sales figures have to represent no more than a pimple on someone’s ass.
Here’s his full statement…
“Other revenues grew 23 percent year over year to $1.8 billion, but were down 2 percent quarter over quarter, driven really by year over year growth in the Play Store, offset by decline in Nexus, and the currency fluctuations. Year over year it hasn’t been as strong given the strength of the Nexus 7 last year.”
I have been saying it for a long time and I know I am in the minority for Android hardcores, but the Nexus line has always been overrated. Everyone goes gaga over stock Android, but it’s just as buggy as anything else. In fact, I don’t think I have ever had a great experience with any Nexus device. They are supposed to be reference devices, but the batteries and cameras generally suck on them as well.
source: 9to5Google
Come comment on this article: Google admits that Nexus devices aren’t selling so well, but that’s not what they said 3 months ago
Google and Facebook come out against government spying
The Department of Homeland Security is setting up shop in Silicon Valley, with secretary of state Jeh Johnson pushing for easier access to our private data. Naturally, both Google and Facebook have started to openly resist this call to create backdoors for state surveillance. At the RSA security conference, Google’s Keith Enright told MIT Technology Review that any attempt to breach his company’s encryption would harm civil liberties.
The search engine’s privacy chief went on to say that if operatives use backdoors to access your data, they’re that much more likely not to bother getting a warrant. Instead, Google has pledged to “drive as much transparency for law enforcement access as possible.”
His words were echoed by Facebook’s Erin Egan, who said that “the trust of the people that use our services is paramount,” and that anything that goes against that “we’re not going to be okay with.” It’s a sentiment shared by Mark Zuckerberg, who has previously gone on the record to criticize the NSA’s PRISM program.
Oh, and here’s something that’s always worth mentioning when an official says that they need backdoor access to encrypted data. When asked, FBI Director James Comey couldn’t cite a single example of how encryption had obstructed an ongoing investigation. So, there’s no actual proof that such access is required, and it’s already been shown that said privilege is routinely abused.
[Image Credit: AFP/Getty Images]
Filed under: Internet, Google, Facebook
Source: MIT Technology Review, (2)
Here’s the Apple Watch torn apart for your pleasure
You likely won’t be able to repair the Apple Watch on your own — shocking, we know. The gadget eviscerators over at iFixit put the Apple Watch under the knife today, just as people who’ve preordered the Watch have begun receiving their shipments. After a complete dissection, iFixit ended up giving the Apple Watch a repairability score of five out of 10 — making it something you likely wouldn’t want to mess with. Removing the screen was “difficult, but not impossible,” iFixit said, and once you’ve dealt with that the battery is “quite easy to remove.” But anything beyond the battery, including the Taptic Engine and Apple’s S1 chip, is pretty much out of bounds. Basically, if you’re getting an Apple Watch, consider an Apple Care plan, or be ready to pay hefty fees in case anything goes wrong.
The teardown also makes it clear you won’t be able to easily upgrade the Apple Watch over time. That’s something people who invest in the more expensive Steel and gold Edition models might want to take into account. Then again, if you’ve got enough bank for the Apple Watch edition, you probably won’t care about dropping tens of thousands of dollars for a new model. Our guess? Apple could offer a trade-in program for existing Watch owners which would give them significant discounts on newer units.
iFixit also points out that the Apple Watch’s photoplethysmographic heart rate monitor looks like it might be able to measure your blood oxygen levels, which isn’t something that Apple currently advertises. That could be one of the features Apple reportedly dropped before the Watch’s release due to erratic sensors. There’s some speculation that Apple might be able to turn on the blood oxygen measuring capability eventually, but that’s not likely since it involves measurement using red light — so far we’ve only seen green light and infra-red sensors on the Apple Watch.
Technology turns touchscreen displays into biometric scanners
A team of researchers from Yahoo Labs has developed a much affordable alternative to fingerprint sensors for phones. It’s a biometric system called “Bodyprint,” and it only needs devices’ capacitive touchscreen displays to authenticate body parts. Since displays have lower input resolution compared to specialized sensors, the system requires you to use larger parts of your body. It can recognize your ear, fist, phalanges, set of five fingers and your palm — simply press any of them on the screen for access. In addition to serving as your phone’s gatekeeper, it has a number of other potential applications, as well.
For instance, you can program the system to answer calls only when it detects your ear pressed against the phone. You can also use it to lock documents and keep them away from prying eyes. Bodyprint, which was recently demoed at the 2015 Computer-Human Interaction Conference (CHI) in Seoul, accurately identified body parts and their owners 99.98 percent of the time during a small test comprised of 12 subjects. But we’re guessing its creators, Christian Holz and his team, will need to test it on a wider scale before anybody can use it on a commercial device.
Make sure to watch the system in action below:
[Thanks, Christian]
Filed under: Cellphones, Science
Source: Christian Holz
A closer look at the ARM Cortex-A72
The Cortex-A72 was announced back in February, promising another boost to performance and substantial energy savings to boot. At ARM’s TechDay 2015 in London this week, we were fortunate enough to be given some deeper insight into the inner workings of ARM’s latest application processor.
Although the base-line architecture is very similar to the Cortex-A57, the A72 is much more than typical revision. A team of some 65 to 70 engineers have gone back through the design, optimizing almost every logical block for power efficiency, helping the processor to sustain maximum frequencies during heavy workloads, and focused on squeezing the design into a smaller area, to keep costs down.
Architecturally, the Cortex-A72 features a new branch-predictor, increases the effective decode and dispatch bandwidths, and has had changes made to the execution units, to name just a few alterations. ARMs new branch predictor reduces misprediction with a new algorithm and can suppress superfluous branch predictor accesses, which helps to reduce wasted energy. The rebuild offers up to 20 percent improvements to prediction over the A57.
The design still features a 3-wide decode, but the dispatch unit has gone from 3- to 5-wide, to more effectively break operations down into further micro-ops which help keep the 8-wide issue machine well fed. The execution stage sees the introduction of next-gen floating-point SIMD units with a variety of latency reductions, multiple zero-cycle forwarding datapaths to reduce wasted cycles, and substantial bandwidth increases in the two integer units. The load and store units have a more sophisticated combined L1/L2 data prefetcher, offering a bandwidth improvement of 30 percent. All of which, among other changes, is designed to help reduce power consumption and to improve performance in certain areas over the A57.
In terms of what this means for silicon designers and end users, the Cortex-A72 is still a high-end processor, but it will utilize energy more efficiently. In other words, the CPU will be able to do more within the limited power budgets available on mobile and should result in cooler devices as well. Even at 28nm, the Cortex-A72 boasts up to a 50 percent energy reduction when compared with the Cortex-A15 and a 20 percent saving compared with the A57, at the same clock speeds. Milliwatts per core have dropped from the A57, to around 700mW at 2.5GHz. The design takes up 10 percent less area than the A57, which will also help save on costs.
Jargon Buster:
- Branch predictor – designed to speed up processing by predicting which branch of instructions to execute and to avoid stalls.
- Decode – determines which instruction is being performed and breaks this up into dedicated operands for other parts of the CPU. The width refers to the number of concurrent executions.
- Dispatch – Dispatches operands to the correct logic (execution) unit, such as the integer or floating point unit.
ARM is also increasingly focused on its POP IP, you’ll see quite a few references to TMSC’s 16nm FinFET Plus manufacturing node in the examples. As well as substantial energy savings, ARM reckons that the A72 will be able to sustain 2.5GHz clocks on the new 16nm process, whilst keeping within the limited smartphone power budget. It’s the additional power efficiency and resulting lower heat profile that will really help the A72 achieve higher clock speeds than a 16nm A57.
We’re also a little wiser about the change to the naming convention too. ARM is looking to differentiate its high performing designs from their lower energy counterparts. The A53 and A57 are quite different in their design and intended applications, so switching the more powerful cores over to the A7x naming scheme should help avoid any confusion in the future.
The key point to take-away is that ARM has focused heavily on improving power and area efficiency with the A72, which is always welcome in mobile products. This also has the added benefit of allowing the chip to run cooler and to be clocked slightly higher than its predecessor. MediaTek and Qualcomm have already announced Cortex-A72 based mobile SoCs, which are expected land on the market towards the end of 2015, we should also see Cortex-A72 powered high-end mobile products in early 2016.
Apple Introduces New 5W Charger With Folding Pins in United Kingdom
Apple has introduced a new 5W USB power charger with folding pins for use in a handful of countries in Europe and Asia. The new adapter is available now for £25 on the Apple Online Store in the United Kingdom, and is designed for use in Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia as well. The charger is also included in the box with the Apple Watch in those countries.
British former professional rugby player Will Carling shared photos of the new folding charger on Twitter earlier this month after claiming to have received the adapter from Apple design chief Jony Ive, who grew up in England and is known to be a rugby fan, but it was unknown at the time if Apple would ever release the product.
https://vine.co/v/ea3rZ0bDjI1/embed/simple
The travel adapter, which can also be used to charge an iPhone, iPod touch and several other iPod models, is currently available to ship within 1-2 business days on the Apple Online Store in the United Kingdom. The original non-folding 5W charger remains available in the United Kingdom for £15 as of now.
Android Mascot Discovered Urinating on Apple Logo in Google Maps [iOS Blog]
Amid the fanfare of the Apple Watch launch, a few eagle eyed employees at Team Android today discovered an unusual easter egg within Google Maps. Visiting these specific coordinates on the outskirts of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Team Android found an image of the Google Android mascot urinating over the Apple logo to be imbedded within the map itself.
It’s yet to be made clear who exactly created the image and placed it within Google Maps and, as Engadget points out, whether Google is even aware it exists at all at this time. While the two companies have been known to be rivals in the past, especially concerning their own individual Apple Maps and Google Maps services, today’s development is an interesting new addition to their long history.
AIVAnet 