The first smartphone to run Android 5.0 will be the Nexus 6 phablet, built by Google subsidiary Motorola.
Ummmm no.
Google has released its latest iteration of the Android OS, plus a triple deployment for the new software in three new devices – a trendy big phone, a slablet and a telly box. Nexus Family New Nexus family to go with the new OS Android 5.0, codenamed Lollipop, got an extensive preview during June's Google I/O conference, …
Been looking forward to the Nexus 9 so very disappointed no 64Gb storage option, the +$80 for the few dollars worth of SSD to make for the should-be-entry-level 32Gb option, and with no SD slot, its a no go here. Had been expecting to buy one for 64bit Android development but guess that can wait a few months until something more suitable is on the market.
>So the tablet has half the storage of the phone? Why?
Tablets, unlike phones, tend to live within range of a local network and media servers etc
One survey suggested that 3/4s of iPads rarely leave the owner's house. It seems reasonable to apply this finding to other tablets of a similar size, and surmise that the tablet can call upon media over the local network.
So that's why Apple sells 128GB iPads, cause no one needs the storage?
They also sell 16GB, because everyone stores their entire collections on a tablet?
Judging by the NYC subways, not to mention every single airplane I've been on in the last 3 years, a ****load of iPads leave the house.
You're looking at the most common use case of using a tablet outside: Waiting for/on public transport, needing to occupy yourself.
What about those iPads you don't see? Judging by the UK roads, I only see a few drivers using their iPads.
Different people have different needs.
"Different people have different needs."
Well yes, exactly, that's why a 64GB or more options would be nice. No one's saying they should scrap the smaller options. (Though I'm thankful that at least we get a 64GB Nexus 6 - it now becomes a viable option for my next phone, which I'd like to store my music on.)
I don't what ipad users do, but one of the most obvious uses for a tablet is for playing videos - there's a reason why in the 2000s, tablets were instead often called "media players". At home, I have a 42" media player for watching videos - a tablet's strength is its portability.
One survey suggested that 3/4s of iPads rarely leave the owner's house. It seems reasonable to apply this finding to other tablets of a similar size, and surmise that the tablet can call upon media over the local network.
While it's true that most pads never leave to home, wifi in the home is often pretty patchy so local storage is a good idea for many. Can't help thinking Google has missed a trick not going head to head with Apple on storage but with significantly lower pricing. For watching films an 8.9" screen is better than an I-Pad – it's just as wide but doesn't need to letterbox the film.
And...?
What exactly is 64bit going to achieve in a 3Gb RAM environment?Don't get me wrong, if there are actual real world advantages to be had them I'm all over it, but it looks to me - for now at least - like it's just a pissing contest between Apple & Google.
64-bit ARM refashions quite a lot of the architecture so as to achieve advantages quite distinct from just having a larger address space. Including:
• approximately twice as many integer registers (28 general purpose versus 13);
• more, and wider, classical floating point registers;
• double precision SIMD; and
• better synchronisation primitives.
There are also some performance-oriented subtractions. ARM used to be famous for making every instruction conditional and allowing each to include a barrel roll. Both of those things are gone in favour of a shorter pipeline.
Also, AES, SHA1 and SHA256 are now implemented in hardware.
There's also the nature of both Objective-C and Java: they're both objects-on-the-heap languages with object types like Integer or NSNumber that are often used just to wrap primitive types like int.
Apple uses 64-bit support to implement tagged pointers: pointers that aren't correctly aligned, i.e. are identifiably not actual valid pointers, actually directly contain the data. So e.g. a 64-bit pointer to an NSNumber that contains a 32-bit value is actually the value itself in the pointer plus some meta content. Nothing is put on the heap. That tagged pointer then effectively gives life on the stack to objects without affecting the semantics of objects on the heap. Which, besides anything else, is good for avoiding page faults. I assume ART will or does do something similar.
So the 64-bit pointers provide benefits unrelated to simply being able to point to a wider area, potentially for both of the main platforms.
This being a technical site (sort of) you are supposed to infer the consumer advantages.
The points made above mostly relate to improved performance meaning speeding up actions for more responsiveness or increased battery life. Faster SIMD instructions are useful for aspects of image processing and 3D imaging for instance, sometimes considerably so. Applies to simple everyday camera functions such as time it takes to process an image meaning can offer faster burst modes, HDR, anti-shake and other automatic processing to yield better images (of course GPU or custom silicon can factor in here too).
There are a few memes around about 64 bit somehow offering few processing advantages, hopefully most people here understand that's a myth from early days of AMD/Intel x64 and not applicable nowadays to either x64 or ARM.
And once dust settles, likely not much of a cost issue here either.
ThomH wrote:
There are also some performance-oriented subtractions. ARM used to be famous for making every instruction conditional and allowing each to include a barrel roll. Both of those things are gone in favour of a shorter pipeline.
Yes, they've destroyed the beauty of the original 32bit ARM instruction set, the 64bit set has no character and could be anything. But then who actually programs in assembler any more to notice such things.
The estate of Philip K. Dick kicked off when the Nexus One was launched in 2010. The replicants in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (filmed as Bladerunner) were called Nexus 6s.
Given they are still calling things Nexus I'm guessing they sorted it out, but a quick Google didn't get me any details.