***Official Galaxy Nexus Pre-Release speculation thread**

[magdelaine]

SD Card Slot unlikely = UGH.

That's just so frustrating if the phone craps out or something all my pictures and things stored on there are gone.

My questions would be: Is the system memory and the storage memory part of the same chip? If so, is there a way for it to be partitioned?

If it is either separate from system OR if it can be partitioned, I don't see the worry. It's highly unlikely the drive will fail completely. As long as recovery still works, you can mount the drive just like an external drive on your PC, right? I mean, if the current ROM is completely hosed and needs to be wiped.

 

[Jon Nale]

Quoting myself from a few pages back just to reiterate how I feel about the battery life:

5-6 hours of continuous use seems reasonable (I think?)

I don't know how much I use my phone throughout the day, but my primary uses are reading websites, checking facebook, watching the occasional youtube clip, and listening to music. This is during a typical work week. On the weekends when I am out and about doing stuff, I also like to take pictures. I make maybe 1-3 phone calls a day.

I can't imagine that I use my phone for 5-6 hours in a day. Especially on work days, when I get home around 5 and go to bed around midnight. 12-5 = 7. Out of those 7 hours I am home, I am not on my phone for 5-6 hours.

I also imagine that 4g coverage might also play a major role in battery life. My friend has a tbolt, and when he turns off 4g, his battery lasts significantly longer (so he says).

How many of you are on your phone, with screen brightness on the highest setting, for more than 5-6 hours in a single day?

Remember, this isn't 5-6 hours total (standby+usage combined). This is 5-6 hours of usage. At least that is how I read the leak...

 

[AndroidsOfTara]

SD Card Slot unlikely = UGH.

That's just so frustrating if the phone craps out or something all my pictures and things stored on there are gone.

Um, you know that SD cards can fail as well, right?

About a year ago, I was able to recover (using foremost on Linux) about 60% of the data on the 16 GB card that came with a friend's OG Droid. The card just failed one day and hundreds of the photos were corrupted.

 

[EarlyMon]

no they aren't! that's what picasa and google music are for

is right on picassa, neatly de-rezzing anything you put there to save storage.

It's support economics. Lose the SD connector, lose the separate-package SD add-on, lose customer complaints about why you can't hot-swap an SD card in an Android, lose iPhone comparison complaints, and then sell it as a feature rather than the shortcoming it truly is.

Oh, well, it is what it is.

 

[drhill]

no they aren't! that's what picasa and google music are for

For $5 a year I have 20 extra GB on Picasa. I figured 5 bucks is worth the piece of mind for all my pics.

5-6 hours running constantly on LTE at full brightness doesn't sound too bad. On my wifi Xoom I keep the brightness at 10% and I'm pretty sure SAMOLED is supposed to be brighter then LCD.

Battery is a huge issue for me. I need to be able to take it off the charger in the morning and not need to charge it until I go to bed. Though I only really use the phone for 30-60 minutes a day when it isn't on my car dock.

 

[dr01d3tte]

Um, you know that SD cards can fail as well, right?

About a year ago, I was able to recover (using foremost on Linux) about 60% of the data on the 16 GB card that came with a friend's OG Droid. The card just failed one day and hundreds of the photos were corrupted.

Answer: clouds. We have 4G LTE and wifi for a reason.
Don't put everything on your C:\ drive

 

[drhill]

is right on picassa, neatly de-rezzing anything you put there to save storage.

You know you can choose to upload at full resolution.

 

[Stretlow]

You think 5 to 6 hours of heavy use is bad?!?!?!? That was as stated with the screen turned up all the way and almost always on. It was also with constant browsing and downloads while on 4G.

That is great life!!!! That means with light to moderate use you will likely get at least 12 hours per charge if not a day or so. My T- Bolt was dead in 3 hours of moderate use or 7 to 8 whit little or no use

Hi all

Another who's been lurking for a few thousand posts so I fellt I should try and contribute something at some point (even though I know nothing)

I currently have the Desire (Bravo) and can do a full battery in 4-5 hours, I know this because I've tested it with stuff like TV streaming on constantly and/or constant web browsing (when cant be bothered working)

However, If I go out on saturday to the footy, I can be leaving my house at 10am and with moderate use, couple of phone calls, texts bit of mobile betting and catching the footy scores I can get home at midnight go to bed and the things still hanging on in the morning...

I reckon 6 hours is the norm for constant use.

Brilliant, entertaining and insightful thread none the less.

Keep it up

Stret

 

[drbugsmn]

SD Card Slot unlikely = UGH.

That's just so frustrating if the phone craps out or something all my pictures and things stored on there are gone.

Agreed! My OGDroid died, but most of the data is on the sdcard. I'll lose some local data but it isn't anything that I care about.

Another concern is those who don't have unlimited data plans, or work in areas with spotty 3g/4g. I have 14gb of music on my phone, looking for more on it so I don't have to worry about streaming, as the reception in the area I work with is very spotty.

If it comes with 32gb, I'll be happy, but will make sure I back stuff up more frequently.

 

[magdelaine]

While I may be a disappointed it will not have a newer exnyos processor with a new gpu in it that would make it worth a 2 year commitment, instead of something that is already outdated in tech terms. To me I think one overriding factor will be the fact that this is a google experience phone and will get updated first and frequently. Yes you can root and rom. But for some of us that can be a laborious and dangerous task. If this is pure vanilla android then we can put what we want on it... That will be my biggest draw...

Just curious, have you ever rooted an unlocked phone? It's a little nerve wracking the first time but I was struck with how easy it was in the end. I wouldn't call it dangerous...at least not on an unlocked phone.

 

[HanSolo]

Dammit I did that F5 thing and was stuck on the last page. Wondering where everyone was!

My questions would be: Is the system memory and the storage memory part of the same chip? If so, is there a way for it to be partitioned?

If it is either separate from system OR if it can be partitioned, I don't see the worry. It's highly unlikely the drive will fail completely. As long as recovery still works, you can mount the drive just like an external drive on your PC, right? I mean, if the current ROM is completely hosed and needs to be wiped.

This is a good question. I want to be able to flash ROMS to this. Say I back up everything to Titanium Backup, won't it still get wiped?

 

[kyler13]

I can get 15 hours of LTE use on my Thunderbolt.

Edit: Not constant use, but still.

I can decimate the battery on my Charge easily with heavy downloading via web browsing. However, that's HEAVY use. I stream Pandora over 4G and push it out to my car stereo via bluetooth at the tune of ~4-5% in a half hour. I don't bother to plug in on the way to work since I'm pulling it off the charger on my way out the door, and I'm still over 90% when I walk in the building. How about minimal use? (a phone call, few texts, check a few emails, maybe check a webpage or two) Yesterday I was swamped at work and barely used my phone: off the charger at 5:30am, left work at 4:30pm with 70% left. I'm convinced LTE is a bigger drain in fringe areas than 3G, but in general, your radio works much harder via EVDO than it does LTE to maintain data sync under decent signal strength.

So, I can't keep up with this out of control thread and still stay employed, so I apologize in advance if this has been brought up. What are the chances that the Exynos 4210 clocked at 1.5GHz ends up in this thing? I mean, I remember talk of it being bumped to 1.4GHz at one point. Couldn't they simply bin out the cream of the crop?

 

[iowabowtech]

You may want to wait until 2012 to buy an LTE handset then This is the way it's going to be and unfortunately there is no way to get around it.

This was the predicament I had to ponder when the whole LTE thing kicked off. Buy this year and suffer through "bad" battery life or wait until mid 2012 when the 2nd gen LTE chips/radios pop up.

It's just the way it's going to be unfortunately

You sure it's going to get that much better? The trend I've seen with Android since I've been involved is that more battery draining technology is released before battery technology itself catches up with it. Feels like a dog chasing it's tail to me.

 

[xtop]

You know you can choose to upload at full resolution.

you can. the problem i assume he's talking about is the auto back up feature in google+. those photo's are limited in size. maybe we'll get an update allowing us to upload the full resolution picture?

 

[overbyc1]

Um, you know that SD cards can fail as well, right?

About a year ago, I was able to recover (using foremost on Linux) about 60% of the data on the 16 GB card that came with a friend's OG Droid. The card just failed one day and hundreds of the photos were corrupted.

Yep my original 16gb card from my DX failed about 3 months from new.

 

[HanSolo]

For $5 a year I have 20 extra GB on Picasa. I figured 5 bucks is worth the piece of mind for all my pics.

5-6 hours running constantly on LTE at full brightness doesn't sound too bad. On my wifi Xoom I keep the brightness at 10% and I'm pretty sure SAMOLED is supposed to be brighter then LCD.

Battery is a huge issue for me. I need to be able to take it off the charger in the morning and not need to charge it until I go to bed. Though I only really use the phone for 30-60 minutes a day when it isn't on my car dock.

Answer: clouds. We have 4G LTE and wifi for a reason.
Don't put everything on your C:\ drive

Wow. $5? That's awesome. However, what if you live in an area that doesn't get good 4G signal? Then you'll constantly be in molasses mode.

 

[nj02vette]

Answer: clouds. We have 4G LTE and wifi for a reason.
Don't put everything on your C:\ drive

While I agree on principle, Verizon has taken away unlimited data (unless grandfathered, and how long do you think that will actually last?). Cloud services sound great until you realize that listening to your Google Music account cost you $1200 this month.

Many of us, myself included, still have unlimited data, but that's a reality for many others.

 

[vasilator]

It's not necessarily software, it's hardware. 1.5GHz, Super bright HD screens, 4G radios, Wifi, etc. All that takes power. No amount of software optimization is going to help that.

Apple addresses the issue by using underclocked hardware (800MHz A5), with small screens (higher resolution, but less backlight), no 4G radios, etc. Couple that with a non-removable battery that they can make bigger (because of the sealed nature), and you have a device that can marginally last longer than current phones. I say marginally, because you can easily kill an iPhone 4 in a few hours too. iOS may run a little more efficient on slower hardware than Android, but it still has battery issues as well.

I don't know about that last part. I play with my wifes Iphone 4 for 2-3 hours (games, etc) and It uses 20-30% max. I am talking not putting it down for at least 2 hours.

I only say this b/c it is the ONLY reason I am considering a move to IOS.

 

[EarlyMon]

My questions would be: Is the system memory and the storage memory part of the same chip? If so, is there a way for it to be partitioned?

If it is either separate from system OR if it can be partitioned, I don't see the worry. It's highly unlikely the drive will fail completely. As long as recovery still works, you can mount the drive just like an external drive on your PC, right? I mean, if the current ROM is completely hosed and needs to be wiped.

Typically, makers are using what we call an MCP - a multi-chip package. Those black things on PC motherboards you've probably seen that everyone calls chips are really called packages - and they typically have one chip inside, so we didn't care about semantics.

In mobile devices, you have a single package with two separate chips - ram and so-called rom, but the so-called rom is really a eMMC memory - in other words, flash memory, just like flash memory in an SD card.

In a modern Android, someone bright finally noticed that they were wasting silicon real estate by have one type of controller for the SD card and another for the internal flash memory (aka rom) - so eMMC memory is flash memory that takes the same control as an SD card.

~~~~~~~

So - can you repartition the internal flash memory?

Hmmmmm - well, depends how well things are locked down. Can you access the bootloader and turn off all security? Even so - pretty risky procedure, even to try.

If memory serves me right, and that's always in question. Guess we'll find out if six others say they've done it with custom rom installs....

 

[The_Chief]

The "Cloud" is great... IF you can get to it! What if you're somewhere with no connectivity? Can I not listen to my music, view my videos & movies or pics? That's the whole point of an SDcard. And yes, I keep my card backed up religiously because yes, they DO fail and yes, mine DID fail.

 

[nj02vette]

My questions would be: Is the system memory and the storage memory part of the same chip? If so, is there a way for it to be partitioned?

If it is either separate from system OR if it can be partitioned, I don't see the worry. It's highly unlikely the drive will fail completely. As long as recovery still works, you can mount the drive just like an external drive on your PC, right? I mean, if the current ROM is completely hosed and needs to be wiped.

Yes, memory can be partitioned. Only have to look at the Nook Color as an example. Although it has a separate uSD card, it's memory is partitioned with a system and data drive.

 

[HanSolo]

I don't know about that last part. I play with my wifes Iphone 4 for 2-3 hours (games, etc) and It uses 20-30% max. I am talking not putting it down for at least 2 hours.

I only say this b/c it is the ONLY reason I am considering a move to IOS.

Same thing with my wife's iPhone 4. We went on a camping trip that took us about 3 hours to get there. She was on her phone texting and playing Words with Friends while conversing with me, 3 hours straight. Her phone was at 70% when we arrived. I was like "What?!"

(unless grandfathered, and how long do you think that will actually last?)

Whaaaa??

 

[EarlyMon]

You know you can choose to upload at full resolution.

No, I must have suffered from PEBKAC and missed that.

Spoiler

Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

 

[metlcat]

Dammit I did that F5 thing and was stuck on the last page. Wondering where everyone was!



This is a good question. I want to be able to flash ROMS to this. Say I back up everything to Titanium Backup, won't it still get wiped?

I have a viewsonic gtablet that only has internal storage, and this isn't a problem. They can separate storage that will act like a SD card so you're able to just wipe the system and data partitions. Only time I lose everything is when I have to go back to stock.

 

[xtop]

The "Cloud" is great... IF you can get to it! What if you're somewhere with no connectivity? Can I not listen to my music, view my videos & movies or pics? That's the whole point of an SDcard. And yes, I keep my card backed up religiously because yes, they DO fail and yes, mine DID fail.

good thing you've got 32gb to work with then huh