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Public area => The Pub => Off-topic => Topic started by: Dragooon on August 10th, 2012, 06:11 PM

Title: Nexus 7
Post by: Dragooon on August 10th, 2012, 06:11 PM
Who else is planning on getting one? I just received mine (costed me 260$ + shipping from US to India) and so far am loving it. It's a great tablet for the cost and a great tablet overall.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 10th, 2012, 10:39 PM
Not available in France...
It's probably the tablet I'll be buying if I ever buy an iPhone 5. If I settle for an Android phone, I'll probably pass on a tablet altogether, or watch out for the iPad Mini.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: nend on August 11th, 2012, 08:01 AM
Nooooooo, not Apple. :whistle:

Maybe I am bias since I have been a small part of a few Android projects. You don't see Apple or Microsoft custom ROM's. So I like my nix Android, won't go to Apple or Microsoft to pay them for the software and the device.

Android still has a ways to go, but you have to love the idea behind the code. Openness IMHO among this type of software just means allot more customization to the main OS.

Plus Microsoft is evil, they want to get vendors to start making their hardware only work with Microsoft products. That sounds familiar to Apple back in the day. :whistle:
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Dragooon on August 11th, 2012, 08:06 AM
Quote from Nao on August 10th, 2012, 10:39 PM
Not available in France...
It's probably the tablet I'll be buying if I ever buy an iPhone 5. If I settle for an Android phone, I'll probably pass on a tablet altogether, or watch out for the iPad Mini.
I imported it from US :D. Couldn't wait honestly. I don't think I'll be buying another apple product for a while, android seems to have settled quite well these days.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: dwx on August 11th, 2012, 01:01 PM
Quote from Nao on August 10th, 2012, 10:39 PM
Not available in France...
It's probably the tablet I'll be buying if I ever buy an iPhone 5. If I settle for an Android phone, I'll probably pass on a tablet altogether, or watch out for the iPad Mini.
If you're of the mind that 1 device is better. then the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note II (http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_note_2-4854.php) would probably suit you.


I've got the original Galaxy Note and have loved using the device for the past 9 month. The Note II is supposed to be official announced in a few days.


-dwx
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 16th, 2012, 12:12 AM
What can I say... I despise Apple, don't like the company and their holier-than-thou attitude, but I do love most of my iPod's features and UI/UX.
I have nothing against Google, and I like the idea of an Open Source mobile OS, but I had the opportunity to test a Galaxy S3 running Chrome and Opera Mobile a couple of weeks ago -- and was extremely disappointed with the UX really. I just didn't feel comfortable with it.

So I'd like an Android device to test my sites on. And hopefully an Apple device to keep browsing with...
(Or maybe the Surface, eh. Heard a rumor that they're going to slash its price...)
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: feline on August 16th, 2012, 08:15 AM
i use a galaxy nexus (android 4.1.1) and the chrome browser here.
looks great and clean ..see attached image...
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 16th, 2012, 08:19 AM
OMG! The '12' in the new post notification disc is off by a pixel! I need to add a hack.android.css file to my skin!

Or maybe not :lol:
It's looking good indeed... Wondering what the replacement font at the top is. Oh, wait, it's just regular Roboto, ahah.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: feline on August 16th, 2012, 11:15 AM
the top bar shows that i have made a screenshot,
the virusprotection (kaspersky), wlan, umts, batterie state and the time ::)
and here a screenshot with opera mobile..
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 16th, 2012, 11:25 AM
I was talking about "Wedge - New ways..."
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Dragooon on August 16th, 2012, 06:05 PM
You used a damn S3 running samsungs crap UI over the beautiful Android UI. So...yeah, bad choice :P
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 16th, 2012, 06:28 PM
I didn't have a problem with the UI itself (I'd already tested a regular Android box before anyway -- just on a tablet, not a phone.)
What I did have a problem with, was with the browsers... And it was the same with all of them (Android or Chrome, can't remember which was or were installed, and Firefox and Opera Mobile.)
- The pinch effect looked 'rigid', not the 'natural' effect that I'm getting when zooming in/out on pages,
- There was too much padding in places,
- A strong tendency to use Roboto or Droid Sans everywhere or whatever -- betraying the fact that Android probably doesn't have a lot of default fonts...
- And major UX mistakes, like this one that made me want to throw away the phone: in order to GO BACK to the previous page, you have to press the OPTIONS button (which is not even a physical button, it has no feedback), and then wait for the menu to open, and select "Previous page" or something... Not only is this a *menu*, but it doesn't even have icons to help you find the right solution immediately!

All of them were done that way.
Mehhhh......................
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: nend on August 16th, 2012, 08:04 PM
The pinch is controlled by the driver, which isn't hardwired in any way. :whistle:

Padding depends on the browser, Opera Mobile seems to work good for me, not the best. The best browser that renders pretty good is Dolphin IMHO, however I hate the UI.

As for fonts there isn't much, you can install more if you want. I lost count of the number of fonts I have installed on my device.

On the buttons, unlike Apple, Android devices come with a wide range of interfaces and hardware that need to be consider. See my device has Menu, Home, Back, Search, Directional Pad with Center Button, Volume Keys, Call and Hang Up.

Some of my keys are hotkeys, so if I press them in a certain sequence or together they do something else.

Dragoon is right though, every manufacturer has to do some twist to the OS. I have a custom ROM so I don't see these problems. :eheh:
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Dragooon on August 16th, 2012, 08:14 PM
Jelly bean reduces the use of roboto, the default UX of JB/ICS is quite better actually when compared to Samsung's, the AOSP browser is perhaps the fastest one of them all, although I use Chrome. Plus you could've pressed the back key to go to previous page if the device had one (it should).
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: nend on August 16th, 2012, 08:15 PM
Here are some screenshots from my device.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Dragooon on August 16th, 2012, 09:44 PM
Here's the look on my nexus 7
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 16th, 2012, 11:34 PM
Quote from nend on August 16th, 2012, 08:04 PM
Padding depends on the browser, Opera Mobile seems to work good for me, not the best. The best browser that renders pretty good is Dolphin IMHO, however I hate the UI.
I don't know if it's the same engine as on my iPod, but it's looking oddly close to Safari Mobile... (Perhaps it's just a custom layer on Safari really...)
Quote
As for fonts there isn't much, you can install more if you want. I lost count of the number of fonts I have installed on my device.
I know, the S3 I tested on had an awful default font for the UI -- the guy seemed to think it was pretty cool to use a fantasy serif font for it. Yeah sure... (Interestingly, Opera Mobile fell back to that font, while other browsers used Roboto as fallback.)
Quote
On the buttons, unlike Apple, Android devices come with a wide range of interfaces and hardware that need to be consider. See my device has Menu, Home, Back, Search, Directional Pad with Center Button, Volume Keys, Call and Hang Up.
The S3 doesn't have a lot of buttons. But below the main screen it has a central button (like Home?), and two 'touchable' areas on its sides -- these are the buttons that give no feedback and unfortunately, the options button is one of these.
I can hate Apple all I want, but my iPod Touch 4 really has the best technical design I could think of. And 99% of that hardware is used for Safari Mobile and playing Scrabble™... :lol:
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 17th, 2012, 06:14 PM
Good news: I'm now running iOS 5.1.1... (unjailbroken. Will have to do that later...) And the update went without having to go back to an unjailbroken version, so it was easy.
Bad news: I made a backup of my music folder (20GB) into my hard drive (30GB free). Then launched the update. It told me there wasn't enough space to back up my media, so I figured okay it's going to back it all up so let's let it do it by itself... I proceeded to remove my backup folder, and launched the upgrade. When I came back an hour later, I had an error message saying there was a synchronization problem. Okay... I rebooted my iPod, it was upgraded to iOS 5, yay, and then I noticed the music folder was empty. Then I looked into my hard drive, and it had 30GB of free data, meaning that none of my music folders had been backed up!

Thank you, Apple..!!!

The music library is still 'backed up' as a text file in iTunes, so I'm going to have to find every CD again on my hard drive and copy it manually... About 200 albums. Again, thank you.
Additionally, iTunes 10.6 is extremely slow to sync. Heck, I started this post after launching a copy request, and it's still frozen. Thank you very, very much Apple. I know what I'll be doing when I consider buying an iPhone... I'll do something else with my money.
Posted: August 17th, 2012, 05:56 PM

Also, Opera too can be an ass...
Opera Mini 7.0.x gives a user agent string that basically identifies it as Opera 11.10. Fine by me. However, Mini doesn't support gradients -- while 11.10 desktop does!
And I don't really see myself going through detectBrowser to add a special case... Or even adding mandatory fallbacks before the linear-gradient line when the browser itself is saying it supports gradients... -_-
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: nend on August 17th, 2012, 09:03 PM
I never really liked Opera Mini, will maybe at first since it compresses and down scales everything, but that was when most data packages where slow. Every site is going to have a problem with Mini because how the Opera server mangles everything when it compresses it to send it to the users device.

Now I use Opera Mobile which is a more fuller web browser that doesn't query the Opera server for compressed or lower quality data. However I rather browse with the browser set as "Desktop" so every website I view thinks it is a desktop and not mobile. When I took the screen shot I let the site detect it as mobile, but I rather not browse in that format if you know what I mean.

Can you get Opera Mobile on your device? Opera Mini just is blah.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 18th, 2012, 12:07 AM
Quote from nend on August 17th, 2012, 09:03 PM
I never really liked Opera Mini, will maybe at first since it compresses and down scales everything, but that was when most data packages where slow. Every site is going to have a problem with Mini because how the Opera server mangles everything when it compresses it to send it to the users device
Well, Opera Mini, AFAIK, has always given the ability to disable the compression thingy... It's in the settings page.
Quote from nend on August 17th, 2012, 09:03 PM
.
Now I use Opera Mobile which is a more fuller web browser that doesn't query the Opera server for compressed or lower quality data.
Plus it has more features yeah. They offer a pretty good emulator for it (heck, if you're crazy enough it's enough usable as a main desktop browser :lol:)
Quote from nend on August 17th, 2012, 09:03 PM
However I rather browse with the browser set as "Desktop" so every website I view thinks it is a desktop and not mobile. When I took the screen shot I let the site detect it as mobile, but I rather not browse in that format if you know what I mean.

Can you get Opera Mobile on your device? Opera Mini just is blah.
Opera Mobile is a no-go on iOS because they restrict what you can do with browsing. Really, there are only 3 ways to make a browser for iOS: be Apple and release Safari Mobile, release a browser that uses the Safari Mobile engine, or release a browser that gets its data from a remote server, à la Opera Mini.
So, basically, Apple is abusing their monopoly...

PS: oh crap, another bug... Looks like the smart quote splitter is broken in Opera. Even in older versions..?! And even when manually rewriting surroundText() to avoid going though the Opera path... :-/
Posted: August 17th, 2012, 11:07 PM

Uhoh... Broken in Firefox 16 just the same. Not broken in IE though... Go figure!
Posted: August 17th, 2012, 11:16 PM
Quote from Nao on August 17th, 2012, 11:16 PM
PS: oh crap, another bug... Looks like the smart quote splitter is broken in Opera. Even in older versions..?! And even when manually rewriting surroundText() to avoid going though the Opera path... :-/
Fixed! Another silly last-minute bytesize optimization of mine that totally broke the logic of selectionStart... Uh oh. I should start seeing a shrink.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Dragooon on August 18th, 2012, 07:46 PM
Quote
Opera Mobile is a no-go on iOS because they restrict what you can do with browsing. Really, there are only 3 ways to make a browser for iOS: be Apple and release Safari Mobile, release a browser that uses the Safari Mobile engine, or release a browser that gets its data from a remote server, à la Opera Mini.
If it's any incentive, you get true Opera Mobile on Android. And it is a pretty good browser.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: feline on August 20th, 2012, 07:52 PM
Quote from Dragooon on August 18th, 2012, 07:46 PM
If it's any incentive, you get true Opera Mobile on Android. And it is a pretty good browser.
the google chrome browser for android 4.1.1 (jelly bean) is better and faster then any other...
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Dragooon on August 20th, 2012, 08:54 PM
Quote from feline on August 20th, 2012, 07:52 PM
Quote from Dragooon on August 18th, 2012, 07:46 PM
If it's any incentive, you get true Opera Mobile on Android. And it is a pretty good browser.
the google chrome browser for android 4.1.1 (jelly bean) is better and faster then any other...
Actually the AOSP stock browser is faster than Chrome, but I use chrome for sync.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 22nd, 2012, 05:46 PM
Quote from Dragooon on August 18th, 2012, 07:46 PM
If it's any incentive, you get true Opera Mobile on Android. And it is a pretty good browser.
As I said, the S3 I tested already had Opera Mobile on it. And it wasn't a memorable experience either...
(Then again, maybe I just need to get the hang of Android. I could only use that S3 for about 5 minutes and I was talking with the guy about what Wedge is...)
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: feline on August 24th, 2012, 10:23 PM
Quote from Dragooon on August 20th, 2012, 08:54 PM
Actually the AOSP stock browser is faster than Chrome, but I use chrome for sync.
true.. the build in browser is a little bit faster, but chrome have better look and feel and the site looks better...
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 25th, 2012, 12:19 AM
All I know is that Safari Mobile used to crash a lot in iOS 4.1, and now I'm on 5.1, it rarely if ever does. Although I'll probably have to re-jailbreak it because I hate that Apple has that hardcoded limit on the number of tabs you can keep open... (It works perfectly well with about 25 tabs open. I just can't close any, because until I reduce the number of tabs to 8, it won't let me create new tabs so I just reuse existing tabs. Which is messy.)

So I'm happy with the stock browser.
Chrome is interesting on iOS... But not THAT interesting either.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Arantor on August 25th, 2012, 12:41 AM
I have to admit I rarely saw crashes under 4.3 but 5.0's Safari crashes regularly on my iPad 1 because of the limits of physical memory. Every time it does crash it's always with an out-of-memory error. Every. Damn. Time. (Yes, I go looking for that sort of thing.)

Other browsers have exactly the same problem.
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Dragooon on August 25th, 2012, 07:58 AM
Hell, safari crashes frequently on my iPad 2...
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Nao on August 25th, 2012, 07:59 AM
How d'you get to know what the error type is...? I just get a freeze and then sent back to the iOS home...

@Shitiz> Well it's good to know :P
Title: Re: Nexus 7
Post by: Arantor on August 25th, 2012, 01:29 PM
Home > Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Diagnostic & Usage Data > each crash is a separate plist entry.