According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is about to take a very different approach with its flagship Nexus devices. Instead of partnering up with just one original equipment manufacturer (OEM) like HTC or Samsung, Google is apparently planning to team up with upwards of 5 OEMs for Android 5.0 Jelly Bean in order to provide a complete line of Google (Nexus) phones.
Not only this, but Google is reportedly planning on selling these devices straight to consumers in unlocked form. This means that Google will begin taking a direct share of the hardware sales profits and also circumvent network providers in the same move.
The implications of this move are many and far-reaching. In the US unlocked devices are quite rare, as US carriers have a huge amount of power when it comes to what will and will not be supported on their networks. This kind of control allows carriers both within and outside of the US to not only dictate the kind of devices that are available, but also to cram said devices full of carrier-specific bloat-ware that ultimately serves no purpose other than to clog up the works and slow down the overall efficiency of a device.
By controlling not only the distribution of a device but also its software content, carriers will have to compete by both providing a timely release and limiting the amount of useless bloat-ware found on their handsets. This is basically good news no matter what country you’re in, as these are two problems that Android smartphones have been facing since the inception of the popular mobile operating system (OS).
Google will also be circumventing much of the need to cut the carriers or larger retailers of the world in on much of the end-profits when it comes to smartphone sales of the Nexus line.
Fighting Fragmentation
Another connotation of this move we’re considering is that of Androids seemingly never ending fight against fragmentation. Every time Google releases a new Android update it takes months to roll out to existing devices, sometimes never reaching them at all. A good example of this is that with Android 5.0 Jelly Bean right around the corner many of the world’s Samsung Galaxy S II users are yet to gain access to the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update, with their GS2s remaining stuck on 2.3 Gingerbread. This example is even more fitting when one realises that just a year ago the Galaxy S II was the hottest-selling smartphone in the world and the undisputed king of the Android market, yet it is still to receive an update that was announced well over half a year ago.
Traditionally Android Nexus devices have been the only Android devices that have received updates in a timely fashion. This isn’t some form of favouritism, rather it is simply a question of ease. An Android OEM, in order to distinguish itself from the competition, will usually paste a unique user interface (UI) on top of the Android platform. This means that an HTC or Samsung owner will have a uniquely Samsung or HTC experience, even though they may both have Android devices. Unfortunately this UI must then be made compatible with each successive update to the Android operating system, which takes a lot of time.
Then, after this has finally been achieved each carrier must then analyse the Android update for each individual device to confirm that it will work on their network. Carriers are also suspected of failing to push out timely updates in the hopes that customers will become tired of their old phone and buy a new one, rather than having their old phone suddenly refresh and offer an updated and better experience.
A Google Nexus device does not have this unique OEM-specific UI pasted on top of it. It instead sports the basic Google Android interface that each Android update is designed specifically to work with. Carriers have little excuse to delay these updates and thus they tend to roll out in a timely fashion.
If Google is truly to offer up an entire line of Android 5.0 devices at once, that whole line would foreseeably enjoy a rapid update to Android 6.0 when it is eventually announced another year down the line. This would create a bigger gap between OEM branded and Nexus branded phones, with the Nexus line clearly in front. Our hopes are that this will encourage OEMs to make their skins more easily adaptable to future Android updates.
This projection does have one slight humorous flaw, however. It’s intriguing to note that the current version of Android, Android 4.0 ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ (ICS), was designed to be the one Android version that would bring them all and (in the darkness) bind them. The idea with ICS was that, by bringing some more stringent guidelines within which an OEM could act, successive versions of Android would be able to be accepted more easily, finally ending the fragmentation problem and offering a more unified Android ecosystem. Why, then, would Google feel it necessary to release an entire line of Nexus phones in order to fix the Android fragmentation problems if ICS was supposed to have already done the job? The question is unfortunately unanswerable at the moment, but it’s still an interesting one nonetheless.
Unifying UIs
The idea of a more unified Android UI experience, with the stock-standard Google-defined UI leading the charge, is slightly reminiscent of the Windows Phone approach taken by Microsoft. Windows Phone, much like Android, relies entirely on 3rd party OEMs to make devices for the platform. However, Windows Phone has very strict rules under which OEMs can operate, one of which is that the Windows Phone UI is the one and only UI that shall be used. As such any Windows Phone, no matter which brand you buy, can look very similar to any other Windows Phone to the untrained eye.
Will, then, Android begin to take a similar approach. We’ve already spelled out the advantages, but one of the strengths of Android has always been its entirely open nature. Manufacturers can play around with the OS as much as they want in order to provide a unique and innovative experience. If things start to become too uniform there’s a slight chance that Android may find itself on a path to becoming the next Windows Phone.
Multi-Market Nexi
One thing we really like about this reported move by Google is the kind of choice it can potentially offer, despite the concept of a uniformed UI. Traditionally Google Nexus devices have always been high-end, meaning that people looking for lower-end phones have had to either miss our to buy a generation behind. A Nexus line could suggest devices of multiple sizes and pricing. We could see big-screen high-end smartphones as well as smaller budget models and anything in between.
Android Tablets
There’s also the potential for helping out the tablet market. Android tablets have been getting destroyed both in-store and in the courts. If Google has a greater control over a line of Nexus Tablets then they can not only ensure that the chances of patent infringement is minimal (we’re looking at you, Samsung), but by providing a stable framework from which the Android Tablet market can grow.
Currently Android tablets offer a huge range of different user experiences, which is great in theory but is failing in practice. This is because potential customers become too confused as to which model to buy and end up either grabbing a sub-par one or giving up and going over to the iPad. Providing a unified tablet experience will allows users to get used to the idea of Android tablets. The differences between models of varying prices will be more obvious and the capabilities of each tablet, capabilities that would hopefully be more unified and comparable, can be more easily understood.
After a generation or two of this OEMs can start going back to making weird and wonderful Android tablets with a potentially larger and more well-educated Android user base.
The Nexus Nexus
At the end of the day we think this would be a pretty smart move on behalf of Google. But what we’re really interested in is seeing what kinds of repercussions come about as the result of Google selling its products directly to users in an unlocked and unified form. It could be just what Android needed to take the next step in the smartphone market, or it could end up restricting OEMs too much to provide a rich variety of products. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The EU already had restrictions regarding data roaming charges, limiting users to a maximum roaming fee of €50 within a month before data roaming was cut-off. Recently Europe has voted to take it one step further regarding the price-per-megabyte (MB) that roaming users are required to shell-out.
The HTC One X is HTC’s new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) flagship device. Not only that, but the One X was the world’s first widely-released quad-core smartphone. As such it represents the next generation of the smartphone market and is an exciting indicator of things to come. For the meantime we got our hands on one to find out if it’s all that it’s cracked up to be and if the One X has a chance of taking some of the Android game back off of Samsung and delivering it to the waiting hands of HTC.
Display and UI
The UI itself was quite smooth, but we did find a few problems to do with lag time between making a command and it registering with the handset. Often within an app we would hit a tab, or press the back button and have to wait a few seconds before anything would happen. This became increasingly frustrating when, after a few seconds of nothing, we would hit the back button again several times only to have a chain of ‘Back’ commands suddenly fly out in rapid succession and we’d find ourselves back at the home screen.
Camera
Battery Power and Heating Issues
Browsing and Keyboard
The WhistleOut Opinion


The Lumia 710 is the mid-range forerunner of Nokia’s new Windows Phone (WP) Lumia range of smartphones. The new WP focus for Nokia brings with it not only a change in overall user experience, but some unique approaches to external design and a subtle feeling of style not seen for a while in the Nokia range.
Display and UI
Camera
Music on the Nokia Lumia 710
Apps and Gaming
Keyboard and Browser
The WhistleOut Opinion


The rumour mill can finally take a rest with the unveiling of the new Samsung Galaxy S3 flagship phone in London. The highly-expected Android superstar might not have lived up to some of the more far-fetched expectations surrounding it, but it still hasn’t failed to impress those that have seen it in action.
As the nation makes more headway in to the age of fibre-optics, leaving our copper-based past behind, we can obviously expect to see internet speeds, coverage and general usage increase. It should come as no surprise, then, that companies like Sky want to get in on the ground floor and offer their own fibre-based services before competition becomes to fierce.
We’ve been hearing talk that Samsung is looking to release its own cloud service, currently known as ‘S-Cloud’, in order to compete with Apple’s popular iCloud. If the rumour turns out to be true and if Samsung is able to provide a solid cloud-based product then this is certainly good news for Samsung owners.
For a long time now there has been gossip about rumours of reports that the technology behind the varyingly popular Microsoft Kinect system is coming to Windows Phone. Kinect is an Xbox 360 accessory that quite literally turns your body in to the controller using advanced motion-sensing and voice recognition.
Telefonica, the owner of UK telco O2, has signed a deal with EA Mobile, giving it the right to run promotions that include popular EA Mobile game titles such as The Sims, Monopoly, Worms and FIFA.