Google says Nexus One too old for Android 4.0

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/10/26/once.touted.superphone.lacks.horsepower/

by tilt • 15 years ago

89 141 15 years ago

electronista.com

nickpp3• 15 years ago

This is EXACTLY what I would expect from HTC. I had their products before and I got burned this way.

It is one of the reasons I switched to Apple.

jonursenbach• 15 years ago

Except HTC doesn't control the software on the Nexus One. Google handles all Google-experience devices like the Nexus One, Nexus S, Xoom and the new Nexus Galaxy.

nickpp3• 15 years ago

I do suppose the HTC hardware is the issue here, otherwise why would google not support n1? They'd have nothing to lose.

quandrum• 15 years ago

How is this different than Apple's iOS5 compatibility list?

Well, besides how much easier it will be for third parties to add ICS to Nexus One.

chugger8• 15 years ago

iOS 5 runs smoothly on a 3GS, a phone older than the Nexus One.

theDoug• 15 years ago

I think the reaction is largely over the perceived short lifespan of the hardware in relation to supported software updates available to it, which in this instance favors poorly against Apple generally supplying software updates more than two years after a phone is released.

danilocampos2• 15 years ago

This phone is substantially younger (by six months) than Apple's oldest supported model, for one thing. And since the 3GS will be sold on an ongoing basis, it'll likely enjoy updates beyond 5.0, as well.

Fliko2• 15 years ago

I'm wishing I bought an iPhone instead of my Nexus One now

ayuvar• 15 years ago

I still like my Nexus One, but between the sagging power button and the lack of "real" multitouch, I'm not inclined to buy another HTC product next time.

jkincaid• 15 years ago

It's feasible that Cyanogenmod will release a compatible version though, isn't it?

jbrkr• 15 years ago

Yes, there's a good chance of such a release considering the history of CyanogenMod [1].

Too bad the update won't be straight from Google this time. One of the key benefits of the Nexus One for nearly 2 years comes to an end.

[1] http://www.cyanogenmod.com/

jhack• 15 years ago

Considering the hacker community got the SDK version ported to the Nexus One[1], I think it's entirely feasible once proper source code gets released.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUkxwT-fdI4

untog4• 15 years ago

I'm sure. There are hacked versions of Gingerbread out there for the original Droid, even though it was officially deemed too underpowered for it. Given the number of hacker types that own a Nexus One, I'm sure it'll be on the way.

mechnik• 15 years ago

I hope Cyanogenmod or someone else will release one. Cyanogenmod version of 2.3 for N1 and other phones, came out as 'nightly' release ages before the official Google release. Does anyone know what are the hardware limitations to adapting ICS?

nickpp3• 15 years ago

Do you think ICS can actually run on N1? I do not think so. Otherwise why wouldn't google provide an update?

Thus, what do you think cyanogen can do to make ICS properly run on the N1 hardware?

RobAtticus2• 15 years ago

It might be able to run, but the performance is just so subpar that Google feels uncomfortable releasing it. I doubt it would go over well if they release ICS for the N1 and the phone is barely usable.

CM, on the other hand, will appear on any device that somebody is dedicated enough to bring it to. So if somebody really wants ICS on the N1, then they'll do it.

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

Gingerbread runs fine on the N1 and ICS has no higher hardware requirements (per Google themselves). Other than driver updates for hardware acceleration, there's nothing about the N1 that really disqualifies it from being able to run ICS just fine.

bonzoesc3• 15 years ago

The N1 has 512MB of internal space, and doesn't guarantee that the user has a MicroSD card inserted. Many Android apps (including Google-provided ones) only install to internal storage, and require janky hacks to work from the SD card. If it's impossible or impractical to update or remove ICS features to fit in a half-gig, it's impossible or impractical to port ICS to the N1.

funkah• 15 years ago

OK, but if Google isn't releasing it, isn't that an indication that it won't run very well even if you do manage to install it?

angryasian2• 15 years ago

it will be built off of android open source project essentially the same thing that the nexus prime will be running. With no new hardware requirements, I don't see any indication of why it wouldn't run as well.

nlanier• 15 years ago

Damn. This bums me out.

brudgers2• 15 years ago

There's no incentive for Google to provide backward compatibility for Android, hence they don't.

anigbrowl8• 15 years ago

Well, it would make people feel more confident about buying Android devices. I am not happy to discover that I am going to be stuck with a browser that chokes on most newspaper webpages (a lot of them keep reloading some 3rd party widget that renders the page unusuable after about 30-40 seconds).

axiak• 15 years ago

What prevents you from using firefox or opera?

lreeves• 15 years ago

Then what's the incentive for Apple to do just that? IOS5 runs on the iPhone 3GS, which is older than the Nexus One.

vetinari• 15 years ago

The difference is that 3GS is still being sold. N1 wasn't available on shelves well over one year.

brudgers2• 15 years ago

People who purchase iOS devices are Apple's customers. People who purchase Android devices are not Google' s customers

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

I've always wondered about this, especially in embedded devices. Amongst the many mistakes Microsoft made with Vista, first and foremost was allowing the bloat to get so bad that it wouldn't run at all on machines that ran XP quite happily. Later Windows 7 could actually run on those old XP machines with many, if not most, of the features that Vista bragged about.

So here we have Google, arguably a company which can hire all of the worlds best engineers, why are they succumbing to the code first and ask questions later philosophy that gave Microsoft such heartburn?

Andy, I know you read HN, tell the team that their bonus depends on Android 4.0 being runnable on a Nexus 1. It isn't about supporting the platform with the least market share of any Android phone, its about instilling in the team a philosphy that taking the time to run great on hardware of that capability pays huge dividends in the phone world.

Many engineers today were brought up in a world where the next PC will be 1.5 - 2x the 'size' of the current PC so bloat is fine, schedule is king. This is a bad philosophy in the embedded space. That 1.5 - 2x the 'size' phone means you can't cut your phone costs, you can't grow your market, you are stuck waiting only the latest / greatest chips which are always in short supply to ship volume. Help those engineers break the habit, I know they can they are smart folks. Challenge them, as Ben Horowitz would say use your lead bullets on this one.

untog4• 15 years ago

taking the time to run great on hardware of that capability pays huge dividends in the phone world.

It really won't though, that's the problem.

The Nexus One is nearly two years old. It's somewhat of an anomaly because it'll have a higher than average number of off-contract purchases, but in general once a person's contact has run for two years they get a new phone.

Two year old phones just aren't that important. Speaking as an N1 owner, I'd love for them to be. But they aren't.

jsnell• 15 years ago

All the world is not the US, in most places the incentives aren't set up for upgrading phones "just because". But even ignoring that, the benefits to the platform as a whole for getting to upgrade as many users as possible to latest version should be obvious. And if the top range of 2 years ago isn't good enough for an upgrade, chances are that a lot of the midrange of today isn't either.

(That said, if there really is a performance bottleneck preventing the port, the most likely candidate would be the GPU. And once you've made the decision to finally embrace the GPU, there's not anything you can do to fix the problem of going with a lame GPU when speccing out the hardware 3 years ago).

anigbrowl8• 15 years ago

in general once a person's contact has run for two years they get a new phone

That kind of market calculus made sense before the recession. Now the value proposition has changed, and while people may still buy newer hardware (such as tablets) they expect better value from their tech purchasing because increasing wealth is no longer a given. Also, people are more suspicious of corporations in general, especially ones that are sitting on a large cash pile. Public sentiment is fickle and can quickly bite a company in the ass - look at how far the stars of Groupon and Netflix have fallen in just two quarters.

The idea that everyone should replace their smartphone every two years says either that your firm is not interested in supplying the less well-off, or else that it doesn't much care whether its products end up in landfill or not. Sure, Apple locks down its hardware platform so tightly that maintaining backwards compatibility is far easier than it is for Google, but note how Apple products maintain a high resale value and that allows them to sell new ones at a premium price point without hurting demand. Apple may be hard to deal with for developers, but Apple consumers feel the firm treats them like Kings or Queens. Google overlooks this market positioning strategy at its peril; loyalty is a two-way street, and the firm should know this very well given its historical disruption of the Yahoo/Altavista/Lycos triumvirate that dominated search back in ~1998.

rayiner3• 15 years ago

Supporting a two year old phone might be important to say X% of users, but I'd argue that Android phones include features that are important to Y% << X% of users.

My girlfriend cares way more that her 3GS runs iOS5 than she does that it doesn't have a 4.5" screen.

lockeandkey2• 15 years ago

This is just simply not sustainable. Everyone cannot get a new phone every two years indefinitely.

chugger8• 15 years ago

Android is not a real-time OS and is not designed for embedded devices. the kernel is not real time and java has severe latency problems caused by asynchronous garbage collection. A workaround is to allow the garbage collector to run on a separate core (one of ICS's main feature), but Nexus One's cpu is single core. I guess Google did not have the foresight to design Android to disable garbage collection. as I mentioned before, automatic garbage collection is disabled in iOS/Obj C primarily because of performance issues/battery life.

nuclear_eclipse2• 15 years ago

The Nexus S also has only a single core, but is already scheduled to get ICS, and I actually already have an SDK port running on it just fine. I think the more plausible excuse is that the Nexus One has a pitiful amount of onboard ROM, which already has issues with limited space for both the OS and apps in 2.3. Granted there are SDK ports to the N1 already as well, but I wonder just how much space is available on the device for applications. Even though installing apps to SD card is supported, it's not optimal, and certain apps just won't work that way.

ajross3• 15 years ago

This isn't a hardware capacity issue. The Snapdragon has a 1 GHz CPU very similar to the Cortex A8, an Adreno 200 GPU broadly comparable to an SGX 535, and the same 512MB of DRAM that all the other phones of its generation have.

Its UMTS radio wouldn't make the cut on today's store shelves, and its camera sucks. But fundamentally this is about planned obsolescence. Google doesn't want to have to pay to maintain the driver stack and QA infrastructure for an old phone.

edderly• 15 years ago

Both the Nexus S and Nexus GS use an SGX540 which is fair jump in GPU performance.

bonzoesc3• 15 years ago

> This isn't a hardware capacity issue.

The Nexus One has 512MB of internal storage. The Nexus Galaxy has 32GB of internal storage. If ICS weighs in at much more than 400MB and has the stellar (read as: "perfunctory") MicroSD support we've come to expect from Android, it'd be about as enjoyable as a fart in a spacesuit on a Nexus One.

Tichy2• 15 years ago

Well Apple, who as we know do everything right, also made several hardware updates that left older Macs behind. So who is right?

dextorious2• 15 years ago

> Well Apple, who as we know do everything right

Really? Says who? The imaginary Apple-fanboy strawman?

> also made several hardware updates that left older Macs behind. So who is right?

What's "right" in this context? It's an engineering tradeoff. Considerations:

1) the cost of adding support for newer features for soon to be obsolete hardware 2) the benefits of using the added capabilities of newer hardware with no backward-compatibility restrictions (new sensors, etc). 3) the engineering effort required to make something performant in older hardware with less memory / cpu power.

From a customer standpoint, it's only wrong if the above don't hold, and the sole company's incentive is to artificially obsolete perfectly fine older devices.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

This shouldn't be a performance issue. It's a storage issue. The phones from early 2010 made by HTC had very low storage, like 512 MB, where 300-350 was occupied by the OS itself, and the rest was free for the user.

HTC Desire which basically is a Nexus One clone, couldn't even upgrade to Gingerbread+Sense, because there wouldn't be enough free storage left, so they had the choice of either using only stock Gingerbread to upgrade it, or leave it to Froyo+Sense.

Now I assume ICS is even bigger than Gingerbread, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fit in there. Now, will we see CM9 with ICS on Nexus One? It's possible, but maybe the CM team will be able to cut what the Android team can't cut from it, and offer a more stripped down version of it.

citricsquid• 15 years ago

I've got both the Nexus One and an iPhone 4 and I can never understand why anyone would choose the Nexus One over an iPhone, it's such an inferior product both hardware and software wise. The comparatively poor quality as put me off anything but iPhones.

seanalltogether• 15 years ago

The Nexus One is really more comparable to the 3Gs and I think it stands up well against it. I bought mine since I wanted an unlocked phone that didn't require a custom hack to accomplish. I've been considering going back to an iPhone 4s if Apple decides to sell it unlocked from their store.

glhaynes• 15 years ago

The online store (at least the US one: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph...) says the unlocked version is coming in November but I think that if you buy one from an Apple retail store you can get it unlocked now.

LokiSnake• 15 years ago

I believe they will come November, according to their store page.

RobAtticus2• 15 years ago

One, the N1 was released almost half a year earlier, so it's not like everyone was snubbing the iPhone 4 to get the N1. Two, some people prefer Android to iOS, and the N1 was one of the better Android phones at the time (and the only 'pure' experience).

phuff3• 15 years ago

I started with an N1 and later got an iPad 2. I found I had to turn off all push notifications and was surprised that apple would put out something that had such inferior usability when the notification dropdown thing that Android has is so clearly better. Maybe they didn't want to copy the people they despised? Or maybe they just couldn't find the engineering time until 5.0? I dunno. It was unbearable. I had to turn all of the push notifications off because I just couldn't handle being interrupted by a modal dialog all the time.

The other thing that really stinks on the iPad compared to the N1 is the non-multi-tasking of apps. Everytime I switch to a different app it starts all over again... Really? Really.

In general iOS was really pretty, and really usable. Maybe I was just aculturated to the android way of handling multi-tasking and notifications, but those two things alone made me think, "I can't believe people put up with this stuff..." :)

chugger8• 15 years ago

I was doing the same thing. I had a Nexus One and an iPad 2. My Nexus One crashed 12 times while I happily used my iPad 2 without problems.

masklinn5• 15 years ago

> I found I had to turn off all push notifications and was surprised that apple would put out something that had such inferior usability when the notification dropdown thing that Android has is so clearly better.

You may want to note that iOS was released more than a year before Android. The notifications have been essentially untouched between iPhoneOS 1 and iOS 5.

> The other thing that really stinks on the iPad compared to the N1 is the non-multi-tasking of apps. Everytime I switch to a different app it starts all over again... Really? Really.

Not really no, you might want to update your iPad at least to the OS released 16 months ago.

dasil003• 15 years ago

It's cheaper, much cheaper data plans available. It's unlocked and you can take it overseas, pop in a SIM you got in the airport for $10 and have voice and data in your local country. Gmail is better than Apple Mail. Maps app is better. Has wifi hotspot and carriers can't prevent tethering.

Those are the reasons I chose a N1 over the 3gs that was available at the time. Now that Apple is releasing a truly unlocks 4s I'm taking a serious look.

barrkel• 15 years ago

My Nexus One made my girlfriend jealous enough to give up her 3GS and come over to Android. YMMV.

robterrell2• 15 years ago

Great. I guess I can stop hitting the "Update" thing every day in the hope that 4.0 will appear.

I can't help but note that the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch purchased the same month are already running iOS 5.0 and I haven't noticed any speed issues.

danilocampos2• 15 years ago

And released a half year earlier than the Nexus One, no less.

tejaswiy2• 15 years ago

My 3GS is almost unusably slow on iOS5.

melling• 15 years ago

Mine too. I'm upgrading to the 4S because of this. Can't wait for the 5. I also have a Nexus One for development. I find it hard to believe it was $600 in Jan 2010 and now it's obsolete.

vondur2• 15 years ago

Mine works just fine, but sometimes hardware issues will cause the slowness. I'm guessing some of the flash memory may be bad.

masklinn5• 15 years ago

Check your logs/system diagnostic, if there's nothing strange try a complete reinstall (without restoring from a backup), this is abnormal, most reports are that the 3GS is as fast under iOS5 than it was under iOS4, if not faster.

chugger8• 15 years ago

You're full of it. iOS 5 runs fine on the 3GS.

robterrell2• 15 years ago

I've only upgraded one of the 3GS's to iOS 5, and my experiences pretty much match this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4956/apple-ios-5-review/15

Basically, as fast or faster than 4.3. But mine is a development-only device with no music or other content, so maybe that's the difference.

dailyrorschach• 15 years ago

I remembered when this happened to be when iOS 4 came out and I still had a 3G, a complete wipe/restore solved the problem for me that time, perhaps that will work here, YMMV.

ZeroGravitas3• 15 years ago

Google updates many parts of "Android" such as Mail, Maps, Youtube, Market etc. independently of the OS. Other parts are improved not on the phone, but server side (e.g. google home page, mobile web interfaces, audio transcription). The bits that it doesn't upgrade (launcher, browser etc.) can often be replaced by 3rd parties, including repackagings of parts of later versions of AOSP.

I was pleasantly surprised how many upgrades my phone (which the vendor never took past 2.1) continually got from Google. I managed to get most of the other features from later AOSP releases, without rooting or anything harder than browsing the market.

In the end I added a custom froyo rom to get the benefit of the JIT (since the device had enough RAM to benefit from it) and will probably jump to CyanogenMod soon.

All in all, in not sure why people are so keen for Google to follow such an archaic and monolithic release model. It's as baffling as the people who care that their browser's version number is changing too fast, except in reverse. It's a mostly meaningless number.

You can start complaing the first day Google switches the new version of Youtube or Maps to supporting 4.0 or above and you actually miss out on features. Most of the stuff they are putting in the OS is hardware-related like dual-core support, NFC beam or soft-keys to replace missing buttons. Even the new font is designed for high-DPI screens.

rayiner3• 15 years ago

"The... (launcher, browser etc.) can often be replaced by 3rd parties, including repackagings of parts of later versions..."

"I managed to get most of the other features..."

"I added a custom froyo rom... and will probably jump to CyanogenMod soon."

Punchline: "All in all, in not sure why people are so keen for Google to follow such an archaic and monolithic release model."

patrickod2• 15 years ago

Why are people complaining about the Nexus One not being as great as the iPhone 4. Look at the release dates and you'll see that the Nexus One has 6 months on the iPhone 4. If anything compare it to the 3GS and you'll see that it is in fact a much better phone. Google are pushing forward with Android and the Nexus One is unfortunately being left behind. It remains the best phone I've ever owned and I'll definitely be buying a Galaxy Nexus to continue riding the Android wave.

chugger8• 15 years ago

the iPhone 3GS is better than Nexus one because it (can) runs iOS 5. your Nexus One is stuck running an old OS.

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

Except that there will be a CM port available probably by mid or late January.

patrickod2• 15 years ago

Please take your trolling elsewhere. Last I checked HN was a place where intellectual discussion takes place. Act accordingly.

anigbrowl8• 15 years ago

Boo. Of course I do not expect all the advanced features or substitutes for things that are not supported by the older hardware, but Google promoted ICS strongly as a 'run everywhere' version designed to save developers from the hardware fragmentation issue. Between me, my wife, and my brothers-in-law, we have 7 or 8 Android devices in this household, and I was looking forward to a more unified operating environment.

jinushaun• 15 years ago

Sad panda... I was really expecting Google to support at least two more version of Android post Gingerbread for the Nexus One. Guess I'll keep the N1 around as my device for testing apps on Gingerbread/old hardware.

Apple handled this a lot better with iOS 4 and the old iPhone 3G. They simply took out features that the 3G couldn't handle. My N1 handles Gingerbread perfectly without any hiccups. Incredibly, every version of Android seemed to make my N1 faster. You couldn't say the same for iOS 3/4 on the 3G, which got worse, and any reasonable person wouldn't expect Apple to support the 3G beyond iOS 4. The N1, on the other hand, seemed like it could support at least two more versions of Android.

vondur2• 15 years ago

I have the Nexus one and am not too pleased with this, the phone isn't that old, and I assumed we would get ICS on it.

clhodapp• 15 years ago

I imagine that this is not due to the n1 being "underpowered" per se, as the nexus s has roughly the same specs as the n1, but more internal storage. The problem is due to the fact that the n1 can't accommodate the ics image, which google is claiming is about twice as large in size. /speculation

anigbrowl8• 15 years ago

I think you're right. running out of onboard space is an issue if I install too many apps on the N1.

v21• 15 years ago

I am constantly running out of internal space on my N1. It's the worst thing about it, and the main reason I would upgrade.

mrbill• 15 years ago

It's sad when a phone that's only 1.5 years old is "too old". I really enjoyed my N1 with Cyanogenmod, but switched back to iPhone when news of T-Mobile's acquisition by AT&T started coming out.

leeoniya• 15 years ago

my gf's CDMA Hero (released October 11, 2009 w/Cupcake!) is running CyanogenMod 7.1 (Gingerbread), runs better than stock HTC sense trash.

"won't run on Nexus One", you say?

it'll run back-to-back Ironman triathlons

dlikhten• 15 years ago

NOOOOOO!!!! HTC EVO 4G NO HAS 4.0 upgrade? Noes!!! NOOOOES!!!!!! I am very sad now.

As a side note, at these speeds, feels like windows xp has less hardware reqs than android :P

37prime• 15 years ago

Nexus One was released in January 2010. Too soon to be "retired" after only 2 years.

Nexus One was seriously "flawed" for having only 512MB of internal storage. I had to uninstall tons of applications just to update the built in ones.

lurker173• 15 years ago

This is the killer. Google keeps piling more junkware apps onto internal storage, and not enabling the SD bit for their apps.

I am constantly making calls of which 1MB non-SD app to evict, while Browser and Maps and friends pile on 5-10MB each. And there isn't even any piracy(?)-related reason to make these apps internal-only, like there is for paid apps.

My N1 is a constant state of "Browser storage full" since the latest round of app updates.

spiralpolitik• 15 years ago

So by the end of the year Android developers will have 5 different versions (2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.0 and 4.0) of Android in the wild and over 40% of which are running a version that's almost 18 months old (2.2) with no upgrade path.

And they say fragmentation isn't an issue...

It's Nokia and Symbian all over again.

angryasian2• 15 years ago

For a site called hackernews, it surprises me that people actually care about this. There will be so many available roms for ICS with source code release, and any phone that is at least running CM7 should have no worries. Its almost impossible to brick a phone during the root process and for a 2 year old phone to not attempt to root at this point, would not be using your hardware to its full benefit.

51Cards• 15 years ago

The sunset photo as the wallpaper on the phone in the article is appropriate. Still love my Nexus One.

foobarbazetc• 15 years ago

Well, this is absolute bullshit.

Google says Nexus One too old for Android 4.0

Related Stories