Video And Screenshots Of Android 3.0′s Surprise Appearance | Hacker News Reader

Video And Screenshots Of Android 3.0′s Surprise Appearance

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47 pointsvdondeti36 comments

The best things I take away from this video:

1. The new Google Maps is coming out in the next few days for Android phones and it looks SLICK. Pure vector graphics when looking at standard map views, which will greatly reduce bandwidth.

2. The gmail app in 3.0 looks slick, perhaps even slicker than the Mail app for iPad.

3. It seems as though we're going to be able to have one binary for both phones and tablets, and the device will automatically detect which device it is and work accordingly.

Pure vector graphics when looking at standard map views, which will greatly reduce bandwidth.

That doesn't come free, though. Don't vector graphics calculations require more CPU/GPU power and likewise consume more battery?

Possibly, but not necessarily. Bandwidth also uses batteries and GPUs are getting more and more power efficient. Anyway the ability to download and store the maps for a weeks trip before leaving home more than makes up for any minor loss in battery life.

I think you're both right. The reduced use of raw bandwidth is going to be a huge battery saver alone. If you're allowed to download trip data BEFORE leaving on a trip, this will also save a lot of battery, especially if you're in areas with poor 3G coverage.

Basically, we may be heading to a time where we can rely solely on our Android phones for GPS navigation.

especially if you're in areas with poor 3G coverage.

It's not just poor coverage that is a problem. If, like me, you live in a small country up off in the corner of the civilized world, then half the times when you've travelled far enough to actually need your GPS you will have wandered across some national border. Trying to download maps over 3G in such a situation will basically lead to a phone bill that will require you to re-mortgage your house to pay off.

You know you can disable data transfer for roaming right?

Which leads again to the "I'm lost and my phone cannot help me without data connectivity" problem that vector based maps could solve. Hence his praise for the feature: In his case this is not just a matter of 3G availability in terms of technical coverage, it's whether 3G is affordable as well.

Both could be solved with "preloading" the phone. So - I dare to say that he knows how to disable that and that's completely unrelated. He doesn't even want to need data roaming to have Google Maps available. You misread the intention of his post.

How exactly will that help me with the whole finding out where I am and where I have to go problem?

The video is worth a watch. The part where he tilts the 2D map into a 3D perspective is awesome. Apparently, they are using vectors instead of tiled images which allows them to now do touch rotations and other cool stuff.

Yeah, this is fantastic. When he shows the demos and talks about the engineers building it, it really sounds like Google has told their developers to "build the future....and, go!" Unbelievably cool stuff.

Alas, lag when scrolling/panning/rotating is still noticeable.

That was my immediate first impression, but remember it's rendering vectors, and they're in 3D!

I enjoyed that feature, but the gesture feels backwards. Seems that a swipe up rather than down would be better for rotating to an oblique angle. Imagine a rotating whiteboard (e.g. http://j.mp/g2KHGc). Standing in front of it, you'd want to push on the top half ("swipe up") to rotate the face upwards.

Their vector implementation of Maps will making it a lot more usable, if you can cache a whole route's worth of map data beforehand: -no worrying about getting lost right outside data coverage -people without data plans can precache data while still on Wifi (smartphones without a data plan aren't that common among normals as far as I know, though it'd be bad news for GPS companies if it comes out for the iPod Touch any time soon)

With iOS, screen shots can be used to hack this. (To take a screen shot, position the display, and momentarily and simultaneously click both buttons. The screen shots are loaded into the Photo library.)

I find that works pretty well when you need to go on a rural route with poor 3G. I did that on my last cross SD run and basically had a pretty cheap road map. The fun of it is that you can do it with the wi-fi version also.

I don't know how bad it would really be for GPS manufacturers. Right now you can get a bunch of different applications for iOS that provide mapping and store all the data directly on the phone. Granted, they do cost money, and Google maps is free, but I don't know that having vector Google maps with caching would really be a huge blow to GPS manufacturers any more than the iOS apps already are.

A few silly observations:

1. They bested Apple at their own game: it has no hardware buttons. Rubin even mentions that the single iPad button can get disorienting at times.

2. The thing costs $10,000! So much for the Apple tax. Let's start complaining about the Google tax!

I'm not sure I get that first one. The reason, IMO of course, that the iPad rotates to any orientation is just for personal preferences. I only ever hold mine in one of two orientations (button at bottom, button at left) and thus I am never 'disoriented'.

Besides that, having at least one hardware button is really quite useful when (inevitably imperfect) apps go screwy. Also, non-standard placement of home button, anyone?

In short: I think, considering this is a prototype, you wont actually see very many tablets without hardware home-type-button. It may sound good in theory but I expect it would be really frustrating in real life.

1. Agreed. While I like hardware buttons in general, the fact that the device is otherwise orientation-less, sometimes leaves me sliding my finger around the edge looking for the button (particularly in the dark). A glowing button would solve this 50% of the time for me. But always having it on the bottom edge (i.e. an on-screen button) would fix it 100% of the time. 2. The $10k figure he gave isn't the retail price, but what he thought it cost to individually fabricate the prototype device.

In regards to 2 - I would bet that the tablet in his hands cost far in excess of $100,000 not $10,000 - or even higher, depending on how you account for engineering time. The raw materials won't cost that much, but building one-off prototypes is horribly expensive. Luckily they will amortize that cost over a million units or more so the cost of the first one is mostly irrelevant.

From that video it seems like Android still has performance issues compared to the iOS. The scrolling looked choppy and had a noticeable lag. Presumably this can be fixed, but I am always surprised that some phones still can't master smooth, no-lag scrolling, given that it is provably doable.

It's also amazing how much they copied from iOS. Almost everything about that Android tablet is a blatant copy of the iPad. Look at the Gmail app, for instance.

In the 80s Microsoft got big by commoditizing Apple's innovations and it looks like Google is going to do the same in mobile. As a consumer I'm not complaining, but Steve Jobs must be going crazy.

Wait, you are accusing Google of copying the Gmail app from the IPad?

You know G in Gmail stands for Google right?

No. Equark is accusing them of stealing the ideas from the Mail app from the iPad.

Two-pane email browsing was been around for more than a decade. It was used by Outlook and in other email clients as well.

No. It was invented by Steve Jobs shortly after he designed the wheel.

I'm just pointing out that they seem to have copied UISplitView exactly, including how it adopts to smaller screens and landscape vs. portrait orientation. Split screens have been around for a while, but this implementation is very specific.

If you don't want your ideas to be "stolen", keep them to yourself.

You put the word "stolen" in quotes. Whom are you quoting? The post to which you replied did not say that Google had stolen the ideas, it said that Google had copied the ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

3:57 (talking about whether the map would also run on "other people's operating system")

Have a group of engineers, they can only do so much.

I have feeling that the Maps app on iOS will not be updated for a long long time after Honeycomb. Apple was wise to look into building their own map app, just like it was wise to purchase Final Cut.

It seems like it would be against Google's best interest to give their excellent Maps app to iOS anyway. Free, built in GPS navigation was definitely a selling point for me when I bought an Android phone.

The problem for Google is that they want iOS to use Google's stuff or else Apple might be prone to pick someone else and that could cascade into not having Google as default for anything on the phone / devices. Google makes its money on advertising not the OS.

I'm guessing that the dual core chip on this android device might be a derivative of the NVIDIA Tegra. Although this wouldn't make sence that the GPU is off the die?

I wonder how well the caching will work. I currently use MapDroyd ( http://www.mapdroyd.com/ ) for cached vector maps. Maybe now I can just use Google Maps and not need a second maps app installed for when I lose my data connection.

I've downloaded MapDroyd for an upcoming trip to Australia. is there a way to get it to provide turn-by-turn directions, or even to show a map of a particular address? I can get it to show me a map of my current location, but haven't figured out street addresses, yet.

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