Not really. The hype should never have been about the Galaxy Nexus, it's just a reference design. The hype should have been about ICS, which is a complete overhaul of Android that adds some much-needed features out of the box that admittedly have all been available as apps for a while. But then, that's all Apple did so I don't see how anyone can complain.

The only thing is the App store does not have that many apps.

3"7 inch screen on the Wave 2, 5MP Camera, 720p recording and I found it faster than Android.

So I would say depends how much games you want on it. For the average phone to make calls, browse the web, music, good camera it's a great phone.

Cheers, tbh dad will never use apps anyway, I just wanted to get him something a bit more interesting than his old Motorola which is about 5 years old now.

The Arc S is the flagship SE phone of the moment (however this is only a mid-range phone), not very hard to answer. SE got it wrong with the original Xperia range but now they are getting things right and there is a dual core model round the corner. You may criticise them for offering several different models, some of them cheap, but what is wrong with that? Why can't people on a limited budget have a SE Android phone? Not all phones need to cost £400 +.

As for Android slowing down the rate of hardware innovation, well look at the G1 from 3 years ago compared to the Galaxy Nexus. Look at the Galaxy S compared to the Galaxy Nexus as well. Huge improvements in hardware have been made and the pace is, as always, accelerating.

The original iPhone design was not only innovative but beautiful as well. The iPhone 4 & 4S, are imho, ugly, chunky and way to heavy. They are one of the first Apple products that have been undesirable as objects.

Screen not quite as good as claimed apparently http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2011/10/why...cked-up-to-be/

I always thought Retina was just Applespeak for their display. Apparently not.

It's a bit of a pixie race.
I really can't see anyone ever joining this one.

And ultimate camera quality only really matters to a few and those doing prints.
It's hardly had a mention until recent.

I would have thought the networks would have been allowing pre orders or indicating their price structure by now, especially if the rumoured release date of the 3rd November is real?

It is. There is no such thing as a Retina display. It has in fact since been proved that increasing PPI beyond 330 is noticeable at regular viewing distances, so all that hyperbole from Jobs was rubbish too.

Increased megapixels do not mean a better quality camera. Trumpeting megapixel numbers is often marketing hype. In fact a camera with higher megapixels can be worse than one with fewer megapixels if compromises are made to accomodate the higher number of megapixels.

It's not rubbish. Retina display means that the display is the highest amount of pixels that the human eye can no longer process. The iPhone screen is the clearest smartphone screen. It couldn't be any clearer because your eyes would no longer notice the difference.

Well that's why the new iPhone also introduced a new lens. The biggest changer In picture quality is the lens. The more light, the better the picture.

steve jobs:
"there's a magic number around 300dpi, if you hold something about 10-12 inches away from your eye, it's the limit of the human retina to distinguish pixels."

Nexus ppi - 316.

It isn't though it's closer to 200 as the article I linked explains.

In which case their resolution is false advertising and they're bound to pull it.

edit: ah no, I see, its resolution times fudge factor, for all phones.

edit number 2:hmmm.. not 100% sure of the calculation I should be doing but I definitely get something approaching 300ppi. Whilst there might be an argument it's not as 'good' a ppi as the iphone/or SII, as steve Jobs says, once you hit around 300ppi it really doesn't matter. The times 2/times 3 is for subpixels, and doesn't affect the actual ppi.

Standard displays uses RGB and have 3 sub pixels per pixel such as the iPhone or Galaxy S2. The Nexus has 2 sub pixels per pixel so even though it has 300ppi the pixels them selves contain 2/3 of the information and so the true ppi is around 200ppi.

Anandtech provides move info on the display here - http://www.anandtech.com/show/5000/g...sion-confirmed

As shown going by subpixel density for a more accurate comparison we have:

iPhone 4: 613
Droid: 452
Atrix 2: 438
Nexus: 414
Galaxy S2: 383

So although the display is indeed better than the Galaxy S2 there's not alot in it. Certainly not as much as google would have you believe.

PPI is dependent on resolution not subpixels. There's either less pixels or not, in which case they are making a false claim advertising a resolution of 720x1,280. They are the only numbers, along with number of inches to consider, in terms of calculating ppi.

If you want to talk about quality of pixels or display thats a different argument, but you can't change the ppi without changing either the resolution or the dimensions.

It's not a false claim as such just misleading. If you make the pixels have 2 rather than 3 sub pixels you can squeeze a third more pixels on the screen without increasing cost (but the actual sub pixel count remains the same).

Realistically displays should be compared using sub pixels per inch and not pixels per inch as per the anandtech article to avoid misleading claims such as this.

Millions of phones sold............I wonder exactly how many of those purchasers actually gave a fig about the detail of pixels and sub pixels. In the real world it's not even on the radar of the vast majority of people...So I wouldn't think it was even a selling point.............

Have you ever wondered why no other manufacturer use the same screens as apple do?

To those people you could same the same about all hardware specs. Most of my friends and family couldn't tell me how much ram or the processor speed of their phone.

What also matters is the physical size of each pixel site. This is basically a function of megapixels (more is worse) and sensor size (larger is better).

What also matters (and where the iPhone is really getting its great shots from) is image processing, the software algorithms applied by the image processor to the raw data coming from the sensor to turn it into a jpeg.

I agree, that was kind of my point. It's easy to forget that when on forums like this it's populated by a very small minority of people who are obsessed with minutia and pointless spec figures that the real world inhabitants don't even consider when purchasing a phone...
Still a good place to come to sort a problem though...

Can sort of see your point, but it does read merely as a stab at Android disguised as a rather for-lone look at the past. To say that Android stifles innovation is a blatant misrepresentation of reality. Android is merely the operating system and to use the OS in an optimal state, you must have the hardware to go with it. Not google's fault in any way, shape or form if the hardware manufacturers do not step up to the plate (which is what they are doing anyway).

I also fail totally to see what was special with early 3g phones. I was an early adopter of 3G phones having an LG followed by a Motorola then finally a Sony Ericcson model and I do not in any way think they set the world on fire. Compared to todays fare, they were stone age. In order to relegate those historical phones todays technology must be innovative, advanced and exciting and Android as an OS has allowed that to happen.