And, wow! Somebody has already created an app to disable the lock-screen camera, which will otherwise take pocket photos and drain the battery (smart, Google; not!)

New version of the CWM recovery out that works.

Put my brave boots on and flashed it and then booted into recovery, all working this time!

Brilliant.

I just want to get the stock recovery image back in place, so that OTA updates work without fuss again.

I tried flashing the 4.1.2 recovery.img before the OTA update, but it still hung when attempting the update. Pull battery, reinsert, try again -- what do you do about that on the N4 with it's sealed chasis ???

Do Android phones not have the protected boot loader approach that iOS and Empeg have then ? Is there not a magic button combination during boot that you can use ?

(though IIRC the iOS approach is different to Empeg, as the boot loader does sometimes get updated ?)

Yeah, it has something like that. All nice and solidly secure from the factory. Geeks like us then "unlock" the bootloader, allowing us to replace the alternate boot image (aka. "recovery image") with customized ones.

Cheers

Hopefully people here with a Nexus device on 4.2 don't need to note someones birthday or anniversary in December.



(from http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/11/17/sorry-santa-google-cancels-december-in-android-4-2/ )

Funny. I've never used that particular feature, though.
The main Calendar app works correctly, even though the interface is practically identical there.

The way it works on my HTC One X which is also sealed up is that holding down the power button for about 5 seconds does a 'hard' reboot. The annoying side effect of this is that with the phone in my pocket, taking more than 5 seconds to do my right shoelace also reboots my phone.

Also, I bought a Nexus 10. Having a lot of fun with it actually. The screen is fantastic, the build quality is great and feels every bit as much of a premium product as an iPad in my opinion. Really like the textured rear. Yes, it does have some weight which makes extended holding in portrait (reading using the Kindle app for example) a little annoying. Software is not too great. Rightmove, Engadget, Squeezebox Controller, GTA 3, and my Humble Bundle games work perfectly well. But iPlayer, The Verge, XBMC Remote, Twitter and many others are either broken or just ridiculous when viewed in 2560x1600. I am hoping some of these will improve, but I do spend the majority of my time using Chrome for browsing and for that it really is a very nice device.

The multi user support was a big plus for me, but it isn't quite as seemless as it should be. Domus Link (home automation via Linux and X10 app), Sony Media Remote and the Squeezebox Controller seem to forget their settings in my wife's account on the tablet. Pretty disappointing really.

That's a handy little feature. I guess that is a less known disadvantage of not having a physical home button (for those who don't know the iOS hard reset is done by holding home and the power, thus it sadly lacks the convenient shoelace reboot feature).

I will give Google credit for trying to encourage app developers to operate in a resolution independent fashion, where they rearrange the screen as more space becomes available. Hopefully, as the market share of the Nexus 7 and other such tablets grows, more devs will get on the bandwagon.

The Nexus 7 is a great device, but as popular as it is I think the problem is that it is still really close to a phone. It has the same resolution as my One X phone, and it does get away with running normal phone apps upsized a bit. I would guess that it would make developers a little lazy as they can look at their app and think that it works fine. With a much larger resolution and a much larger device the Nexus 10 is quite a different beast along with devices like the Moto Xoom, Asus TF101, Samsung Galaxy Pad etc. But the reality is I don't know anyone else who has one of these larger Android tablets so it may take a while to catch iOS when it comes to tablet app quality, if that ever happens.

You're right, of course, but if Android devs start following the tablet style guide, which encourages them to split their app into fragments that might display full-screen on a phone and share the screen on a tablet, then it becomes relatively straightforward for a dev to support a variety of different screen resolutions and sizes.

(And, of course, at the next Google I/O, I wouldn't be surprised if every attendee gets a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 10.)

I'm puzzled by the apps originating on iOS with good iPad versions that fail to make the jump to Android properly. My Nexus 7 would be a fantastic smaller Flipboard tablet. But it has the layout from the iPhone version, which just doesn't work as well for quickly browsing stories.

??? Dunno what FlipBoard looks like on an iGadget, but I like it on my GN, and liked it on the N7 (which I no longer have).

Cheers

Main key ability, more then one story viewable on the screen. I'd quickly "read" my Google Reader feed by knocking out 5-8 stories I wasn't interested in with one flip. Any one of those you tap to get the full article view.

How does "Google Reader" relate to "Flipboard" ?

Flipboard has great integration with Google Reader, along with many other services beyond the preset categories. I find it to be a good Twitter client as well.

Got the OTA update for Android 4.2.1 today, fixing the "missing month" and other bugs. Dunno (yet) what else might be different.

Cheers

No 4.2.1 for me yet!

Nearly 2 weeks in and I love this phone, I'm loving android in its jellybean flavour.

This phone is so unbelievably quick and smooth, its a complete and utter bargain, the screen is amazing too.

No regrets in breaking the ties with iOS.

The wife loves the phone too, so when they're more readily available I think we'll be getting her one too.

Excellent!

It'll be interesting to see how the long term availability of the nexus 4 goes; it's another of the "sold at cost" products (along with nexus 7/10, samsung chromebook, etc), so google are paying the manufacturer something to make it worth their while building the thing - or covering another piece of the retail cost structure, be it distributor margins or whatever to achieve the same effect.

Obviously in the tablet/chromebook market, they needed to prime the market with competitive devices to get android/chromeos a foothold, but that wouldn't seem to be the case with android. There are many many vendors in the game delivering to every price point and every quality level. Possibly it's a warning shot to amazon?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's always in short supply for this reason - it's subsidised with a limited budget. The fact it exists is enough to mark the nexus checkbox, and if you really really want one you can order and wait.

Just got the samsung chromebook and it's decent for the price, I have to say. Sub-par screen, plasticky build, bad keyboard feel and a meh trackpad (though nicer than the Cr-48) but for $250 you really can't argue - it browses the web perfectly acceptably and battery life is good.

Lots of supposition and guesswork below. I have no insider information...

My guess is that Google is just absolutely desperate to bust up the current carrier-subsidy business model. Steve Jobs made a similar observation, back in the day. Apple managed to negotiate very effectively with its carriers. Google presumably found it had very little leverage with the original Android business model, so this new Nexus-branded project is presumably their attempt to try something else.

Long term, the real consumer cost, with all the usual middleman profits, will fall below Google's current subsidized profit, and Google may then choose to terminate their program if its objectives (presumably giving Google more direct control over user devices) have been achieved.

So far the only thing that I have found in my general use that doesn't work as well as iOS is copy and paste in the SMS application.

It's often useful to be able to copy and paste a portion of the text, for example yesterday I received a tracking number via text and the only way I could use it was to copy the whole message and paste it into an email and then copy out the tracking number to paste into the browser.

Adrian

Yeah, that's weird. Just about all other apps on Android seem to have the generic text copy/cut/paste functionality. But the SMS app only copies complete messages.

I think you'll find that the iOS Messages app has pretty much the same restrictions. You can copy a whole message and you can copy phone numbers and assorted other things that the app thinks it recognises, but beyond that you have to copy the whole message.

Humn, I could have sworn that I'd copied and pasted sections before, but now you mention that it doesn't have that functionality I do seem to recall this.

I'd probably never noticed it as this is the first time I'd received tracking information via text, so probably wouldn't have had cause to copy and paste from a text before.

Both iOS and Android should fix this!

On a stock Galaxy S III with 4.0.4 you can copy parts of an SMS. I think this is the Samsung app though rather than the native Android app. You just tap the individual message and then it opens separately and then you can click-hold to get the little "book end" markers.

Ok, the best part of a whole month in and I'm completely and utterly sold on this device and Android in it's current incarnation.

You know when you first picked up an iPhone and played with the operating system and marvelled at how slick it was (compared to "smartphones" of the day), well, there's no difference here in slickness between the current version of iOS and Jellybean.

My thoughts.......

I like that you can decide what Apps you want on your home screen. No Apple, I didn't want Passbook or Stocks (etc) anywhere on my home screens.

Widgets. I have my train times displayed on my homescreen, I see whether my train is late without having to find and launch an application.

Notification bar. Again, this is just dumb in iOS, why on earth are there not icons to say you've got email or a message. Android (and virtually every other phone OS on the planet) have this right.

Tethering, I like the fact that it's my choice on how to use data that is included in my package. I often use it on the train with my Nexus 7 just so I can browse bigger.

Stats, the stats are useful, I can see how much data I've used between a set of dates or in the current billing period. I can see what's using my battery, this is useful stuff.

Battery. No worse than my 4S, probably slightly better if anything. It's a smartphone, I'm used to knowing that if I use it, the battery is going to drain. It's not a feature phone that'll last 2 weeks on standby.

Screen. Awesome, looks beautiful and is a lovely size.

Camera. Dunno, I've never been one for taking photos on a phone, wouldn't bother me if it was the worst camera on the face of the earth.

I've still got 4GB free space on the device, I was never a prolific installer of apps, maybe because there's so much crap out there (A problem in both the play and apple app store). When I do install stuff, it tends to be because it's trending somewhere or because I specifically know that I want it, I don't randomly browse the store and think "oooh...I'll install this".

Speed. Whoosh, this thing is fast and responsive, no lag. It just works. (Where have I heard that before).

If you'd have told me a year ago that I'd own an Android device and that it'd be as good (and better in so many additional ways) as an iPhone I'd have laughed in your face, but here we are.

My name is Adrian and I'm an Android-a-holic.

Edit:

Build Quality. Awesome again, feels solid and a quality product.

If only this was actually true on my Nexus 7. I still have the problem with something randomly sucking the battery dry on standby.

It doesn't happen all the time now, sometimes it will go 4 days or more on standby (still crap compared to any iPad in that respect). But often it will just drain the battery in 24 hours or so.

The battery stats simply haven't helped to track down the offender, besides showing that something stops it sleeping properly

Re the battery I have the same issue with my SGS III so you're not alone there. The ICS battery usage monitor does seem to show more "awake periods" when it's flogging the battery i.e. discharge graph is steeper than normal but the percentage usage breakdown doesn't help.