Verge: HTC in 'disarray', staff departures, 'disastrous' First, & production problems

[Crono]

Seriously, it's the epitome of being one sided here in the crusade against something that can only benefit the user. Don't we normally expect that these things should err in our benefit? When did we fall into making excuses for the carriers?

I would love to have SATA support on my phones, but I don't see that happening.
I would love full HDMI out, not mini or micro HDMI out.
I would love for my phone to have more physical buttons, or physical keyboards but manufacturers are phasing those out too...

The fact is that the majority doesn't require microSD, and the fact that you, or me, or anyone else is part of a vocal minority who wants x or y doesn't mean we will get it. Carriers and manufacturers try to keep the majority happy, and otherwise try to save as much as possible and make as much profit as possible. I'm sorry, that's just how it works. I'm not saying it's good, but there is a reason. That's all I'm doing, explaining the reason.

It's not an excuse, it's a reason.

For all the complaints about phones not having microSD or removable batteries these days, I think we should be complaining 20x as much about data caps. Pick and choose your battles.

On the plus side, with the success of the S4, maybe carriers will start pushing the manufacturers for more phones with microSD. Personally, I don't care. I would much take the increase in onboard storage versus the microSD slot. Manufacturers make enough profit on the phones that even if they took a small hit they could afford to add 32GB, 64GB, or even more on their base model, flagship $600 phones if they really wanted to.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I would love to have SATA support on my phones, but I don't see that happening.
I would love full HDMI out, not mini or micro HDMI out.
I would love for my phone to have more physical buttons, but manufacturers are phasing that out too...

We've had microSD in smaller phones than the current ones. SATA is a ridiculous statement because they've never been in phones (and WTF, why would you want that? How would you even power the hard drive?)

HDMI vs microHDMI is basically microSD vs full SD. Sorry, ridiculous again because smaller phones in the past had microSD already. And the Galaxy S4 proves you can have a smaller phone with a larger battery while being lighter even with a microSD slot.

Galaxy Series again shows that you can keep the home button without issue. The iPhone even gives you a physical switch for locking. No, this isn't a good excuse either.



And that's the word. Excuse. Why are you excusing manufacturers? Since when do we need to make excuses for them?

 

[Crono]

And that's the word. Excuse. Why are you excusing manufacturers? Since when do we need to make excuses for them?

I picked those examples to make a point: they are features that the majority does not require. You may not need them, but in each case someone would benefit from them. MicroSD is the same way, but you can justify that for yourself for whatever reason.

You are excusing the manufacturers in the other direction.

MicroSD is a poor, poor substitute for onboard NAND.

The one shining beacon of the microSD among the current generation of phones is the S4 - and yet that comes with 16GB of onboard, half of which isn't usable. So they throw you a pity feature, a microSD slot, a technology which the company mostly responsible for Android doesn't even want anymore. A feature which costs you more to use if you want to match the internal capacity of a phone like the HTC One. People talk about the vanilla or pure Google experience, but Samsung isn't offering what Google is all about with TouchWiz and microSD - it takes a Google second attempt to make that possible now with the new pseudo Nexus S4.

Why is the higher price of a internal + external memory solution acceptable?
Why are you excusing Samsung?

 

[lopri]

Why is this thread turning into the One v. the S4? Just enjoy your choice. No one will take your phones away.

 

[lopri]

Looks like it's you, Crono, starting with your bait in the post #5.

 

[Crono]

Looks like it's you, Crono, starting with your bait in the post #5.

This thread is about HTC.

HTC's flagship is the One.
It's relevant to compare flagship devices. My point is that HTC's approach matches up with the needs of many consumers. Samsung does as well. Why I keep getting into arguments is because other people fail to at least acknowledge that HTC's approach is just as valid. Where it fails is management and marketing.

That's all. The S4 is a very good phone.
I'm not defending my individual phone choice. I have no problem saying Apple makes phones equally good, or that the new Lumias are on equal footing, or that Blackberry has some innovative features, or that the LG Nexus 4 is probably the best combination of features (love the white Nexus 4 looks by the way) and price.

And it's not "bait". You aren't adding anything by trying to play intermediary, by the way, unless you are just trying to +2 your post count. If a mod thinks it isn't relevant to have this discussion they can let us know.

 

[lopri]

The thread is about HTC employees leaving. I don't see how that's relevant to the S4. Read the first page, then compare it to the next 2 pages and what the discussion has become.

Oh, and I have no interest in adding to the One v. the S4 (which this thread has turn to, thanks to your thread-jacking) unless there is a thread for it. I have already expressed my views elsewhere.

 

[Crono]

The thread is about HTC employees leaving. I don't see how that's relevant to the S4. Read the first page, then compare it to the next 2 pages and what the discussion has become.

Oh, and I have no interest in adding to the One v. the S4 (which this thread has turn to, thanks to your thread-jacking) unless there is a thread for it. I have already expressed my views elsewhere.

I read. Please read the original post.

Uh oh, that ain't good. :/ Sad too, because the One X and One are great phones.

The S4 comes into play becomes the current news is Samsung has sold 10,000,000 S4's, and HTC sold 5,000,000 Ones. If that isn't relevant during a time of turmoil in HTC, I don't know what is. Their whole approach to smartphones is in question because their leadership has been accused of not looking long term. The future of HTC, which is an extension of their current state, and how they will survive against a giant like Samsung is integral to the discussion.

If you want to limit the discussion very narrowly each thread in this forum would have about 5 posts.

EDIT: Please read the article that the OP linked to:

Those constraints came at a critical time, just as Samsung was shipping its breadwinning Galaxy S4 around the world. If there was a common thread among everyone The Verge spoke with for this story, it was Samsung's brutal dominance: the Korean giant's own-sourced display and processor combined with an enormous marketing war chest make competing in Android extraordinarily difficult, even as reviews have consistently lauded the gorgeous One and bashed the S4's cheap plastic and comparably safe — even boring — design.

Sources tell The Verge that the One was off to a slow start — in part due to the supply issues — but is now gaining steam. Regardless, against the threat of 10 million S4s being sold in a single month, it may not be enough.

What's next for HTC? More upheaval among the ranks, perhaps — and the changes could go all the way to the top if the One isn't a smash hit (provided Chou stays true to his word). In the meantime, the company stands at the center of a triple threat: a Microsoft focused on Nokia, a Facebook focused on distributing Home as widely as possible, and a Samsung focused on dominating the entire Android market.

 

[ChronoReverse]

MicroSD is a poor, poor substitute for onboard NAND.

This is a lie fed by the industry. As shown in another thread in this forum, Samsung's 64gb is faster than then internal memory of the GS4. Future cards will be even better.

If you take the assertion about cheap NAND, that doesn't hold water either. You can get nice Samsung microSD cards or you could pick up cheap ones from DealExtreme.

 

[Crono]

This is a lie fed by the industry. As shown in another thread in this forum, Samsung's 64gb is faster than then internal memory of the GS4. Future cards will be even better.

If you take the assertion about cheap NAND, that doesn't hold water either. You can get nice Samsung microSD cards or you could pick up cheap ones from DealExtreme.

I haven't seen that, if you could point me to benchmarks it would be appreciated. Even if true, you are still talking about additional cost and lower reliability. I myself have had many microSDs become corrupted, and even if the tech has improved, I would prefer internal storage. Even with relatively cheap microSDs it's still an extra cost. Does Samsung include a microSD for free? Why can't companies just add more internal storage? These are expensive phones... if NAND is cheap, that's even MORE reason to include a microSD. How can they justify a phone that only comes with 16GB of space - internal or otherwise - for $650? Phones more than a year old came with that much.

I'm not saying HTC should rest on 32GB, either. 64GB standard would be nice. People keep quoting the 1080p specs of the new phones, but the manufacturers are charging an exorbitant amount to increase the storage a relatively small amount. Why do we excuse that?

EDIT: I'm not saying my viewpoint is correct, but I think it's representative of a portion of tech savvy consumers, just as many (mostly current Samsung fans) represent a portion of tech savvy consumers. I'm just trying to fight against the assumption that "one size fits all". Not everyone wants microSD if we can't have higher capacity onboard storage at a reasonable price point. That last part is the key. I don't want to pay $800 for a 1080p 64GB phone with a microSD slot. We shouldn't be happy to pay that when there are such huge profit margins on these phones, even if it is amazing to have such tech available to us. There's a reason that the Nexus 4 was and is so popular, and it's not because it has a microSD slot. Price matters.

 

[Ravynmagi]

This is a lie fed by the industry. As shown in another thread in this forum, Samsung's 64gb is faster than then internal memory of the GS4. Future cards will be even better.

If you take the assertion about cheap NAND, that doesn't hold water either. You can get nice Samsung microSD cards or you could pick up cheap ones from DealExtreme.

The micro SD card may be super fast (have have a pretty fast 64GB Sandisk UHS-1), but isn't the micro SD slot on most mobile devices a bottleneck? They don't seem to read/write from the SD card nearly as fast as my USB 3.0 SD card reader on my PC does.

 

[ChronoReverse]

The micro SD card may be super fast (have have a pretty fast 64GB Sandisk UHS-1), but isn't the micro SD slot on most mobile devices a bottleneck? They don't seem to read/write from the SD card nearly as fast as my USB 3.0 SD card reader on my PC does.

Depends. I've found that sequential speeds are slower than internal memory but the more important random accesses (particularly writes) are not bottle-necked by the interface and are significantly faster than the internal memory. With that said, the GS4 has a UHS-1 slot (some people with the i9500 have reported 50+MB/s from their UHS-1 microSD cards).


Keep in mind that the previous generation of phones like the GS3 has relatively similar performance to Class 10 microSD's (except sequential reads where it's noticeably faster). Internal memory has been pretty slow in phones until recently; my Nexus S has absolutely abysmal speeds (we're talking 4MB/s for sequential writes which is the definition of a class 4 microSD) and even the GS3 only had 10MB/s sequential writes.


For the current generation, the sequentials are now both much faster but randoms are slower than good microSD's. Incidentally, the Sandisk is optimized for sequential (matching the internal of the GS4) but only half as good as the Samsung in randoms.

 

[Brian Stirling]

It's fine for the phone makers to provide on-board storage but I want the flexibility to add more storage and uSD gives me that. I'm less bothered by soldered in batteries though I'd prefer removable ones.

There are quite a few folks that wonder why anyone would need or want more than 32GB or even 16GB of storage because, afterall, there's the cloud, but they tend to be the same ones complaining about data caps so go figure...

In many places the data use is so high because of the user density that the average user has a terrible experience and very low data rates and not much can be done because the infrastructure is limited. Add to this mix a group of people that laugh at on-board storage, stream music all day, then complain about data caps.

The S4 has a lot to offer with a 5" screen at 1920x1080, a removable battery over 3000mahr and a uSD slot, but I went with the HTC One from ATT with 64GB. If I could have had a design input I'd have gone with a 5" screen, a 3000mahr battery and uSD slot for the One and there's no reason that would need to make the phone any bigger as the S4 is basically the same size as the One.

I'll say it again ... in a few years there will be a lot of folks with over 256GB of storage and some pushing 1TB -- on there phone. I might be one of them...


Brian

 

[Eruditass]

This is a lie fed by the industry. As shown in another thread in this forum, Samsung's 64gb is faster than then internal memory of the GS4. Future cards will be even better.

If you take the assertion about cheap NAND, that doesn't hold water either. You can get nice Samsung microSD cards or you could pick up cheap ones from DealExtreme.

Do you have links to a benchmark?

I'd like to see it with sequential and random read/write, 512B and 4K...

Keep in mind that the previous generation of phones like the GS3 has relatively similar performance to Class 10 microSD's (except sequential reads where it's noticeably faster). Internal memory has been pretty slow in phones until recently; my Nexus S has absolutely abysmal speeds (we're talking 4MB/s for sequential writes which is the definition of a class 4 microSD) and even the GS3 only had 10MB/s sequential writes.

Ah, that is surprisingly terrible.

For UHS-1 cards, I assume they will still work slow in non UHS-1 compatiable ports?

What phones have UHS-1?

I chose a faster non UHS-1 microsd card since its random performance was better than UHS-1 cards.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Do you have links to a benchmark?

I'd like to see it with sequential and random read/write, 512B and 4K...

Sure:

 

[Eruditass]

Also got an internal memory benchmark of a relatively recent phone?

 

[ChronoReverse]

I'd like to see it with sequential and random read/write, 512B and 4K...

You can see poofyhairguy's microSD above

Here's the results for the GS4's internal memory from Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6914/samsung-galaxy-s-4-review/6

Basically the GS4 internal memory is faster in reads while his microSD is faster in writes.

 

[Eruditass]

Internal memory seems way faster in internal reads, which I'd say is a bit more important. Also, his/my samsung card is pretty much the fastest in random read/writes for a microSD card, other cards being 2-10x slower.

 

[krumme]

Come on. Just eat it. For all purposes the difference is negligible. I think it comes as a surprice for most the numbers is so close.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Internal memory seems way faster in internal reads, which I'd say is a bit more important. Also, his/my samsung card is pretty much the fastest in random read/writes for a microSD card, other cards being 2-10x slower.

For reads, unless it's a huge file, the speeds seem to be dominated by cached reads in Android. Anandtech actually uses modified settings for AndroBench because the default settings results in craziness like 400MB/s reads.

Furthermore, I have reason to suspect that poofyhairguy's card reader isn't UHS-1 rated since manufacturer rating for the Samsung is 70MB/s and even if they're inflating, it shouldn't be _that_ far off.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Furthermore, I have reason to suspect that poofyhairguy's card reader isn't UHS-1 rated since manufacturer rating

Yup, you are correct. Ancient card reader.

 

[lothar]

If Facebook drove a truck load of money to your office, you'd decline them?

Depends on what stipulations come with the truck load of money and how much damage it could do to my own brand...

 

[lothar]

Note to Samsung: snap up their designers! You need them. Desperately. Double whatever Microsoft is offering. Their talent will just be squandered there as well.

Hell no.
I hate HTC's Sense designers as much as I hate Samsung's TouchWiz designers.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Depends on what stipulations come with the truck load of money and how much damage it could do to my own brand...

But the HTC First didn't ruin HTC did it? Unless it consumed massive resources from developing other killer phones or resulted in HTC One shortages, I wouldn't say it hurt. If they benefited overall from the money that FB trucked in, that's fine.

I'd say they did more damage to themselves with the One X and only 16gb of storage on AT&T than the First did.

 

[Zaap]

Hell no.
I hate HTC's Sense designers as much as I hate Samsung's TouchWiz designers.

HARDWARE not software. Nobody gives a rip about whoever 'designs' just another launcher.