Tag Archives: android

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E15.

A later than usual post. Hadn’t gotten around to actually watching CheckPoint until my lunch break, today. Another post coming this evening regarding some esports business news.

  • Of course all we’ll be talking about is GTA V. This is expected.
  • That opening is excellent, Graham. Kathleen’s troll is effective, though.
  • Wii U game? PASS.
  • Man, the Ouya news is something I could just care less about. Sure, they’re pretty new at the whole Android-based console world thing, but at least they’ve fixed the mistake and it only took three bad eggs to spoil what could’ve been a massively abused loophole in indie-game funding. Even so, I still can’t bring myself to spend any more time on an Android console than I already do. It’s called my Nexus 4. It also doubles as a phone. It’s pretty damn impressive, if I’m honest.
  • I’ve used the iFruit app on my iPad at home and I have to say, it’s definitely a fun little toy. It’s also nice to have cars ordered for you that are already upgraded and appear without the whole difficulty of finding a decent car to steal and spending time and money liberating it and upgrading it in the game. Once you’ve done it for each character, however, that part of the functionality ceases to be useful. Chop makes up for this shortfall, even though the minigames you play with the dog to increase his skill are a bit hectic and not very smooth.
  • Atlas is bailed out by Sega. I’m with Kathleen on this one: Sega’s history points towards destroying most franchises it absorbs by mashing them up with each other. I hope they let Atlas keep making RPGs.
  • “Madden games: I may not play you, but I respect you.” It’s too bad all of that attention to detail couldn’t be put towards other EA titles.
  • Kathleen and knives? It’s Paul’s fault. I can accept that.
  • SimCity is still trying rip players off? Oh Maxis. How far you have fallen.

I’m still on the Nexus 4 because… why not?

I’ve been putting off an update on my use of the Android device known as the Nexus 4. I’ve done a couple of things of major note in the past couple of weeks, not the least of which has been signing a lease for a nice house that is slowly becoming a bachelor pad for me and a couple of roommates.

That being said, I’m pretty sure that I’ll have to wait until the iOS 7 operating system gets a few upgrades before I return to the iPhone 4S I have.

Android 4.2 has been a pretty eye-opening experience, and not because I can put derpy little widgets on the screen, but because of the device I’m using. The larger screen is something that I’ve quickly grown accustomed to and I’m not sure I can ever use a phone without the haptic-response feature of the keyboard.

The apps that I use on a daily basis aren’t anything that is exclusive to the Android operating system over iOS. While Android fragmentation might be a major concern for users who pick up devices without the Google experience branding and promotion on them, I don’t think i could use a phone without a stock Android experience because I am pretty opposed to the thought of bloatware almost entirely.

Perhaps other Android phones are better with regards to their hardware performance and quality, but I like the Nexus 4 just fine. It is simple enough to perform what tasks I require from the device admirably enough and without straining to do so.

The iPhone 4S I have showed plenty of signs of being too slow for the unoptimized and unfinished iOS7. In the interest of not disclosing more than what’s necessary for this post, let’s just say that I could easily describe my hardware as straining to keep up with the cool new functionality of the operating system’s seemingly simplified actions and graphics.

Not so with the Nexus 4. The only strain that I’ve noticed is how layering nearly-live radar data with a map layer takes the device to the ragged edge of single-digit frame-per-second performance when trying to reposition the map.

And if that’s the only real drawback, I think that it’s something I can deal with until something prompts me to switch back to the iOS ecosystem.

SIM cards are wonderful things, most times.

Hey, that Android isn’t that bad.

Seriously, though. I’ve been using a Nexus 4 I bought off the Google PLay Market for a couple of weeks now and I have to say, iOS 7 really needs to over-deliver for it to get me away from this phone. That said, I still think that the iPad 2 I own will always have a use, but it’s losing ground in a big way thanks to the Acer Chromebook (which they’ve recently released a new updated model with a better battery and increased processing power… right, my fucking luck is amazing).