And so ends an age...
Google announced a slew of new devices today, and while these Google-branded gadgets surprised no one, they did confirm a rumor that has been gaining traction for quite a while now...
The Nexus brand is now dead.
Source: Image; Animation by @modprobe
The Nexus line of mobile devices began with the Nexus One, released on January 5th, 2010, and while Google did not have full creative control of the phone's hardware, they did control the Nexus brand, the entire software experience of the phone, and they had a great deal of input on the hardware design as well.
The purpose of the Nexus line was twofold. First, it provided a single target device that Android developers could build apps for, as these were the official Android phones. If it runs on a Nexus, and not on some other Android device, it's because the other Android device is malfunctioning, not the app.
The second purpose of the Nexus line was to provide phone manufacturers with a golden standard against which all Android devices should be judged. For example, the Nexus One featured a clickable trackball, which the user could roll up, down, left, or right to highlight items on the screen, and click to select them. This served as an indicator to all Android phone makers that Android phones were expected to have some kind of 4-directional input with clicking. When the second Nexus device, the Nexus S, launched, it did not feature any such input method, which signaled to manufacturers and developers alike that Google had decided that particular feature was not desirable to users and would be phased out.
An old favorite of mine, this video shows the durability testing of the Nexus One prior to launch
The Nexus phones did not always have absolute bleeding edge technical specifications, but they always boasted specs comparable with the best phones available when they launched, and usually they introduced completely new hardware and software features, such as Near Field Communication (NFC) -- the technology which today powers features like Android Pay and Apple Pay -- which was introduced to smartphones by the Nexus S. And of course, the Nexus line also always showcased the latest version of Android.
Although the Nexus line was never wildly popular, and it didn't always have the best possible tech specs, Google had stringent quality standards for the Nexus brand: with each new phone they would choose the manufacturer making the best phones at the time as their hardware partner for the next Nexus device. Nexus might not have been the best on paper, but in my opinion they consistently offered the best overall experience.
The full history of Nexus phones and the innovations they delivered is available on Wikipedia.
I was the proud owner of the Nexus One, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 (2012 edition), Nexus 7 (2013 edition), and Nexus 5, which I still use today. Between the Nexus One and the Galaxy Nexus, I owned the HTC EVO 3D, which was HTC's flagship phone after the Nexus One, but the difference in quality between a Nexus phone and a normal flagship device was so substantial that I went back to Nexus and have never used a non-Nexus phone since. I am, therefore, sad to see the line end; nevertheless, it was a good run, and I'm excited to see where we go next.
The nexus phones were typically such good quality for the money. Its unfortunate that the pixel has an iPhone price tag. I too still use a nexus 5, its the best phone I have ever owned.
All great things come to an end.
Death is a part of life and leads to birth. Hopefully what is birthed will be an upgraded version of life∞§∞
So they do. Take the N1's trackball, for instance... I loved that thing, and I was sorry to see it go, but by removing it they made the phones thinner, more durable, and freed up space for more important hardware. It also made the Nexus One unique; no other phone had a trackball quite like that one, and it's one of the things that made that phone so special.
The N1 was probably my favorite phone of all the ones I've had, though it's a close call between it and the G1, the first Android phone. The G1 was fat, ugly, and clunky, but it was also a game changer, and it had a unique sliding drawer design which hid a full hardware QWERTY keyboard which was truly well done and was the most pleasant and accurate hardware keyboard I ever found a phone to have.
Google, you done got me all nostalgic today... Haha
Hahahahahaha I can tell!
"All Things Must Pass" - George Harrison
They're rolling out unlimited cloud storage of images and video (that were shot on the phone).
It's going to be a huge selling point
True, though they already have unlimited storage for images (video too? not sure) just for downloading Google Photos. But with the Pixel, you get unlimited storage at original quality, which is a step forward. Otherwise they recompress your pictures to save space, though I have to say whatever compression they're doing is phenomenal as it doesn't visibly degrade quality much if at all, and achieves a surprisingly good compression ratio.