Google To Take 'Apple-Like' Control Over Nexus Phones (droid-life.com) 180
Soulskill writes: According to a (paywalled) report in The Information, Google CEO Sundar Pichai wants the company to take greater control over development of their Nexus smartphones. When producing Nexus phones, Google has always partnered with manufacturers, like Samsung, LG, and HTC, who actually built the devices. Rather than creating a true revenue stream, Google's main goal has been to provide a reference for what Android can be like without interference from carriers and manufacturers. (For example, many users are frustrated by Samsung's TouchWiz skin, as well as the bloatware resulting from deals with carriers.
But now, Google appears to want more control. The report indicates Google wants to do a better job of competing throughout the market. They want to compete with Apple on the high end, but also seem concerned that manufacturers haven't put enough effort into quality budget phones. The article at Droid-Life argues, "We all know that Nexus phones will never be household items until Google puts some marketing dollars behind them. Will a top-to-bottom approach finally push them to do that?"
But now, Google appears to want more control. The report indicates Google wants to do a better job of competing throughout the market. They want to compete with Apple on the high end, but also seem concerned that manufacturers haven't put enough effort into quality budget phones. The article at Droid-Life argues, "We all know that Nexus phones will never be household items until Google puts some marketing dollars behind them. Will a top-to-bottom approach finally push them to do that?"
Nexus aren't satisfactory (Score:3, Insightful)
I would not buy a phone without a microSD slot, and the Nexus line fails by not including such an essential feature.
But, more important than that: Google definitely should put more pressure on manufacturers and carriers to keep the phones' OS updated for longer.
Re:Nexus aren't satisfactory (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree. Nexus devices are satisfactory but not exceptional. They lack essential features like SD Card slots and don't really feature any nifty "bits" to mess with, but are the only devices guaranteed over the long term to receive regular updates, and that alone makes them better. Everything else is, by far, less than satisfactory due to the emphasis of gimmicks or poorly implemented features while often neglecting or actively harming security.
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Re: Nexus aren't satisfactory (Score:2)
It must be nice to live in an area where Verizon isn' the only option for reliable signal. Meanwhile, those locked bootloaders suck. Too bad the FCC ensures an uncompetitive market and let's them do whatever the hell they want.
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IDK... its not that hard to root and install a custom rom on them these days.Maybe 2 minutes work.... even on Sammys its dead simple nowadays. So much so that 'guaranteed' updates is meh... and not worth the trade-offs that have to be made if I purchase a Nexus model.
Then all you have to do is hope the community maintains a ROM for your device... I'd rather look on a custom ROM as being a last resort, while I've really enjoyed using CyanogenMod I'd rather my device was maintained properly in the first place by the people who sold it to me.
Having been through the process I'd also dispute your "2 minutes work" even for a fairly experienced user the time taken to read the guides and find all the appropriate tools is easily going to be half an hour, plus an outside chance
Re:Nexus aren't satisfactory (Score:5, Insightful)
Any phone without a micro SD card slot and a removable battery is of no use to me at all, and I will not buy.
The really fortunate thing with the whole Android range is that Microlith, Stormwatch and I can each buy the phone we want, with the features we need, usually at the price we wish to pay as wel..
There are other types of smartphone too, they don't have the same range of different models, but some people seem to like them.
As far as security goes, the manufacturers are hopeless at providing updates, but for the tech-savvy consumer, updates can be installed, with a small amount of messing around and a custom ROM. I know that's not ideal, and to vast majority of people won't be able to do it, but it is an option.
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http://ecx.images-amazon.com/i... [images-amazon.com]
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The removable battery thing is handy if you're working with a bleeding edge unstable ROM.
Rather than hold the power button down for 10 seconds to force a shutdown, flip off the cover and pull the battery.
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What about the 'ol hard reset option of removing the battery?
This is no longer an option on phones without a removable battery.
Also, getting the IEMI or serial number can only be done through software on the device itself now.
It also means that any "slots" (sd cards, hdmi, etc) need to be on the outside of the device which then discourages their use.
I sort of get the aesthetic thing... but if you want that, just get an iPhone... why does everyone have to copy what Apple does?
Re:Nexus aren't satisfactory (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'll accept a reasonably priced large internal memory and no SD card slot. The only reason to bother with an SD card is because some companies rip you off on memory upgrades. SD cards have some disadvantages as well, such as using more power than internal flash memory.
Removable batteries are of course essential, but so is a reasonable size one. 2800mAh is about as low as I'd want to go. It needs to get a full day of heavy use on a single charge.
The current Nexus devices are a bit expensive for memory, and t
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The thing about MicroSD is that internal storage is cheap(ish) to upgrade now, and cloud storages are becoming increasingly bigger for cheaper
Not sufficient.... Cloud storage does mirroring well enough and
works up to the capacity of the phone's storage.
As soon as the content on the cloud gets larger and shared
software management becomes a royal pain. Cloud storage
management just sucks for phones.
The important point about uSD cards is storage is a cash
cow and the cow will kick ya in the head if you put its
udder in too tight a clamp.
Kick some udder phones...
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the only devices guaranteed over the long term to receive regular updates,
Long? I do not think that means what you think that means.
Take my nice Nexus 4:
Released: Nov 13 2012
EOL: May 2015 (2.5 years later)
That's not a long time in my book. Ubuntu 14.04 on my laptop will in theory (I'll be upgrading to 16 in a few months) will receive updates for 5 years, 3 years beyond when the next version is available (more for the server version). Windows XP support lasted, well it depends precisely how you count it,
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How do you define EOL? I have a Nexus 4 and recevied a regular OS update a while after May.
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They annouced that there would be no more updates, that's how. They relented when they found a major screw up. You won't be getting Android 6 despite the phone being perfectly usable with it.
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Add to that that the N4 has common digitizer failure and it's horribly difficult to repair, and it's not that great a device. In fact, it's kind of a dog's breakfast. It seemed great when it was new...
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It seemed great when it was new...
Except for the fact it regularly lost contact with the cell network and needed rebooting. I suppose if you're a googler with 24/7 wifi access whereever you happen to be that doesn't matter, though.
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I disagree. Nexus devices are satisfactory but not exceptional. They lack essential features like SD Card slots and don't really feature any nifty "bits" to mess with, but are the only devices guaranteed over the long term to receive regular updates, and that alone makes them better. Everything else is, by far, less than satisfactory due to the emphasis of gimmicks or poorly implemented features while often neglecting or actively harming security.
The SD card is a double edged feature. Get filesystem corruption on the card and your phone starts behaving like a two year old on crack.
Anyone using Android with a micro SD card and who gets random freezes and reboots may want to try removing (or erasing) the SD card and see if that clears things up.
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That was my experience with a Samsung Galaxy S4. MicroSD slot became somewhat unreliable, which led to unreliable functioning of things like music, because I had my music on the SD card. Sadly, I had assumed this would be rock-solid when I bought the phone, so I went with minimum internal memory.
My replacement is a Nexus 6P with 128GB of internal storage. Much happier. Except for the part where I spent something like $739 or thereabouts for the 6P with Nexus Protect. :)
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That was my experience with a Samsung Galaxy S4. MicroSD slot became somewhat unreliable, which led to unreliable functioning of things like music, because I had my music on the SD card. Sadly, I had assumed this would be rock-solid when I bought the phone, so I went with minimum internal memory.
My replacement is a Nexus 6P with 128GB of internal storage. Much happier. Except for the part where I spent something like $739 or thereabouts for the 6P with Nexus Protect. :)
For me it hasn't been the slot, just the cards - and generally formatting them resolves the issue.
I refuse to pay that much for a phone just to get that RAM internal which is one reason I won't buy an iPhone.
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Nexus devices are satisfactory but not exceptional.
Yeh, this is about right. They are nice, standard reference phones for Android.
But: if my Nexus 4 was upgradable to Marshmallow (the latest Android OS) I probably would be upgrading it to being exceptional.
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I don't buy it.
I think that manufacturers do whatever they can to cut costs and foist things on people as "features"
Then, when people buy the devices it is seen as proof that the consumer wants these things.
Built for Android developers not hackers (Score:2)
There is really only one thing that distinguishes Nexus devices from everything else Android. As a Google device its pretty good about getting software updates. OK, a little less factory bundled software is nice too. These software updates are what makes Nexus an excellent phone/tablet for end users too.
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exactly.
Why would you NOT want an SD card if it was available? More space is good.
To say (as the GP is suggesting) that people don't want these feature is BS. It is simply the manufacturers determining what people "want" for them and then people not raising a fuss about it because it is "good enough"
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Google has stated that they don't like SD cards because they create problems from a platform reputation perspective. Apparently it's really common that people use shitty SD cards in their devices, which cause apps to frequently crash when they need to read/write to them.
My only concern with Google taking the bottom to top approach is that they might piss off a lot of OEM partners by competing directly with them. Microsoft did that, and they have basically trashed consumer adoption of their own platform as a
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Sure, they might piss off a lot of OEM partners, but what are those partners going to do? Switch to Windows Phone?
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Sure, they might piss off a lot of OEM partners, but what are those partners going to do? Switch to Windows Phone?
Probably go with an incompatible Android fork...likely their own version.
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Re: Nexus aren't satisfactory (Score:2)
I've had this problem - even with a SanDisk pro-level SD card (buggy controller revision). But if Android offered a proper format/qualify process, it would have saved me all that frustration and placated Google's concern. No, they want to rent people cloud 'services' to make up for a lack of storage.
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No, they want to rent people cloud 'services' to make up for a lack of storage.
15GB of free storage. Unless you are keeping your music or photo or movie collection on an sd-card it seems not a problem.
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The problem I run into with phones that lack microSD cards is not consuming media it is creating it. With two small kids my wife takes an insane amount of video on her phone. A nexus series phone would be full in a week. As a result, instead of having a Nexus 6 she has an LG G4 with 128gb sd card in it and there was enough room under the back cover to stick another card in there when the active one gets full.
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I recall hearing they also do it to avoid people getting cheap slow *sd cards and complaining about the speed...
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This is the best argument that I heard as to why Apple refuses to make a 32 GB version of their iPhones. They know that 8-16 GBs is insufficient so they use it as an incentive to force people to upgrade to the 64 GB version paying a lot more money than the memory is worth.
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Microsoft did that, and they have basically trashed consumer adoption of their own platform as a result.
You know that Surface is extremely profitable for MS right?
To say that they trashed consumer adoption is simply not true. Quite a lot of people are adopting Surface devices.
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Surface =/= Windows Phone.
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Google already has tons of control. Their Open Handset Alliance (the program a company is required to sign with in order to distribute GApps) disallows those companies from offering phones with competing eco-systems. (HTC, Samsung, Sony, etc can never offer a phone with the Amazon app store and services). Google even went after carriers who tried to use a different location service (which is still in court).
Android might be open source, but to make it usable, the rest is closed.
Re:Nexus aren't satisfactory (Score:5, Insightful)
I would not buy a phone without a microSD slot, and the Nexus line fails by not including such an essential feature.
But, more important than that: Google definitely should put more pressure on manufacturers and carriers to keep the phones' OS updated for longer.
One persons essential features are another's rarely used amenities. Features such as microSD slots or removable batteries take space and as such they come with the trade-offs of added bulk or smaller battery. Fortunately unlike apple's iPhone family the android ecosystem is open and there are a plethora of devices out there to satisfy most peoples needs and budgets
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A removable battery is a necessary safety feature, and the only way to ensure the phone is powered off.
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A removable battery is a necessary safety feature, and the only way to ensure the phone is powered off.
Not for me, it's perfectly safe for me now.
Once I figured out that the Faraday bag over my head needed breathing holes, my black fingers and my daily hypoxiation became a thing of the past.
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If the government wants to follow me to work, they can go right ahead and knock themselves out.
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with the newer releases of android you can use your SD storage "as ram"
Say what?
AFAIK, no production Android devices anywhere have any sort of swap to flash or SD enabled. A small number use zramfs to provide swap space; that swaps RAM to compressed RAM. Swapping RAM to SD would be terribly slow.
It's possible that some custom ROMs have done something like this, but Google hasn't.
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For users, âoeAdaptable Storage Devicesâ entails that they can move an appâ(TM)s code plus its private data to external storage without having to turn to third-party tools or OEM hacks. Looking at a technical aspect, the setup will format the external storage to be in league with the internal one and will wrap it in a layer of specific encryption. So to Android, it becomes a part of a greater storage layout. In laymanâ(TM)s terms, Android M will treat an external storage device like an SD card as if it were internal storage, letting users move apps and other data between storage devices.
Android M Offers Support for External Storage Devices [softpedia.com]
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I would not buy a phone without a microSD slot, and the Nexus line fails by not including such an essential feature.
But, more important than that: Google definitely should put more pressure on manufacturers and carriers to keep the phones' OS updated for longer.
Sample size of one, registered. Micro SD has been superflous for some time now with the most basic of phones coming with no less than 4GB of usable storage space. Its more of a pain to deal with as you have to use FAT file systems for it. My last to Nexus phones (Nexus 5 and Nexus 5x) have supported USB host mode for a while now, so you've got plenty of options for expanded storage.
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Micro SD has been superflous for some time now with the most basic of phones coming with no less than 4GB of usable storage space. Its more of a pain to deal with as you have to use FAT file systems for it.
My last to Nexus phones (Nexus 5 and Nexus 5x) have supported USB host mode for a while now, so you've got plenty of options for expanded storage.
4GB...Yep, 640K should be enough blah blah.
4GB - put your favourite 10 albums on there, and 2 games and suddenly there is no swap space for the phone to run, let alone your photos or videos. Not everyone uses their phone as just a browser/ calling device. For some it is their gameboy, walkman, portable dvd player, ...
And plugging in a usb device is not practical for most uses (especially if you have to charge at the same time).
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I listen to / watch many podcasts. Due to the data volumes, I download most of them over wi-fi at home so I can consume the content on the go. An SD card is essential for a consumer like me. Even a 16GB phone is quickly overwhelmed when you've got over 80 active podcast subscriptions. I'm "current", so I only have episodes that were released last night and I'm sitting at almost 8GB of space consumed. Considering that my 16GB phone doesn't have 16GB of space, that's over half of the available space.
And
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"But, more important than that: Google definitely should put more pressure on manufacturers and carriers to keep the phones' OS updated for longer."
Totally completely agreed. I don't know how to program but god damnit I wish there was a way the fundamental crap underneath could be updated, without needing approval from HTC / Samsung / LG AND then local carriers as well, it's ridiclous.
Apples system is simply better in that regard. My iphone 5s is right up to date, it's an older phone and unlike some claim
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Android does such a poor job of managing SD vs internal card space that I am actually happier without.
And then to compound things, my old Samsung would let the SD card slide out every once in a while - and the phone REALLY hated that, losing settings for things that were stored on the card.
The wake up call for me was when I realized that I never took the SD card out of the phone. Not even for transfer to the computer - I'd just plug in a USB cable. What the heck was I putting up with the hassle of managing
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SDCard handling in Android has been broken more or less from the beginning. Got worse when the first phones without SDslot mounted part of their internal memory as "external" and I'm not sure if the latest contraptions to fix that fixed anything or just turned it into a different way of broken.
It IS broken when you have GB of free space but can't install anything because some smaller memory partition is full.
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Google itself is not doing such an awesome job with updates, see e.g. the Motorola Moto E second generation which does not even get 5.1 let alone 6!
And a microSD card is a nice feature but as long as you cannot seamlessly run apps from it, it's just a sad media store and despite having a microSD slot I could not use my old Moto E anymore just because it ran out of storage and there is nothing you can do about it if you want to stay with vanilla android.
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So every time a bug fix rolls along, or Android bumps up a version, there are two additional codebases to merge, test, certify and deploy. The more the handset is customised the more painful the process will be. For every single combination of handset and network.
Best thing to do is buy a SIM free handset. That's all the ne
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Very likely, it was your SD card failing, and nothing wrong with the phone. Did you try swapping in a new SD card?
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So, people buy an iPhone where they either spend a fortune on storage, or constantly manage the storage as they run out so quick because SD cards are hard?
That is an odd point of view.
Nexus 9 had finish issues (Score:4, Informative)
I own a Nexus 9 and I think it is a good solid tablet. But mine looks raggedy as hell because the matt finish on the back is only a thin film overlay that has worn off all over the place and in others is lifting like old dead skin. So face up it looks good, face down it looks like a 20 year old tablet that has had a hard life.
The other comment someone else made is around the microSD slot. Particularly for a tablet, which is a pure media consumption device, it should have an SD slot.
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Hey grandpa: use a streaming service!
And personally I find streaming off Plex a lot more convenient than fiddling about the SD cards.
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Hey grandpa: use a streaming service!
And personally I find streaming off Plex a lot more convenient than fiddling about the SD cards.
Hey junior: how convenient is your streaming service when you're on an airplane with no connectivity?
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$2 [ebay.com]
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Way way way way less convenient then a hand full of microSD cards. Especially if you want to have the device resting on something in portrait mode.
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Hey grandpa: use a streaming service!
And personally I find streaming off Plex a lot more convenient than fiddling about the SD cards.
Wow, what an enlightened young tech guru. Please can you tell me where you live so I can move there immediately?
You obviously have truly unlimited data plans with absolutely flawless coverage even indoors and underground and a really brilliant streaming service that offers every possible show (including rare movies from decades ago and all my videos of family vacations etc), so I will be able to watch whatever I want whenever I want.
The only reason to want an SD card is because I'm not with the times...
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That's fine. If I am near a network.....
And for travel 5 microsd cards are way less hassle than an OTG cable hanging out of the bottom of my tablet.
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Not a chance. I do not want a computer running 24/7 just to serve and transcode video.
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I own a Nexus 9 and I think it is a good solid tablet. But mine looks raggedy as hell because the matt finish on the back is only a thin film overlay that has worn off all over the place and in others is lifting like old dead skin. So face up it looks good, face down it looks like a 20 year old tablet that has had a hard life.
It depends on who made it.
After 16 months of daily usage, the case of my Nexus 5 showed little wear. The case on my 2013 Nexus 7 has two chips on the corners due to carelessness (dropping) but apart from that has nothing but a few scuffs. The Nexus 7 was made by Asus and the 5 by LG.
It was the same with my ancient Galaxy Nexus although the front bezel was wearing down to bare plastic after about 4 years, it still looked impressive enough that the car detailer who found it* asked where he could get on
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Of course it depends on the specific device. I have a couple of nexus 4s and 5s kicking around that look fine. I also have an old nexus 7 that looked fine till my daughter dropped it down the stairs. The nexus 9 though has a particular problem with that coating.
Someone else's nexus 9 they took a photo of - https://lh3.googleusercontent.... [googleusercontent.com]
Apple-like control (Score:2, Insightful)
No more SD slot: check
No user-replaceable battery: check
I'll be sticking with the LG G4 until a better alternative comes along that doesn't do one of the above.
Nothing like being forced into consuming their cloud storage so that they can better mine my personal data to jam even more "targeted ads" down my throat.
No thanks. Wake me up when it's over.
not very Apple-like to give your OS to all OEMs (Score:3)
The Apple business model for mobile is that to use their software, you must use their hardware, you can only buy media from them and use their media player (iTunes), etc. Google's is, and continues to be, that you can use their OS with any hardware, buy media from any source, and play it with any app. So pretty much the opposite of Apple.
Google plans to have higher quality on their reference design / flagship, the Nexus line. That's cool. Not really related to Apple at all. I suppose Apple doesn't make cheapie crap for the lowest-budget market, such as an $89 tablet, but that's nothing unique to Apple. Heck, even the companies that DO make low-end stuff often don't brand it as theirs, they use a different marque.
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One of the reasons I abandoned iOS for my smart devices is because I was forced to use iTunes for so many things. If I wanted to play videos, I had to convert them to the Apple approved formats, and access to files was a pain in the ass. When I bought my Nexus devices, I could install VLC, play just about any video format, I could copy files on and off the device, build any directory structure I wanted, and in general just have an easier time using my device within my whole computing ecosystem.
Using externa
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I'm looking to upgrade my Nexus 7, and it will be with another Android device, hopefully a Nexus, because then I'm not stuck with all the shitware guys like Samsung throw on their devices.
Is that a 1st or a 2nd? If it's a 2nd, I'm not convinced there is actually anything better out there. It is one of the best pieces of hardware in the house. If it's a 1st, well, Tegra 3 is a bit shit... try a Nexus 7 2nd :)
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Not everyone. Steve Jobs said "buy Android" (Score:2)
> The reason one uses iPhone is that you use the Apple stack of services. The reason one uses Android is that one uses the Google stack of services.
The first part of that may be true in many cases. You buy an Apple device to watch Apple's approved videos on Apple's video player. Steve Jobs said âoewe do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.â Steve Jobs isn't wrong about his own company's position - if you don
* Not Apple's vs Google's, Apple's way vs your way (Score:2)
I missed a couple of words in my concluding sentence. It should be:
It's not about choosing between Apple's way vs Google's way, it's often about choosing between Apple's way vs your own way.
This post written on a Macbook Pro.
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And now they will do both.
Walled garden for those that want that.
Somewhat lower walls for those that don't.
Uphill Battle (Score:2)
The only device manufacturer that makes money off (Score:2)
The only device manufacturer that makes money off Android is Samsung. Good luck "pressuring" those guys to do anything, and without Samsung Android is basically fucked on the high end where all the money is. So I fail to see how this could possibly work.
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Didn't google do this already? (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't they own Motorola and have complete control? Then got rid of that because it made all of the other phone makers feel bad?
What makes a Nexus phone different from an iphone? Neither has an SD card or replaceable battery, yet the Nexus always seems to be about half the price.
I've never had to replace a battery in a phone before it was old and slow and not what I wanted anymore.
I'm rarely out of wifi range AND need direct and immediate access to tons of data, nor have I ever filled up a 32GB phone with what I want to take with me.
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Critical mass. Now they can screw over the other manufacturers without repercussion. The others are trapped without Android.
Weird situation with partners (Score:2)
This is going to make for a weird situation with other phone makers.
Google essentially controls the source code, and keeps it closed for a couple of months until a release. Phone makers used to have early access. But now these same phone makers will be their direct competitors.
Also, Google isn't exactly the bastion of consistence. Previously, they announced that they'd produce and sell a cheap budget Android mobile phone for India. But they have retracted that also, after backlash from local sellers.
Nexus 5X (Score:2)
I really like my Nexus 5X. Using Project Fi so it uses Sprint or T-Mobile (or WiFi) - whichever has a stronger signal. Security updates from Google every month. And the power management is superb - usually end a day with 30 - 40% battery left.
Removable battery not that important (I carry an external, which I haven't needed), but a micro-sd card would have been nice.
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The challenge for Google... (Score:2)
is to convince people that their phone has the same cachet as the iPhone. Apple has managed to do that and that's what allows them to charge premium prices. From a performance/features standpoint the Nexus is on par with the iPhone. Same things from an Apps standpoint.
What Google needs to do is convince customers that they are getting a luxury item. One that is not only worth the money but is desirable and enviable. Apple customers are not only willing to spend the money, they are happy to do so.
Luxury cust
Unbalanced parenthesis !! (Score:2)
I can't read past the first paragraph... Too much LISP maybe?
About fucking time (Score:2)
Google's hands off approach is why I wrote off the Android platform. The last Android device I had was a Galaxy S3, and I had to root it, and replace the OS with cyanogenmod just so that I would have a working phone.
This sort of crap is inexcusable.
Now if only Google will also do what Apple does and support their products for a minimum of 3 years, then maybe I'll start taking Android seriously.
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There should be a more optimized key arrangement.
Re:I can think of one way to make them better. (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I hate it, that ship has sailed.
Touch screens suuuuuuuuuuuuuuck for input.
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The (Android) BlackBerry Priv gives us a glimmer of hope.
It's not a proper landscape slider, but at least it's a hardware slider. Let\s hope it will be wildly successful.
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HTC Touch Pro 2 with custom Android ROM... (replacing WinMo, for the observant amongst you...)
Sliding hardware keyboard + Android + SELinux = Respectable workstation.
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editing documents on a 3.6" screen sounds more painful than 'Respectable'.
But each to their own. :)
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Well, yes Google wants to hurt competitors market share but lets not forget about Microsoft. Lumia is doing terrible a few years on. Microsoft has made headway in the Tablet market and the new Surface Pro is being raved about. I'd say Google would be more worried about Microsoft building a device that is on par with Surface Pro but as a mobile phone.
That's kind of an apple's and oranges comparison. The Surface Pro (I own an SP4 by the way) is more of an ultraportable laptop than a tablet. Or rather, it doesn't really run the kind of apps you'd want from a tablet. But again, it's wonderful from a portability perspective.
That said, if they tried to push it to a phone, they'd experience the same amount of fail that they've been experiencing this whole time, especially given that their UWP app API is limited and it sucks. Try creating an OpenVPN client for
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Well, maybe not using official third-party SDKs, but it's certainly not impossible. OpenVPN relies on the TUN/TAP driver, which I'm not sure anybody has bothered to port to WP8.1/W10M yet, but on a jailbroken phone (yes, they exist) you can do it.
There is also an official API for TLS-based VPNs, which may be usable for OpenVPN, though you'd need to re-write the client to use those APIs instead of using TUN/TAP like it usually does. They only officially allow a few limited partners to use those APIs (they ar
Re:timothy timothy, who the fuck is timothy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bit late to the party, aren't you? Timothy has been the author of every front page article since last Friday.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty much every Nexus phone has had a battery that is easy to replace, for levels of easy varying from "you can do it with one hand" to "you need a fingernail and a common Philips screwdriver". Sure, the Nexus 5 and 5X batteries aren't officially "user replaceable", but they're about as hard to replace as 4 AA cells in an old toy with a battery lid with screws. It takes more effort to replace the CMOS battery in a random PC than to replace the battery in a Nexus 5 or 5X.
Re: (Score:2)