Sunday, March 24, 2013

Steve's Upcoming Counseling Session

We just set the following email to the Google Device Support Team:

_________________________

Hi, Google Device Support Team.

It's  been a while since we spoke, but I recently discovered that someone in your organization has been (I hope inadvertently) disseminating inaccurate information about this Nexus 4 bug, and I thought you'd want to know about it right away.  

Here's the deal: you see, we all know that the Nexus 4 was not designed on purpose to prevent wifi and bluetooth from being used at the same time.  We all know that it is a bug.  Well, all of us except for Steve, apparently. Here, read for yourselves:  


Now, we all have the utmost confidence that someone in your organization will immediately take Steve aside for a private little counselling session about the inappropriateness of, shall we say, bending the truth regarding this particular flaw in the Nexus 4 product.

Thanks for your prompt attention to this matter.

Best,

--Doug

________________________


(BTW, we don't think this is a picture of Steve, but it could be.)

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Translated...

"It's a hardware bug, we can't fix it. If it were a software bug, we could, in theory, fix it, and we therefore would not be calling it a feature. Instead of calling it a bug.  Which is what it really is. But it would be inconvenient for us to be calling it that."

From one of the Google Nexus 4 product forums regarding the bad wifi/bluetooth interaction on the Neuxs 4:

The Google rep I talked to said this was intended functionality of the device and there is nothing to be done:
________________
Hi James,


Thank you for contacting Google Play Support. I understand you're having trouble with your wi fi and Bluetooth. If I were experiencing this issue I would be concerned as well. I assure you I have the information for this issue.

As we discussed, this is built in functionality of the device. You cannot use both wi fi and Bluetooth at the same time.


Thanks again for your patience and understanding.If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to reply to this email directly. Also, you can visit our help center at: 

Regards,

Steve
The Google Play Support Team

Of *course* this is "built in functionality. Of *course* Google  designed the phone so that you could not use wifi and bluetooth at the same time.

Oh, and by the way, telling little white lies is a little bit evil.

--Doug

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Key Lime Pie and the Nexus 4

Since the last post, we've tried a CyanogenMod derivative ROM on the Nexus 4:  Paranoid Android 3+.

PA 3+ is a decent ROM, it feels solid and fast. However, it, like CM 10.1, is based on Android 4.2.2, and like CM 10.1 it has the same two irritating bugs as Google's own 4.2.2 Nexus 4 factory image which Google refuses to fix, for whatever reason.

Those two bugs of course are:

We suspect that Google hasn't fixed these because they simply are unable to fix them, along with all of the other wifi and bluetooth issues in 4.2.2. The best we Nexus 4 owners can hope for is that when Google releases Android 5 Key Lime Pie in May, these well-known problems with the N4 will have been fixed.

But don't hold your breath.  It has been 179 days since the wifi and bluetooth problems with the Nexus 4 were first reported to Google: not exactly confidence-inspiring.

--Doug

Saturday, March 9, 2013

CyanogenMod

We've gone down the path of CyanogenMod for the Nexus 4.  The Android development community has an apparent average age of about 14, and all the arrogance and haughty superior attitude of, say, your typical Los Alamos National Laboratory staff member in the mid-80's, but at least they know how to bang out code. It's kind of refreshing actually after the ponderous interactions with "Fuck you, we're Google".

The two primary outstanding N4 bugs that we've been tracking, and seeing zero progress from Google are
  1. Nexus 4 stops responding to ARP requests when screen is off with wifi on, and
  2. Bluetooth kills wifi on the Nexus 4.
We've reported both of these on the CyanogenMod Jira bug tracking site. Let's see if the CM folks can make better progress on them than Google.  Actually, if they do *anything* they'll be making better progress than Google, so the bar really isn't set all that high.

We've been favorably impressed with CM 10.1 M2 experimental release, as well as the recent nightly builds, so we're holding out some hope that a more agile, more energized bunch than the Google behemoth can finally get these issues fixed.

--Doug