Report: Google to Stop Selling Nexus Phones in 2015
No more Nexus after next year?
Google's Nexus brand has come a long way since the introduction of the Nexus One way back in January of 2010. Five phones, three tablets, and an ill-fated media streaming player later, it seems the Nexus name may soon reach the end of the line. According to the latest rumors, the Nexus 5 could be one of the last Nexus-branded phones we see from Mountain View.
Word comes from Eldar Murtazin, who tweeted early this morning that the Nexus line would wrap up in 2015. In its place will be the Play Edition phones that several smartphone makers had launched in the last year.
Every year we're treated to a new Nexus phone running the latest version of stock Android. As expected, 2013 gave us the Nexus 5. However, it also gave us a handful of other popular smartphones running stock Android. Each of these devices carried the 'Google Play Edition' branding alongside the regular manufacturer and model name. These handsets included the HTC One Google Play Edition, the Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition, the Moto G Google Play Edition, and the Xperia Z Ultra Google Play Edition.
The move would eliminate Google's need to commit to working with a single manufacturer for each Nexus device. Though Mountain View isn't deadly loyal to one specific manufacturer (the Nexus smartphones have been made by HTC, Samsung, LG over the years), it does limit itself somewhat by only offering one phone each year. Not only that, but it leaves little choice for the consumer. Moving away from Nexus and towards Google Play Editions of already popular smartphones isn't a bad idea in that regard. Where it will matter is price. Over the last couple of years, Google's Nexus line of tablets and smartphones have been priced incredibly competitively, and users have been drawn to stock Android at an affordable price. What will happen if manufacturers are pricing the devices?
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I have SGS4 GPE and HTC One GPE. Both have received 4.4.2 at most a couple weeks after the Nexus line.
The only way I see this happening is if Motorola devices become spiritual successors to the nexus line, but that'd still require a price drop as the Moto X came out with lower specs at $500+. Doing that would also go against what Google said about not favoring Motorola, one of the benefits of the Nexus line is giving a way for other manufacturers to work closely with Google, giving all of that revenue to Motorola by ending the Nexus line would piss a LOT of people off [the exact same way Microsoft's Surfaces did].
If this does happen, I'll probably end up changing ecosystems. From my experience at least, Android phones are too locked down by the manufacturers for my tastes. Considering I hate all of their interfaces [like TouchWiz and Magazines, and Sense] I need at least stock and ideally the ability to flash customs. This is dead simple on Nexus devices, and made a stellar experience by the incredibly vibrant development for these phones specifically because they are AOSP and not locked down at all.
I have SGS4 GPE and HTC One GPE. Both have received 4.4.2 at most a couple weeks after the Nexus line.
They're also both double the price of the Nexus 5. if you're looking for a good phone in the 300-400 range, then neither of those are acceptable. Without Nexus you either get a lower end phone or give up on getting an off contract phone.
Because one of the biggest criticisms of Android, and a significant reservation a lot of consumers have, is that the OS update process is broken when Google starts leaving it up to the hardware manufacturer, and then the cell service provider to actually push updates. Moreover, such a complicated process--where there is no real motivation by hardware mfg's and carriers to spend time and money on updates--leaves users subject to possible security flaws that would typically be updated. Sprint and LG are excellent examples of this--they hardly push updates to any devices save for the Samsung Galaxy devices.
Play edition phones would theoretically get updates in the same way that current nexus devices do. I haven't heard about Play Edition devices getting updates any slower than current nexus devices.
Because the top-selling nexus products are being sold at-cost (i.e., no profit), and other hardware manufacturers are not interested in selling vanilla android handsets at typical retail prices (i.e., with profit) if they have to compete with a google-subsidized device. That, and it's my guess that google only started the nexus project to gain support and desire for vanilla android, to show manufacturers and carriers that consumers don't actually like or benefit from the bloat they usually stack on top of the Android OS (which complicates updates, and sometimes leaves customers/handsets vulnerable to some things).