Gingerbread phones run Google Play Services* pretty well.

That's kind of the point, they can push out updates to say the Maps API and let devs use those APIs on older phones.

the marketing department taketh away.

As someone once said, "nobody ever woke up in the morning wishing for *less* functionality from their devices.*

I was considering of getting one of those, thinking of all the cool things I could do with it. Now, there's no point.

Seems to be rumors for both.

Honestly I think I'd prefer moto, but I will be looking forward to it either way as long as it is not a "phablet"

http://www.ibtimes.com/nexus-5-release-date-coming-latest-rumors-suggest-motorola-manufacturing-lg-still-possibility

(granted, take anything IBT says with a whole lot of salt)

I'm not sure the Firefox OS brand carries much weight to keep OEMs and carriers in line. Google has the Play store, Gmail, Maps, Calendar, Drive, Music, Books, Google Voice, etc. They use these things as leverage to keep the OHA in line and compatible. And it's still a problem -- particularly from carriers (who think they hold the keys to the kingdom). I highly doubt carriers & OEMs will stop their dirty tricks for a new and relatively powerless brand name. Firefox is well known for the browser, but few people have yet heard of the OS/phone outside of tech enthusiasts. Even Google's leverage was not enough to stop Amazon from forking Android. What chance does Mozilla have vs Verizon or AT&T?

That said, competing forks might not be a bad thing per se... I think the next few years will be interesting times in mobile.

Dude, your pawn is lagging. It just took one of my pawns that was right next to it. /En passant spike

How do I mod +1 Redundant?

Me either :) But the good tech review sites have them (Anandtech, for example)

Also brightness should be measured in absolute terms (nits). One tablet's 50% is not the same as another.

Edit: the guy was not from the Economist, but it was used as an example.

That's actually a marketing trick of a kind of "false choice". I can't remember where I read this but they have done studies involving this and the example was given with newspapers. Basically the idea goes, if they offer 2-3 choices and 1 is very expensive, another very cheap but the third makes it seem like you are getting the expensive plan for less, you think it's a deal in your mind. No one is immune to this, so I'm not singling out you, we've all felt victim to this as it's the natural way our brain makes order.

Ah here it is, it was someone from the Economist:
http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-1-%E2%80%93-the-truth-about-relativity-2/

TED video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOhb4LwAaJk

Ah ok, thanks :)

This is a decent code sample too:
https://code.google.com/p/adamkoch/source/browse/#git%2Fbitmapfun

From, here:
http://developer.android.com/training/displaying-bitmaps/index.html

(adam koch is an Android developer advocate at Google, and the code comes from the AOSP but is backported to use the support lib)