Android Eats Its Own
If you’re an Android OEM you’re pretty much reduced to slapping the latest greatest hardware you can find with any Android build you happen to have lying around and pushing it out the door only to count to five and unleash the next superphone to hunt it down and devour it. The competition for Android OEMs started off being the iPhone but now things have escalated so quickly that the iPhone is an afterthought. The fierce frenemy they are all facing are themselves having completely bypassed competing OEMs.
The Atrix 4G, you remember that phone don’t you. The mother of all super phones with a whopping 1GB of RAM on board, Tegra 2 processor plus a 4” screen to salivate over and even docks and premium accessories to go with it. Apparently the sales are going so well that you can get the phone for the sensational price of $29.99 at Best Buy. You read that right, $29.99 online. I wondered why such a spectacularly spec’d phone would be selling for feature phone pricing and some Android fans graciously left their opinions in the comment section. Take a peek below.
Am I seriously reading people complaining about the locked bootloader as the reason they’d never buy the Atrix and why the sales suck? This phenomenon is isolated to the Android platform and is one headache I’m sure the Android OEMs wish they didn’t have to deal with. Somewhere Steve Jobs is snickering at competitors having to defend securing their own devices. Even the attack on the 4” screen seems rather indicative of the phenom fever that has taken over the Android world. The message is clear, bring your best everyday and even then your 15 minutes is just that 15 minutes then the next superstar Great Phone Ever takes the stage.
If Apple came out with a dock that the Atrix did there would be awards being delivered to Cupertino as we speak but Motorola’s customers are laughing at them for confusing thinking too highly of themselves. Android fans know if they wait for the calendar to flip to the next month there will be something even cooler to covet. Oh to be a scavenger of an Android phone graveyard. You could probably build a rocket ship with the amount of awesome tech that gets trampled on by its own. Good for the customers indeed, OEMs you only have yourselves to blame for getting into a Tech War with yourselves. All consumers are laughing all the way to the savings bank. I have to admit, things are looking pretty great for Android users and just another shining example of why the Android platform continues to churn out daily activations that would make your head spin.
Source: Brandon Miniman & Best Buy
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It’s obvious that most consumers are not exactly crazy about the latest and greatest hardware spec and that the Atrix is not selling as well as Best Buy has hoped.
Sure but I tend to think that the Atrix was aimed squarely at consumers already familiar with the Android OS. My contention is that the Android smartphone wars have escalated to the point that even a good device like the Atrix 4G gets heavily discounted and units will be moved thus Android gets credit for continuing to take the world by storm without mentioning its increased popularity is a direct result of having really good phones at practically feature phone prices. Again as a consumer this can only be a good thing as it drives the price down on competing OSes not named iOS.
This should stop some time and OEM should try to understand this.
Tl;dr but until Windows Phone I hadn’t heard of BOGOs.
Explain that ball sniffer.
Ball sniffer.
What I am saying is that most consumers are not going to pay $200 dollars for the latest and greatest spec and that they would rather have a cheaper one.
Try explaining Tegra 2 and 1GB memory to consumers most likely wouldn’t make them fork $200.
It’s the user experience not the spec that sells the phone.
It’s obvious that Best Buy anticipate the Atrix to be a must have item and it wasn’t. Now, Best Buy is trying to get rid of inventory.
My contract on AT$T expired last October. As soon as I heard about the Atrix I was prepared to buy it on launch day. I still haven’t renewed my contract with AT$T and here’s why:
1) Laptop dock is $300 (for a shell? not a chance)
2) Laptop dock requires a tethering plan (for a shell? not a chance)
3) Laptop tethering plan requires me to give up my unlimited plan (not a chance)
4) Locked bootloader
I expected the competition to catch up on the the remaining specs (i.e. dual core, screen size and resolution, ram, etc). In my opinion the laptop dock is what made the Atrix special and AT$T killed the golden goose.
An ad ran on TV last night from AT&T offering the Samsung Focus for $49 by the way. No mention of Microsoft or WP or Bing, just Samsung and $49, the price I believe of their old iphone.
Motorola sucks for the bootloader stuff and neither you nor I know just how many people understand and care about that stuff for you to just write it off as blog nonsense rather than an apparent legitimate demand not to have such things on one’s phone — and then resent companies that dare to do such a thing, then laud companies like Samsung that pledge not to.
You, you’ve got the phone that’s so perfect out of the box that you wouldn’t dream of needing to unlock a bootloader, but my people have to fight and root and flash to make our phones half-decent. Don’t let the fact that Android’s outselling everything including the iPhone fool you, it’s total garbage and only popular because of dirt cheap prices. They’re practically giving them away, of course they’d pin this market down.
C’mon Murani. Apple’s anti-diversity, Google’s wildly pro-diversity (talking about hardware) and Microsoft is somewhere in between. Apparently there’s a demand for all three approaches (though RIM is losing momentum), though the greatest portions of the demand lie on the two opposite poles, Apple and Google, with Microsoft discovering that the sweet spot is .. well, challenging to tap, so they’re hedging their approach with the Nokia stuff. You think that was initially on their to do list, Nokia? Do you think this was? “Microsoft and Nokia say they want to make Windows Phone 7 the most “operator friendly” OS in the smartphone industry.” The word for that is flailing.
I’ll make a deal with you, the next time we rip on the other guy’s platform we pledge not to use an AT&T phone as an example to make our point. AT&T sucks at everything. They probably suck more than the Atrix, but whoever thought of this half phone half laptop thing needs to think a little less outside the box next time. And whoever thought disabling HSUPA was the right thing to do, well, what do you expect with something AT&T touches.
If Atrix 4G is an AT&T failure, then Kin was a Verizon failure, and the NoDo fiasco is an AT&T failure too….. or are we talking double standards here?
Hmm Hotmail Alias, … that’s a good point. Concede to employing double standards or don’t talk trash about Microsoft without talking just as much trash about Google. Could try to call it Motorola’s failure but I don’t want to let AT&T off the hook, could go with AT&T but have to shut up about Microsoft, in order to bash Microsoft I could call the Atrix Google’s failure but I would never do that, ..
I have to do some soul searching on this. You cornered me with your maze of circular logic.
I have nothing to say about the Atrix at this time.
Doug, I take your conceding as the first signs of eventual conversion to WP7 . Or Maybe we can call it returning to your roots, though you won’t need to root any more ‘smart’phones as a user.
As for circular logic, try reading Joseph Heller’s ‘Closing Time’ or catch up with its prequel, whatitsname… something 22.
i beleive i saw the atrix on the super oneclick rooters compatibility list. and im almost sure XDA has come up with a way around the locked bootloader. could be mistaken as i havent had the time to actually try using super one click or following the XDA workaround as in my opinion (aside from not being able to install un-approved apps) MOTO got android and motoblur to live very harmoniously this time round and ATT crapware aside the phone is easily better than any other offering by AT&T (or pretty much any other carrier) at this time.
ps. if anyone has tried using super one click on the atrix could you please post your results.
Rooting and unlocking, like breasts and toenails, are different things. But it’s worth a look.
are you talking carrier unlocking? because that is definately like comparing breasts to toenails… but bootloader unlocking, isnt that like comparing nips to tits? or maybe nips to breasts. kinda like a country in a country (vatican?)
Okay breasts and toenails was a bit extreme.
I’ll try a car analogy, though noting that I don’t own a car. Rooting is like being in possession of all the car keys including the one to the glove box and trunk, a secret code to disable traction control so you can do donuts and have e-brake happiness, whatever tool they use to change the upholstery, a butter knife to get into the fuse box which your asshole dealer thought would be in your best interests to glue shut and some crazy glue to close the lid when you’re done. Sideloading, adding one of those really long rear view mirrors, strapping it onto your current rear view. Helpful.
Unlocking the bootloader however, the tool to do that is like the thing in a garage you drive over that lifts your car and the little crane thing they use to replace the engine as well as the long thin metal rod thing that you can use to prop up the hood so that you can screw around with the carburetor and other shit like the thing that tells the thing that sends sparks to the plugs to send sparks to which plugs and in what order and how frequently, dig? Replace the muffler with a rice burning wide-gauge thing, or just remove it altogether (but it’s your fault if the cops give you a hard time, not the muffler remover tool seller).
Carrier unlocking, another thing, is like some sort of magical tool that somehow makes your car which normally takes ultra expensive super unloaded gasoline to take diesel instead.