Apple vs Google: Naming of flagship Android vs iPhone

iPhone

  1. iPhone
  2. iPhone 3G -> iPhone 3GS
  3. iPhone 4 -> iPhone 4S
  4. iPhone 5 -> iPhone 5S
  5. iPhone 6 -> iPhone 6S (and plus sizes)
  6. iPhone 7 (and plus sizes)

Android

  1. Nexus One
  2. Nexus S
  3. Galaxy Nexus
  4. Nexus 4
  5. Nexus 5
  6. Nexus 6
  7. Nexus 5X & Nexus 6P
  8. Pixel & Pixel XL

While iPhone is recognized as a global name while erstwhile Nexus and now, Pixel has almost no branding outside of the Android fanboys.

Further on Google’s naming snafu:

  1. Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Nexus 9 are tablets. 7 & 10 were launched with 4 and 9 was launched later.
  2. Pixel brand was originally used for Chromebook Pixel.
  3. Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P were new versions of Nexus 5 and Nexus 6, respectively. It seems like the two teams couldn’t agree on a single suffix letter.

Google I/O 2016: Android notes

General

  1. Multitasking – multi-window mode and picture-in-picture mode. This includes the ability to launch window in adjacent activity, and drag and drop between activities.
  2. Notifications – Custom quick settings tile for an activity
  3. Multi-locale – users can specify locale beyond their primary locale
  4. ScopedDirectoryAccess for the shared storage
  5. New file-level encryption mode (as opposed to block-level encryption) and the corresponding Direct Boot
  6. Java 8, Jack, and ndk support in Gradle
  7. GCC deprecated in favor of Clang

TechTalk on Image size/compression

  1. PNG – Get image down to 256-bit palette (if possible) or compress them using Zopfli. Test the difference with butteraugli
  2. Convert PNG to Vector drawable using Potrace. Vector drawable are natively supported on Android 5.0 and above. Use compat to use them on the older versions. Or generate PNG for the older versions (not recommended)
  3. WebP is another option (Note: Speaker failed to mention that WebP is natively supported only on Android).
  4. Avoid JPEGs. They are usually larger in size.

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“Material design” and Google’s strategy

 

Android

Before 2008, smartphones OS market was fragmented.
There were a few big names like Palm and Symbian, but most phone manufacturers were doing their custom operating systems. For example, Motorola alone had five operating systems.
In 2008, Google came out with an open-source smartphone OS.
Mobile phone manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola, and HTC, embraced it and made short-term profits till they got commoditized by a standardized OS controlled by Google.
On the other hand, Nokia and Blackberry decided to ignore and badly lost market share.
Eventually, they embraced it as well, albeit, in different forms but it seems its a bit late.
The only winner (till now) is Apple, who was simultaneously working on iPhone and has held its ground well primarily, due to superior UI design and user experience on iOS.

Material Design

Till 2014, web design has been fragmented, flat design is popular, but no one controls it.
There are a few big names in web UI development like BootstrapFoundation but most companies are either using homegrown or open source jQuery libraries/CSS libraries for design.
In 2014, Google came out with Material Design, and just like Android, it’s being given out for free.
Even Android 5.0 is using the same material design.
While app developers are almost bound to replicate material design for Android apps, the choice of offering the design to web developers is an interesting one.
If a sizable chunk of web developers decide to embrace material design, Google will control look and feel of the web.
If the android apps and websites look similar, then it will only persuade more and more iOS developers to use material design in iOS apps.

The end game is to corner Apple in user experience by producing a design which Apple will be either forced to adopt or create something different and superior.
As far as others big players are concerned, both embracing and ignoring material design will be an equally lousy proposition.

Disclaimer: Thoughts are solely mine. 
Disclosure: I used to work at Google.