There was no E hardware in the Xoom, which was very new for Verizon at the time. Instead, buyers were told they’d be able to upgrade their device to support E in the coming weeks. That ended up stretching into months. Update didn’t become available until seven months after the device launched. You had to factory reset your tablet send it away for Verizon to install the E modem, which took about a week. As you can imagine, sales of the E Xoom were pretty bad. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver. The tch Urbane 2 was delayed indefinitely while worked on a fix. The company didn’t even offer a timeline, which was a big mistake. Many potential buyers assumed the watch was gone for good. Naturally, when the watch did go back on sale in mid-2016 there were not many buyers still interested. Android ar was in a lull at that point, in part because the Urbane 2 left a gap in ‘s smartwatch lineup. The company eventually released its findings from a months-long investigation of the incident. It found that the shape of the first battery caused negative electrodes to be bent inward where they came in contact with the positive ones shorted out. The second batteries also suffered a positive-negative short, but this one was caused by welding burrs. If Samsung had taken a little more time to investigate test after the first recall, there might still be a Galaxy Note7 on the market today. The Nexus 4 was almost impossible to find for months after its release, even when you got one it didn’t have E… or did it? It turns out the antenna was able to connect to E even without the right signal amplifier. st as people were starting to get excited about the secret E, issued an update to lock E in the radio firmware. It didn’t really have a choice as the device wasn’t certified for E by regulators. Still, it was just another thing that annoyed people who had already dealt with the messy launch to get a phone. The delays caused by the redesign resulted in the Bionic missing its window. The Galaxy S2 was released over the summer, the Droid Razr was heavily rumored over the fall, as was the Galaxy Nexus E. Those phones ended up launching right after the Bionic, effectively killing any momentum that phone would have had. It was poor planning all around. Verizon Motorola should have just canned the Bionic when it became clear there was no space in the lineup. th the right pricing, a device like the HTC First might have had a shot, but that’s not what we got. It was exclusive to AT&T, which insisted on a $99 on-contract price (it was hundreds of dollars more without one). AT&T reportedly only sold a few thous units during the first few months, at which time it dropped the price to $0.99 on-contract. Maybe that was the right price in the first place, but this instantly kicked off a new round of coverage on the phone’s failure. It was over for the First at that point. Gingerbread came out almost the same time as the Galaxy Tab shipped, unveiled Honeycomb a mere two months later. Despite its flaws, this was a version of Android properly optimized for tablets. It made the Galaxy Tab 7.0 look hideously rushed doomed it to failure. The $400 price tag also seemed high for something that was essentially a large poorly optimized phone. If Samsung had just cooled its jets waited a few months, it could have started its tablet plans off on the right foot. In all, released two modules for the G5; a camera grip a HiFi DAC. The HiFi wasn’t even released in the U.S., let’s face it, the camera grip was a terrible idea. So, the launch modules stank, things didn’t get any better because never released any more of them. At the end of the day, even had to admit the G5 was a flop as it reorganized its mobile division over the summer of 2016. If it wanted to do a modular phone it should have actually had some good ideas for modules ready to go. The Galaxy Nexus was over $700 off-contract $300 on-contract when it launched in late 2011. Right from the start updates were slow compared to the international device, which annoyed the Nexus fans who switched to Verizon to get the phone. Battery life was also worsened by the first few updates. The final nail in the coffin was ’s release of the unlocked Galaxy Nexus on the ay Store in April 2012 for $399, just over half the cost of Verizon’s version. Verizon didn’t benefit much from just a few months of exclusivity, but that was long enough to permanently hobble the Gnex in the . Everyone lost on this one. The “killer feature” was Dynamic rspective head-tracking tech, which was little more than a tech demo. There weren’t enough apps games available to take advantage of it. There weren’t even enough apps games in general because the Fire one had no apps. That was something consumers put up with on cheap tablets, but not an expensive phone. How expensive? It was $650 off-contract was exclusive to AT&T where it was $200 with a contract. None of that was a good idea. The phone was eventually sold unlocked for as little as $130 to clear stock. The Fire one might have had a shot if pricing availability had been more in-line with the Fire tablets.
