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From http://source.android.com/faqs.html#what-kind-of-open-source-project-is-android

Why did we open the Android source code?

Google started the Android project in response to our own experiences launching mobile apps. We wanted to make sure that there would always be an open platform available for carriers, OEMs, and developers to use to make their innovative ideas a reality. We also wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no single industry player could restrict or control the innovations of any other. The single most important goal of the Android Open-Source Project (AOSP) is to make sure that the open-source Android software is implemented as widely and compatibly as possible, to everyone's benefit.

"No central point of failure, so that no single industry player could could restrict or control the innovations of any other."

Seems pretty clear.

The broader and more up-to-date picture is probably from Google ... as of 1st December, only slightly more than half of Android phones were running Gingerbread (which has been released on AOSP for over a year now). Most of the rest are running Froyo, but there's still 10% of all devices running Eclair!

It's not a pretty picture, and given the huge advances made first with Gingerbread and then ICS, it doesn't do Android any favours to have so many devices out of date. That said, a lot of phone makers have promised updates to ICS in recent weeks, so hopefully Google has done a bit of arm-twisiting behind the scenes and ICS adoption will be better.

There are apps in the market which have a nice easy to use interface.

What happening here is that the app he installed opens the web browser to when you lock the screen. The app is then, in here in lies the secret sauce, is able to get the commands from the the browser is receiving. The browser part is simple, it can poll looking for input. How the app gets that input is interesting part. I don't know how its doing that. It may have created a callback from the browser to there app. Android has excellent inter process communication tools, but I don't know how he is doing this from an app he doesn't control. I've only thought about it for 5 minutes though. With this app and another app you control, this exploit would be trivial (one with internet access and another with sdcard access for example). I think any app can execute process with would give it access to the shell. That doesn't mean it has root access, but Android will let you view much of the file system without root. You cannot get to private app data storage, but you can see the sdcard and other basic parts of the file system like /framework or /etc.

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Parcel.html this shows inter-process communication.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html this shows how to launch the browser.

What happening here is that the app he installed opens the web browser to when you lock the screen. The app is then, in here in lies the secret sauce, is able to get the commands from the the browser is receiving. The browser part is simple, it can poll looking for input. How the app gets that input is interesting part. I don't know how its doing that. It may have created a callback from the browser to there app. Android has excellent inter process communication tools, but I don't know how he is doing this from an app he doesn't control. I've only thought about it for 5 minutes though. With this app and another app you control, this exploit would be trivial (one with internet access and another with sdcard access for example). I think any app can execute process with would give it access to the shell. That doesn't mean it has root access, but Android will let you view much of the file system without root. You cannot get to private app data storage, but you can see the sdcard and other basic parts of the file system like /framework or /etc.

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Parcel.html this shows inter-process communication.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html this shows how to launch the browser.

You're an uninformed idiot.

Thanks, this post looks promising.

2.2(Froyo) and 2.3(Gingerbread) are a night and day difference in every way possible.

-The battery management issues went from abysmal to acceptable between these two kernel versions.

Citation please. From abysmal to acceptable is not a measurement I can grok.

-The user interface is way cleaner and better thought out.

The circular lock screen looks better. I admit. Is that all?

-Entire genres of the Android Market are unavailable when you have an out of date version of the kernel because app developers like myself actually use the features released in new SDK APIs.

So you're telling me that you wrote off something like 99% of the Android handsets as soon as that new SDK came out? You should have waited until now at the very least.

Specifically Gingerbread updated the "SensorManager" Class to include updated Sensor Fusion functions which combine accelerometer, compass, and gyroscope sensor data to create an Inertial Navigation System. Froyo has the technology necessary for a graduate student to build a satelite. Gingerbread has the technology necessary for a middle schooler to build a satellite. 1 API update changed technology accessibility by an entire decade of education. This doesn't even touch on the difference in development hours required for the graduate student before and after.

I just had to buy a new Samsung Phone off of eBay because Motorola has their head up their ass. I can root the Epic 4G and install any kernel version I fancy. Motorola's locked bootloader (aka eFuse) makes this impossible and means I'm constantly having to develop apps with 1 hand tied behind my back guaranteeing that I fail to keep pace with the competition.

As an example, Google released the "Google API Level 10"(Android 2.3.4) which updated the USB adapter to add functionality for the new "Google ADK". This update separates the world of Android phones in to TWO TYPES:
-Those with 2.3.4 and up have Arduino level ease of interfacing to hardware like relays, potentiometers, oscilloscopes, servo motors etc.
-Those with 2.3.3 and below which cannot do this without doing something hokey like Bluetooth or the Sparkfun IOIO.

The first type is in an entirely different league of phone from the second.

In conclusion, every Android Update is a critical update and should be available in hours, not years.

Of course, a developer should have the latest SDK on one of his phones, but I was speaking about my friend who is not a developer. My friend doesn't have an ADK and his one-year old phone certainly didn't have a gyroscope chip in it yet. If anything, you've just made my original point. What's the point of crying foul about upgrading software to hardware he doesn't have in the first place?

Android has Exchange support. Honeycomb added full device encryption, and ICS carries it over. It's right in the changelist.

is it though ?

http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html

2.2 + 2.3 = 85%
Add in 2.1 and you get to 95%

95% covered in 3 minro revisions doesn't seem too bad, especially with the speed of Android versions slowing down.

I run into apps that don't work on iPods because they were written for iPhones. I run into apps that won't install on the 3GS because they require a 4.

There are certainly some good examples out there, but those two are horrible. Fragmentation is mostly an issue going forward (developed for 3GS and suddenly does not works in the next generation?!!) Although the iPod vz iPhone may be close to be a viable example, the only reason an app will not work in that is due to feature sets. Example: an app that uses the camera flash as a flash light will not work in an iPod, because the iPod has no flash light! Sure, allow me to install it to.... what? That's not real fragmentation.

The only real lines of fragmentation (at least with my experience developing for it) are:
Resolution: (3 varieties for original iPhones, Retina iPhones and iPads)
Processor power (mostly for games) 3 CPU performance tiers (4 if you count the original iPhone chip but that is already obsolete and not sold or supported.)

With Android you have a huge line of graphic chips and CPUs, with very different storage models and resolutions and memory size. It is very nice that Google provides a site showing how many phones are at various resolution "buckets" and OS versions, but there is no comprehensive source to actually even know:

How many phones run on every specific screen resolution?
How many phones run specific graphic chips?
How many phones run specific CPU speed?
How much installation app storage devices have (I'd settle for buckets there)?

These are all points that make you actually able to determine if it's worth even start developing for the platform. A game developer does not care how many android phones are out there. Heck, we don’t care how many are there with 4" screens. But we need to know how many phones out there actually can run the type of game we are working on. Sure, Apple does not give us a comprehensive list of active iPhones, but we know that there are only 3 possible specs to worry about for a 3 year deployment window.

The app storage is very important because larger apps can have trouble installing on phones with too little memory. My wife's now retired Samsung Gravity S was not even able to install Angry Birds, and that was the first thing she tried when she got the phone! Day one and no space to install anything but basic IM apps.

Are we forgetting that you can also purchase apps on Android, in some (but not all) cases, with direct carrier billing? For example, I bought Minecraft: Pocket Edition by billing it to my AT&T account

They're looking for practical applications of their devices and Apple's doing a damn good job of attracting application developers.

This is getting really tired. A friend and I had a face off recently Apple vs Android. He pulled out an App and I showed him the equivalent on Android, then we did the reverse, the only rules were no apps that required jailbreaking.

Both app stores are HUGE. Both app stores have basically an app for everything. Hell both apps stores have games which are direct clones of each other with different graphics (how this isn't a legal issue I don't know).

Although I do admit that I conceded defeat when he used Siri to send me a text message, and then I used Android voice commands to reply saying "Fuck off" and the stupid Android phone didn't recognise the swear word.

Even when you jailbreak / root your way out of the walled garden and the .... picket fenced garden, both phones have apps that make them incredibly versatile.

Google Wallet with NFC support.

As an owner of Galaxy Nexus in U.S. on AT&T, that's not true - NFC is there, but wallet is not. The phone doesn't come with Wallet app out of the box, and it doesn't show up in the market if you search. If you obtain a direct link to the app from elsewher, it opens it in the Market app, but download button is disabled, and there is a banner on top saying "This item is not available on your carrier".

My brief investigation leads me to conclude that Google Wallet is an exclusive deal with Sprint, and only works on their network, even if you have a stock unlocked Google phone. That sucks.

There is one for HP too, my father has used it for a few months without trouble. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.hp.android.print

If you want entertainment, get a blackjack app for your phone. It'll cost less than a lottery ticket.

Ah, in a reply to myself: apparently you cannot run plain Ubuntu on A500. You can run Ubuntu under Android with e.g. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.appbuilder.u14410p30729 but I don't know if that is useful for anyone else or not, but I feel somewhat tempted to try it myself.

Many of the printer manufacturers have software that allows you to print to their printers if they are on a LAN your Android is connected to. I have a Samsung MFP and can print and scan quite easily using Samsung's mobile print app for example. Just match your printer manufacturer with the app and check it supports the model. What you can print depends on the printing app as it either implements an action or reads particular file types. The Samsung one reads from your picture gallery, google docs, web pages, facebook & twitter and various other format files in your documents directories (txt, pdf and I'm pretty sure some versions of office files). I find scanning often to be more straightforward than on my PC. Pretty sure there are apps for Brother, HP, Epson, Canon, etc. Their features & polish will probably vary. Just search for printer in the android market, eg https://market.android.com/search?q=print&so=1&c=apps Obviously if your printing is only over the LAN, it should be more secure than a "cloud" based method, and some of those apps charge per page printed IIRC.

I don't print a *lot* from my Android tablet, but I do occasionally. I've found PrintBot to work nicely:

https://market.android.com/details?id=net.jsecurity.printbot&hl=en

Note: I have no connection to the author, and haven't yet needed to try the paid version myself, so I refer to the (extremely restricted) free version.

Works great for me on my Android phone, assume it would work for you. Found it on this really neat thing called the Android Market....

Right here.

1) you are not 100% reliant and bound to Google for Applications, if you find their "controls" (mocking voice and air-quote) too restrictive, you can simply select "allow unkown sources".

Or jailbreak or sideload. Just as approachable for the technical user (actually a little easier for non-technical people on the iPhone because there's a cottage industry around Jailbreaking).

Also on the iPhone, you are slightly better off since there's a centralized non-Apple store - Cydia.

Google are yet to use it to pull an application for offending their sensibilities or competes with them, unlike Apple.

Unless you want to write gambling or porn apps, which Google does not allow.

Apple also allows apps that compete with them, they start to get picky when there are too many applications in the same space.

I do miss having the wifi etc buttons on the notification bar though, the widget isn't as useful when you're in an app.

Actually, it seems that I was too pessimistic in my estimates. Try this. Works here on Galaxy Nexus.

Update .. branding guidelines here http://www.android.com/branding.html

CarrierIQ, and the carriers ( AT&T, Verizon, etc ) are not "fucked" as you put it at all.

The basis for all the "evesdropping" and "wiretapping" accusations and laws, include the phrase "without authorization" but when you read the TOS contracts and privacy policies that everyone with cell phone service from a carrier signs and agrees to, they clearly state that device information and usage information is collected. The service contracts and privacy policies clearly spell out that you essentially have no privacy, with the caveat that at least Verizon claims to anonymize the data before they share it. If you don't believe this, the laws and contracts are on the web for everyone to read. Check it out.

For all the lawsuits and illegal activity accusations, its pure politics, because currently, the carriers are well within the law because they have notified everyone in their privacy policies that as a customer of the service you have little expectation of privacy.

There have been alot of comments concerning Google and Android being/not being involved. After having read Verizons policies at least, they state that Verizon can share the information with third parties. This is where Googles involvement *might* come into play. Who is to say, that Google hasnt allowed the carriers to install Android and use it in a commercial environment after modifications, in exchange for your usage information ? Im not claiming this is happening, but merely that the policies that users agree to would easily allow for this.

According to http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html ... "The preferred license for the Android Open Source Project is the Apache Software License, 2.0 ("Apache 2.0"), and the majority of the Android software is licensed with Apache 2.0." The Apache license states "6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file."

So, the trademark "Android" appears to be protected, while the OS itself appears to be open source. A quick search of the trademark database returned the following URL http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4009:ksf9at.2.45 ... "Owner (APPLICANT) Google Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CALIFORNIA 94043." Google appears to own the trademark of "Android" for mobile phone operating systems.

Connecting the dots, one can see where Google, wielding its trademark ownership, which is not part of the Apache license for the software itself, can in exchange for allowing carriers to use Android(tm) in its marketing, receive all of the usage data users agree to allow the carriers to collect and share with third parties.

The rabbit hole is deep.

Comments apply to US environment. Other environments of course, are subject to other laws.

' I think it's pretty telling that the "touch" event in the Android API is called "click" '

Not true, a quick look at the reference for the View class from which all UI elements derive in android(you can find it here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html) will tell you that there are two different events you can handle, onTouchEvent and onClickEvent. A touch event is what you would use if you want the raw touch event(for a game for example). The click event is what you use for things like buttons, or tabs, a more appropriate naming would possibly be 'onTapEvent', maybe. But I don't see anything wrong with onClickEvent personally.

When I played with the first Transformer I started by opening the Excel clone and playing with that. I clicked on a cell, typed on the keyboard and hit enter. It didn't move to the next cell. Instead, it just made the text in the current cell have a second line of text in it. I tried tab (it just added a tab). I tried escape and it erased my text. The only way to move to the next cell was to lift my hand from the keyboard and touch the next cell. I know I shouldn't judge the tablet from just one app, but that horrid user interface experience made me pass on the thought of getting the Transformer 2. If they can't get something as simple as that right..... there's no way I want it. And it's not like it comes installed with a lot of applications, so the ones they do include should be at least decent.
Add to this the rampant number of applications that raid your contacts list and ship the information back to a central database, and Androids failure to create an isolation mode which gives either fake or no information to an application and you can assure that I won't ever trust an Android system with any personal info.
I have looked for the ability to do development on the Android (not for Android, I mean on Android) and I just haven't found much of anything. No compilers, no command prompt to even run compilers from, no IDE's, etc, etc. So, another failure there (iPad is even worse)
Finally, I've looked at the games for Android...... wow, there's really nothing out there. Why have a PS3 equivolent processor when all you have is Atari2600 games? They really need to work on getting some game companies on board. It's bad. Really really bad.

if you're really so masochist that you want to compile _on_ android, here you go: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside
you'd need a real keyboard to enjoy it at all. but it would still be like doing professional c64 development in late 80's on an actual c64, that is: not smart.

and maybe you should warez some psx games or whatever to the thing, finding decent mobile games is a chore of it's own because of the flooded market - like trying to find a good c64 game out of a bargain bin full of shit.

if you want to bother, there's some tools that let you set perms for apps after installation.

LBE Privacy guard is similar to PermissionDenied, but no reboot necessary. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.lbe.security.lite

Then install Permission Denied application (you need root) what gives you possibility to rip those permissions off from application https://market.android.com/details?id=com.stericson.permissions.

After selecting what permissions the app can have, you need to reboot to take it affect.
And the other great application is Droidwall what is firewall (needs root as well) where you choose per application does it have access to WLAN or 3G internet connection. Great to limit some apps only to use WLAN instead 3G or vice versa.

"web browsing, reading PDFs and accessing my e-mails via SSH"

Yes, if only there were a single tablet on the market that didn't require rooting to do such complicated tasks as web browsing, reading PDFs, or even a single SSH client.

Look, I'm all in favor of individuals having control of their devices. But I'm pretty sure there's a reason nobody sells a rooted tablet that does exactly the same things as everyone else's tablets. If you can't even answer why you need root access, don't expect to find a product that will.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.stericson.permissions that is what Chinggisk posted few post up...

But how do you prevent code that runs at the users' access level from being able to access all of the data that the user has access to?

One way is by making user accounts a tree instead of just a list. Root has access to all the user accounts under it, and each user can make separate sub-accounts and run a less-trusted application in a sub-account. Another way is by attaching capabilities to applications, as in OLPC Bitfrost, Android, and the Mac App Store sandbox (which I've been told is written by the same guy who wrote Bitfrost).

...and furthermore, you can get a Bluetooth OBD scanner which you can use live with your smartphone as you drive along. I'm using a cheap scanner from eBay and the Torque app for Android.

My seven year old daughter was watching the speed graph linearly increasing whilst the RPM graph saw-toothed. Now she understands gears in a whole new way.

Assuming you have some space on your computer to store the transcoded files, I wrote a Makefile to transcode music to solve this. I can't access it right now, but I use a very similar Makefile for keeping all my photographs (at low resolution) on the phone, which is really useful for annoying people with holiday snapshots. I just changed it to work with music files.

~/.toPhone/Source/ (symlink to my photos)
~/.toPhone/Albums/ (this is rsynced to my phone with rsync for Android)
~/.toPhone/Makefile

PHOTOS = $(shell find -L Source/ -type f -name '*.jpg')

SHRUNK = $(patsubst Source/%.jpg, Albums/%.jpg, $(PHOTOS))

PNGS = $(shell find -L Source/ -type f -name '*.png')
SHRPNG = $(patsubst Source/%.png, Albums/%.jpeg, $(PNGS)) .PHONY: all
all: $(SHRUNK) $(SHRPNG)

Albums/%.jpg: Source/%.jpg
                @mkdir -p "$(@D)"
                convert "$<" -resize '800x800>' -quality 40 "$@"
                @touch -r "$<" "$@"

Albums/%.jpeg: Source/%.png
                @mkdir -p "$(@D)"
                convert "$<" -resize '800x800>' -quality 40 "$@"
                @touch -r "$<" "$@"

Then it's just:
nice -n 20 make -j 4

The newest version of the GPL, version 3, forbids it. GPLv2, the license of the Linux kernel, may allow it. Android is mostly Apache 2.0.

I hit submit too soon. There is some truth in my humor. The facade is that Google has an open sourced development model, not that the product is technically open sourced. I can grab a nightly snapshot of any of the other truly open-source projects that are out there (firefox, linux kernel, etc.) yet Google only made their source code available after their hardware partners release their phones in order to guarantee their partners an exclusive first release.

Google perpetuates the open-source development myth with their "Get Involved" and "Philosophy and Goals", then uses excuses like "accelerated release" or "end user experience" as reasons not to fully embrace the open-source development that they try to associate with their product.

So I hope this explains the Facade part of my comment.

Yes I answered the parent's challenge, but don't get mad at me if my post hits too close to home for you.

What, pray tell, counts as "open source" in Bill's universe?

Delivering the bill of goods that is being advertised. By your reasoning, Microsoft shared source initiative is open source, but that's not the product that's Google is trying to sell.

I hit submit too soon. There is some truth in my humor. The facade is that Google has an open sourced development model, not that the product is technically open sourced. I can grab a nightly snapshot of any of the other truly open-source projects that are out there (firefox, linux kernel, etc.) yet Google only made their source code available after their hardware partners release their phones in order to guarantee their partners an exclusive first release.

Google perpetuates the open-source development myth with their "Get Involved" and "Philosophy and Goals", then uses excuses like "accelerated release" or "end user experience" as reasons not to fully embrace the open-source development that they try to associate with their product.

So I hope this explains the Facade part of my comment.

Yes I answered the parent's challenge, but don't get mad at me if my post hits too close to home for you.

What, pray tell, counts as "open source" in Bill's universe?

Delivering the bill of goods that is being advertised. By your reasoning, Microsoft shared source initiative is open source, but that's not the product that's Google is trying to sell.

My point is that it's okay for Google to decide when to release their code.

However they are marketing this OS as open-sourced in every sense of the word, why else would they come up with these excuses for why they delayed the source code release?

If Google has claimed Android to follow an Open Source model, I agree with you, but calling Android simply "Open Source" is still correct.

But they do. Please read their "Get Involved" page, or their "Philosophy" page.

My point is that it's okay for Google to decide when to release their code.

However they are marketing this OS as open-sourced in every sense of the word, why else would they come up with these excuses for why they delayed the source code release?

If Google has claimed Android to follow an Open Source model, I agree with you, but calling Android simply "Open Source" is still correct.

But they do. Please read their "Get Involved" page, or their "Philosophy" page.

What's hilarious is that the Android developer tutorial is for a notepad application.

Link here

I guess you could load it on your phone if you wanted.

So Ice Cream Sandwich is designed to be compatible with both phones and tablets. Do you have set a specific flag when you build the code depending on what kind of device you want to put it on? Or is it relatively device agnostic? Can it determine the screen size by querying the hardware and figure out what to do automagically on its own?

It is design-agnostic, in that you can use resolution and DPI to determine what the device is like, and adapt the UI accordingly. This describes the details.

SkEye is much better than Google Sky. Decent number of objects and a pretty cool feature for 'pushto' guiding a telescope.

http://source.android.com/source/downloading.htmlCheck yields a 404.

Remove "Check" from the end of the URL and it loads just fine.

you didn't even fscking care to check the fscking link?

http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html

http://source.android.com/source/downloading.htmlCheck yields a 404.

The most embarrassing part is that, like many Android devices, the Fire can't scroll smoothly despite having a dual core processor.

...like many Android devices? You mean, like many of the bargain bins Android-based devices that don't even qualify to connect to the Google Market (since they don't satisfy any of the minimum specs).

Because my Samsung Tab 10.1 certainly scrolls smoothly, and even most of the pre-Honeycomb tablets I've tested also scroll smoothly, as long as they satisfy the minimum requirements (PDF) required by Google to be officially called an "Android device" and connected to the official Google market, then you know you have a tablet that will scroll smoothly.

What is it about this task is so difficult? iOS 1.0 handled it back in 2007 on less powerful devices.

Don't blame Android. Blame the Apple fanboys for thinking that their iPad is still the best device for almost everything, despite the mounting evidence against it.

Take for instance the person who submitted this piece of news to Slashdot (or the person he's trying to quote). Does anyone actually still think the iPad is the best for watching Movies? Seriously? I personally don't. How many iPads are on 4G these days? It still wasn't long ago, that the only iPads you could get were wifi-enabled, or 3G-enabled. Can people even watch movies on 3G with an iPad? AT&T didn't even allow you guys to use FaceTime on 3G. I doubt that watching movies on it would work that well on it either.

Even FaceTime between two adjacent wifi-iPads inside an Apple store during off-peak semi-deserted hours got all choppy through wifi-only. Do you think FaceTime would even work on the slower bandwidth of your home? I doubt it. My android tablet at least, can stream video either way, on 3G, wifi, or 4G, but on 4G (even after you substract all the marketing bullshit, I still get speeds of around 1 MB per second, and that means I can stream HD content in almost real-time). 4G-enabled Honeycomb tablets, those are the current best devices for watching movies.

And for Android:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dicon.sonar&hl=en

I can only speak for myself but the "cure" I've found to that problem is to learn Android (I'm a Java expert already, no sweat was produced) and create a publishable application on the Android Market. After half a year I am back in enjoying coding for myself, the company I work for getting more hopeless in that regard every day, and I have a neat application that is successful enough in its own niche to make me a happy coder.
For the curious and for the sake of auto-promotion, the app is Evanova, an Eve Online companion.

Christ. Here's the Git repo and download instructions. Google did ask CyanogenMod to stop distributing its Google apps (Market, etc.), but not Android itself. You can download those apps separately, and I'm sure Google could restrict those devices from using Market if they tried. Perhaps your mother should have taught you not to lie.

http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html

That page sure disagrees with you.

If it had a good, usable, UI standard, but an OEM felt they had a way to improve it, they would be free to do so to differentiate their product.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if OEMs change the UI then it becomes non-standard.

But if the default UI didn't suck, they wouldn't all need to change it, and most wouldn't.

Google owns the Android trademark. They can place restrictions on it's use as they see fit. That they haven't restricted it as I suggested is part of the problem.

They cannot stop an OEM from stating that their device runs Android, that's not how trademarks work, there is no legal method for them to do such a thing.

Yes, they can. If I own the trademark, you can't use it without my permission unless you're making a reference to my product. If that product is OSS, and you've modified it, then it's no longer my product (it's a derivative), so the only way you can use my trademarked name is with my permission. If I set terms under which you may and may not use my trademark, then you can use it only when you comply with the terms. That's exactly how trademark works.

IANAL.

Go back and reread my earlier post. I didn't ignore that at all. First you argue with my premise, then when your own comments demonstrate my premise is valid, you assert I'm ignoring something I stated in my premise.

Here's what you said:
If it had a good, usable, UI standard, but an OEM felt they had a way to improve it, they would be free to do so to differentiate their product.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if OEMs change the UI then it becomes non-standard.

Google owns the Android trademark. They can place restrictions on it's use as they see fit. That they haven't restricted it as I suggested is part of the problem.

They cannot stop an OEM from stating that their device runs Android, that's not how trademarks work, there is no legal method for them to do such a thing.

Go back and reread my earlier post. I didn't ignore that at all. First you argue with my premise, then when your own comments demonstrate my premise is valid, you assert I'm ignoring something I stated in my premise.

Google owns the Android trademark. They can place restrictions on it's use as they see fit. That they haven't restricted it as I suggested is part of the problem.