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Android Phones Delayed
CommanderData writes "PC World reports that Google's Android phone rollout is facing delays. Originally expected to have handsets on the market and in consumers' hands this summer, it appears that Q4 2008 or even sometime in 2009 is more likely. Software developers are also complaining that programming is difficult on the Android platform due to regular changes being made by Google." Update 21:14 GMT by SM: Google has (via Google Watch) refuted widespread claims that Android will be late, so I guess only time will tell.
They are probably waiting for the Duke Nukem Forever port.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Disorganization?
Everything tagged "beta?"
Welcome to Google.
Have you released a product today?
Kriston
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10419263/1/google-android-phones-coming-this-year.html
PC World is reporting old news. Q4 08 has been the target for a while now.
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Google says Android delay is a rumor, launch on target for 2008
Didn't stop the usual attention grabbers from writing knee-jerk I Told You So articles though...
This report at PCWorld and WSJ today are *inaccurate*. Google always said that the "second part of 2008" will be the time that the first Android phone will get released, and now these guys are writing article saying that "Q4 2008" is late??? It's right up with the schedule if you ask me! Engadget also wrote about how these articles are either mischievous or simply wrong.
A constantly changing platform is the only way to ensure that the software living on it remains robust and well written. Cull the herd, I say! This is like if we took all the people in the world and put them in a giant dome with some sort of floor which constantly changes directions. Only those with stable enough legs (good foundations) would remain standing, while the rest would be deleted! By failing to stabilize their interfaces Google has created an environment where only the strong can survive! Three cheers for Google!
Here's the WSJ article that is the source for the PC world writeup ...
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Developers: We can use your help.
While I'm sure Google is talented, providing an OS and API is new ground for them. I'm not sure what their culture is like, but I would think time to iron out the kinks would be expected for this type of thing.
Apple/Next has been developing APIs for developers for years and have lots of lessons learned. Google is new to this. Give them time.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Only one carrier is currently planning on supporting Android phones, anyway: T-Mobile. (Otherwise known as the most open cell carrier in the US market anyway.)
Sprint deserves a dishonorable mention at this point, because while Sprint is a MEMBER of the "Android Alliance" they currently have NO plans to allow Android phones on their network, 2008 or 2009. Plus they're Sprint and they'll "fire" customers over attempting to use the features they were sold, so even if they did offer Android phones, don't expect to be allowed to actually use them.
The Wall Street Journal reported the delay. PC World merely parroted the report with Slashdotian flourish.
Apple isn't doing much better with their SDK.
I thought android was supposed to finally be real software for cell phones? Such a thing is dangerous for most current cell phone makers to the point that they wouldn't support it.
Wasn't that the whole reason for google making such a big fuss about the recent spectrum sale?
This is not the android I was looking for!
Large companies tire quickly of trying to hit a constantly moving target which breaks applications every time they get a new build.
In other news, developers still prefer to deal with the mess that is Win32 rather than constantly changing interfaces of open source software. Shocking youtube video at 11.
Theres a reason companies don't all jump on the open source bandwagon ... its too much damn effort to support and maintain when none of the core developers give a damn about keeping things compatible. Spend countless man hours supporting every revision of open source software, and pay no up front licensing cost, but a fortune in support ... or ... pay a large up front chunk of change, write it once, and know it will work for several years assuming you followed the spec properly and didn't do anything blatently against the API documentation. Try them both, see which one is more profitable and less nerve racking.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Never keep an anthropomorphic robot from the latest tech gadgets.
Because Apple's products always ship on time, and developers have no complaints whatsoever about the iPhone API.
Good news for OpenMoko.
Is Bill retiring? Or has he secretly taken over google?
Seriously - More often than not, big projects slip. And more often than that, there are rumors of big projects slipping.
I think this was why Apple wouldn't allow programs on their iPhone. They were updating the core too often after release and they knew it would likely break most third party code. Now that their core is stable, they'll release the 2.0 version with an SDK.
Android could've gone the same route: released, but not allowed 3rd party apps until stable. But I think that would be as frustrating as it was for iPhone users.
Does it run Linux?
With Nokia's acquisition of Trolltech (makers of Qt and Qtopia), Google is set to butt heads against a VERY large competitor, who is all-in on re-entering the US cellular industry.
Nokia is roughly the same size as Google (bigger in some ways, smaller in others), but more importantly, it's got more at stake. Qt/Embedded (a.k.a. Qtopia) is a heavyweight competitor to Android which has had far more design time, with a much more solid basis (Qt and Qtopia are both many years old, though Trolltech only recently aimed at cellular technology, which should be quickly rectified by Nokia's massive development teams). Google's dot-com mentality allows them to toss megabucks at an idea, like throwing things against a wall to see what sticks. If Android doesn't stick, whatever; they can afford it. If Qtopia doesn't stick, Nokia is back the drawing board and fighting a losing battle against LG.
Google's only merit is that they've been working on Andriod for longer than Nokia has been working on Qtopia (Nokia only finalized the Trolltech purchase last week). Google's only chance is to bring Andriod to dominance before Nokia manages to release Qt-powered phones. While they appear well-poised for this, the setback of this and other delays hurt the Andriod line more than you might think at a quick glance.
The cellphone platforms of tomorrow will be Apple iPhone, Google Andriod, and Nokia Qtopia. The other players (Motorola, Erickson, LG) will be left in the dust (or they'll adopt one of the above platforms rather than squeezing as much as they can out of standard J2ME). We'll see where Palm fits in with their revamped platform; they could easily go either way.
Can Google really face Microsoft on one front (office apps) and Nokia in the other? What about its bread & butter of web searching (their original front against Yahoo)? What's next, a car to take on Ford and Toyota? :-p
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
...on a single hardware platform.
I'm thirsty. Can you spare any of your Kool-aid?
I, for one, welcome our delayed telephonic overlords.
-- Boycott Shell
I thought they wouldn't have them until the 23rd century.
By the way, when they do get here, I wish that could be the Slashdot icon for Android.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. GNOME has been kept backwards-compatible for years now (the last platform ABI break was generally at 2.0). Same for KDE, at least they don't break compatibility inside stable branches. Now take X.org, Apache, Eclipse, or just about any open source project with a sizable third-party developer base, and you'll see they take great care in maintaining backward compatibility.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
...was just was an underhanded Google stunt to maintain status quo for handset vendors to lock people into their versions of 'Droid.
"The ASL will allow individual handset makers to develop proprietary customizations for the platform as needed to accommodate the unique technologies in their individual products."
So even if people decide to fork into FreeAndroid under the GPL we're screwed cause the drivers to make the phone freaking ring will be proprietary with a different interface for Motorola, Nokia, LG and CornershopCellPhones. It's back to reverse engineering for everyone. Shit.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
In three weeks, Apple will ship the second-generation iPhones. That's right: the iPhone has already been out there for about a year, and meanwhile the Android phones are "delayed". What's all that about?
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
They're waiting for HURD to hit, erm, 0.3
FTA "Google has said since it unveiled Android Nov. 1 that there would be phones based on the OS in the second half of 2008. The Wall Street Journal, citing Google as a source, is reporting that the Android handsets "won't arrive until the fourth quarter."
Confused, I asked Google for clarification. Will the Android phones be delayed as the WSJ reported? The answer was a resounding, "no."
"We remain on schedule to deliver the first Android-based handset in the second half of 2008 and we're very excited to see the momentum continuing to build behind the Android platform among carriers, handset manufacturers, developers and consumers," a Google spokesperson told me today."
um 4th qtr '08 is still "second half of '08" *head asplodes*
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
The OpenMoko phone is now in full production, and should be on sale in the USA in early July.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Community_Updates/
Have you ever worked with Qtopia Phone Edtition? I bet some of your attitudes would change. While QT is a fairly nice set of APIs everything in the phone edition seems like it's been designed with only one platform in mind (The Greenphone) and porting it to a different set of hardware is horrible without breaking APIs.
There's also the LiMo Foundation. Don't know how they fit into the equation.
I look forward to Nokia bringing out Qt phones and eventually replacing Symbian. Symbian is such a horrible OS to develop for.
Sorry - the correct URL doesn't have the trailing slah.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Community_Updates
I hope you're right. Because if that happens then I won't even care who wins; they're all infinitely better than the locked-down stupidity that's available now.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I am also bewildered by the supposed reports of a schedule slip. Shoddy reporting.
As far as "difficult to develop for?"...
Well, let's start with the fact that the SDK will have been out in some form for nearly a year before we even see the OS released on consumer hardware...as opposed to one year AFTER the iPhone was released. Considering that fact, any comment on maturity seems overly harsh. BTW, this SDK runs on just about anything...also unlike the iPhone SDK...assuming that you received a blessing from Cupertino to get a copy.
Let's also consider that an OS like Android is going to have to be far more robust and flexible than the iPhone OS. The iPhone, like the MacOS/Leopard/Snow Bunny OSes, has the convenience of running on only a small number of device architectures. Those architectures are finite and well-known by Apple. In contrast, Android must be an OS that supports a wide range of ever-evolving architectures and feature sets...or lack thereof.
This complexity extends from the OS to the application development environment. When you write an application for the iPhone, you know the exact screen size and available resources. Not so for Adroid. Your UI must scale...or be lowest common denominator. You may leverage supporting peripherals like a camera, GPS, trackball, physical keyboard, SD card slot...but then again, you better be prepared for them not to be there. Processor? Memory size? There may be min specs, but having to build an OS that runs on the expected range of offerings is not trivial.
Masking some of this complexity is a task for the Android OS developers...which is why it is inherently more complex than an OS for a finite set of devices...but it is worth it...at least to the consumer...by fostering an environment that motivates hardware innovation by a range of competing vendors.
Seriously folks, let's not be disingenuous and just pretend that the only difference between the iPhone and Android (or the MacOS and Windows) is Apple's genius.
Then why does the update from Google confirm the target is still the second half of Q2?
Q4 seems way more realistic to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh yeah. That will matter.
I'm not putting any bets on that. Nokia's name isn't meaningful (at least here in the US). The name Qt is completely meaningless to a consumer. I'm not going to pick a phone because it has Nokia software on it. I don't think most Americans would. Google is different. Google is a big brand here. People know Google. They like Google. That has sales power. Nokia may have more mindshare in Europe, but I'd imagine that Google still has a very strong brand there, so things may be more equal.
Of the two, I'd put far more stake in Google's effort. Is Nokia trying to get other cell phone companies on board?
Now I think the iPhone will kick both of them. I hope Google does good, but I frankly doubt it. The carriers are far too corrupt. Read the WSJ article that this story is based on. They talk about Sprint's problems integrating and branding all their stuff in, T-Mobile's problems, etc. In other words all the carriers are taking the software that exists and trying to turn it into their normal drivel that they sell. Apple stood up to that. The iPhone isn't covered in bad AT&T interface. Yet an Android phone will either be "Googly" or look quite a bit like any other Verizon phone.
Every story about the iPhone since first word last year has been "Wait for OpenMoko", "Wait for Qtopia", "Wait for Android". Apple is out there doing it. It may not be fully open, but it's there and it's rather open (in how easy it is to get an application up, compared to what you have to do with normal carriers and normal phones).
Google talks a nice game (and I trust them), but they are still up against the carriers who will have enough freedom to crush their ideals on every "Android" phone they release.
OpenMoko doesn't have the push either the iPhone or Android have. Qtopia may end up just another platform (like Symbian or Windows Mobile) that fails to take over the mobile phone world.
All in all, I don't care. I don't trust the phone companies. I love the iPhone interface (and will be buying the next version mostly because of it). But if the iPhone and others (like Android) can push the phone companies to better interfaces, I'm all for it. Just about every phone I've touched has a poor to horrid interface. The Samsung Instinct seems to have an improved interface, until you get to web surfing where it's just as bad as just about every phone released in the last couple of years.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Read the update from google again - indeed it says second half, not second quarter. My Bad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Greenphone was ditched in favor of better options. The current development platform of choice is the Neo1973, the same platform used by the OpenMoko folks. Nokia hasn't yet announced a new development platform (i.e. one that they actually make) for Qtopia Phone Edition.
As to portability, that's one of Qtopia's biggest merits. It was so extreme that before the Greenphone was nixed, people were finding better support on other platforms (since Trolltech had no idea of how to design cellphone hardware). The only reason they even made the Greenphone was to jump-start the Qtopia Phone development community and (probably) as the second big step to position themselves for a buyout by either Motorola or Nokia. (The first step was the IPO in Norway.)
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Almost ready, kthxbye
http://www.openmoko.org/
BTW, this SDK runs on just about anything...also unlike the iPhone SDK...assuming that you received a blessing from Cupertino to get a copy.
Anyone can download the iPhone SDK today. It's deployment to the actual phone that is trickier and requires a cert that a limited number of people have to date - but right now most iPhone and Android developers are on the same footing since Android developers have to use a simulator as well.
However, I would wager any given iPhone developer that wanted to ship an application (free or otherwise) will be able to do so before we see the first Android phones ship. I might be porting some things to Android later but I certainly am giving iPhone applications precedence.
Masking some of this complexity is a task for the Android OS developers...which is why it is inherently more complex than an OS for a finite set of devices...
The Android devices are a finite set as well, just somewhat larger. Don't forget that the iPhone OS has to abstract away all the same things as well, both to account for current devices with different feature sets (iPhone/Touch/iPhone 3G) and also for potential future features, such as different screen sizes or what have you.
So the iPhone OS developers do not really have it any easier than the Android OS developers as far as OS development goes. Now testing on the other hand is harder with Android, but then again in that area you have Google being helped out by all the carriers building Android phones whereas Apple has to to most testing of hardware glitches themselves.
Seriously folks, let's not be disingenuous and just pretend that the only difference between the iPhone and Android (or the MacOS and Windows) is Apple's genius.
Let us also not dismiss the work Apple has done to bring forth a pretty solid mobile development platform, and claim they have an easier ride in all regards.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not ready to call Android the second coming, but if Google stays true to form, it is likely to be a very good product with an amazing marketing drive behind it. Nokia is really going to have to make something happen to make Qtopia more than just another cell phone platform, and so far it doesn't seem like a lot of people are convinced- especially the rival cell phone manufacturers who probably feel better about licensing software from Google than from a competitor. My guess is that Android and Qtopia will coexist for some time, with Qtopia eventually settling for a percentage of the low-end smartphone and high-end cellphone markets, and Android competing more with the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices.
All major software projects miss their deadline due to unrealistic expectations.
More at 8
Seriously, I had high expectations of android when it was announced but then, after downloading the SDK I discovered that its JAVA only.
Wtf is the point of having linux running on its core if you can't use C/C++ for native applications?
Every story about the iPhone since first word last year has been "Wait for OpenMoko", "Wait for Qtopia", "Wait for Android". Apple is out there doing it. It may not be fully open, but it's there and it's rather open (in how easy it is to get an application up, compared to what you have to do with normal carriers and normal phones).
Yes, and I made some of those posts. But the implication you're trying to string together is wrong. There's no pretense from any of the OpenMoko advocates (incidentally available around 4th July) that it's going to dent any of these mainstream markets - not from me, and not from anyone else I've seen.OpenMoko's product is open, Linux, very flexible and I don't have to be a fashion or AT&T/Apple slave. That's plenty of justification over the iPhone.
In the past, doing cross platform dev was annoying enough. Coding in C or C++ towards the idiosyncrasies of each OS and environment was challenging. But it was solvable. Now we've got not just different OS's, but different lingua franca as well. Java on Android, ObjC on iPhone, C++/.NET on WinMo. I've, for a long time, avoided top-to-bottom cross platform programming, finding that commonizing the important underlying libraries is 90% of what I want at 10% the cost. Now, it's going to be really hard to do that.
I had the pleasure of being involved with integrating Google Checkout with my previous employer's cart. It was funny as testing something as trivial as a 3rd party payment method became frustrating as Google would make unannounced "changes" to their testing sandbox server almost daily. That memory and this article seems to indicate to me that Google may still need to mature in how they interact with their clients.
I will probably never buy a Nokia phone. Every Nokia device I've ever used has been a cheap piece of shit. They may in fact make good phones, but if they want me to believe that they have to stop making the world's shittiest phones, too. It also says a lot about a phone's software when I deliberately will pick a Motorola phone not just on the basis of hardware, but software as well (given that I narrowed my choices to Motorola vs. Nokia ahead of time, this statement makes some sense.) Nokia can go piss up a rope, because here they are KNOWN for making cheap-ass phones with lots of features that don't work. Of course, Motorola is known for making super sexy phones that cost a million dollars and need frequent reboots. Google, on the other hand, has a reputation for being super cool. So I'd say they have a good shot here, unless some other cellphone company gets their act together.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Google is not going to finish consumer appliances. They can tinker & experiment with unrelated pieces of software & release software betas. They got the search & Adsense finished. A finished consumer gadget with all the hardware & software functionality debugged & perfected is a different story. They couldn't possibly finish it without outsourcing a lot of it.
Google already tries to re-invent wheel since there is J2ME, everyone including their Youtube can ship successfully in J2ME to huge number of devices. Yahoo themselves gave up the native C++ (on S60) for J2ME on "Yahoo Go!" 2.x+ . Why? Well, it seems it serves them what they need.
The biggest problem of J2ME is the very advanced coding needed for the UI. SonyEricsson seems to have a solution: http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/newsandevents/latestnews/newsapr08/p_project_capuchin_announcement.jsp , they will use Flash Lite 3 in J2ME so designers can go for whatever they need.
I think Google knows the power of Qt since Google Earth can ship on 3 different platforms (and Symbian S60?) thanks to it.
I fail to understand what Google wants to do with Android. It is not my big concern, my software and hardware vendors already have support for it. I can't understand why not go for J2ME advancement and preparation of desktop Java on Devices. Yes, Desktop Java in 1-2 years on high end smart phones. Memory and CPU is slowly becoming non issue.
Doesn't it sound like "Silverlight" to you? I mean, there is Flash, everyone happily uses it and produces stuff on it and some rich software company comes up with "Silverlight".
Uh, yeah. Sure. But just maybe you ought to take a better look at the stuff that's currently out there. While the iPhone doesn't actually exist as a software platform, Symbian has a wide user base which has attracted a steady stream of developers even despite the horrendous API and other problems (which I suspect is why Nokia has looked elsewhere for its next platform).
Not that I'm jumping on any one bandwagon before actual hardware appears, but I'm also betting that the next big platform won't be one with a $2000 cutthroat operator deal welded onto it.
Openmoko FreeRunner Why settle for anything less?
Actually to most people Google = advertising (as well it should). Google cell phone (or software but to the consumer they are the same thing). People will have much more faith in Nokia than Google when it comes to cell phones.
In the end though, it doesn't matter because consumers don't care about QT and they sure don't care about Android. They want what will work for them.
IMHO, if someone, anyone decided to actually put their effort into the browser like apple has, they would actually be able to compete against the iPhone. Like you said every single browser stinks on cell phones except safari. if I could get a phone similar to the iphone but with a real browser I'd go towards that instead of AT&T any day of the week.
On a small university project porting a gps app to android. Because of the GPS/android interface the project won't be properly tested until I can get my hands on some hardware.
I keep seeing prototype systems running android in videos from conventions, I've been assuming they were modded in (after just working with the Symbian API an overlay seems possible).
Can anyone fill me in on purchasing from Google or the hacker's guide to Android?
Disclaimer: IWOT (I want one too). - Z
I think Google should have focused first on getting something out quickly: partner with just HTC and T-Mobile, for example, and get a single model out. That would have built buzz and given developers something to work with.
And what is Qtopia based on?
C++
Ha ha. Good luck... (especially with regard to the iPhone SDK)
It's easy for confusion to arise when you are a complete moron with the IQ of a tadpole. The whole premise of the article is in these few lines:
"Google has said since it unveiled Android Nov. 1 that there would be phones based on the operating system in the second half of 2008. The Wall Street Journal, citing Google as a source, is reporting that the Android handsets "won't arrive until the fourth quarter. Confused, I asked Google for clarification..."
Since Q4 2008 is by definition 2nd half of 2008, the whole story is a complete non-sequitur. The author needs to go back to high school, no kindergarten and learn some basic logic.
Oh I don't know...supposedly certain properties of Symbian make phones as cheap as E50 possible.
So perhaps - S40 for lowend, S60 in the middle and Qtopia for highend?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't say a thing about Nokia phones, but Motorola phones? Talk about utter trash. Q. Razr. Shudder.
Those phones are an abomination upon mankind.
Whats it like to feel oppressed by entities that aren't really oppressing you?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I don't know, the tinfoil hat protects me from the voices.
What was your point?
You'll love the Qtopia phones once they start rolling out; Qtopia 4.4+ includes a very nice and cleaned version of webkit, so the built-in web browser will be virtually identical (in terms of HTML/JS/etc rendering). The big difference is that since webkit is an integral part of Qt, you'll see HTML-enrichened widgets and views all over the place rather than just the browser and a few custom applications. Using webkit in Qt apps is as trivial as using a text box.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I'm sorry, but how do I put it:- the American market simply does not count, when it comes to mobiles. As much as I don't mind cheering US to win in other respects, you folks have an aging infrastructure and have a very very small footprint in terms of actual growth metrics.
Look at it this way. Nokia now sells fourteen mobiles every minute worldwide. Most of Africa's new boom is because of mobile-commerce; people barter talk-time for actual commodities. In comparison, in the US, you still pay for text messages, and, here's a pet peeve, it costs cheaper to call from Singapore to LA, than it is to call LA from Seattle. Trust me on this one; I've tried it a few weeks back.
Nokia's brand-name is not big in the US? Who-effing-cares. It's a mediocre market at best; that's not where the phone companies should be looking out for anyway.
More than mere navel gazing.
I have a RAZR V3i, it gets 2+ days of standby (depending on signal) and has survived more concrete drops than I like to admit to causing. The interface is not so great there either, and I have to reboot once a week or so, but like I said - I'd rather reboot a motorola than have to use a nokia. The RAZR has about the sweetest form factor for a phone that there is. I want the linux-based RAZR 2, but have no particular reason to buy one, so I haven't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the end, it all comes down to personal preference. If they are good phones to you, then who am I to try to take that away? It's hard to find a phone you like. Of all the phones offered by Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T, I grudgingly accept but one: my Samsung SCH-i760. After that, the only redeeming quality other phones have is that you may be able to whip them at someone's head if they're causing problems.
It's a very sad state of affairs in the handset business for me :(
where does blackberry fit into all of this? I like mine I don't see why blackberry isn't going to continue to be competitive.