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Carriers, Manufacturers Are Strangling Android
loconet writes "This article in Gizmodo claims that Android's fragmented model is harming it, but Google has the power to save it. The rumored Google Phone could be a ploy to upset the wireless industry, or it could be an expensive niche device. Either way, it would be a bid to take Android back from the companies that seem hell-bent on destroying it. '...once handset manufacturers (and carriers, through handset manufacturers) have built their own version of Android, they've effectively taken it out of the development stream. Updating it is their responsibility, which they have to choose to uphold. Or not! Who cares? The phones are already sold."
You have to hand it to Apple, at least they handle updates pretty well.
I don't think it's reasonable to complain about the spread of updates yet, I think over time they will tend to smooth out.
Plus, I don't think it matters. Look at all the people will ing to jailbreak iPhones, or to apply custom firmware to Windows Mobile devices. If the carriers don't update, most users will if it's possible - and I think for the most part users will be able to upgrade phones since Android is open. It will just be a more quirky process than the iPhone offers, but in the end people can make a choice they feel comfortable with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since phones are frequently replaced for various reasons the software upgrade issue seems to be less interesting anyway.
A new model replacing the old with better hardware comes at least every year. And people do drop their phones and a lot of other things happens too.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Here is the Ars article from time past on the subject of just why Google decided on the ASL instead of the GPL:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/11/why-google-chose-the-apache-software-license-over-gplv2.ars
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Cell phone carriers are, at least in america, holding back cell phone software. The subsidized-phone business model gives them the oppourtunity to control everything about customer's phone software. Most basic carrier-sold phones are a nightmare to use, filled with ugly, confusing branded interfaces and annoying "stores" that sell overpriced useless games and ringtones. Apple did something right by cutting a tough deal with specific carriers in order to prevent them from branding the phone. Google's "all comers" strategy has opened them to the megalomania of the carriers.
Windows Mobile, which unlike Android has always ranged from okay to sorry, must be updated by the phone manufacturers unless you luck out and your model gets attention from ROM cookers. Yet it has lived for over ten years... why would the expectation for Android be any different? Perhaps I am being cynical, but this smells like fear-mongering from parties that still think WinMo has a future.
1) (Practically)Free VOIP when in WIFI zones instead of using minutes.
2) Internet Browser in WIFI zones.
3) No commitment plan, but maybe minutes bought on a trak phone style buying.
4) Ability to write my own custom aps on the phone.
This is my dream phone because I can use it as a home phone and never have to pay for it. Everything past that is bonus.
God spoke to me.
I'm not entirely sure what this article is trying to prove. Android has been out for a year. It takes most software companies 6 months to ready a new release, test it, and put it out to market. If anyone (carriers or manufacturers) are interested in keeping their hardware on dated software, that won't be clear until at least June.
And his supposition that handset manufacturers have no incentive to make their already-sold handsets operate well is just stupid. If you get a reputation for not updating your software, people won't want your hardware. And the carriers have even more interest in keeping software up to date.
I'm an iPhone user, but I really hope this takes off. There are some interesting features in the Droid and competition is always a good thing. On top of that, separating the phone from the provider is a Win in my book. Yes, it will remove the overt control from the provider, but it will also have the effect of eliminating contract termination fees, and it could also potentially bring about better standards that ALL cell providers would be forced to follow as well as better pricing in the long run if they are no longer subsidizing the phones.
September 2008: Android 1.0
March 2009: 1.1
May 2009: 1.5
September 2009: 1.6
October 2009: 2.0
Sorry, but by the time a phone maker qualifies the newest version for use on a particuar phone, it's likely there'll be a newer version of Android out...so...why bother? If you're always going to be behind the timjes, might as well just concentrate on your newest offerings, instead of trying to make sure that Android x.x is backwards compatible with your old hardware.
Perhaps a major release with new features only once a year, and bugfixes and efficiency improvments in point upgrades as needed.
Sorry but, too many people have learned that upgrading the OS breaks 3rd party apps, thus I can see why phone makers prefer stability over feature improvements.
The manufactures aren't trying to destroy Android, but the negligence is sure to stunt its growth. As long as Android is free and provides a good tech demo companies will continue to use it to sell the newest version of their phone.
Without a more cohesive foundation it will probably stagnate though. The same thing happened with Linux; 'the year of the linux desktop'. Linux has survived not because of market viability but because technical people liked it. It still doesn't have more than a couple percent of marketshare (in the consumer market.) Android has an advantage in that smartphones are more integrated platforms than desktops, and people expect less expandability, but each smartphone will be a part of the manufacturers brand, rather than the Android brand. On a fragmented market it's much more difficult to deliver expanded functionality in the form of applications to consumers. It will be more like the crappy java games that you'd see on old phones than the market for desktop software.
It's a new concept for phone companies though, and they'll probably start updating the OS once they get used to it. If they don't though, Android will probably see a limited success.
I will admit that I don't understand the standards behind the cell phone industry, but why are cell phones so strongly coupled to the service providers and, well, not open?
If I want a landline, I can go buy any old phone I want, and as long as it speaks the right protocols (which are pretty simple for analog landlines) I can plug it into my wall, and it works.
If I want internet service, I can go buy Ye Olde Acme Cable Modem, plug it into my wall, call up my local ISP, and poof! I have internet.
If I'm out of disk space, I can go get a hard drive from Seagate and stick it into any machine I want to.
In so many other engineering situations, interoperability between one component and another is restricted only as far as it is required to be based on the manufacturer's engineering decisions. (I can't mount a Nikon lens on a Canon camera because they have two different ways of doing autofocus, for instance.)
Why the hell can't cell phones be this way, instead of the current quagmire where they're hopelessly entangled with what the carrier wants? I want a cellular carrier that charges a fair price for service (per byte and per minute, or whatever), and then lets me use whatever device I want to use that service. If I can stick a radio into a TI-89 and make it speak CDMA, let me make phone calls with it.
Even with fragmentation, it should be possible to write compatible apps for most phones. If, otoh, google makes a reference phone, then Apps are going to be for this phone, and no progress will be made.
The issue still seems to be carriers, at least in the US, wanting strict control over features. T-mobile seems to be the only US carrier that will allow tethering. Sprint seems to have said it will never happen, and ATT and Verizon both will do so only with additional fees. This seems to imply that additioanl features one might have with an android phone might only happen with additional fees.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The worst handling has to be the way Samsung has treated us who bought the Galaxy.
No update to either 1.6 or 2.0 but the lower end models, like the "Spica" (which began its life as Galaxy Lite) will probably be updated.
They could at least release the source code needed for someone to compile Android as a third party software but they refuse. Really, really bad. My last Samsung phone, you can be sure of that. The phone stopped working after 3 weeks also - I am still not sure if it can be repaired.
great info....
for keeping Android up to date ... seeing that it had been rumored that anything beyond 1.5 might not be available due to (flash) memory size, we're up to a partial 2.0 release, with many of the 2.0 fixes and enhancements already available ... at least for the geeks that have managed (or dared) to root their device ... otherwise, I don't know how long it would take to see anything newer than 1.6, if any at all ...
The main reason why people jailbreak is to get decent apps that will never be approved (such as emulators) on their phone.
You were saying?
I think people jailbreak for either (a) more customization, (b) pirating, (c) free tethering. At this point there are very few classes of desirable apps that aren't able to be on the app store.
With a lack of a central authority forbidding such things, most people are less likely to root their Android device unless they are geeks.
Unless they need to do so to install software updates so they can get recent applications.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's hard to believe that Google chose to go with what essentially is the open-source version of the broken WinMo model in a post-iPhone world. They got this thing all backwards.
Perhaps they should have came out with Nexus One from the outset and then set up some kind of a reference design for all other manufacturers, instead of letting various handset manufacturers to cook up their own custom distributions. That way you could have one unified experience for the developers to follow. It's starting to look like Linux on the desktop -- something that sounds amazing on paper but doesn't quite work in the real world when you put it in front of non-geeks.
Apple maintains total control over it, sticks to their guns, and the product isn't bad.
Google gives the carriers complete control, and it turns to shit.
This isn't a new pattern, this is the way its been all along and is one of the reasons the iPhone is doing well.
You wouldn't get email on your phone with out an extra $10/month charge from AT&T if it was in their control. Maps would be the same way. Data would be $0.10/kb or packet, whichever amounts to the largest possible bill.
Apple and the iPhone didn't sell so well just because of the hardware or software specifically. Apple's total control over the system is actually a blessing, contrary to what most seem to think.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
How about:
Journalists, Bloggers Use Overwrought, Hysterical Headlines
From the stop-taking-yourselves-so-fracking-seriously dept.
The linked article basically talks about how different phones are using different versions of the Android OS.
OH NOES. You mean they aren't all running identical versions?! It's being strangled! It's strangulation, I say! Woe unto those who have slightly different versions of software on their phone, for truly they shall be cursed from on high!
Seriously people. Take a deep breath and calm down.
The 10 years when WinMo was a major player was characterized by NO consumer choice after the original purchase. Blackberry and Palm were the same way. Now the consumer is beginning to understand the benefits of having an open platform untied to their carrier. So if Android phones get locked down to the same level that WinMo, Palm, and Blackberries where for years then it will have to compete on crutches with the iPhone. Sure there are unlocked phones available but not enough to justify a vibrant marketplace al la iTunes.
All the carriers care about is getting people to use air time.. anything else is an expense the cuts into their profits. .
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It is a "prepaid" plan from Virgin Mobile. It costs $0.18/minute, and to keep the number and keep the minutes, I have to give them $15.00 every 90 days. The phone cost me $35.00.
So, for $5.00 / month (+ 8.25% sales tax, so more like $5.43) I have a phone that currently has hundreds of minutes available on it.
I haven't found a data plan which gives equivalent value yet, though...
Except Apple have a few per cent market share - so actually, by your logic, people prefer more open solutions.
Believe it or not, there's more (far more) to the mobile phone market than Apple and Google. Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola, RIM. But you wouldn't know it from reading Slashdot.
They got what they wanted: a low or no cost OS that works, that they can customize, that isn't Windows Mobile, Palm, or some other legacy anchor most consumers know already they don't want. They do not want or need an upgradable phone O.S. They would much prefer that people renew their phones every two or three years and so stay obligated on their contracts than that they upgrade their phone O.S. That they have to buy all their ringtones and apps again is just bonus.
The NexusOne isn't for the phone providers. It's for the phone buyer who would rather pay for the phone up front and not get contractually committed to a wireless company (all of whom are notorious for milking their contractually obligated customers untily they're dry). It's for the hardware buyer who wants to stay in control of his hardware.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sure there are a few different versions, but saying they are strangling it is like saying Redhat or Ubuntu are strangling Linux by offering differences/choice, etc. The Nexus One is simply a phone that Google will be sure to keep rather "Vanilla" -- and it looks like you can run that OS on other smart phones already (You can run the Nexus One OS on Droid already: http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-news/10006-android-os-2-1-available-droid-use-your-own-risk.html)
To check out more Nexus One stuff, check out http://www.nexusoneforum.net
You find that often you can get a phone for $0-$50 that is $300+ if bought retail. For example when my office got my my 8330, the cost online for one was like $300. Since we bought a plan, Verizion sold it to us for about $25. They really do give you the hardware at a price that is a loss to them. However, one thing to note is that quite often their plans aren't any better if you provide your own hardware. They often still require a year contract. So you can debate how much they are really doing for anyone.
However when they do give you a phone, it makes sense they want a contract or early termination fee because otherwise they would take a loss on people who signed up and then canceled right away.
Oh, not those kind of carriers?
I don't think the article appreciates where most consumers are at. Most consumers have simply cell phones and will continue to have simply cell phones. Most cell phones today are for all practical purposes, smart phones. What most consumers do not have, have rejected for the past 15 years, and will continue to reject, is a device that is a big rectangular brick that happens to also let you make calls, what used to be a PDA, and is now a mobile internet device (MID).
Android is an OS that is first and foremost is for smart phones. The iPhone is not a smart phone at all. The iPhone is a MID that happens to have phone functions. See: iPod Touch.
With Android, Google isn't focusing on the iPhone market. Google is focused on the Symbian market where Apple does not even compete today.
Apple is going to need to decide very quickly whether they want to remain only a player in the niche mobile internet device market, or whether they want to enter the smart phone market proper, where most consumers are and will continue to be.
With any luck, Apple will enter this market with something like an iPhone nano. I really like their interface, but like most consumers I don't want a mobile computer, I want a phone, one that flips open and follows the contours of my head, and in this day and age gives me email, gps, search, and music in a phone, not in a pocket computer.
I don't know where you come from but any smartphone owner who's paying for ringtones is an idiot.
Aside from that, for all the bad mouthing, WinMo is still extremely popular. I think you're talking out your ass. And I *know* for a fact that you can't back your shit up.
The only hope we have is if the telcos are forced to be only carriers of data packets and not have anything to do with phone hardware or have any say in what use is made of the data they transfer. They should be like the electric utilities, supply the network and send me the bill and shut up.
Nokia's "updates" are bug fix updates that fix egregious errors, the kind that should never have gone out in a shipping product to begin with. Other than that, Nokia's approach to software upgrades is "throw it away and buy a new one". Symbian itself is fragmented into three different user interfaces, and even within a particular user interface, there are significant incompatibilities between even minor releases.
I've had half a dozen Nokia Symbian phones; I'm never going to buy another one. Nokia's hardware is great, but their software, user interface, and software upgrades suck.
My Blackberry Curve (2 year contract, with a mandatory $29.00 per month data plan, er, phone payment) has a GPS chip which does not work unless I buy verizon navigator for $120 per year. Luckily google maps is good enough. WiFi....possible, but not in any Verizon branded phone. Luckily, I can up and download music and pictures....this is considered "progress" in the USA phone model.
I guess a situation like this makes you stop and realize why Apple institutes such draconian controls on its hardware/software. Anything wrong with any "Google phone" reflects badly on Google, regardless of whether it's their fault or not. After all, people like us who read these kinds of articles and have some idea of what Google can and cannot do will understand that it's not entirely Google's fault... but for other people, it spoils the brand.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Buy your phone outright. Then you can do whatever the hell you want with it. I've done this with my last 2 phones (Nokia N93i and Android Dev Phone 1) and haven't had any problems. The only problem is that it is a large upfront cost ($830 and $650 respectively for me), but the costs work out to be almost the same if you divide it by the standard 2-year contract plus handset repayments. I managed to front up the money as the typical struggling university student in both occasions, i can't see why anybody else couldn't.
I feel like Google's had to shoot themselves in the foot a little to gain the attention they wanted for Android. The HTC Dream was the first "flagship" android phone and I think they deliberately chose a different carrier (Motorola) for the flagship 2.0 so that HTC was not just the only manufacturer throwing dollars at Android.
I wonder which company will have the flagship phone for the next version of Android?
Somebody please explain to me why Android matters. What does it have that all the other phone OSs don't? Better APIs? Nicer SDK? I imagine a lot of geeks like the idea of owning a hackable phone, but that's not enough by itself.
Whenever I ask this question, I get answers that only address issues with the iPhone, like the fact that nobody tells you what software you can run on it. Please recall that there are a lot of phone OSs out there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mobile_phone_operating_systems
You're about 3 years out of date.
And you're thinking very provincially. The USA is not the entire world, but you have read this random survey and apparently made that error, extrapolating actual global sales share from a prospective US-based consumer poll (with purchase characteristics and mobile market dynamics very peculiar and specific to the USA). Also, I note from that very survey that the Iphone future purchase share in those US consumers surveyed actually dropped 8 market points overall (44% to 36%) compared to an earlier June survey. Finally, surveys like this speak to current buying behaviour and do not address installed platform bases.
Da Blog
US mobile carriers strangling development and wallowing in monopoly rent behaviour. Our next story: scientists believe that dogs like sniffing crotches
Seriously its so obvious that handing control to the locked down US carrier model will nerf any advantages Android provides as a common platform, and even more so in contrast to the iphone which is locked down by a single authority for better or worse. Fortunately, like linus and the linux kernel, the single authority does a pretty good job of it. Whereas with Android its like a open source hell (without the open source), every carrier is basically doing their own fork and then a pretty p1ss poor job of it in many cases.
The sooner someone comes along to provide a viable mainstream alternative that the US public will embrace, the better. Everywhere else in the world the concept of an unlocked phone and the ability to move between carriers, heck even countries, is a given. The problem is that joe public sees stuffed up android phone from Verizon (or whoever) and blame android, not verizon.
That doesn't really look like that in the real world...
First, you have Creative Zii, some Archos devices, etc. Essentially an Android iPod Touch-style thing.
Secondly, I don't see Android competing with Symbian devices that much; the latter are, most often, sturdy candybars at least two times less expensive (without contract!) than cheapest Android phones, which are all large touchscreen devices - not really cheap, but definitely on the cheap, a bit.
One chart is worth thousands words: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smartphone_2009.svg
Most importantly, you forget that vast majority of phones sold today are not smartphones, but simple feature phones. This is the area in which smartphone OS can grow, bigtime. But manufacturers don't really target their Android offerings there (if it even can be done - can Android run properly on the slower spectrum of ARM CPUs, with small amounts of RAM, and small non-touchscreen?) OTOH Symbian phones are nearing $100 mark...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Good I have a Nokia 5530, unbranded, unlocked, prepaid chip. No GPS and no 3G (I have a stand alone GPS for when I really need it and 3G is too expensive).
I use the wifi to browse, check mail, play music, read books, keep my agenda, some games, light office applications use, and only occasionally the phone features.
Nokia gets updates from time to time and I can even change it to get the updates of other zones (not officially tough)
Symbian S60 5th may not be the best of the best. But ranks in the top 5. And for 150USD it cost me less than my previous phone.
Strangling a baby would require a rather big and flexible penis.
If that were true a developer would never be able to re-submit the same application and get it approved but for some reason they can. I know 2 iphone developers, both of them have had applications rejected for trivial reasons, both have re-submitted them after changing the version number and got them approved (yes, no code changes) although this took three times for one application.
they have 10 applications between them on the App store, neither of them has made the US$99 per year to stay in the developer program.
A lot of people jailbreak their iphones just to get basic functionality available in most other phones, right now only one Australian carrier permits the Iphone to tether whilst the others dont even offer it as a paid option. Compared to all other phones which are capable of tethering. BTW, Australian telco's arent allowed to charge for unlocking phone functionality, either it's there or it's not.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The problem is that Google created a system that needs to be updated, but is sold as an appliance. Appliances shouldn't need software updates.
Software updates for appliance-type devices are huge headaches. Do you send users a message "New updates are available for your computer", like Microsoft? Do you install them forcibly by remote control? What if someone is relying on their phone and an update fails? Who provides tech support?
"Agile" development for appliances is a recipe for user misery.
WinMo held less than 15% of the smartphone market last year. That's not "extremely popular". In tech-savvy Japan iPhone share has reached almost half. WiMo has negative growth. In fact one Gartner (we can trust Microsoft's friend Gartner not to skew the numbers away from Redmond, right?) analyst has WiMo share at a meek 7.9% in 3Q 2009, off 28% from a year before.
"From one side, the market is going open source," Cozza said. "We expect that, by 2012, around 62 percent of the whole smart phone market will be open source with Symbian, Android and other Linux flavours. On the other side, they have more closed environments like Apple and RIM. Microsoft is caught in the middle. They have to think hard what they can do."
"All their licensees - HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson - are developing on Android," Cozza said, adding that previous licensees Palm and Motorola have both abandoned Windows Mobile.
I'll agree about the ringtones thing, though - they're idiots. The thing is, there are a lot of idiots. Ringtones made up $500M in sales last year. It's shrinking fast, but to most people half a billion dollars is still a lot of money.
An important thing to note is that two or three year contracts are the norm in cell phones, so if you lose 28% of customers year over year, that's essentially everybody who could ditch your product for free. I'll say it again: that's not popular.
Now show me how I can't back my shit up.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
smartphone penetration is actually rather large, and probably will be the majority of sales in two years or so.
According to Gartner, 2009 Q3 worldwide mobile phone sales were 309m units (with effectively zero growth over 2008 Q3). Gartner-defined smartphones sold 41m units, representing a 12.8% growth over 2008 Q3. Assuming that total mobile phone sales remain flat in 2010 compared to 2009 (a not-unreasonable assumption given recent historical sales data and market dynamics), then for smartphones to become a "majority of sales" within two years, we will need to see annual growth close to 100% or so. Less if you're brave enough to predict a reduction in the absolute number of mobile phones sold. However, this is still several multiples of the maximum compound growth rates smartphones have ever been able to achieve in their best years (and that was with much smaller installed bases).
It seems as if, from your bullish comments, you're in possession of some very different data than most people, or that you have somehow come to a conclusion very different from what most people perceive as reality. I'm guessing that you disagree with Gartner's most recent 2012 smartphone prediction:
Da Blog
Again, you're on that "worldwide" trip, which includes poor countries with most people unable to afford a $600 mobile phone.
In Japan, I believe Smartphones are the rule rather than the exception, and in America they should make up the majority of sales in the next couple years if current trending continues.
I realize I'm probably being trolled by an Android or iPhone fan who wants the opposite of what he says, but I'm going to play along anyway. I forgot to bump my post points in my previous reply so I'll do it here and offer a prediction, which I seldom do:
If WiMo 7 isn't the Second Coming of phone OS's - if it doesn't launch with an open toolkit and an app store with many apps and a search function that's not Bing crippled, and in addition to that offer some revolutionary customer serving technology unheard of before, then WiMo market share two years from now (4Q 2011) will be less than 3% and trending down. Android will be >40% and trending up.
Basically my prediction revolves around the fact that we don't need Excel and Outlook on a mobile OS that sucks. What we need is a robust mobile phone OS that lets us plug it in to our other stuff. We want products that obey us and get out of our way.
The failure of WiMo is going to do horrible things to Microsoft. It will be hard to make people afraid of OS-X and Linux when they've got a copy in their pocket that serves them just fine.
Mod sibling up please.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Try using your iPhone in a country where it wasn't originally sold. Then you'll see the value of jailbreaking - and learn what a pain the Apple lockdown process is. Every time I update the firmware, the thing tries to re-lock onto AT&T (the nearest AT&T tower is about 6000 miles away, I reckon). If I want American apps (I'm American), then I have to jailbreak the thing, or buy a shitload of iTunes cards when I'm in the states.
I like the phone's functionality, but I'm seriously considering buying another piece of hardware to get away from Apple's lockdown. Oh, and iTunes sucks on my computer.
Here in Brasil, we have the "US model" of subsidized phones and contracts for the more expensive phones (cheaper phones don't have contracts, but are still subsidized - it's just that the service itself is so darned expensive that the carriers get paid back for the handset).
But I buy new, unlocked hardware on Ebay and bring it to Brasil, where it works fine. Why don't people in the US do that? Buy what you want and use it where you want it. Sure, you'll fork out $300 - $600 for a new smartphone, but it would quit all the bitching about being locked to AT&T, etc. Is it just laziness and inertia?
TFA is pure FUD.
I've had a G1 from T-Mobile for over a year, and my wife has a Droid from Verizon. T-Mobile has been very diligent about pushing out updates over-the-air, there were several. My wife received one update from Verizon last week, she bought the phone on launch date.
In all cases the updates have proceeded smoothly. The phone was out of service for just a few minutes, there was no loss of personal information, or of applications that were downloaded.
TFA provided no evidence that the carriers were actually slow about providing updates. My personal experience (two different carriers, two different Android models) is that they are doing quite well.
The carriers have a huge incentive to keep the user of a fairly expensive phone with a fairly costly service plan happy. Churn is a big problem in their industry. They know it costs a lot more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer.
I updated a Symbian phone once. As the release notes clearly stated, you have to back up your contacts, photos, calendar and applications (each manually) and restore them after reflashing. Compare that with the iPhone, which does all that with one click, even when upgrading across major versions. The Symbian updates just aren't worth the hassle. Who wants to sysadmin their phone like that?
To top it all off, Nokia seems to be abandoning Symbian in favor of Maemo, or at least splitting their efforts.
By "baby" the GP meant "zygote."
Yeah I been following this debate and you are talking smack with no facts.
but why are cell phones so strongly coupled to the service providers and, well, not open?
Because the service providers make more money that way, and they can afford the politicians it takes to not change the situation.
Does the droid GPS -require- a data connection?
I took my driod to europe, and the GPS tools ("GPS Status") would never get coordinates. I think this is because I did not have a data plan there; it worked once while i was connected to wifi. I bought a program made for storing maps to use w/o a data connection ("GPS Save and Go"), and it did not work either.
I just want an app to do gps waypoints I can go to and return to, but nothing on andriod seems to do this.
If Android is successful the cell phone industry repeats the MS-DOS (and perhaps IBM-PC) scenario. The "other guy" is even Apple.
What happens next is practically nobody makes good money except for Google and Apple, particularly not the cell network cartel who have to become mere telecoms utilities. They'll directly lose half their business (phone distribution) and the telecoms side will have to compete on things like pricing instead of phone hardware exclusives.
The telecoms companies absolutely do not want Android. Ironically, they are having to accept it because for some carriers is all they have against the iPhone - one exclusive that went too far.
Disclaimer: this is based on UK where all carriers have pretty much 99% coverage.
suck it
No... you just talked smack without using any facts.
It's amusing that this sort of mindless consumerist jingoism should be spewed by someone from the USA, which has until recently exhibited such drastically low subscriber ARPUs and unit penetrance that pretty much all manufacturers and cellcos didn't even bother to release any of their high-end phones in that country. Relegated to a backwater in the global mobile business, the USA would probably have remained so for many years had Apple's success with its high-end featurephone not encouraged them to begin to accelerate deployment of better models within the USA. However, because US consumers are still markedly stingy when it comes to paying for services, the USA's selection of phones and services is still quite poor. Why do you think all the large billing and distribution companies are EU or Asian? That's where the real money is. Half a billion high-spending EU consumers, 2 billion high-spending Asian consumers. The USA can muster up 300m low-payers, and many of them are effectively locked into multi-year hire-purchase schemes by incumbent and regional cellcos. Just not that attractive a proposition.
Also, I believe that the "Japan" thing you are rferring to is, again, not based on sales, but in fact the recent impression monitoring and market research by Admob (now part of Google). The same surveyors also found that only 22% of Japanese mobile consumers wanted to carry a "smartphone", with just under 50% saying that a simple call phone was "enough". Also, the recent Japanese growth of 350% in mobile Safari impressions is coming from a long period of virtually no growth, and a tiny installed base. It's easy to show 350% growth in one quarter if your installed base is tiny. Maintaining that for a full year will prove more difficult. Even with the sales boost, Japan's Iphone consumers still represent only 3% of total global Iphone consumers. By comparison, the UK accounts for 8%.
I'm sure you're going to counter these statements by some ill-informed personal assertion without anything in the way of links of reason. However, I am done with this line of debate. The links speak for themselves.
Da Blog
If that were true a developer would never be able to re-submit the same application and get it approved but for some reason they can.
Almost never anymore, that used to be true - and it's pretty obvious to anyone going through the process that before that was because you got different reviewers that found different things.
They've tightened up the process now though and reviewers look at earlier case notes for reasons for rejection - it's simply no longer true you can resubmit and get in. That's what the Rogue Amoeba people tried to do, I could have told them it was a stupid idea and it cost them a month of delay for trying. Basically you are gambling on finding the stupid reviewer who does not look at case notes now, but at this point they have the process down to where it just doesn't work.
Now you can explain further why something is the way it is, and sometimes get Apple to reconsider a rule. But that does not mean the rule did not exist.
they have 10 applications between them on the App store, neither of them has made the US$99 per year to stay in the developer program.
That pretty much tells me the kind of applications they are producing if ten applications do not even produce the $250 floor of revenue within a year.
A lot of people jailbreak their iphones just to get basic functionality available in most other phones, right now only one Australian carrier permits the Iphone to tether whilst the others dont even offer it as a paid option.
Well yes, that's exactly what I said in the first place (I even gave tethering as a reason). Tethering is actually THE reason I would jailbreak, as I use it very infrequently but when I don it's very handy. So even if AT&T offered it I'm pretty sure it would not be worth what they charged for it, unless I could have some kind of reasonable day usage charge.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a ludicrous argument. Yes, 'because I say so' is technically a reason, but it isn't a justification in any meaningful sense.
So you should point us to an example of an actual rejection that had no stated reason behind it. All of the high profile rejections I know of had stated reasons. Some seemed stupid, but like I said they all had reasons.
And yes, "duplication of phone functionality" is a reason. Also like I said, you may not agree with it - but that is a reason.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
SymbolNOBODY:
You said what's quoted below from you, here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1476008&cid=30428430
"It's tolerated (perhaps encouraged) in part because these annoying actors are otherwised engaged in improving Linux. Major Debian and BSD contributors, for example, use slashdot as a workspace for their human-machine interaction side experiments, of which APK is probably one. In addition many of these trolls post links which, if you follow them, will completely hose a Windows machine. This is part of the game. - by symbolset (646467) on Monday December 14, @01:15AM (#30428430) Journal
I took offense to the BOLDED part... & ALL you EVER seem to have is "ad hominem" based attacks on people, not the points they make. So, my reply in the URL below was simple (and logical):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1476008&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=30428430#30430244
Additionally, "symbolNOBODY"? Well - the day you can make something like this (& that got you PAID for it, & that has done as well for others online):
http://www.tcmagazine.com/forums/index.php?s=b861a743aa23c4568b7d73e07ef7ecec&showtopic=2662
That's also gone over 250.000 views worldwide in 1++ yrs.' time online, & across 15 forums where that guide for Windows Security has been made either an:
1.) "Sticky/Pinned" thread
2.) An "Essential Guide"
3.) Rates 5/5 stars (etc.)
AND, gets "feedback" like this from users that have applied it:
----
http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28430
PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:
"...recently, months ago when you finally got this guide done, had authorization to try this on simple work station for kids. My client, who paid me an ungodly amount of money to do this, has been PROBLEM FREE FOR MONTHS! I haven't even had a follow up call which is unusual. Now I don't recommend this for the average joe, but it if can work for a kids PC it can work for anything! Now, i substituted OpenDNS and activated the Adult Content filter with them for this kids computer. I know its not perfect, but will catch over 99.5% of said sites."
and
http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=10f9ba9ad5ff990aaae1e7ec91f593a2&t=28430&page=3
"Its 2009 - still trouble free! I was told last week by a co worker who does active directory administration, and he said I was doing overkill. I told him yes, but I just eliminated the half life in windows that you usually get. He said good point. So from 2008 till 2009. No speed decreases, its been to a lan party, moved around in a move, and it still NEVER has had the OS reinstalled besides the fact I imaged the drive over in 2008. Great stuff! My client STILL Hasn't called me back in regards to that one machine to get it locked down for the kid. I am glad it worked and I am sure her wallet is appreciated too now that it works. Speaking of which, I need to call her to see if I can get some leads. APK - I will say it again, the guide is FANTASTIC! Its made my PC experience much easier. Sandboxing was great. Getting my host file updated, setting services to system service, rather than system local. (except AVG updater, needed system local)"
Thronka - forums member @ xtremepccentral.com
----
THEN, when you have done so, on THAT account? THEN, you can talk (and, ESPECIALLY about that which you said about myself which I quoted from you above sho
Rogers, Rogers, Rogers.......
I guess Rogers really does not care to catch on the android wave and support their products they would just rather sell us new phones. Well all this negative publicity in regards to android will cause new users to look elsewhere due to the lack of support and spend their money with another company. I have no desire to support Rogers when they will not even stand by their own products.
It is very baffling why Rogers would not support the HTC Dream / Magic and update to version 1.6 and eventually 2.0 and so on. Android is the fastest growing market in smart phones and leaving their customers with old OS will ensure that Canada lags behind in Android support.
HTC, HTC, HTC
Well all the blame cannot go to Rogers either cause at the end of the day this is a HTC phone and is obvious they just want to sell handsets but by allowing carriers to not provide updates for the phones they certainly are hurting their image and will cause android users to look at others brands as well.
Google, Google, Google
Great OS but.......You need to learn a thing or two from the iphone and that you need to rollout these updates across the board on these phones just not ones you brand and make. Failing to do so is a major mistake and will cost you in the long run. While android may be taking off and getting a larger market share how do you think the sales are going to be in a few years when android owners are tired of being handcuffed from the carriers and manufactures of your phones by poor support....I love my android phone but i tell you a unlocked iphone is looking allot more attractive to me specially in the long run....Having updates for the android is what makes the Google experience much richer and with carriers not supporting 1.6 or 2.0 android is sure to upset many customers as it has done in Canada already.
In the mean time putting pressure on Rogers and all the negative press they are going to receive on this and loss of revenue may force their hands to actually do something about it instead of responding with their generic corporate responses.
If need be the Android users of Rogers who have the HTC Dream, Magic and EVE will pursue this diligently.
All i have to say is thank god my contract is up this summer ....Nexus One, Wind, Dave, Public Mobile will all get a chance to get my money since Rogers has proven all they care about is your money not customer satisfaction.
To educate yourself more on this topic and find out all that has been done and said by the customers, Rogers, HTC regarding Android updates for Canadian users please read the forums.
http://androidforums.com/rogers/10647-rogers-dream-1-6-update.html