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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."
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.
I have the same phone (developing for it too), and it doesn’t matter if you have a branded carrier-updated model.
Changing the internal ID that controls, which update mod it’s going to pull, is ridiculously easy. There is a small tool, and a huge list of all IDs of all Nokia phones for all carriers!
You change the ID, run Nokia’s own updater, and you’re done! (Just to into the themes menu and back out, for the theme to initialize properly.)
So everybody can have the very latest updates.
As for the GPS. That’s not the worst problem. The worst problem is, that without a data connection, GPS is not working and useless. It just tries to find satellites. According to Nokia, it takes up to 40 minutes to get the first fix, then it’s fast. 40 minutes?? A TomTom does it in under two seconds! Like pretty much every GPS device (including phones) out there. And they don’t want to admit that it’s a serious bug too. Which puts a big dent in the otherwise huge respect that I have for Nokia, because of their strong support for QT, Linux, and open source in general.
On my phone, even 40 minutes do not help. I can be in a place with nothing at all around me. No trees, no buildings, nothing. And yet, after two hours, I don’t get a fix. Unless I enable A-GPS. Then’s working as expected.
I really recommend installing Maps Booster. It’s a software similar to the iPhone’s “fake” GPS, which uses wifi hotspots with a database of ID/location mappings, which even works inside rooms, and adds to the overall quality. The only problem is, that for that you also need a data connection. Because it pulls the IDs from a constantly updated online database. (The same that the iPhone uses, btw.)
All in all, I guess you can’t do without a data flatrate nowadays. Which costs around 20€ here. Too much for the average user.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
"Improved user experience" is a multi syllable way of saying "making stuff better." But yes, it's either a feature upgrade or a bug fix. Just because someone releases a new version of software doesn't mean that the prior release was irresponsibly broken, or intentionally crippled.
But perhaps we're just coming at this from different perspectives. My perspective is that I write software for a living, and my team and I work really hard to make things as delightful as we can for our customers. We do regular releases as part of that process, making things better and better each time. Your perspective just seems to be that "the computer industry" is out to screw people over, and the fact that software gets periodically released as clear evidence of the evil of "the computer industry." There's some evil out there in the world, but the fact that software gets released and patched is not by itself evidence of evil.
Having lots of updates is not in any way impressive, it means they didn't do things right the first damn time and rushed it to market.
90% now is more than 100% never.