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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.
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.
Look at all the people will ing to jailbreak iPhones
The main reason why people jailbreak is to get decent apps that will never be approved (such as emulators) on their phone. With a lack of a central authority forbidding such things, most people are less likely to root their Android device unless they are geeks.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
It's as if you're fishing for the answer "N900"...
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
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.
It may be different where you live, but here in the United States we sign two year contracts that come with subsidized phones. That means that the majority of churn on handsets is rated at two years per device.
Two years is a long time. I would not want to be stuck on Android 1.5 for two years when a fairly simple upgrade to 2.1 would unlock a huge new increase in functionality of my existing hardware such as turn by turn navigation and Google Goggles.
I much prefer the European model of unlocked phones, but changing the industry is a whole other topic in itself. I am hoping Google has the ability to change that, but we will see.
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.
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.
If you do not want to bite the bullet and purchase the N900 (around $599) you can get a N800, first came out in 2006 for around $200. Remember even with the price of the Nokia N900, if you ditch your $50 per month cellular plan, you will recoup your costs in 1 year. If your cellular plan is more than $50 per month, you will recoup the cost of the phone faster.
The ONLY thing the N800 does NOT have when compared to the N900 is cellular. Based on your list, no cellular, you can do everything you want to do with the Nokia N800. The N800 still has the FM chip like the N900 also. A plus with the Nokia N800 is it has a reversible webcam, you simply rotate it to change from taking a picture of you to a picture of something/someone in front of you.
Most important, ONLY with the Nokia Nxxx (which you have root access to) can you install any Linux app you want. Expect to do some tweaking. But the reality is you have a shot at it. Remember the first Nokia Nxxx, the N770 came out in 2005. At one point there were over 450 apps for the Nokia N800. While I was NOT surprised that the website for apps for the N900 did not list them all, I would be surprised if you could not get them to work on the Nokia N900.
Ideally you want an application to just install on your phone, even Linux apps. Thanks to apt-get and yum, most Linux software applications can be configured to work on pretty much any Linux distro. All it takes is your patience and time. However if you do NOT have root access, you will be limited with what you can configure. You always want access to root with any Linux distro, or do not use it as you will end up frustrated in a blind alley one day. Just not worth wasting your precious time that way. (I use su and sudo, but I must have access to root, just in case, period, end of discussion)
Next years Androids are suppose to come (with the ability to root day 1, or so the rumor goes) from Google. If they follow through with that hope, then those phones will be equivalent (and possibly better than) the Nokia Nxxx. Currently the Android can be rooted, however Google has sent Cease and Desist orders to people who not only root the phone, but include other Google apps on it. In other words, Google does not officially sanction rooting at this time. They tolerate it as long as you do not include other apps, but that is it.
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We've been working on native mobile apps for our systems the past 6 months. iPhone has been pretty good to work with. You build your software, if it works on one iPhone (or iPod Touch even), it will work on the next in the same exact way. Now there may be differences in OS (2, 3, 3.1, 3.2), but at least the hardware is the same and operates the same way. Same pretty much with Blackberry as well as they have the classic Blackberry style and then the Storm. There are some hardware differences between models, but basically you have to make sure it works on your normal blackberry and then the Storm series phones.
Windows Mobile is a nightmare. You can write the software, but it runs on so many different hardware platforms, each with their own difference (some have a stock UI, others a manufactures UI, others a carrier UI), that it takes a lot of time an expense to debug it. And even then we still get complaints that things don't work on XYZ model phone that we had never even heard of before. Our app maybe perfectly usable on one phone, completely unusable on the next because of screen size or one has a touch screen, one only has a keyboard interface, etc..
Unfortunately for Android, they're going down the same road as Windows Mobile. As it stands right now, we have to test against 3 different OS versions (1.5, 1.6, 2.0) AND test usability against different configuration. How does it look on AB size screen vs. CD sized screen. How well does it interface with touch screen? How well does it interface with keyboard? Does it run well on processor version X vs. Y, etc.. That adds a lot of cost to develop for in testing and QA.
We'll give Android another year and see. But if some of these problems don't look to be righted by Google, then in the future we're likely to support iPhone and Blackberry native and then develop a web-based interface for everything else to keep down costs.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.