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."

Comments

What a nightmare.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to hand it to Apple, at least they handle updates pretty well.

Re:What a nightmare.

[Stevecrox]

I'd like to big-up Nokia at this point, my Nokia 5800 has had 4 firmware updates since I bought it a year ago. Each one has added new features and speed certain things up (Nokia Maps 3.0 is massivily superior to Maps 1.0). In the same time things have gone from Nokia PC Suite, to Nokia Ovi and Nokia Music (Nokia Music was horrific) to now Nokia Ovi 2.0 and Nokia Ovi Player (Musics replacement is actually good).

While carriers have slowed the progress of updates down (O2 took 4/5 months to role out the last one) Nokia has consistantly moved to keeping their phones updated and providing better integration with the PC side and mobile (even down to little things like icons).

The one downside I can see is I used to go through a different Windows mobile every 12-18 months, I'm almost at the end of my current 12 month contract and I can't see the point of changing the phone. Unless I can get double/tripple the battery life, since the current GPS setup drains the battery something chronic (4/5 hours continious GPS Navigation use and the batteries toast).

Re:What a nightmare.

[kdart]

Google does get it. But Google does not want to play by the existing rules. They want to change the rules.

Re:What a nightmare.

[Jurily]

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.

Re:What a nightmare.

[CTachyon]

[...] 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. [...]

That is either physically impossible or sheer dumb luck, depending on your device.

Some explanation of GPS is in order. For a GPS receiver to work, the GPS network must send it three pieces of data: the almanac data, the ephemeris data, and the current time (to atomic accuracy). Some receivers cheat and can get by without the almanac, at the cost of slow satellite locks and inaccurate position fixes until the almanac is available.

Among other things, the almanac tells the receiver a general, fuzzy idea of where all the satellites are located, and also gives the receiver a chance to measure the amount of ionospheric distortion (the single biggest cause of GPS position errors). The fuzzy satellite positions are valid for about 6 months, but the network only transmits one full copy per 12.5 minutes. You physically can't download it faster than that via the GPS network: GPS transmits in a repeating loop at a mere 50 bits per second, slower than an ancient 300-baud modem. Worse, the ~4KB almanac is only part of the GPS data, so the download rate is even slower than that. Oh, and to add insult to injury, GPS has no error correction, so if a section is corrupted you have to wait another 12.5 minutes for a retransmit.

With the almanac in hand, the receiver next needs the ephemeris data, which provides satellite orbital parameters in detail far beyond what the almanac specifies. This is absolutely mandatory for obtaining a fix. Once downloaded, it's good for about 4 hours, but the data is specific to each individual satellite. One satellite's ephemeris takes 12 seconds to transmit from start to end, but they can be downloaded in parallel. (As with the almanac, there is no error correction. If the receiver misses part or all of an ephemeris, it has to wait 30 seconds for the next retransmission.)

The clock data is similar to the ephemeris, except that it takes only 6 seconds to transmit. It's on the same 30-second retransmit loop as the ephemeris.

With all three pieces of background information at hand, a 60-bit signal every 6 seconds keeps the clock data up-to-date. This is what the receiver is paying attention to once it has a "lock" on a satellite. 3 locked satellites gives a latitude, longitude fix by making some educated guesses. 4 locked satellites gives a far better latitude, longitude fix and adds altitude as well.

In summary, if your TomTom truly has zero almanac data and zero ephemeris data (i.e. it's a fair "first fix" fight), the time to first fix must necessarily lie in the range from 12 seconds to 30 seconds... if the TomTom can download ungarbled and pristine ephemerides from 3 or more satellites simultaneously, without a single bit error among any of them. This also assumes that the TomTom is cheating by foregoing the almanac, trying to get a fix from ephemeris only and not correcting for the ionosphere.

The only possible way you can get the claimed 2-second fix is if the TomTom (a) already has a current almanac (or is deliberately foregoing one), (b) already has current ephemerides for multiple still-visible satellites, (c) already has very fresh clock data for those same satellites, and (d) gets lucky and catches 3 or more of those still-visible satellites with known data that all just happen to be transmitting their respective 60-bit subframe headers (1.2 seconds minimum, 6 seconds maximum) within the same 2-second window. As I recall, the TomTom backs up the almanac, ephemerides, and clock data to fl

Re:Doesn't matter if users ca upgrade.

[Darkness404]

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.

A naive question

[Entropius]

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.

Re:Here is my dream phone

[lamapper]

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.