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Will Android Flavors Spoil the Platform?
rsmiller510 writes "Open source operating systems have a lot of upsides, but when you give cell phone makers and providers the power to customize the phones to whatever degree they like, it could end up confusing consumers and watering down the Android label."
Since the competitors don't have choice and can't get it they have to argue that "choice is bad". If you like choice though - if you prefer a less expensive phone or one with all the bells and whistles, or larger or smaller or whatever, Android is an obvious choice. If you like to choose the phone network based on pricing or features, quality of network, or how badly they restrict the phone's features to maximize your bill, again Android is a clear winner. If a single great design that's wholly integrated and secured by a single vendor is your preference, iPhone is a grand choice - and that's great! You get to choose that too.
Lack of choice as a feature though is in general a tough sell.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... in the same way that all the flavors of GNU/Linux have spoiled that platform.
I love the fact that there is such a wide variety of Android phones. Different features are important to different people, and being able to choose between different phones gives them the opportunity to buy one that caters towards whatever the find most important (good screen, good keypad, good camera, etc.)
Living With a Nerd
they are definitely annoying me. My biggest problem isn't with the customizations but the insane lag to update. Froyo came out months ago but my Droid X still hasn't been update.
I'm not a smartphone owner, not yet. I don't have a company paying my way for me and I'm not about to foot a $100/mo bill on my own. not yet and not with the current level of phones.
a few weeks after you buy a 'smartphone' some other model makes yours a POS. well, almost. how can anyone buy in that kind of market and retain sanity?
vendors are destroying the 'beauty' of the system. apple (I hate apple, btw) had it almost right when it controlled the carriers. the carriers are little children that run wild if not controlled. apple controlled them; android simply let them run even MORE wild.
google fucked this up. and I think its too late now, the market is SO fragmented its actually damaged. fanboys won't agree but who cares what they think; its the rest of us middle-guys who simply want something stable and something SUPPORTABLE for a few years. the throw-away model every few months is not do-able for me, for this pricepoint.
if there is ever a 3rd choice, I hope they learn from the 2 that 'came before'. apple model is too extreme but actually so is the android model. a middle ground needs to be there, really; and is not. we have the walled garden and the wild wild west where vendors can fark up YOUR phone and mostly get away with it.
I'm still on the sidelines and not willing to fund this insanity until it levels out.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Terrible news everyone. Android enables the ability to extend usability and functionality beyond what the native platform supports! It's not a one size fits all shoehorn! What a failure! God, I need to sell my stock quick!!1
You know. I've never bought a car thinking it had any features in it other than the ones I knew it had. How about instead of treating consumers like they're the awkward creepy man-child that greets customers at Wal-Mart, we just expect people to have enough interest in the product to do their research and read the fucking box and reviews to find out what the device is even capable of? I mean, are there any reasons other than because the expectation of personal responsibility is dead?
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Yes, all these Android flavors spoil the platform, but not in the way most people are pointing to. Personally, I think the problem is that stock droid sucks. Stock droid sucks especially hard considering I can only get Droid X (I accept no substitute) bundled with a ton of Verizon bloatware that keeps running no matter how often I shut it down and I'm sure it's broadcasting my location information and lots of stuff. And the default launcher is slow, fairly ugly, and not entirely stable. LauncherPro is everything the stock launcher should be, but it bugs me constantly with pop-ups about paid features. If stock droid would learn more from the droid community, the droid brand would be faring better. Spending $200 on a phone just to hear "everything on your phone sucks- download these dozen programs to patch it up"... sucks.
Because Microsoft has never confused us with a dozen different varieties of the same operating system. http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/217488538_MN88A-L-2.jpg
I know I'll get modded to hell but I think that Android is in danger of suffering to forking into different carrier-specific versions. I believe that people _will_ hear about cool features that an Android phone offers, buy an Android phone and find out, too late, that it's available on _other_ Android phones, not the one they bought. This will start to result in negative user experiences down the road.
The plus side of it (being fair here) is it is really driving competition and making the different forks of Android as well as iOS better because of it. It's forcing manufacturers to drive to improve, which is good for the consumer but, for people who want Android to win, it will soon become a discussion of specific forks of Android because there will no longer be one unified version.
Heck, I find myself looking at Android phones thinking "if I were to switch from my iPhone, which one would I be interested in getting?" (I won't be switching - I like my iPhone - but I like to contemplate which version of Android interests me to keep my options open and all that.) That, to me, is a clear sign that the differentiation is real and something people need to keep in mind.
Android is not a consumer brand, therefore its flavors can't raise or sink the brand. The whole premise is flawed.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
i've never had an android, and i don't really know what's all the fuzz about it.. but if at some point of history they could offer some variation of my default phone (i always buy small and simple phones), like, the option to add some sort of anti theft tech, i would go with android, since it looks (that is, by what i've heard) aimed to be an open platform. the same goes, i think, to anyone who stays with one type of phone (not the ones that like to have the coolest phone out there. that market couldn't care less for functionality) i think this is great to expand the market.. we could all sit and say how people don't like to have some sort of bash 'cause they 'freak out' when they see it, but the truth is that more and more people are getting used to it, at least enough to know they haven't broke anything by opening it.. and that's quite enough to change that uneasiness of having a customizable phone into a powerful incentive, as in ''i don't know how to use it NOW.. but with time this phone will rock''
You compare apples to oranges here. When I need a phone, I first look out for the phone itself then the service provider. Others may look at the carrier first. Can you say Android has done miserably so far? No!
On the other hand, when I am looking for a computer system, I look at the applications available, ease of use then the support. In this department, Linux is still wanting.
Google should stay the course with its Android licensing regime. It gives us choice...much deeper than anything otherwise. Just recently, LG launched entry level Android phones. This would be an after thought if it were not for Android's licensing regime.
Good for consumers (in theory), horrible for developers, which is probably why most developers favor the iOS platform.
Not much more I can say. After developing for a year and a half by myself, it has gotten unmanageable. I can make an app that is polished and slick for the Droid, but the ratings get dragged down by other devices that it apparently doesn't run slick on.
As a single person I can't possibly manage all of the QA and customer service that all of these devices demand. It was fun while it lasted. Never developed for the iPhone but I can see how it might be a better experience.
The customizations many vendors tack on to Android suck (for the most part). Just leave Android alone and it works fine.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I personally find that the Android phones that are out now all have horrendously ugly interfaces; HTC comes to mind first. They need to have one, and only one, GUI for the interface. Anything more than that and the only way you can tell it's Android is by looking at the "taskbar" items at the top of the interface.
I have to say this, damn people.
Look at all the different cars we can buy, food, shoes, clothes.
Books, music, movies, etc...
Do I really need to go on?
This article is just flamebate, to cause peeps to get angry.
Anyways, didn't we have an article that like 70% of the Android Devices were 2.0 and up?
And I bummed my G1 is running 1.6? No. The phone works fine and does what I want it to. Keep my calender info, call people, receive calls, and i like to read ebooks on it.
If I want Android 2.2, I can either use a custom rom, or i can buy a new phone.
Just like everything fucking thing else.
I'm going to add this. I'm glad we have all these choices. It's good for us. Now quit thinking you need to defend what you buy, because that sort of thinking is stupid.
Be seeing you...
Sorry to say, but you (and me) are not exactly the primary buyer of these phones anymore. It's "normal" (i.e. non-geek) people. When they see some phones on AT&T running android and offering features XYZ, and some others on Verizon running android and offering features ABC, there is going to be some serious confusion. Is it the phone? Is it the carrier? Is it android? They don't care, they just want the best stuff.
This is part of the reason why android also keeps being shunned (in articles) for business: there's no single model like RIM has. For consumers, if you buy an iPhone, you know exactly what you get. When you buy android, it's not exactly certain.
All that said, I personally prefer android, but that's probably because of customization and choice, which is exactly what you stated :).
Despite Google being the unifying factor, the carriers are even more greedy and less capable than the Unix vendors of old, and meanwhile Apple remains ascendant and proprietary.
Inconsistent user interfaces diminish network effects and will suppress Android adoption... then there are abominations like the Verizon vCast store.
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From TFA:
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of open-source tools, and Android has the potential to offer all the advantages of an open platform, but it also gives the handset and cellphone providers the power to customize and add endlessly to their phones.
So just what is the advantage of an open platform if OEMs are not allowed to customize it? I see Android like the Linux kernel on which it is built. The Linux kernel powers all manner of desktops, phones and other devices with a wide variety of user interfaces. Similarly, Android is a building block to make a phone user interface. It allows manufacturers to make an HTC phone, or a Motorola phone (etc).
And what is the alternative? Lock down the OS so OEMs can't replace applications with their own choices? Isn't that the practice that causes everyone to complain about Microsoft? Just imagine that the default browser in Android was Internet Explorer. Would anyone here complain about manufacturers replacing it with anything else on their model of phone? No? Then it seems a bit rich to complain about any other customization of the platform.
I've only got the one phone. I'll have it for 2 years. Then I'll buy whatever I feel is best at the time. Research is the only way to make a good choice when there are many similar choices to pick from.
There were/are lots of flavors of Unix. It was/is really forked up. I don't see why the same thing can't happen to Android.
Choice is a great thing! Options are a great thing! Sure, ensuring that an application works PERFECTLY on ALL handsets EXACTLY the same is more difficult on Android than the iPhone, but that simply doesn't matter. There is a saying, "Don't let GOOD stand in the way of GOOD ENOUGH". This is very applicable in the case of the fragmentation debate. You can make GOOD ENOUGH applications for Android quite easily and then stamp out the bugs as you go. Not to mention, Google makes it extremely easy to test your app on all the different versions of Android that they have out there. It is simply not that hard.
This has a straight parallel to the Windows vs Mac world. When developing application for Windows do you think that all the Windows developers are out there buying every single PC configuration to test their app? Of course not, that simply isn't practical. It is why Mac systems have always had a more cohesive/"just works" feel to them. (Apple owns the hardware) The end of the day though, Windows systems work just fine for almost everyone out there. It has also led to a much lower cost for computers that you can't get in the Mac universe. This is the same thing that you are seeing with Android. It is good enough and in fact has features that I would hazard a guess gives the iPhone a jealous eye. Android is running on all sorts of different hardware, some with keyboards, some without, some starting at $199, some as low a $0(BOGO deals). All these things end up in a highly tailored product that allows each consumer to make their own choice. The good Android phones will rise to the top and the bad Android phones will fall to the bottom. It's the way business works.
In the end, the consumer doesn't care at all about fragmentation. What the consumer cares about is, "Does the phone do what I need it to do?"
Android delivers what consumers need out of a smartphone platform and it does it well enough that any small fragmentation issue becomes irrelevant.
Go Illini!!!
Just make the Android platform as configurable as the Windows platform. Sure, it is easy enough to get around the BS, but why put it there in the first place? Let me install and delete (all of the) software, and don't mess with my configuration when you push an update. If you want to protect people from themselves, then put the (This is an Administrator function!) warning in that comes on the Windows 7 platform.
Two things I have learned from my Android phone experience: 1. I will never purchase another Samsung product again. After advertising the Behold II as 2.x capable, users had to threaten a class action suit to get an upgrade from 1.5 to 1.6 and were told that the phone was not capable of running 2.x. Oh, and BTW, the 1.6 upgrades on T-Mobile started at the end of June and were suspended due to reports of problems with the upgrade. My phone got upgraded, my wife's did not. Users were told a fix was in the works. Almost three months later, silence from Samsung and T-Mobile. 2. I should have switched carriers and bought two iPhones. Between the 5 versions of Android OS available, the garbage dump that is the Android Marketplace, and the absolute lack of ownership of the problems by carrier, hardware manufacturer, or Google, I am surprised their marketshare continues to grow. As soon as I am able to get out of this contract with T-Mobile, I will be switching to iPhone.
All it takes is a few vendors to drop the ball with bad implementations, or go out of business dropping support to create a bad association with Android. That's the real issue. Bad PR goes a lot further than good. At some point someone will put out a really terrible version that will in some respect hurt the label.
I thought the ability to customize the software was suppose to be the big feature behind the endless screaming of "but, but it's Open Source!"
I'm getting a mixed message here. Are we now doing an about face and saying that open source is fine just as long as no one modifies it? Isn't this 'problem' the same thing that Apple and Microsoft fanbois have been screaming about for years?
First of all Android is not a Google OS, it is an Open Handset Alliance OS. Google is one member company of 73. Google adds value just as any carrier or design and manufacturer adds value.
Secondly, every phone you buy - at least in the US - is locked down, so your argument is that their Achilles heal is that - in one respect only - they are not better than the others.
Thirdly, it is locked down by default, but nothing is stopping you from unlocking it or paying someone to unlock it for you.
Finally, it is indeed a portable computer. You don't get to choose many things on the Windows platform - e.g. to IE or not to IE until recently - and yet nobody is saying a Windows PC is a not real PC.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Apparently more selection is less?
Screw that, get your smart on and pick which suits....
All this has completely soured me on Motorola.
I advise everyone to stay far, far away from their Android offerings. After this burn, I'm not buying anything from them again.
The phone was so locked down to start with, I should have done my homework and realized this was a trap.
It appears they care about the Droid series, but nothing else. Don't assume Motorola will live up to their commitments.
Run, don't walk, from Motorola.
Isn't android Linux?? Shouldn't this article also be in the Linux site of slashdot??
The choice has to be a choice of applications, and it has to be applied by user.
Operating system, working environment, primary configuration features have to be stable, uniform and consistent. As anyone that deals with end users knows, lack of consistency will invariably create confusion, leading to negative perceptions and all that is related to that.
Take an example of Windows. A clean Windows installation (at least as of XP) is a decent system, simple enough with most controls and configuration items in familiar locations. Compare that with "vendor customized" PC as they come out of the box. I just had a misfortune of buying a touch-screen netbook from Lenovo which was "customized" by Lenovo with their own VM that boots first, complete with poorly configured programs in random locations. Then, as you move on to the real Windows 7 operating system (you can reboot into it), there is more customization and crapware. The system has excellent hardware but the OS and software is not usable at all. I am planning to reinstall it with a clean system shortly.
The same is true of Android, however there is no "clean system" that can be installed, resulting in an irreversible "crapware" experience.
iphone 3g, 3gs, 4, 4.01, 4.1, original iphone, ipod touch 1 2 and 3..
That list sounds daunting, but all you really need to test on is:
iPhone 3G running iOS 3.2.
iPhone 4 running iOS4.x (latest version).
The 3G could run iOS 4.x if you only wanted to develop for 4 (which is realistic as the adoption rate of new OS releases is very high and rapid). After iOS4 comes to the iPad (November) I'm switching all development to support iOS4 only.
The 3G is really the low bar for performance to test against, as long as it runs fine on that even the original iPhone will be OK (I know, as I do have all the models to test against).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So once you have your phone, and your lengthy contract, there is no incentive for the vendor/carrier to perform an upgrade. They are technically delivering you your phone service with some "smart" features tacked on. All vendors are doing this, so there is churn at the end of contracts, but it will probably be a wash with everyone leaving their respective carrier for another one. Upgrades introduce regressions, and fixing those costs money, and that would eat into profits.
If the underlaying OS and the DE were split apart, or better yet, there was a firmware hooks to the radios that had standard calls from the OS, maybe there'd be a chance of some success here.(I'm thinking of how the original Xbox loaded the dashboard for XBMC) As long as you're tied to your vendors to provide your upgrades to you, you might as well be as closed source as anything that Microsoft puts out.
The way I see it its the carriers again being the problem. I've got an Orange branded Desire - it was stuffed full of crapware and carrier specific 'enhancements'.
They've still not released FroYo. They're still probably enhancing it (read taking away WiFi hotspot - probably, if they think they can get away with it).
I've flashed mine back to generic FroYo with SenseUI. But most users won't have the inclination or confidence to do that.
SenseUI probably good. HTC have no reason to limit the functionality they've made their money out of you by the time you've made your purchase. More features. More selling points.
Second level customization for carrier shit so they can lock you down and screw more money out of you - not good
Perhaps Google should insist on a mechanism to reinstall a generic ROM on all Android devices.
Require carriers to sell unlocked phones with no crapware.
OR
Split sales of phones away from carriers. Require carriers to figure out what kind of universal technology they can use, like SIM cards or whatever, and then simply have the carriers provide plans and have customers simply pick the phone and carrier separately.
I understand that people think that bundling service and the phone some how gives them a discount, but the problem is that we've gone down this road for so long and we aren't getting a real improvement of quality of service. In fact, it's decreasing in terms of quality of the phone call. Before it was a way to sell new lines, now it's a way to lock users into a contract so that you can't move away if quality of service is not what you need. The carriers are competing by providing the snazziest phones, not by providing phones that make clear phone calls and can reliably connect in as many places as possible. Let's refocus the companies on competing on what they are supposed to compete on and maybe the cost of the handsets will go down and carriers will have more freedom to invest the subsidy money in infrastructure.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Android 2.2 was released in May 2010 just after the launch of the HTC Desire in the UK. It took HTC until July to customise Android 2.2 for the HTC Desire, and we are told that T-Mobile UK will finish their layer of tinkering later this month (September). That's over four months to apply branding and load customised apps. With Android 3.0 promised in Q4 (from October), it look's like we'll be a whole version behind. Again.
I strongly agree with this article.
The war we should be paying attention to is not iPhone vs Android vs. WM7 vs Blackberry - it's us against the carriers. The carriers need to be dumb pipes, with device makers dictating what interfaces and software get used.
But Google went whole hog the other way, letting carriers run amok after a promising start where it seemed like they would maintain a firm hand. Now it's at the point where a new Android phone will have Bing as the only search engine it's possible to use!!
I'm a mobile developer and at times have considered Android development, but cannot in good conscious support a model that I feel screws the market over so badly. The whole open vs. closed argument is a farce, when for 99% of the population the iPhone is just as open as Android, and only the most technical can distinguish the difference.
In fact, I feel so strongly about the issue of carriers taking over the smartphone world, that if I ever do move to support a second platform it will probably be WM7!!! And believe me, in the not so distant past I would never have wanted to support Microsoft because of misgivings about them. But I feel it's important to support any company that is willing to try and dictate control over the carriers, and I believe Microsoft had said they planned to fix the UI for WM7 and not let carriers modify it.
If you do buy Android, try to buy phones that the carriers have not worked over.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look, I think everybody is aware of the issues of segmentation and of following various forks on a main branch of any code base, whether it's open-sourced or not.
The fact that people are still discussing this as an issue whilst handset manufacturers and operators are supporting growth and proving that Android-based handsets are selling makes the whole argument moot.
Opinion pieces they may be, but unless it comes from the mouth of Google or other major contributors such as HTC, then the only ones complaining are people on slashdot, because your average mobile user in the wild doesn't seem to be too bothered.
Android is a platform, welcome to how platforms develop.
As a developer for both Android and iOS (and a few other mobile) platforms, I can say this is already an issue with Android (from a dev's perspective, at least). While "choice" always sounds good for consumers, the only real choices are usually pre-made by carriers and handset manufacturers, leaving the consumer with little more choice than they had with previous generations of phones (Motorola's RAZR had a pretty good Wheel of Fortune game "app," too).
Although the Android emulator is fine for quick checks, a viable Android product must be tested on a growing number of handsets and other products, making R&D for a new app MUCH more time consuming and costly than that of its iPhone counterpart (Even if you only wanted to support a single device, choosing to support only the latest iPhone 4, for instance, still gives one a much larger target audience than choosing only to support the latest Samsung Galaxy model on a particular carrier).
And supporting a commercial Android app is a larger undertaking too -- more like that of traditional PC development, in which one might expect to deal with a variety of hardware or setting possibilities, but nothing like traditional mobile or game console development -- in which one can expect some level of uniformity among systems.
In other words, iPhone developers can much more easily and affordably offer quality apps at lower prices than their Android counterparts. I'm not saying it's impossible to offer the same quality of user experience across the board, but it is without question a larger undertaking for Android development. And eventually, this WILL affect consumers, too -- either by limiting the size of their pool of quality apps, or by increasing the cost of these same apps.
You're acting like the only "problem" anyone has with Android OS is that they didn't do their homework before buying, and didn't know what they were getting!
Like anything, SOME minority of buyers fall into that category, but especially with something as advanced as a "smartphone", I don't think this is usually the case. People interested in a cellphone that does all of this tend to be fairly tech-savvy already. The others flatly reject such products as "useless", "too confusing" or "too expensive to buy/keep service on".
The problem I see with Android (and yes, I'm using an Android phone right now!), is that Google made a huge mess of it. After touting it as the world's greatest phone OS and hyping it up, they released a POS that needed multiple revisions to get it "on par" with its competitors, and even the latest 2.2 "Froyo" STILL lacks in many areas. Tasks that should be complete "no brainers" like dragging icons around on a screen to re-arrange them turned out to be impossible. Support for web proxy servers on wi-fi connections? Non-existent! Simply deleting an application takes about 5 steps (including scrolling through long list of all installed apps to find the one I want to remove), where it only took 2 on an iPhone (hold down icon until it "jiggles" and tap the X that appears in the top corner of the icon).
There's nothing inherently bad about allowing extendability and extra functionality, but there IS a real problem when you let individual carriers *cripple* functionality to suit their own best interests, and when you didn't take any steps to ensure the hardware your OS was offered on was adequate to give a good user experience! Even Microsoft tried to "certify" computer systems as being appropriate/sufficient to run various "flavors" of the Windows 7 product. With Android, there was no such thing. Lots of people promised a future update to phone X or Y from an older version of Android, without even verifying it was going to be possible to do -- so some are backpedaling, while others are just ignoring questions about it.
My Sanyo "Zio" Android phone, for example, includes demo versions of pointless games (Midnight Bowling and an Uno card game) that it won't let me delete, as well as some shortcut to my carrier's web site that I'd rather get rid of, but can't. Where's the "usability" in that, when I can't so much as erase a crippled/demo program I don't want on the device?!
Im about to sell my old G1 to a guy on craiglist for $80, with all the email I got it's clear I could have got closer to $100. I paid $200 for it new over 2 years ago. A month ago I bought the new Samsung Galaxy to replace my G1 for $150 online, which it's clear I'll be very happy to own for a year or two. So the difference there out of pocket is $70, nothing im going to lose my sanity over.
However I agree with you on the monthly bill they stick you with but I rely so much on mobile web at this point I wouldn't want to go without it.
I am a v1ral sig. Plse c0py me and h3lp me spread. Thank y0u?
The issue with multi-platform Android phones is demonstrated with the new Motorola Charm device. If any of you browse android apps, and like to read comments before downloading you have no doubt come across comments such as: "Won't work on my Charm", or "Crashes on my Motorola Charm". The issue with devices such as this entry level android phone is that they set the bar so much lower than your standard android handset. In this case the Charm has only a 600 MHz Processor and no stand alone GPU. Combine this with the bloated moto-blur software package that Motorola installs by default on it's Android handsets, and the user experience is going to be affected. The only viable solution that I can think of is to ensure that the Android market can pull the phone's user agent and software version, then only list apps that are usable on that system. Of course developers will need to test and flag which system combinations their software will run on, and they're already complaining about having to do this (and it's not a requirement yet).
As long as you're tied to your vendors to provide your upgrades to you, you might as well be as closed source as anything that Microsoft puts out.
Why is this the case?
Why not get the updates from the manufacturer?
This problem is annoying. I tried a G1 for a month and didn't like it, and have been using an iPhone 3G for almost two years (it is marginally better overall than the G1 but with a different set of problems for me).
Really in the long run, the solution is to break the carrier subsidy altogether for phones that can only be used on that carrier. To increase real competition, one needs to be able to buy a decent phone for about 3-$400 in today's money and then get month to month service from different networks at a price that overall after 2 years is not any more expensive than getting a carrier subsidized phone and a plan that locks you in for two years (hopefully it will be less with competition). I come from the perspective of wanting a lot more government regulation so I see no problem with the US government telling carriers they have to do it this way so we can have a truly competitive market. I know it's unrealistic now, and there is an added problem that different networks have some different hardware requirements (for different waveforms), but future silicon should be able to handle this (I think there is already at least one model that will do CDMA or GSM).
I'm frustrated enough with the current Android situation that I find myself musing about the Meego OS. Tne Nokia N9 is nothing but rumors now - I'll have to see how good it actually is. Won't be available when my contract is up though (Dec), so I may just search for an Android phone that I know can either be rooted or is essentially a stock Android release (3.0 I hope) with very little crap added on and nothing taken away (as is my impression of the original Droid).
First, Steve Jobs complains that Android is fragmented and offers too many versions.
No one else had said it before.
Then a bunch of second-rate tech websites echo it.
Then it gets reposted here and a bunch of 7-figure IDs and Anonymous Cowards post "me too" stuff.
Do I have to spell out a marketing-company forged FUD campaign? Has it been so long since IBM vs. Microsoft? Do we really need to re-learn what this looks like?
If a carrier abuses the phones, leave the carrier.
If a phone comes out neutered, don't buy it.
Having a codebase that moves rapidly forward is a simple fact of computing since broadband got big. Calling it a weakness is pure bullshit, especially when the competition moves (at most) at the rate of about a significant change once per year.
It's nice to see this issue getting some attention. I read an article the other day outlining the problems with the notion that Android is "open". The question is, for who? The bottom line is that Google has given virtually all of the "openness" to the carriers and manufacturers, and left none for consumers. Carriers like Verizon still get to throw out tons of stock UI and features and replace them (or not) with garbage. Then they get to deny you updates to the latest and greatest Android revision. It's not Apple vs Google; it's Apple vs the carriers and in that matchup I'll choose Apple everytime.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
If I wanted to develop an app for Android, with the OS fragmentation going on and wide variety of hardware out there, just how many Android phones would I expect an app to work on? Would I have to do extensive compatibility testing, and what would that list look like? Would I face angry customers wanting refunds and smearing my name because the app didn't work on their particular combination of hardware and software?
This is a real issue. Precisely because Android is open-source, hardware vendors can and do alter it to suit their own preferences and needs, which will inescapably lead to compatibility problems. A small-time developer with one phone and the Android SDK faces a lot of uncertainty. If a developer needs to own and feed contracts on many different Android phones, the fact that the Android SDK is free and runs on a computer you already own becomes irrelevant in the big picture. It seems strange, but with iOS and its simpler compatibility requirements, it may actually be cheaper to develop for iOS even though you have to pay 99 bucks for the SDK and buy a Mac Mini to run the SDK and simulator upon.
Is anything being done to address this? (Something like including vendor-specific and hardware-specific simulators, copies of firmware always freely available for testing in the simulator, etc. as part of the SDK) I want Android to succeed, but it could shoot itself in the foot over the fragmentation issue.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
I keep hearing 'general purpose mobile pc' but its not really.
look at the home pc and the utility that gives you service (electric and maybe even IP if you think of IP as a utility-like service). I really can separate the install of my pc (os, apps, you name it) from what feeds it (electricity and ethernet).
the electric company has ZERO interest in telling me what I can run on my pc. the IP guys sort of want to have some say but at a level, conceptually, its all just 'ip connectivity' that they sell. this isn't the AOL walled garden of 15 yrs ago. you can buy IP service and electric service and connect any computer you want to those.
not so with cellphones.
the vendor BUTTS IN and insists he be right in your face with all kinds of 'services' and 'products' they want to make money from. such a disgusting business (compared to at least the electric company).
I wish that cellphone service would become just a LITTLE bit more like water and electric, where they don't get to say or care what goes after your end of the connection.
technically, defining an API to connect to a wireless network isn't rocket science and there's no technical reason for the lock-in. its just money and greed and we let the carriers continue to get away with it.
apple broke the mold and defined TO the carriers how they will work with that stupid iphone. I'm no iphone fan at all but I'll give apple credit for turning around the roles and telling the PHONE COMPANY what they'll do and what they'll not do. that took huge balls. pity its not universal and that the carriers get to seek revenge, of a sort, via android and non-apple os's.
lots of talk of net neutrality but really zero talk about wireless neutrality, where it really counts.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
There appear to be two types of people: people very concerned about Android's fragmentation and its inevitable demise and people who actually own Android based phones. Thank you for your concern, but we're doing fine, thanks. We're busy enjoying the ability to install software from third parties without going through the Android Market, the ability to choose easy to root phones, the ability to choose phones we can easily replace the core operating system on, and more.
On a related note, us Linux users are also somehow surviving in the face of dozens of distributions.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
you have to look at natural selection. The "fragmentation" could be Android's greatest strength if among the diversity there emerges variants that excel at what users want. Likewise, different variants may prove more successful than others in different environments (when put to different uses). Can any of these potential variants be better than those that are designed around a much more "non-fragmented platform"? That will depend entirely on the kinds of uses and environments to which they will be put, their ability to evolve in the face of different set of circumstances and their relative cost of use, the latter possibly more strongly influenced by the network supporting the phone than the phone itself, since in the long run the cost of the phone is primarily in its monthly maintenance.
fragmentation and multiple non-centralized distributions of linux didn't kill our favorite penguin flavored operating system
It's worth asking the question: Does fragmentation really matter that much? I've done one or two apps on Android and haven't had any problems. They do a good job of displaying the slicing of versions so you know what you're getting when you support certain SDKs.
From the customer perspective, phones under the same brand seem reasonably consistent. I wouldn't expect a Nokia to look like an iPhone, so why would I expect a HTC phone to look like a Samsung?
Google saw that the loudest blogs ripped Apple for having a closed system. So they developed a system that is the polar opposite...
Knowing that eventually things would get so badly messed up by The Carriers that these same blogs would cry out for Google to take over and straighten the mess out. Which they would step in and do, becoming the new Carrier Overlord who reigns over carriers and manufacturers (who have become dependent on Google because all the other alternatives except the iPhone got killed off). Google could thus become Apple and Microsoft combined and have people begging them to do it.
The same could be said for Linux. Seriously, can I mod the subject Score:-1, Redundant?
Where was this "huge plethora of choices"? Your choices included 1) an x86 box from company x, running the current flavor of Microsoft OS, 2) an x86 box from company y, running the current flavor of Microsoft OS... etc. The only real differences among all these "choices" were the label and the price tag.
That's not at all true in the cell phone world. Each manufacturer, and in some cases, each model of cell phone is a universe unto itself - it really is quite a bit harder to make a choice, as all these devices have different hardware and software capabilities.
People act like google has some magical power to make the carriers bend over for them.
Google had all the leverage they needed over the carriers, because they have the only viable alternative to the iPhone. Other carriers saw iPhone exclusive carriers like AT&T snapping up customers, and they needed SOMETHING to compete.
carriers never would have bought into android if it didn't have the potential for customization,
And yet many carriers bought into, and still carry, they iPhone which allows none of that.
Furthermore, Google could have allowed skinning without going so far as to allow the search engine to be replaced entirely with Bing! Or mandated the Google App Store on every device, instead of seemingly making it rather difficult to get permission to include the App Store.
there are locked down, restricted android devices. there are also open, unrestricted devices.
And if all the carriers market is the locked down, restricted devices for how much longer will you have the open ones?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Can I please have the list of stock android phones that I have root access to and can upgrade without issue?
Surely, there must be lots by now right?
Too late. The only real hope is Google reining this in with version 3.
Contrary to popular opinion, Apple did not control the carriers. Apple climbed into bed with the carriers signing exclusivity deals and making changes to IOS to suit carrier needs (there is no technological reason why VOIP cant be sent over 3G, nor any reason for tethering to be carrier activated). Apple went backwards in a big way by making changes at the factory to suit carriers, With Android or any other phone, they are still limited to customising the OS image themselves.
As an Australian, I can buy a non carrier branded phone if I so desire and have it work on all three of Australia's (physical) networks (Optus, VHA and Telstra). With the Iphone, even if I buy one outright from an Apple store Optus still gets to say if I can or cannot tether (without paying) but if I buy the Samsung Galaxy S from Optus, I can tether with the built in application.
What prevents Americans from buying unbranded phones are the American carriers, no carrier operates a nationwide 2100 or 900 MHz network that will work with European/Asian unlocked handsets. Apple has done nothing to change this where as Google began selling unlocked developer handsets from the word go. Android is trying to break the vertical monopoly carriers have over software, hardware and service, Apple is doing nothing to help this. In fact by bowing to carrier demand to charge for tethering they are going in the completely opposite direction.
So stop fooling yourselves, Apples in bed with the carriers.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I can buy an unbranded and unlocked Android phone that has no carrier restrictions or programs and use it on almost any carrier in Australia, Asia and Europe. Google didn't control the carriers, it did an end run around them.
Stop going on about this crap, if there is a problem using an unlocked 2100/900 phone from Europe, that is a problem with the carriers in your nation are set up not with Android.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You're ignorance is showing.
Here is an unbranded and unlocked HTC desire. It's half the cost of an Iphone, does more and can be used on any 2100/900 MHz network in the world...
What, you dont have one of those? Well I'm sorry, the problem isn't Android it's the way your carriers are set up. I have no problem buying this phone and using it on any network in Australia, Europe and most of Asia.
So you cant write for Iphone either?
You complain about Google not controlling the carriers (see link above, they went around them completely) but Apple climbed into bed with the carriers. There is no technological reason for preventing VOIP services over 3G nor is there any reason that Tethering has to be carrier controlled. With an android device, whether purchased from a carrier or from a store like Clove.co.uk I can tether on the Optus network in Australia, however if I buy an Iphone unlocked from the Apple store, I still have to pay a tethering fee to Optus if I want to use that function. Google is not in bed with carriers, Apple is, by giving carriers the ability to disable functions at the pipe rather then having to disable them on the OS (which an unlocked and unbranded phone gets around completely).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
"Many providers" will choose wrong, either overcharging for the phone's inherent features, or selling Android's usability out to Microsoft with a Bing app their buyers can't uninstall (now why would Microsoft want to cripple the critical search and navigation features of Android phones?) "Many phone vendors" will likewise choose wrong, giving you crudware or just hosing up the native interface with their own-branded "value added" interface. The nice thing about choice is... some won't. And you can choose the ones who don't when you buy your phone because we have the Internet now, and you can learn about what's where without buying the phone. So you can choose the ones who don't and get the phone you want.
You see how that works? When you had no choice, it wasn't up to you and you had no hope of ever getting what you wanted no matter what you were willing to pay. With choice you get to choose so you get to have what you want up to what you're willing to pay. I know, it's hard. Try printing that text out and reading it over a few times during the day and it might start making sense.
Some people want different things. For security one might want a fingerprint reader, face and voice recognition to wake the phone. Another might want telemetry with their pacemaker and an app that calls their doctor or 911. Someone else might need a blood sugar gauge that keys into their diet calendar and insulin monitoring app so that a kid with diabetes don't have to carry around embarrassing gear, and giving parents or doctors legitimate information to work with. Some people want thinner and lighter, some more battery life. Who knows, maybe I want USB peripherals for servo controllers, dual external MicroSD ports for media and a camera on five sides sides for my observation blimp RPV application? Hey, I hear they're making projectors for phones now, and external HDMI ports that do full-HD. Maybe I want all the phone parts that can possibly to be transparent, translucent or blacklight reactive because that's my sense of personal style. Maybe I want a Wacom tablet for photo editing, drafting, as a programmable control panel. All of these things are fringe things, that no all-in-one phone is going to give. Without choice we get none of these things. We won't see all of them, but I'm willing to bet that with the rich choices Android offers we'll see some of them.
/There are FOUR lights!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I responded to this elsewhere in the thread, so I'll just link it here. The choice thing is key.
Android is decidedly not being shunned in business. I work in business. I don't see anything but iPhones and Androids any more, and it's not Anecdotal. Comscore agrees. RIM still has a presence but it's fading fast. I'm still carrying around the CrackBerry at work, but an update to Epic 4G is in the plan. Android is sucking the air out of every other balloon, which means that they're getting a HUGE swath of the new unit sales - and so almost all the phone vendors' attention.
The speed of this change is nothing short of amazing. Android didn't really start to take off until Donut was released, which I note was exactly one year ago today. And now it's at 17%. That's astounding. And yet we have this fine article to tell us "choice is bad"?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You're ignorance is showing.
I think I'm going to frame that one, it made me smile.
What, you dont have one of those? Well I'm sorry, the problem isn't Android it's the way your carriers are set up. I have no problem buying this phone and using it on any network in Australia, Europe and most of Asia.
That's great, it really is. But it's pointless, and even worse misses the point I was making. Because that's not what most people will buy. Most people will buy the carrier specific versions. So over time, you have more and more "Android" phones that are totally different. That have thier own app stores, each of which you must apply for... why would I, as a mobile developer, enter that lions den? With a market that fragmented how will I make back development costs?
But even worse, it lets the carriers control what software is allowed on each device, for most people. Sure you can buy out of the racket for $600-$1k. But again, realistically not many people will do that. Why are you not concerned about the freedoms of the people who can ONLY afford a smartphone when it comes via subsidy? Those are the people you should be fighting for if you want an open future!
So you cant write for Iphone either?
I have no problem writing for the iPhone because that supports a model where ALL consumers are free to truly put anything they want on a phone, not just rich and/or technological elites like you and me.
Apple climbed into bed with the carriers. There is no technological reason for preventing VOIP services over 3G nor is there any reason that Tethering has to be carrier controlled
You stupid Apple Haters and your utter ignorance may well doom us all, I am trying to have a real discussion over here about carrier power which you totally fail to grasp by claiming because you can buy out of it, that there is no problem. Then you go and bring up stupid Apple Hater arguments that aren't even true! VOIP has been allowed on 3G for almost a year now on every carrier, and tethering has been allowed by AT&T (it was freely allowed by many other international carriers for a while). Meanwhile you miss the FACT that Verizon has Skype running ONLY on the Verizon Android phone.
Apple is, by giving carriers the ability to disable functions at the pipe rather then having to disable them on the OS
Tethering IS disabled at the OS level. Which is why you could for a while simply download a profile that flipped a switch in the phone and enabled tethering, and why jailbreaking has always allowed you to tether without paying any fee.
But once again, you are going back to the same old boring and frankly stupid Android/iPhone war when the real war should be around carrier control. Yes Apple had to bend and provide a way to disable tethering and THAT IS BAD. Skype for Android is only on Verizon and THAT IS WORSE. Are you really so dense you cannot see the horrible trend before you?
I think, sadly, that you are. If technical people on Slashdot cannot even see the danger I give up; I seek to protect you no further. Your punishment is the world in which you shall live in five years time. Sadly, I too must live in the hell you strive to create.
I will read no further writing of yours; it is too depressing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple's model for the telephone market is almost definitely better for application developers. An application developer can buy 3 models of phones (and iPad if you care about that thing), test on each and be sure that everything works. The fact that iOS is such a closed platform is fantastic and makes it so that we developers can be more confident of what we ship to the public. It also means that we can optimize code to run well on all the phones which run that operating system.
Android on the other hand is more like the next step of Symbian... with slightly better design and control. Symbian was a heap of shit for developers. The API was a nightmare, content delivery worked only sometimes. Their package management system was a tinker toy. Additionally, their memory model was designed with a 25 year old PDA in mind, and their argument for it was that it needs to work with GCC 2.91. They implemented an ad-hoc exception model with a "clean-up stack" which was a lame excuse for auto-pointers as 2.91 didn't have good template support.
Android on the other hand has a relatively simple development model and it seems as if application development (so long as native code isn't important) is really quite easy. You can code in their Java like language (I do this to help with the law suit to differentiate and call it something else) and make an app and get it running quickly. Unfortunately, it runs on about a billion different processors (there are tons of ARMs out there) with a gazillion (quite cool that word is in the spell checker) graphics subsystems out there (nVidia, frame buffer, TI, etc...) and there are a multitude of different types of touch screens (single touch, multi touch, hi-resolution, low resolution, no-touch, just joypad, high latency, low latency). There are a pile of audio subsystems, I won't even begin to cover the massive number of those, it's mind boggling.
Writing simple cook book and business apps for Andoid is a charm. Takes far less time than on iOS, almost as little time as on Windows Phone 7 (which is WAY EASY) and can be tested more or less in an emulator without any problems. The only issue is the touch screen input which can be averted by making the buttons all a little bigger.
Anything requiring high response rates, fancy input methods, real-time audio, etc... is a nightmare on the platform. It's even worse than on Windows. There are just too many methods of input.
Android is a pretty neat touch screen platform that allows absolutely any manufacturer out there to make a full blown smart phone for almost nothing. Chinese vendors are already pumping these things out by the truckload and it's only a matter of time before it's possible to buy full smartphones for $50 or less.
You can buy an after market iPhone screen and touch panel from China for $20 (free shipping). And they are pretty good replacements. This means that they can get them for less than half that. Cheap system on a chip ARM processors can be bought for less the same. It's entirely possible that you can get ALL the parts required to make a full Android phone in China for probably $30. The specs will be pathetic, but will improve rapidly over time. The result, an Android phone containing the bare minimum memory required to run the phone, the bare minimum CPU required to run a telephone call, the bare minimum audio quality required to hear the other person, probably not even enough specs to download an application.
Of course, noone would buy these phones right? Well, probably not more than 100,000 of each model (which is the target Nokia sets for their mid-range smart phones). Remember there are a shit load of Asian people buy Chinese knockoffs of all these things. And what's best is, these aren't even knock offs. Thanks to the open source nature of Android, it's 100% legitimate to make these things. Of course, no westerners would buy these things. Umm... or would they. DealExtreme.com will sell tens of thousands of these. They'll be sold all over the Mediterranean and Caribbean islands to t