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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
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.
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
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.
Talk to the owners of Motorola's older android phones, many of whom are still getting the run-around on an upgrade.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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
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
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