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Google's Gingerbread Man Has Arrived
Daetrin writes "Last weekend Google received the next statue in the sweets-themed series that commemorates the major updates of the Android OS. In the past this has meant that the release of the next SDK was right around the corner. However this time there's some doubt as to what the version number will actually be. Many sites (including Slashdot) have assumed that 'Gingerbread' was synonymous with '3.0,' but now there's some evidence that everyone may have jumped the gun and the next version will actually be 2.3."
Why doesn't the summary include a picture of the gingerbread statue after making a specific reference to it?
Anyways, this has a small picture and a video with it actually being unveiled (I couldn't find a better article with an actual pic): http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/34973/Google-unveil-Android-Gingerbread
Each major version of Android is named after a dessert, and in alphabetical order, so Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, and now Gingerbread (with Honeycomb to come). When the Android team finishes the next version they celebrate by getting a big statue (in this case a gingerbread man) put on their front lawn.
Alpha, Beta and Ice Cream
How many apps actually have this compatibility problem? I mean I get that there are certain apps specifically for 1.5 and some for 2.0, but I must have downloaded and run at least 100 apps for my android phone and all of them have run just fine. And I'm running a HTC magic, which came with 1.5, never had 1.6 delivered, and I have rooted and upgraded to 2.2. It mostly runs fine btw, despite rubbish hardware with a few tweaks and compromises (no widgets), And as I said it runs everything just fine. In fact I'm sure if some HTC engineers took some time to optimise v2.2 for the device it would run great. The fact is the Android platform isn't nearly ready for mainstream consumption (no way I recommend it to non-techies) and needs a heap more development, so regular version updates should be expected for some time. With enough iterations, Android will become a very powerful and flexible portable computer OS, so bring the new versions on!
I know, just like how Linux development started moving so fast there were four version in a single year. Everyone gave up and ran away, now all we have are Windows and MacOS X!
There is no concept of customer satisfaction when it comes to mobile users. One, we are never satisfied. Two, the carriers don't care even if we were.
My wife lost WIFI when she upgraded to 1.6. The reason: it doesn't play well with wpa2, the fix: either use WEP or a 8 char pass-phrase. Neither of which is acceptable to me, so she doesn't get to play spades on line anymore....
I upgraded to a Motorola Cliq last December, we are still on 1.5. Tried to root it, performance started to suck so I went backwards. The have next quarter since then. I think the problem is their idiot developers cant get Blur to work on the later releases.
The Android developers group needs to set some guidelines so each carrier doesn't go off and do their own thing and keep the market all fragmented. Open source OS's are a great thing, except when fragmentation leads to stagnation. This is like the early days of Linux with incompatible code bases flying all over the place and you had to compile your kernel just to be safe.
zabagione
Uh, no. Just no.
Eric Schmidt has said that since Android is open carriers/manufacturers aren't going to be prevented when it comes to customizing the builds they use.
However a rumored goal for Gingerbread was to give it some of the shared UI tweaks that things like HTC Sense and MotoBlur have added to /reduce/ the customizations carriers will do by making them irrelevant. But that's far and away a whole other thing than expressly forbidding it.
As for updates coming simultaneous? Don't hold your breath. Besides the fact that carriers and manufacturers will still put their own builds together there really is more to it than just customizations.
Take the original Moto Droid for instance. It's a Google Experience phone, has no Moto Blur or other "enhancements" of which you refer and still it took months for FroYo to be deployed to it compared to the Nexus.
A and B pre-date Google's purchase of Android, Inc.
A was Android
B was Bender (Futurama)
Cupcake was the first release under Google which started the naming after treats instead of robots.