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Android Phones Get Virtualization

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the do-both-run-doom dept.

bednarz writes "VMware is teaming with LG to sell Android smartphones that are virtualized, allowing a single phone to run two operating systems, one for business use and one for personal use. A user's personal email and applications would run natively on the Android phone, while a guest operating system contains the employee's work environment. The devices would also have two phone numbers."

13 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Cool idea by Kokuyo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Although I'd appreciate a phone that, for once, did the basic things right first. Like with car stereos, I have yet to find a device that does not have one or more major annoyances.

    1. Re:Cool idea by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have yet to find a device that does not have one or more major annoyances.

      And honestly, you never will. That's not a criticism of you, because I'm willing to bet all but a rare few feels the same way. This is to be expected with developing a single product with mass appeal. You can't make everyone happy or else there wouldn't be a new to constantly re-invent the GUI.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    2. Re:Cool idea by plover · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Although I'd appreciate a phone that, for once, did the basic things right first. Like with car stereos, I have yet to find a device that does not have one or more major annoyances.

      Most phones have those annoyances, but our problem is that we constantly shift expectations of what "the basic things" are. Not long ago, basic meant "voice". So if you go back to basic old Motorola phones, the voice was fine but they had clunky speed dial memory schemes. Fast forward a few years, and we had good voice and contact lists, but SMS was awful. Then came Bluetooth and MP3 players, most of which were slow and/or crashed often, but SMS was improved with T9. Now we have phones that do voice, music, Bluetooth, MMS, etc., but web surfing is awful. Or the walled gardens chafe. Or something else is annoying.

      Truly basic phones (large-face screens, number-only buttons, no features to do anything else) sell well with a certain group of people who no longer wish to learn the latest in technology on an annual basis, and they are fine at what they do. But of course that may be "too basic" for average tastes these days.

      --
      John
    3. Re:Cool idea by Enderandrew · · Score: 3, Informative

      Though I agree with the OP that even with smartphones, basic things are being overlooked.

      I'd argue the address book has been a basic feature since early cell phones. And yet even on the iPhone 4 (arguably one of the most advanced phones on the planet) I can't manage groups of contacts. I need a third party app to do that for me.

      --
      http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  2. Computing Power? by Halborr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This actually sounds... Like a great idea to have two numbers reach the same phone. My worry is the battery consumption will go through the roof (on a piece of technology that already doesn't have the greatest battery life times) and that computing resources will be in short supply on a mobile device (which brings us back to power consumption).

    1. Re:Computing Power? by rootofevil · · Score: 5, Funny

      10 paces, turn, and launch your operating system?

      --
      turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
    2. Re:Computing Power? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Multiple SIM support has been around for years(typically not on US carrier locked stuff; but weirdo Chinese cheapies and retail-unlocked jet-setter devices do it standard, in addition to the slightly shady "16-in-one-SIM" hack/consolidation kits.

      The real trick(though I'm not sure that virtualization is a good answer) is getting the vastly increased amount of user state, some of it either personally or business sensitive, separated in some logical way...

    3. Re:Computing Power? by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Dual booting" would mean you couldn't get a call or text on your "personal" number while your phone was booted into "work" mode. It also means you couldn't get a "work" call or text while your phone was booted into "personal" mode (clearly not as bad the the first one but an issue none the less).

  3. Print version by MortenMW · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'd appreciate a link to the print version, like this

  4. Hmm... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While, obviously, virtualization is the technology that VMware is going to throw at any use case, since "when all you have is a hammer, etc." It seems like a really hackish approach.

    Virtualization, in my server/workstation experience, has three major benefits: 1. Migration: Assuming a decent SAN setup and some fastish interconnects, your VM can float merrily from physical server to physical server with periods of unresponsiveness under .1 second. Allows you to skip some of the really expensive "zOMG this particular piece of hardware must never, ever, ever die even once in the next decade" add-ons without compromising uptime. 2. Near-perfect compatibility with legacy software: Barring really esoteric stuff that is depending on being right next to the metal of some specific archaic box, all the legacy crapware out there needs to know absolutely nothing about virtualization in order to virtualize. Virtualization aware OSes can make life a bit easier; but there is nothing stopping you from running almost any obsolete crap you need to run on a virtual machine that looks exactly like something from 1995, only with a 3 GHz processor and loads of RAM. 3. Isolation and rollback, particularly for workstations, being able to call up, experiment on, roll back, and delete OS instances makes doing potentially dangerous things safe.

    However, all these things are either irrelevant to cellphones(unless your cellphone has SAN storage and a GB link to the redundant cellphone in your other pocket...) or artefacts of the fact that legacy software largely sucks at things like isolation and versioning. Virtualization, like the AMD64 instruction set, is massively popular because it allows the power of architectures that don't suck without giving up legacy software that runs on architectures that do. With something like Android, though, an almost-totally-new OS is being built from near-scratch to suit a new set of requirements. Virtualization seems very heavy handed compared to something like having isolated namespaces and URI "domains" into which programs can be confined...

    1. Re:Hmm... by Abcd1234 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Virtualization, in my server/workstation experience, has three major benefits

      And yet you don't mention sandboxing, which is one of the things this article touches on.

      *Many* people around here have advocated VMs as a way to protect your personal data from potentially malicious software, to the point of even suggesting browsers should be run under such an environment. The fact that *you* don't see that as a benefit doesn't mean said benefit doesn't exist.

  5. Re:Solution in-search of a problem? by Ephemeriis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Isn't this a little overkill? I mean the only thing that sounded good about it was the whole "two numbers" thing - but you can do that without virtualizaing complete operating systems.

    Two numbers is good...

    But if you virtualize an entire second phone you can have entirely separate calendars, phone books, apps, all of it. You can keep your personal life genuinely separate from your work environment.

    And when you get a new job, and leave your employer, they can wipe out the virtual environment without deleting everything in your personal environment.

    Sounds like a great idea to me.

    --
    "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
  6. Phone virtualization is an AWESOME idea by erroneus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wish I thought of it first!

    Fact is, one of the nicer things about virtualization is the removal of dependency on hardware. The OS, Applications and data can all be packaged neatly in one or a few files that are transportable to other hosts. These can be backed up and recovered. Lose your phone? No problem! Get another one and restore your phone image to it! That virtualization might enable the existence of more than one phone running concurrently is nice and interesting, but having even one phone virtualized is awesome.