Google To Merge Honeycomb and Gingerbread

eldavojohn writes "In Barcelona, Google's Eric Schmidt has been revealing future plans for Google, saying that the next release will merge smartphone and tablet versions of its mobile operating system Android. Aside from bragging about Android's growth, Schmidt tiptoed around a question of Google acquiring Twitter, instead offering the very nebulous statement that YouTube doubled its revenues last year."

Comments

Where's Gingerbread?

[TheSeventh]

Shouldn't they focus on something like, oh I don't know, actually Releasing Gingerbread for existing phones, like they said they were doing "in a few weeks" back in November/December?

No updates, no word from Google about why they aren't sending it out. Looks like things might be falling apart over there.

Re:Where's Gingerbread?

[idontgno]

Gingerbread? 2.3?

It's released.

Oh, do you mean, "Shouldn't they focus on pressuring Android phone manufacturers and network providers to release their own OTA updates to existing phones?"

Google don't play that.

May I recommend Cyanogenmod nightlies? I'm running CM7 Nightly 30 and it's rocking Android 2.3.2 flawlessly on my CDMA HTC Desire. If you're waiting for your network-providing gatekeeping overlords... well, I hope you enjoy waiting.

Re:Where's Gingerbread?

[TheSeventh]

Gingerbread? 2.3?

It's released.

Oh, do you mean, "Shouldn't they focus on pressuring Android phone manufacturers and network providers to release their own OTA updates to existing phones?"

Google don't play that.

May I recommend Cyanogenmod nightlies? I'm running CM7 Nightly 30 and it's rocking Android 2.3.2 flawlessly on my CDMA HTC Desire. If you're waiting for your network-providing gatekeeping overlords... well, I hope you enjoy waiting.

Yeah, see I have a Nexus One, so I'm not sure how they would pressure themselves . . . ? And with no updates and no word on when it will happen, I figure something must be falling apart over there. Apparently these days, Google doesn't play much at all. But they do like to talk about how much they are doing.

I'll give it a few more days and then I'll go the cyanogenmod route. I was just being too lazy to want to deal with any quirks or bugs not worked out yet with the nightlies.

Re:Where's Gingerbread?

[idontgno]

Yeah, I saw that you replied to another poster about having a Nexus. My clever post and yours crossed in the mail, I guess.

Still, most Nexus Ones were HTC-made, so it's probable that Google doesn't have as much leverage as you might think.

I've had no problems with CM7, after rooting my Desire. Battery life is somewhat better than the stock Android 2.1 that came preloaded.

So, yeah, I'm fairly happy with the nightlies, but I'm looking forward to when the nice people at CM get a definitive 7.0 official release out there.

Re:Where's Gingerbread?

[Facegarden]

But it's only on the Nexus S. They were going to release it for the Nexus One and others, but those plans seem to be on hold. I'm using 2.3 on my N1 via the nightly Cyanogen builds but it's definitely got a bunch of quirks in it still. I'm betting Google is going to just release 2.4 as their next "standard" release that's widely distributed.

While I also am using CM7 on my N1 and wish Google would release a damn stable version already, I imagine they're pretty busy. I'd *much* rather they spend all of their energy on making Honeycomb kick ass than releasing Gingerbread for more phones. Gingerbread is a nice update, but Honeycomb tablets will be shipping soon (supposedly) and they really want to ship them with the best possible software they can. Not only am I much more interested in a honeycomb tablet than stable Gingerbread on my phone, I also want regular people to choose honeycomb over the ipad.

Also, the Nexus one (and maybe the older dev phones) and the only ones google has any ability to "release" updates for. For the rest of the phones out there, its up to the manufacturer. Clearly cyanogen/koush et al have been working their asses off and they aren't done, I don't see any reason why the manufacturers would be any farther.
-Taylor

Re:Where's Gingerbread?

[Facegarden]

which is why the Android model of open source is fundamentally broken, imho. But then it was never about the customer.

This is such a stupid fucking argument.

"Oh my god they released in December and it takes months for manufacturers to port to their devices! Android is broken!"

You don't realize it, but this is the right way to do it. How would you expect it to work? Embedded development takes time, there's no way to avoid that. Even on full PCs there is a delay. Take Windows - they come out with new releases only once in many years, so they can easily delay the release 6 months to allow manufacturers to port their drivers - and thats what they do. Microsoft has a Release Candidate of windows ready many months before they "release", but no one complains about that. If google told us "Yup, the next version is done, so we're releasing to manufacturers and you'll see it in 6 months." people would get just as upset. And it wouldn't make sense to do - some people port faster and can use the new features sooner - so just release all the source and let the OEMs sort it out.

You could look at Ubuntu - it releases all at once to everything - but then, thats where computers differ from phones. Computers have enough extra space and resources that PC operating systems like Windows and Ubuntu just include drivers for every piece of hardware they can - windows has many hundreds of megabytes of *extra* stuff on the disk just to make sure whatever network card you happen to have will work. Phones don't have all that extra space. Computers are also all built with certain things being constant. Phones have to be highly optimized though, so everything about them varies. The notification lights are hooked up to different pins on the microcontroller, different features on a bluetooth chip are enabled depending on space requirements, etc. All the code for every component has to be ported to exactly how that device is laid out. So far NO ONE has come up with a good solution for building a mobile phone OS that can be universally upgraded without issue. Thats something google is trying to do with Android, but thats one hell of an undertaking. They say Gingerbread includes some features that will help, but dude, this stuff is all new, it takes time.

So chill out and think about what you say.
-Taylor

Re:Where's Gingerbread?

[Facegarden]

which is why the Android model of open source is fundamentally broken, imho. But then it was never about the customer.

This is such a stupid fucking argument.

"Oh my god they released in December and it takes months for manufacturers to port to their devices! Android is broken!"

You don't realize it, but this is the right way to do it. How would you expect it to work?

Like iOS?

Apple says "oh hey new version of iOS is out and you can instantly get it for any iOS phone that's been out the past 2 or 3 years with a simple update"

Takes months for manufacturers, maybe, if they actually were trying. They could have been experimenting with the beta version of Gingerbread and have it working by the time it was officially released. Hell what about all those Android phones still on 2.1, or worse, 1.6?

Wow, you really don't get it. Apple tests iOS with every device they release it for, because, uh, there's only like 10 of them, and they created them all.

And actually, I checked and what you said isn't even fucking true. iOS 4 came out last summer for phones and ipod touches, but not until fall for iPads. And it wasn't compatible with anything made before the iPhone 3GS - so, half of the iPhone models got left behind. So you're full of shit.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/iphone-os-4-0-unveiled-shipping-this-summer/

And yes, the nice thing about apple controlling every piece of hardware is that they can release for many devices at once, but that's not how Android works and I hardly consider that broken. If you want to work with multiple manufacturers using open source code, you have to accept that not everyone will jump on a release immediately. I'd much rather have many manufacturers than one, so like I said, I hardly consider it broken.
-Taylor

Re:New version every 6 months...

[GweeDo]

Yeah, this whole fragmentation thing is just killing us Android dev's right???

Or not: http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html

90% of all users that connect to the Market are now on Android 2.1 or greater. Android 2.2 and 2.3 haven't brought any kind of huge API changes that require you lock out 2.1 users to get some awesome new feature. The new "big thing" is going to be the Fragments API and it will support all the way back to Android 1.6.

Now, don't get me wrong. I want everyone that can be to be on 2.3 yesterday, but it isn't exactly a big deal.