Dell and Baidu Introduce a Smartphone With Forked Version of Android

cortex writes "XDA developers is reporting on the release of a new smart phone which runs a forked version of Google's Android operating system: 'Dell and Baidu, the Chinese search giant with over 80% marketshare in its home-country, unveiled the Streak Pro on Tuesday (via Computerworld). The device has a 4.3 AMOLED screen with 960×540 resolution and packs a 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor. Most notably, however, is the operating system it runs: a forked Android version dubbed Baidu Yi, which replaces Google's services with those of Baidu.' How will this impact Google's support for Android and open source in general?'

Comments

Not at all

[SuperKendall]

There's already some Android phone out that uses Bing as the search engine. And then of course there is Amazon who essentially is forking Android.

Google had to know this would happen, they simply don't care. If they keep advancing Android it keeps Android devices more desirable than others in theory. Plus at this point what would the strategy really be? Close Android off and watch vendors run to Microsoft?

Re:Not at all

[thegarbz]

Depends on how you define forks. Amazon has to my knowledge not "Forked" Android. To do so would be to take Android and do in house development in a different direction. From what I can tell they have simply taken Android as is and put their modifications on top of it. Amongst them removed the Google Apps, and added their own primary interface and own apps.

Most phone manufacturers do this already just not on the same big scale. Samsung ship phones with TouchWiz, a Samsung specific home screen and app drawer for their phones which is more like iOS than Android, as well as the Samsung Marketplace. The difference is that they still have Google's partnership and ship the phone with the complete set of Google Apps and the official Market.

When you fork a project you take the project at a given time in a new direction, and the codebase typically starts separating more and more from the original. Customising Android, regardless of how heavily you do it does not make it a fork until you essentially take over a whole new project.

Re:Google will smile and laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Google didn't "ignore" the chinese market, they pulled out for ethical reasons (present chinese government wanted them to censor).

Re:With the expected Chinese requirements.

[adriantam]

I agree with you that "China == bad" is not always true. But how do you explain the 80% market share of Baidu? In China, you can't do big business without kowtow to the government. That's a reason for that bullshit to exists. And that's a way to get rid of those bullshit: lift your hands off the people and let them have the freedom. By the way, I am Chinese.

Re:With the expected Chinese requirements.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if you're trolling or really that poorly informed. For all my complaints about how we do things, your suggestion that the situation in the US is worse than China is patently absurd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

Re:Google will smile and laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Google had a significant portion of the Chinese market before pulling out - over 35%. And even with the current situation where they have much less marketshare, they're profitable. So basically you're full of shit.

Google had been against censorship all along, but decided to try and change China from the inside. Eventually, they discovered that it wasn't possible, so they stuck up for their principles and took their ball and went home. It's rare that you see a company put principle ahead of profit, and they should be commended for it.

Re:With the expected Chinese requirements.

[Tubal-Cain]

Also, let me know about the secret prisons china has outside its borders in order to torture people and circumvent its own laws.

.

You assume they need to be outside the country?

Baidu is awful

[Anonymous Coward]

Baidu is absolutely laden with spam. The English searches are a little better, those come from Bing rather than Baidu's own engine, no great but passable.

But when I was in Shanghai I used Baidu almost exclusively, because they keep blocking Google. Sometimes Google works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it works but is so ridiculously slow that it's unusable. I know this is not Google making, but the Chinese tricks. However I still need to find things.

It's not a political thing I think, a lot of it is just corruption. It's not that the guy running the routers is such a communist puritan that he favors Baidu comrades, it's that he's such a corrupt person, ten bucks in his pocket and he'll route you through a Pentium 4 firewall! Baidu just know who to pay off.

Re:Impact?

[Daniel Phillips]

"How will this impact Google's support for Android and open source in general?"

Not at all, or possibly for the better?

Definitely for the better. Truth be told, Google's attitude towards free software sucks in major ways, not least their overt campaign to undermine the GPL and copyleft in general. Yes, this is overt, and shameless. There is one loose cannon in particular whose name I will not mention whose personal vendetta includes not only the entire GPL ecosystem, but Debian too. Might as well have a serial puppy shooter on staff.

Re:With the expected Chinese requirements.

[mynickslongerthanurs]

But how do you explain the 80% market share of Baidu?

Because its major competitor is suffering from blatant malicious QoS deterioration?

• Every 15 minutes, any attempt to access google is met with a reset. The blocking lasts 15 minutes, causing an artificial 50% downtime for ALL Google services.
• When the service is accessible, searching for a potentially 'inharmonious' word (including seemly innocuous false positives like 'carrot') resets the connection immediately and deny future access to Google for 5 minutes.
• Don't even THINK about using Google Search over SSL.
• G+ doesn't work. Well, neither does Facebook.
• Blog service (blogspot/blogger) doesn't work. In fact, searching for the word 'blogspot' resets the connection.
• Video service (Youtube) obviously doesn't work.
• No site managed by Google Sites works.

Oh, and I'm a native.

Re:With the expected Chinese requirements.

[MightyYar]

Please, point me to the last time china killed over 100.000 foreign civilians outside its borders.

Interesting that you apply different morality to who they kill depending on whether or not they are in or outside their borders.

Does Korea count? How about Tibet? Ask the people in Taiwan about their gentle neighbor.

I can understand how people are anxious about the behavior of the US - but just because the US is evil nowadays doesn't mean that China is automatically good.