Holo Theme Is Now Mandatory For Android Devices

tripleevenfall writes in about the new theme changes in Android 4.0. From the article: "Starting with Android 4.0, support for the 'Holo' theme will be mandatory for phones and tablets that have the Android Market installed. Holo is the stock Android theme, known for its sharp angles, thin lines and blue hue. Third-party developers can now create apps and widgets using the default Android aesthetic, knowing that's how it'll look on every major Ice Cream Sandwich device that has the Android Market. " This is not banning custom themes; instead it is merely giving developers a consistent theme that is guaranteed to be installed if they want a consistent look across all devices. There are even a few improvements to the style protocol to help developers deal with dark and light themes.

Comments

This still doesn't address fragmentation

[bonch]

This doesn't appear to address fragmentation at all. To the contrary, fragmentation will be even easier, according to the article:

To be clear, this doesn't mean the death of phone makers' user interface customizations, such as HTC's Sense or Samsung's TouchWiz. Far from it: Google is also making it easier for developers to accommodate these custom interfaces, with a bit of code that adopts whatever theme the device is using by default. Essentially, app developers will be able to choose whether their apps will look more like stock Android 4.0, or like the phone maker's customized interface.

Recall that TouchWiz is the reason the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab won't get Ice Cream Sandwich despite being only months old. Just look at this chart of the completely broken upgrade cycle for Android smartphones--and note the 2 1/2 year old iPhone 3GS can run the latest version of iOS. The problem is that the carrier's business model is to sell you a new phone every six months. It's not in their best interests to provide upgrades and support. As far as they're concerned, interaction with the customer is over the moment you purchase the phone, so they don't give a crap about trying to provide a cohesive platform that interoperates with competing Android phones.

Seamless experiences win out in the long term. We saw this when gaming moved from PCs to consoles in the 2000s, and it's happening now in the transition to the post-PC era. The previous mobile web OS usage article raised a lot of eyebrows, because despite the fact Android has greater volume, it's turns out that it's actually #3 in web use behind Java ME and iOS, which means the majority of Android users are not using their phones like smartphones, for whatever reason. On top of that, developer support for Android dropped by one-third over the course of 2011 despite an increase in activations.

The fragmentation issue is something Google desperately needs to solve if it wants to avoid the same fate that desktop Linux did. Throwing something out there, calling it open, and letting "choice" steer the ship isn't going to do it. Requiring support for a theme is a step in the right direction, but all it means is that there is a default theme, not a standardized one.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[forkfail]

It's the stock phrases, such as "Seamless experiences win out in the long term." They're pretty much copy-paste.

And this from an extremely unhappy Samsung Galaxy S phone, complete with busted GPS and no ICS.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The problem is that the carrier's business model is to sell you a new phone every six months.

I don't think carriers and handset makers are actually that clever. I just dont' think they consider software updates at all relevant. Given even in the days of yore, with WinMo and PalmOS, OS updates were largely nonexistant. Want Winmo6 from Winmo5? Buy a Winmo 6 device!

The idea that you can have the latest and greatest OS with out custom flashing your ROM is kind of new.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[roc97007]

Are there still MS shills? I thought they all had to get real jobs.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[d4fseeker]

Give this one a try: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1363593
I think you'll find it icy-sweet enough
True, Samsung doesn't care about software updates, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't either.

Oh, and if your GPS antenna is broken or has bad contacts; you can order a new one for roughly 10-20$ off eBay, replacement is easy with just 2 screws.
However I usually find external bluetooth receivers with SIRF3-chips the best; my "Road66"-one even manages to get a steady and accuracte fix in large cities, has 6 hours battery charge and takes around 10 seconds to cold-start (I dont know how it does it... amazing!)

I for one am quite pleased with my Galaxy S (first revision), even if not with Samsun'g customer service. Well, that's what homebrew is for, isn't it? ;)

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[forkfail]

An open platform will always have a certain level of fragmentation. It's part of the cost you pay for having an open platform. The benefit is that you get more apps and options. The downside is that they don't always play nice. So - I admit that there are negatives to so-called fragmentation.

With this said, if you honestly parse the OP's post, look at the structure, language, word choice and links, not to mention the timing of it's posting, and consider modern marketing techniques as they pertain to blogs and social networks, it seems to be at least a reasonable to at least suspect that the author has either professional or monetary ties to Apple, or that he is a true Holy Warrior for The One True Platform.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[alostpacket]

With all due respect, you don't understand what you're talking about. The greater fragmentation threat revolves around custom implementations of core parts of the OS. Most specifically "ContenProviders" (the API, not media companies, although those are a problem for everyone of a different sort). This is even a problem with Google not following their own APIs but asking developers to use the MediaStore API (but that's a different discussion).

With regards to upgrades, certain older devices had limited inter protected storage for the OS an apps. The original Samsung Galaxy S is one of these. Right after that phone came out more and more devices were implementing larger internal storage. This particular problem with upgrades, is an unfortunate one-time-only growing pain. That's not to say those devices cannot receive security updates, just that they cannot fit the entire ICS image + apps + a skin on the protected storage.

You can sit back and play monday-morning-quarterback, but the truth is the internal storage+SD had some nice advantages for the user, but ultimately it was decided (rightly so) that there needs to be more room for apps and the OS.

Finally, the point of this article, which has little to do with upgrades, is that app makers now have some more reliable and consistent APIs for UI widget appearance. There is nothing bad about this. Sure it's a small step, but it's a step in the right direction. It even allows devs to maintain a style inline with whatever skin the user is currently using, or use the more stock looking one. Finally, when you consider many apps use their own look and feel above and beyond any OS look and feel, this is probably not a huge deal regardless.

Your tirade again fragmentation, especially being so uninformed on the issue, just seems irrational. iOS is great, Android is great. They have different strengths and weaknesses.

Flurry is a joke to Android devs. They specifically cater to iOS devs, and were embroiled in a privacy scandal in early 2010 on Android. Further, Google Analytics provides a similar service for free, and one that is already hugely popular among web developers. Flurry puts out that same press release every year to garner press about themselves. This is absolutely the worst kind of skewed statistic. "Iphone analytics company that was previous burned by bad behavior on Android, says more of its customers are iphone devs than in the past" It was sad to see so many media companies pick up the PR release.

With regards to who does the most web surfing, you would need a statistic that accounts for the fact that many Android phones used to report the UA string as "mobile safari" and that many Android users use a variety of browsers: Firefox, Opera, Dolphin, xScope, and more. I'd look to admob or comScore as at least decent approximations. Certainly

There are some very valid fragmentation and bloatware arguments to be made against Android, but none of what you brought up holds any water when you dig a little deeper.

Full disclosure: I'm and Android dev myself, as you can see in my sig.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[jeffmeden]

Actually if he wasn't disingenuous to his own damn post, maybe he wouldn't be branded a troll. First he quotes part of the article that hints at Google's plan to make the UI theme more accessible to app developers, and then he turns it on it's head and says this will increase fragmentation... Because nothing says "fragmentation" like making app developers have to do LESS to cleanly support the OS. Then he links to an article as a claim of faith (re: the Galaxy line not getting rev 4 software), and completely leaves out the article from approximately a day later that showed Samsung was reversing their position due to customer outcry. And to top it all off, to not sound too much like a anti-google shill he throws in the sentence "Requiring support for a theme is a step in the right direction" which makes no sense at all given the nature of the rest of his argument.

He slapped together some canned flamebait responses and didn't bring anything about the actual article to this thread (or anything new at all for that matter) so yes he earned those downmods.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[icebike]

An open platform will always have a certain level of fragmentation. It's part of the cost you pay for having an open platform. The benefit is that you get more apps and options. The downside is that they don't always play nice. So - I admit that there are negatives to so-called fragmentation.

Fragmentation is a pejorative, invented by Apple in an attempt to cast diversity in a bad light.

When anyone brings it up when discussing a wide range of options and freedom in the market place you can know they are Apple fanbois. You never see the word applied to any other area, such as Automobiles, where there is even more diversity and choice.

In those areas, phrases like wide selections, lots of choices, wide variety, diversity, freedom, all are positive attributes.
Even "clones" and "Forks" have a positive connotation in the areas of computers and software.

Only when speaking of Android is the word fragmentation trotted out.

Convince me that is just coincidental.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[an unsound mind]

The problem here is that the fragmentation is so bad quite a few developers are jumping ship to Apple - resulting in Apple's quite monolithic ecosystem actually looking more appealing even from a choice viewpoint, at least to me.

I could have my choice of poorly working, barely updated Android phones, and having to wrangle with the Android Market being full of malware even if I choose to void my warranty and go Cyanogenmod or get an official Google phone - or I can go for a much, much smoother user experience with iPhone.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[nahdude812]

As I've observed in other comments, the iPhone 3GS running the latest version of iOS by version number isn't that impressive since the major new functionality is still locked out of the device (typically for sales reasons rather than hardware reasons such as with Siri). It's cool that you get to see a number which is the same number on newer phones, but it only grants you a carefully selected subset of the most basic of the new functionality, so it's not really the same version after all.

In contrast, on Android, if your device is at certain version, it has access to all the features from that OS version that your hardware can support (eg, you can't depend on a gyroscope if none is present).

Your chart should be updated to indicate how far back all the new major features are supported. Apple's roadmap will suddenly terminate full-feature-support for each phone line on the first SDK release after a newer phone is launched.

In the mean time, although you can still target back to iPhone 3 OS versions in XCode (letting you include people with a device that is more than two years old but excluding you from using any newer features), you can still download Android SDK's back to API level 3 (the first public api level). So you can target every commercial Android phone at once as long as you either stick within the feature set from those original devices or you're clever enough to write code that knows how to fail gracefully when a more modern feature is unavailable. For example, we do this with one of our apps which has an NFC option (first available I think in API level 10, Android 2.3.3), but has plenty of non-NFC functionality as well - targeting API level 7 (Android 2.1) and conditionally using more recent APIs if the phone's OS supports them.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[Scowler]

In other words, you're not a developer.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[roc97007]

> He's a subscriber, so it's not surprising he has first post. Is anything even remotely critical of Android on Slashdot these days automatically considered an Apple or MS shill?

No, not at all. For instance, I have several large beefs with Google, and I'm not happy with either MS or Apple for several reasons I'd be happy to bore you with at a later time. As geeks we have to use *some* devices to get our work done; the difference is, non-fanbois tend to judge devices on a case by case basis rather than buying entirely on logo and calling it good.

What made the thread originator (since vanished, for some reason) an Apple shill is how he went on and on for paragraphs about how wonderful Apple's philosophy is yadda yadda. People who have any interest at all in the original topic are unlikely to be interested in how Apple is so much better. It's something that's written for the benefit of the writer rather than the reader.

And just incidentally to the original poster if he's still listening, if Samsung won't play nice on Android versions, there's a simple solution: Don't buy Samsung. That's the thing about Android. When the vendor screws up, you don't have to go through the mental gymnastics to try to convince yourself that the vendor is correct and that's the way it's supposed to work and you're a better person for missing that feature. You just buy from a different vendor. Apple fanbois don't have any concept of that, and this causes a cognitive disconnect when they try to talk to the rest of us.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[viperidaenz]

But when Ford develop new software for the ECU in later models to improve fuel efficency and emissions they don't give you a free upgrade on your old model. They won't even let you pay for it. You can't even offer to pay for an entire new engine to upgrade your last-years-model. They force you to buy an entire new vehicle. In conclusion, Ford refuses to upgrade your old vehicle because it is not a new purchase. Comparing it to servicing your car because its a different colour - that would be an apt comparison if the warranty was void because you bought an Android phone with the TouchWiz thingy on it.

There is no automotive analogy that holds true for this situation.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[iluvcapra]

Thank goodness, I hadn't realized that Samsung failing to upgrade the Galaxy S to ICS, and all Android vendor's and carrier's systematic failure to offer good support of anything, is actually part of an Apple marketing campaign.

Fortunately, you offer the solution. All I have to do is stopping using the word "fragmentation," and start calling all vendor mistakes "diversity," and, my mind being thus made right, I will understand that bad support is actually a good thing.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[d4fseeker]

And then spend countless hours tether-booting it, trying unreliable jailbreak hacks and stumble across issues with Cydia?
Or maybe you just don't care about jailbroken freedom, in which case: Why didn't you buy an Iphone4 in the first place? They were roughly the same price...

On the other hand you could just get a phone from one of the manufacturers that really cares about updates, like HTC, even if that means having a less impressive hardware. You did a choice knowing full well the manufacturer's notority for not caring about updates or if you didn't then you should have looked it up first.
Complaining about having to do stuff yourself afterwards is kinda... stupid

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[Dahamma]

but it only grants you a carefully selected subset of the most basic of the new functionality, so it's not really the same version after all.

That's a pretty huge exaggeration. The only missing features for the 3GS are Siri and in-place photo editing. 2 features of 200+ added with iOS 5. Big deal.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Don't forget the security aspect. We see threads on /. daily about Android malware. iOS is pretty much 100% secure when it comes down to incidences of compromised devices.

Your point is partially valid, although exaggerated. I'll make two in return:

1) Apple is hardly 100% secure. Every jailbreak method that has ever existed exploits an unpatched vulnerability in their software.
2) The upside to Apple playing the role of Morality Police is that it reduces app malware to manageable levels. The downside is that apps that disagree with their social views or with the desires of their carrier partners are not approved or are quickly removed.

With great power comes great responsibility. The difference is that Android largely endows the customer with that power, while Apple largely reserves it for themselves. There are benefits and drawbacks to both.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[Skuld-Chan]

What is funny is anytime I ask my friend who has an iPhone 4 if he can do things like swype (or any customized ime), inter-application data sharing etc - his answer is always - I can jailbreak my phone and do that.

I guess it goes both ways ehh?

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[pauljlucas]

You never see [fragmentation] applied to any other area, such as Automobiles, where there is even more diversity and choice.

First, for some things, possibly including automobiles, more choice isn't always a good thing. Second, "fragmentation" is much more of a problem for developers and not consumers. Third, "fragmentation" doesn't apply to things like automobiles because they don't run a common OS that developers write apps for. "Fragmentation" is referring to the fragmentation of the OS, not the hardware choices.

Can you imagine if there were something like CarOS that all automakers used, but tweaked the hell out of for their own cars? It would be just as "fragmented" a market and as much of a pain to write apps for.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[Toonol]

Good catch. It's generally painfully obvious when you read something that has been prepared in advance like that, or is written to hit certain bullet-points or catch-phrases.

Sometimes you'll see an Apple advocate mention in a post that he likes product X because 'it just works'. It's hard to imagine that somebody writes that with a straight face, but I think they're deadly serious. They think they're making a point, not realizing that they're admitting to the world that their thought processes are controlled by a marketing campaign.

The thing is, I think Apple products are generally really high quality (except for their ported software... itunes and quicktime are terrible). However, I'm constantly being driven away from them by the quality of their advocates. I now view iphones and ipads as vaguely creepy in the effect they have on some people.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[BitZtream]

It would be just as "fragmented" a market and as much of a pain to write apps for.

No, it wouldn't be, because it isn't. The OS isn't software as you're thinking of it, but there most certainly is a set of design standards for a car that everyone follows more or less, and as such these cars are compatible with the rest of the world.

Thats why all cars pretty much take the same double DIN stereos.

Tires are all pretty standardized in a given class of cars.

Bolts and Nuts are standardized.

Pretty much all cars in a given geographic area will use a single common fuel source (gasoline, diesel, propane, whatever)

Batteries are pretty much all the same voltage

Width and wheelbase are pretty common and standard for an area and type of workload.

Pretty much everything in a car is 'standardized' so that everyone can work with everyone else and a level of interoperability exists so things can be interchanged.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[sonicmerlin]

The iPhone 3GS runs an underclocked CPU running at 600 MHz. It received iOS 5 and runs it perfectly. The iPhone 3G contained the exact same hardware as the iPhone 2G, the original iPhone released in June 2007. Until just a few months ago the 3G ran the latest version of iOS.

If the Galaxy S, a "halo" phone from a year back, can't run the latest version of Android, something is desperately wrong with Google's OS.

Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation

[Anonymous Psychopath]

The A5 chip has yet to be jailbreaked. You also can't jailbreak an iOS device and thus access vulnerabilities with a rogue program.

The iPad2, which runs the A5 CPU, certainly has an untethered jailbreak. Whether the vulnerability is in the CPU or the OS is irrelevant. Root is root no matter how you get it. You get root on an Android phone using similar methods.

In terms of secondary exploits, how about all the Jailbroken iPhones where sshd was enabled by default and the password was "alpine"? Remember the worm that changed wallpaper to Rick Astley? They could have done much nastier things than that.

I'm not saying this is Apple's fault since the secondary vulnerability was a result of the user purposefully running the initial exploit themselves. Most security vulnerabilities these days require the user to take some kind of action. What I'm saying is that the perception that the iPhone is more secure than an Android phone is simply a false dichotomy. They both have had vulnerabilities with every release. Otherwise there would be no jailbreaking/rooting at all.

Re:Err

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the users be allowed to change the theme?

"This is not banning custom themes; instead it is merely giving developers a consistent theme that is guaranteed to be installed if they want a consistent look across all devices."

I think you missed that sentence.

Re:Err

[DrGamez]

It's depressing when my mom asks me to do something on her new Verizon Android phone and I stare at it in confusion for more than 5 minutes. I've owned a Nexus One since they were sold though so I guess it's my fault in thinking the phone companies wouldn't slather their layer of ugly paint on everything.

Android is nice because it allows the companies selling/branding the phones to do it their way.

Unfortunately they are better at stealing money then they are designing UIs.

Re:What's this?

[drosboro]

Really? Having a consistently-available UI is "a wall"? Or even the "foundations of a wall"? I think we've forgotten what a "walled garden" actually means.

Re:What's this?

[wanderfowl]

There's no wall here at all, just a foundation. You can still do whatever the heck you want with your device as a consumer, and this is just saying that manufacturer's shouldn't completely break the underlying UI structure, even if they want to supplant it with some theme of their own. "Do what you want with the field, just don't salt the Earth so nobody else can use it".

Re:Err

[dreemernj]

Think of it this way - if they didn't use Android, there is a very good chance they would still have a horrible UI. But it would then be a phone with a horrible UI and no vast library of Apps. That doesn't make what they are doing good. But it's at least a silver lining.

bad subject line

[roc97007]

Holo theme is not mandatory, only support for the Holo theme for devices that use the Android marketplace. So applications can be written that use the Holo theme with some confidence that they will display correctly. This is a good thing. It gives developers a minimum standard look and feel that is required to work.

Re:Err

[swanzilla]

It's depressing when my mom asks me to do something on her new Verizon Android phone and I stare at it in confusion for more than 5 minutes.

That is quite common with Tier I family tech support. Suggest your mom escalate incident to Tier II.

Re:What's this?

[badboy_tw2002]

No, it generally means "someone who likes something different from the thing I really really like in the same domain". See sports teams, etc. Generally its a result of it being a zero sum game (Only one team can win the super bowl/world cup/whatever), whether that means there's an actual limitation or a perceived one (I only get one phone so my choice is the best, or "My mom said I can only get one console, so that one that I have is obviously the best"). Those of use who recognize that one can often have more than one flavor of ice cream/console/operating system/mobile device/programming language/text editor are perplexed by the behavior, but understanding the base motivation helps a bit.

(Except of course for people who like the Dodgers. They objectively suck, and their fans are doo doo heads. That's a fact.)

The Problem...

[eno2001]

...for me has always been that any OS or device I've used has been riddled with bone headed design decision. Things that break easily with normal use. UI elements that are the wrong size or in the wrong place. Poor choice of fonts. In all honesty, you'd have to be pretty simple minded to love every product that comes out of a single company or every bit of software that comes from the same developer. I mean look at the Ford vs. Chevy guys. That's the ultimate outcome of customer loyalty: a lack of thinking. Given that most of us here are rugged individualists, it's a natural assumption that we're going to want to do things our own way. Sometimes that will be just giving in an saying, "Oh the heck with it, Apple makes a pretty decent device and I don't have the time to fiddle". Other times it will be, "Good lord Microsoft can't code a decent UI to find their way out of a virtual box of nothing. Screw this I'm going back to (insert better OS choice for your needs here)". Show me a person who says, "Everything that (insert company or developer) created has always been perfect and I've had no need to change a thing" and I'll show you a liar. Config files, preferences, options, themes, control panels all exist for a reason: nothing is perfect.

Re:What's this?

[scot4875]

No, I think it's generally applied to people who are incapable of seeing the flaws in the things they like, and cannot have a rational discussion about them. It's people who somehow have an emotional investment in their chosen product being "the best" and anyone who chooses differently, for any reason, is "wrong".

It's perfectly fine to have a favorite, it's not perfectly fine to be blinded to alternatives.

--Jeremy

Re:Err

[sootman]

Yeah, but will the users be allowed to change the theme?

Subsidized

[Dan East]

The problem is that the carrier's business model is to sell you a new phone every six months.

Why in the world would they do that? The carrier's primary goal is to get customers is to commit to the most expensive 2 year contract possible. The insane overage rates are really just to prod customers into upgrading to more expensive contracts is all. Smartphones require the most expensive contracts because they consume voice minutes, SMS texts and data more than any other type of phone. Thus carriers subsidize the phones to give customers the equipment to consume those resources. The ideal customer is one with a modern enough smartphone to require an expensive contract, who that keeps that same smartphone as long as possible.

Does your monthly rate decrease after your contract is up? Does it decrease if you buy your own phone straight out? Of course not. Yet the carrier makes even more money off of you because you're still paying a monthly rate that factors in the subsidization cost of the phone.

So to sum it up, there are only two reasons a carrier wants to put new cell phones in their customers' hands. To upgrade customers with regular or premium phones to smartphones that require a more expensive contract, and to keep the more demanding customers from switching to other carriers because they offer more cutting edge hardware.

Re:Subsidized

[viperidaenz]

Carriers in NZ don't seem to follow the USA convention of "get everyone on a 2 year plan". Half the mobile market is prepay, most of the monthly contracts are for companies. There have been times where 1 and 2 year terms come with higher monthly charges, making the "free phone" not very free. The commerce commission probably forced the end of that. Some carriers offer a discount on your monthly plan instead of a phone subsidy if you sign up for a year.

They are probably loving this phone smart phone fad though. Data prices are astronomical. $20 per Gb if you prepay it, $500 per Gb "casual rate" is pretty normal.

Bingo

[jareth-0205]

*Thankyou*. I'm an Android dev too, and it constantly astonishes me that the form of "fragmentation" that most of the tech world complains about (OS version number) has nothing to do with the form of "fragmentation" that actually causes me any sort of real problem (screen aspect ratios / device bugs / differing OS implementations).

Re:Bingo

[WankersRevenge]

*thankyou* I'm an ios dev and it's nice to see some rationale discussion about platforms instead of the typical feces tossing match that typically occurs here.

Android reduces fragmentation.

[danbob999]

The main fragmentation that interest developers is the one between platforms, not within a platform. If Apple and RIM both switched to Android, it would be much easier to develop for mobile devices. They add a lot of fragmentation by continuing to push their proprietary platform. Google actually removes fragmentation by giving away for free an OS that anyone can use. There would be much more fragmentation in the mobile world if HTC, Motorola, Sony, Samsung and LG all pushed their own OS like Apple and RIM are doing.