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For Android Users, 2012 Is Still the Year of Gingerbread
First time accepted submitter brocket66 writes with this excerpt from BGR: "Three major revisions of Google's Android operating system have launched since the company released Android 2.3 more than 21 months ago in December 2010, but Gingerbread is still the most widely used version of Android by a wide margin. A study conducted early this year by graphic designer Chris Sauve projected that based on Android adoption trends up to that point, Android 2.3 Gingerbread would be the dominant version of Android in 2012 despite the fact that Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich had already been released. Now, as the fourth quarter of 2012 approaches, data from Google's Android version distribution tracker confirms once again that those projections were accurate."
1.3 million Android activations a day. I guess we like it this way.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Poor customer service from phone carriers and the manufacturers. Sign the customer to a 2-year contract and/or get his money in their greedy little hands then screw the customer
But I paid hard earned money for my phone. I'm not ready to buy a new one yet. Now maybe if more Android phones were upgradeable to newer operating systems, I might run some newer software on my phone.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
What you miss on Gingerbread are the nice layout features on ICS, means you have to jump through more hoops as a developer. But if you are making opengl apps it really is no big deal, supporting native code on 2.2 was a major pain, now with 2.3+ you can actually write your entire activity in c++, really useful for games.
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices
You have to root and upgrade yourself, but the devices can handle it just fine. So back to lazy phone carriers not working with device manufacturers on year old handsets.
captcha: suspend
Why mess with a good thing? Most users do not need or want to upgrade. If the phone works, then an upgrade presents real danger of making it worse, not better.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
honeycomb is only for tablets, not cell phones, so it makes sense. Blame the cell carriers/ 3rd parties for the holdup 4.0 is not even being rolled out to some 90% of phones that are already out there, therefore it only makes sense that 2.3 is the dominant flavor
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If it works, use it. Like the other folks said, a lot of phones are left unsupported by their providers with no official updates. Then you have the choice of using it and not worrying about the OS, as long as it works right. That's fine for the average user who isn't likely to do a lot of USB-to-computer interfacing with it to do the upgrades or mods... .1
But if you really want updated software you can look into things like Cyanogenmod. Doing that got my unsupported phone all the way up to Android 2.3, whereas Motorola left it languishing with the only supported version at 2.2 or
2.3 has been doing well on my phone for awhile now, but if the Cyanogen guys put out a stable 4.0 release for my phone I'll definitely try it.
I've been assuming the reason there are lots of 1.x and 2.x phones out there just had to do with the fact there are a lot of low-end Android phones for sale. I figured ICS and JB had fairly stiff hardware requirements. Is that not correct?
#DeleteChrome
On the consumer side, 90% of smart phone customers don't use even 15% of what their devices are capable of doing. For most consumers, the questions, "Can it go online?", "Can it make phone calls and send texts?", "Does it have some stupid little games I can put on it to pass the time when I'm bored?", and "Does it work reasonably well without being too confusing for me to figure out" are all they care about. That functionality has been available long before android 2.3 even hit the scene, never mind 4.0.
The average consumer doesn't understand nor care about the differences between OS versions on really anything, computers, smartphones, whatever. As long as it does that one thing(s) that they want, most are satisfied. Now if they're exposed to a new feature from a new version they might grow to like it and use it, but chances are unless they're already a techie and looking into that sort of thing, most users won't care about it until there's some game/app/thing they want to do with their current device/OS and can't. Plus, unless they happen to be fairly tech savvy and aren't afraid of voiding warranties and what not the consumer is at the whim of their device manufacturers and carriers to get them updated software. So it's no surprise most people just stick with what they have if it works 'good enough'
From a manufacturer point of view they've already sold the product, maintaining updates costs them money, so they're disinclined to spend money on a product that's already sold. There's some work done on flagship products, and maybe a little bit just to earn enough goodwill with their customers that they'll keep coming back, but like all corporations they balance expenses for 'customer service' very carefully. For most corporations, customer service isn't about doing what's right for the customer, it's about doing enough to keep most of the customers happy, but not cost the company a fortune.
There's a little more incentive on the carrier's end to keep things updated, since their customers are paying for a service, not for hardware, and I'm sure that there's some push from the carriers to get their devices updated. But even then that costs money, so it's really only going to be their most popular devices that get attention, and less popular ones will fall by the wayside.
Tl;dr most people figure if it ain't broke, don't fix it
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Cyanogenmod is available for maybe 25% of android devices sold in models, probably less than 10% in number. For my android device, there are severe trouble with the phone/wifi firmware (wifi sometimes doesn't work when you have a SIM inserted) and camera (not supported by native camera app). There is no support for that from the CM team since it's an unofficial port and obviously, the hardware vendor and telco don't support it either.
Apple supports firmware updates including full hardware support for about 3 years at least. You may not always get all new features, but at least you get the security updates. Google does not mandate any such term from their vendors, they are fine with "fire and forget". In practice, this makes devices with the same quality and features in hardware less worth if they're not running iOS. You may not want to spend iOS money on a device, but if you have to add in the security risk and frustration about the lack of support and McGyvering you will probably be subjected to, the price difference may suddenly not be that big anymore.
Android vendors get away with putting on their own "improved" UI, which usually isn't that much of an improvement, but makes it harder for people to switch phone because the UI is different. There's no signature "it works this way and looks that way" OS on Android phones, making it harder to market them.
If Google wants to really get ahead, for Android 5 they should mandate 3 years upgrade support from vendors and telco's (within 1 month after general release) and no customization apart from optional addons that can be switched off by the user. People that spend a lot of money on a device or a "sponsored" telco deal should be able to enjoy their device a whole lot better and marketing the devices would be a lot easier as well, making it more justifiable to pay top dollar for such a device.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
droid 3 !!! blame it on TI or VZ for the lack of ICS update!!! we all want the kernel but the 512mb of RAM stops it...
I take it you still run your desktop PC without upgrades as well? Wait for the first "real" android virus. There will be public outrage that vendors didn't offer upgrades to prevent this. Sure, lots of people don't want to upgrade, because if they would be interested in that, they'd buy an iPhone. Market share for people that want decent support for their devices OS that doesn't involve DIY is very low for Android. If Android would offer this, there would be a lot more competition with iOS devices than there is now.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Probably, in numbers, the amount of devices still sold with Android 2.2 and 2.3 is still higher than the amount of devices sold with 4.X. Even tablets are usually sold with either 2.X or 4.X, not with 3.0. So no, it doesn't make sense, new devices are being sold in the millions with known vulnerable software on them.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Mine isn't supported. Else I would have upgraded.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
My Galaxy S2 got an update to 4.0, but it wasn't available OTA, only by connecting the phone to Samsung's KIES software.
My wifes's Motorola phone got an update to 2.3 just a couple of month's ago (yes, 2.3, not 4.0), but again, it wasn't available OTA -- only by using Motorola's software on a PC.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Google sells bare phones direct to consumers. Really good, well supported models with lots of high end features. Consumers have the choice to buy these, or defer the large upfront cost of the phone over a year by paying higher monthly rates. I've had my Nexus S for almost three years and it's paid for itself (actually I'm about $60 ahead at this point) by choosing a plan that reflects my up front purchase cost. Telcos are taking advantage of lazy consumers, but there are also competitors in the market who are serving more informed consumers. There's nothing to worry about here.
moox. for a new generation.
Apple supports firmware updates including full hardware support for about 3 years at least.
Is that true?
Apple right now are still selling the 3GS iOS 6 runs badly, Admittedly with features stripped. According to you will still be receiving updates in September 2015. It won't. The 3GS is a rare duck in its support, but has done so to give the impression of a larger product line. ...but seriously measure support from end of sale not start.
could they stop naming the operating system to appeal to six-year-old girls? That is probably not their best target demographic.
So it runs most all the apps people use. It does pretty much anything the average smartphone user needs to do. It's ubiquitous. It's kind of like Android XP.
I wish more real computer people used these phones. It's weird there's a Debian port for my phone but no ICS? wtf guys?
I wish people would stop counting Honeycomb, it's a tablet-focused fork of android that isn't supposed to be on phones anyways.
Yes, I am obsessed with ellipses.
Is there any public data on how many iOS devices are running the current version? I know Apple implemented OTA updates in a recent veraion (4.0 I think) but I would be interested to know how many people (read: typical end-users) even updated to 4.0. I can think of three people off the top of my head, who I know personally, who have NEVER updated their iPhones\iPods. I have to assume, then, that it's not that uncommon.
It would be interesting to see the ratio of Android users who are "forced" to be on an older version to iOS users who have never bothered with updates that are available to them. Another good one would be a ratio of iOS users who went to a previous version in order to jailbreak vs Android users who rooted to go to a newer build.
Or rather, without the cellphone. (I have my reasons, no need to question them.) Naturally whatever I choose will probably have cellular equipment in it. I just want to make sure cellular doesn't switch on. Limiting my phone calls to Wifi is perfectly fine.
Also preferably without the Microsoft tax, which probably limits my selection to Motorola. ...any suggestions?
Apple right now are still selling the 3GS iOS 6 runs badly, Admittedly with features stripped. According to you will still be receiving updates in September 2015. It won't.
3 years since debut you fucking ignoramus.
blog
I've had my Nexus S for almost three years
Wow! How did you get one 16 months before they existed?
Nexus S isn't that old. Introduced Dec. 2010.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
There are a couple Android-powered cameras - might be worth checking them out.
Nikon Coolpix S800c
Samsung Galaxy (camera)
#DeleteChrome
Perhaps a better way would have been for Google not to release the Android source code, but instead to implement it in such a way that it supported a plugin and extension architecture, like Firefox, Chrome and Eclipse.
That way, the OEMs would have been able to tailor the phones to their liking, but wouldn't have been able to tinker directly with the primary Android code. It would mean that updates could easily be pushed to the phones and OEMs would have to do very little work. A preview Jelly Bean could have made available to devs, to ensure their extensions, etc. still worked and then it could have been pushed down to the public.
But then again, it is likely that, should it have used this approach, Android would not have captured the market share it now commands, since fewer OEMs would have picked it up, not wanting to work with closed source.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Indeed, where did you get that date from? Wikipedia? Go check the edit log for that article. Pay close attention to the time/date stamp.
I had originally written 2009 in my post, but decided to fact check myself. I deleted the bit in my post with the numbered year, but forgot to change three to two in the post.
moox. for a new generation.
1) Gingerbread was the first version to give a fairly complete user environment (compared to iPhone).
Ergo: Most software has been developed for 2.3.
2) Most contracts with mobile operators in UK (and I guess in other countries as well) last for 24 months, and devices cannot be upgraded in the meanwhile.
Ergo: I'm not going to pay for a new device before the current contract end.
3) Honeycomb is mainly for tablets, which have quite a narrow user base compared to mobile phones.
Ergo: Gingerbread devices > Honeycomb devices.
4) Android versions are not easily backwards compatible.
Ergo: I'm not going to port my current software, unless there's a significant user base (if it ain't broke, don't fix it)
While not officially supported, many phones have working, mostly working, or partially working builds of ICS and JB. I was on a Droid2 before I decided to get a Galaxy Nexus for the fact it has an unlocked bootloader, even over the SIII, but the Droid2 ran ICS like a top, though some hardware acceleration issues existed. The ICS build by some user on RootzWiki was still far better, smoother, faster, and had better battery life than the GB build that came on it by motorola.
See XDA and RootzWiki with your GB phones, and see about getting a better build on there...of course, I roll my own anymore, and run JB on my Gnex, even though it's not been released yet officially for my phone (vzw).
Perhaps the fact that we cannot ourselves (easily) update our tablets and phones says something about how much control we've lost on our devices? That scares me. If i buy one of the new style of laptop-tablet hybrid, can I expect the same? Will this not easily cut years of value off these things, and slow down the software ecosystem?
I had an _expensive_ Window Phone. Then Microsoft told me I could not upgrade my 6 months old phone to WP8. I felt so cheated, and still do. I will never buy another. It is such a disrespect for the customer.
You sound like a frustrated little shit. I enjoy seeing little shits like you cry when adoption numbers like these are announced. It just snuffs out your POS OS until it finally dies.
1-Turn on airplane mode.
2-Turn on wireless.
3-Take a look at the phone status
4-Profit
But it depends on the reason behind not wanting a cellphone radio in the first place. My guess it the radio will be on by default on a cold boot and you need to turn it of, maybe you could remove any RIL stuff from your ROM (rooted or custom ROMs). But when I go to places I don't want the radio enabled I do the above and tell Tasker to do this for me at boot just in case it restarts/reboots.
I've spent all day trying to update my wife's phone (gt-i9000 2.3.3) and my phone nexus s (4.0.3) with zero success. I don't want to root them.
Most of the time has been spent with the gt-i9000 since it is the most out of date one but every attempt has failed. The documentation for doing this is shit. The resources for doing this is shit.
I only have linux (F17) at home. If I can't do it then it is little wonder that others cannot.
.
I'm still on Froyo. Carrier phones FTL.
I agree the lack of upgradability of android on old phones is frustrating. Seems to me that the manufacturers and the carrier do not have the capacity nor will to deal with the idea of upgrades.
My android phone is 2 years old, it still has crapware from my carrier on it. I tried looking to see if i could update, but the carrier's website has little to no help. Just one page showing how to update a few of the more popular smartphone makes.
The carrier's want us to use their crap apps, and thus bloat most android phones with them. The phones are locked so we cant even delete them.
It's an interesting time, but to me the carriers have the final say in this.
Just like people are stuck on IE6 and Firefox 3.6 two out of my three devices uses froyo. Even then I had to get a custom build for one or I would of been stuck with Cupcake.
Show me a phone I can buy directly from Google and then use with a reasonably-priced service (e.g. Virgin Mobile) and I'll happily buy it. Otherwise STFU.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Amazing! That's almost two years!! How can they stand to use anything so ancient?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If virgin uses GSM then you should be fine, I was able to use my phone while roaming all over South America (I made a call from Macchu Pictures on this thing) and most of Mexico. Supports edge and 3g here stateside.
moox. for a new generation.
My Epic 4g (Samsung Galaxy S) is about to hit it's 2 year mark, actually.. it did 4 days ago. It started with Eclair, got Froyo, and eventually Gingerbread. As others have said Honeycomb was Tablet only, and Ice Cream Sandwich and Jellybean require more power than the phone really has (yes ROMs can make it work, but it's not as perfect as it should be). I imagine that most people are still on these 2 year cycles with their phones, and some upgrade even less. It's no surprise to me that Gingerbread is the most popular right now. In two years, Jellybean will be the most popular (or what ever the highest version of 4.x is), while the latest devices run 5.x or even 6.x. I find it funny that we complain that people are still using 2 year old versions, while, on the PC end, we still have XP and Vista users. I think phasing out an OS version in 2 years is fairly quick, and in a few years we won't have to complain about things like this.
Here is the official Google blog announcing the Nexus S. It was announced on December 6, 2010. It wasn't available for sale in the U.S. until December 16. Even assuming you ran out and bought one the day it shipped, you still haven't owned it for three years. Not even two, in fact.
Breakfast served all day!
Buy an unlocked GSM Galaxy Nexus off of Google play and put a pre-paid SIM in it. I have one with NET10's "unlimited" SIM it and it has been working well for me.
The problem with this is that they don't sell a phone that has the features I want:
Physical keyboard slider
removable battery
microSD expandable (kinda stupid that Google has been moving away from this)
There really ought to be a Nexus Q version that comes out with the regular version.
How portable does it have to be? Most Android tablets don't include cellular equipment. Since you like Motorola, maybe a Motorola Xoom, which has a good upgrade record. Some app UIs don't look very good on tablet-sized screens, though.
That said, every Android phone I've owned has included switches for both the WiFi and 3G radios. "Airplane mode" turns off both, but you can also switch off one or the other, if you choose. Switch off the cell radio and forget about it. Or for that matter, buy a GSM Android phone and don't put a SIM card in it. Voila! Your phone will not work as a phone.
So, basically... buy whatever you want. My main suggestion is to buy it used, though, because unless you buy a phone that's been subsidized by a mobile contract, it will probably cost you $400 or more to buy new.
Breakfast served all day!
Samsung Galaxy Player.
I realize that most phones won't let you get to the Home screen without a SIM being installed, but can't you install a damaged SIM so it can't register on the network?
I would buy an Android powered Blackberry curve in a second. I loved my Blackberry to death, but using it made me feel like I had an Apple II in my pocket, when everyone else had a sparcstation. Dat keyboard.... to this day I'm still slower (even with Swype, Swiftkey, etc... I've tried them all) on a touchscreen than I ever was on my physical keyboard blackberry. Sadly the only android phones that come with a physical keyboard are marketed towards teenagers and thus manufactured as one grade up from trash.
moox. for a new generation.
In practice, this makes devices with the same quality and features in hardware less worth if they're not running iOS.
A) Most of the cost a lot less than a device running iOS.
B) iOS is dragged down by the abomination that is iTunes and the fact that it is so heavily locked down. I'm not just talking about what apps and features are allowed, you can't even copy your MP3s to the damn thing without iTunes or iCloud.
but if you have to add in the security risk
Can you point to one instance of users suffering from an in-the-wild security exploit on Android that was not patched on a phone from a major manufacturer? Android seems to be pretty secure, with the only security issues coming from apps, and Google does bother to patch its own or remove third party ones that are not fixed. Part of this resilience is probably due to there being little incentive to do drive-by attacks on Android since rooting can be accomplished in much easier ways, so no-one is bothering to look. With iOS for a while you could actually drive-by jailbreak anyone's iPhone via a web page, talk about scary.
Android vendors get away with putting on their own "improved" UI, which usually isn't that much of an improvement, but makes it harder for people to switch phone because the UI is different. There's no signature "it works this way and looks that way" OS on Android phones, making it harder to market them.
Actually the point is to make it easier to market the phone by differentiating it from all the other Android phones out there. I dislike most of them as well (the Samsung GSIII one is fairly minimal and not annoying, but HTC is horrible), but you completely misunderstood why they have them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So you are poor and broke and who exactly are you blaming for that? Not yourself apparently.
The market is growing even if you are begging on a corner.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Its not a question of "coding for 2.x" - its a question of being compatible. The early version of Android were very fully formed, almost all of the fluff added later were in the interface (*).
If someone is making a new app they need to take a look at if they NEED 4.x - most won't - they can make their apps with the features available in earlier version of Android.
"Angry Birds" only REQUIRES version 1.6 - but is compatible with all later versions of Android.
The "must have latest version" is mostly tech pundit circle jerking.
(*notice i say "almost all" meaning not all, learn to read before flaming)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
>Apple supports firmware updates including full hardware support for about 3 years at least.
That is probably why I'll buy the new iPhone when it comes out despite knowing it'll have a proprietary power plug instead of microusb and a walled OS. Maintaining the OS is crucial since no OS is bug-free when it's shipped. Android, by not having a routine patch policy, is just a few bugs away from a clever black hat finding the flaw that'll give them complete control of handsets around the world.
I had hoped that perhaps Microsoft would have understood this but the way they rolled over for the telcos suggests that Apple is currently the only handset company that has a grip on how important a uniform platform is.
In practice, this makes devices with the same quality and features in hardware less worth if they're not running iOS.
A) Most of the cost a lot less than a device running iOS.
B) iOS is dragged down by the abomination that is iTunes and the fact that it is so heavily locked down. I'm not just talking about what apps and features are allowed, you can't even copy your MP3s to the damn thing without iTunes or iCloud.
but if you have to add in the security risk
Can you point to one instance of users suffering from an in-the-wild security exploit on Android that was not patched on a phone from a major manufacturer? Android seems to be pretty secure, with the only security issues coming from apps, and Google does bother to patch its own or remove third party ones that are not fixed. Part of this resilience is probably due to there being little incentive to do drive-by attacks on Android since rooting can be accomplished in much easier ways, so no-one is bothering to look. With iOS for a while you could actually drive-by jailbreak anyone's iPhone via a web page, talk about scary.
Android vendors get away with putting on their own "improved" UI, which usually isn't that much of an improvement, but makes it harder for people to switch phone because the UI is different. There's no signature "it works this way and looks that way" OS on Android phones, making it harder to market them.
Actually the point is to make it easier to market the phone by differentiating it from all the other Android phones out there. I dislike most of them as well (the Samsung GSIII one is fairly minimal and not annoying, but HTC is horrible), but you completely misunderstood why they have them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, the problem is people buy what the carriers offer on two year contract.
If you went pre-paid instead and bought the Galaxy Nexus or earlier the Nexus S you'd be on Jellybean by now.
See my response to the exact same topic someone else pointed out, immediately before yours, and written six hours ago
moox. for a new generation.
Errr, I don't see that response. All I see is you being sarcastic and talking about Wikipedia. I thought I'd give you a source other than Wikipedia.
Breakfast served all day!
Since I can't edit a post, I'll edit it here - Evidently Microsoft might have switched gears on its update policy and as of Windows 8, might send upgrades over the air to all Windows 8 platforms.
Whether ZDNet has it right or not, it's hard to tell as I couldn't find any Microsoft update policy statement.
Yes, the response where I updated wikipedia to reflect the correct date of winter 2010 literally minutes before making my post on slashdot.
moox. for a new generation.
1)Too many versions too quickly.
Thus is life in the mobile world...
That's not how it should be. iPhone releases 1 phone per year, which includes 1 major OS upgrade to all prior phones of the past 2+ years (covering all carrier contract timeframes). All other mnaufacturers release so many phones that they can't keep up on software upgrades, and by the time that 1-2 year timeframe hits, that phone feels ancient. It's not exactly an optimal customer experience.
As a customer I specifically make phone purchases based on the odds of getting new android updates. At first I thought Samsung would do it, they failed me. Then I thought HTC would, and they failed too. Now I'm back to Samsung, and frankly the situation is even worse... even the Google branded phones have serious upgrade lag. Manufacturers blame it on the carrier, carriers blame it on the manufacturer. In the U.S. anyway, I've resigned to a best case scenario of getting a single upgrade in the first 6 months of the phones existence then spend the next 18 months watching several new Android releases come and do without being able to experience any more upgrades until my contract finally expires. It's just a big stalemate.
Galaxy Nexus or Nexus S, use it with T-Mobile Monthly4G. Virgin, as far as I can tell, won't let you bring your own phone.
(yeah, now we'll hear that there's some OTHER requirement which rules out T-mobile)
(disclosure: I am a Google employee)
My phone came with 2.2 and I have upgraded all the way to the latest Jelly Bean. Here's a hint: only buy Samsung or straight from Google. Maybe Motorola will finally stop being jerks now that Google owns them and have an upgrade path, but my next device will be a Nexus 7 straight from Google.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
My point is that most hardware CAN support an OS upgrade to become a better device. The phone companies just don't do it because *gasp* it would take work and eat into their 2 year upgrade profit lock in cycles.
I thought you guys were a bunch of Linux geeks always going on about how great a simple OS upgrade could make older hardware.
Sheesh, even XDA-devs managed to get non-geeks into rolling their own ROMs, but when such vaunted peeps as an actual Android Developer can't get a CM mod working on their device cause someone else didn't make it work out of the package for them...
Really guys? Is this not the same crowd that has as its founders a group of code-psychos who would write their own drivers just to see if they could make it work? You guys make the baby-Krishna cry. :(
If you don't put a SIM card in it, the phone part of your device will be effectively disabled.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
OK, is $30 a month reasonable enough for you? Assuming you are in the USA, you can buy the Galaxy Nexus (unlocked) from Google and use it on T-Mobile's Pay as you go service. Here are a couple of XDA threads which may help you out: [GUIDE] Smartphone Service for just $30/month [INFO][GSM] Own Your Cell Service ..with Prepaid and the Galaxy Nexus [UPDATED 5/24]
Virgin Mobile uses Sprint's network, so that means CDMA.
Show me a phone I can buy directly from Google and then use with a reasonably-priced service (e.g. Virgin Mobile) and I'll happily buy it. Otherwise STFU.
I've got the Galaxy Nexus from Google and use it on Simple Mobile (a T-Mobile MVNO). It works great and is $40 a month.
Confusing UI, shorter battery life.... what is to like? I wish i never clicked upgrade. I long for Gingerbread.
"Android 2.3 Gingerbread would be the dominant version of Android in 2012 despite the fact that Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich had already been released."
Android 3.0 Honeycomb is for tablets only. The majority of devices running Android are smartphones.
Without sim you can still dian emergecy patterns, the radio still works just fine.
Who knew?
DOH!
XP so what?
What in the hell are you talking about? The entire Droid line has qwerty keyboards, and they were long the flagship android phones, built like tanks.
There aren't as many phones with a physical keyboard as without, but there's still a LOT of them, and ample selection for anyone, on any carrier, to get a good one.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Indeed, where did you get that date from?
I bought a Nexus S online from Best Buy four days after they became available. I know for a fact when they appeared. Wikipedia's date of December 16, 2010 is correct.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Clearly you've never used a blackberry for any length of time. Technically the droid has a keyboard, but it's not something you'd want to regularly pound out two page emails with.
moox. for a new generation.
I do so on a regular basis.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Most people never upgrade their iOS either - so what?
unlockable phone and reasonably priced service? as a long time Virgin Mobile user, I'm going to have to say: unpossible!
I love my no-contract $25/mo plan (unlimited slow ass data, and 300 minutes talk). But it would be nice if there were more phones or at least upgradeable ones.
That said, I suspect if carriers were more heavily regulated in the US, rather than having a nation-wide standardized service (GSM) with no-contract phones we'd just find ourselves paying even more in upfront fees and new taxes. Because it would be the lobbyists for the carriers that would write up any government regulation, rather than a consumer watchdog group. Not much money (power) in being a consumer watchdog I'd imagine.
I hate to sound like a libertarian crackpot. But if the government can't fix all our problems, then we're only left with the free market. Yes I know Europeans seem to have a government that works, but I don't live in Europe, I'm in the United States. It just works different here. I guess it's our own fault for electing representatives for how well they hold some idealogical extreme rather than their track record on protecting the common person.
I'm running Jelly Bean, but that's not saying much since my tablet is only a few weeks old. If I find that OS updates in the future aren't available, I'll gladly root the thing. However, I am talking about a tablet; it's just a toy to me. If it's a phone that a person relies on every day, they'll probably be more hesitant to fiddle with it.