Forget patent trolling – Android’s biggest weakness, and most daunting obstacle to overcome, is its complete and utter lack of updates. Motorola has detailed its upgrade plans for Ice Cream Sandwich – and it ain’t good. If the company Google just bought can’t even update its phones properly, what can we expect from the rest?
The list of phones and when – if ever – they’re going to get their Ice Cream Sandwich updates is depressing, indeed. Other than the US version of the Wifi-only Xoom, the Motorola ICS rollout is going to start in the second quarter of 2012 at the earliest, with another group of devices planned for the third quarter. By far the largest group of devices are in the “Evaluation & Planning” phase – meaning, Motorola has no damn clue whatsoever.
“Thank you for being a Motorola Mobility customer,” thanks dude, “We know you value having the latest and greatest technology on your device. We are working very closely with Google and our carrier partners to bring you the best possible experience on each of our devices powered by Android. This means ensuring that all upgrades and updates enhance device functionality and provide an overall improved experience.”
Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG – none of them have begun their Ice Cream Sandwich rollout. Everybody knew it was going to be a long road, but this long? None of them have even started rolling out ICS yet? I knew I had to expect a little delay in getting ICS when I bought my Galaxy SII a few months before ICS’ official release, but we’re halfway February now, and still – nothing.
In the meantime, both my iPad 2 and my old iPhone 3GS (currently loaned to a friend who got sick of his crappy Xperia X10) are running iOS 5. My HTC HD7 is running the latest and greatest Windows Phone 7.5 release, receiving updates on the same day Microsoft releases them. Yet, the flagship Samsung Android device is still not enjoying an Ice Cream Sandwich, almost 4 months after its release. And because the CM9 team needs code from Samsung, CM9 for the SII is held up as well.
I can accept (and expected) a month, maybe even two months. I cannot accept (and certainly did not expect) four months. This is disgraceful for a €600 high-end device. I love this phone – but I don’t get the idea it’s loving me all that much.
Forget Apple’s and Microsoft’s patent trolling – this utter lack of updates is Android’s biggest problem. The only attempt we know of of Google trying to address this issue was the update alliance, announced back in May 2011. Sadly, this has resulted in absolutely nothing at all.
Like I said in my Android review – Google, fix this. Do something.
When you buy a PC with Windows 7 do you expect to get a free/automatic upgrade to Windows 8? Geeks don’t like it, but the average Android user doesn’t give a fuck.
That’s somewhat different – at least you can go out and *buy* Windows 8 yourself in most cases… One might argue that the version of Android you run doesn’t matter, but if you’re still stuck on Gingerbread, then there are an increasing number of apps that you can’t run now.
Here, however, users are stuck waiting for the vendor to provide the update, rather than going out and buying it themselves… except for those who run a 3rd party ROM such as CyanogenMod or something.
FWIW, several of us even have ICS running on our HP Touchpads, albeit buggy.
From the 700000 (or whatever many fart apps there are) apps you can’t run what? Chrome and a handful of other apps?
Like I said no normal person gives a shit, because they are very unlikely to ever hear about those. Geeky people will go crazy and write bad stuff on the intertubes, but they are not the majority .. sadly 😉
I’ve run into a few apps I wanted to try on the Touchpad running Gingerbread and couldn’t because they required Honeycomb (which was not widely available) or higher…
For example, this one: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.subhog.antipaper.notes
But hey, go ahead and tell me I’m just a geek, and my opinion doesn’t matter, I’m used to it.
OK my bad, I was talking about phone apps. Real tablet apps are all not going work, because they require Android 3 or higher.
On the other hand Google said that they do not support Gingerbread on tablets…
I’ve always been curious – where does one draw the line between phone and tablet?
I ask because there are tons of Gingerbread-compatible apps that run at tablet resolutions, and look great doing so.
Besides, it’s their own fault for not releasing Honeycomb sources…
It’s not just about apps (spoken like a geek yourself, sir!) Having installed ICS stock on a Samsung Galaxy S, I can tell you that it is light years slicker than Gingerbread. “Real” users will want that.
Geeky people are the people that give advice to their non-geeky friends. They don’t need to be a majority to influence the sales of one platform or another.
How about developers writing Android apps. It’s frustrating being, lots of the time, limited to Android 2.1-2.2 for all intents and purposes… Gingerbread is getting onmore and more devices, but anything developed with something post 2.1 in mind is going to be niche. To reach wide numbers on Android means looking at all the sweet stuff Google release in new updates and keep coding with much older stuff.
I don’t expect the upgrade to be free, as much as I expect the upgrade to be possible. Which is one of the many reasons why your analogy is false.
Next.
Edited 2012-02-16 01:00 UTC
Nope. You can wipe Windows 7 from there, install some rolling distro and upgrade to your satisfaction until the machine will become too old. Normal hardware should provide you with the option to upgrade your OS. Locked down systems don’t let you do it because of the lack of closed drivers and etc.
People with a technical bent are more likely to complain about the problem, but the word does leak out of geekland and out to normal people. They then get the feeling that they’ve bought and abandoned device. I’ve had non-technical people ask me for a recommendation and then turn around and ask me to explain what that “upgrade thing with Android” is.
That argument was weak the first time it was made and it sounds more stupid every time it is repeated.
Windows 7 gets updates. Almost all apps on Windows 7 get upgrades. You are not stuck on app versions when win7 was released.
You are stuck with 2.3 Android. It is okay for a budget phone but if you get a high end 600 euro($780) phone you should get at least 2 years of updates/upgrades.
Google should release something like the windows or intel sticker. If Samsung/HTC want it on their phone they have to update within 3 months of the Android release and provide it for at least 2 years. They can make a special version of phones that are more expensive.
What are you talking about?
Almost all Android apps get updates/upgrades via market too. It is just the base OS that doesn’t get upgraded to new major versions most of the time. Just like Windows.
Edited 2012-02-16 12:04 UTC
I think the issue is that Motorola-ICS will not get ICS updates promptly if at all.
The comparison of Windows is not all together accurate either. Windows7 won’t be unsupported the moment Win8 launches. Windows is also a retail OS which both end users and OEMs must pay noticable license costs for.
Alternatively, if the vendor is going to impose a specific OS version, lock out original developer updates and not support there molested version I sure do expect them to provide a firmware update for the OS version that is still supported and runs fine on the still perfectly good hardware. It’s the absolute minimum the vendor could do for it’s paying customers. Not to mention the security implecations in neglecting devices because they have the less hip OS version.
And vendors who don’t ship updates promptly for the current OS version; that’s insane and inexcusable.
It wouldn’t matter if Google stopped having major point upgrades and just upgraded individual features of the OS and apps.
The primary problem is that the phone makers do not make money from pushing new OS upgrades to existing phone users. They make money by selling new phones. So, a new phone with the new OS upgrade makes them money while putting the new OS upgrade on an already purchased phone does not.
A secondary problem is that the carriers do not want phones on their systems that enable features people have not explicitly paid for. A new OS upgrade can give you new features out of their control or access to features you haven’t paid for and they don’t want that.
Google cannot fix this unless they get into the phone making business and get good at it. And good look to them, since the carriers would likely fight it where possible to maintain control. The worst fear of the carriers is to become just another dumb pipe to the Internet.
Well, I bought Windows XP and still get updates, I bought a Nokia E52 and still get updates…
Those hardly got updates of such kind, they got security and overall bug fixes…
For what it’s worth, the jump from Gingerbread to ICS is a big change. Big api changes, big changes in the kernel with how the cameras and gpu & graphics stack work. Big changes in the the settings apps, the notification bar, etc.
The CM/AOSP folks are having a heck of a time getting devices brought up to snuff driver wise, and a lot of the extra features, functionality and tweaks they developed for GB have to be forward ported one by one. And their changes are pretty light weight.
The manufacturer’s and carriers? Well, their problem is even larger. All the extra skinning, tweaks, extra apps, etc., all have to be either ported or heavily tested to make sure they work right under ICS.
Even Asus, who had the gold metal of Honeycomb updates for the original Transformer is having a hard time getting an ICS release fully stabilized and released.
I’m not saying that things couldn’t be better run, they certainly can. But in this particular case, the level of change from GB to ICS is a big leap compared to previous upgrade iterations (Donut to Eclair, Eclair to Froyo, Froyo to Gingerbread) and additional time should be expected…
100% agreed. AFAIK most vendors just got ICS when it was released and expecting your phone to get it in a few months is just very naive. Software change management is hard.
An upgrade from 2.3 to 4 is going to take a while. My guess is Q3.
There’s yer problem.
That is the problem with throw-over-the-wall open source with added dependencies to closed source (drivers, vendor value-subtractions)
I really hope the Lima project finishes its Mali GPU drivers soon. My next phone will be all ARM (as in with Mali GPU) and hopefully that will make updating and running other FOSS systems (Mer, Tizen) fairly easy (Linux 1.0 easy)
LOL. Soo naive.
You can get essentially that from here http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/ It’s about as OSS friendly a phone as you can get.
Wow… I mean it’s nice and all, but 749 Euros (which for me in Canada is roughly $1,000)? I felt like I was spending big when I dropped $600 on an N900. I’m willing to pay a premium for freedom, but there comes a point when I have to remind myself it’s a frickin’ phone.
That’s a serious flaw in the development process. If things were done properly the OEM vendors would be involved from start to finish and it wouldn’t be a mad dash at the end once the source is dumped to the OEM’s.
Exactly. The vendors are part of the problem, but the main problem lies with Google. They want all these partners, but they refuse to give them access to the code until they release their own phone with the final version.
This is also bad for developers, since if Google released beta versions, they would be able to test and prepare their apps for the final release rather than having to go out and buy a new phone when it becomes available just to test their apps on the newest version.
Also, it hasn’t been 4 months. Its only been 3. According to wikipedia, the ics sdk was released october 19th, but the source for ics wasn’t released until november 14th.
Or they could just leave out the bullshit bloatware and release ICS as stock.
Google could probably also help the situation by releasing beta versions a few months in advance like Apple does, so at least then everyone could get started coding earlier, instead of having to wait for the next Nexus phone to be released.
But because Google releases the source at the last minute, even having a Nexus phone kind of sucks, because not every app is compatible with the latest and greatest out of the box, and there’s still some things that don’t work. So, it’s kind of like Linux in a way… just stick with your phone/distro of choice and enjoy some stability, or go with the latest and greatest and live with the growing pains
You know, I wish they would leave the crap ware off the device, but they don’t, so this is the situation users are in. Makes you kind of feel like being third in a human centipede.
I have to agree that it is a big change. The Honeycomb release was very short-sighted and should really be considered an experiment.
I used a few different Honeycomb tablets demoed in Best Buy and they were always incredibly slow on graphics transitions. Of course, this doesn’t mean the systems themselves were slow, but it certainly gave the appearance that they were. This was even more apparent when demoed side-by-side with the likes of the iPad which was arguably the impetus for the rushed Honeycomb release.
As was said, Google wanted to clean up/consolidate many parts of the system, and the ICS release was just the way to do that. In fact this was Google’s justification for not releasing the source code for Honeycomb until ICS was complete – they didn’t want anyone else trying to build Honeycomb because they knew it wasn’t going to be maintainable.
However, I think that Google ultimately would’ve faired a lot better had they published all updates to the source in an experimental branch as it was being updated. They just needed to make it very clear that anyone basing their work on that branch risked their work being broken or abandoned by upstream changes.
Also, this would’ve let anyone track the changes as they were happening and keep continuous integration of their own products going based off the latest experimental branch source. If said organisation’s software broke because of a change upstream, at least they’d know precisely which changes broke their software, so that they could have some idea of what caused it.
As it turned out, by dumping the finished product, Google certainly maintained strict control over how the final ICS product evolved (though they could’ve done that anyway albeit with a greater potential for negative – and positive – feedback along with way). However the price they paid was an almost certainly increased time to market of ICS builds/updates from manufacturers to support already existing hardware.
All that said the community has come out with some pretty compelling ICS releases so far. I personally switched to using the ics-evo-deck alpha 5 release for my EVO 4G sometime around the new year, primarily because I had heard amazing things about it increasing battery life (side note: it did – I went from 7 hours between charges to 2 days). Yes, it’s somewhat rough around the edges (anything that uses the GPS ends up needing a Force Close) and there’s no working 4g driver yet, but for me it was worth it.
Unfortunately for me, it appears that no more updates are going to come out for the ics-evo-deck image (apparently the author got tired of the ‘kiddies’ on the XDA forums complaining), so I’ll have to make due until CM9 is finished for the Evo 4g (though they’ve said it might be difficult because of the graphics drivers).
So I guess my point is that, yes, I too wish I could get an official ICS release for my phone from the manufacturers (especially since I already know the hardware can handle it). Unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen for a very long time, if ever, because hardware manufacturers have little incentive to keep software current on old hardware. In their view, it means that less people will be buying new hardware, which probably has more than a few grains of truth to it. After all, ICS on the Evo 4g makes it “feel” like a new system, even though the hardware is already “old” by mobile phone standards.
I personally think this stance is ridiculous and just plain wasteful (since phones are difficult for consumers to re-purpose for other computing needs after their perceived end-of-life). But that’s just my opinion. Yours probably differs.
I’m going out on a limb here for a second but how about not include all that additional crap that isn’t required; ICS is perfectly fine out of the box and doesn’t require additional tweaking – port the drivers, compile the damn thing and provide it to end users via an internet enable win32 front end that bypasses carriers altogether.
Quite frankly it is the same crappy excuse that Samsung used to justify not bringing ICS to Samsung Galaxy S (apparently it doesn’t have enough ROM space on the device) – could they provide a vanilla version of ICS for Galaxy without TouchWiz? sure they could but god forbid the end user seeing a phone without all their crapware preloaded onto it!
Sorry but once again we have phone companies selling their phones cheaper than Apple only to find that they don’t have the resources at the other end of the equation, namely customer support, to adequately develop and support Android when future updates and upgrades arrive.
There is a reason why I advocate Windows Phone 7 and iPhone’s but I guess people on this forum (I’m not directing this observation at you btw) will never learn in favour of believing that being an Android fanboy is ‘sticking to the man’.
Edited 2012-02-16 06:22 UTC
To me as an engineer, it isn’t about sticking to the man. It is about being interested in the device I use. WP7 and iOS are appliances, Android is what I consider to be an real operating system (guts exposed).
If they were selling the Galaxy S II for $50 unlocked bootloader, unlocked sim and unsubsidised then I’d be happy for their position of, “screw you, you’re on your own” but the reality is that the SII costs in NZ$999 so as a result I expect at least 3 years worth of operating system updates as part of the large sum of money that was handed over initially.
As for the following:
What a load of crap – call me back when I can download and compile a bog standard vanilla Android source code (kernel and user land) and load it onto a phone without having to jump through a dozen fiery hoops because of locked bootloaders and the vendor refusing to provide the source code to their drivers. “Guts exposed” is a load of crap – if they were exposed I’d be able to do the former without having to hack the living crap out of the source code just to get the thing working on my phone.
Edit: Sorry if I sounded like a bit of a rude prick in the post.
Edited 2012-02-16 09:03 UTC
Certainly you have a point (see my other post), but partially exposed is miles better not exposed.
I am running ICS on my phone (it isn’t particularly fast but it IS stable).
AFAIK SGS2 does allow you to unlock the bootloader easily. HTC and SE allow you to do this as well (Ironically not Motorola).
Also as an engineer I don’t mind jumping through hoops (compiling etc), it is a tradeoff and part of the fun, If I wanted to stay ignorant I would have gone with WP7 or iOS. Basically I’m advocating against everybody being a dumb consumer and just expecting everything to be fed to them (Imagine if everybody had an iPhone…that would be horrible)
Noted that with closed drivers those hoops do get quite hot at times…
Edited 2012-02-16 09:37 UTC
There is a reason why I advocate Windows Phone 7 and iPhone’s but I guess people on this forum [snip] will never learn in favour of believing that being an Android fanboy is ‘sticking to the man’.
Wrong assumption. Why is using Android “sticking it to the man”? Google is “the man”. Most techies using Android are choosing to use a phone that:
A.) Isn’t locked out the wazoo.
B.) Works well with alternative systems.
Windows Phone 7? I might be wrong, but my guess it being an MS phone, it ties in heavily with Windows. I don’t use Windows and I’m not planning to.
iPhone? I’ve experienced the activation process and it ties into iTunes. Which either requires Windows or Mac OS X. I have neither. So seems to be a no go too.
“The CM/AOSP folks are having a heck of a time getting devices brought up to snuff driver wise”
You’re partially right, but even the supposedly “unhackable” devices like the Droid X have a mostly-working ICS port for CM9 these days. Not everything works, but considering it’s a community effort, the results have actually been really surprising. I think, if anything, CM is going to be very pivotal in breathing new life into Android phones that “aren’t supported” for ICS.
You’re definitely right about the API changes though. The amount of changes in ICS gives the impression that they reached a few years into the future and brought a phone platform back with them.
Yep there is the real problem:
And no or hardly any budget or dedicated time to work on it.
Google should simply stop making big whizz bang about Android releases leaving that for more obscure developer and partners conferences. Turning Android release names into marketing codes directed towards the consumer was a major mistake.
By creating a demand they can’t fullfill they are only hurting themselves.
Managing API evolution is another matter. There’s really no reason that besides hw related innovation that is tied to given device for its lifetime new APIs couldn’t be released and distributed as software components separate from the core OS. The fragments API is first step.
Hopefully ICS looks to be a major milestone in android lifetime that will follow with less frequent majors.
I hope they put less and less stuff in the releases and more and more components in the Android Market.
People care about apps and features. If you get all apps and features via Market updates then not getting new major release won’t be that infuriating for people.
They really should break all that stuff out.
The only problem is how security problems in the stuff they can’t push into the Market are handled. I can live without updated apps, but major security holes need to be closed.
+1. The fact that Google markets new versions of the OS heavily knowing full well that maybe a handful of actual people will actually be able to use it is an issue.
They chose a more open model for Android and thus should treat the project like most open source projects where most developers/people would have used/downloaded the beta well before a .0 release. They can’t market their OS like Apple does. Even then Apple releases iOS betas to developers well in advance of the actual release to the masses.
Imagine not being able to download betas for your distro of choice. That is basically the situation here. That puts everyone at a disadvantage, including Google apparently.
This could all be resolved by forcing the vendors to unlock their bootloader’s and disclose all the changes (drivers, patches, updates) so that it can all merge back into a single tree and Google themselves simply make regular builds and address anything that breaks. If all these drivers were merged into the main kernel tree along with the Android changes we wouldn’t even be debating this topic but due to the clusterfuck that now exists because of the way Android is developed and integrated this is why we’re at this current impasse.
True. Unfortunately that isn’t the first hurdle. The first hurdle is to get manufacturers to stop using binary blobs everywhere. Only with the source you can smoothly transition between kernels, otherwise you’re being cut off by the ABI changes. I have ICS running on my htc vision but the only reason the camera works is because someone used a hex editor on the camera blob.
Edited 2012-02-16 08:44 UTC
Android partners will never give they proprietary bits away for free. Besides price and nice shell this is their only diffrentiator and a compettitive advantage . This not only amounts to crappy launchers but optimized hw drivers and drivers for custom (like digitizer in Note) hw and whatnot. Not In a world where countless low margin PC box mover companies are breathing on their necks. If you want open device buy in Maemo before it’s killed.
Edited 2012-02-16 10:38 UTC
Moto needs time to update drivers, Q/A, etc. I’m typing this on my Xoom with the official ICS update. It was first since it’s the Wifi only, now Moto needs to work with Carriers, Dev and Q/A isn’t overnight ya know.
The lack of updates and the 2.2 security bug is why everything but the Nexus phones and iPhones got banned from the corporate phone plan.
[Blackberries got banned because they don’t use Active Sync, and WP7 is a victim of user apathy.]
I’m still stuck in Froyoland on my Motorola XPRT waiting for an update to Gingerbread!
There is a perfect explanation in the “Building Windows 8 blog” about ARM platform lock-in.
==========
The approach taken by ARM Holdings, the licensor of ARM products is, by design, not standardized in this manner—each device from each manufacturer is unique and the software that runs on that device is unique. There is of course a standard instruction set and CPU architecture, one that is always improving (for example, adding 64-bit support and multiple cores), but many of the connections between the CPU and other components are part of the innovation each licensee brings to the ARM platform. Commonality across devices can occur under the hood, but is not applicable or significant to consumers. End-users are technically restricted from installing a different OS (or OS version) on a device or extending the OS, so this is generally not possible, and rarely supported by the device maker. Device makers work with ARM partners to create a device that is strictly paired with a specific set of software (and sometimes vice versa), and consumers purchase this complete package, which is then serviced and updated through a single pipeline. The cross-partner, integrated engineering of these embedded devices is significant. In these ways, this is all quite different than the Windows on x86/64 world.
=============
Ofcourse WP7 and iOS devices are also ARM based but probably the OS architecture is good enough that versions do not differ from each other that much and as the hardware is controlled by single/small group of companies, the devices look to the software similar enough to allow new OS versions to run on older hardware.
It’s even more stupid than that actually : to get a consistent hardware architecture, Microsoft mandate that all devices running Windows Phone 7 use a single family of SoCs from a single manufacturer (source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_phone_7#System_requirements )
On their side, Apple partially design their SoCs and support an extremely small number of phones, so they are also able to keep a good level of hardware consistency.
No matter how much Microsoft try to make this mess look like innovation in their blog post (they probably don’t want to piss off their hardware partners too much), the success of ARM is the worst thing that ever happened to OS manufacturers. I’m surprised that this exercise in postmodern hardware design still features standard instructions to access RAM.
If Google really wanted to improve the Android update situation, they should probably choose one of the following paths :
* Mandate use of a specific family of SoCs, like everyone else. Ideally those from Ti, since their specs are publicly known and can be supported by the AOSP code itself. But it pisses off hardware manufacturer in the short run, and puts Android in a dependence situation with respect to the chosen hardware manufacturer in the long run.
* Develop Android in the open. Makes Google lose a major part of its leverage on hardware manufacturers, may mean total loss of application compatibility between devices in the long run. Not necessarily such a good idea.
* Work on the new driver-OS interface first and publicly release the specs as early as possible. Google keep maximal control on the OS itself while giving hardware manufacturers more time to work on updates. But it requires some amount of developer discipline that Google employees may not have (“Stable driver ABI in an unreleased version of a Linux-based OS ??? Shocking !”). Nevertheless, I think that this is what they should do.
Edited 2012-02-16 08:46 UTC
Mandating one SOC is one of major reasons why WP7 gets half hearthed support from manufacturers and is loosing in the market. What interest does Samsung has supporting system that forces it to buy components at competitor (Quallcomm) while having better and definitely cheaper equivalents?
You may have noticed that I am definitely not a fan of this option myself
Just had to mention it for the sake of completeness.
Sure, just wanted to add my view to the bigger picture .
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
Alan Kay 1982
It may be that the old PC model – one OS and many OEMs – is simply no longer viable in the post-PC world of computer devices. In the entire phone and tablet market only two companies are making any real money and only two look like long term sustainable businesses, which are Apple and Samsung and the latter’s financial performance is quite a bit weaker than the former. Maybe Nokia can come back from the brink with WP7 but I wouldn’t bet on it, a Microsoft takeover of Nokia is still likely I think.
Android does not look like a very healthy ecosystem for OEMs or developers, it’s primary impact has been to prop up the power of the carries (which iOS may have been able to kill) and it is ironically the power of the carriers that leads to the OS update fiasco.
Structurally there is no reason for any of this to get better unless Google does something spectacular with Motorola and if they go the route of making their own hardware the marginal OEMs may all jump ship.
One option for Googlerola would be to focus on cheap (free?) feature phones running a cut down Android OS and with Google services baked in and pushed out in the hundreds of millions to the developing world markets. Google need to do something about their long term mobile strategy soon as the one they have is not working (from Google’s business point of view) and their primary source of income (advertising served via the PC) could be under real threat as the PC appears to be entering a secular decline.
Ah, the old quote from the 80s… And what happened to companies which used to follow that advice back in the day ?
-Amiga corporation : Dead.
-Be inc : Dead.
-Commodore international : Dead.
-Atari : Left the PC business.
-IBM : Left the PC business.
-Apple : Nearly died, got back in the race by swallowing its pride and making Windows-compatible DAPs.
Doesn’t sound like such a good plan in the end, does it ?
The hardware world is a jungle. Companies must either keep up with the crazy pace of its permanent arm race or implode. With each decade, more computer hardware companies are quietly buriend. In the end, the only thing that survives across the years is software that betrays its friends when the time is right and abstracts itself from the hardware it runs on.
The IBM-compatible market has never been easy on OEMs, and yet we find that kind of computers in every home. It seems like you just realized that the computer market is easy on software manufacturers and hard on hardware manufacturers, whereas it has been the case for some time now.
Excuse me, but did you just compare Ferrari with Citroën ? Regardless of OS considerations, manufacturers which solely focus on high-end and high-margin products are likely to make more profit that manufacturers which try to cater to everyone’s needs. In the end, though, it is in everyone’s interest that the car and cellphone markets do not become filled with premium brands.
And what would that change exactly ? If Nokia’s smartphone division is not able to keep up with the hardware race and Microsoft’s OS is not attractive enough to attract the masses, I don’t see how merging both can magically make everything better.
What you do not seem to assess is that in today’s telecom business, carrier racket is a mandatory step when you want to make low- and mid-end phones, which is what most people use and what Apple consciously avoids to make.
Let’s sum up why.
Along the course of cellphone history, carriers have successfully led people to believe that low-end phones cost €1 and mid-end phones cost less than €100. And that being forced to stay 12 to 36 month at the same carrier was just linked to some technological constraint.
They probably did so because they understood that people would not pay the full price for a cellphone if they knew how much it was, but were ready to pay a smaller sum each month if they claimed it was used for telephony services.
Now, this is a problem because it gives carriers a ridiculous amount of power. They can just say “Nice phone you got there, sir, it would be sad if something bad happened to its retail ‘price'”, and cellphone manufacturers will do whatever they want.
High-end phones are not so much hit by this situation : since they are way above the €100 psychological threshold anyway, even once subsidized, they can afford to cost a bit more. But for the lower-end, the problem is real. People who are not informed of what happens behind the scene won’t buy a low-end phone with a contract for more than 1€ if they find a similar one for 1€, so subsidizing is a question of life or death.
The only way this could stop is if carriers stopped cooperating with each other to maintain this broken system in place, and if one of them set out to inform users of what’s going on.
Here in France, there is some hope of this happening as a new carrier, Free Mobile, has set out to have two separate contracts for cellular services and phone subsidizing. As an example, for a phone which costs €145, you pay €1 on “purchase” and will pay €6 more for 24 months before the phone is officially yours. You can leave Free’s cellular services anytime during this period, only keeping the phone subsidizing contract alive. Phones are sold unlocked.
I wish them well, and hope that this example will be followed around the world by other minor carriers who want to get some PR and differentiate themselves from “the big ones”. It’s about time people find out how much phones actually cost, and make a choice in an informed way.
Again, what could this possibly change ? If people do not buy Motorola phones now for some hardware reason (they are too expensive, they break easily…), why would they be more likely to buy them with a Google logo on it ?
Most likely, it would only damage Google’s brand, and weaken the relationships between Google and other phone manufacturers. I really don’t think that Google want to rely on a single phone manufacturers that was until recently on the road to bankruptcy.
I wouldn’t worry for Google’s future, if I were you.
As one of the world’s largest search engines, they have so much control on the information that people see on the internet that there will always be someone willing to pay in exchange for some privileged presence in their search results.
Since they have a quasi-monopoly on web advertising, Google are also making money on almost every web page someone sees, no matter whether it’s on a cellphone, a tablet, a laptop, or a desktop. Due to the Internet’s freely accessible nature, websites live and breathe via advertising, so as soon as mobile-optimized websites start to represent a significant amount of server bandwidth, people will find out a way to put ad in them. With a bit of luck, we’ll even get rid of the animated interactive ad crap in the way.
Google have a symbiotic relationship with the internet as it exists today, each one relying on the other for its proper operation. The only ways to sink Google, as it stands today, would be to sink the internet, or completely change the way it works.
The latter is possible, but I’m not sure whether it’s a desirable outcome. I like the fact that I can browse the web without constraints, only giving money to websites in the form of ad hits, shopping, and voluntary donations. I’m not attracted by an internet made of tightly closed silos that each require a paying subscription before information may be accessed, or an internet that is only accessible via “apps” that are tied to a number of devices and OS versions, and at the mercy of the will of my phone’s OS manufacturer.
Google’s power on the internet is frightening, but so far they have not abused it so I’m relatively fine with that. I just avoid using their services. If one day they go crazy, well, I guess I’ll join the protests on the road…
Recently I’ve seen way more adds through various Android apps than the browser and switched from using dedicated GPS device to Google nav completely.
I don’t think you have to worry about Google.
I will be very disappointed if Google doesn’t fix this situation over the next few months. Once the last few buyout approvals go through, they have the power. No more excuses. Get it done.
The experience of myself and my friends would indicate Motorola can’t put out hardware that lasts more than six months before having major failures, these days.
Having some experience in the telecommunication world and as a former Nokia employee, I can say this will never change.
Any manufacturer is happier to sell you a new mobile than provide you free OS upgrades.
Apple does it, because they control both hardware and OS.
WP7 manufactures are doing it, only because Microsoft imposes them to do it. But if Microsoft can see better manufacturer support for WP7 by dropping this requirement, they will drop it.
The guys developing Android phones are the same ones that did Brew, Symbian, or whatever proprietary OS they had. These are on the game to sell you mobiles, not OS upgrades.
Actually the casual user has been educated that if he/she wants a better mobile, then he/she needs to buy a new one. It is a shame that works like this, but I see hardly any possible change on how it works.
Your former employer has already forced MS to support an additional SOC (ST Ericcsson Novathor ) in WP. With Win8 o believe the situation will more resemble one with Windows. MS is enforcing a number of PC-like interface standards so o guess only manufacturers who adapt will be given invitation.
In the longer term this should beneft android platform as well.
Indeed, it would be good if non-Windows ARM devices benefitted from the ARM standardization that Microsoft try to bring on the table for Windows 8.
Here’s to hoping that most OEMs will attempt to reduce their manufacturing costs by using the same standards everywhere…
Edited 2012-02-16 10:53 UTC
The other side of the coin is that you cannot mod,alter or remove the OS. So the fact that there are standards, for us at least, there isn’t any discernible benefit.
That is, unless they start selling completely open tablets with the same architecture…
My meaning of benefit was the same that Harlan pointed out : as forced to add these interfaces for windows anyway producers will start putting them in android devices enmasse as well. That will enable upstream Linux support and lower the barrier for kernel upgrades.
The problem is that MS knows that as well. They talk about windows dedicated HW and may implement number of IP traps in those standards to make it impossible for open systems to embrace them. They don’t have to look at Intel any more.
The designs will soon reach general public and work for finding assorted patents and relevant prior art should start NOW.
Google shoud have come up with this 2 years ago. This is an area where they seriously lab behind MS in os development.
Edited 2012-02-16 12:20 UTC
Okay so I have a Samsung Galaxy S i9000. It has like 3 or 4 ICS ROMs and some of them are very stable, I ran one for about 2 weeks as my daily driver but then gave up on it and went back to CM 7.2.
Why? No it isn’t cause ICS was unstable, it worked great on my phone, everything worked no problem at all.
But, a few of my apps misbehaved or were not quite compatible with ICS and I also missed some of the nice features of CM7 that are still missing from CM9. For example, the biggest one being volume rocker to skip fwd or back in music player when screen is off. I use this extensively when working out and just have the phone in my pocket. Having to take phone out of pocket and look at the screen to skip songs is a pain. Another thing being the fully configurable lockscreen in CM7 including delay locking so it only asks me passcode if I haven’t used my phone for 30 minutes. I could go on and on.
But in my opinion Android is okay but it is CyanogenMod that makes it great – at least for me. I will never buy a phone that isn’t supported by CM ever no matter how man cores or Gee Bees it has.
Edited 2012-02-16 10:58 UTC
Is there a flip phone (as opposed to candy bar phones with touch screen) with decent specs, price, features that is considered supported by Cyanogenmod (and will continue to be by future releases based on Ice Cream Sandwich)?
Maybe I’m weird but I like flip phones so much better than the candy bar form factor, I think I’d forego the touchscreen!
All the ones listed on the devices page at cyanogenmod
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices
look like candy bar phones, every single one.
I’d have to agree. I have a Droid X2 and it’s relegated to evaluation and planning stage as well. Here’s to hoping dragonzkiller is able to get CM9 running on it and released soon…
I hope they at least unlock their bootloaders on ALL devices. Then even if Motorola is too lazy to update the OS, the hacker/mod community will do it for them.
There’s almost certainly some carrier and/or volume stuff involved.
I have the Electrify which is the same as the Photon 4G but without WiMAX. The Photon 4G is in Development, scheduled for Q3, but the Electrify is “In Evaluation & Planning. Further details to follow.”
The main difference here seems to be the carriers. And I’m sure the Electrify has fewer handsets sold.
That said, my phone is working fine and I wasn’t promised anything with my purchase. But it will be really annoying if it gets stuck on Gingerbread while its sister phone gets ICS.
If Motorola can’t ship updates.. heck, it’s far worse then that. If Google Motorola can’t use Google’s stock Android distribution (aks, actual Android) instead of one of the knockoff child forks these vendors keep feeling the need to ship and unsupport.. WTF? The real value in Google having it’s own hardware manufacturing arm is using Google Android instead of shipping a pre-molested version.
This just further comfirms my opinion; if it’s not a Nexus device, it’s not Android inside. When I booted it up for the first time it popped up a license warning “this device will recieve updates directly from Google.. agree?” – Heck yes I agree. I baught this specific OS implementation because it was going to get updates directly from Google.
What, you mean like my Google Nexus S, that still doesn’t have the ICS update?
As some people said, ICS bring a lot of changes to the infrastructure. While the OS is free, all those manufacturers still have the Microsoft/Apple mind of closing their changes and drivers. Guess what, it’s firing back. Now they can’t keep up with Google’s development. If they open everything, I’m sure a 14-16 year old kid will eventually hack those things to work on the new OS.
The author of the article said “If the company Google just bought can’t even update its phones properly, what can we expect from the rest?”. Common, they just bought the company, it is not still integrated. Don’t expect a miracle.
Also, very likely they bought it because of (1) Patents, Patents, Patents, and (2) Have a in-house manufacturer so they can release the default phones faster, and (3) Do I said Patents.
They haven’t bought anything yet. They have announced a deal to purchase Motorola Mobility but the purchase hasn’t happened yet. The deal just got US and EU approval last week and is still awaiting approval from China.
“Crappy” Xperia’s will get ICS upgrade in a couple of months.
http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2011/12/21/ice-cream-sandwic…
BTW I’m a long-term SE addict and happy user of Xperia Mini Pro phone. I don’t understand how anybody can buy terrible motorola devices.
Edited 2012-02-17 09:35 UTC
I have a Nexus S phone here, Googles own phone and still no ICS for this either.
It’s really annoying that they stopped the OTA update and haven’t resumed it yet, but at least the official 4.0.3 ROM is out there and can be manually installed.
I had to soft reset the phone after installing it, though, to fix the battery problems and get it to last more than just 15 hours from a single charge.
Annoying nonetheless, but it could be worse (Eg. if I had a Samsung Galaxy S).
Yeah, they stopped the OTA for a reason, stuff stopped working. I am not going to take the chance on manually doing the upgrade as this phone is used for work.
I’ve got a Motorola Atrix phone. It’s a brilliant concept, a little bit crippled/ahead of it’s time. The phone needs 2-4gb of ram not the 1gb they shipped it with. When it boots into laptop mode it doesn’t have enough ram to run more than about 3 tabs in firefox. This is mostly because the phone is using the bulk of the ram for phone functions at the same time. Updates to the firmware are definately necessary. These devices are no longer phones. When you put 48gb of storage into a phone and make it turn into a laptop it better damn well keep being updated/upgraded. These devices are going to start going toe to toe with laptops over the next 3-5 years. If the rumors are true and there’s a quad core 2gb atrix 3 later this year I’ll definately be upgrading to it.
ICS was probably announced and released too early. Google felt pressure to release because the iPhone 4s was releasing and the Christmas buying season was coming up. Although only one phone would have ICS during the Christmas season, it being released led consumers to assume the phones being bought would quickly be updated.
ICS is already on release 4.04 and some significant changes have occurred, at least under the hood.
Part of the delay on phone vendors part was probably them waiting for the platform to stabilize before investing in porting it to their devices.
Edited 2012-02-20 12:24 UTC