
At the Google I/O conference, Google just held its second keynote address,
which focussed on Android. The talk was held by Vic Gundotra, and he unveiled a number of new features coming in Android 2.2 "Froyo", as well as some features coming in Froyo+1. The main theme of the entire keynote? Openness and choice, and a whole bucketload of not-so-subtle jabs at Apple. I'd like to apologise upfront for a possible lack of critical notes in this article - I'm still handing out the brownie points to Google for
yesterday.
Member since:
2005-07-11
I'll reserve judgment on this until I see exactly how it's implemented, but right now it sounds scary. Do you really want some random <thing> on the Internet to send a message to your phone, and have the phone start an application based on that info? Sounds like a security nightmare waiting to happen.
However, if they've thought about it long and hard enough, maybe they've come up with a way to make it safe. We'll see when it hits devices.
Stream the uncompressed WAV? Or transfer the MP3 and play it on the phone? Hopefully it's the latter, or else everyone's data charges are going to go through the roof.
That's actually one of the biggest problems with Android: development is happening too fast.
2.2 is about to be released ... and there are still 1.5 phones (LG Eve) being sold, and new 1.6 phones (Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and X10 mini) hitting the market.
There's also a bazillion different CPUs, GPUs, chipsets, screen sizes, screen resolutions out there. On the one hand, you can get a device with the specific hardware features you want. On the other hand, it's a royal pain to develop for (especially to optimise for), as everything gets written "for the lowest common denominator".
Sure, Apple only releases upgrades once a year, and there's only 1 form factor and hardware version to choose from. But at least it's stable and easy to target.
I'll be happy when Android development starts to slow, with only 1 or 2 major updates per year, and vendors can actually start to provide updates for existing phones. There's nothing worse than buying a phone today with 1.5 or 1.6 on it, only to find out tomorrow you can't upgrade it, or you can only upgrade to 2.0.
Edited 2010-05-20 22:41 UTC