Android Device Makers: Take Note of These Two Articles
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 24th Dec 2011 13:00 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless "Earlier today, Samsung revealed that it won't update the Galaxy S, its most successful smartphone to date, to the latest version of Android. You might shrug and dismiss that as just more evidence of Android's inherent fragmentation or the need for buyers to beware, but I take grave issue with it. This is a decision based not on technical constraints, as Samsung would have you believe, but on hubris." This. A gazillion million thousand times this. Also: "It's simple: make a large high-end device, a smaller value device, and a QWERTY device. Maybe one or two other specialty form factors, tops. That's it. Update them once a year, and keep the names the same." It would make updating a hell of a lot easier. We don't need the Samsung Galaxy SII Epic 4G Touch Sensation.
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zima
Member since:
2005-07-06

Symbian was once the dominant smartphone os, and look what happened to it.

Yeah, look what happened to it... http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-200812-201112 (generally, I suspect its future might be much less clear than Elop makes it out to be)

The line between smartphone and feature phone is blurring by the day. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to see Android on feature phones in the near future. I don't believe this would exclude it from smartphones, however if the fragmentation continues, I can see it losing its dominant position if for no other reason than that app devs will get sick of all the model-specific quirks.

Most of the world will just ignore such confused "feature phone" distinctions ...even if some insist on using it for what is just "inexpensive smartphone".
It's like making distinction on the basis of what "workstation" used to mean - but it doesn't make sense any more, any cheap laptop can do virtually "everything".

And dev fragmentation... they just won't target model-specific quirks, the situation with the SDK will get more tidied up if anything - that is what's actually happening despite the variety of handsets exploding.

I generally disagree with Apple's policies, but imho, they did do one thing right: not allowing carriers to fuck with the os image. iOS is iOS, no matter where you get your phone.

OTOH that's what greatly helped the adoption of Android...
(and as for iOS... just buy a device from some countries and see how Facetime "works", or remember how readily Apple implements SIM or data transmission locks)

The sad bit is that the Nexus One isn't as old as the iPhone 3GS, and look at that, the 3GS is still getting updated (though I wouldn't be surprised if iOS 5 was the last update it gets).

But remember the 3GS is still being actively promoted / it will be likely dropped much sooner counting from the end of notable sales.

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