It has been exhilarating to watch critic after critic get the state of Android machinery completely wrong.
Android is a breakthrough in mobile OSes relative to the ones that came before it. It is absolutely something that’s needed. Let’s look at the characteristics of the mobile OSes that came before it:
Real-time OSes, made to be able to perform certain tasks under pressure. Fundamentally good, but the backlash was that most phones ran on really poor chips.
OSes with a nonexistent, minimal (J2ME) or very stiff application API. Mobile applications worked great as long as they were simple and underperforming. I can name a handful of mobile applications that worked well. There were, even then, more target devices and interested users than iPhones and Android devices put together; there was a market for great applications, but no one was able to produce them.
Some OSes were produced with infinite variability across multiple manufacturers, multiple alternate versions of the same fundamental device, and a succession of these devices. You had one version for one phone for every two or three months. Some of these are patches. Some of these have new functionality, some of which actually depends on the capability and some which is just ifdefed out for segmentation purposes.
The identity crisis that the Android platform is going through right now boils down to something very simple: it is compelling to have one big, feature-rich, oft-revved, secure, full-tilt platform, managed by a large company and at least largely open to everyone.
If it sounds like a huge boon for customers, it’s because it is; ideally you can pick and choose from the devices that take full advantage of the latest revision whenever you want to buy, and you get to scoop up many new features over the lifetime of your device because the people who are implementing them are not directly interested in getting you onto the newest device.
The problem is that it isn’t a huge boon for device makers. It used to be, and it still is to a residual extent in that OSes were horrible before. When Android was started, it was the first serious major ground-up mobile OS in years, and from people who had already built a nichepoorly adopted platform where the ideas of cloud storage and apps had taken root. With the alternatives being what they were, and with the device makers being pants at if not creating then at least executing mobile OSes, they would have been forgiven for looking for the next bus to modernity.
But it’s not a huge boon right now. Look at HTC, one of few device makers that has consistently cared about the user experience, to the point of nearly making Windows Mobile Classic livable. HTC do their own thing with their own shell on pretty much every platform, including Android. Look at Samsung, which is taking the hard road building a new OS of its own, Bada, after some experience with Android (and nearly every other OS, it should be said). And look at everyone else, whose long development cycles and penchant for forking ensures that they won’t ship with the latest or second-to-latest release of Android.
The really valuable part of Android, the one that as far as I can tell is not surrounded by the controversy of the loosely-defined “genuine Android” stamp and the one that not only will live on to become its legacy but already is today is the bottom half. The open part. The one that device makers are as free to strip away as the rest of it, but choose not to because they’d hardly have a system anymore.
There’s a case for a line of full-stack Android phones. Google made a good model. But for the device makers, I think there’s no business in providing the scenario that would be the aforementioned boon to customers. This would sadden me deeply if it weren’t for one thing.
The existence of the half-stack Android option leaves it open for device makers to deliver their own take on the second half. Right now, device makers still mostly suck. Eventually, with any luck, the better makers will continue bubbling to the top in a self-perpetuating positive circle. It is true that the best user experience comes from designing the hardware and the software. It just so happens that the industry sucks at the software, but that there are device makers that are actually good at certain aspects of the software. They are given a chance with Android.
You can continue waiting forever for the day when everyone ships the latest versions of their fork of full-stack Android within a month of release. Google can’t force them to. They have some sway; they are squeezing fairly weakly in a dickish kind of way today, and the device makers decide (rightly) that it’s unacceptable. If success for Android is about every device being 2.2 the next quarter, they haven’t reached it. But Android is successful, today, if success is sneaking Android into many new interesting phones or tablets.
There’s another angle to this, and it involves carriers going beyond carriers to become stewards of the phone experience, something that they absolutely shouldn’t do, something that they can’t do well, something that they haven’t ever done a great job of, but something they seem to do anyway in a world where unsustainable growth without focus to please the stock market and inflate egos is somehow regarded as a good thing. This puts a wet towel over anything good with any device on their networks, ever, but just thinking about it makes me too depressed to consider writing about how it affects what I just talked about. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble imagining it.
The open part. The one that device makers are as free to strip away as the rest of it, but choose not to because they’d hardly have a system anymore.
I might be wrong, but isn’t the “open part” pretty much all of Android minus some apps, like the app market, and the GPS app? As far as I know, a lot of cheap hardware already runs that system.
By LKM · 2010.09.18 08:23
LKM: Yes, more or less. When HTC toss a few apps and add a few layers, they’re using, not abusing, Android. People who say that means they don’t use Android are right in a small way and wrong in a big way.
By Jesper · 2010.09.18 08:41
Right now the manufacturers are still free to switch OS – as you say, Samsung have tried everything, and Android looks like a stepping stone. HTC are just as likely to go Win Mob 7 when it arrives.
Where that may start to change is when/if consumers start to build up an investment in a platform – that’s obviously working for Apple (iPod owners becoming iPhone and iPad owners) – although I think most people’s investment in Apps is quite small.
Once they start marketing the idea that you can get a new Android phone and all your pictures / Apps / etc are just there, then I think the platform starts to become more ‘sticky’. Put some money into games that require 2.2 (or latest version) and again, users will demand the phone that runs Angry Birds.
As for the carriers, I think it is inevitable that the carriers will lose their battle, and become the simple data pipes we require – even if, in the end, it will take regulation to force them to do it (as it has with EU roaming). Governments are now very aware how much a poor or overly costly telecommunications impact on a country’s competitiveness – unfortunately the focus always lags 5 years behind, and is still on broadband and broadband speed – but my suspicion is that what would be best for the EU economy would be cheap near universal data coverage, and no roaming charges within the EU.
(The only way that is going to happen is if the EU forced a ban on the actual physical networks from being able to sell to consumers)
By JulesLt · 2010.09.20 09:15