
There's no such thing as Android, only Android-compatible - FluidDjango
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/12/theres-no-such-thing-as-android-only-android-compatible.ars
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ChrisLTD
It was annoying enough that my computers eventually became too slow to run the
newest versions of Windows/Ubuntu/Mac OS. I can't imagine the the frustration
Android users must feel to be denied updates not because of obsolete hardware
but because of handset and carrier neglect.

Google should step in and assure that all Android (tm) hardware can be updated
to vanilla releases of the operating system without the need to be a
technology wizard.

~~~
bane
In some ways it reminds me of the very early days of PCs. An early consumer
really needed to know their stuff when buying a PC back then.

Here's some common scenarios from back in those days:

\- Buy a Tandy? Sorry, weird video card and sound controller meant limited
software selection.

\- PC Jr? Similar. But entirely different from the Tandy hardware. Even had a
different kind of VGA and oddball joystick ports!

\- 5.25" drive when the software is only in 3.5"?

\- How about double sided disks?

\- Double density?

\- Oddball keyboard connector on your AT&T brand 8088?

\- No Parallel port? No printer.

\- No PS/2 port, but the needed trackball peripheral needs it?

\- Weird IBM MCA slots? Can't get a sound card.

\- Wrong UART chip? Stuck at 2400bps.

\- Hercules graphics card? good luck with that.

All of these things were on systems that were "PC Compatible", and were
advertised as such, but made owning and operating these things a serious pain.
It was a loose "compatibility". If you had just the right hardware mix and
match, and just the right drivers loaded in the just the right parts of
memory, you could get 85% of the software to work.

Later software sent users through extensive setup processes with questions
like:

"What DMA assignment?", "Hercules graphics?", "CGA, EGA? or VGA (not PC Jr.
Compatible?", "EMS?" etc. etc.

It's not quite that bad with Android, it seems about 95% of the software I try
on my devices works fine. But it's still kind of a pain, and useful to keep
the old days in mind.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Just like the old days, graphics are the big sticking point. Most current
shipping devices have some mix of the following:

\- Resolution:

* HVGA (mostly only low-end phones now)

* WVGA ("standard")

* FWGVGA (early Motorola)

* qHD (most high-end phones)

* WSVGA (7" tablets)

* 720 (Rezound, Galaxy Nexus, more soon)

* WXGA (10" tablets)

\- Graphics

* Adreno (Qualcomm)

* GeForce (nVidia Tegra)

* ARM Mali (SGSII, less the T-Mobile USA variant)

* PowerVR (everyone else)

------
nextparadigms
I don't want updates "indefinitely". I think 2 years of updates, which is the
usual lifetime of a phone, or updating to 2 major new versions (5.0 and 6.0
for 4.0/ICS phones) is reasonable.

I don't mind if they raise the price a little, but they'll have to heavily
promote this "feature", otherwise customers won't know why their phone is more
expensive than the competition who isn't offering these updates.

~~~
eigenvector
It would be a lot easier for handset vendors to upgrade all of their devices
from the last 2 years if they didn't release a new phone with slightly
different hardware every month. LG alone is upgrading 11 devices to ICS -
that's over twice as many devices as _all_ of the iPhones ever released, and
Apple has been selling iPhones since 2007.

Baring actual hardware limitations (e.g. the lack of NAND space on the Nexus
One), most of the work in porting a ROM is the device drivers. Vendors are
really shooting themselves in the foot by releasing a dozen different hardware
configurations in a single year.

------
ec429
"MS-DOS—the original "weak OS." Every version of the software is retailored
and rebranded by its manufacturer. Even some software has to be rewritten to
conform to different machines and their varied specs."

Interesting definition of 'original'... unless my history is very wrong, *NIX
was around first. Retailored and rebranded by vendors? Check. Rewritten for
different hardware? Check.

Android is like Unix, which is no surprise really, since technologically
that's what it is.

What freed Unix from the fragmentary mess of vendors? It was cheap commodity
hardware, combined with GNU. As long as smartphone makers try to differentiate
their products, incompatible versions of the OS will proliferate - and as long
as Android remains schizophrenic about whether it's really open or not, and as
long as Google tries to prevent forking, forks will happen. The best defence
against forking is not to try to defend against forking. (Further reading: esr
on bazaars)

~~~
mahmud
Unix was only rebranded in the early 80s at the exact time DOS was released.
However, Unix's unintended "re-branding" was at its birth: due to its
portability & availability in source, every installation was almost a "port".

------
37prime
A lot of people expecting about 3-year life cycle of a smartphone now.

They'd buy one under contract and upgrade to a new on within 18-24 months. The
old smartphone then given to a family member. It is a lot more common than the
tech crowd.

So having manufacturers updating the phone for at least 3 years would really
help a lot.

------
teyc
The lack of upgrades is not necessarily a problem for most people. This is why
there has been little commercial interest in providing a constant stream of
upgrades.

Take Windows XP for example. People are still installing this even though they
are no longer supported by MS.

------
sjs382
Seems I got lucky in that I'm using one of the older phones that has always
had some community development inertia behind it.

In fact, I installed Android 4.0 last night and now I'm running a phone thats
almost exactly 2 years old. I love my HTC Incredible.

------
jshen
by far my biggest complaint about my droid x2 is that I have no idea if or
when it will get ICS. When google announces updates to android, rather than
getting excited, I get pissed off. My phone is less than 6 months old, and was
a top of the line phone. I have no idea if I'll ever get ICS. Isn't that
absurd?

------
recoiledsnake
> In other cases that upgrade will require significant engineering
> investments—time and money—on the part of the handset maker and the carrier.
> They might decide to spend the money and deliver the update, six months
> later. Or they might decide that the investment isn't worth it.

It's a double whammy. The OEMs need to spend the money for the update and the
customer will be disincentivized to buy the newest hardware.

Not supplying ICS for the Galaxy S will help the sales of S II and the Galaxy
Nexus.

~~~
ChrisLTD
It seems like the perfect opportunity for a hardware vendor to separate
themselves from the crowd.

"Buy our hardware and be assured software updates for 2 years."

~~~
evilduck
So, buy from Apple?

From my own experience with this, I bought a Samsung Moment a couple weeks
after it launched and was abandoned with about 17 months left on my contract
(with some severe bugs that were never resolved while I had it). I did get an
official update to 2.1, but it was very late and that was the last update it
ever received while I owned it.

Sure, I wasn't an eligible purchaser for their next immediate phone release,
but their utterly terrible support of my product _ensured that I'll never be a
future customer of Samsung, for any of their product divisions_ and severely
tarnished my impression of Android in general. All Android manufacturers do
equally bad jobs at supporting their products with only a couple of products
as exceptions (even "big release" phones like the original Motorola Droid got
abandoned before their earliest contracts ended, late buyers are really
screwed), so I'm not too keen on rolling the dice on any future Android
products either.

~~~
ericabiz
I was using my OG Droid on a regular basis until I got a Galaxy Nexus. I was
running the latest Gingerbread and a super-tuned fast kernel from
<http://www.peteralfonso.com/> on it. When the manufacturers drop the ball,
the community jumps on it. Far better than an iPhone of similar vintage (the
OG Droid came out in late 2009.)

~~~
tuppy
I'm not seeing how your solution is "far better" considering that the "iPhone
of similar vintage" is the iPhone 3GS (released June 2009) which still
continues to receive updates.

