
Dell's Aero Smartphone: An Embarrassment to Android - techiediy
http://www.pcworld.com/article/204040/dells_aero_smartphone_an_embarrassment_to_android.html?tk=nl_wbx_h_crawl1
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dannyr
This comes with the territory of having an open-source OS.

I don't like what Dell is doing but they are damaging their own brand more
than they are damaging Android.

But before we get too hung up on having the latest version of Android running
on our phones, let us put things in perspective.

I do care a lot about having the latest version of Android. But I'm like you
guys, we're plugged in to the tech scene. We love our apps, the coolest and
latest UI, etc.

But for the rest of the country, a survey of my friends suggest that most of
them do not care.

My roommate just bought a Palm Pre. There are very few apps in the market. But
guess what, my roommate is very happy with his phone. He said it's the best
phone he's ever had.

I was happy with my Android phone even when my G1 was on 1.5. I'm glad that I
upgraded to a Nexus One and I'm now on 2.2 but I never felt that 1.5 was a
piece of crap.

My observation with the tech community is that we think we are mainstream.
We're not. I don't know many fellow geeks that play Farmville but you know
what, it's got 100+ million users.

So before we start raising hell about having different versions of Android out
there, we should consider that maybe the mainstream users do not really care.

~~~
Zev
_My roommate just bought a Palm Pre. There are very few apps in the market.
But guess what, my roommate is very happy with his phone. He said it's the
best phone he's ever had._

I'll second the sentiments. I've got a Palm Pre Plus for personal use and an
iPhone 4 that I use for work (iPhone dev). I love the Pre. It's a fantastic
phone. Looks great, is more open than Android, etc. But, it could use an
update in hardware. The cpu is somewhat (affects scrolling) and the screen is
really scratched up (despite taking reasonably good care of it and only having
it for a few months).

But, the Pre has some drawbacks. There's _some_ fragmentation; Sprint is the
only network provider to release the 1.4.5 update -- which is big for games.
And the openness might not necessarily be for the best. I had some patches
installed that really screwed up performance (iPhone 3G-running-iOS4 bad) and
it took me awhile to realize that.

~~~
mattmaroon
I too love the Pre. I've used iOS devices a ton, and Android a little, and
feel qualified to say the WebOS is just hands-down the best. You're right
about the screen, you have to get a protector for it. App support is
relatively minimal, but at the same time still covers most bases.

The best thing about it is the Touchstone. That's one of those things that you
can't even fathom how much you'll love until you use it. I even mounted one on
my dashboard.

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raganwald
I was going to write that Android needs a Dictator that lays down the law with
minions and partners alike, especially to enforce a "No Devices That Suck"
policy. But honestly, does Google care? If Dell wants to ship a device that
sucks, let HTC prove this is a terrible idea by eating Dell's lunch. If
Android 2.2 is better than Android 1.5, let customers vote for 2.2 with their
wallets.

Of course, there is always the risk that a customer who hates a Dell Aero will
replace it with an iPhone instead of an HTC, ...

~~~
bmelton
As I understand, I don't think Google particularly cares if someone replaces
their device with an iPhone -- the last I heard from Google on the subject was
(paraphrasing) 'any phone with mobile web and applications is good for us',
the premise being that any device capable of visiting Google's web services
was all that they wanted out of consumers, so that we could keep consuming
their services and being served their ads.

~~~
rryyan
I think this was the original idea. But now Apple is a direct competitor
(iAds), and clearly not shy about blocking competitors from their platform.
Microsoft (or whoever) could do the same as well. It makes sense for Google to
control and promote their own platform for their services (see Chrome and
Chrome OS), as an insurance policy if nothing else.

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glhaynes
I understand handset makers not providing timely upgrades (who wants to spend
engineering/support $s on software upgrades for a sale you already made to a
customer [really, a customer of your customer] who probably won't hold any
loyalty to your brand either way), but why are so many new devices coming out
with really old versions of Android? I've never really seen anything like that
before... PC makers are ready to go with Windows Next the day it's out.

~~~
nkassis
Because they spend a ton of money on crap "enhancements" to the original UI
(except for HTC sense which I don't really care about, all others I've seen
are crap). If they just released plain Android they wouldn't have anything to
differentiate themselves. The problem with their plan is that they suck at
software development and their enhancements make the phones worse and
outdated.

~~~
tvon
Hardware manufacturers don't see themselves as Android distributors, they
don't want to compete to see who can make the best home for vanilla Android.
They see Android as a jumping off point, not a final product.

~~~
rryyan
Agreed. The problem is, I don't think phone manufacturers are adding enough
value in their enhancements for customers to care. As it stands now, the new
features that Google adds in every update to Android are much more desirable
than whatever features the manufacturers are tacking on.

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BrandonDC
I find this type of corporate cluelessness fascinating. When a product like
this is released, it feels as though the company ignored everything; the
market, the competing products and the customers. How does this happen? Is it
Dell's lacklustre R&D funding? Poor leadership? Is the team who developed this
product made up of soccer moms who don't know anything about smartphones? All
of the above?

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swilliams
At the time, I mocked Verizon for branding their Android devices as "Droid,"
but now I think it's a little brilliant. Companies like Dell and anyone else
can release crap, and it won't damage Verizon's brand, since most of the
public doesn't know that they have the same OS underneath.

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S_A_P
I think what this really says is that Dell is happy to release average, "me
too" type products that really add no value to the market segment.

I dont see that the major PC vendors carry alot of weight in this segment
anyway, so why the mediocre device? Seems to me that Dell has been caught
completely off guard by mobile devices and still really doesnt have an answer.

~~~
protomyth
Dell has a big enterprise sales force. How long before they start pushing some
"all-in-one" purchases that bring this phone (or the next version) to the
enterprise?

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acon
Sure, selling devices with outdated versions of Android is bad, but to me it
is worse that they don't release updates for existing phones in a timely
manner. If I buy a phone I want it to feel fun at least until the contract
runs out, which means 18-24 months. If my friends gets new phones running
better software, my fun is reduced and my next phone is more likely to be an
iPhone, where I know I'll get timely updates.

~~~
QE2
> my next phone is more likely to be an iPhone, where I know I'll get timely
> updates.

One significant update per year, on which Apple has disabled half of the
features because you don't have the latest model?

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thehigherlife
What do decisions and devices like this one do for the Andriod brand? not a
lot of good I would immediately think. This is probably google's biggest
problem.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
No, their biggest problem is having so many countries you can't buy apps in
yet. I don't this does more than minor damage to the Android brand.

Companies like Packard Bell and eMachines make nothing but low quality shitty
Windows computers for decades and they didn't really damage the Windows brand.
Not saying that Windows has a sparkling reputation mind you, but the things
that have damaged their brand have been their own fault really. And in the
end, everyone _still_ ends up buying a Windows PC because they're _everywhere_
, at every price point and every form factor.

~~~
thehigherlife
Windows and Android are not the same platform and buying a computer is a
difference experience than buying a mobile phone.

Even if I give you that they are the same, The eMachines and Packard Bell
still looked and felt the same (from an OS perspective), you could blame the
performance on the crappy PC, not the software running on it.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
In the Windows 3.0 and 3.1 days, they didn't. Almost all the PC manufacturers
used to include extensively customized desktop UI's. And man were they
_awful_.

Edit: Here's a link to screenshots for the custom UI shell that Packard Bell
used to ship with Win3.1 and Win95. Prepare for the horror! :-)
<http://toastytech.com/guis/pbnav35.html>

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whalesalad
Everything Dell is doing is Android 1.5... they're WAY behind the curve.
People need to wake the hell up and realize that the most important part of
their devices is the EXPERIENCE, not the bells and whistles. They won't even
remotely be able to compete on the experience front without Android 2.2.

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aphistic
I'm not surprised. When I first found out Dell was re-entering the "small
devices" sector I decided I was going to stay far away from anything they
produced. I was burned on the Axim X50v and I'm not going to make the same
mistake twice.

It was for close to the same reason as mentioned in the article as well
(outdated system software). I bought it on the promise of an upgrade from
WinMo 5 to WinMo 6 and while they delivered on the promise of WinMo 6 it was
many months behind the expected release date and was so buggy and slow that it
was unusable. Though that may have been the fault of WinMo more than the
device itself. They never did release an update to fix any of it, either.

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awe
Embarrassing? I'd call it growing pains. Google allows manufacturers free
reign and once the UI has reached a certain point I'd say that's when Android
will start to get locked down. Too early for that though.

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Potter
"This trend is precisely why I've argued that it's time for the baked-in
Android UI to die."

Google seem to be taking the opposite approach to solving this problem.
Rumours are that the next major release is set to include significant UI
enhancements.

If the UI is good enough, manufacturers won't bother rolling their own. Well
that's the theory, but they still need to differentiate somehow...

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brianobush
I am still running android 1.5 on my phone (the Cliq) - since T-mobile and
motorola are a bit slow to update their older platforms. However, it still
does what I need - browsing, email, calling. Bleeding edge usually add much
more functionality, though I would sure like to try out the new voice
activation features in 2.2

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draebek
Are there many new applications that require the use of Android 2.x? It seems
to me that could be a serious problem for "Android": consumer buys new Dell
phone running "Android," finds they can't run half the cool apps their
friends' EVOs can because they've got some old version of Android, consumer
now hates Android.

~~~
ydant
My understanding is that the difference between 1.5 and 1.6 was huge in terms
of what it provides in API/functionality and a lot of apps target 1.6 as a
minimum as a result. Probably a lot more than target 2.1 or 2.2. 2.0 almost
doesn't exist, it was upgraded so quickly on the devices that had it.

My experience is that if you're on 2.1 you can run most of what's on the
market. I haven't used 1.5 or 1.6 enough to know about them (other than
technically), but I wouldn't be surprised if 1.5 can't run a large chunk of
the market and 1.6 probably gets excluded from a lot of cool stuff, too.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
One of the major differences between 1.5 and 1.6 is that 1.6 added support for
different screen densities. That's pretty major. If you only target 1.6 and
above with your app, it's trivial to support different resolutions and screen
densities. It looks like it'd be tricky to support 1.5 and be resolution
independent. I don't know for sure though.

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napierzaza
Whoa, I thought there were issues with the sprawl of hardware that has come
out, and the phones which can't upgrade to new OSes. But now we find out that
you can't even trust a NEW phone to have the newest OS?

This is as bad or worse than the PC industry.

But is this because of Google? Are they manufacturers starting projects for
ver x.x and then only to find out after 6 months of work that the new OS is
not compatible with the software/hardware they've developed?

Is there information on the road-map to the development of specifications? Or
are these companies just aiming low?

