
A Late Night Froyo Treat Android 2.2 Goes Live On The Nexus One - Concours
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/22/android-froyo-nexus-one/
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keltex
I'm beginning to think this whole Android 2.2 thing was planned from the get
go to take as much wind out of Apple's sails as possible.

Google knew when Apple's big announcement was going to be and most likely they
had a good idea what it was going to be about (iPad / iPhone 4.0). So they let
Apple do their thing and then after the media frenzy had died down a bit, made
their big announcement. Of course Google I/O was already planned so that made
the perfect forum to make their announcement.

Now to add insult to injury, the week after they talk about all the new
features, they actually release them. Apple's iPhone 4.0 OS is not due until
this summer and now when it comes out it will already be behind Android 2.2.

I'm not taking sides here, but certainly see it as a PR victory for Google.
What I'm seeing out there is more Android news than iPad news.

~~~
mechanical_fish
So, waiting until a lull in the press cycle and then making a big announcement
is a hostile PR move? What would a polite PR move look like?

Google staged a major Android conference and made a major release. Of _course_
there is more Android news this week than iPad news.

Google timed their conference and their release to avoid Apple's big April and
May releases, and to avoid WWDC and Apple's (presumably forthcoming) big June
release. This isn't particularly hostile or non-hostile; it's a basic law of
PR physics. The influential tech reporters are human beings that can only be
in one place at one time.

(It may be an even _more_ fundamental law of physics: There is only one
Moscone Center.)

Finally, since I'm not trying to sell page views I'm free to point out, once
again, that selling smartphones is not a zero-sum game. I doubt that Google's
efforts to mention Apple and Apple's products in every other sentence is
particularly bad for Apple. By elevating Apple to the level of "the industry
standard which we all must compare ourselves to", Google buys attention for
themselves, but they also ensure that even more people will pay attention to
Apple's next move. It's really kind of a win-win. The ones who aren't winning
here are Microsoft, RIM, and HP/Palm: The unmentioned ones.

~~~
keltex
You keep repeating "hostile" like I used that word in my comment. I didn't.

~~~
mechanical_fish
This is true. Perhaps I initially misread your tone. It has been a bad week.

~~~
mailanay
Interesting, the reason of dis-agreeing with something might be influenced by
what is the state of mind at that moment. I wonder how many comments and
articles are down voted because of this reason.

To avoid such things from happening as part of my business decisions, I
usually delay the decision making by a day so that I can "think clearly"
before taking any decision.

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rufo
Froyo looks like a great update, but I'm not clear on why it's the game-
changer/straw that breaks the iPhone's back that everybody seems to think it
is. Is there something I'm missing here?

~~~
elblanco
Simple, look at the feature list for Froyo. All things the iPhone most clearly
_does not_ do.

Even discounting flash, these things are among the most requested things that
people want their iPhones to do: like tethering, wi-fi hotspots, jit, media
sync OTA, media streaming OTA, flash 10.1, web app access to the compass and
camera, voice to voice language translation, etc.

It's not necessarily that it's "better" than the iPhone. It's that it squarely
does all of the things that Jobs artificially prevents the iPhone from doing
that consumers actually want.

~~~
kaiser
sorry, my iphone tethers since 3.0 (depends on the carrier :) the media sync
and streaming sound lie an awesome feature.

Considering flash ... I find it sad, that google is actually supporting it.
Where is the open standards idea there??

Other than that, I'm happy about the competition. Hopefully makes Apple to
include some of this features. Yet, I don't see the UI on Android getting any
notable improvements in Froyo :( Maybe I need to play with it, as soon as it's
available.

~~~
detst
> Considering flash ... I find it sad, that google is actually supporting it.
> Where is the open standards idea there??

That should be my choice as a user. I love open standards but why is it sad
that they would support it if users want it? Why should it be up to Google (or
Apple)? Shouldn't it ultimately be up to Adobe and me?

~~~
kaiser
You are right. It's just Google advocates so strongly open standards (check
the first 10 min of google i/o keynote)and now they are directly supporting
flash in Chrome and Android. imho it's just very inconsistent.

I'm still trying to figure out, if I can just compile froyo and put it on our
labs google nexus (I would expect that from an open source mobile phone
operating system, ... seems not possible from what I see).

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Tichy
Why do they "roll out" in such a weird way - why not make it available to
everybody at the same time? Surely Google doesn't have bandwidth problems?

No update available on my N1 yet :-(

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brown9-2
What sounds more frustrating is that the availability of the new OS depends on
your phone manufacturer

~~~
gvb
Well, the phone manufacturers have to port Android to their phones, so updates
won't be available until the manufacturers apply their porting mods to the
update and then push it out. That is the down side of not buying a Nexus One
(G1). That is also the reason I was disappointed when I read Google is
shutting down their phone hardware sales.

Unfortunately, manufacturers tend to lose interest in supporting their
hardware after the initial sale is made. The classic example is all the
printers that worked fine under XP, but the manufacturers never bothered to
create Vista/Win7 drivers, so they became paperweights).

The Google reference phones have the advantage for updates since, by
definition, Google has already done the porting for those phones. In theory,
Open Source has an advantage since the community can do updates. That theory
is tempered by the reality that the community needs to include people that are
capable of doing the porting and enough hardware information needs to be
available for people other than the manufacturer do do porting.

~~~
Tichy
You can still buy N1s, just not through Google. I think/hope they'll keep
making reference phones, too.

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kaiser
I also wondered ... is there no firmware to download and flash on your device?
We have a nexus in the lab and I would love to try froyo out.

With Apple, you always get the new versions/betas the same day they are
announced and can play around with them.

Could also smb. help me, I'm new to Android and I'm just wondering how easy is
it to flash my custom firmware on a google nexus (bought over the web store)??

~~~
kaiser
found the link for the firmware:
[http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-
pa...](http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-
FRF50-from-ERE27.1e519a24.zip)

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bwr
I thought Google usually publishes an update image that you can flash yourself
if you don't want to wait for your turn in the roll out?

~~~
mbrubeck
They did for the Android Dev Phones, but haven't for the Nexus One. (This is
the first Nexus One update.)

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nuclear_eclipse
Correction: there was an OTA update for the Nexus One a few months ago to try
and resolve some issues regarding EDGE/3G transitions, and a few other htings.

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ZeroGravitas
Anyone know what the story is on a UK Vodafone Nexus One? My wife might be
buying one and I hear the upgrades on Android can be disruptive so I'd rather
get it done sooner rather than later.

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bobbyi
Does it come with Flash?

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stanleydrew
Yes.

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gvb
Can it be disabled?

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pkulak
Yes

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ergo98
This guy got an Evo 4G at the Google I/O -- are we sure he didn't also get a
N1? Google did mail out N1s and Droids in advance. If it was an N1 handed out
at IO, not really surprising if it got the update early.

I'd like to hear reports of non-tech-reporters-who-went-to-IO getting it. For
the record my N1 is still telling me no updates are available.

~~~
axod
I was at I/O. They first gave out N1/Droids in advance, then announced we
could all have Evo's as well.

My N1 says "Your system is currently up to date" :/

