

Saving Android From a Second-Rate Future - joshus
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/reviews-column-saving-android/

======
blinkingled
1) True Android is the one that runs Android apps - difference in glow or
purity not counted. They run, it's Android.

2) You cannot force your definitions of Android on people to get them to buy
"the one true Android". People buy what they like. They like the S3 better
than the Nexus. Talk about different priorities. S3 is starting to get the
Jelly Bean update too.

3) There is something called emphasis in good designs. Android was designed to
let people have choice. It was designed such that Samsung can ship TouchWiz
and users can effortlessly install $ANOTHER_LAUNCHER to get the experience
they want on the same phone.

4) Developers have dealt with complexity arising from diverse devices before.
It is not a big deal. If you are crying about testing effort you aren't doing
it right. If you care about reaching to 50% and growing number of Android
users you are just going to have to do it right and invest in testing your app
on most phones by releasing timed betas or buying your own dozen of phones.
Remember it's been done before, done right and done by god knows how many
developers that have good apps in the Play Store.

5) You can't crib about higher maintenance costs if you buy a big house. You
similarly can't crib about differences in Android skins if you bought into a
diverse ecosystem. Good news is you have a choice - care about purity, updates
etc. - get the Nexus. Care about bleeding edge hardware, 2GB RAM, quad core
CPU - get the S3. Care about iPhone-esque build quality - there is One X. As
long as there is something I like there is no problem. If I don't like
something in iPhone land - I have no recourse. That's their emphasis in design
- less choice.

Android is working as designed - sure there are those upgrade issues that can
be made better - but for the most part it is not the normal users who are
complaining. As long as they can get things done with their Gingerbread phone
they are happy. The next one down the line will get them a Jelly Bean phone
that can still run the stuff they bought.

~~~
twism
Android isn't just about apps. From utilities like Google Now, to aesthetics
like resizable widgets. The android experience isn't waiting for your carrier
to update your phone when folks with nexus devices are getting updates a
couple of days after the update is announced. S3 might be getting updates but
I doubt US owners will see one this year.

Why can't we get iPhone-esque build quality of the One X with regular updates
and purity of the nexus?

I say manufactures should leave the customizations to the users, focus on
hardware, and getting timely updates to the phone.

~~~
blinkingled
How do you think Google should do what you are asking it to do? Remember
Microsoft is trying and going nowhere - their upgrades are still a fiasco -
despite having a limited set of devices. It is simply not possible for Google
to update those hundreds of SKUs out there to the latest version, all at once.
The only way they could do that is by limiting hardware choices. People don't
seem to like that.

There are rumors that Google will have as many as 5 manufacturers build a
Nexus line that they will sell like they do the Galaxy Nexus today. May be
that's as close as we will ever get to regular updates for a variety of
hardware.

~~~
twism
I like the avenue that Google is taking. Hopefully the hardware they use for
their nexus devices is on par with their flagship heavily customized handsets
so not to stifle competition between their devices.

------
talmand
I don't get it, is he complaining about the Android OS or the UI skins that
manufacturers choose to install on their devices?

Does this mean that if I apply a custom theme to my Windows7 install it is no
longer "true" Windows7?

Older phones not getting Jelly Bean is a silly complaint at this point, can't
we get past this?

I just really don't get these type of articles, I can only assume they are
link bait since they rarely make any sense. Then there's the entertaining
comments as people argue over their phones as if it matters somehow in their
lives.

And here I am commenting on it, argh, the cycle never ends!

Is this guy trying to convince me of something? What's the point of this
article?

At least the author justified his stance by describing the devices he's
purchased. This has become the tech industries "I'm not racist because I have
black friends" statement that is starting to appear in so many places now.

~~~
protomyth
"Older phones not getting Jelly Bean is a silly complaint at this point, can't
we get past this?"

I would imagine we can get it past it when every phone capable of running the
newest Android version is allowed to upgrade to the newest Android version.
Until then, it is an issue for developers who want to use the latest APIs.

~~~
talmand
I can't necessarily disagree, when it comes to developers. Just curious, what
are these latest and greatest APIs that's preventing developers from producing
quality apps because they don't exist on older phones? Is it because of
security and/or functional updates to the OS or is it truly app APIs that some
apps just can't exist without?

~~~
protomyth
One example from the graphics APIs / changes:

"Earlier this year, Android 3.0 launched with a new 2D rendering pipeline
designed to support hardware acceleration on tablets. With this new pipeline,
all drawing operations performed by the UI toolkit are carried out using the
GPU.

You’ll be happy to hear that Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, brings an
improved version of the hardware-accelerated 2D rendering pipeline to phones,
starting with Galaxy Nexus."

[http://android-
developers.blogspot.com/2011/11/android-40-gr...](http://android-
developers.blogspot.com/2011/11/android-40-graphics-and-animations.html)

You can walk your way from <http://developer.android.com/about/versions/jelly-
bean.html> backwards to see what is missing on older phones.

------
ZeroGravitas
Once they get the manufacturers to stop using different launchers and dialers,
then they'll also have to stop users from selecting different apps for each
intent to preserve the purity of Android as Matias and Andy intended it. Or
they could just not bother and let people buy whatever phone they like and
install whatever they want on it.

Is TouchWiz Angry Birds really that different from MotoBlur Angry Birds or
CyanogenMod Angry Birds?

------
anigbrowl
Android is second-rate because it's only in Jellybean that they've conquered
the latency issues. People are using Android devices for passive consumption,
rarely for any kind of content creation, because virtually all the content
creators are and content creation software are already on iPad and have given
up on Android, in much the same way that musicians almost exclusively used
Macs for 10 years because nobody took audio seriously on the PC. That was OK
because PCs had many other uses, but since tablets are more lifestyle than
business devices, ceding all the early-adopter and tastemaker types to Apple
was a huge mistake on Google's part.

Fragmentation is not that big of an issue among the Android users and
developers I know. A craptastic multimedia stack was a much bigger negative.

I say this from a household with 4 Android devices and no Apple ones,
incidentally.

~~~
mchusma
I run a startup, we do iOS and android development. I switched from iOS to
android last year with the galaxy nexus, now back to the iPhone 5. I can tell
you we spend a ton of time dealing with fragmentation. Here is the issue. It
takes you something like 2x the front end time to test on some devices (40 or
so, which we own some and use services and friends for others). After you
finish and release, you get about 10x the support request for all kinds of
random devices, and it is nearly impossible to debug without the device.
Fragmentation is huge part of the effort in android. As a user, I found many
of my favorite apps didn't work. I had to use my old iPhone 4 for music, as
Spotify didn't work for bout the first 6 months I had my phone.

~~~
anigbrowl
Totally - I only know a small subset of developers, and that was low on their
list of complaints.

------
radley
The author seems to be stuck in 2011 when device UIs were rough, behind the
curve, and the promise of a pure Android device would save the platform. The
"second rate" Galaxy S3 is now massively outselling the Nexus and is the only
Android device to outsell iPhones last summer.

~~~
twism
It's just marketing. IMO, the GSIII is not a bad device, but pure nexus with
Jelly Bean from google (hspda+ version, not the verzion nexus which should not
be called a nexus device) is the best android (or any mobile OS) experience.

~~~
radley
That's just opinion. I have 2 stock JB Nexus devices and yetprefer to use my
GS3. If the sims were the same size I would use both since JB has the better
voice stuff right now.

My point is numbers don't lie. The author laments the GS3 as second rate yet
it's clearly the most in-demand device. The author is either deluded, had
writers block (and dredged up an old premise), or hoped this might be a
popular new link-bait topic.

~~~
twism
Just saying, those numbers are driven by marketing, and the s3 is a newer
device with better tech specs, plus the fact you can't get a JB device from
any cellphone carrier.

~~~
talmand
And JB is required for a good experience how? How is JB required over ICS for
that matter?

~~~
radley
JB actually kicks ass. It's faster/smoother and has outstanding voice
recognition. There's a number of small upgrades as well.

------
tensafefrogs
Google doesn't care if android is a "second-rate" OS. Google makes money from
people using google. More smart phones = good for google, regardless of the OS
the phone runs. Android has been hugely successful in getting phone carriers
away from their antiquated systems (remember life before the iPhone?).

Yes, the iPhone is massively successful, but there's billions of people in the
world who will never own one, and that's the market that Android is capturing
so well. And to do that, they don't need to be perfect.

~~~
mirkules
Yes! People often lose sight of what is Google's goal compared to what is
Apple's goal. The bulk of Apple's profit is in iDevices (hardware) and
services (iTunes, AppStore, etc).

Google's core business is ads. They sell ads by getting as many people to use
their services as possible. More devices running _any_ Android directly
translates into more money from ads, and I think this article entirely misses
this point.

------
Zigurd
The article contains a common error:

"Every iPhone comes with iOS exactly as Steve Jobs intended, which means
developers know precisely what they’re getting."

On Android, that's not the problem. All Androids, as uglified by OEM add-ons
as they might be, are highly compatible with applications. All Androids
running the same API level of Android, even the Kindle Fire, run all the
applications that use those APIs. There are optional APIs that some apps
depend on, but those dependencies are also completely unrelated to OEM
customization of Android.

The problem is that "customized" Androids are hard to upgrade. That means
that, while all the iPhones that can run iOS 6 will be running iOS 6, there
are many many models of Android devices that will never be upgraded to Jelly
Bean. And that reduces the value of a lot of the Android installed base
relative to Apple products in the field.

~~~
elcogote
>The problem is that "customized" Androids are hard to upgrade.

Why are they so hard to upgrade?

~~~
FrojoS
Because after 6 months the supplier forgets they soled you the phone and
doesn't release any more updates. You might be able to update by rooting the
phone, but most people can't get bothered.

I've been once burned by HTC (Wildfire). One update after 3 months and that
was it. Still runs Android 2.x. with countless major bugs, like 'when you
click on one SMS message, it opens a completely different one'.

Is Samsung better in terms of update policy? Otherwise I will probably go with
an iPhone this time.

~~~
headShrinker
Unfortunately, I don't see Samsung as much better. I was burned while holding
a Galaxy S (Maxed out at 2.3.5) and Galaxy S2 (Maxed out at 2.3.5[US
version]). As far as I know that is the end of the road for the S2.

~~~
jsight
I have a GSII (T989) in the US, and the latest official release is ICS (3.1).

~~~
headShrinker
I stand corrected. 3.1. sorry.

------
programminggeek
Android was designed, I believe I read somewhere, to be the most carrier and
OEM friendly OS possible for smartphones. It was meant to be skinned, loaded
up with software by OEM's ad carriers, but still to act as a kind of
compatibility layer between devices.

That alone solves the dev problem with Java ME that you would potentially need
to do hundreds of separate builds for different devices and so on. With
Android you have one version for all devices.

From that perspective, Android has gone beyond Google's wildest expectations
and it solved at a basic level many of the Java ME problems, but that's not
even close to the same goal that Apple had when they made the iPhone.

Why are people surprised that a system that was designed from day one to be
what it is today isn't the same as iOS?

~~~
headShrinker
"It was meant to be skinned, loaded up with software by OEM's ad carriers, but
still to act as a kind of compatibility layer between devices."

You are right, but this is definitely not understood by the masses or even
tech-savvy users. iOS was built to separate the phone OS from the carrier,
Android is some a bridge between carrier iterated phone OS and compatibility
between the bunch.

------
mtgx
As an Android users I agree with the article. The very _least_ Google could do
is get Motorola to use the "stock" Android. They really shouldn't care what
the other manufacturers think about it. First off, they aren't using stock
Android anyway, so why would they be upset about it? And second, they seem to
be very willing to adopt a very "stock" WP8 OS on their phones, so again I see
no reason for them to get mad over Google using stock Android on Motorola
devices. Now, the hard part seems to be actually convincing Google to do this.

~~~
martey
One of the weirdest things about this article is the fact _it does not mention
wireless carriers once_. If Motorola makes phones with stock Android, but no
carriers decide to carry it in their stores and on their websites, it is no
different from a Nexus phones.

Former Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha previously suggested that phone
skinning and customization was heavily driven by wireless carriers, as well as
phone manufacturers: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-
sanjay-j...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-sanjay-jha-
verizon-and-at-t-dont-want-seven-stock-android)

------
drivebyacct2
Has anyone seen the Motorola phones they're criticizing? The DROID line is
really, really good. The newer DROID releases have a Blur that is even more
minimal than the already very-minimal recent Blur. When I watched the demo of
the RAZR I (with Intel), I was floored at how clean Blur was and how close to
stock it was.

Turns out, the RAZR M that's available like, everywhere, is also the same way.
Huge screen, smallest bezel I've ever seen, same form as the iPhone 5.

I was a lot, lot, lot more worried about Android a year or two ago. A year or
two ago Blur was god damn awful. And irremovable. And there were NO phones on
the market that offered an updated experience or an unlocked bootloader.
Today, we have the Nexus line. We have Motorola and Samsung offering
"Developer" edition phones that we can load our own OS onto.

tl;dr Android customization has been reigned in, though likely because of
consumers buying in patterns and HTC/Moto/Samsung realizing that fewer and
cleaner modifications in Android allow them to perform updates faster.

(also, I think Google would do themselves a favor in more than one way by
accepting T-Mobile Theme Chooser into Android proper so that
Motorola/HTC/Samsung could use that to provide visual differentiation instead
of brewing their own theming jars.

~~~
dougmccune
it's also not just about the skin being bad, it's about quickly getting
updates. That's the bigger problem IMO. Both the phone manufacturer and the
carriers seem to hold up updates, sometimes indefinitely. More important than
getting TouchWiz/Blur/Whatever off the phone is getting the latest Android
bits on the phone. If the manufacturers pushed their skin updates as quickly
as Google can push release-ready Android updates I wouldn't care as much
(although the recent Samsung security issue still gives us plenty of reasons
to hate these customizations anyway)

~~~
drivebyacct2
I understand this frustration as a developer, but users don't seem to care, or
else Nexus would be selling like hot-cakes. More to the point, as Android
slows release cycles and focuses on things like "Project Butter", having the
absolute latest becomes less important.

I mean, you're right and I do NOT want to be making excuses for the version
fragmentation out there when Apple does such a better job with updates
(granted, it's much easier for them).

~~~
talmand
But that's the very thing that people who should know better keep forgetting
or are ignoring, the market doesn't care!

Find any random person that has a phone running Android v2.3 and ask them if
it bothers them that their phone, which works perfectly fine every day for
their needs, is not running the latest and greatest version of Android. I'm
willing to bet most of them would not know what you're talking about and that
they have no idea what version they are running anyway. You might as well ask
them what version firmware is installed on their TV.

I'm also willing to bet this is true for most of the market for iPhones as
well.

The average consumer most likely DOES NOT CARE. As long as the phone is in
their price range, a carrier they like, and that it works for them then they
could care less about the OS version. Whether it's Android or iOS.

Why can't people just be happy with the amazing things we have?

~~~
drivebyacct2
I agree that the average customer doesn't care but "Why can't people just be
happy with the amazing things we have?" is a terrifically awful outlook. If
people thought that way, we'd still be using Motorola RAZRs. The flip-style
one, not the smartphone one.

~~~
talmand
I disagree, technology tends to move forwards regardless of the market's
feelings towards it. Granted a great deal of technology is driven by the needs
of the market but to say we would stagnate on one phone for a long period of
time just doesn't work for me.

