Google doesn’t care who makes Android phones. Or who it pisses off Google could use defeat in the Oracle case to take Android proprietary, reckons analyst Richard Windsor, who thinks development for this watershed event is already well underway, as we reported last week. Google would then be able to bring the ecosystem up to date much more quickly than it does today. Last year’s Marshmallow …
Open source or not, the problem are the required bundled proprietary services. Just like with Microsoft the problem was bundling IE and Media Player, not Windows itself.
Google knows it has to fight the EU one way or the other. It could do it from the position it reckons more suitable for its interests even if it will have to lose something.
Not sure your definition of required is the same as mine. Last I checked, I can use an Android phone without signing in to Google services at all, installing my own choice of app stores from the variety available outside of Google. Of course, I have to sign in to access Google's services, but that's to be expected.
You still have to run the core Google proprietary stuff or else the phone doesn't work at all. And -possibly more to the point- allow it access to the internet otherwise -again- nothing works.
My phone has never signed on to any Google service, and has been quite enthusiastically firewalled from the start and yet it has still sent stuff back to the mothership, despite my efforts. Now in my case it's not that critical, because I don't keep any personal stuff on the phone or use it to log into anything (because I don't trust it, frankly). That isn't a luxury available to everyone.
> You still have to run the core Google proprietary stuff or else the phone doesn't work at all.
That may be true of some Android phones, but it is _NOT_ true of Android in general. examples such as Amazon Fire, Nokia/Microsoft X, Cyanogenmod and many Chinese phones do not have Google proprietry stuff and still work fine.
On those phones you can still access services and can even get Google services if you want them.
> And -possibly more to the point- allow it access to the internet otherwise -again- nothing works.
Nonsense. Phones can phone, message and such without internet access, they can even run local apps. If you want to use an internet service then you will have to .... access the internet.
Last time I checked Cyanogenmod was based on Android 4.4 and Android is on version 6.
It depends on the phone. CM 13 is based on Marshmallow ... but it tends only to be an option for phones that can run Marshmallow anyway. CM isn't generally a way to get a newer Android version on a device.
Last phone : 2011 Xperia Pro, shipped with Gingerbread, updated to a mostly complete ICS. CM support - up to Marshmallow.
Current phone - 2012 Motorola Photon Q with SIM card mod. Shipped with ICS. Now on Marshmallow.
Without CM both phones would be bricks without up to date security patches. Not all phones have as much support, but many do.
Have a virtual beer for being a fellow Photon Q holdout. I've recently upgraded my Photon Q to CM13 and it's never run better! Just a pity we can't swap in a slightly larger RAM chip... the 1 GB RAM is really all that holds this phone back. Who would have thought the day would come we need 2 gigs of RAM to make a phone call (all right, I jest a little).
I just wish Motorola would make a new Droid 4/Photon Q, exactly the same but with up-to-date innards. Not likely to happen unfortunately. But have you ever tried ssh'ing into a server on a phone without a physical keyboard? Not a pleasant experience. And my dad will let his Droid 4 (hand me down from me) be pried from his cold dead hands, and all he uses it for is texting. There is a market niche here...
James 51 - I dont know when you last checked - maybe 1963?
Yesterday I installed a version of Cyanogenmod based on Android 6 on my Samsung S3 - a phone which was shipped with 4.4 - and my 5 year old phone is now like a new one. It doesn't do 4G, but then I live in Central London - we don't have 4G here most of the time anyway!*
It was not something I would expect my non-technical aunty to do, but I am sure she could get the guy who sells phones in the market to do it for £5 - which is far cheaper than even a Chinese "flagship".
* who IS hoarding all the 4G? Is it the northerners? Or have the SNP hijacked it?
The Ship of Theseus comes to mind here. Sort of.
If you could swap out all the modules and replace them when they fail at which point would you have been better off just buying a new phone?
It'd also be a development nightmare. The manufacturer of the modules will inevitably bring out newer revisions of their modules.
This gives you even more possible permutations than the current Android phone ecosystem.
Lastly when you've eventually swapped out all the modules for new modules how would the warranty work? At which point is it no longer considered the original phone?
A warranty on each module would be absurdly hard to manage and comprehend for average folk.
"Ah yes sir, but you plugged in the v2.0 camera module to the v1.2 control module, the warranty on the v2.0 module doesnt cover this"
This opens the door to potentially unnecessary upsell.
"Ah yes sir, you'll also need the v2.0 control module for that camera and a v2.0 touch module"
This is A confusing for average consumers, B annoying to develop software for, and C a great way for consumers to be silently ripped off without knowing it.
Modular phones are not the answer I'm afraid. As cool as they would be.
Also, if my little lad got hold of a modular phone I'd likely be walking around with some modules missing quite frequently.
Toddlers are shockingly efficient at dismantling and hiding things.
... some (read most in fact) just want a phone that works out of the box and till the day we chuck it on the shelf 2-3 years later.
Most people want a phone that works out of the box and continues to work and to be fully updated and secure until they pass it on, 2-3 years later, to a relative who uses it for the next 2-3 years and who also wants it to remain fully updated and secure in that time.
Yes, most phone owners would never take the time or trouble to learn how to, for example, install Cyanogenmod on their phones ... but don't imagine that that means that they are happy with the idea that their phones contain unpatched security flaws. They want patches and updates, they just want them to be automatic and painless.
I don't think so. Most users say they care about security - but then happily disable the virus scanner because some website said they needed to in order to get some (pirated) game to work. Of course because the user "researched" this by looking on the internet they know what they are doing and it's perfectly safe.
"Most people want a phone that works out of the box and continues to work and to be fully updated and secure until they pass it on, 2-3 years later, to a relative who uses it for the next 2-3 years and who also wants it to remain fully updated and secure in that time."
I bet if you asked the first 100 Android phone users you saw in the street 99 wouldn't have a clue about updates or really care. From talking to most customers they actually find phone updates annoying as it 'breaks stuff'. Yes ignorance is a kind of bliss.
My Gf hates the fact her phone comes with Cyanogen on it. "Fucking nerds keep updating it!" She especially loved the last update a few days ago whereby the receive updates over wi-fi OR data had been reset by the last update to pull the 400MB in over her data allowance instead of wi-fi, while sat in the living room.
From talking to most customers they actually find phone updates annoying as it 'breaks stuff'.
Because it's true, whether "breaks" means, changes the UI, or removes a feature that I need, makes an installed application stop working, or (with Google) removes an entire on-line service with little warning.
Regular end-users, who lack the skills to ferret out fixes and workarounds on the Internet, are justifiably afraid of updates.
(My Mint box being the exception. Somehow they manage updates without breaking stuff.)
The average user, the part of the market where Android is firmly ahead of iOS, doesn't want the hassle of upgrading an OS. Not on their computer, and not on their phone. They want a phone that works, is safe, and still is after 2 or 3 years, after which the hardware starts to die, and it is replaced.
They don't even care it is safe. It has to work, run "crappy bird", "slapchat" or whatever app is fashionable, until a new more fashionable model is out, at a a price they can afford.
They care, they just don't know it. They'll know they care as soon as someone in the criminal fraternity works out how to access their mobile banking app.
To get the proper Linux for phones the hardware architecture and bootloader needs to be open.
This is what we have on PCs. Like them or loathe them, MS set a very useful PC hardware and architecture standard. Conform to that standard and you got a sticker for your PC saying that it'd run Windows. Linux benefits (even now with the optional Secure Boot) because there is a stable common hardware spec (albeit one with a wide range of possible peripherals and devices), so it's easier to make a One-Linux-Fits-All distribution.
MS tried the same thing with phones. Conform to their hardware standard, Windows Mobile will run. AFAIK it's not an open standard like a PC, so it's not reusable in the same way the PC standard is.
I think the best thing MS could do is to open up their phone standard. Dunno if it'll help, but they've nothing to lose by doing so. Google are heading towards a proprietary hardware standard, MS's open on might be more appealing for manufacturers.
That'll put the focus on Google's proprietary services being anticompetitive...
> As far as I know every PC nowadays is basically a PC2001 on steroids...
That is merely defining the term 'PC' as something that fits what PC2001 requires it to. In fact PC2001 was just a list of features that were already available in most 'x86 PCs' at the time and did not create anything new.
> We need something like linux for phones.
Android _is_ 'Linux for phones'. Linux is the kernel of Android.
Perhaps you meant 'GNU for phones' or 'KDE for phones'. Well you can do that too. Maemo/Meego was 'Linux/Gnome for phones' and later, 'Linux/QT for phones' from Nokia and would run such desktop programs as Gnumeric, Abiword and OpenOffice.org. I wrote stuff in Python/Glade that would run unchanged on N800, Windows and desktop Linux.
There is also Ubuntu for phones, Tizen, Jolla and probably some others.
You can also run GNU stuff on Android such as Terminal-IDE.
Just go and buy them otherwise they will fold for lack of demand.
Google, with its perpetual attention deficit disorder, never sat down and thought properly about an update mechanism for Android.
Android Wear devices are also bitrotting. It's not as if they didn't know there was an update problem before designing AW.
Once is carelessness, twice is on purpose? It seems obvious that Google doesn't care about OEMs, they just want the advertising. Cheapy Chinese manufacturers don't care about Google, they just want an OS to stick on it. It's not a future anyone particularly wants.
Silver's cancelled, and the conclusion is that Google has won? I hope not. Perhaps western OEMs will switch over to Tizen or something. It'd be in their own best interest.
If Google ever rock up in court complaining about Dalvik runtimes it'd be funny.
Don't forget to blame the OEM's, carriers and regulators. Google has never had enough power to force any of them to provide product support. They all learned from Apple that conceding any control at all was bad and unlike Apple, Googles Nexus line didn't grab enough market share to frighten any of them.
Endless API churn in the kernel it's built on doesn't help either, once the manufacturer stops updating their binary driver blobs you're usually locked into that release of Android. That's something Goggle should have controlled and had the power to do.
There's plenty of blame to go around.
>Google, with its perpetual attention deficit disorder, never sat down and thought properly about an update mechanism for Android.
They didn't have a choice - The way most ARM-based systems were designed doesn't allow for a one-ROM-fits-all (Linux distro-style) updating. Google bought Android in, as they were desperate to catch up with the iPhone. That was at the beginning.
In Act 2, silicon was advancing so much that two-year-old phones weren't really worth updating. It's only been the last couple of years that older phones have been good enough to keep using (though of course a new budget, but pretty good, Android phone won't break the bank).
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