Quote:
Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors
Android has some really amazing apps, first off - and tons of them are free. Second, battery life depends on the model - the Incredible 2 is pushing 36 hours with regular use, which is well above average for a smartphone.
And finally, I have never understood what's so bad about "fragmentation." Fragmentation is part of what's awesome about open source. You have choices.
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I think you misunderstood me. I did not mean the battery life but the life of a phone itself, which is affected due to android market(not the app market) fragmentation.
The birth of a droid goes like so:
1. Android OS dev community churns out new features that have new hardware needs.
2. This vanilla OS is then passed on to phone manufacturers who repack it with their own UI, features and branding. They also take the OS to the butcher table to fit it in the various kind of models they make.
3. These phones are then passed on to cellular carriers who again modify the manufacturer's OS and apply their own UI, features(more like feature restrictions) and branding.
4. Finally the user can buy the device and is very happy. Fragmentation is awesome till here.
5. The inevitable happens, the android dev community churns out a new version.
This is where the pain starts. The vanilla OS is not usable by the average user, unless they are power users and have rooted their devices and are ready to debrand their device.
6. The new version then has to pass thru the drawing board of the manufacturer, who tailors it to fit the specific models and then it has to pass thru the cellular carrier's drawing board. This process takes a extremely long time. The manufacturer as well as the cellular carrier are both not very good or very fast at it and they dont like to spend money on it.
7. In the end, the user gets the update very late and doesnt like it. In addition it dawns on the user that very soon the manufacturer and the cellular carrier will stop churning out updates for their specific model. They are profit oriented corps after all. So a droid starts dying as soon as it is born.
An example: my HTC Desire. The latest HTC gave us is v2.3 on June 2011, It took HTC 6 months to churn out the update, vanilla release was on December 2010. HTC also stops supporting the device at that time.. This update is however not recommended for most users and wipes the phone, so officially it is stuck at v2.2 (the original version only). The hardware in the phone is however capable of running Android v4.0 which is the newest. But to get that on my device, I need to be a power user, root it, loose HTC Sense, wait for the community to port the OS to this device (which is very unlikely).
How old is this phone? Born on February 16, 2010 and died June 2011. 16 months. R.I.P.
How many major updates it received: 1 (v2.1 to v2.2).
HTC Desire akin to HTC Sensation at the moment. i.e a top of the line phone.
Google is working hard on trying to remove the manufacturer and the cellular provider from the OS-to-user pipeline. Experts call it one of the reasons for Google's takeover of Motorola. But alas I dont think it can be fixed. It is the nature of the beast.
There are many other aspects of market fragmentation. The second main one has to do with apps and their quality. An app developer is constrained by the lowest common denominator when developing an app or the app wont function on all devices. The dev also has to handle a variety of screen sizes, performances issues and individual quirks. Never mind the need for the dev to own a number of devices(most droid devs dont have that much money!) to test the app and the extra work hours needed to have the app perform 'ok' on all devices. So due to this fragmentation the life of a droid dev becomes unnecessarily harder and is only worsened by super fast OS updates, new hardware etc.
The result is a low quality app because the hands of the dev were tied behind their back!
Just for a comparison, see the iOS(apple mobile device OS) development. Apple guaranteeing that an OS update will work on all but the oldest models. There is a strict standard that the devs can rely on. There are high quality development tools available. The dev does not need to buy a bunch of devices to test the apps. The dev gets support from Apple. For all that they have to give up control and a larger profit share to Apple. It hurts but seems like the lesser of two evils.
Take my word for it. It is bad. or you can confirm by (re)searching online.