A long overdue update

I guess "What I can tell you is that things are well underway with Android 2.2 and that I have our Ermine release (yes, the next furry beast) on both my pocket edge and entourage edge" could be read as two separate releases. Android 2.2 was being demoed at CES 2011 last month, though, albeit admitted by enTourage as "not ready for prime time". I'll bet you $10 that "Ermine-1.0" includes the "Android 2.2" firmware update.

Originally Posted by borisb

.... I'll bet you $10 that "Ermine-1.0" includes the "Android 2.2" firmware update.

I surely hope that you are correct....but I would still accept your bet, but it would have to be for 850 yen.

Also, we should take a moment to toast the memory of "dontpanic", who apparently has departed enTourage. In the past, we welcomed his timely input on the forums, including the big "a statement on froyo" thread (with over 14,000 views at this point), and this thread normally would have been started by him. While he didn't post all that often, he was there when we really needed him and he'll be sorely missed.

So, welcome, "young" bmoc! You have big shoes to fill!

A tip of the hat to dontpanic. Thank you for you time at Entourage and your posts on the forum.

BTW, if we get a good Froyo 2.2 update and any necessary bug fixes after that point, I will be happy. I understand that a young company like Entourage cannot support a product for too long but this has been a long promised, long awaited and much needed update.

Best wishes to dontpanic. He'll be missed on the forum. He was often the voice of reason.

And welcome, bmoc. Big shoes indeed.

Originally Posted by StevenP

BTW, if we get a good Froyo 2.2 update and any necessary bug fixes after that point, I will be happy. I understand that a young company like Entourage cannot support a product for too long but this has been a long promised, long awaited and much needed update.

Sounds like, in the best of circumstances, Android 2.2 (?Ermine) will be in our hands in March, probably about 10 weeks after the message "weeks, not months away". And by then, Motorola will be shipping the Xoom with Android 3.0..... which I suspect will not run on current eDGe hardware. Then people will be waiting, just waiting, for news about the next Hardware / Software release. It will be interesting to see how potential customers react to a device released with Froyo, when others are shipping Honeycomb.

To be fair, the person who made that statement is no longer with Entourage, so it's not really fair to act as if it's binding on his/her successors.

Xoom and Edge aren't exactly direct competitors either, as Xoom is going to be in the $700-$800 range. Adam is a disaster, and Eee Pad has been pushed back to the fall, so the only legit 10" Android tablets in the $500 or less price range out there in the mean time are Archos 101 and Viewsonic gTablet, and the former is likely to have its own hardware issues to make the jump to 3.0. (Though both have Froyo so Entourage really does need to hurry up and compete).

Originally Posted by Corpulent One

To be fair, the person who made that statement is no longer with Entourage, so it's not really fair to act as if it's binding on his/her successors.

With all due respect, I disagree with you in a way. Naturally, nothing that anyone in a company states is necessarily binding. But when someone makes a statement on behalf of a company, the company "stands behind" (or at least should) what they said. The fact that they now have left still leaves that statement which the company should stand behind, and if the company doesnt do that it is a reflection on the company and not on the person who made the statement. The statement was not made by that person as a private citizen, but rather as a representative of the company. I do agree with what you said about the various tablets, and I only used Xoom as an example because it will ship with Honeycomb on board. It certainly stands as a different device, based on price as you correctly point out.

Thanks for all of your insight, dontpanic. And, BMOC, I really appreciate your willingness to let us in on some of the ongoings at enTourage!

Remember that bmoc has apparently replaced dontpanic as a new hire. Someone undoubtedly will fill sladwig's shoes as the communications person for the Blog. So, no net reduction.

To clarify for bmoc, Ermine will be 2.2.

Originally Posted by Snow

To clarify for bmoc, Ermine will be 2.2.

alefor, can I PM you my bank account into which you'll deposit the 850 yen...?

Hi Snow,

Do you think we can at least have some sample codes on how to use the eink for developers? I think we can all agree that there are a lot of potential applications of the eink out there that would make the edge even more useful ...

Originally Posted by Snow

To clarify for bmoc, Ermine will be 2.2.

Found the following info about Flash Lite 4.1 (from July of last year, interestingly enough):

Of course this comes with a tradeoff that ‘high-end’ features of Flash 10 will not work in FL4. Gradients, filters, effects will not work in FL4. But then when your CPU is not powerful enough, you don’t want these features anyway. If you plan on using Flash Lite 4 as a plug-in, our estimate is that it will still play about 90% or more sites without any difficulties and this includes all the popular sites such as youtube, CNN etc.

See http://www.embeddedflash.com/?p=701 for the full post.

This suggests that Flash Lite 4.1 will probably fit our needs pretty close to what we would expect of the full Flash 10.1. At least it seems Flash plugins on websites will be visible.