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What's up with Android versions and upgrading?

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barney:
US phone service has been a closed market since the first cell phone came out.  FTC opened up the market when it disbanded/fragmented Ma Bell (then known as AT&T - guess who's back ;D), but the market started closing again when cells appeared.  So it's well nigh impossible to get the phone you want with the service or provider (not necessarily the same) you want in the US.

The hope was that Android would, to some extent, alleviate this situation.  Someday, it might.  But not  :( right now.

JavaJones:
I don't see how Android *can* alleviate the situation. It's just an operating system. The interests of the phone makers and the carriers is in keeping things the way they are, I think. At least that's certainly true for the carriers...

- Oshyan

barney:
Android can do it the same way Windows did in the PC market.  When I got my first laptop - a business machine - there were probably half a dozen different OSes current.  DOS, in several different flavours, but others that I cannot remember - think the laptop was MK/V - ? - but not certain.  I'm not forgetting Amiga, Z90, all the rest that fell by the wayside - they fell.

At that time, Windows existed, but didn't work - Borland's (?) Carousel was better, and I was using OS/9 on a Tandy CoCo for my home stuff:  it had functioning, workable windows.  Software - if you could find any - was catch as catch can.  DOS was the most common and varied, and that's one of the things that started to make DOS the prevalent OS.  Then MS presented Win 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 98SE in fairly short order.  That's when software standardization really began.  It had started with DOS - if most  everything you could find, even games, ran on that OS, ya naturally wanted to use that OS - and a functional Windows platform, even on a DOS platform made things more attractive.  Compaq had a proprietary system, as did HP, and a few others, but they'd all run Windows.  The name of the game was standardization - if your hardware couldn't run Windows, it wouldn't sell.
Android has the capability to do the same thing - as more people adopt it, more manufacturers are going to be constrained to conform to it.  As that happens, more hardware vendors will be equally constrained to create fitting platforms. 

Yeah, that sounds like a stretch.  But considering that the smartphone hardware is advancing at about four times the rate that PC hardware did, it's a near-future reality.

And it's not hardware that drives software, it is software that drives hardware development.  So, Android has a real shot, good or bad, at creating the kind of standardization that happened with DOS/Windows.

(Before someone brings up OSx, Linux, et. al., remember that neither one would likely exist w/o Windows as a target/incentive.)

If Android really does get going, service/hardware providers are going to have to accommodate or lose market share - anathema to them!

JavaJones:
What you're proposing *might* happen, but more likely is that app makers will simply target older OS versions that are more broadly compatible, and the high-end will remain fragmented. The carriers and hardware manufacturers will need to change their attitudes for anything more fundamental to really work I think. Although it's possible that as Android evolves, stuff like what Sense and Motoblur enables will become more part of the core and thus obsolete, and then at least the manufacturer side of things would be more cohesive. Then you just have the carriers in the way...

- Oshyan

barney:
Granted, I'm looking to the future.  But I'm also remembering.  The Amiga was superior, in many respects, to a lot of desktop systems in existence today.  There was another, a competitor whose name I do not recall - and too damned lazy right now to research it - equally capable machine, as well as the Z90, which took a different approach to most everything.  None of them exist today, save in ROMs that can be used in Windows or in a DOS/Linux environment.

What I expect to happen will be much along the same lines as DOS/Windows - adventurous app makers will embrace a new environment, people will adopt the newly created apps and complain when they're not available on older systems, then the vendors - and other app makers - will take note.  Then the explosion begins.  Android may not be the platform for that, but it has the capability, if its developers pay attention to history.

As for the app makers targeting older OSes, I don't think so - most of the ones I've know want to use the latest and greatest in order to display their genius.  Understandable - I'd do the same thing if I had the talent.  If you think about it, many of the requests here on DC are for things that no one else has done - many of which really push the edges of what is doable in the current environment(s).  But the folk here manage, don't they?  Not every time, but the successes are significant.

These are the people, and many like them, that will push some phone OS to its limits, and force manufacturers to accommodate their products, whether for free or for coin.  When that happens, service providers will have to acquiesce or go under.  'Tis my thought that Android - particularly being not vendor-specific - could provide the platform for such.

Perhaps not.  But it is the most viable phone OS I've encountered for that capability.  And when that happens, whatever the OS, the hardware folk and the service providers will have to acquiesce or go under.

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