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What's up with Android versions and upgrading?
superboyac:
I see, edbro. I was just reading a little about it. It sounds like I take Windows for granted. Windows is designed to be upgradeable, and it's not normal for an OS on a device to be so easily upgradeable. i think that's the situation with Android. Unlike PC's, Android is being used on a variety of devices with a lot of parts and components inside that are not open and standardized like the stuff we stick inside a pc.
It really makes me appreciate how far along we've come with pc's. The fact that I can go to the store and buy any of the video cards, or hard drives, etc. and just stick it in and have it work. imagine if phones or laptops were that way. We pick the screens, keypads, inside chips, memory, and put it together ourselves. Hey! That's a business idea...
barney:
Hey! That's a business idea...
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Yeah ... now get the telecoms to buy into it ;D.
Edit: look how long it took before we could buy our own land-line phones, instead of going through Ma Bell.
superboyac:
Hey! That's a business idea...
--- End quote ---
Yeah ... now get the telecoms to buy into it ;D.
-barney (August 06, 2010, 01:05 PM)
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That's the great part. It would be like a big F-U to the phone companies. If we can build it, we tell the phone companies that all we want from them is their service. If it becomes popular, they would have to submit.
It would be exactly what Dell did to get huge. let the consumer build his own cell phone, and just buy the service from the phone companies. Whose idea was it to tie the phone and service together? Time Warner doesn't give me a computer when I buy their ISP service, why should phones do it? We don't think about it because it's so normal for us. Mark my words, someone is going to become the Dell of cell phones and they will become very rich for it.
barney:
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly.
But I spent the last decade of my corporate existence in telecom - MCI - and suspect it would take an act of congress to get them to go along with it, much less buy into it. While it would significantly reduce their overhead - inventory, store maintenance, floor space, just to name a few - it would also generate a competition they really don't want.
From what I've seen, folk don't buy service from Verizon, Qwest, AT&T, T-Mobile, et.al. because of the service: they buy the service because the phone they want is there. The iPhone is a perfect example of that. My service is T-Mobile. Not because I think their service is great - it ain't! - but because I wanted an Android phone, 1st the G1, then the MyTouch. And I'll probably stay with them because they've another Android-based phone I'd like to try.
From a consumer standpoint, your concept would be fantastic - the telcos would actually have to compete for your business with true service and innovation.
From a telco standpoint, it would be abomination, and I suspect they'd use every possible means, some legal, some shady, to fight such a development. They don't want to lose their mini-monopolies ;D.
mwb1100:
What I've found is a pretty soft implication that some phones cannot be upgraded to higher levels of Android because the phone hardware won't support the upgrade.
-barney (August 06, 2010, 10:51 AM)
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I think this is true - an Android build includes a Linux kernel, and the drivers for that kernel are generally compiled in for the particular device. This is really closer to a firmware update than upgrading a desktop OS. A new Android package really has to be built for each device.
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