On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Brian May <[email protected]> wrote: > The argument is that this is the only way Google has to ensure that > Android phones meet a minimum standard, and we don't have a maze of > different products that are incompatible with each other.
Where the minimum standard is so low that the status LED is removed from some popular phones such as the Galaxy S to save a cent or two. > As much as I don't like this, they might have a point. Even with the > current restrictions, manufacturers still are making lots of changes > to Android for the sake of making their product different, when > customers don't necessarily want this. These changes typically mean it > takes longer to get updates, and exposes the manufacturers to legal > challenges due to issues that aren't always present in the base > Android code. This in turn gives Android competitors an advantage. Customers usually don't get updates because the vendor locks the phone down deliberately to prevent it. My Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is locked to Android 2.1 and I haven't been able to root it to install CyanogenMod. Sony has recently deigned to release an update to a newer version of Android however they have not deigned to support their proprietary backup program that they shipped with the Xperia and the new version of Android wipes ALL data on the phone. Fortunately Sony was generous enough to warn me that it is impossible to backup my important data, but as Sony doesn't allow me to backup application data and the application vendors sometimes don't allow it I'm stuck on Android 2.1 (with whatever security holes there may be) until I can root that phone. If Google really wanted to allow us to have updates they could easily make it a condition of shipping the Google binaries on Android that the phone vendor must provide updates for at least 2 years and/or allow CyanogenMod etc to be installed. The sad thing is that the Xperia X10 is actually quite nice hardware apart from the battery life. If it was running a newer version of Android (with Wifi AP support and better power efficiency) then it would really be a great phone and compare very well with phones that are much newer. An Xperia X10 running CM7 would beat the hell out of anything you can get on a $29 plan in Australia! -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list [email protected] http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
