The fundamental problem is that device manufacturers all put their own proprietary layer of UI Magical Sparkle Ponies on top of the generic Android OS, so they can't let their customers upgrade without making the proprietary layer compatible with the newer version of Android first, which they have no incentive to do for an old device while they're busy trying to get their stuff to work on whatever the shiny new device is, which is always.
So you definitely want to find a phone running the latest version of Android when you're buying, because who knows if you'll ever have a chance to upgrade the OS. It's kind of the worst aspects of closed and open source in one, unfortunately. It's entirely possible to build Android apps in Python -- use your favorite Python web framework to generate server-side HTML5 and then use PhoneGap ( www.phonegap.com) and jQTouch (www.jqtouch.com) tomake it look and work like/turn it into a native Android app. However, Android's native web browser is weird -- it has quirks that aren't in Chrome or Firefox, which makes no sense given Google's support for both projects. So it's not as painless as it could be. --Casey On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 11:46 PM, Raymond Flaming <[email protected]>wrote: > Not true. A large number of the Motorola handsets have not been > upgraded beyond 1.5 yet (many months overdue). There are lots of us > out there, and it's not because we're luddites, but because Motorola > is stonewalling us. > > On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 11:07 PM, > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > The 10% still running 1.5 are not going to be people that are going to > use > > a custom app. > > > > JD >
