android excitement and worries
I’m extremely excited by all the features being added to the upcoming Android release. On-screen keyboard, UI improvements, and most importantly (for me), new API features, including support for developing homescreen widgets.
But I’m also worried about how these types of updates will affect Android devices and the distribution of applications on them. Will all devices always be capable of upgrading to the latest OS release? Will this be handled automatically through OTA updates? I really don’t want to have to support various ports of the same Android app for various devices and releases.
Another big concern is that carriers and manufacturers will use Android’s openness against it by locking their devices to certain releases, or by modifying the source and creating custom branches, resulting in a bunch of operating systems that are based on Android but don’t fully support the native API. A Samsung executive has been quoted as saying “Our commitment is more to the Android phone than the Google Experience device.” Samsung is doing a lot of customization on the phones based on different carriers requests. I’m anxious to see what exactly that customization entails. Even if it’s only at the UI level, I’m concerned that features like the standard custom homescreen widgets will be rendered useless on these devices.
Google needs to find a way to convince everyone to maintain a certain level of compatibility and consistancy. If every computer and laptop manufacturer decided to make some radically transformed version of Windows for each vendor, the PC world would be a complete shithole. Mobile devices need be be thought of as computing platforms. I hope Samsung and friends come to understand this soon.
