Recently ive been wondering why android is so different compared to windows?
I mean, although android 2.2, 2.3, (2.4) is out and running, only a small percentage of the phones actually got the upgrade, and most of em are still running 2.1 or lower for the time being, so what is the point in having a new firmware available if you cant run it on your phone anyway ?
Android is just a firmware right ? So why cant it be like windows, when there is a new version, no matter what specs or brand of PC, you just install and your up and running... And phones are just like small computers right ?
So why doenst google make android just as compatible as windows, and as soon as a new version comes out, we just install it and were good to go ? I know this is sort or less the whole point of it being open source, but there has to be a solution to this.
This would actually make so much more sense than it is right now! I know all phone-brands want to add there personal touch to there android phones like SE did with timescape and mediascape etc, but its all just based on the same firmware right ? So why cant these things like timescape and mediascape be seen like an update ? rather than fully integrated in the firmware ?
In my opinion, phone brands should go back to what they are actually good at.. manufacturing phones, and google should go back to what they are good at, designing new android versions, this shouldn't be the other way around.
Could one of you pls explain this to me ?
As a master student in economics, IF android could actually be compared like windows as I just explained, this would only have positive effects on the android/phone market, instead of all these angry and disappointed customers...
http://gizmodo.com/5733556/the-complete-state-of-android-froyo-upgrades
this threat is what made me write this, it is clear we are not the only ones stuck with 2.1 (but the gods at XDA are doing their best to fix this!)
I understand your point. My take on it is about the fragmentation. I'm not commenting whether it is good or not, but here's what I think. Windows machine have a much higher memory where they can store drivers, settings, etc. Just Windows XP alone took approx 6GB? I don't think phones can have that much internal memory at the moment. Also, PC's have interfaces where everything comes out to the correct machine language (PCI, SATA, etc) While these lacks on phones. They have different architectures and peripherals that supports only that architecture. Therefore, to keep it lightweight, it is the manufacturer's responsibility that if they are using OS such as Android, that the OS works with their hardware, while on PC, it's more hardware to work with the OS.
I'm sure if there's a universal hardware interface for mobile devices and enough internal memory, your wish will come true
unknown13x said:
I understand your point. My take on it is about the fragmentation. I'm not commenting whether it is good or not, but here's what I think. Windows machine have a much higher memory where they can store drivers, settings, etc. Just Windows XP alone took approx 6GB? I don't think phones can have that much internal memory at the moment. Also, PC's have interfaces where everything comes out to the correct machine language (PCI, SATA, etc) While these lacks on phones. They have different architectures and peripherals that supports only that architecture. Therefore, to keep it lightweight, it is the manufacturer's responsibility that if they are using OS such as Android, that the OS works with their hardware, while on PC, it's more hardware to work with the OS.
I'm sure if there's a universal hardware interface for mobile devices and enough internal memory, your wish will come true
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I understand what you are saying, but then again, why dont we just manufacture android phones based on the same architecture ? So they will all be compatible with every version of android ?
If this could be accomplished in some way, manufacturers wont have to deal with the lack of compatibility of newer versions anymore, and every phone will run optimal with any given firmware.
Android is at the same development stage as windows when it was win.dos, effectively; the future development was not foreseen. The aggressive marketing by ms changed that, obviously, but pcs from that era are hopelessly outdated. Mobile manufacturers are keeping up with Google rather than being dictated to by them. Eventually, a physical threshold will result in Android updates being software instead of hardware.
I think...
Sent from my X10i using XDA App
android is a fairly new n young operating system... its hardly 2 yrs old....
give it time... the way its goin now it headed in the right direction (same as windows)... compatibility issues will be sorted as time progresses... bare in mind that android devices span vast array of price ranges (and thus diff hardware as suited for that price) so compatibility will be an issue which will be sorted out in time...
clintax said:
I understand what you are saying, but then again, why dont we just manufacture android phones based on the same architecture ? So they will all be compatible with every version of android ?
If this could be accomplished in some way, manufacturers wont have to deal with the lack of compatibility of newer versions anymore, and every phone will run optimal with any given firmware.
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Click to collapse
The problem is there's too many architecture to go for. A universal architecture means we're eliminating many companies. For example, say we choose snapdragon as our universal. That means ARM, NVIDIA, will all be taken out the competition. Of course ARM cannot build a microcontroller based on snapdragon's design either, this is due to licensing and such. I'm sure manufacturer wants something like you said, it will be much easier to manage, but chip makers are doing things their own way. Also, you have to consider how much new technology is being introduced to phones in just one year. It is massive. Even if phones have the same architecture, the problem that comes about is the memory size to store all the drivers. Either way, it will have to go through the manufacturer to strip it out, which would be back to where we start again. So it will not work out anytime soon...However I did heard Google is aiming to make a flexible Android where it can do something like you said, but looking at the hardware change, it's impossible for now
FWIW - I think that it's more to do with USP's - Each manufacturer could, quickly and fairly easily just bung stock android onto their hardware, and therefore make it extremely easy for us all to upgrade to the latest OS.. but they think.. "hang on, if we do that then all the phones will look and work in the same way.. why would anyone want to buy ours, over xxx competitors phone... no that simply won't do.. we must make our phones special, different and more appealing to XYXY subset of the market... that way we'll sell more phones than our competitors and eventually.. if we're lucky, we might just compete with Apple"..
Or something along those lines!
Gawd - I thought for a minute you actually wanted Android to be "like" Windows...
I nearly pooped myself.
k1sr said:
Gawd - I thought for a minute you actually wanted Android to be "like" Windows...
I nearly pooped myself.
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Click to collapse
I was thinking the same way! Windows? Nah! Windows itself is a bloatware OS...
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Related
With the source code now released how long do you guys think it will be before one of these mad catz works through it and optimizes it for the HTC Titan?
http://source.android.com/projects
I'm guessing we will see something within a month. I'm hoping sooner than that because I can't wait to try this out, I've been messing around with the SDK for a while and I'm looking forward to what is to come!
What do you guys think? Will we see one by Friday? By Nov? In one month?? By Christmas??
I hope something soon. I too want to see all the G1 goddiness on my Titan. Who knows. it might even have a working hardware acceleration driver!
my bet is by Christmas... I am planning on keeping an eye on the Vogue android thread by dzo He is the one that was able to get the SDK releases of android running via Haret... and to my understanding the Vogue and Titan are similar enough that most progress that they can make on the vogue will be relevant to the Titan...
I am not going to be getting a new phone anytime soon, so the idea that I might be able to have a new OS to play with on my phone is very enticing
I am excited about this whole android thing! I am not a devoleper, but I do like to modify, and tinker.... I would love to play with android when it gets close to ready, but I am wondering... is it / would it be possible to dual boot an OS with such limited resources? (i am afraid I don't realy understand how the ROM / OS thing works...) Or would it be more of a second device kinda thing untill all of the kinks are worked out?
I would say a hell of a lot sooner if we all stopped waiting and got to work.
I was surprised to receive a call while running it for the first time today. Need alignment and button mappings for a start.
The Titan doesn't meet the minimum system requirements for Android. Android requires 256MB flash memory and 128MB RAM. The Titan has 256MB of flash memory (which means you wouldn't be able to add anything to the phone), but it only has 64MB RAM (which means you're out of luck).
Don't get your hopes up, people.
dumpydooby said:
The Titan doesn't meet the minimum system requirements for Android. Android requires 256MB flash memory and 128MB RAM. The Titan has 256MB of flash memory (which means you wouldn't be able to add anything to the phone), but it only has 64MB RAM (which means you're out of luck).
Don't get your hopes up, people.
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Click to collapse
my hopes aren't up too high, I don't think we will be dual booting, or completely replacing the WM rom with an android rom really, but I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be able to get android running via haret like we have been doing for the past 3 months...
but I am curious, do you have a link to the minimum android requirements?
From my understanding Android was developed to be able to run on just about any device. In an interview with Googles Director of Mobile Platforms, Andy Rubin
Q: What were the primary development challenges for Android? Did you design it with high-end or mainstream hardware in mind, and what are the system requirements?
Rubin: When we built the system, we wanted it to be as flexible as possible. We did a lot of work to write our own library, and it's 250 kilobytes, not 3.4 megabytes.
We took a lot of those types of considerations when we were developing the platform. The platform is capable of running, as I said, on kind of mid- to lower-end devices as well.
We feel that one of the platform's distinguishing features is how it handles access to data. I talked about the mashups on the Internet and everything else. So, although the platform can run in a stripped-down fashion on mass-market phones, we think that the initial devices will be mid- to higher-end phones just because of the data access capabilities of the platform.
The minimal requirements are 32 megabytes of RAM, 32 megabytes of flash, and a 200-megahertz online processor. There are companies within the alliance working to bring that to even lower-power phones.
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Click to collapse
I am aware that this interview is nearly a year old, so things may have changed, but since I cannot find a recent comment on the minimum requirements I have to assume that they still intend for Android to be able to run on a wide variety of hardware, which would include the Titan
But then again, I could be wrong, I might be missing a very obvious link to the minimum requirements for android.
Thanks in advance for the link
It seems that some people here don't understand that we can already run Android on the Titan. Just go here: http://it029000.massey.ac.nz/vogue/ , get the latest version, extract it to \Storage Card\, and then run the haret.exe.
Of course, we still need a lot of work to be done to make it fully usable. The touchscreen needs a bit of fine-tuning, in my opinion (though it's debatable). Another big issue is the keyboard. I think that some are working on it right now, though.
This may sound like a totally naive question. I've asked it to myself a few times but with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth today about Nvidia not supporting newer android releases I have to ask. I have two gtabs and I've tried installing a number of different roms with different kernels and while some are definitely zippier than others and some look a little different, they are basically all the same (stock roms excluded of course). I've wondered what having a gingerbread or honeycomb android system would really mean for me on the gtab. I do a lot of work with VM machines - mostly running Windows. Outside of the fact that Microsoft also won't write drivers for some newer hardware for older operating systems, I don't see a lot of difference between say Windows 2000, XP and even W7 (other than W7 makes everything I do harder). I can run most application fine on any of them. I'm sure that under the covers there is some different functionality and even improvements but for the user experience - I'm hard pressed to explain why someone should dump their stable and working fine XP for a W7 machine unless of course there is some device or application that has been specifically coded not to work with XP. For example: Google Chrome and Firefox run on XP and W7 but the new Internet Exploder from MS won't run on XP. That was clearly a deliberate choice by MS because the other guys can all run. Sorry rambling a bit here but that leads to my question. What would I gain by having honeycomb running on my g-tab? The applications would all still be the same I imagine. Perhaps the performance would be a little better? Perhaps I might have a few OS type enhancements? But, at the end of the day, what would I really see as the true benefit of having a honeycomb android system running a dev built rom? I'm not being facetious here - I really would like to understand why this is so important to everyone. Hopefully the answer is something technical and not just "because it is newer so it must be better." What am I missing?
hi enigma,
It is a good question that you have asked and I certainly understand where you are coming from and tbh I am certainly no expert and maybe not best placed to try and give an answer!
I think honeycomb as a version is particularly sought after simply because of the fact that it was built from the bottom up as a tablet OS. You would have to assume that this would increase ease of use, functionality and aesthetics. I reckon this is quite a big deal. I have a couple of android phones and the g tablet and I would prefer for my tablet to look and feel different from my phones.
I think another reason is that people are very keen to be running honeycomb on a relatively cheap tablet – honeycomb tablets are coming out at around double the price of the g tab. The chance to say a big fu*k you to those prices is I guess quite exciting.
Finally, I think as you mentioned, people have a desire to have the newest things. This is just human nature and I am the same – bit pathetic maybe but that is just how it is.
Anyways, these are basically the reasons why I personally would love a bit of honeycomb on my g tab!
Is it just me or does android Overall lack standardizations?
There are so many different versions of android tablets and phones that app developers seem to have to make for one, then keep changing for others.
Things do not seem to be cross compatible between devices either.
The way I'm looking at is is like windows:
With windows you have all kinds of PC's and there is a standard, Keyboard & mouse. Windows interfaces between the hardware and apps and allows seamless transfer between different PC's with windows OS.
Then I look at android. And what runs on my android tablet, wont work on my friends tablet. Same in reverse.
Basically has anyone else noticed this? Lack of standardization when it comes to a practical interface?
And it seems to fall on the app devs to support a specific device, when android itself should be the interface between the hardware and the app.
Does anyone see where I'm coming from?
What does everyone else think?
Do you think there will eventually be a standard with android devices like what happen to the PC after Microsoft made windows and created a standard in that respect?
Do you think that traditional PC computers running windows and MAC will eventually phase out?
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And whats the deal with a phone needing 2 GHz dual core CPU's?
If the code was optimized properly, wouldn't you be able to get the same speed and quality from half that?
I've seen high end android tablet lag badly, when an intel PC of lesser speed runs windows just fine.
I dont get it, It would save battery power as well if it was refined, would it not?
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I dont really want this to be a question air post and people answer, I'm hoping all kinds of us people can have one big giant discussion.
Maybe if enough people want a standard for tablets and smartphones like there is with computers, there will be better progress.
Because at the moment, everyone seems to be doing their own thing, and they are all suing each other over the dumbest details, so what if someone elses device has a home button in the front like an iPhone, where else would you put it?
I think Samsung has the best setup of all of them, its touch buttons in the front bottom, other buttons on the sides.
Seems like a good place to start a standard design, don't you think?
The biggest advantage that Android currently has is that its available for every price range, in every flavor you would want. Android reached 72% market share not due to the flagships but due to the lower end devices that majority of consumers buy. Standardizing the specs at a high end would cause it to not be affordable for many people especially in countries outside the US where there are no carrier subsidies. So I vote for it to go on like this.
premsrj said:
The biggest advantage that Android currently has is that its available for every price range, in every flavor you would want. Android reached 72% market share not due to the flagships but due to the lower end devices that majority of consumers buy. Standardizing the specs at a high end would cause it to not be affordable for many people especially in countries outside the US where there are no carrier subsidies. So I vote for it to go on like this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I mean creating a standard like with windows PC's, they are all the same basically, and each has its own price range and level of power.
And windows is the interface between the hardware and the software you install.
With android, I don't see this, I see app developers having to make the app for each device, when they should just have to make it for the android OS, and the android OS is the interface and inturpurtation between the app you install and the device hardware.
Aside from that, they should all at least have a basic standard interface like home, back, search, power, volume, buttons and then the touch screen. Kinda like the samsung phone design.
There are only so many physically achievable ways we can design a smart phone, for example apple sued Samsung over copying their iPhone because the home button on the Samsung phone was mechanical. I mean, what is this world coming to? Where would apple have liked samsung to stick the home button? On the back of the device?
It is in a practical location. So why not put it front and bottom of the screen?
I'm after a "basic" standard, not a complete identical standard. Something kinda like how every windows PC has the same basic keyboard design and mouse design. The rest can be different... But apply it to smart phones and tablets in their own respective interfaces designed.
See what I mean?
(I'm thinking of this great world where android ARM tablets, PC's, and phones replace the current computer systems and stuff. It would work, android seems to be able to do so much more and consume so much less power. While maintaining the same or greater speeds.)
zBusterCB87 said:
I mean creating a standard like with windows PC's, they are all the same basically, and each has its own price range and level of power.
And windows is the interface between the hardware and the software you install.
With android, I don't see this, I see app developers having to make the app for each device, when they should just have to make it for the android OS, and the android OS is the interface and inturpurtation between the app you install and the device hardware.
Aside from that, they should all at least have a basic standard interface like home, back, search, power, volume, buttons and then the touch screen. Kinda like the samsung phone design.
There are only so many physically achievable ways we can design a smart phone, for example apple sued Samsung over copying their iPhone because the home button on the Samsung phone was mechanical. I mean, what is this world coming to? Where would apple have liked samsung to stick the home button? On the back of the device?
It is in a practical location. So why not put it front and bottom of the screen?
I'm after a "basic" standard, not a complete identical standard. Something kinda like how every windows PC has the same basic keyboard design and mouse design. The rest can be different... But apply it to smart phones and tablets in their own respective interfaces designed.
See what I mean?
(I'm thinking of this great world where android ARM tablets, PC's, and phones replace the current computer systems and stuff. It would work, android seems to be able to do so much more and consume so much less power. While maintaining the same or greater speeds.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You must be a great essay writer
My English teacher would give you an A for sure.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
What are the chances we'll see the new Ubuntu for phones os running on our hardware anytime soon?
As far as I understand it it should be just a matter of compiling for our specific soc, making a flashable rom and then flashing, right? They say it can run on android kernels so there shouldn't have to be any hardware interface work that needs to be done, right?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda app-developers app
If you don't mind me asking, how would this make any difference to us?
rangercaptain said:
If you don't mind me asking, how would this make any difference to us?
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Click to collapse
It would enable us an alternative operating system choice, allowing application developers to create processor native applications (rather than using a java virtual machine that's quite resource intensive than running apps on the bare metal) thus using less system resources, enabling faster multitasking, greater compatibility with preexisting applications, enhanced security, and the desktop mode that they are touting is quite nice as well. connect an hdmi dongle and use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to turn the phone into a desktop computer... there are lots of uses for a bare metal operating system on a hardware platform with restrictive system resources.
there's really nothing wrong with android per se, she's a great OS, but there are a wide number of other approaches to building os's and user experiences. I would consider this pretty similar to choosing to install ubuntu on a PC, or windows on a mac for that matter. it's a matter of widening the variety of application approaches and compatibility. a matter of choice.
I really want to know if this is possible after seeing the demo of it on engadget this morning I'm convinced that this is one os I'd be willing to flash and possibly leave on over android, as amazing as Android is this just better though out in terms of where everything is and speed of access
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It may take off, if someone is able to best the entire android community as a whole, but the odds of that are "0"...
We would be better served if google took it over, and incorporated the OS into a handful of smart phones. Beyond that prospect, a port for us would be nothing more than a pet project.
This idea is not new, and mention of it can be found in virtually ever forum on this site, and a few devs have met with success on getting a bootable Android device running Ubuntu, but it was a short lived event, as support for the OS is simply not there ATM.
I do agree that a different OS is a good idea, but as a dedicated Android user, I would not be willing to switch at this point, as a stable, functional OS is months or even years away.
Likely the OS would fall the way of RIM, and other OS platforms, albeit, ahead of it's time.....g
gregsarg said:
It may take off, if someone is able to best the entire android community as a whole, but the odds of that are "0"...
We would be better served if google took it over, and incorporated the OS into a handful of smart phones. Beyond that prospect, a port for us would be nothing more than a pet project.
This idea is not new, and mention of it can be found in virtually ever forum on this site, and a few devs have met with success on getting a bootable Android device running Ubuntu, but it was a short lived event, as support for the OS is simply not there ATM.
I do agree that a different OS is a good idea, but as a dedicated Android user, I would not be willing to switch at this point, as a stable, functional OS is months or even years away.
Likely the OS would fall the way of RIM, and other OS platforms, albeit, ahead of it's time.....g
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Click to collapse
While I strongly believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, the fact of the matter is that it's already running on the quintessential android test bed for the current generation of phones (the galaxy nexus) which means that it should be very easily ported to other, similar hardware (which is most of the android devices out there right now.). if they made this completely open source (which i'm pretty sure they'd have to given that most of the components of the OS are built on open-source licenses), and allowed the already very good and very diverse linux community expand it's functionality, write good apps for it, I think it has some pretty great promise.
my personal standpoint however, is that operating systems for mobile should work exactly like they do for PC's (and macs for that matter). you should be able to install whatever, whenever, without the approval of the company that happens to make the hardware, and without the approval of the company who provides the data and telephone services for the device... it's a pocket computer, not a dumb phone designed for one thing.
I thought Android was Linux and Ubuntu was Linux. Why is one type better than the other? And to run native, wouldn't hardware manufacturers have to write a butt load of drivers? Like the fiasco of upgrading from win2000 to win7.
Ubuntu won't be released til 2014, will older phones like our note1 be supported?
Keep in mind that by 2014 the note1 would be considered old in mobile years.
rangercaptain said:
I thought Android was Linux and Ubuntu was Linux. Why is one type better than the other? And to run native, wouldn't hardware manufacturers have to write a butt load of drivers? Like the fiasco of upgrading from win2000 to win7.
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Click to collapse
hardware drivers always run on the bare metal anyway (usually as part of the kernel, or occasionally as a background daemon service). the point is that android applications are built on top of the java environment which is a virtual machine - it's processes are abstracted and emulated which requires much more system resources than writing in something like c++ for the underlaying hardware. the only compatibility that this would break is that binaries don't work across cpu platforms. if something is compiled for the arm9 architecture for example (what most modern smartphones use, including our note), it wouldn't run on android for x86 or another java virtual machine like bluestacks. in order to get it to run on a different hardware platform you'd either have to emulate a complete device (like the iphone and android sdk simulators), or recompile it for the platform you want to run it on (only useful if you have the source code). the latter method is how linux distributions have been doing things for years. there are virtually identical linux distributions that can run on intel, arm, powerpc, sparc, motorola 68k, etc. etc. they can all run pretty much the same applications (because of the hardware abstraction layer present in the kernel), but in order for it to work, those applications must be recompiled for the appropriate underlaying processor architecture, as the output of a c(++,#) compiler is code that is cpu architecture specific.
also, windows 2000 and windows 7 were designed for the same (or similar) underlaying hardware problems. windows 2000 to windows 7 was mostly a piece of cake. whereas the move from windows 98 to windows 2000 or windows 98 to windows xp was difficult because windows 9x and windows 2000/xp use a different variety of hardware abstraction layer and thus different drivers must be written as drivers designed for one HAL won't work with another. (same thing for major linux revisions. the HAL in the 2.4 series of kernels is different from the one in 2.6 series of kernels which means one has to rewrite device drivers in order to get some less-than-standard hardware working.
So cp....
your a smart guy...
Get it going for us.....
you've got the skills we need to pull it off....g
gregsarg said:
So cp....
your a smart guy...
Get it going for us.....
you've got the skills we need to pull it off....g
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, If i had access to the sources (that by all rights should be open thanks to the way the gpl is designed), I'd be happy to build a rom and help with the development efforts. I'm pretty decent at optimizing linux distributions for arm hardware. we should all petition canonical to release the code post haste.
I would love to see ubuntu ported over to phones. I almost fell off my chair when I heard of the idea that your phone could just connect to a monitor/keyboard/mouse to become a fully fledged desktop computer. This would literally replace almost all of my gadgets into one device. I wouldn't need a laptop, an ipod, a dvd player, or even a gaming console possibly as well.
I've been using ubuntu for a number of years and would be overjoyed to see almost all of my electronics and computing essentially made into one pocket sized device. The possibilities are so great for this kind of leap in technology and it almost seems to be the inevitable succession in personal computer technology. This could possibly be the beginning of the end for laptops, desktops, tablets, and netbooks/ultrabooks. All data would be transmitted using flash memory or transmitted OTA instead of spinning disks or other media.
If the source code is released, and I'm sure it will since Canonical has done a decent job of running Ubuntu lately, I hope someone brings it to the i717 because then I would probably sell a lot of electronic equipment
The release will never happen to allow a single, all inclusive device.
Ubuntu or not, there are too many hands in the pie, and billions of dollars on the table.
The apples, and Samsungs of the world will go at it until the day we die.
They all want the biggest piece, and will squash anyone that gets in their way.
Ubuntu would need a home run piece of code that emulates a magic carpet if they ever hope to slay the beast.
And if they did, I'm not so sure that people would embrace the one stop shop mentality for a single device anyway.
It simply stinks of yet another apple type monopoly in the making.
I support the idea, but it's the logistics that kill the deal, money driven logistics of course.....g
gregsarg said:
The release will never happen to allow a single, all inclusive device.
Ubuntu or not, there are too many hands in the pie, and billions of dollars on the table.
The apples, and Samsungs of the world will go at it until the day we die.
They all want the biggest piece, and will squash anyone that gets in their way.
Ubuntu would need a home run piece of code that emulates a magic carpet if they ever hope to slay the beast.
And if they did, I'm not so sure that people would embrace the one stop shop mentality for a single device anyway.
It simply stinks of yet another apple type monopoly in the making.
I support the idea, but it's the logistics that kill the deal, money driven logistics of course.....g
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Too true, it's all about the money in the end, even with free stuff.
Now that you mention it, it does sound a lot like some sort of Apple type ploy to get you to buy their things... either way I hope it happens someday
I suppose the main reason why the Android OS is so poorly distributed is because there is nearly limitless hardware configurations and such. So why not create another layer that abstracts the hardware? Every manufacturer would be responsible for getting their virtual machine to support their hardware, and it would be pretty much a one time thing. From then on, Android would just be on top of that, ignorant of how to handle the real differences in hardware. This way, all devices could get the latest OS updates instantly, and even the oldest of phones would still be supported.
I guess you could argue that a VM would take up a lot of resources, but it doesn't really. And hardware today is excessively powerful to the point where people can't even tell the difference between a phone that benchmarks 30k vs 60k.
Or maybe this is a dumb idea. I did study computer engineering but am unemployed so there's that.