Solution: How greatly decrease fragmentation

[chance1117]

As we all know fragmentation is a very big issue for Android. The nexus line of phone always get the latest builds of android and some don't have Froyo yet.

Here is my solution: Rather then each manufacturer creating their own flavor of Android through deeply integrated skins (sense, moto blur, ect) each manufacture will have their own group of apps that are available on the android market.

So if I buy an HTC phone Sense would be installed as an app. This app would be available to anyone on the market. Sense would be free for HTC users and for purchase for users with other manufacturers.

This is a win for consumers. We will get the choice of what what type of android experience we want along with the latest version of android. The manufacturers will then be able to make additional revenue when their apps are purchased in the market and they will be able to push out phones quicker since they don't have to spend so much time dealing with fragmentation of their own software.

 

[mordbane]

Not a bad idea, but unless the skins from competing manufacturers are going to be really expensive ($20 - $30) there's not much advantage to buying an HTC phone over a Samsung. Plus with the piracy being assumed to be a bigger problem than it actually is, they'll be scared to death to put an apk on the Market. And you run into the same problem when you upgrade your phone to the latest build and the manufacturers will still drag their feet on releasing a compatible skin. Phone manufacturers want to sell you an "experience" when they sell you a phone, not a blank sheet of paper. It maybe what most of us want, but were in the minority of Android users.

Fragmentation could be controlled by Google by not pushing out updates until all manufacturers are ready to do so. Yea this will slow things down, but that's the only way your going to unify Android. By putting the Google branded phones out there with the latest update, it's like they're competing against the other manufacturers. Which I guess they are, but they're shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[Brett]

I wish something like this would be incorporated into android devices. They will never do it though. The manufacturers consider their skin to be a benefit to their devices. Plus they want to have their ui stand out out of the box because not everybody would think to look in the market.

Also, google doesn't push out the updates. They release their source code for android and then it is the manufacturers job to take the source code and modify it for their devices. Google has no control on when devices get an update after they release the source code.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk