Memo to all Android OEM's (and US carriers)

[VZWRocks]

Originally Posted by Clak

you know, I'd expect that kind of reply from some of the riff raff around here, but not from you. Lately I've noticed a real lack of respect for users of this forum from some staff, and It's getting to the point that I'm thinking I should go elsewhere.

He cold have been more tactful about it, but he was only saying what a lot of us were thinking but didn't dare say. You could have and should have stated your views better.

[VZWRocks]

Originally Posted by GNex Girl

I think the fear was that more dumb phone users will switch to iPhones and that would overload the network.

What VZW should have done was keep unlimited for 4G phone new lines and upgrades from a 3G phone.

Most dumb phone uses who upgrade to iPhones dont know how to use them and dont use a lot of data anyway. I see this all the time.

Dropping unlimited had nothing to do with the iPhine and everything to do with needing more income to build the 4G network and in reaction to those who abused the system before tethering without paying and listening to Pandora all day long.

The only thing that giving those who get 4G phones unlimited data would do was give them an incentive to get 4G phones, but the double data promo (which is back again BTW), and the fact that going forward almost all phones will be 4G takes care of that.

[ECrispy]

I am all for choice. I explicitly mentioned this - "You are free to introduce 10 different variants which don't have these features".

I am also not happy that after Google introduces an OS designed with certain features in mind (e.g. no hardware buttons) for which they have very good reasons, and have explicitly said they want to get rid of buttons like menu, almost no new phones respect that.

The goal of a flagship phone is to push the envelope and give users the best possible experience. Nexus phones are the only ones that do that, and I want more than one choice.

Addressing a few issues -

- NFC is very cheap. There's no reason not to include it in a new device. Like someone else said, wait till iPhone has it and then see every oem scramble to include it

- Updates: the only reason it takes 6 months - 1 year (or never) to get updates is because they don't care about users. They have access to the sdk and software months before its publicly available (just like any Windows oem partner gets access to early Windows builds). It's not a question of 2 or 3 or 4 months - its committing to support for a phone. It doesn't take months to package ICS with some proprietary drivers. What this all comes down to is they'd rather spend resources and money on new phones rather than supporting old ones since they don't get any money from them.

[VZWRocks]

Originally Posted by ECrispy

- NFC is very cheap. There's no reason not to include it in a new device. Like someone else said, wait till iPhone has it and then see every oem scramble to include it

Source please.

- Updates: the only reason it takes 6 months - 1 year (or never) to get updates is because they don't care about users. They have access to the sdk and software months before its publicly available (just like any Windows oem partner gets access to early Windows builds). It's not a question of 2 or 3 or 4 months - its committing to support for a phone. It doesn't take months to package ICS with some proprietary drivers. What this all comes down to is they'd rather spend resources and money on new phones rather than supporting old ones since they don't get any money from them.

Respectfully you dont know what you are talking about. No one outside of Google and the specific OEM partner (Samsung) who designed the current Nexus device sees the code until it is released into the AOSP.

[ECrispy]

I can't find the source for NFC costs right now, but I remember reading it's not that much.

As for access to code, you may be right. I think this is bad on Google's part since it leads to fragmentation of their platform. But even if oem's get access to AOSP when its made public, there's still no excuse. There are ICS ports made by hobbyists in their spare time, and the only thing lacking is proprietary drivers, which the oem's own.

[VZWRocks]

Originally Posted by ECrispy

I can't find the source for NFC costs right now, but I remember reading it's not that much.

As for access to code, you may be right. I think this is bad on Google's part since it leads to fragmentation of their platform. But even if oem's get access to AOSP when its made public, there's still no excuse. There are ICS ports made by hobbyists in their spare time, and the only thing lacking is proprietary drivers, which the oem's own.

They do that because they dont want OEM's writing their software on top of old builds.

As for hobbyists getting it done faster you hit the nail on the head right there "hobbyists" ... as popular as they are and as smoothly as they seem to run they are not tested a fraction of what the official builds are and the kinds of people who install custom roms are a lot more forgiving of bugs than joe consumer who will complain about them to the carrier and ask for replacement devices which costs the carriers and OEM's money in the long run.