Gingerbread and why its Neccesary

[gabailey1]

With the advent of Gingerbread on the horizon, and the requirements its imposing on hardware, many peoples have begun to believe that this means google is turning into the same company that idolizes fruit. This is UNTRUE. The allegations that Google has decided to lock down Android from being customizable are totally UNTRUE. Google hasn't confirmed or even indicated that Gingerbread is un-skinable. Think about all the launcher apps that totally revamp the way Android looks that reside on The Market. Google has allowed them to exist, and encourages them. All of Android OS is opensource. It has been, it is, and it will contonue to be so. As such, anyone can take Android and skin it how they want. And is the need for hardware requirements surprising at all at this point? Really? Even now, the possibilties of the G1 ever getting anything higher than what its at officially is limited by its hardware. Because of limited ROM and RAM. The more sophisticated the OS becomes, the faster the hardware needs to be. This is the same thing that has happened with Intel Processors and Windows. The hardware would innovate, and the software would have to catch up, and then the software would innovate, forcing the hardware to play catch up. This will forever be the role of software and hardware. As things change, as Android, or iOS or webOS grow up, they will always require better hardware. Its easy to sit back and moan and groan and point fingers but that's how it is. Simple as that. So instead, let's sit back, and look forward to Google trying not to ban companies from molding android, but to make it so they don't really have to. That's what openess is about. Choices. How many phone publishers out there won't put Android on their phones simply because stock android can be intimidating to figure out, and because they don't have either the know how or the resources to skin it like Sammy and HTC and regrettably Motorola have done? Its a smart business move on googles part. Its time to put that the new guy to work (here's looking at you Palm UI guy) so that he can make Android as naturally polished in its Vanilla flavor as rival OS' UI's are (again iOS and webOS have long established themselves on ease of use and polish). You could also look at it this way: In each subsequent version of android, more and more features and functionality were tossed in that OTHER COMPANIES DID FIRST. What am I talking about? Well when android 1.5, or cupcake was released, HTC released the HERO. One of its (if not its first) phones with Sense UI overlayed on top. Gorgeous gorgeous sense! And it had the ability to sync facebook contacts with your phones contacts! The palm pre had been out already, and its webOS features Synergy, which seamlessly melds all of its dedicated sources into one cohesive glossary. Your contacts had facebook info, yahoo info, and google contacts info. Then 2.0 is released with the droid. It begins to feature the very same concept, natively adding the ability to pull peoples facebook info into your contacts. Did people scream and shout: HTC did it first! Your making them useless! Your locking them out! No. You know why? Because google natively adding this functionality allows HTC to focus on other aspects of their UI, leading us to amazing innovation the the Leap screen and fully interactive widgets. The more google adds into Android, the more they continue to streamline the experience, the less companies like HTC and Sammy have to worry about. They focus their energies into making their phones stand out in more meaningful ways. Like HTC and their amazing widgets. Or Samsungs take on what a launcher should be, and how the notification shade should function (kudos to them on that too, cause android has needed that functionality since its release). Android will never lock down. It will always be open. Don't stifle it from growing though. Allow it to blossom, and let other capitalize on its sucess and fine tune or add what they want. In the end, that's what's best for everyone.

 

[mr.saving]

Holy wall of text Batman!

 

[Raptor]

Holy wall of text Batman!

Yep, an occasional paragraph break would make reading a whole lot easier -- at least it's not all caps!


Brian

 

[milominderbinde]

gene_bailey, you got to take a breath, buddy.

 

[Stang68]

Sooo...does Gingerbread mean we'll finally get copy and paste done right?


hehe