It's been nearly a month now since Google unveiled the giant gingerbread man on their campus and as of right now there has been no solid sign of when it will be with us, so obviously people have been asking, where the hell is Gingerbread? I would like to run through a few theories on the delay, they split neatly into 3 categories (there is a 4th but we will come to that later), Software, Hardware and Services.
Software
Simply put, Gingerbread may not be done, either they ran into some delay with the coding or found some bug very late on which has caused them to go back and fix it. I find the first Idea unlikely, as I don't think they would put up the statue till they were ready and since they proper definition of ready would mean that they had thoroughly tested the code I don't see the second one being likely.
Hardware
This concerns the unconfirmed Nexus S phone from Samsung which was supposedly going to be launched with Gingerbread. Rumour has it this has either been delayed by a hardware problem or completely pulled to be replaced by a better phone. Unless the phone is something different from a Stock Android Galaxy S (which is again what some of the rumours say it is) I cant see how hardware could be the reason and surely neither Samsung nor anyone else has a complete better phone that close to full production that they would decide to replace a model that was on the verge of release.
Services
There's a whole bunch of stuff that Google showed at I/O that might be dropping with Gingerbread and some other things like Near Field technology which will allow you to swipe your phone over a sensor to pay for things. These things take time to set up. We have seen changes to the developers pages for the Market that implies the Web based market may be coming, but things like the music store take a hell of a lot of work to set up just in the negotiations with record labels let alone all the back end and what would be the point of being able to pay for things through your phone if nobody accepts that method of payment. Maybe Google are waiting on a few more signatures so that they have a bigger splash at launch.
That brings me to the 4th option I mentioned. Maybe Gingerbread is not delayed at all. Maybe this is all going as Google planed it. Just because previous updates have come out in a couple of weeks of their statue doesn't make this a law, certainly no one at Google has ever made the link. We are all here because we love Android and obviously we all want the latest and greatest version but just sit tight and it will be here before you know it.
In closing I would just like to share with you the picture I have as my phones current splashscreen.
Software
Simply put, Gingerbread may not be done, either they ran into some delay with the coding or found some bug very late on which has caused them to go back and fix it. I find the first Idea unlikely, as I don't think they would put up the statue till they were ready and since they proper definition of ready would mean that they had thoroughly tested the code I don't see the second one being likely.
Hardware
This concerns the unconfirmed Nexus S phone from Samsung which was supposedly going to be launched with Gingerbread. Rumour has it this has either been delayed by a hardware problem or completely pulled to be replaced by a better phone. Unless the phone is something different from a Stock Android Galaxy S (which is again what some of the rumours say it is) I cant see how hardware could be the reason and surely neither Samsung nor anyone else has a complete better phone that close to full production that they would decide to replace a model that was on the verge of release.
Services
There's a whole bunch of stuff that Google showed at I/O that might be dropping with Gingerbread and some other things like Near Field technology which will allow you to swipe your phone over a sensor to pay for things. These things take time to set up. We have seen changes to the developers pages for the Market that implies the Web based market may be coming, but things like the music store take a hell of a lot of work to set up just in the negotiations with record labels let alone all the back end and what would be the point of being able to pay for things through your phone if nobody accepts that method of payment. Maybe Google are waiting on a few more signatures so that they have a bigger splash at launch.
That brings me to the 4th option I mentioned. Maybe Gingerbread is not delayed at all. Maybe this is all going as Google planed it. Just because previous updates have come out in a couple of weeks of their statue doesn't make this a law, certainly no one at Google has ever made the link. We are all here because we love Android and obviously we all want the latest and greatest version but just sit tight and it will be here before you know it.
In closing I would just like to share with you the picture I have as my phones current splashscreen.
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