Google fattens up Android devs with Jelly Bean sauce Google will release the latest official build of its Android mobile operating system, version 4.1, to developers today. The web giant will parcel up the source code, codenamed Jelly Bean, ahead of the rollout later this month. Jean-Baptiste Queru, the tech lead on the Android Open Source Project, announced the release on its …
This post has been deleted by its author
Androids Killer App?
I thought flash was the killer app, "the full web as it supposed to be" or whatever cack they came up with? I seem t oremeber everyone telling use not so long ago that Flash was super important to the interwebs and that apple could shove it up their arse with their half assed attempts?
Doublethink?
Has anyone noticed Adobe AIR??? quote from blog..
"Adobe's solution for video delivery to mobile devices is centered on enabling apps. As an immediate future-proof migration path, Adobe AIR provides the same advanced **Flash based** video features, which means no changes to your content protection or video delivery infrastructure."
from
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmedia/2012/06/impact-on-android-video-delivery/
This post has been deleted by its author
"Preferential treatment for Google's own hardware and Motorola Mobility hardware."
please correct me if I am wrong, but as its googles money that was stumped up to produce android os, then surely its a given that they will distribute upgrades for their own hardware first? Its up to the other manufacturers to alter the code to suit their hardware?
No, it's not only about the customised interface. Google's AOSP releases are coded to work on specific hardware at the low level. To port it to another SoC requires quite a bit of work at the low-level, though this should probably be less for Jelly Bean as there are fewer low-level changes between 4.0 and 4.1.
"I'm sure if Samsung wanted to push out plain vanilla Android to their phones "
It's worse than that. They also pander to all the networks who also get to put their crap on top of the Samsung customisations. That means that if you bought your phone directly from Samsung, it won't get an update until after all the operator customisations are also done (sometime around the next ice-age).
That Samsung, LG, SONY, etc don't have the source code, just means that Google are able to release faster, surely? They'd know the OS best of anyone (you'd hope) and they'll have their own family of devices in house to test on as they develop, too.
Sounds about right that it should become ready devices they have the most access to first, doesn't it? Samsung should presumably be in a good position cos of the Nexus, assuming they're doing the work on that (which they might not be as it's Google branded)
The Nexus devices are what Google feel the basis of the hardware should be as a demonstration of the operating system etc.
The Xoom was released as a Google Experience Device, basically a Nexus without the label.
All these are released with the statement that they will receive updates direct from Google for Nexus and that the Xoom in the USA would receive the basic Android.
That means that they will be updated fast,if say Samsung wanted to they would roll out the Jelly Bean update within a couple of days, all they would need to do is install it on a few tablets and test them, if they had no hardware conflict then roll it out. However they want their own stuff on them so thats the delay....
"if say Samsung wanted to they would roll out the Jelly Bean update within a couple of days, all they would need to do is install it on a few tablets and test them, if they had no hardware conflict then roll it out."
Thank fuck you don't work in QA for a mobile hardware vendor that I own.
I may be alone here but even as much as I like Android I'm getting a little irked at how each release is going to be "buttery smooth". Even my One X (UK Tegra 3 version) can have its moments and that was the first Sense 4 phone HTC made. I'm waiting for a stable version of CM9 before I give that a try but will these changes to the code listed really impact the experience to a buttery smooth level? I know nothing of coding but I do know what I experience.
My HTC One X also suffers some lagginess - I have however decided this is the usual HTC issue - the phone doesn't actually have the specs needed to run as it should. For instance - t'm quite astonished at the number of times I see that Android has killed an app in the background in order to keep Sense4 running - but after about a week of the phone running constantly - everytime I leave an app by pressing the home button, Sense4 crashes leaving with me a blank screen with the white loading box on it. Restarting the phone will make it right again for another week or so. Investigating further I now realise that the phone is really lacking the RAM it needs to be able to run smoothly. There are of course many articles online now about Sense4's agressive memory reclaiming techniques. When you add on top of this the disaster that is HTCSmartSync that switches off data and wifi overnight after the phone has been idle for 15 minutes - because as far as HTC are concerned - no-one works during the night..... My last phone was a HTC Desire I bit the bullet and trusted that HTC would have learnt from their mistakes when building this phone - but I am now fairly certain that I will be going to a different manufacturer in April 2014.
However - back to Jellybean
Ultimately RAM will still be an important factor into how smooth the phone runs - but visually - drawing more frames per second will at least make the phone look smoother.
Ugh! You don't need to tell me about the stupid 'battery saving' feature that is SmartSync turning off all data at night, I brought it up with them and was told that's a feature. Yup.. even when I said not everyone works at the same time, some work nights, but that means nothing I guess. They're only interested in those day workers! I'm trying to stay with t hem because I like Sense and appreciate it more in its trim Sense 4 form but such ludicrous decisions and choices like these make me wonder. Two colour LED notification that turns off after 5 minutes (that's not mentioned anywhere.....) took me weeks of back and forth with support trying to troubleshoot before they mentioned the limit. All stupid little things in the name of battery saving.
The ImageSense chip nonsense makes me laugh too. I saw some photos that were linked to as examples from the HTC community manager (blog person) and the thumbnails looked great but the full size images were awful! Full of noise, massive amounts of detail missing and the usual HTC camera failures. When a lot of people pointed out that these were awful examples and that if these are the best it can do then it's somehow worse than older phones they removed the full size images and said better examples would be uploaded. That never happened and now owning the One X I can see that those awful images are pretty accurate unless you have near perfect lighting.
I swore off Motorola for life after owning a Milestone so it seems like I'm left with Samsung or Sony. I may reconsider Motorola at a later date with them now being Google owned depending on reviews but I doubt it.
You mean like the Nexus One, that ICS won't run on even though it's been sold in retail channels right up to ICS release?
Apple supports it's devices for 3+ years after purchase. They may disable newer features because they won't run properly on the older hardware, but at least they give you *something*.
Apple supports it's devices for 3+ years after purchase. They may disable newer features because they won't run properly on the older hardware, but at least they give you *something*.
let me correct that for you.....
They may disable newer features because they want to keep those features for the newer hardware in an effort to entice people into needless upgrades.
there... thats better ....
As opposed to most Android phone manufacturers who just don't bother. The Android landscape is still predominantly 2.3. As I said, it's a shame that it takes a mod community to give people what their manufacturer should be able to give them but top marks to the CM team who do a brilliant job.
I own an iPhone and a couple of Android phones. Apple IS trying to gouge every last penny out of me, no doubt about it but if I'm not dumb I can get the best value out of them and they constantly give me the latest OS. My Android phones I have to turn to the Open Source community for as the manufacturers couldn't give a flying fuck about the phone after the sale.
There is a market for a midrange device (i.e this years midrange tech not just older flagship device that is getting old) that just provides a reasonable stock experience and fast updates. (Sucks that you don't even get Nexus devices prerooted - if you need to mess around splitting boot.img's (And breaking OTA updates) just to get ro.secure=0 then that isn't a premium experience). They had it better when they provided prerooted dev devices without access to paid content. (And they had a physical keyboard and buttons).
ZTE updated the blade fairly officially from 2.1->2.3 it is trivially easy to do if you don't do dodgy hacks and still to the way the dev board maker does stuff.
spec's wise even midrange should be just fine (1GB ram if the manufacturer is incompetent or get away with 512MB if they know what they are doing (Or they just clone the Nexus S))
All smartphones are rubbish for actually being a phone (They are ok at being pda's portable mini computers). Cannot even do a week between charges with super minimal usage.
The dumb phone I use is 6 years old and still works just as well as it always had (Changed the battery twice). Nokia 6230i
I am ok paying top end pricing if something is going to last 6 years if it is going to last less than a year then I am totally not.
I think I would most likely be better off with a 7" 3G tablet instead of a smartphone (At the moment I have a wifi xoom and a 2011 Xperia).
Google are not really all that much more trustworthy than anyone else (Otherwise the Xoom worldwide would have been a Google Experience Device - even advertised on the box that it is one which it totally isn't)
It is not like Apple or even MS where it is forced from the top.
Finally the only thing that makes Android any better is the stuff that is only possible from root apps (WIthout that I might as well be on WP7). If you lose the convenience of the updates just for getting superuser access to your own device then that isn't acceptable either.
My big question is whether there will finally be caldav support? iPhone has had it for years, yet all android has is some half-assed 3rd party caldav plugins that don't even work 100%.
How is it that an evil proprietary company supports open standards (CalDav, CardDav, etc) better than a company that open sourced it's whole OS?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
