Database Users

What mobile OS is going to really thrive?

I'm a freshman at Purdue University studying computer science, and my interest pretty much lays in mobile devices and programming. Just a background about myself.
I've been looking at mobile platforms. I've had some experience with using Windows Mobile and the iPhone OS, but haven't had any experience with Android. My question for all of you is, what OS do you think I, or more generally, current college students should focus on?
Obviously there's the big factor of personal preferences, but looking forward, what is going to be a big market?
The iPhone OS already has a big application market, and I do think it will only grow as the iPhone market share grows, but I fear the iPhone's market will peak before I get out of college in about 3 more years.
Android seems to be the budding OS, since its market share is quite low due to only having one device out, and for a small(er) US carrier. But I feel Android, since backed by Google, will thrive for awhile.
Blackberry OS seems really nice, but for now I think the developer pool and demand for blackberry applications is quite low. But, this means that is could peak about then time I'm out of college.
Finally, Windows Mobile seems to be, and no offense to anyone here, but the laughing stock of mobile OS'. The introduction of Windows Mobile 6.5 will help, and Windows Mobile 7 could spark the WinMo community and userbase.
What are your thoughts?

iPhone will continue to be successful but its closed environment will hinder its full potential. It is likely to reach a critical mass soon that it won't be able to reach beyond as long as it clings to proprietary hardware.
Android is likely to continue to be a niche market, much like Google Docs. Successful only if you define the term in a very particular way, but not in a "mass market" way.
Blackberry, from an applications standpoint, has already stalled and is likely to continue to do so unless the Storm can break through, which seems unlikely at this point. After the initial mania over it, it's become kind of a yawn.
You've not included Symbian, but since I don't know much about it I won't comment on it here.
Windows Mobile is not likely to increase its market share significantly, but it's also unlikely to lose much more market share. Integration with the Windows desktop/server world is only likely to become tighter, and that will remain attractive to business users.
I doubt you will go far wrong with strong skills in both iPhone and WinMo. Others are risky.
But really, you mentioned you want to program for mobile devices. With the OS's you mention you are unnecessarily limiting yourself. Windows CE is a quite powerful mobile platform that many of the largest manufacturers are basing their mobile strategies on - just not telephones or other handheld devices. There are many other mobile technologies that you should investigate and will probably give you far greater opportunities than a phone OS.

Like he said, I would definately not focus on a phone OS but rather on a core OS.

I agree with pretty much everything you said, ajbopp, and I get where you're coming from. But in terms of market share for phones, I feel that the trend is going quickly towards average-user type smartphones like the iPhone. My feeling is that whatever OS can tailor towards the average user is going to be the one that comes out with the biggest market share, but that much is obviously. WinMo and Blackberry at the moment are geared towards businesses and if they stay that way they won't own the market. I'm really looking into what OS will perform well in the mass market.

Gotta disagree with you there. Whatever OS can tailor to business needs is where the market share is at. And I don't mean the device that can integrate with Exchange Server the easiest and most reliably.
The OS that will run the navigation, climate control, GPS, etc. systems in every automobile produced by Toyota, or every transport truck engineered by Navistar, or every driver from UPS...that market will dwarf the personal communication device market. The opportunity for application development is more extensive, and the value of those applications will be immeasurably higher. They already are.

let him go with the FailPhone already...

ajbopp said:
Gotta disagree with you there. Whatever OS can tailor to business needs is where the market share is at. And I don't mean the device that can integrate with Exchange Server the easiest and most reliably.
The OS that will run the navigation, climate control, GPS, etc. systems in every automobile produced by Toyota, or every transport truck engineered by Navistar, or every driver from UPS...that market will dwarf the personal communication device market. The opportunity for application development is more extensive, and the value of those applications will be immeasurably higher. They already are.
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Well right now the iPhone has a sizable market share and is tailored to the average user, no?
And I think the OS that is capable of running the things you mentioned sounds like Android, since it's not limited by hardware or software limitations.

met3ora said:
Well right now the iPhone has a sizable market share and is tailored to the average user, no?
And I think the OS that is capable of running the things you mentioned sounds like Android, since it's not limited by hardware or software limitations.
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But it's also not standard, or well-used. You're banking on Android becoming something as commonplace as Java did so quickly in the 90s. I think that's pretty much a long shot.
Plus, you have to consider code re-use and platform diversity. Today, Windows, Windows Mobile, and WindowsCE is still the target to beat when it comes to marketing plans, project expenses, customer familiarity, legacy product integration, and a host of other considerations.
Java offered platform independence at a time when the WWW was just beginning to burgeon. Had it been developed even 5 years earlier, it probably would not have been successful.
There is no comparable event on the horizon that is likely to make Android the dominant mobile OS. There's just not enough incentive to jump to it.

As someone that sells cell phones for a living (at least while in college), I will give my perspective on what I see and hear from customers, as well, my personal feelings as a multiplatform smart phone user...
Background: I offer multiple HTC devices... the Diamond, TyTN II, Touch Dual, Touch, and S621. I offer 3, soon to be 4, Blackberries, the 8310 Curve(2mp camera, GPS, EDGE), the Pearl 8110 (Same as Curver), and the 8820 (No camera, GPS, EDGE, and WiFi), and shortly the new Curve 8900 (3.2mp camera, GPS, WiFi, and EDGE).
Customer: The majority of my customers go with the Blackberry Curve/Pearl(More Curves than Pearls). They like them for the ease of use, in terms of easy app downloading and use, easy e-mail, easy internet, easy customization with a new theme. They are mostly concerned with rock solid stability, battery life, and easy to use. Business ability plays a very small role in the choice, actually, of a BB.
Helping with business related aspects has more to do with selling a customer on a smartphone than any one brand. Also, as I am on a small tangant, BB has done a lot as of late to make their phones less business centric and more mainstream, and have been very successful with this.
As for customers that go with WinMo based devices they don't mind a slightly more complicated OS. They are a bit more tech savy. They don't really care so much about the phone's camera, as they already have a 12mp digital camera for that. The are looking more at cutting edge, from the touchscreen, to the ability to do anything with the phone. They do get frustrated with how slow out of the box the HTC can be, but they don't mind, because they are likely flashing a ROM anyways, or they don't care because it gives them more abilities out of the box than a BB will ever be able to do with every app loaded onto it.
So what does this all mean in terms of longevity? Well, a couple things...
1. WinMo has a much brighter future than BB. In 3 years, WinMo devices are going to be faster and more capable out of the box. BB's will gain in speed, but they will still be limited to essentially an 'os' inside an OS. Palm ran into the problem BB is fastly approaching, they can't improve on what they have anymore since their ceiling is already reached. That is a huge benefit WinMo has over BB, and the others, except for maybe Android, it's ceiling is much higher in terms of absoluter ability.
2. It means that whoever developes a UI for WinMo, whether it be microsoft, HTC, or someone else, that is as friendly as the BB OS will make a killing!
If I was doing a degree in computing, with my focus geared toward mobile platforms I would focus on WinMo/ Windows CE... I would also make sure my JAVA was up-to-date, as I don't see dumbphones going away anytime soon.
As for my personal preference as someone that owns both a TyTN II and a BB 8110 Pearl, I prefer WinMo. I like it because I am not affraid of technology, can customize it ten fold more than the BB, have a more complete web experience, and so forth. Basically, I prefer capability over all other aspects. And like I said already, while WinMo may lack in ease of use and out of box speed right now, it will catch up and prove to be superior.
NOTE: If, and this is a huge IF given Apple's track record, the iPhone OS becomes available for other platforms, it will explode and take over a huge share of the market, I don't think 50%, but it will be one of the top 2 smartphone OS.

pjcforpres, so you're saying that Windows Mobile will start becoming the more prominent OS in the long run?
The release of Windows Mobile 6.5 (I haven't tried it, I've since moved on to a Nokia N95 from my Tilt) looks like it's finally giving a facelift to the standard ugly interface we're all used to.
My concern with WinMo is the lack of an built-in application store. Admittedly I haven't kept up as much as I should on that, but I believe MS has one in the works to be shipped with 6.5? If so and if this takes off, I'd probably look to move into that field.
Has anyone had experience programming in XCode (iPhone/Mac OSX) and can tell how difficult it is compared to other languages such as Java?

pjcforpres said:
As someone that sells cell phones for a living (at least while in college), I will give my perspective on what I see and hear from customers, as well, my personal feelings as a multiplatform smart phone user...
Background: I offer multiple HTC devices... the Diamond, TyTN II, Touch Dual, Touch, and S621. I offer 3, soon to be 4, Blackberries, the 8310 Curve(2mp camera, GPS, EDGE), the Pearl 8110 (Same as Curver), and the 8820 (No camera, GPS, EDGE, and WiFi), and shortly the new Curve 8900 (3.2mp camera, GPS, WiFi, and EDGE).
Customer: The majority of my customers go with the Blackberry Curve/Pearl(More Curves than Pearls). They like them for the ease of use, in terms of easy app downloading and use, easy e-mail, easy internet, easy customization with a new theme. They are mostly concerned with rock solid stability, battery life, and easy to use. Business ability plays a very small role in the choice, actually, of a BB.
Helping with business related aspects has more to do with selling a customer on a smartphone than any one brand. Also, as I am on a small tangant, BB has done a lot as of late to make their phones less business centric and more mainstream, and have been very successful with this.
As for customers that go with WinMo based devices they don't mind a slightly more complicated OS. They are a bit more tech savy. They don't really care so much about the phone's camera, as they already have a 12mp digital camera for that. The are looking more at cutting edge, from the touchscreen, to the ability to do anything with the phone. They do get frustrated with how slow out of the box the HTC can be, but they don't mind, because they are likely flashing a ROM anyways, or they don't care because it gives them more abilities out of the box than a BB will ever be able to do with every app loaded onto it.
So what does this all mean in terms of longevity? Well, a couple things...
1. WinMo has a much brighter future than BB. In 3 years, WinMo devices are going to be faster and more capable out of the box. BB's will gain in speed, but they will still be limited to essentially an 'os' inside an OS. Palm ran into the problem BB is fastly approaching, they can't improve on what they have anymore since their ceiling is already reached. That is a huge benefit WinMo has over BB, and the others, except for maybe Android, it's ceiling is much higher in terms of absoluter ability.
2. It means that whoever developes a UI for WinMo, whether it be microsoft, HTC, or someone else, that is as friendly as the BB OS will make a killing!
If I was doing a degree in computing, with my focus geared toward mobile platforms I would focus on WinMo/ Windows CE... I would also make sure my JAVA was up-to-date, as I don't see dumbphones going away anytime soon.
As for my personal preference as someone that owns both a TyTN II and a BB 8110 Pearl, I prefer WinMo. I like it because I am not affraid of technology, can customize it ten fold more than the BB, have a more complete web experience, and so forth. Basically, I prefer capability over all other aspects. And like I said already, while WinMo may lack in ease of use and out of box speed right now, it will catch up and prove to be superior.
NOTE: If, and this is a huge IF given Apple's track record, the iPhone OS becomes available for other platforms, it will explode and take over a huge share of the market, I don't think 50%, but it will be one of the top 2 smartphone OS.
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Typing on my blackstone right now so will make it short. .
I definately do -not- think the WinMo OS will thrive, nor completely go out of the picture. If they manage to increase their user experience and out of the box situation it might, but I don't see this happening anywhere untill Windows 7.
Looking at your statement about WinMo users I have to completely disagree with you. The biggest share of people that have a WinMo device do nothing with customization at all, nor are they tech-savvy people. The thing that influences phone sales the most is still the outside (Features, looks, branding) before software, looking at the sale figures of let's say the Omnia vs the iPhone in Germany says it aswell. The majority of people that bought a iPhone (average-users which present the highest share) didn't go to the Apple store because they read about the fluid OS it's using, but cause it's from Apple and they had been using an iPod for so long. The biggest reason the iPhone had such a succes was cause of Apple's image in customer-friendly electronics and as a status symbol. (Say all you want, marketing-technical this is the case.)
Most likely if we actually look at Apple's record, theres nearly no chance the iPhone OS will go multi-platform. They've always been extremely tidy-up on enforcing patents and even try to go against x86 hardware Mac OS users.
Fingers getting tired now so that's all for now

pjcforpres said:
I would also make sure my JAVA was up-to-date, as I don't see dumbphones going away anytime soon.
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Lol..
Edit: What about Palm's WEB OS???

windows will be thrive i think

This is an interesting discussion. I'm a great fun of the sloppy open OS windows offers for the same reason I dwell on these forums. You asked about an appstore, which wm6.5 has (not functional yet because of the betaness). But I really don't think that's something to base future predictions on, because everyone is catching up to that right now, I do believe nokia has an appstore as well.
As for the thriving osses, I'm quite certain that the general smartfone market share is and will be increasing. People seem to pay EUR 600 to get the newest "dumb" phones, for the same money they can have a smartphone that looks good as well. I do see apple's one provider provider as limiting for Iphone OS as a lot of people are satisfied with the deals providers proir their newest phone deal and getting a simunlocked one is quite a hassle. I have had some big discussions over people who are buying what os, and they seem to believe that the general population thinks of an iphone when they think of a multifunctional phone. That being said I'm looking very much forward to windows 7 as I think it will deal with a lot of the currents uglyness and sloppyness of the phones. It will however mean that the newer WM will be "more" closed than before, but I'll guess we will manage , 12

Right now 3 OS'es are leading the pack: WM, Apples and Symbians.
Symbians will probably continue to prosper since they are still by far the easiest to familiarize devices you can ever have. But I'm sure, until symbian figures out a way to be as pretty as an iPhone or as flexible as WM.. they will slowly come out of the picture like Palm and BBs.
As long as Steve Jobs stays alive, apple will get bigger. They may not call it iPhones anymore but it's gonna be something hip and cool that would certainly appeal to the younger/new generation market.
WM will never die. As long as you have Windows PC's, you cannot kill WM. And right now, WM6.5 is heading the right track.. it maintained the flexibility and power of WM and added an iPhone feel to it. I have no doubt that WM7 will definitely make everything better. Much like what they did from XP to Vista.
Android? Hmm.. until they show more devices that can use it, yeah maybe. But I'd stick to WM and iPhones if you wanna develop mobile apps.

antrak:
I understand what you are saying about marketing and all of that. The success of the iPhone is largely due to marketing and familiarity. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, brands and locks down their technology like Apple does. And the branding they gave the iPhone was ease of use, speed, and customization out of the box.
WinMo devices don't have that as easily out of the box. Overall, you can do more with a WinMo device than an iPhone, but it takes more to get the WinMo device to do it.
And it has been my experience, with WinMo and BB as my only 2 smart phone platforms, that the more tech savvy people go with the WinMo device, and those looking for a simpler more straight forward out of the box experience go with the BB.
At the OP:
Yes, I am saying that in the long run, WinMo will be the overall leader. Just as you see Windows based PCs as the dominant computer in the market, you will see WinMo devices as the dominant smart phone in the market. The only drawbacks WinMo has can be fixed rather easily... The lack of speed is something this community has already addressed and fixed. My TyTN II flies! The touch friendliness is being address as we speak, with Touchflo from HTC and TouchWiz from Samsung and WinMo 6.5/7.0 from Microsoft. I believe that Microsoft coming up with the solution is more likely, and is more important than for HTC or Samsung or some other company to come up with their own UI solution. Also, fingers crossed, better graphics drivers would go a long way in helping out WinMo devices, especially HTC devices.
Also, note that WinMo syncs up much better with all those home PC's than any other platform. People looking to get a smart phone are buying them with the idea that they can use the phone in place of their computer for many regular day tasks. I use my TyTN II to manage the small business I am starting up, my work emails, my schedule, school work, and so much more.
I also have a BB Pearl, and as much as I loved it's simplicity, it wasn't powerful enough or integrated enough with my home PC to cut it. BB is great at making a rock solid idiot proof smart phone that allows you to communicate with ease, and they are doing more for multimedia. But BB is approaching it's limitations as it is an 'os' inside and OS.
WebOS looks amazing, and I am sure it will run amazing as well. Palm does good work, for the most part, but they are similar to BB. The new WebOS is a step above, and will have a higher ceiling than BBs current ceiling for future ability. But it is still going to fall short of WinMo, Android, etc. in long term totality because it is too isolated, just like BB.
The advantages WinMo, and the iPhone as well, have over everyone else is that they have full computer based OS backing them up. WinMo has Windows PCs, the iPhone has Macs. As Apple develops the iPhone OS more and more, it will sync better and better with Macs, and do more and more.
As Android handsets become more plentiful, the development will pick up pace, and it will gain a following, especially with Google backing them. And their is the potential they will sync up multiplatform better than anyone else just because they are open source.
WinMo will gain in out of the box speed and UI friendliness. It will probably be a year for WinMo 7.0 to come out and catch up in speed and UI. But WinMo is already ahead of the game when it comes to everything else. Just look at the market and what is available for WinMo devices compared to the other OS.
WinMo will always sync better with Windows PCs than any other OS. As Apple works on it, the iPhone will sync better with Macs than any other OS. And as time goes on, technology advances, and so forth, the smart phone market will follow the home computer market. WinMo will be the leader, Apple will be second, and the others will still hold on to the market, but they won't ever eclipse WinMo and Apple once the market settles.
Basically, I see the smart phone market as a developing market right now. I don't think today’s numbers and trends are very significant when you are trying to size up long term trends. I believe long term trends, and business school agrees here, will follow several factors, specifically for smart phones those work out like such:
1. Usability: This has to do with speed, UI ease of use, and compatibility with other technologies.
2. Price: The more expensive, the less likely it is to "boom" or "tip" or any of those nice catch phrases.
3. Stickiness: Aka, cool factor, fun factor, hip factor, everyone must have it factor.
I see WinMo, in the long term, leading all others when it comes to usability, as it is a familiar platform that will sync better with already established technologies. It will also be competively priced, except for BB, I don't believe anyone else is as cheap. And stickiness... well the iPhone has that right now, but with proper marketing and better UI, WinMo will catch back up. And FYI, I believe sticky wise it goes 1.iPhone 2. BB Curve 3. G1 4. HTC of sort.
I am rambling and all over the place a bit by now, and since I am not going to edit, I will recap to bring it all together.
Based on my personal experience with WinMo and BB, as a salesman and an end user, as well my knowledge of the market, I believe WinMo devices have the brightest future. Of course, WinMo devices have to overcome their out of the box lack of speed and UI friendliness, but I don't see those as insurmountable obstacles. Rather, I see those as all the more reason to focus on the WinMo platform, as there is going to be a demand for talented programmers capable of achieving that goal, as well, capable of taking advantage of the wide breadth of abilities that WinMo has.

I see where you're going in terms of integration and its benefits towards the future. I guess I'm being a litle short-sighted here, as now I feel the basic smartphone user *isn't* actually integrating.
Admittedly I'm looking primarily (and that's a shortfall of mine) at my own demographic, which is college kids looking for trendiness and wow factor. But I'm willing to bet that if you asked 20 college kids with WinMo or iPhones, you'd find 5 or less of them are actually syncing them to their computer.
As of right now, I believe the general public isn't tieing in their phone with their computer as most, if not all of us on this forum are used to doing. So in terms of integration being a big selling point, I don't see the general public looking at that as highly as us as more tech-savvy people do. Now, I DO believe that when we get far enough in to the future that integration WILL be a major selling point, but I believe the near future still seperates phone from computer.
The question of what attracts people to a phone is a rather interesting one. This is another assumption I'm making, but I believe what draws people to the iPhone is part trendy factor, part status symbol and part "you can do so many things with it so easily". I'm definitely open to being proven wrong, and I guess my argument comes from pure assumption and a bit of knowledge on how the college-kid's-brain functions, but I do see the average college kid as a fairly accurate representation of the general public.
It may look from all my posts that I'm very pro-iPhone, which isn't necessarily true. We can all agree that Apple has done many things right with their phone. I'm just interested in how it gained its popularity. If one were to see just how popular it was going to become and jumped on developing apps on it very early, there is a giant profit to be made here.
That's what I'm looking for-- what will peak in the coming years?

met3ora said:
I see where you're going in terms of integration and its benefits towards the future. I guess I'm being a litle short-sighted here, as now I feel the basic smartphone user *isn't* actually integrating.
Admittedly I'm looking primarily (and that's a shortfall of mine) at my own demographic, which is college kids looking for trendiness and wow factor. But I'm willing to bet that if you asked 20 college kids with WinMo or iPhones, you'd find 5 or less of them are actually syncing them to their computer.
As of right now, I believe the general public isn't tieing in their phone with their computer as most, if not all of us on this forum are used to doing. So in terms of integration being a big selling point, I don't see the general public looking at that as highly as us as more tech-savvy people do. Now, I DO believe that when we get far enough in to the future that integration WILL be a major selling point, but I believe the near future still seperates phone from computer.
The question of what attracts people to a phone is a rather interesting one. This is another assumption I'm making, but I believe what draws people to the iPhone is part trendy factor, part status symbol and part "you can do so many things with it so easily". I'm definitely open to being proven wrong, and I guess my argument comes from pure assumption and a bit of knowledge on how the college-kid's-brain functions, but I do see the average college kid as a fairly accurate representation of the general public.
It may look from all my posts that I'm very pro-iPhone, which isn't necessarily true. We can all agree that Apple has done many things right with their phone. I'm just interested in how it gained its popularity. If one were to see just how popular it was going to become and jumped on developing apps on it very early, there is a giant profit to be made here.
That's what I'm looking for-- what will peak in the coming years?
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I agree with you in general here... I am looking into the future as much as possible as that is what you seem to be asking about... "what will peak in the coming years?"
I also agree that in general, the average user isn't syncing their phone with their computer and are looking more towards ease of use. That is why I tried, and maybe failed, to emphasis that WinMo needs to improve that aspect in order for it to pop as I believe it will.
WinMo as it is right now is not very user friendly. The UI is outdated and not touch friendly. Out of the box the phones are slow and cumbersome for the "trendy" market.
But in 3 years, I don't believe that will be true anymore of WinMo devices. I believe they will increase in speed, and thus useability. I believe the UI will become more friendly to the end consumer, especially the low tech end user that WinMo seems to miss out on.
This isn't to say there are no "non-techy" users of WinMo, there are plenty, probably more than are super techy like us. But even those "non-techy" WinMo users have a bit more tech knowledge than your average BB user.
Basically, what I am getting at is that in the long term, 3 years from now when you are graduating, 10 years from now, and so forth, WinMo has a brighter future than other platforms for the very reason it will integrate better, and its current downsides are easily fixed compared to other OS downsides.

Pocket PC's are not good with cameras, they don't have good battery life, 65 colors and no multitouch, not apps preinstalled, difficut for the average user, they don't handle games right (they are good games out there but they are old),no visibility under sun and on top of that the new models can't handle non converted videos (thanks god I have Asus P535)...
That's why the public doesn't like Windows Mobile. And 6.5 - Wow transperent bars and new start menu - nothing at all. The hope for Windows Mobile is Nvidia Tegra.. !

One thing I have trouble with is gauging how long it takes for things to happen. WinMo is behind on UI's, true, but is trying to be saved by 3rd party UI's like TouchFlo and TouchWiz. I think a lot of the problem is that WinMo DOES have the reputation of being slow and not user friendly. Of course, this reputation is due to the out of the box experience, which is very crucial.
But how long will it take for people to be comfortable with WinMo? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe most people are now buying WinMo phones that have custom UI's on top of them (HTC, Samsung, etc), and I think this will really help in the revival of WM as a "good" OS.
Now, Android is starting out with the initial impression that it is touch friendly, fast and customizable. WinMo is gonna need to dig itself out of the hole that is its own stereotypes, and I believe Android has the advantage BECAUSE of its initial impression.
Thoughts?

Marketplace???

Has anyone noticed how ridiculously expensive and overpriced applications are in the Windows Mobile Marketplace?
For one, their selection of applications are terrible. So far they're just a bunch of badly designed generic apps that don't feed any real purpose. The games are horrible too.
The only decent application I wanted to buy was Pac Man, but that's like £5 !!! for a measly game that probably only has 5 levels and I'm only going to play when I'm bored.
. I just want a decent Twitter application that has kinetic scrolling and doesn't show that horrid side-bar control.
. A decent media player with visualisations and coverflow.
. A few nicely designed touchscreen games including ones like Tweeter that makes use of the G-sensor.
It makes no sense for Windows to release all these devices and advertise that WM is a social device when their marketplace is a bunch of bollocks.

ilabstudios said:
. I just want a decent Twitter application that has kinetic scrolling and doesn't show that horrid side-bar control.
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http://code.google.com/p/pocketwit/

I agree. I am very disapointed with the marketplace myself. I was expecting thousands of high quality cheap and free apps but that's not what we have yet. I am hoping that this is only due to the fact that it's been 10 days since its release and must be hard to get thousands of apps ready to go in the first few months. I am confident though that microsoft is ready to compete with android and iphone so must surely have something more in mind than they currently have.

Unfortunately it has nothing to do with Microsoft. The WinMo software companies haven't adjusted yet to that fact that there is a central place for the average user to hit and find their competition. Something like SPB could be as pricey as it wanted, because it could take the average user forever to find any quality alternatives. They have the advertising dollars, placement on carrier websites, etc. Now there's a spot for a smaller competitor to get the same exposure. But it'll take time for them to pop up.
$30 for any mobile app is retarded. I'm really disappointed that since release day, I'm only seeing 10 new apps in the store. Maybe the "what's new" button is broken, but there's a couple on the results page I installed day 1 of Marketplace being open

The lack of apps is probably not helped by the fact that, as I understand it, Microsoft charge an extra $10 or so for each country to list the app in (and require that the app be localized for that country) so I'd assume that a good chunk of people developing apps in the US aren't going to push their apps beyond the US (I'm no developer so haven't read the full pricing details but that's the gist of what I've seen in some MS developer forums with people questioning why their apps aren't available)
It'll especially be true for free or cheap apps - if you've made a free app, would you pay out to make it available to other countries?
The only reason I can see for restricting apps to a country is if they are purely regional - TV schedules for a particular country, or train schedules or something.
Steve.

Well, I'm in the US, so not really an issue. Trust me, not missing much if they are actually holding out on pushing to other countries.
I'd also guess the word is out to developers that Marketplace is a good spot for their software to turn freeware and end up on a torrent so perhaps they are holding off until Microsoft fixes the security.

Jesus shoe tapping finger clicking Christ, give it a chance its only just started. I have already seen a lot on there for free and under 70p... just wait and be a bit patient.

give it a chance its only just started
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I would if that were the case. Unfortunately, Marketplace has been exposed to developers months before it was officially released, which is why I am confused as to why there are so many cheap applications. I'm sure that there will be more applications coming soon, but I'm more concerned about the pricing and quality of applications. When I watched the first keynote last year on the coming of Marketplace I had higher hopes than his.
I realise that some iPhone developers have investment from other companies and some of them even have a development team working on the apps, but still.. look at the type of stuff Android have compared with Windows, it's ridiculous. It's as if no real developer wants to develop on the WM platform.
I feel that their advertising campaigns are misleading. They're trying to get across the fact that WM is now social and more application orientated when so far all I can find on the marketplace are overpriced applications that seem like it was developed for WM5.
Personally I don't think 6.5 is going to be a huge success, TechCrunch has already given it a bad review. WM7 better be different.
Btw. In the world of technology, there's no room for 'Oh give it a chance' type attitude. Technology companies usually have once chance of pulling something off. Hence the reason why companies like Google or Apple spend millions of dollars on market resource, trial testing and development research.

Marketplace? Pah!
http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/
I've been relying on the RSS feed from this fine site for the past couple of years or so, since my original TyTN, TyTN II and now my Touch Pro 2. It's a great site, has introduced me to great programs like NoniGPSPlot, has new applications all the time and finally - it's all free (and not warez free, but genuine software).
Great stuff - Microsoft saw what Apple were doing too late and have done too little me thinks to succeed.
I love my Windows Mobile phone; but Apple's iPhone taught Microsoft and other mobile developers how important eye candy in a phone OS was. Google's Android OS will be taking the lions share of future mobile phone sales and I see Android phones surpassing the iPhone.
Unless Microsoft do something right, not many peeps will want a Windows Mobile device in a few years time...

So far the only good to come out of the app store is Zenonia...badass rpg... 10 bucks though But well worth it in my opinion! If you like old school snes hack and slash rpg's, this game is for you. Full sound, decent story, just great overall. For me, there's point in playing my old favorite snes games on my phone because with sound, to me its pointless. and not using sound is the only way to get an snes emulator to run smooth; regardless of which one it is ( morphgear, smart-whatever its called, or pocketsnes

Paulplex said:
...
Great stuff - Microsoft saw what Apple were doing too late and have done too little me thinks to succeed.
I love my Windows Mobile phone; but Apple's iPhone taught Microsoft and other mobile developers how important eye candy in a phone OS was. Google's Android OS will be taking the lions share of future mobile phone sales and I see Android phones surpassing the iPhone.
Unless Microsoft do something right, not many peeps will want a Windows Mobile device in a few years time...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see plenty of commercials for iPhones and Google phones on TV but absolutely none for WinMo phones. MS really needs to start promoting itself in this market.
S

How about the annoying fact that I don't get a chance to choose where to intstall the app. They all go directly to device memory. That sucks balls!

Paulplex said:
http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/
I've been relying on the RSS feed from this fine site for the past couple of years or so, since my original TyTN, TyTN II and now my Touch Pro 2. It's a great site, has introduced me to great programs like NoniGPSPlot, has new applications all the time and finally - it's all free (and not warez free, but genuine software).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nice one !

Theres a cab floating around here to fix that...
moSess said:
How about the annoying fact that I don't get a chance to choose where to intstall the app. They all go directly to device memory. That sucks balls!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

mpicart said:
Theres a cab floating around here to fix that...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=568806

@Paulplex - Thanks for the link. I know I can get free applications quite easily, that's what I've done so far. However most of them aren't to 6.5 standards, the majority of them are still coded for use on old WM5 phones.
When you spend hundreds on a phone you expect to install applications on it that are intended for such a high-end device. The only application which is worth installing is the Myspace and Facebook app, and even those aren't great.
I regard my phone as my house in a way. When we buy a house, we intend to fill it up with furniture, usually the more expensive the house, the higher quality the furniture. The same should apply to phones, in that instead of furniture we require high quality applications. But where are they? SPB is the only one I can think of.

do you people think that bill gates and the people at microsoft are just gonna sit around and allow apple to dominate the app frenzy in the market for pdas and devices? dont u think that most people at microsoft all have winmo devices? do u really think any employee would have an apple iphone?...so of coursse thousands of new gsensor apps are on their way of being placed on the marketplace or in development...obvious with android showing that they have developers also who are pumpin out apps for them..microsoft is doin the same thing..give them time the winmo app store just came out..and a gsensor phone for a winmo device first showed up only a yr ago..so they have a bit of software catching up to do with these new devices. HTC thank god...droped 6 new phones for the north american market just this month alone..with the tp2 being the first in september..(htc pure,htc hero,htc tilt 2,htc imagio,htc mytouch) so basically with 6.5 also droped...htc has done their part by stacking microsoft with a heavy set and multy array of phones to crush the competition i.e iphone 3gs or whatever version its at now. microsoft is not gonna sit around and allow apple to dominate the app market..and they sure as hell arent gonna let android..a new OS that has no business gettin their OS on htc devices, surpass them either...remembr bill tried to buy out google but they rejected a couple yrs ago. And u all know bill gates has a winmo devices,prolly a htc touch hd or the new imagio...dont u think he wants a huge selection of apps himselve? trust..were not the only ones on the heals of microsoft to get these developers in line..and get these apps rolled out...plus half the apps apple has for the iphone are useless and they are just puttin them in commercials to show that they have a **** load of apps...half the apps they have could be bunddled up with other apps like how a spb traveler or mobile shell app is but they are just tryin to show off how many apps they have..plus most of all the developers for apple just have the change a couple scripts around in their apps and all the same apple apps could be made into cabs and become winmo apps...so the **** isnt hard..the microsoft winmo team execut8ves or w/e u wanna call them need to get their marketing department working full throttle and start shipping new apps with these new phones...i repeat HTC has done their part..now its time for the software to catch up...

"Windows" isn't a device, "Windows" doesn't release devices, and "Windows" doesn't sell devices. "Microsoft" isn't any of those things, either. Microsoft is a company that produces an OS that runs on LOTS of devices (some phones, some PDAs, and a whole lot of things that are neither).

Plenty of time for this thing to get up to snuff.
But that said, the real problem is that while there aren't that many WM OS out there, (5, 6, 6.1, 6.5) and most apps will pretty much install in either, the different hardware config makes it a different ballgame, especially with games, no pun intended. Some phones have buttons, some don't. Some games will work only in landscape, some will not, some will work on both. And not all phones are exactly finger friendly. They're meant to be used with a stylus for the most part, the finger's a secondary thing.
So yea, these developers will have their hands full, unless of course they want to limit their market to particular devices only.
So that being said, my gripe is that none of these apps are telling me they're to be used in a particular hardware platform.

@moegdaog, I'm a developer myself, so I realise the number of new applications that will come soon, however that's not what I was specifically talking about.
I'm more concerned about the level of development on applications and games. Why so many developers opt to develop for iPhone isn't because of a bias view-point, it's because the tools they provide mean that they can develop a high-end application and start earning money as soon as it's in the marketplace.
However the type of developers are not the same. iPhone developers are usually younger, multimedia orientated so they probably have skills in web, graphics and illustration, where as Microsoft developers are usually a lot older and more prone to developing utility (function) based apps and have very limited skills in anything else. Most developers aren't able to outsource and so they are left with a rubbish application.
My worry is that yes there will be many applications within marketplace but will they actually be worth all that money and will any investors support the development of these apps. Also how will these applications differ from what we have seen on Android and iPhone.

Is Windows Mobile an application desert?

I'm fairly new to smartphones, having had the Tilt2 for only about six months after about four years with a Treo 650, but one thing seems to be increasingly true about Windows Mobile phones: If you want the greatest capabilities, you just have to get an iPhone, not a Windows phone.
It just drives me crazy that all the good apps are iPhone. Deposit checks to Chase Bank without deposit slips or going to the bank using your iPhone camera AND THE CHASE DEPOSIT APP FOR iPHONE! Netflix, play movies on iPhone or trailers on Windows. AT&T U-verse download and play movies...on your iPhone. These are three fairly new ones that come to mind, but it is this way for seemingly everything. Even TCM's new movie schedule app is for iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry...Blackberry for crying out loud...but not Windows.
It's another 18 months before we can upgrade for a reasonable price from our two HTC Tilt2 phones to iPhones. If Microsoft wants to increase its market share, it needs to offer subsidies to developers. Windows 7 Mobile is not the answer...we don't buy computers for the sake of the operating systems. It's for the programs that run on the OS. Isn't it the same with smart phones? They all make calls and take bad photos. It's the other stuff that is the difference.
Am I wrong?

Youre absolutely right, however with over 300,000 downloads of the windows phone 7 SDK already, I think the next version of windows will have plenty of apps to enjoy. Microsoft is also wanting developers to release a free demo of all software, so we can check out any app to make sure we want to buy it. With the integration of XBOX Live, playing games online with other windows 7 users and the focus on gaming, WP7 is going to be awesome. UI definitely looks great and there are rumors that the day the marketplace opens up there will be over 100,000 aps submitted and available. Things really are looking up for microsoft phones. I know I'm getting one!

MPlayer: will let you stream hulu and bbc and others.
Movies for rental: Check out Amazon Unbox. It's part of amazons video service, where you can rent and buy movies and tv shows. You can have the settings set to automatically download a mobile version of the movie or show you are getting. Though I've never tried it with a rental. I usually just buy tv shows for 99 cents. Downside is it is not streaming, but download to pc and then transfer to your phone. Another option is to use
It's true that some of the very new apps will probably never see a WinMo 6.x port since the platform is switching to WP7, but calling it an "application desert" is a stretch. I have over 100 different programs installed to my phone, with everything from musical instrument simulators to various business tools and games. There's a huge number of free programs as well as a lot of high quality paid-for programs. Check the "apps worth installing on the tp2" for a good sample of the free applications you can get.

bowserb, as you said, you are new to smartphones, so with a lot of respect i want to share something, my experience with smartphones is a little more than yours, motorola q, blackberry, htc 8125, samsung epix, samsung blackjack, htc touch and know i have a tilt2, and beleive me its much more phone than the iphone
windows mobile and iphone are two differents worlds, windows is more for professionals and business people, focussed in getting the job done, excellent in word, excel, pp, (create and edit), emails capabilities, outlook and exchange sync, etc,etc, then as a second priority is the music, videos, etc,etc
on the other hand iphone is the phone for teenagers, to play, to think they have the ultimatte machine (go to a high school and teel me if dont see al least a hundred of them in 110 kids), you need aplications for everything, let me explain, when you are to compare a phone you have to do it from the box, which one is more capable without going to itunes or marketplace, there the iphone dont have a chance, in others words if you dont jailbreak the iphone its almost useless, my sister and my brother have them, so i know what im talking about
if you want real games and real tv, you have xbox, playstation and a flat screen

MS doesn't care about its market share for Windows Mobile 6. Mobile is a tiny part of MS's business, completely insignificant compared to sales of PC operating systems, Office, etc. It remains to be seen how much MS will even care about Windows Phone 7. With WP7, its possible they can make money off the mobile market like Apple and Google have, but that remains to be seen. It would require a whole new level of support and financial commitment than MS has shown in the past. MS has proved they can make money from a new market (XBOX), if they see it as a viable potential opportunity and throw enough resources at it. But if they go into half-hearted, they will fail now that Apple and Google already have a substantial hold on the market.
Yes, commercial developer support for WM6 is drying up with WP7 coming in the next couple months. But there is still a huge user supported base, many will argue. If you want more support from MS and other commercial developers, its not going to happen. They have all moved on.
The underpinnings of WM6 is just too old for developers to make backwards compatible applications. All the WM products up to version 6 are based on the same Windows CE code from 2000. So you can see why there is little desire to make an application for this outdated OS, when there is a modern updated version coming out in a few months.
And don't forget about Android. The iPhone is all the rave for the uninformed. But if you want a OS that has a huge user community, and tons more customization and function than the iPhone, then Android is what you want. Unless MS can really turn things around, I'm almost certainly going Android for my next phone.

Since you want an Iphone so bad.....
Here is my two cents on an iPhone.
Yes, I agree with you it has a lot of nifty apps, in various categories. On of the other side, a "phone" is for making calls. I have 3 cousins, and a few family friends who have Iphones, they hate the "phone" part of it because it drops calls, and lags on the phone screen severly. I know many people who have smartphones who send internet to their iPhone's to do what you were talking about with the Chase banking things and stuff. The new iPod Touch has a camera and mic if I'm not mistaken.
My dad used to be subscribed to a PocketPC magazine, and they ranked iPhone top of the line for apps, but worst for phone usage. Even worse than regular phones (ie non-smartphones).
Whatever you want to do is up to you though.

App desert?
Thanks for the comments, guys. I had no idea that WM6.5 was an update of Windows CE. Last time I used that OS was on a Casio PDA...a really long time ago. (Note for the younger crowd: A PDA was smartphone without the phone.) About Windows 7 mobile--will I have to buy a new phone to get it, or will there likely be an upgrade available from HTC?
MS Office. I can't imagine iPhone Contacts being a clumsier, more limited application than on the Tilt2, where contacts show up multiple times and all with m next to the name. Word and Excel are OK, but I almost never use them, even though they are indispensable on my desktop computer.
Dropped calls on iPhone. I suspect that is an AT&T problem, not iPhone. My Tilt2 drops calls all the time, as did the Treo 650 before it and the Sony/Erikson before that. Isn't that the reason people are clamoring for iPhone on Verizon?
iPhone is for teenagers? How do you know I'm not one? And even though I'm not, why should they have all the fun? No I don't really care about music and movies on my phone, but the ever growing list of useful and practical apps for the iPhone would seem to make that platform the choice of all age groups!
Anyway, this reply is mostly rhetorical. In 18 months, it will be time to survey the smartphone landscape.

redpoint73 said:
MS doesn't care about its market share for Windows Mobile 6. Mobile is a tiny part of MS's business, completely insignificant compared to sales of PC operating systems, Office, etc. It remains to be seen how much MS will even care about Windows Phone 7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They better start caring, mobile phones are going to be replacing PC's for many folks in the future.

txrider said:
They better start caring, mobile phones are going to be replacing PC's for many folks in the future.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They do. They are investing billions into WP7.

bowserb said:
About Windows 7 mobile--will I have to buy a new phone to get it, or will there likely be an upgrade available from HTC?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WP7 will be for new phones only, and an official upgrade is out of the question. The Tilt2/TP2 does not meet the stiff hardware requirements mandated by WP7. From the processing power all the way to the hardware button layout, it doesn't meet the new WP7 standards. Wouldn't be surprised if the smart folks on XDA will get some form of hacked version to work on Rhodium, but propably won't be quite the same experience as on a phone that runs WP7 natively.

redpoint73 said:
WP7 will be for new phones only, and an official upgrade is out of the question. The Tilt2/TP2 does not meet the stiff hardware requirements mandated by WP7. From the processing power all the way to the hardware button layout, it doesn't meet the new WP7 standards. Wouldn't be surprised if the smart folks on XDA will get some form of hacked version to work on Rhodium, but propably won't be quite the same experience as on a phone that runs WP7 natively.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even the high end HTC HD2 will not get an official upgrade to WP7, it has been said by Microsoft and HTC....
If the people on here can do it...that's another story...

An Open Letter to Android via Google and Forwarded to Samsung

Hi XDA-Samsung Users,
I've been a member of XDA since Jan last year. I went from owning a Nexus One to a Samsung Galaxy S i9000. The reason for the change was for the better specs and superior hardware of the Samsung Galaxy.
The phone is an incredible piece of machinery, but is severely hampered by the modifications that Samsung makes to the Android OS. I admit that the codec support within TouchWiz is impressive, but too much of the core framework of the phone is inefficient and sluggish.
Even using the latest release of unofficial firmware Samsung, Android 2.2.1 (JPY), there is still the occasional hang and the missing RAM (which is there somewhere, but not for user applications).
Samsung is mostly to blame, but there is also a quality control element that Google should be responsible for.
I have prepared an open letter that I sent to Android via Google Press and then forwarded on to Samsung for their reference. This were all through publicly available channels so will have to filter through customer service centers and the like.
I'm not expecting much, Google appears to use Amazon's customer service approach, "No customer service is good customer service".
But would like to post it here to hopefully get it out into the wilderness.
I tweeted it here http://twitter.com/#!/ibproud/status/27528781828722688
and would appreciate if you agreed with the content to retweet it. Hopefully it should give it a bit more weight.
It would be interesting to get the communities feedback on how mature they believe Android is.
Do they need to keep trying to make everyone happy or can they start to use the weight of their OS to get manufacturers to align the user experience?
Dear Android Team,
I am writing this letter to air my frustrations and to hopefully get some peace of mind that your strategy for Android will resolve some of the main issues plaguing the platform.
I have now been with Android for over 12 months. I used to be an iPhone user, but couldn’t stand the walled garden that Apple put me in. I couldn’t download directly to the phone, replace the messaging app or sync wirelessly. I went to Android because I wanted the freedom to use my phone more as a desktop replacement than as a phone/mp3 player.
When I joined the Android family (January 2010), I started with the Google Nexus One. I was so keen to get into the Android community I didn’t even wait for it to be on sale in Australia to get it, thus I hit eBay and bought it outright.
I was very pleased with the platform but could still see a few rough edges around the Operating System. It had the usability I was looking for but was lacking the polish I had grown use to with Apple. There was good news on the horizon with an Éclair update that would give the already beautiful phone a nudge in the right direction. As I was in Australia and the phone wasn’t here yet, I had to push the update through myself, after seeing how easy this was and getting the feeling of being a little phone hacker, I was hooked, I started preaching Android to the masses. Australia is still building momentum for the platform and it’s taking some time. Most of the major carriers stock between 4-6 Android devices, most of which are low end or outdated in the overseas markets.
I follow all the key players in the industry through Twitter and have a majority of Google News trackers picking up articles with android related words. I have also now converted my Wife to Android (HTC Desire Z, also not available in Aus) and I picked up the Samsung Galaxy S and gave my sister the Nexus One. The problem I face now is that I’ve run out of money and can’t go out and buy a new Android phone just to be up to date with the latest Android OS (Gingerbread), this would also be the case for most consumers. The Nexus S is so similar to my current hardware that I must be able to leverage the extra performance from the update.
But alas, we reach the major problem with the platform. Fragmentation. I’m not referring to the Fragmentation of the various app stores and apps available based on different OS versions but more to the Fragmentation of the OS based on the custom skins and manufacturer update cycles. The open platform that is closed at 2 levels, Manufactures and Carriers. I will continue to buy my phones outright as it gives me the freedom and flexibility to upgrade my plans as better ones become available. This always guarantees that I’m free from the bloatware that is preloaded on most Carrier bought phones and free from 1 of the barriers to the true AOSP experience. The next barrier is one that is running rampant in the interwebs rumour mill at the moment and that’s manufacturer updates and in my case I refer to Samsung.
Samsung Galaxy S phones come loaded with Android 2.1, most of them internationally are running Android 2.2 and just recently as select group of the devices is getting Android 2.2.1. This is now a month after Android 2.3 was released. For Samsung I would consider this largely negligent, considering they had the opportunity to work with Google to build a Google Experience Phone (Nexus S). The specs of this phone are so similar to the Galaxy range that a port shouldn’t be too difficult. I understand that there are a lot of constraints and dependencies in the development cycle that could cause delays as well as manufacturers agendas (mostly in unit sales). It is great that Samsung have sold so many devices globally but at a cost of the user experience as well as potential damages to long term retention.
I understand the Open nature of Android and the push to encourage manufacturers to put there own spin on the platform, but Android is getting bigger and more mature, it doesn’t need to be High school girl bending to the whims and peer pressure from the carriers and manufacturers.
There are a team of Devs in Germany who are working to port CyanogenMod 7 (Gingerbread) to Galaxy S i9000, but these guys have now spent over four months just trying to get through Samsungs drivers. The team didn’t start just to customise the phone but to actually make the phone work properly, I of course refer to the RFS lag issue and Samsungs modification to the framework that slowed it down. The goal of the team is to maximise the potential of the hardware and operating system.
It would be great to see some muscle from Google thrown into the mix, there doesn’t need to be requirements dictated, but maybe ethics encouraged.
There seems to be a few options here:
- Encourage device manufacturers to share their drivers, if it is too sensitive to share at least work with the community to help them do it themselves.
- Start to break down the way the platform is customised so that way the manufactures (Samsung/HTC/Motorola) skin the platform can sit a layer above the core code, thus be a quick implementation/customisation to get their skins working.
- Get each manufacturer to offer the AOSP experience to advanced users. This can be done through an agreement between the user and manufacture that states this will void the warranty and have its own terms and conditions.
- This last one is a long stretch, but how about taking all the manufacturers drivers into a repository, the way Windows do updates. When a new Android version is developed the drivers can be updated or incorporated and be packaged out through the Android SDK.
I may be completely off the mark. I’m not a developer and couldn’t pretend to know what effort is involved at any stage of the process, from building Android to rolling it out into the latest and greatest phone. The one thing I am though is an End User, a person that wants my phone to do more, to get close to being a desktop replacement.
Maybe I’m also being a bit idealistic.
I hope the Android platform continues to flourish and for it to become the Windows of the mobile era.
Sincerely,
Irwin Proud
E: [email protected]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

It's really an excellent summary. Consider there're even more black sheeps out there. For example Sony Ericcson which ones recently made a statement like Android is their favourite Smartphone OS and left Symbian in Nokias hands.
But we found also the good ones like HTC, which every Manufacturer should have HTC as its Paragon concerning Android Software Development.

Great write-up; I agree 100%

I agree with your post fully, and concur that the Windows Phone 7 model for OS updates is more efficient, and strikes a happy medium between iOS and Android's approach to upgrades. However it is also more restrictive in terms of handset hardware limitations
I suppose the idea is that customers should vote with their wallets and buy from companies with good software and firmware support. The problem with that is a majority of phone users (android or otherwise) are technically savvy enough to take such support into consideration when looking at the latest and greatest fancy phone in a store. We could all buy the Nexus One or Nexus S only, but this too is restrictive to the customer as other phones offer more/different features

my 2 cents worth:
I agree on your points - but I'd skip the first few paragraphs if I were the one who write the letter. Other than that, thank you for making the effort.

What exactly are you hoping to achieve with this letter? Google has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that samsung don't want to update their phones. In these type of situations it's just better to vote with your wallet and buy another manufacturer's phone next time and let Samsung know why you don't want to use their phones in the future.
Writing letters like these is just a waste of time imho.

What Google should do?
Toss3 said:
What exactly are you hoping to achieve with this letter? Google has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that samsung don't want to update their phones. In these type of situations it's just better to vote with your wallet and buy another manufacturer's phone next time and let Samsung know why you don't want to use their phones in the future.
Writing letters like these is just a waste of time imho.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please allow me to politely disagree. Google can do a lot about this and they have done this also. When I say they have done this - I am talking about not having Market application on Android OSes which come on non-phone hardware.
Google should put similar restrictions for loosley coupled skins, upgradable drivers. I had been giving this a lot of thought lately. I will sum up my thoughts with above letter as above:-
i) Device manufacturer skinning - Google should mandate that it should be just another APK within AOSP and users should be given a choice to turn it off.
ii) Device Drivers - Google should mandate there should be a better way of installing device drivers - similar to what we have in MS Windows (MS Windows is an excellent model of how hardware device should be handled - this lead to the exponential growth Windows is enjoying now).
iii) Android OS Update - If Google can achieve the above two, then the choice to upgrade the OS should be at user discretion. Of course, Google should mandate that there is OTA availble as an option. And obviously this OTA would be served by Google, not by device manufacturers. This would also free up time, effort and cash spent by device manufacturers in upgrading the OS.
So this is in the best of interest of everybody.
These restrictions if put in place, would free us all from this phenomena of running outdated OS.

Not sure what ti say on this one. It's true that Samsung has failed on some levels, however I must say that this is the first phone that has allowed me to get to know so much about the internals of the Android OS.
Modifying kernels, ROM's, reading about different file-systems etc... it's not a thing for the common user but I expect the people on this forum to be interested in such things.
Ok, if Samsung had done it right, we may have discussed these things anyway but it would've drawn less attention as people would not be looking for solutions to their problems.
But of course we have to strive to quality for everyone and this letter may just open some people's eyes at both Google and Samsung.

Thank you so far for the feedback.
poundesville said:
my 2 cents worth:
I agree on your points - but I'd skip the first few paragraphs if I were the one who write the letter. Other than that, thank you for making the effort.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Remember most members of XDA would be a cut above the average user. The reason this letter was written the way it was, was to demonstrate that I am a typical end user. Although I would consider myself leaning slightly to the more advanced side I wrote the letter based on a very general experience of the platform, an experience a lot of consumers would go through.
Toss3 said:
What exactly are you hoping to achieve with this letter? Google has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that samsung don't want to update their phones. In these type of situations it's just better to vote with your wallet and buy another manufacturer's phone next time and let Samsung know why you don't want to use their phones in the future.
Writing letters like these is just a waste of time imho.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What am I trying to achieve with this letter?
I really don’t know, but it helps to just get the thoughts out there.
With approximately 300,000 activations daily, I don’t think Android sees the true reflection of how their platform is received.
When the Galaxy range of phones was released in the US, they would have been seen as the closest thing to an iPhone that non-AT&T customers could get. So sales and activations shouldn’t be seen as the indicator of clever consumers or consumers wanting an open platform, but of consumers who wanted an iPhone but for the various reasons didn’t want to go with AT&T.
Remember: The international Samsung Galaxy is the only Android phone I know of that looks more like an iPhone than any other phone.
What I would really like to see is, that annually google will release a major version of Android. So V1, V2, V3, etc…. the mobile manufacturers commit to any minor or incremental updates per major version. So if Google says they are releasing Android 2.4 then they are saying to the manufacturer that this version will also work on any phone that currently supports v2.1 to v2.3.
As more and more people move to smartphones and tablets, more and more will we see hackers, spammers, botnets and so on attempt to access our devices. If we can’t have the latest updates that close any open holes then our phones become a huge liability.
Pierreken said:
Not sure what ti say on this one. It's true that Samsung has failed on some levels, however I must say that this is the first phone that has allowed me to get to know so much about the internals of the Android OS.
Modifying kernels, ROM's, reading about different file-systems etc... it's not a thing for the common user but I expect the people on this forum to be interested in such things.
Ok, if Samsung had done it right, we may have discussed these things anyway but it would've drawn less attention as people would not be looking for solutions to their problems.
But of course we have to strive to quality for everyone and this letter may just open some people's eyes at both Google and Samsung.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not really sure if Samsung has failed as such, but have put too much focus on unit sales rather than quality control and great user experience. They started releasing different iterations and modifications to the same phone without considering that each minor tweak to the hardware would mean more resources to develop updates and maintain each device.
I also agree that without Samsung I would know very little about linux filesystems, kernel and custom roms, but shouldn't all of these be more to push the phone above it's limits and not to just get it working properly?
There's nothing wrong with knowing the advanced stuff, however it shouldn't be a necessity.

The problem ironically is that Android is open source. I agree wit the letter above, but I can;t see how you can stop manufacturers doing what they want.
Also the Drivers being proprietary isn't going to change and device manufacturers aren't going to suddenly start releasing their closed driver sources.
Agreed Google should stand up and restrict the Skins to a single APK that can be removed, this would stop all the associated problems with HTC and Samsung skinning too deep in to the OS that it becomes impossible to remove it. The problem with that is, then any manufacturers APK will be installable on any phone. Which is something we know they don't want.
We already know Androids biggest downfall and so does Google. Fragmentation.
I believe once Google has the strong position they want and users demand Android when they buy a new phone, they will start to put their foot down and try to enforce standardisation across Manufacturers, but until they get to what they feel is that point, we're stuck.
Anyway much luck with the letter, I hope someone who matters get's to see it.
Logicalstep

My next tablet after TF101

After looking at Android's fragmentation, the pain that one has to go through for every damn update is really getting to me! Google has really screwed this one up big time...its funny to even see the number of different screen sizes, hardware configurations android is being used. No standardization makes it a nightmare for developers to write applications that are consistent. Its hard to imagine that google has been so short sighted!
Asus is surely a brilliant company to have come out with a great tablet (and their newer tabs are kick ass too at great price points). But its really bothersome if I'm always in some sort of dependence on the manufacturer to release OS updates - this is just plain crazy! If Google's aim of ICS was to converge all devices to use the same OS, then why aren't they supporting manufacturers or insisting on all manufacturers to push out an update?
To start things, Google has really messed up their long term roadmap with fragmentation issues...and I would expect a company of that scale to atleast put in some sort of contractual commitments with all its manufacturing partners to roll out updates to its customers within a given timeline.
Here is what I would expect Google to have implemented yesterday, if they really need to retain popularity towards Android and keep it growing -
1. No more fragmentation moving forward. Standardization of screen resolutions, minimum performance requirements, ram, storage requirements etc.
2. Device manufacturers must commit to issuing software updates within some timeline from when google has an update.
3. Manufacturers dont decide if the update can run on their device or not - it must be google who decides this, and should be decided based on hardware specs
Now with Windows 8 on the horizon, I would definitely wait it out and move over to a Windows 8 based tablet. Knowing Microsoft, they're perhaps the only company who invests a lot of time and thinking in getting things right. It shows clearly from their development tools/platform, their emulators, clean implementation rather than an iterative approach etc.
Last android tablet for sure! And I'm hoping windows phone 7 will mature too, and its windows 8 variant should be a lot more promising. Thats when I would phase out my Galaxy S and head back to MS
What are your thoughts people?
cheers,
San

dreamtheater39 said:
Knowing Microsoft, they're perhaps the only company who invests a lot of time and thinking in getting things right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
haha, you made my day XD ...btw. throwing the word "vista" into the ring ^^
coming to win8. i just read an article today that the arm version of windows is most likely not able to run desktop programs. asuming that: WOOOOOW, Windows 8

If you prefer a monolithic OS to the liberty you get with Android that's your choice.
Personally, I do not. I do not like being locked into one vendor who gets to decide how I use my device.
I like having a choice between a smartphone, a 7", 8.9", 10.1" or even 11.5" tablet, or even a laptop that I can run the same OS (Android) on.
I love the Transformer. I have one device that is truly a tablet and, with root, also serves the full functionality of a laptop. What can Windows offer me that does this? What can iOS offer me that can replace my Transformer?
And that's besides the fact that with a Windows device I'm stuck with an OS that I am familiar with the shortcomings of, and unable to do anything about. Or with iOS that, again, no one can fix but the manufacturer (if they feel like it).
Yes, fragmentation of the Android platform is a bit of a problem. The Market addresses this, somewhat, by only showing software you can install on your device. Most Android devs are sensitive to their customer's needs and a polite email is frequently responded to positively, and usually with a fix in short order.
Frankly, I consider the fragmented markets (GetJar, Market, Amazon App Store, etc) to be a far larger problem than fragmentation of the OS, and I don't consider that to be anywhere close to a large problem.

Hmmm my thoughts
1. They have set an agreement with there partners. A new timeline that they must update devices within a set life span for a device think it was around a year and a half have a google on it. (p.s year and a half aint bad considering how fast mobile tech is moving)
2. It should not be a problem for devs to write apps for ics and the differences in hardware are accounted for
3. ms well thought out vista ms dos longhorn??? ms dos was not future thinking and very short sighted especially in terms of ram!!!!!! if anyone remembers vista was a plain mess!! and longhorn didnt even meet the public. Not to mention the many other flaws or screw ups (anyone remember xp early days it was hackers heaven)
4. At its roots android is linux google the track record for updates and security between ms and linux then whie you're at it google how many servers in the world run linux compared to ms
5. The biggest flaw of all ms was a single user platform a pc the first pc they now want to make it multi user and move toward cloud computing etc etc linux has been doing this for years so inherantly android can do the same ms on the other hand is having to kick there own ass so hard bills teeth have been replaced with hes toe nails
6. I like win 8 and 7 for one reason gamming and a couple programs i just cant get otherwise but as soon as i can do these things elsewhere or linux based i will.
You do have good points but i just wanted to step in as the other side of the coin.
Sent from my tf Enigmatic V2 beta 1.65Ghz Panda.test cust kernel settings

If you really want to be assured you can run everything on every device I suggest you look at Apple. The iPad will continue to be the dominate tablet for years to come and then you can be assured that everything will be packaged nicely and controlled in the manner decreed in Cupertino.
Open source means a trading a messier support structure for more innovation, and is not for everyone.

blestsol said:
Just leave please and get your ipad.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Enough said, whining isn't usefull here.
Seriously what do you want us to say? Good writting nice information, thanks for the info!!
I mean wtf?
Reported the thread.

Klau you do relise where XDA stands for and what the DEVELOPERS word means behind it?
XDA is for developing and helping people when they want to use costum roms or other non officeal related subjects
If you are unsatisfied with a device use the offical forum of ASUS, thats the right place!

Are any of the responses written by a mod?
So since when did everyone get appointed the responsibility to decide what is allowed to be discussed on this board, which isn't even the developer forum, it's on the general forum.
If you don't think the topic is relevant to you, just don't enter it. Let the mod do their job.
---------- Post added at 11:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:43 AM ----------
blestsol said:
Ooc, you don't agree of disagree... Why you responding? People use words wrong so much... Fan boy? Man you reaching. Foh. You sick of something ignore it and take your own advice. Dip from the thread. Simple ass that for your simple ass.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Learn to read, I said if you disagree, state your reason.
I've stated my reason of disagreement regarding the unfriendly atmosphere of this board.
You're grasping at straws that don't exist look who's reaching lol

klau1 said:
Are any of the responses written by a mod?
So since when did everyone get appointed the responsibility to decide what is allowed to be discussed on this board, which isn't even the developer forum, it's on the general forum.
If you don't think the topic is relevant to you, just don't enter it. Let the mod do their job.
---------- Post added at 11:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:43 AM ----------
Learn to read, I said if you disagree, state your reason.
I've stated my reason of disagreement regarding the unfriendly atmosphere of this board.
You're grasping at straws that don't exist look who's reaching lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't disagree. My post said what I meant. What he was describing is what ios can give him. Please show where my fan boy thoughts are though. In my short sentence.
I'll wait for that though.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using xda premium

silversx80 said:
Oh, the irony :
Here's the thing, the OP is an open-ended criticism on things the android community praises about the android platform. Praising those things does not make one a fanboy, nor does calling one a fanboy render an ages-old demotivational poster anything less than a sophomoric response in the hopes that a chuckle will sway the reader over to your point of view.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, face palm has always been my actual sentiment about the responses here, and pictures help prevents a large post from getting ignored.
silversx80 said:
Someone criticizes the platform as a whole, one which others really enjoy (including myself), and makes the declaration that they're moving over to another, which is much better. Their assessment is based only on opinionated observations from their point of view, which is hardly an inconvenience to anyone else. Of course they're going to get a "get the f*ck out" response, and deserve nothing less. It's like when the Christians invaded the Turks and tried to convert the entire group of people.
It brings up the ages-old motherly line of wisdom: If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all.
There is nothing wrong with desiring something that is better for your uses, but use that as a premise. Don't start by lambasting the opposition, especially when you know what the system is about and you know the offerings of the competition. Some people may actually enjoy the things you don't.
In my opinion, ALL of the devises and software are AMAZING when you consider what the all do.
Instead, we get a bunch of non-contributing, product-zero, whiny little girls. You know what, that's fine; next time you think of complaining, go make your own. As soon as yours is better, then you can complain about other offerings.
Until then, STFU and GTFO.
P.S. If android will be more successful as a standardized platform, we'll see it move that way. I write that with reservation, as android is currently the #1 mobile platform in the world, so they must be doing something right... much to the chagrin of the OP.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Look, every reasonably intelligent person understands trade-off exist. Simply one comes to mind:
can a "God be powerful enough to create a rock so heavy that even it can't lift it?"
Usability comes at the expense of functionality, everyone should understand that.
But people forget that sometimes, not a big deal, just explain it to them instead of acting like an internet bully. That doesn't help your point across.
silversx80 said:
It brings up the ages-old motherly line of wisdom: If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just because you disagree with the OP doesn't mean it was not "nice" or offensive

lol's were had reading this thread.

klau1 said:
Just because you disagree with the OP doesn't mean it was not "nice" or offensive
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dude, basically what he did was akin to going over to VW Vortex, complaining about all the reasons why his little 2.5 Golf was not like the current offerings from Toyota, and said that when the new Hondas come out, he's getting one of those.
There is no purpose in his post other than to demean and criticize. There is nothing productive, nor contributory about it. No, I didn't have to read, nor post, but I felt compelled.
If someone want's to leave for a better personal option, that's fine. If they want to make a scene and flip the table on the way out, then they shouldn't expect a positive reception to their announcement.

As much as I hate Apple, I do think that progress requires contrast. What do I mean? We need a solidified company like Apple that keeps pushing the same standard but slightly better (that's like peer-reviewed science). We need a looser society of innovators like Google's associates who play around at the edges of what we expect at the moment (who are like fringe scientists, some contribute great genius ideas, and some who completely **** it up). For me, I like the fringe scientist; I understand the need for peer-review, but I think I'll stick with Android for at least the next tablet too.

A WARNING FROM THE MODERATOR
A WARNING FROM THE MODERATOR
Play nice..........
talk nice ........
Or you will be banned.......
And I will close the thread
To those who reported this bad behavior, thank you
Keep it civil, Folks
Thanks ~ oka1 Moderator

Did they demo a Windows 8 ARM device at CES? I am very curious as to how Windows 8 will perform.
This is a very interesting project that could either excel if developers jump onboard, or crash horribly if developers reject the idea of Windows on ARM.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Interesting feedback from all you guys!
Just to clear things out, from where i come from -
-I've always loved android for the flexibility it gives me. I've always made custom roms, modded the hell out of every device i've ever had, starting way back from the Pocket PC days! Android - seemed like the most perfect option for me.
-I've always stayed away from Apple, for a myriad of reasons - they dictate everything, and i hate that. And also, i hate being in the bucket of half wit fanboys who bought one just to be "cool"
-I work for one of the biggest game companies, and i'm responsible for technology direction for smartphones, tablets. So, let me tell you what this looks like from a developer's view point -
A game is always written for iOS first - reason being, the platform is standardized in terms of display resolutions, hardware capabilities. Testing effort is extremely low in comparison (you dont have to test on a 100 devices!)
You have only 2 aspect ratios to deal with - phone & tablet. And you know that your game will run on all the iphones and ipads floating in the world. So this makes it easy from development & testing points of view. And this is the reason why games are "always" developed for iOS first.
Now the fun begins - once the game is done and is out on iTunes, there are large conversion teams which takes care of getting it to run on android phones and tablets. You have to see the hardware inventory we have here - so manyyyy android phones and tablets - and all of these have to be tested to give it a QA greenlight. Even when devices have the same hardware specs, each device behaves differently at times because the manufacturers have written different drivers specific to the device!
And then now, we have honeycomb and ICS - the screen has a static status bar in the bottom which takes away 48 pixels from your screen! Suddenly, your game needs to factor odd resolutions of 1280x752, 1232x800, 1024x552, etc etc. This means - redesigning all your game menus, UI, dialogs so that they dont leak out of the screen - crazy load of work! And then - you can have ONLY ONE APK to support ALL THESE resolutions and hardware configurations!
And then finally to top it all, you have several different market places, custom roms to test on, devices that the developer blacklists because of incompatibility - bypasses blacklisting on the market place because of a custom rom/hack...and he ends up playing the game giving us bad ratings!
The list is endless! I really feel this should not be the case for such a huge platform coming from a really big ass company! Honestly, i feel android made it big because it came in at the right time when the hardware side of things was at a great level - allowing them to give super slick graphics. And they had no other competition (windows mobile was too old, and the other was just iOS). They just got lucky, went without a clear plan - and iteratively refined and fixed things.
Atleast now, I feel Google should really accelerate its efforts towards some form of convergence. Look at the variance that a developer needs to take care of - different hardware configs/specs (ram, storage, processor!) - performance wise, different screen resolutions (a 100 different combinations! literally!), custom roms/modding, different manufacturer driven hardware/software customization, a zillion different OS versions, and so on. All this has to be factored, and we can have only 1 apk! And then finally, the provided android emulator that they provide - is soooo damn sorry, its not even funny. The emulator is literally like a slide show on my really powerful desktop - forget trying to use the built in emulator for developing games!
At the end, the platform lives because of the number of developers who support it. If customers dont have newer and better experiences coming - they would shift boats - its as simple. Making it harder for developers is just shooting yourself in the foot!
-San

dreamtheater39 said:
At the end, the platform lives because of the number of developers who support it. If customers dont have newer and better experiences coming - they would shift boats - its as simple. Making it harder for developers is just shooting yourself in the foot!
-San
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a huge problem with this statement, and pretty much the rest of your post. They are not a valid presumptions.
First, the developer and platform support each other. The platform does not live because the developer supports it... I'd argue that it's the other way around, but still a 2-way street. Without the platform, the developer cannot develop.
Second, games from the big developers may be released on iOS first, and some may be released on Android first. Without references, your statement in invalid. If you're only referring to your company, then specify that.
Third, screen resolution (and other oddities) may be a contributing factor in some app developers not bringing iOS apps to Android, but the vetting process of the Apple App Store discourages other developers from even trying to release anything onto iOS. Some devs don't even want to program things for iOS based on principle (and visa versa).
Fourth, the whole reason big mobile-platform app developer companies exist is to make money. Why alienate more than 50% of the market because of screen resolution? That would be lazy and counter-productive to profits.
Fifth, one could argue that it's not the big-time devs who got each platform off the ground, but the small-time devs, who released their apps for free. It wasn't the gaming capabilities that sold Android and iOS early on; that's a very narrow perspective.
Sixth, Android isn't being shot in the proverbial foot by different market places, those particular devices may be. The Nook and Kindle Fire come to mind, but keep in mind that those were sold on the premise that they're electronic readers first, that happen to run a modified version of Android.
I feel that you're upset over Android making it harder for you to earn a paycheck. I understand the challenges involved, but I think you're not looking at the big picture.
I moved to Windows Mobile phones from Palm devices because I wanted better synching with my computer, use of the .Net framework, and ease of customization ability. Turned out that WM was not intuitive on my early phones.
I moved from WM to webOS. Loved it. It was intuitive, smooth and reliable. Customization wasn't very easy, but I didn't care. Also, it had support of the big app developers and had some pretty good games too. Unfortunately, it didn't have support of the small-time app devs because of the difficulty writing apps for it. Where is it now?
From there, I knew that webOS was going to be short-lived, so I moved to Android. No, it's not as stable as iOS or webOS, but it is still a great OS. Small devs can get a chance in the app market, along with big-time devs who write cross-platform.
Windows 8 may be a great platform, but the big picture is that there is no cult-following for Microsoft as there is for Apple. What they need to do is give potential-customers options. Those options need to range from inexpensive, to top of the line. Different hardware, in other words (a nightmare for devs). If they don't, and since they don't have a die-hard following, I suspect it wont gain as much ground as Android did, or even webOS.
Apple has a good customer base, and knows what that customer wants. It's an easy sell. Windows customers are far too diverse and can't accept a blanket-type device range to cover all the wants and needs like Apple customers can. Android addresses those customers by providing options because it's an open architecture. Fragmentation sucks for the devs, but the user doesn't care because the typical user only has one device. Those users are why the devs exist at all.
To sum up, I think three things:
1. Your assessment of Android's shortcomings are somewhat short-sighted and not applicable to the big picture. The user wants the experience of the phone, not the apps. Apps are just noise now, with hundreds doing the same thing.
2. Your arguments are falling on deaf ears, or ears that cannot do anything about your complaints (i.e. I don't think Android's authors are reading this thread with much merit).
3. Your arguments would be better suited in the iOS, or Windows 8 sub-forums.

I was thinking about the horror of all the different Android devices when looking at them from a Dev's point of view (which I am NOT) so I appreciate your openness and insight.
The main reason why I will stay away from an iOS tablet for a long time is simply that the interface on a tablet needs to be more flexible than simply arranging icons to start apps. In other words, as long as iOS does not support widgets there's no appeal to me to buy an Apple tablet. Very narrow-minded, I know. Having an iPh*one (3GS) is not optimal but I am still waiting for an Android phone that intrigues me and is NOT linked to VZW.
dreamtheater39 said:
Interesting feedback from all you guys!
Just to clear things out, from where i come from -
-I've always loved android for the flexibility it gives me. I've always made custom roms, modded the hell out of every device i've ever had, starting way back from the Pocket PC days! Android - seemed like the most perfect option for me.
-I've always stayed away from Apple, for a myriad of reasons - they dictate everything, and i hate that. And also, i hate being in the bucket of half wit fanboys who bought one just to be "cool"
-I work for one of the biggest game companies, and i'm responsible for technology direction for smartphones, tablets. So, let me tell you what this looks like from a developer's view point -
A game is always written for iOS first - reason being, the platform is standardized in terms of display resolutions, hardware capabilities. Testing effort is extremely low in comparison (you dont have to test on a 100 devices!)
You have only 2 aspect ratios to deal with - phone & tablet. And you know that your game will run on all the iphones and ipads floating in the world. So this makes it easy from development & testing points of view. And this is the reason why games are "always" developed for iOS first.
Now the fun begins - once the game is done and is out on iTunes, there are large conversion teams which takes care of getting it to run on android phones and tablets. You have to see the hardware inventory we have here - so manyyyy android phones and tablets - and all of these have to be tested to give it a QA greenlight. Even when devices have the same hardware specs, each device behaves differently at times because the manufacturers have written different drivers specific to the device!
And then now, we have honeycomb and ICS - the screen has a static status bar in the bottom which takes away 48 pixels from your screen! Suddenly, your game needs to factor odd resolutions of 1280x752, 1232x800, 1024x552, etc etc. This means - redesigning all your game menus, UI, dialogs so that they dont leak out of the screen - crazy load of work! And then - you can have ONLY ONE APK to support ALL THESE resolutions and hardware configurations!
And then finally to top it all, you have several different market places, custom roms to test on, devices that the developer blacklists because of incompatibility - bypasses blacklisting on the market place because of a custom rom/hack...and he ends up playing the game giving us bad ratings!
The list is endless! I really feel this should not be the case for such a huge platform coming from a really big ass company! Honestly, i feel android made it big because it came in at the right time when the hardware side of things was at a great level - allowing them to give super slick graphics. And they had no other competition (windows mobile was too old, and the other was just iOS). They just got lucky, went without a clear plan - and iteratively refined and fixed things.
Atleast now, I feel Google should really accelerate its efforts towards some form of convergence. Look at the variance that a developer needs to take care of - different hardware configs/specs (ram, storage, processor!) - performance wise, different screen resolutions (a 100 different combinations! literally!), custom roms/modding, different manufacturer driven hardware/software customization, a zillion different OS versions, and so on. All this has to be factored, and we can have only 1 apk! And then finally, the provided android emulator that they provide - is soooo damn sorry, its not even funny. The emulator is literally like a slide show on my really powerful desktop - forget trying to use the built in emulator for developing games!
At the end, the platform lives because of the number of developers who support it. If customers dont have newer and better experiences coming - they would shift boats - its as simple. Making it harder for developers is just shooting yourself in the foot!
-San
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I thought the name of the game was resolution independence, designing your UI's without depending on absolute values but rather relative values and taking into account resolution size, using DP measurement units instead of PX. The last time I worked on an app was a while ago but even then the app scaled fine from something as small as a Droid 2 to something as large (was large at the time) as a Nook Color or a Galaxy Tab.
So are you saying Apple has it better because they only have two screen sizes? Who cares if there are fifty different screen sizes and fifty different resolutions? If you design your UI and your app correctly with resolution independence in mind it should scale well to most if not every resolution and every aspect ratio shouldn't it?
Even when devices have the same hardware specs, each device behaves differently at times because the manufacturers have written different drivers specific to the device!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you referring to certain things like how device GPU's vary and therefore certain texture compression methods in OpenGL for example only work with ATI GPU's and not PowerVR GPU's and vice versa?
I do agree that fragmentation exists but only between Android versions such as those running 1.5, 1.6, 2.2, 3.0, 4.0, etcetera but you can deal with this. I doubt they'll standardize hardware. Maybe screen sizes, maybe screen resolutions but manufacturers are there to make money, not play equal to every other manufacturer. If HTC wants to release a better phone with a better resolution to make more money Google isn't going to tell them to do otherwise. The only reason this is different with Apple is because Apple is the only one making hardware for their iOS so there are no companies fighting over each other for profits. They can control the whole platform. Obviously with Android you have multiple hardware manufacturers and they're not all part of the same company, they're looking to make profits over each other and that means devices have varying features. That's just how Android is unless Google makes their own devices and restricts Android to Google devices.
I think I would like the idea of uniformity better too, not as strict as Apple but certain things being the same across all vendors. We're heading that way in a sense since Google is requiring all ICS devices to support the Holo theme. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future we get more restrictions from Google but as for forcing manufacturers to make certain hardware? That I truly doubt. Google has made it possible to work with different devices by allowing you to query for different device features such as checking for a keyboard or a trackball or an accelerometer, use resolution independent practices such as DP measurements and relative positioning, it's not as bad as it seems IMO.
different hardware configs/specs (ram, storage, processor
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So? What developer hasn't had to deal with this on virtually every system developed on since the origin of computing? Because Apple managed to create an illusion that this is irrelevant by making a handful of devices with fixed hardware and therefore only having to achieve acceptable performance on those devices? Make the decision to alienate those who don't fit the requirements. Alienating a certain group from support isn't going to be the end of the world. Games are sure to use Tegra 3 and those without Tegra 3 devices might be assed out if the game can't scale down. The world continues...

Tubular said:
I thought the name of the game was resolution independence, designing your UI's without depending on absolute values but rather relative values and taking into account resolution size, using DP measurement units instead of PX. The last time I worked on an app was a while ago but even then the app scaled fine from something as small as a Droid 2 to something as large (was large at the time) as a Nook Color or a Galaxy Tab.
So are you saying Apple has it better because they only have two screen sizes? Who cares if there are fifty different screen sizes and fifty different resolutions? If you design your UI and your app correctly with resolution independence in mind it should scale well to most if not every resolution and every aspect ratio shouldn't it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course, a lot of work is done to make things resolution independent. But this is not always easy when you want to have some really complex games designed which is heavy on 2D UI. Full screen dialog boxes, Floating UI options etc. are all part of many big game titles developed and ends up being incredibly hard to port across multiple resolutions/aspect ratios. Try looking at some of the user reviews on games - people complain about the smallest of things and randomly throw in a 1 star rating. For a development company, ratings are everything. If your app gets low ratings, it goes unnoticed and thereby killing your chances of earning decent revenues for breaking even - let alone profitability! The cost of development goes up due to higher requirements for development & testing (multiple devices and other fragmentation issues).
Are you referring to certain things like how device GPU's vary and therefore certain texture compression methods in OpenGL for example only work with ATI GPU's and not PowerVR GPU's and vice versa?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Several things here - PVR textures, many open gl calls behave differently on certain devices - for instance the filtering doesnt work as expected on the samsung line of devices because they have their own driver tweaks applied, some devices crash out on a minor opengl warning, while the other devices ignore and continue to run etc. The point here is, you cant see it running on 1 "TYPE" of device which represents a family (same res, performance specs) and assume it will run on the rest. You can release and iteratively respond to user feedback - but you risk getting low ratings and then your game gets buried under.
So? What developer hasn't had to deal with this on virtually every system developed on since the origin of computing? Because Apple managed to create an illusion that this is irrelevant by making a handful of devices with fixed hardware and therefore only having to achieve acceptable performance on those devices? Make the decision to alienate those who don't fit the requirements. Alienating a certain group from support isn't going to be the end of the world. Games are sure to use Tegra 3 and those without Tegra 3 devices might be assed out if the game can't scale down. The world continues...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
[/QUOTE]
When you build games, the objective is to provide the best graphics to the end user with excellent gameplay. Now, if i have to support several hardware configurations i either have a fallback mechanism to have lower quality on lower device (more dev effort, more costs, more testing), or reduce overall quality of graphics all across (bad quality game - low ratings, low revenues), blacklist lower specced devices (killing potential market share - cutting total revenues, risking break even). This becomes extremely critical especially because the games and apps are sold for a measly $1 and every sale is important!
silversx80 said:
Second, games from the big developers may be released on iOS first, and some may be released on Android first. Without references, your statement in invalid. If you're only referring to your company, then specify that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not all developers need to follow this. But any large sized company will invariably follow this approach - mainly from the point of view of monetization. Right now, the fact is, Android is yet not a platform where the big bucks come from. Its still unfortunately the damn fruit company. And the sheer fact about the difficulty in have a game run on android is a deterrent to release on android first. Its much easier to finish a game for ios, throw it on the marketplace, and quickly see how the game did. If people like it, and you made decent revenues, then you could expand to android - which would take a lot more time, money, effort.
Fourth, the whole reason big mobile-platform app developer companies exist is to make money. Why alienate more than 50% of the market because of screen resolution? That would be lazy and counter-productive to profits.
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true, and thats what i mean by the effort it takes on testing and development makes it a costlier bet! Imagine the capital investment - to house all the phones to test on!
I feel that you're upset over Android making it harder for you to earn a paycheck. I understand the challenges involved, but I think you're not looking at the big picture.
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I barely find it hard to earn my paycheck Its my company which has to invest the $$$ to get every game out of the door to hit android markets! And just seeing all the chaos involved in shipping an android title, just makes me wonder why google has made this so complicated! If i have to think from the perspective of having my own startup company making android games - it would give me shivers! Not all companies have the lucky streak of Rovio and those few company that i could handcount.
-San