Tag Archives | Google Android

Apple Plays Hardball, Microsoft Benefits?

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 9, 2010 at 4:43 pm

Good post over at CNN Money by Philip Elmer-DeWitt with some backstory about Apple’s lawsuit against HTC over iPhone patents. Elmer-DeWitt quotes Yair Reiner, an analyst who says that the suit is spooking handset manufacturers since it throws the future of Google’s Android OS into doubt. (And Reiner says that manufacturers were already nonplussed over Google’s introduction of its own Android phone, the Nexus One.)

End result, according to Reiner? A window (pun unavoidable) of opportunity for the otherwise way-behind OS known as Windows Phone 7 Series, which manufacturers may turn to instead of Android. (I don’t know if Windows Phone is vulnerable to Apple lawsuits, but on the surface, at least, it owes far less to the iPhone than Android does…)

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Android Market Needs Stars

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 8, 2010 at 9:05 am

The quantity of software in Google’s Android Market app store is growing rapidly. But compared to Apple’s App Store, the Android one is still short on stuff by rockstar developers like this one. Wonder what Google is doing to make it worth their while to build great stuff for its platform?

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The Verizon Droid is a Loaf of Day-Old Bread

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 23, 2010 at 5:44 pm

Wasn’t there a time when Verizon’s Droid was the hottest Android phone in the nation? Sure–but it ended on January 5th, when Google launched the Nexus One. The Droid runs Android 2.0.1; the Nexus One packs Android 2.1 and some custom Google tweaks. And the difference is more than a minor technical matter.

Yesterday, Google announced Google Earth for Android. It looks neat–and it requires Android 2.1, so it won’t run on the less-than-four-months-old Droid. That’ll get fixed when Verizon rolls out an update for the Droid, which may happen soon. But it points out frustrating, potentially crippling issues with Android: The platform is splintering, and it’s changing so rapidly that the majority of Android handsets feel stale. Even the Droid–I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that Amazon is selling it for fifty bucks, or one-quarter of Verizon’s original after-rebate price.

Over at InfoWorld, Galen Gruman has a good post with more evidence of Android’s fractured nature. There are multiple, incompatible versions of the OS out there, and I don’t know of any good reason to think the situation’s going to get better rather than worse. Google surely isn’t setting a good example by releasing an Android version of Google Earth which won’t run on most Android phones.

Do I need to recap the situation with Apple’s iPhone OS? It gets only one major upgrade a year, instantly available to all owners of existing devices, and all software works on any iPhone OS gizmo that has the proper hardware.

Android will never be like that, of course: It’s an open-source product that runs on an array of gadgets with varying hardware specs and capabilities. But how big a bummer is it going to be if it takes a nerdish interest in version numbers to determine if a given app works on your phone? Isn’t it a problem if the hot Android phone of the 2009 holiday season feels stale by February, even if the situation is somewhat temporary?

In short, wouldn’t it be healthy for Android if it evolved a little more slowly, and everyone responsible for its fate agreed that compatibility is a key goal?

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Firefox on Android: Coming Soonish?

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 17, 2010 at 12:22 pm

The browser wars have been one of the best things that ever happened to computer users–but so far, they haven’t spilled over from the desktop onto phones. (Yes, there are multiple browsers available for many phone OSes, but there tends to be one 800-pound gorilla and a bunch of obscure alternatives.) So I’m glad to hear that Mozilla says it hopes to have Firefox up and running on Android by the end of the year…

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Google’s Nexus One Phone: Evolution (Not Revolution) at Work

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 14, 2010 at 10:36 pm

[A NOTE FROM HARRY: A few weeks ago, I took on a fun part-time gig–writing a weekly technology column for FoxNews.com. The column appears each Tuesday in the site’s Scitech section. I’ll also run them here on Technologizer later in the week. Here’s this week’s column–a review of Google’s Nexus One smartphone.]

Last week’s Consumer Electronics Show packed Las Vegas to the brim with new technology products, from 3D HDTVs to e-readers. But the week’s most talked-about new gizmo didn’t make its debut at the conference.

The day before CES got underway, Google cleverly swiped the spotlight by unveiling the Nexus One, the first phone the company is selling itself. After years of scuttlebutt that a “Googlephone” might be on the way, there’s finally a model that deserves that moniker.

Based on Google’s own Android mobile operating system and built by Taiwanese phone giant HTC, the Nexus One isn’t the tradition-busting breakthrough that some tech watchers expected. (There were those who wondered if the company might give it away and turn a profit via on-screen ads.)

Nor is it the mythical iPhone killer that pundits love to fantasize about. But like most of the Android phones that have debuted since the T-Mobile G1 in November 2008, the Nexus One is a clear evolutionary improvement on its predecessors. It displaces Verizon Wireless’s Droid as the top Android model to date, and is one of the most impressive smartphones on the market, period.

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