Recently, Android design chief Matias Duarte sat down with Wired to talk about Android Design, which was recently launched to help developers adapt to the look and feel of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Google’s own suite of apps. During the interview, fragmentation, and particularly updates were discussed. Here’s what he had to say:
“A lot of those issues really are much more related to the hardware capabilities. Things like just how much memory you have. The reality is, right now Android is growing so quickly, it’s like it was back in the X86 days of PCs. When you got that 286 and were so excited! ‘Yes!’ And then Quake comes along and your 286 just couldn’t do the job. So right now, we have that issue people call ‘fragmentation,’ where some of the older hardware just won’t run the new OS. So trying to upgrade the OS is really difficult.”
“Remember when you got the new version of Windows, and you couldn’t run it on your PC? You just had to get a new computer, right? It’s something that happens at certain inflection points of computing, where the capabilities just grow so quickly that they outpace everything else.”
Before I go on a rant, let me say that I love the work that Matias is doing with Android. Ice Cream Sandwich is a wonderful UI, and I’m excited for the future of the OS. With that said, I have to disagree with Matias on this. In principle, he’s correct when it comes to old hardware and what we’ve experienced with PCs, and I can’t blame him for this response as he’s trying to downplay the issue. Gingerbread was announced in late 2010 and it took six months for the first top tier phones to get it. I’m sorry, that doesn’t have anything to do with old hardware. Now, with Ice Cream Sandwich, the SDK was released in October 2011. It has already been 3 months and companies like Motorola won’t have the ICS update until quarter 2. This is for devices like the DROID RAZR which doesn’t have hardware limitations, and it doesn’t appear Samsung and HTC are going to be any quicker.
Unfortunately phones and PC’s are different products. Most people are required to sign 2-year contracts with phones. It’s very difficult for a consumer to upgrade to the latest and greatest, but even when they can, the latest and greatest doesn’t generally have the current software (ICS). In the coming days, consumers will be able to buy a DROID RAZR MAXX which is an incredible phone with its 3300mAh battery, but it won’t have ICS. What does this have to do with old hardware? The LG Spectrum was released last week which again doesn’t have ICS, and how about the HTC Rezound? All these phones are top-notch high-end phones. This is not to say that old hardware isn’t an issue. It’s a safe bet that the original DROID won’t receive an official update to ICS, but it’s over 2-years old. They already announced the Nexus One won’t get it either.
So far only two devices have received the ICS update and that’s the Motorola XOOM and the ASUS Transformer Prime. Why? Because they’re pretty much stock or vanilla Android experiences. Obviously the only way to fix all of this would be to stop all manufacturer skins, but seriously, that’s not going to happen. Forcing manufacturers to update quicker isn’t going to work either, because they can’t do it. It’s like asking my three-year old son to go out and shovel the driveway, he can’t do it. The skins will continue to slow down the manufacturers so mandating anything won’t solve it. So is there a happy medium?
How about Google mandate that each manufacturer release at least one phone and/or tablet per year that’s stock, and that it must be updated within 1 month of the release of the SDK. I know, this won’t fix overall fragmentation, but it gives the consumer a choice. They can decide to go with stock and get faster updates or get something else if they don’t care so much about updates. Also, for those that want stock, it gives the consumer a choice of manufacturer. For example, if a consumer really likes HTC hardware, they can continue to buy their preferred brand.
So yes, we would still have fragmentation and there’s the question on which carrier(s) would carry these stock devices, but it’s a beginning to making things better. Right now, we need to see improvements, and from what I’m seeing, there isn’t an improvement with ICS. It’s going to take close to a year for 50% of the devices to get it, which isn’t an improvement from what we saw with Gingerbread updates. I love Android, but nothing is perfect. If there is one thing wrong with it right now, it’s the timeliness of updates, and it needs to be addressed without pretending it’s not an issue.
For more from the interview, head over to wired to check it out.