Opinions - Is the rapid growth of Android necessarily a good thing?

[HEXUS]

Android looks set to become the Windows of mobile, but who will benefit?

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[BEANFro Elite]

As much as I admire Google for their efforts at becomming a big player, equally I'm left with a very uncomfortable feeling in my stomach at the rapid growth.

There are many reasons, but thats another topic, it would appear that Android is in so many devices of so many specifications of so many shapes that theres nothing "special" about Android, in fact I find it rather off-putting...

On the other hand, Windows Phone 7 has a lot of potential in my opnion.

[TheAnimus]

speaking of which my Omnia7 is broken :'(

But I do find it hard to really understand the brand Andriod, its not the fragmentation, its just there should be sub groups. ie Snapdragon and 800*480 called something.

[Terbinator]

speaking of which my Omnia7 is broken :'(

But I do find it hard to really understand the brand Andriod, its not the fragmentation, its just there should be sub groups. ie Snapdragon and 800*480 called something.

Orange SanFrancisco/ ZTE Blade!

[TheAnimus]

Your missing my point, there are so many which for fill that requirement, but its hard to know at a glance which can.

Windows Experience Index was a good idea for bricks and motor stores selling games, but also for helping PC shoppers see the performance of each one. Regrettably too many manufacturers still sell them with headline figures such as cpu clock, or the amount of RAM.

[Spud1]

Good article

Android still does have a lot of potential to become the dominant mobile platform - thanks to all the reasons you discuss. If they can solve the framentation issues (not sure how they can to be honest - but there will be a way!) and crucially solve the interface issues that plague the vanilla android versions (this is purely for non techies - every non technical person that I know, whos been sold a droid, has complained to me about this)..then yes it could really shoot to the top and stay there.

I personally think that Google need to take just that little bit more control away from the OEMs to help address these issues, they need to balance the open nature a little better. I'm not saying that they should go as far as apple - despite the fact I think that apple have the right idea - but a little bit more control would help them no end.

Possibly more along the lines of what Microsoft are doing with WP7.

[usxhe190]

To be honest, I would like to separate the handset with the OS.

I wish it could be more like computers. I can pick the OS and install that.

[crossy]

Android still does have a lot of potential to become the dominant mobile platform - thanks to all the reasons you discuss. If they can solve the framentation issues (not sure how they can to be honest - but there will be a way!) and crucially solve the interface issues that plague the vanilla android versions

Hmm, I'm going to disagree (slightly) here - the plethora of manufacturers is good, and the range of devices (from SE X10 MiniPro/HTC Wildfire to Dell Streak and onwards to tablets) is a good thing. And as to launchers - it's quite cheap/easy to replace what's shipped by your handset maker with something more "appropriate" (says the guy currently running the Sony Arc launcher on his X10). What I'll criticise Google and all the manufacturers for is the disparity in OS. Heck, take Sony, they've got devices on 1.6 (in some markets), 2.1 and 2.3. Samsung are similar. Now does that make sense to anyone?

I personally think that Google need to take just that little bit more control away from the OEMs to help address these issues, they need to balance the open nature a little better. I'm not saying that they should go as far as apple - despite the fact I think that apple have the right idea - but a little bit more control would help them no end.

+1, they (Google) NEED to start pulling them reins in a bit. Animus' suggestion of an "Android Index" initially struck me as dumb, but it's kind of grown on me and now I think it's probably would work really well. So a more powerful phone, more RAM, GPU would score high.

What Google DEFINITELY need to do though is get the shambles around OS versions well and truly resolved. In an ideal world we'd have Apple's arrangement (I'm quite jealous of this - even more so if iTunes wasn't involved), but I realise that we need the vendors to add their own tweaks, such as front-ends. So I'd settle for getting rid of the involvement of the teleco's. Some (yes, I do mean you AT&T) just don't get the idea at all, so people unlucky enough to use them have a horrible experience.

Getting back to the original topic - I don't think that Google can sustain the level of growth, and it'll plateau soon(ish), but Android will still be very much the dominant OS. Is this a good thing? I'd say "yes" because of the variety of devices that'll be available - but I'd say that equally about WP7 (which I really hope Nokia can make a good go with).

Ideally I'd like to see 'droid and WP7 on about equal footing, with iOS and Blackberry in third/forth places (not respectively). Both iOS and Blackberry are single-vendor devices, so I'd argue that having them dominant is a bad thing for consumer choice, and therefore for the market itself.

To be honest, I would like to separate the handset with the OS. I wish it could be more like computers. I can pick the OS and install that.

You can already do that (to a limited extent), see http://tutorial.downloadatoz.com/how...oid-phone.html, but I see what you're getting at - I agree that it'd be neat to be able to switch your device from Android to WP7, (not likely to see iOS or Blackberry in that mix because of the single source issue). I'm also intrigued by this claim of Blackberry that they will be able to run Android packages - got to be good news to have a lingua franca for software distribution, although malware propagation could be an issue (obviously!).

[usxhe190]

You can already do that (to a limited extent), see http://tutorial.downloadatoz.com/how...oid-phone.html, but I see what you're getting at - I agree that it'd be neat to be able to switch your device from Android to WP7, (not likely to see iOS or Blackberry in that mix because of the single source issue). I'm also intrigued by this claim of Blackberry that they will be able to run Android packages - got to be good news to have a lingua franca for software distribution, although malware propagation could be an issue (obviously!).

I know but it would be great if it is like properly done Imagine we can just install what we want rather than how limited we are by the phone companies. I blame Apple and their successful iPhone which other manufacturers are following

I would love just to buy WP7 OS or get Android. Imagine Ubuntu Mobile (and I can get skin like HTC) or whatever. That is true open and diversification rather than what we have now...

It would be great (obviously phone manufacturers will hate that)