News - Google is reportedly replacing its Nexus brand with Android Silver

[crossy]

Sounds not so good, because the Silver, for short it will be S...., like Samsung series's S2, S3,S4. I don't like this name

Don't agree - for a start it doesn't say that these "Silver's" will be new devices, only that Google will be more "hands on" with regards the software. In which case, aren't these similar to the "Google Play Editions" already out there, only this time they'd be "Silver Edition" ... "SE".

Article also doesn't say that there'll only be one "Silver" available per year (as is the case with the Nexus phones/tablets), so having "Silver 1", "Silver 2", etc wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. On the other hand "HTC One m8 SE" and "LG G3 SE" are okay to be sold alongside each other. Plus I can't see a big plus for the manufacturers if they're just going to be supplying unattributed devices to Google.

Of course Google could always change the identifier so "Silver" phones were "Android google" models ... or "Ag" for short (one for the chemists out there). Ag1, Ag2, etc any more agreeable?

[Saracen]

Google Play has two components, the actual Play Store and a background service as well. The service doesn't show up on the default task manager on most phones. You can kill it but it will just restart again. I don't know why it keeps restarting for free and built-in apps though. I was under the impression it was just for licence verification. Maybe it is used for tracking stats as well.

More than that. Google is and has been shifting more and more core services into "Google" Android, and then abandoning the original, and open-source, AOSP (Android Open Source Project) variants.

Bear in mind, the original Android was open source, and in theory, still is. BUT, if an OEM wants access to the Google bits, like oh, Play Store apps, YouTube, GMail, cloud-syncing, Google Maps APIs or overlays, or GPS location data, etc, then as Google moves more and more of the updated versions of these functions into reliance on Play Services, then those OEMs either have licence from Google, or develop ALL of these services themselves if they stick with the AOSP Android fork, and provide the infrastructure, or licence the data from someone else ....short of, oh, going out and mapping the world themselves, for instance.

In other words, it's about market domination and locking everyone in to Google Android, which is emphatically not open source. It's licensed up the wazoo, and back.

And as just about every major OEM (outside of China) except Amazon has gone the Google route, and as this makes it incredibly hard, and largely pointless, for app developers to avoid Google tie-ins, it's pretty close now to a situation where Google effectively owns, and certainly controls, just about every mainstream non-Chinese Google device, or at the very least, the platform running on it.

With just about every Android release since 2.2, more "GoogleApp" versions of functions, from the camera up, appear, and any development on the stock (open source) AOSP version immediately ceases. And the reliance of those "GoogleApp" versions on play services is the control method, since without Play Services, those new versions won't tun, and Google absolutely owns and controls Play Services.

Android, with those few exceptions, is now effectively and permaently locked inyo the Google ecosystem.

[crossy]

More than that. Google is and has been shifting more and more core services into "Google" Android, and then abandoning the original, and open-source, AOSP (Android Open Source Project) variants.

Bear in mind, the original Android was open source, and in theory, still is. BUT, if an OEM wants access to the Google bits, like oh, Play Store apps, YouTube, GMail, cloud-syncing, Google Maps APIs or overlays, or GPS location data, etc, then as Google moves more and more of the updated versions of these functions into reliance on Play Services, then those OEMs either have licence from Google, or develop ALL of these services themselves if they stick with the AOSP Android fork, and provide the infrastructure, or licence the data from someone else ....short of, oh, going out and mapping the world themselves, for instance.

Hmm, I'd heard elsewhere about the "Googlfication" of Android and while not totally in agreement, am worried that it's going to become more and more difficult to fork or go "open source pure" with it. Stuff I was reading was also suggesting that Google's perceived as being pretty laid back at the moment, but if they ever decided to "play the heavy" then that's going to be a big incentive for the open sorcerers to come up with alternatives to gApps.

Wasn't aware that you can't access GPS data on Android without the Google stuff - I would have thought that this would have been pretty core functionality for a 21st century smartphone.

On the other hand they are ploughing a lot of money into Android, which obviously buys them a lot of say. And I'm very sure that they're not exactly pleased that Amazon and now Nokia are pretty much able to take "their" basic OS and deGoogle it with not too much apparent effort.

[Ttaskmaster]

Pretty annoyed, actually, as I thought the whole point of Android was to escape the rigid approach of iOS and do things the way you wanted?

[ik9000]

Pretty annoyed, actually, as I thought the whole point of Android was to escape the rigid approach of iOS and do things the way you wanted?

except you still can't get control of what apps can do without rooting your phone. It really ought to be possible on android to block what apps can and can't do rather than just be presented with a list of "can see and do wtf the app likes and you get no say so other than install or not" which is really dumb. If app makers knew people could block "read all contacts" "access all web history" "turn on cameras" when all it is is a train timetable etc they would be more careful in their coding to begin with... my next phone probably will not be a google one. - but then apart from ioS there is only win8 phones and Android customised variants which are presumably just as bad or worse than plain old android. Not really much choice is it.

[jim]

except you still can't get control of what apps can do without rooting your phone. It really ought to be possible on android to block what apps can and can't do rather than just be presented with a list of "can see and do wtf the app likes and you get no say so other than install or not" which is really dumb. If app makers knew people could block "read all contacts" "access all web history" "turn on cameras" when all it is is a train timetable etc they would be more careful in their coding to begin with... my next phone probably will not be a google one. - but then apart from ioS there is only win8 phones and Android customised variants which are presumably just as bad or worse than plain old android. Not really much choice is it.

I agree, but Google probably know full well that all we'll do is ban virtually every app from accessing the internet, and thus cut off all the ads, so I doubt it will happen any time soon.

[crossy]

except you still can't get control of what apps can do without rooting your phone. It really ought to be possible on android to block what apps can and can't do rather than just be presented with a list of "can see and do wtf the app likes and you get no say so other than install or not" which is really dumb. If app makers knew people could block "read all contacts" "access all web history" "turn on cameras" when all it is is a train timetable etc they would be more careful in their coding to begin with...

+1 on this. Heck, I'd think it an improvement if you were able to find a reason/justification why that particular access was being requested. So rather than say "Needs access to location data" and leave it at that, have a drop-down on this that said "In order to mark deals as 'local'" for something like Groupon, HUKD, etc.

The flipside of this is that while I fully appreciate that Google may have very good reasons to insist that all apps have internet access (for their ads), there's other permissions that could be offered up to user choice, even if it means that (for example) switching location data off pops up a dialog warning that "without this permission this application will not be able to offer local deals". So an informed user can trade access for functionality as they see fit. And yes, I realise that Google did have such an enlightened system in place for a short time then removed it.

... my next phone probably will not be a google one. - but then apart from ioS there is only win8 phones and Android customised variants which are presumably just as bad or worse than plain old android. Not really much choice is it.

How about Cyanogen-based phones, are they any better? Being targeted at a technically-literate audience you would have thought so. Plus - dare I say it - how about Ubuntu phone when, or should that be "if", it gets going? Or there's Firefox OS ones too.

[ik9000]

cyanogen from what I gather suffer on battery life, ubuntu forget it. Firefox? Really! Did you see the number of extra permissions the recent updates to firefox android browser ask you to grant?