Google man: 'Honeycomb' only for fondleslabs (so far) Google's "Honeycomb" incarnation of Android will run only on tablets, and not on smartphones. Or so it seems. Wednesday morning, at a press event inside Google headquarters, when asked if Honeycomb would run on phones as well as tablets, Google director of products for mobile Hugo Barra said: "As we continue to think about the …
Android fragmentation doesn't exist now? This man should be fired, since he's clearly not paying any attention whatsoever.
Yes, if you have a 1.6 handset, some things are not available to you, and yes, there are handsets that only got upgraded to 1.6. Let alone the huge number of 2.1 and 2.2 handsets that haven't been upgraded to 2.3.
Oh come on, your Nexus One is over a year old now! It's yesterday's news. You should be going out and buying one of the new Nexus S phones! Or at least Google would have you think.
As a fellow Nexus One owner I'm a little miffed. I reckon CyanogenMod 7 (which at least is easy to get onto a N1) will provide an Android 2.3 implementation way before Google do - latest I heard it's a matter of days away from a beta.
I've given up trying to find any method in Google's madness regarding Android.
They repeatedly deny fragmentation, claiming it's actually evolution (which is a bit like saying it's not drug abuse, it's alcoholicism - different words, often the same result) and whatever they call it they do almost nothing to combat it - even their Nexus One isn't on the latest Android release yet.
Then they go and make an incompatible version of Android called Google TV.
Then they make Android Honeycomb (3.0, which indicates it's a sequel to Gingerbread 2.3) for tablets but are unclear as to whether it's also for phones (is this their way of hyping tablets or something?).
Then they *finally* get round to enabling a webstore for the Android Market, which should have been there years ago as people like AppBrain managed to do.
It seems to me that there are several teams within Google working on "Android" and no real overall direction. As a fan of the system I think this is a shame. I'm getting confused about the whole thing - I hate to think what the less informed are thinking!
iFan because at least you know where you stand with the JesusPhone.
The main difference is that we're almost a year down the line. So we temporarily had iOS 3.2 for the iPad only, with a bunch of new features that are useful on both types of device, then we had iOS 4.0 for handsets only which jumped 3.2 to a bunch of other useful features, then only at 4.2 did everything come back together. I'm sure they'll do the same thing with Android; fork the code base during the development and launch of new types of product, then a merge further down the line.
There's a risk of fragmentation, of course, but we're still in a much better position than we were trying to support J2ME across the breadth of available handsets, and the available handsets are a lot better.
So, possibly 3.x for tablets and 4.x as a later "unifying" release (which may be the fabled "Ice Cream").
I find it odd that they haven't come out to say 3.x supports phones if it does, so I guess we can only assume it doesn't.
Google would be a lot better if it was more transparent. Getting any definite information out of them (even unofficially) is difficult, a fact that was obvious on the Nexus One "support" forums!
I don't think fragmentation applies - there are good arguments for having different OSs optimised for phones and tablet/netbook sized devices. You don't want a desktop OS on your phone, nor do you want a tablet to just be a brick-sized phone like the iPad.
People don't complain that Windows on x86 is different to Windows on phones. People don't complain that there's fragmentation between OS X and iOS. Nokia also maintain a distinction between Symbian and Maemo/Meego (not to mention S40 for low end phones).
Google had always planned to have both Chrome and Android, so the idea of two OSs shouldn't be a surprise - though I wonder if this new announcement is what was originally planned to be Chrome?
Is not about cross device platforms, it is about multiple handsets not being supported by the latest OS release. Nexus one isn't on 2.3 and is Googles platform!
This is where the issue comes with Fragmentation, not with a single platform for all devices. However Google have denied that fragmentation is a problem so that must be the truth..
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