Jacob’s Lifestream

That’s right. I do.

Of course, this may be due to my lack of knowledge of Android, but here’s what I see:

Windows Mobile used to be friggin’ hot. It more or less SAVED a lot of us who needed our phones to do more than just being phones. But it had a flaw I think is fatal (apart from its obvious staleness):

MS made the various O/S versions, released them to OEMs. OEMs modified as needed, effectively creating a large number of vendor specific customized Windows Mobile versions. I mean, yeah, same operating system beneath. But some OEM versions required you developing your app one way (I specifically remember that about one device). So you couldn’t be sure, that what you wrote for one Windows Mobile device, could run on all Windows Mobile devices. Even if that was one of the basic premises.

I see it happening with Android. HTC isn’t happy about standard Android. So they re-create their UI from Windows Mobile on Android.

There, mission accomplished, users happy ! Well, at least for a little while anyway. Because, what happens when that kind of fragmentation is introduced ?

Users start depending on the OEM (in this case HTC), instead of the vendor (In this case Google), to release device specific editions of the operating system.

And noone says HTC wants to do that. Google does, it has to be committed to their operating system. But HTC can basically just deny e.g. Hero users a Hero specific version of Android. Which essentially means: Your device is no longer current, won’t be, go spend more money on one of our newer devices.

Everyone knows I’m an Apple fanboy. I think they create fantastic stuff. I also think they can be very arrogant, too proud, and one of the most closed companies in existence, despite their very outgoing image.

But one of the things I see as a benefit in that regard, even though it means Apple controls by an iron fist, is that Apple has FULL control over the operating system.

Which means, the same operating system runs on all devices. Functionality differs, depending on the hardware platform available. But the basic operating system runs on all. And you don’t have to wait for an OEM to customize it for a specific device.

You get your fix directly from the source. That’s one of the things that kept me on my old iPhone. Sure, I couldn’t do all the really new sexy stuff. I could do a lot of sexy stuff still, though.

But… what happens when other vendors think they have invented UI nirvana ? Both LG, Samsung, Huawei, Sony Ericsson and possibly others, have Android devices coming.

• I know that at least Samsung has their own UI they use across various devices.
• Sony Ericsson may very well customize Android for the Xperia 3, to support the UI from Xperia.

Then the users are not only locked to one vendor. Their devices will also be too old, too fast.

So Android, here’s to you navigating the vendor-waters successfully. I actually want to see Android succeed. It adds another aspect to the mobile sphere, and I truly appreciate that. Android helps pushing other vendors to re-imagining their current operating systems. Hopefully they’ll influence Apple too, cause however monster cool I think my iPhone 3GS is, it definitely has flaws and lack certain functionalities (which I wrote about earlier, press the Apple tag in the tagcloud to the right).

But I also hope Google cleans up that beginning mess I see starting to form.

And Google, please do :)