Android On Lockdown: AT&T Removes Best Parts of Android from Backflip

Does Google place any restrictions on the changes that can be made to a phone and still being able to market it as an Android?

it varies by handset. my mytouch 3g took a lengthy process involving 2 microsd cards, a hex editor, submitting some id numbers specific to my phone/microsd cards to some random website and getting emailed a "gold" file, and reflashing various files. my nexus one took all of going into the settings and unlocking it, then reflashing a cyanogen firmware that had been downloaded to the phone.

i would imagine that if at&t is locking down this particular phone, they are (or have instructed motorola to) lock down the firmware reflashing process.

If you get the phone from Google or T-Mobile it is trivial to root them and install your own firmware.

Hopefully Motorola won't lock down the bootloader too badly on AT&T.

It is a bad thing, any enterprise that wants to deploy their own android software to device they paid for now has to choose a different carrier than AT and T..

Its why Enterprises do not use iPhone in the first place..

Allowed by whom? Google went out of their way to give handset makers and carriers almost total control over how they choose to package Android. I suspect we'll see more of this simply because the carriers will want to create a low end SmartPhone market to replace the dumb phones out there. They'll only run a few carrier approved apps and may not have access to the regular Android Market but instead a carrier run market instead.

I know in the on-going Internet race to judgement Android has been anointed the White Knight role but Google's choice to give carriers/handset makers so much control over how Android gets into consumer hands is nothing to be proud of. We shouldn't be cheering on a solution that really isn't nearly as open as people suggest. Even a more legitimate Android phone like the Droid or N1 is crippled from doing wifi tethering unless you root/jailbreak it. Why? Because carriers didn't like it. If we're really looking for a 100% open mobile platform Android isn't really the solution. It's probably the best bet out there today but that should not stop us from pointing out why it's also restrictive.

Crippling Android on their phone might just make it easier to do an apples-to-apples comparison. Assuming AT&T screws up on something everyone else is getting right.

Installing ROMs is not trivial unless the handset manufacturer wants it to be. Look at the Archos device, for example.

It also sucks for developers that Motorola is still actively releasing new Android devices with such dated hardware. This is basically a glorified G1 (~500Mhz CPU, 256MB RAM) I'm not sure how that's going to play when we're very likely to see 1.5Ghz multi core CPUs with 4x+ as much RAM being released this year That's quite a big gap in specs between the low end and high end for brand new devices that are going to be in use 2 years from now and beyond.