Does anyone else get the impression that this might have just been an intern project* or similar?
Seems very odd for a seemingly minor iterative update to pop up out of nowhere after such a long time otherwise.
* The update, not Google Glass itself
Seems very odd for a seemingly minor iterative update to pop up out of nowhere after such a long time otherwise.
* The update, not Google Glass itself
But my assumption is that someone at Google still uses their Explorer Edition, and fixed some pet peeves of their own to support newer Android phones better, maybe they added the keyboard input because they needed it, etc. And then just decided to go ahead and get it released to everyone because the work was already done anyways.
I suspect this is a backport of work that was done to support the new Glass for Work program.
(I used to work at Google, on teams other than Glass, although I know former members.)
But I am dubious this has to do with Glass for Work, because Enterprise Edition has been out a long time, and surely has had updates long before now. It's unlikely that Enterprise Edition is still built on the archaic platform Explorer Edition is built on (Android 4.x on an OMAP processor that was already old when Glass was first released). And there is little to no reason I can fathom for Google to expend Glass for Work resources on backporting fixes to a device that's been abandoned for over three years.