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Comment by thomholwerda | Hacker News Reader

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Nope. It doesn't mean "reaches the most people". It means "has the most impact on the world". I think that Android will be the technology that allows people in poorer places of the world to have the internet - and thus, knowledge, and thus, power - in their pocket. That is going to change the world in a significant way.

Even something as simple as this: the internet may have information on the best way to treat sick cattle, or how to best treat certain crops. Heck, in more developed areas, it may cut the reaction time of aid services drastically.

(you already see this happening in Kenya, as linked in the article: http://singularityhub.com/2011/08/16/80-android-phone-sells-... ).

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And given that Android is copying the iPhone experience, much of Android's impact is attributable to Apple.

If you don't think Android is copying, take a look at pre-iPhone Android prototypes.

But in the context of what the OP is saying, what does that matter? The point is that an open source Android will be available to many, many more people worldwide than the iPhone ever will. Where their UI inspiration came from isn't really all that relevant.

"... will be ..."

Really? I guess we can wait and see, or we can already start attributing accolades to Android that have not happened yet. I still see people bringing up Xerox Parc all the time with respect to the GUI, so maybe where UI inspiration comes from is relevant?

  > I still see people bringing up Xerox Parc all the time
  > with respect to the GUI, so maybe where UI inspiration
  > comes from is relevant?

That's a very good point. Some talk as if Jobs ripped off Xerox PARC 1:1 and just reimplemented what he saw. In reality he saw only the concept, and Apple hugely expanded it, implementing lots of stuff what was not there (as "simple" as overlapping windows e.g.). And PARC was compensated for the ideas too.

Time will tell. I think you're wrong. Most of the third world doesn't even have a reliable cell phone service and, of course, little money, so there are few consumers to target ads at.

On a practical note, battery life matters in impoverished regions, best of luck with your "might last 24 hours, 36 if you're really lucky" Android handset.

Your second paragraph is warm and fuzzy nonsense, you should be ashamed of yourself for writing it.

Smartphones are designed for the needs of the developed world, the less developed world has it's requirements too, I doubt that internet enabled smart phones are high on the list.

And those alleged $80 handsets, how long exactly until they break and require servicing? Google "android failure rate", (less than e.g. iPhones, you can check), compare it those to conventional mobile phones.

> Most of the third world doesn't even have a reliable cell phone service

Wrong. Most of the third world has excellent cell phone service and they're using cell phones for far more stuff than we do. In Kenya, for instance, you can make small payments using your regular, non-smart cell phone.

> of course, little money, so there are few consumers to target ads at

They have advertising in the third world as well. I doubt that's because there's no money going around.

> On a practical note, battery life matters in impoverished regions, best of luck with your "might last 24 hours, 36 if you're really lucky" Android handset.

This needs to be solved, agreed. Chances are, however, that the phones that solve this problem will run some form of Android.

> > On a practical note, battery life matters in impoverished regions, best of luck with your "might last 24 hours, 36 if you're really lucky" Android handset.

> This needs to be solved, agreed. Chances are, however, that the phones that solve this problem will run some form of Android.

It is worth noting that some Android phones are already doing impressive things on this front. See, for example, the Samsung Replenish (that can slowly charge from sunlight with an alternative battery cover): http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/10/samsung-replenish-review/

I don't think it's as bad as you make it seem, but not by much: internet access is definitely nonsense in countries where mere electricity availability is spotty to start with (which is a common issue in sub-saharan Africa, communal charging for cell phones is common), it requires both electricity and a much higher density of cells than basic GSM voice and text; and battery life on current smartphones makes them a very hard sell in such countries (see: spotty electricity availability).

However I do think smartphones are a logical and valuable extension of cell phones in developing countries, not in that they improve communication but in that they make "offline" information more readily available, things like medical knowledge applications are not really possible on a "dumbphone" (limited screen real estate and controls) but a smartphone can replace stacks of books, can be carried and can be kept "current" by updating its applications a few times a year.

I see value in that, lots of it.

Oh, and $80 handsets are not even close to fixing this, the majority of sub-saharan africa (in terms of population) lives below the UN's poverty threshold. Which is under $2/day.

I see these $80 handsets going to the "upper crust" of these societies more than to the poorest segments.

Most of the third world measured by area or population? The areas that is densely populated often have pretty decent connectivity. It is also improving very fast as operators are investing heavily to continue to meet the increasing usage.

24 hours? I own an android phone and I am lucky to get 12 hours if I use it regularly.

12 hours? What are you doing? Playing games all the time? I can go 2-3 days with mine, 6 days with umts data off.

Android is a linux clone which itself is a unix clone. It features an iphone clone ui layer and a java clone application framework. There's was a lot of great execution in Android but very little that was revolutionary.

If Microsoft buys Android instead of Google and keeps it proprietary the third world still gets cheap linux-based smartphones.

If Apple doesn't release the iPhone real webkit browsers still make it into phones based on linux (and Opera Mobile's compressed web is probably superior for many third world data rates anyway). Maybe it takes a bit longer for touch ui to popularize but that's not indispensable to accessing the web knowledge base.

Android isn't a Linux clone, it is Linux.

If Microsoft buys Android instead of Google

I don't think that would ever happen. MS had its own mobile OS way before Android existed, and it suffers somewhat from NIH syndrome.

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