Comment by pedrocr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pedrocr | Hacker News Reader

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Google is interested in building Android as a platform. Having 80% of your install base stuck 4 versions behind[1] is a crappy way of doing it. Even after they've moved more and more of the platform into the Play frameworks you're still leaving users without a bunch of improvements to the core platform, not to mention security fixes. iOS is miles ahead on this front exactly because it controls the hardware. That Google doesn't do the same now that it also controls the hardware seems short-sighted.

Building a 150$ great phone would allow them to set a feature/quality floor for the market. If they forced their suppliers so the hardware in these phones is properly supported upstream, targeting new versions of Android should be pretty easy. When Ubuntu launches a new version it doesn't need to go and retrofit it to the thousand different types of laptop out there. The state of Android though is that the GPU/Camera/whatever drivers are binary blobs locked in to a specific kernel version.

[1] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

and they could/should have done this 4 years ago, minus the hardware, simply by tightening the licensing model. you want to say you're "android" and use our software? You have conform to these minimums.

most people could predict from a mile away that when there's no restrictions on it, the carriers and manufacturers will generally race to the bottom in terms of quality and support. ESPECIALLY when the google name is tangentially attached to something, why would they bother making a good hardware model or updating it regularly? laypeople - who they are targeting - will blame google before they blame a handset maker or carrier.

Four years ago Android was well behind iOS, RIM was still around, OEMs were still considering having their own smartphone OSes, and Google had minimal leverage. There's a good chance the OEMs would have refused to go with an Android with a tighter licensing model.

Point in case: I have a Galaxy Nexus that is fewer than two years old that won't receive any future releases because it's old enough they don't want to bother with.... not that it isn't capable... they just don't want to bother updating devices that are older than X (where X = less than the average contract length in the US).

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