industryterm:mobile and portable devices

  • There’s no such thing as Android, only Android-compatible
    http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/12/theres-no-such-thing-as-android-only-android-compatible.ars

    Right at this moment, we have brand-new, state-of-the-art, highly evolved mobile and portable devices in a range of form factors that are based on at least three different major releases of #Android. Support for updating existing #devices to the newest version of Android is all over the map, even for devices made by the same manufacturer, like Samsung’s Galaxy series of smartphones and tablets.

    Tablets with fully skinned, proprietary operating systems like Amazon’s Kindle Fire or Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color/Nook Tablet only amplify the diversity that was already present in the smartphone market.

    ZDNet’s Ed Bott argues that for manufacturers and carriers, supporting indefinite at-will updates to the latest version of Android just doesn’t make economic sense:

    The problem with Android is all that #freedom, which allows hardware makers to take the OS and do whatever they want with it. It is inevitable that that freedom will produce a plethora of devices. Some of them will be incapable of running a new Android update. In other cases that #upgrade will require significant engineering investments—time and money—on the part of the handset maker and the carrier. They might decide to spend the money and deliver the update, six months later. Or they might decide that the investment isn’t worth it.