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Android Phones Delayed
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jun 23, 2008 04:35 PM
from the of-course-delays-are-unusual dept.
from the of-course-delays-are-unusual dept.
CommanderData writes "PC World reports that Google's Android phone rollout is facing delays. Originally expected to have handsets on the market and in consumers' hands this summer, it appears that Q4 2008 or even sometime in 2009 is more likely. Software developers are also complaining that programming is difficult on the Android platform due to regular changes being made by Google." Update 21:14 GMT by SM: Google has (via Google Watch) refuted widespread claims that Android will be late, so I guess only time will tell.
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Well it figures... (Score:5, Funny)
They are probably waiting for the Duke Nukem Forever port.
Re:Well it figures... (Score:5, Funny)
No, actually, they were waiting for WINE 1.0 to be r....oh, nevermind.
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Huge shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
Disorganization?
Everything tagged "beta?"
Welcome to Google.
Have you released a product today?
Re:Huge shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what sent Palm into limbo, made people forget about HTC and the WinMob phones, the Motorola Q and Razr...it just keeps going. I'm someone whose spent his entire career in the mobile arena, and I can say that this is one competitive business considering how much of a pain it is to reengineer a smartphone every year just to keep your head above water. Because if you don't keep improving and releasing, the industry writes you off. Companies as big as Google have been stymied and left behind as roadkill before and it'll happen again for sure.
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Rats! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Huge shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not really (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10419263/1/google-android-phones-coming-this-year.html [thestreet.com]
PC World is reporting old news. Q4 08 has been the target for a while now.
Re:Yes Way (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they meant to say the third quarter of the second half which puts it firmly at the third half of the third quarter.
WSJ says fourth quarter. Google says second half. Last I checked, Q4 falls in the 2nd half of the year. Perhaps this ass-clown didn't do so well with fractions.
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Google denies rumors... (Score:5, Informative)
Google says Android delay is a rumor, launch on target for 2008 [google.com]
Didn't stop the usual attention grabbers from writing knee-jerk I Told You So articles [google.com] though...
Incidentally, the original post is mis-credited (Score:5, Informative)
The Wall Street Journal reported the delay. PC World merely parroted the report with Slashdotian flourish.
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This report is inacurate! (Score:5, Informative)
This report at PCWorld and WSJ today are *inaccurate*. Google always said that the "second part of 2008" will be the time that the first Android phone will get released, and now these guys are writing article saying that "Q4 2008" is late??? It's right up with the schedule if you ask me! Engadget also wrote about how these articles are either mischievous or simply wrong.
Re:This report is inacurate! (Score:5, Informative)
July 1 also counts as "Second Half" of 2008. I'm not shocked, maybe some people were hoping for more from Google.
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Excellent.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Excellent.. (Score:4, Funny)
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Original Wall Street Journal Article (Score:5, Informative)
Documentation (Score:5, Interesting)
New Paradigm For Them (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm sure Google is talented, providing an OS and API is new ground for them. I'm not sure what their culture is like, but I would think time to iron out the kinks would be expected for this type of thing.
Apple/Next has been developing APIs for developers for years and have lots of lessons learned. Google is new to this. Give them time.
Android Phones Delayed - Androids get angry (Score:5, Funny)
Similar to Apple and iPhone (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this was why Apple wouldn't allow programs on their iPhone. They were updating the core too often after release and they knew it would likely break most third party code. Now that their core is stable, they'll release the 2.0 version with an SDK.
Android could've gone the same route: released, but not allowed 3rd party apps until stable. But I think that would be as frustrating as it was for iPhone users.
Google Andriod is about to be hit by a steamroller (Score:5, Interesting)
With Nokia's acquisition of Trolltech (makers of Qt and Qtopia [wikipedia.org]), Google is set to butt heads against a VERY large competitor, who is all-in on re-entering the US cellular industry.
Nokia is roughly the same size as Google (bigger in some ways, smaller in others), but more importantly, it's got more at stake. Qt/Embedded (a.k.a. Qtopia) is a heavyweight competitor to Android which has had far more design time, with a much more solid basis (Qt and Qtopia are both many years old, though Trolltech only recently aimed at cellular technology, which should be quickly rectified by Nokia's massive development teams). Google's dot-com mentality allows them to toss megabucks at an idea, like throwing things against a wall to see what sticks. If Android doesn't stick, whatever; they can afford it. If Qtopia doesn't stick, Nokia is back the drawing board and fighting a losing battle against LG.
Google's only merit is that they've been working on Andriod for longer than Nokia has been working on Qtopia (Nokia only finalized the Trolltech purchase last week). Google's only chance is to bring Andriod to dominance before Nokia manages to release Qt-powered phones. While they appear well-poised for this, the setback of this and other delays hurt the Andriod line more than you might think at a quick glance.
The cellphone platforms of tomorrow will be Apple iPhone, Google Andriod, and Nokia Qtopia. The other players (Motorola, Erickson, LG) will be left in the dust (or they'll adopt one of the above platforms rather than squeezing as much as they can out of standard J2ME). We'll see where Palm fits in with their revamped platform; they could easily go either way.
Can Google really face Microsoft on one front (office apps) and Nokia in the other? What about its bread & butter of web searching (their original front against Yahoo)? What's next, a car [google.org] to take on Ford and Toyota? :-p
Re:Google Andriod is about to be hit by a steamrol (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah. That will matter.
I'm not putting any bets on that. Nokia's name isn't meaningful (at least here in the US). The name Qt is completely meaningless to a consumer. I'm not going to pick a phone because it has Nokia software on it. I don't think most Americans would. Google is different. Google is a big brand here. People know Google. They like Google. That has sales power. Nokia may have more mindshare in Europe, but I'd imagine that Google still has a very strong brand there, so things may be more equal.
Of the two, I'd put far more stake in Google's effort. Is Nokia trying to get other cell phone companies on board?
Now I think the iPhone will kick both of them. I hope Google does good, but I frankly doubt it. The carriers are far too corrupt. Read the WSJ article that this story is based on. They talk about Sprint's problems integrating and branding all their stuff in, T-Mobile's problems, etc. In other words all the carriers are taking the software that exists and trying to turn it into their normal drivel that they sell. Apple stood up to that. The iPhone isn't covered in bad AT&T interface. Yet an Android phone will either be "Googly" or look quite a bit like any other Verizon phone.
Every story about the iPhone since first word last year has been "Wait for OpenMoko", "Wait for Qtopia", "Wait for Android". Apple is out there doing it. It may not be fully open, but it's there and it's rather open (in how easy it is to get an application up, compared to what you have to do with normal carriers and normal phones).
Google talks a nice game (and I trust them), but they are still up against the carriers who will have enough freedom to crush their ideals on every "Android" phone they release.
OpenMoko doesn't have the push either the iPhone or Android have. Qtopia may end up just another platform (like Symbian or Windows Mobile) that fails to take over the mobile phone world.
All in all, I don't care. I don't trust the phone companies. I love the iPhone interface (and will be buying the next version mostly because of it). But if the iPhone and others (like Android) can push the phone companies to better interfaces, I'm all for it. Just about every phone I've touched has a poor to horrid interface. The Samsung Instinct seems to have an improved interface, until you get to web surfing where it's just as bad as just about every phone released in the last couple of years.
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spin being spun (Score:5, Informative)
Confused, I asked Google for clarification. Will the Android phones be delayed as the WSJ reported? The answer was a resounding, "no."
"We remain on schedule to deliver the first Android-based handset in the second half of 2008 and we're very excited to see the momentum continuing to build behind the Android platform among carriers, handset manufacturers, developers and consumers," a Google spokesperson told me today."
um 4th qtr '08 is still "second half of '08" *head asplodes*
Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Apple's products always ship on time, and developers have no complaints whatsoever about the iPhone API.
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AND....... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am also bewildered by the supposed reports of a schedule slip. Shoddy reporting.
As far as "difficult to develop for?"...
Well, let's start with the fact that the SDK will have been out in some form for nearly a year before we even see the OS released on consumer hardware...as opposed to one year AFTER the iPhone was released. Considering that fact, any comment on maturity seems overly harsh. BTW, this SDK runs on just about anything...also unlike the iPhone SDK...assuming that you received a blessing from Cupertino to get a copy.
Let's also consider that an OS like Android is going to have to be far more robust and flexible than the iPhone OS. The iPhone, like the MacOS/Leopard/Snow Bunny OSes, has the convenience of running on only a small number of device architectures. Those architectures are finite and well-known by Apple. In contrast, Android must be an OS that supports a wide range of ever-evolving architectures and feature sets...or lack thereof.
This complexity extends from the OS to the application development environment. When you write an application for the iPhone, you know the exact screen size and available resources. Not so for Adroid. Your UI must scale...or be lowest common denominator. You may leverage supporting peripherals like a camera, GPS, trackball, physical keyboard, SD card slot...but then again, you better be prepared for them not to be there. Processor? Memory size? There may be min specs, but having to build an OS that runs on the expected range of offerings is not trivial.
Masking some of this complexity is a task for the Android OS developers...which is why it is inherently more complex than an OS for a finite set of devices...but it is worth it...at least to the consumer...by fostering an environment that motivates hardware innovation by a range of competing vendors.
Seriously folks, let's not be disingenuous and just pretend that the only difference between the iPhone and Android (or the MacOS and Windows) is Apple's genius.
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News flash: "open source" != anarchy (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. GNOME has been kept backwards-compatible for years now (the last platform ABI break was generally at 2.0). Same for KDE, at least they don't break compatibility inside stable branches. Now take X.org, Apache, Eclipse, or just about any open source project with a sizable third-party developer base, and you'll see they take great care in maintaining backward compatibility.
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