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With all due respect, you're going off another tangent.

Froyo, aka Android 2.2, was released on May 20. It's now July 19th, almost two months later. The fact that only one phone will support an OS for more than two months is a problem.



Froyo was not released on May 20th. It was formally announced at Google I/O at around that time. I don't know the exact release date but a quick Google reveals a staff member denying that it had reached final realease as recently as June 23rd.

Why you (or Mr. Gruber) would consider it a problem that one phone model would receive updates sooner than others is something of a mystery to me, particularly on such a short timescale. It's not even out for the Nexus One in my country yet.

edit: US rollout began 28th June, and phased in with most users getting an update notification within that first week, http://googlenexusoneboard.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-android-...


I hope Google learns from this and doesn't announce future new version until the day they can ship the code. Android bashers have been complaining that 'it's taking months to get 2.2 deployed' which is a complete misrepresentation of the facts.


I wouldn't call it a problem; it's an artifact of a completely different ecosystem. If it wasn't an open platform, and was all built by only one company, it wouldn't have been announced until just before it was shipped.

I'm sure some people are frustrated by it, but following "publish early and often", and all that goes with it, is how open source works.


What's frustrating is that pretty much every Android phone is sold with a "with Google" stamp on the back, and that this basically means fuck all.

It should mean "this is an Android phone that is built with Google's blessing and with Google's support, so lean back and don't worry".


I recently bought an HTC Desire - there's no "with Google" stamp.

I don't think your statement is correct.


Indeed. The "with Google" mark carries meaning; it means you are getting AOSP (the consistent version of Android that is actually usable), instead of the handset's bastardized version of Android. (HTC Nonsense, Moto-durrr, etc.)


Unless you're in the UK where Vodafone have delayed the OTA update so that they can fiddle with it first.

It turns out that the Google mark really is meaningless.

Myself and most of my friends who I recommended the Nexus One to on the basis of first updates and vanilla software, we are now all running CM6.


This isn't quite true. For example, the fairly new HTC Droid Incredible has Sense and the "with Google" stamp. Also the Motorola Droid X.

Maybe it's not the majority of phones then, but my point still stands that the stamp is fairly meaningless.


Do you use Linux? Every Linux distro comes with a Linux kernel. Yet none of the distros are supported by the kernel team. It's a different task. In OSS world there is a concept of upstream, where cool newstuff happens and the package maintainers who pack the released software. The two almost never happen together. If you care to go into business of testing and delivering Android OS for every single phone out there - go ahead. You might even make $$ off of it. But in the mean time the official maintainers are the manufacturers and they are nit going to all agree on when to release the next update - it is a competitive advantage to them to keep the current OS + all the ads and proprietary features running as long as possible.


no, it was announced on 5/20.




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