Google's Gingerbread Man Has Arrived 92
Daetrin writes "Last weekend Google received the next statue in the sweets-themed series that commemorates the major updates of the Android OS. In the past this has meant that the release of the next SDK was right around the corner. However this time there's some doubt as to what the version number will actually be. Many sites (including Slashdot) have assumed that 'Gingerbread' was synonymous with '3.0,' but now there's some evidence that everyone may have jumped the gun and the next version will actually be 2.3."
Re:says the gingerbread man to apple (Score:4, Funny)
Heh, still waiting for OTA updates from T-mobile for my wife's Android 1.6 myTouch 3G. They've been promising it "just next month" since February :P
Re: (Score:2)
It's become a cruel joke on the XDA forums for the Vibrant. Waiting on 2.2 which has been coming any minute now ever since it came out. I don't want to even think about how long it is before I'll see 2.3
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, I got some inside information from the brother of a guy who worked for the sister of a tech support reps bosses secretaries gardener who posted on one of the android forums. We're getting updated next week!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Is it going to happen at the Thirty-One Flavors? Eh? Will it? Bueller? Bueller?
Re: (Score:2)
So does that mean we hate Apple today? Wait, that's odd days, not even, right? Or is it by the last digit of your IP address? I have such a hard time keeping these all straight.
Re: (Score:2)
So does that mean we hate Apple today?
No. Get your schedule right. Apple hate day is tomorrow. Today Apple is ignored as it clearly is irrelevant in the age of the cloud and already fading into obscurity. Has been, really, for the last couple centuries. Just nobody ever bothered to notify Cupertino, so the folks there still show up for work every morning. Poor sods they are, come to think of it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Heh, still waiting for OTA updates from T-mobile for my wife's Android 1.6 myTouch 3G. They've been promising it "just next month" since February :P
Tell me if I'm wrong, but what incentive do the carriers have to provide OTA updates after a customer has purchased a phone and data plan? I think the answer is: very little and probably not at all. I myself would like to believe that customer satisfaction would be a good reason, but I think it's the just a matter of.. once they have your money and updates are not specifically scheduled in the contract then tough luck.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
There is no concept of customer satisfaction when it comes to mobile users. One, we are never satisfied. Two, the carriers don't care even if we were.
My wife lost WIFI when she upgraded to 1.6. The reason: it doesn't play well with wpa2, the fix: either use WEP or a 8 char pass-phrase. Neither of which is acceptable to me, so she doesn't get to play spades on line anymore....
I upgraded to a Motorola Cliq last December, we are still on 1.5. Tried to root it, performance started to suck so I went backwards.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure T-Mobile is lying (and there were some pretty big ads on their website and in print promising OTA updates) just to keep their older inventory moving off the shelves... that and that the "latest Android" is a swift moving target (how apt the gingerbread man reference).
Anyway, some lawyer-types ought to take them on for truth-in-advertising, prolly more money to be made there than with silly RIAA john doe suits :P
Re: (Score:2)
I left Verizon because of the lousy, locked-down firmware they put on their phones. Customer satisfaction must count for something.
Re: (Score:1)
So you left Verizon before they had any Android phones for the behavior that they don't practice when it comes to said Android phones?
It's okay, I left Ford because of the exploding gas tanks they put in their pintos. Customer satisfaction must count for something.
Re: (Score:2)
I left Ford because of the exploding gas tanks they put in their pintos. Customer satisfaction must count for something.
The gas tank only exploded because the woman driver was BACKING UP on the interstate!
Re: (Score:2)
Umm, I left Verizon before Google had Android. They sucked then and I've seen no reason to give them another try. I'm quite happy with T-Mobile.
Re: (Score:2)
I may not be 100% correct here, but I recall phone shopping about three years ago for a Blackberry and I believe Verizon was charging and extra fee for use of the GPS receiver. I went with Sprint because just about every feature of the pho
Re: (Score:2)
As a nerd, I like to have the latest and greatest software/firmware, especially if it adds new functionality and runs faster, but most peo
Re: (Score:2)
Once carriers develop a firmware/platform for a specific phone and it works reasonably well, there's really no reason to fix it unless there are a bunch of complaints about usability, or a bunch of gaping security holes that need to be fixed (which is common on desktop platforms, but isn't discussed much when it comes to mobile platforms).
Personally, I think Google needs to take a serious look at taking over supporting OTA updates. Yes, there are currently practical obstacles like how to separate core Android from the carrier's aesthetic modifications, but I don't think that would be impossible to address. People mention the specific low-level tuning done by carriers and their manufacturer partners as a major issue. This is something that Google should clamp down on now that they have gained significant market share. They should ensure t
Re: (Score:1)
AFAIK this might actually improve on the segmentation, because with 3.0 Google expressly forbids/discourages extensive customisations (like HTC Sence), partially because upgrading those customizations to need Android versions for all the phones is the major reason why it takes so long for phones to get new Android versions.
So here is hoping that once you get 3.0 after that all further upgrades would be nearly simultaneous for all devices.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm gonna have to ask for a citation here. AFAIK, pretty much the only thing we know officially about Gingerbread is that the rumors about it from a few months ago are BS.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Uh, no. Just no.
Eric Schmidt has said that since Android is open carriers/manufacturers aren't going to be prevented when it comes to customizing the builds they use.
However a rumored goal for Gingerbread was to give it some of the shared UI tweaks that things like HTC Sense and MotoBlur have added to /reduce/ the customizations carriers will do by making them irrelevant. But that's far and away a whole other thing than expressly forbidding it.
As for updates coming simultaneous? Don't hold your breath.
Re: (Score:2)
Stupid question here, but why can't you upgrade it yourself?
Re: (Score:2)
I made sure the Android phone I got for myself a few months later (myTouch Slide) was well-supported by CyanogenMOD, so I'm all set. I picked up both of them from Craigslist (no doubt by people who wanted to upgrade to the latest and greatest Android or expected something more like an iPhone)
As for my wife, she loves her "little red phone" just the way it is. It does everything she wants it to, and really not that much less than my phone. So barring an automatic update (heck, she never even updates any o
Ditto here (Score:1)
Ditto here on the motorola milestone, which moto kindly locked so I can't upgrade the base OS myself as it has a hash check (unlike the Droid).
Are there any 3rd-party updates for your MyTouch (HTC Magic elsewhere)?
I can't wait for the Apple Pie release... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if there will be an changes in response to the Oracle Java suit. If I understand correctly, it was a matter of the completeness of the Java support. Perhaps that could mean Android would be able to run apps that weren't intended for the phones?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, they could make Dalvik be J2SE compatible, which would come under the free patent license for J2SE only.
Sun never licensed J2ME under a free patent license for a very good reason - J2ME is/was quite lucrative, being on tons of "dumbphones" and "featurep
Re: (Score:2)
Or, they could port it to Go. Then they'd own the language, too. Just one more snub to Oracle (see other article about Oracle's brain drain).
Re:I can't wait for the Apple Pie release... (Score:4, Funny)
Pie Version will be just a maintenance release ... 3.14
huh? (Score:2)
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Was there an 'A' or 'B'?
Hmm... What will 'I' be?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... What will 'I' be?
After Gingerbread, the next two have already been announced: Honeycomb and Ice Cream.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
A and B pre-date Google's purchase of Android, Inc.
A was Android
B was Bender (Futurama)
Cupcake was the first release under Google which started the naming after treats instead of robots.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not true - Google released both 1.0 and 1.1 for the G1 before 1.5 (Cupcake) was released. Both were released more than 3 years after the Android acquisition in 2005.
There were no public releases from Android, Inc. And I can't find any reference to a release named "Bender", which would almost certainly run into trademark issues.
Re: (Score:1)
Late reply, but just to clarify as I might not have been clear with my wording.
The A and B were not releases, but code-names used internally.
The C-Cupcake release was the first Google release which had the treat themed codename.
So the 1.0 and 1.1 releases were outliers in this trend of codenames.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
zabagione
Re: (Score:2)
Last I checked Google was an international company, so...
Zimtschnecke [wikipedia.org]
Zucker [wikipedia.org]
Zwetschkenknödel [wikipedia.org]
np: Shadow Huntaz - 2020 (Valley Of The Shadow Instrumentals)
Re: (Score:1)
Okay smartypants, what's after that?
Re: (Score:2)
"When the Android team finishes the next version they celebrate by getting a big statue (in this case a gingerbread man) put on their front lawn."
This has to rank up there with burning effigys on a large fire (Guy Fawkes / Bonfire night in the UK) as weird celebrations from the West that must make us look fucking insane to the rest of the world.
Yet here in the West we often have the cheek to claim other culture's celebrations are strange!
Worthless without pictures (Score:5, Informative)
Why doesn't the summary include a picture of the gingerbread statue after making a specific reference to it?
Anyways, this has a small picture and a video with it actually being unveiled (I couldn't find a better article with an actual pic): http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/34973/Google-unveil-Android-Gingerbread [pcr-online.biz]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Mea culpa (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
mmmm (Score:1)
2.3 == 3 (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the new math, previously put forth by Sun when they started calling Java 1.2 "Java 2".
Not to mention version jumps from SunOS to Solaris:
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
New Math never was more brilliantly explained than by Tom Lehrer:
http://curvebank.calstatela.edu/newmath/newmath.htm [calstatela.edu]
Re: (Score:1)
They got the idea from GNU and Emacs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Winamp skipped version 4 because they said what became version 5 was the best of both versions 2 and 3 (2+3=5).
And of course the general disconnect between Java versions of what the consumer sees and what the developer works with. Java 1.5 to the developer, Java 5 to the end user, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
It's unlucky in China as well, I believe. This makes for some funny things - I live in Richmond, BC, where more than half of locals are ethnically Chinese. The elevator in my building does not have buttons for 4th, 13th and 14th floors.
Re: (Score:1)
It's the new math, previously put forth by Sun when they started calling Java 1.2 "Java 2".
I can't wait to see what happens when they get past 1.9 (aka Java 9?)
Will it be 2.0? Can't call it Java 2.
Maybe it will be 1.10? Isn't 1.10 == 1.1? Taken.
They'll probably just start jumping on the meaningless-pair-of-letters bandwagon that everyone else has been getting on and off of over the years...MX, CS, XP, ME, CE, NT, FX, DX, MP, XL, ...
"Just released, the latest and greatest, J2EE JDK DD!"
(DD, for double-digit, lol)
And this is important because? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
By approximately 0.7
Seriously though, companies are sometimes fooled by the looks of the numbers. 3.0 sounds like a whole new shiny redesign, while 2.3 does not.
Re:And this is important because? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe Google said that tablets should wait for 3.0 (not any particular codename). If Gingerbread isn't 3.0, that means that there is at least one more significant release than people expected between now and the time Google thinks Android is tablet-ready. This probably matters to some people.
Re: (Score:2)
because they think it has importance. I've had it explained to me in many ways. The user thinks 1.0 is done, it lets people know which version to download (regardless of if your product has more then one version at any time). It's basically one of those bullshit things which suffers from parkingson's law of triviality.
Re: (Score:2)
How does this impact our quality of life?
When a new major version comes out, phone companies use it as an excuse to stop supporting the old one, and you have to buy new hardware to get new software (or use a third party rom, which disproves claims of "the old hardware can't handle it"...)
2.3 (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope its 2.3. Many of the 1.x handsets never got a 2.0 upgrade, but 2.x handsets seem to have decent offerings for upgrades in the 2.x version. I don't want to see handsets that could otherwise support Gingerbread have support dropped for them just because the marketing plan says to stop supporting certain handset when the next major version come down the pipeline.
Yes, yes, there's always rooting the device and custom firmware but that's not an option for every one (be it technical limitation or user limitation)
got gingerbread ? (Score:3, Funny)
Android development is moving too fast (Score:5, Insightful)
I sincerely hope that they maintain backward compatibility and things of that nature. Already there is a division between 1.5 (and older) and 1.6 (and newer). I would hate to see another division after that.
There has already been much said about the scattering of various (usually carrier-driven) modifications to the OS that cause compatibility problems with apps in that an app on one model/make of phone will not work with another where the OS version is the same. (That's a big deal) I think it is important that this sort of consistency problem get resolved. I am sure wireless phone carriers have no problem with users not being able to run apps that were not purchased through them. But the market will very quickly become larger than mobile phones and consistency issues need to be resolved before that happens.
Re:Android development is moving too fast (Score:4, Informative)
How many apps actually have this compatibility problem? I mean I get that there are certain apps specifically for 1.5 and some for 2.0, but I must have downloaded and run at least 100 apps for my android phone and all of them have run just fine. And I'm running a HTC magic, which came with 1.5, never had 1.6 delivered, and I have rooted and upgraded to 2.2. It mostly runs fine btw, despite rubbish hardware with a few tweaks and compromises (no widgets), And as I said it runs everything just fine. In fact I'm sure if some HTC engineers took some time to optimise v2.2 for the device it would run great. The fact is the Android platform isn't nearly ready for mainstream consumption (no way I recommend it to non-techies) and needs a heap more development, so regular version updates should be expected for some time. With enough iterations, Android will become a very powerful and flexible portable computer OS, so bring the new versions on!
Re: (Score:2)
Off the top of my head, a usable and flexible syncML client with syncML compliance with all the apps that should be able to use it.
That should be a pretty obvious feature that isn't yet fully enabled. And Funambol... sheesh! damned thing won't do SSL without being registered to one of the recognized CAs. And when I add the CA it still won't work. Meanwhile Funambol developers won't even recognize the problem.
SyncML should be included in the OS.
Re: (Score:2)
Which, you know, is funny. I used to think the same thing.
And then, I started asking non-techie folks about how they like their shiny new Droid. They all seemed to like it just fine as a widget that makes phone calls, does text messages, browses Teh Intarwebs, and plays a cheesy game, and were satisfied with their limited use.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I know, just like how Linux development started moving so fast there were four version in a single year. Everyone gave up and ran away, now all we have are Windows and MacOS X!
Re: (Score:1)
This would seem to indicate that Gingerbread really is targeted to tablets.
So - is Honeycomb going to require a 2GHz CPU? Will there be a version targeted to smartphones (lower CPU specs)? For most people, a mobile phone has
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Being forced to use Windows Millennium would hurt or kill me.
If you didn't do it yourself for having to run it......
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The response from Rubin about the rumored requirements for Gingerbread was, "Don't believe everything you hear."
Re: (Score:1)
Cupcake: 2.6.27
Donut: 2.6.29
éclair: 2.6.31
Froyo:2.6.32
Google does not write device drivers or port kernel. Google get involved only in reference platform which is required to develop android user space. For rest of devices, kernel porting is mostly driven by OEM(for a particular hardware) and it is done by hardware partners. What is the incentive for OEM
Re: (Score:1)
My phone came with Android 2.1, but my carrier (Rogers) disabled Google Navigation so that they could sell their own navigation app. So I rooted the phone and re-f
Re: (Score:2)
The division isn't because older android versions aren't compatible in newer versions, the division is because developers want to use features of newer SDKs that are not available in the older ones. There are many big and important changes from 1.5 to 1.6 and 1.6 to 2.0. But many devs started around 1.5 or 1.6 and so they already have a user base or they started with 2.0, had success, and wanted to capture more market by making compatible 1.5 or 1.6 versions.
So while you can use the 1.5 version, it probab
naming convention (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
I guess Snowball would be more appropriate.
Re: (Score:2)
...Or your doing it wrong
Nevermind him ... he's underqualified.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously. Glazed Donut would be a much better name.
Statue? bah (Score:2)
newer phones (Score:4, Interesting)
I am still waiting to upgrade from my g1 to the g2, if they can ever perma-root that thing!
android is open?! (Score:1)
fascinating, how much is android open.
there is new version very close, but nobody knows what the new features will be, or even what version number it will have.