Android Portal

There’s a pretty thought-provoking article about Android and its design priciples on computerworld.co.nz. David L Margulius questions whether Google’s “all applications are created equal” approach will actually do the mobile phone market any good.

From a developer’s point of view being able to access core functions, integrate apps into the rest of the OS and the availability of a properly documented SDK sounds great, but the author does make good points about the user experience that may result from this. Obviously one of the deciding factors in Android’s success in the consumer market will be the availability and quality of its applications.

Considering Google is doing a lot to faciliate development for Android (the $10M programming challenge, YouTube tutorials, support groups etc.), it’s probably safe to assume that availability will not be an issue. Quality, however, could become a problem with everyone and their grandmother trying their hand at mobile phone applications (Dan Morrill’s development demo has over 110k views at present).

Handset manufacturers and especially carriers are notoriously conservative when it comes to the software on the phones they deliver. A lot of them even use branded firmware that locks out non-approved updates to avoid complications. Now, if carriers don’t even trust finished releases from major manufacturers like Nokia, it’s not hard to guess what their stance on 3rd party apps will be. Needless to say, they won’t be helping customers figure out why “Voice Dailer 1.3.5″ doesn’t play nice with “Contact Manager 2.4.2″.

So where does that leave the end-user? Ultimately it will depend on the signal-to-noise ratio of the applications to come whether Android will find acceptance with people that couldn’t care less about version conflicts or become the cell phone equivalent of Gentoo.