Lawyers sometimes do Missing the point much?
Posted Nov 5, 2009 0:28 UTC (Thu) by
drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to:
Lawyers sometimes do Missing the point much? by smoogen
Parent article:
Welte: Android Mythbusters (Matt Porter)
I think that Google is aiming Android at the low-end phone of the future.
Currently the only phones capable of running a full OS are in the 400-600
dollar range, which is only what the high-end of the market can sustain.
After a quick google'ng Symbians range around 200-800 dollars, WinMo 6.x
ranges 300-700 dollars, and iPhones are 500-700 dollars. All
retail/unlocked price. Getting locked-down versions tend to knock off 40-
60% of the price.
Android, on the other hand, is aiming for pure ubiquitousness. It seems to
be aiming to create a commodity OS for phones that are free with contract
or range in price less then 100 dollars. Of course higher end phones will
just run more applications faster and be more useful for gaming. I think
Android phones should get down to that price within the next two years.
This positions Android to replace the wide range of 'feature phones'
software that
tend to have one large application that has a number of features that makes
it emulates some of the more popular things people do on real smart phones,
but don't really have the resources to run a full OS. Traditional Linux
desktop-based systems, by their nature, are still going to be to much for
those level of systems. (I am looking forward to the day when I can just
install Debian on a smart phone and use Gnome-shell desktop usably on it.)
If you look at the hardware used for Android it tends to be lower-end when
compared with other smartphones. They tended to use older freescale based
platforms, while iPhone and others tend to use the newer TI OMAP3 platform
or the competing Qualcomm Snapdragons should be coming out soon. I think.
The "Droid" Verizon phone is the first Android to use the newer platforms,
which come closer to the level of hardware that you get with a new iPhone
or the N900.
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