Database Users

Google launching linux O/S for mobiles

From el reg.
Google has unveiled its phone platform, Android. It's yet another Linux OS, freely licensed, that will appear in devices in the second half of next year. Google has signed up over 30 partners including Qualcomm, Motorola, HTC and operators including Deutsche Telekom for the "Open Handset Alliance".
CEO Eric Schmidt described it as "the first truly open platform for mobile devices." Android, named after the start-up company Google acquired in 2005, encompasses middleware and applications as well as the base kernel. An SDK is promised for download next Monday under an Apache license. However, the ad-supported model will take awhile to shake out.
"Contrary to a lot of speculation out there, we won't see a completely ad driven cellphone based on Android for quite some time," said Andy Rubin.
If this all sounds a bit familiar, it's because it is.
Two such alliances appeared in 2005, and two more this year. The LIMO Alliance, backed by NTT DoCoMo, Motorola and Samsung was unveiled in January. ARM announced yet another industry Linux OS coalition just a month ago.
Despite clocking up a healthy air miles account for all involved, real momentum has stalled for Linux on mobile phones: you'll look for a 3G Linux phone in vain, today. Motorola made a strategic bet on open source in 2003 but discovered that integration complexity and costs outweighed the advantages: the company recently returned to Symbian for its smartphones. Nevertheless a wide alliance of industry backers have come to Google's launch.
Currently Symbian dominates the smartphone business. It's painfully built-up almost a decade's worth of integration expertise, in giving manufacturers what they want, including a successful Japanese business where carriers dominate. Symbian's chief technical advantage today is the platform's maturity, and more recently, its real-time kernel. This permits manufacturers to build lower-cost single-chip phones, while running their older proprietary baseband stacks as an OS personality.
With Nokia, whose volume drives lower component costs, pushing Symbian into its midrange feature phones, Android faces a stiff challenge competing in this market.
And as we pointed out earlier this today, it isn't clear that failure of rich mobile data services isn't due to anything on the supply side - people just don't find them very useful.
There's a significant gap, however, for "two box" solutions that only Blackberry and Apple fill today, as phone companions. Rubin said the system requirements supported QWERTY and large screen sizes, and Schmidt hinted at bringing the PC experience to mobile devices.
Android may yet find a niche in which to flourish.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/05/google_android_announcement/

Wounder if it will be compatible with our devices... lets hope!

dferreira said:
Wounder if it will be compatible with our devices... lets hope!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everithing is possible... even in our dreams

Bsquare also working on porting flash to android

article source
Adobe is working on a version of Flash for Google's Android mobile phone operating system, but it turns out it's not the only one.
On Wednesday, embedded software specialist Bsquare plans to detail its work in the area. "Bsquare has been tapped by a global tier 1 carrier to port the Adobe Flash player to the Android platform on more than 100 embedded devices," according to a message sent to reporters about the news.
Flash is a software foundation that's popular for games, video streaming, and other more sophisticated Web site features, but it's mostly a fixture on PCs rather than mobile devices. Apple's iPhone, the technological leader among smartphones by many accounts, doesn't support Flash.
Google Android leader Andy Rubin demonstrated Flash on the T-Mobile G1 Android phone at an Adobe conference in November.
(Via Peter Rojas.)

And if were lucky we will get it before adobe finally decides to release the official version. I wouldnt hold your breath though.

im sure we will get it before the iphone either way, if i remember correctly apple finally gave in to having flash on the iphone, looking forward to this
(PS. the current flash player in the market sucks, let me save you the trouble and tell you... it sucks)

android 2.3 feature :)

1. Tweaked UI
It doesn’t sound like the Android UI is getting a complete overhaul till Honeycomb, but Gingerbread will include some small tweaks. The notification bar at the top of the screen has gone from white to black, the launcher buttons are now green instead of translucent, and many of the native app icons have received a makeover.
Most of the existing native apps will also look slightly updated thanks to tweaks with the styling of menus, check boxes, and radio buttons as leaked in the last Google Maps update. Other small tweaks include new animations when you swipe across the desktop and when you power off the display (as reported by Phandroid).
2. Near Field Communications (NFC)
We first reported back in October that Samsung’s Google experience phone would support MasterCard PayPass, and then last week Eric Schmidt confirmed that Gingerbread would support Near Field Communication (NFC).
NFC is a short-range, high frequency wireless communication technology that only operates when two devices are about 4 inches apart. It is basically just another form of electronic identification except the ID is tied to a bank or credit card company. All the user needs to do is just setup their account then tap their phone to a wireless payment pad and complete the transaction.
Eric Schmidt said that in the future your phone could replace your credit card, so you can see how important this is to Google and their partners.
Opponents of NFC say it might fail because it is too complex and big companies will fight over who owns the point of control for the transaction, but if Google is going to make this a standard feature on all future Gingerbread phones then we think that ensures it will at least move the mobile payment standard forward.
MasterCard has not been confirmed as a NFC partner, but I think there is a good chance they are on board in addition to some other payment companies like PayPal.
3. New Motion Control APIs
True 1:1 motion processing is coming to Gingerbread thanks to InvenSense, the company behind the MEMS gyroscope sensor found in the Nintendo Wii MotionPlus controller.
Gyroscope sensors have already appeared in some phones like the Samsung Galaxy S, but Android 2.3 will add new sensor fusion APIs including quaternion, rotation matrix, linear acceleration and gravity. These new tools will open the door to all kinds of motion controls for augmented reality apps, games, navigation systems, and camera improvements like image stabilization.
See our previous post for a video with several real-world demos.
4. Native Video Chat
In his last interview, Andy Rubin hinted that native video chat was coming to the next version of Android. “We support video chat today, with Google Talk Video. It works on the desktop. Whether that can be repurposed and made appropriate for sipping bandwidth for mobile, it’s an exercise that’s underway.”
If Mr. Rubin is willing to admit that it’s underway, that tells me the project could be nearing completion and already in the testing phases.
It looks like all the high-end phones coming in the next few months will include front-facing cameras so this is another sign that Android is ready for a native video sharing app to connect all these devices.
5. New Android Market
Google has been telling us for awhile that a new Android Market was coming and recently said new features could appear in the next few weeks. The Android Market can be updated separately from the operating system, but the timing tells us the new Market could be tied to the release of Gingerbread.
Confirmed features for the new Android Market include YouTube video previews, parental controls, PayPal payments, and new high-res promotion graphics that sound like they will be used on the desktop browser version of the Market.
At the Google I/O Developer Conference we attended back in May, Vic Gundotra demonstrated the browser version of the Market that was being tested. See the video below for an idea of what to expect.
6. Google Music
As you can see from the video above, Google is also working on a music streaming service for Android. They launched a music search service earlier this year and hoped to get their music store opened before Christmas, but the latest reports say it might be delayed till 2011. Apparently the music labels are still negotiating with Google on how their “digital locker” will store purchased music, but maybe they come to an agreement this year.
This is coming sooner or later so if it doesn’t make it into Gingerbread then I expect we will see it early next year when Honeycomb tablets are revealed.
7. Support For More Large Screen Devices
On the Android Device Dashboard there is a report where Google displays the different screen sizes and densities of devices that access the Android Market. The Large category is currently blank, but look for more big screen devices like tablets to be officially supported in Android 2.3. This means we could see more 7-inch tablets like the Galaxy Tab (1024 x 600) get certified and maybe a few other resolutions for the new smartphone displays that are rumored to be coming.
We have also heard that Google might relax the rules of their Compatibility Definition Document and allow non-3G devices to be certified. No WiFi-only devices have been certified to use the Android Market yet, but Android 2.3 should hopefully change that.
In a somewhat related note, I believe this is the reason the WiFi-only Galaxy Tab was delayed till next year so that Samsung could make sure that Google allowed them to ship it with the Android Market.
8. Virtual Keyboard Enhancements
Google recently acquired hot startup BlindType to improve their virtual keyboard and we are hearing the enhancements might be coming as soon as Gingerbread. The old company website is now down, but you can still see a demo of their technology on YouTube.
What is BlindType? It is a revolutionary system that:
Eliminates touch typing frustrations
Allows for super sloppy typing
Helps you type easier and faster
Constantly adjusts to the user’s “perceived” keyboard and typing style
Just type the way you are used to – no gestures, nothing new to learn!
9. Support for WebM and VP8
We know that support for WebM and the VP8 video format are coming to Gingerbread because Google and the WebM team have told us this.
WebM is defined on the official project page as, “An open media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska media container. Though video is also now core to the web experience, there is unfortunately no open and free video format that is on par with the leading commercial choices. To that end, we started the WebM project, a broadly-backed community effort to develop an open web media format.”
YouTube now offers WebM videos as part of its HTML5 player experiment. Logitech and Skype are also working with the format for future video calling services.
10. New YouTube With Broadcasting
As we get near the end of the list some of these possible features might be a stretch, but there are still hints that new YouTube features are coming. Phandroid reported that Gingerbread will have a new YouTube app and we know that they are also testing their new live broadcasting platform.
If you look at how important video will be to the upcoming Gingerbread experience, then it is not too hard to imagine that YouTube will allow live broadcasting from your phone similar to Qik or Ustream.
The next generation of superphones will include dual-core processors that support 1080p video streaming and also have speedy 4G connections, so the hardware is definitely going to be there to make it happen.
11. Google Me or Social Gaming Network
Google recently denied the reports they were working on a Facebook competitor called Google Me, but all the signs are there that Google is working on a way to bring together all their social services. TechCrunch reported that Google’s master pitchman Vic Gundotra was being placed in charge of the project, so we expect big things from him.
Andy Rubin hinted that Gingerbread would include improvements for gaming in a previous interview. “I think gaming is an area that I think is underserved right now. If we were to carefully look at what new features and functionalities in the platform that we would need to support all forms of gaming across the entire spectrum, I think that would probably be an interesting thing to pay attention to.”
A number of recent acquisitions and partner agreements might also play a role in this social gaming platform. In the last year Google acquired LabPixies for $25 million (an Israeli startup that made web games), Jambool for $70 million (makers of a virtual currenty platform), Slide for $182 million (Facebook games developer), and invested $100-200 million in Zynga (makers of Farmville).
Apple’s Game Center and platforms like Open Feint have really raised the bar for social gaming, so Google will have to release something soon if they want to catch up.
12. Flagship Phone – Nexus S
Finally, what good is a brand new operating system unless you have a flagship product that can show off all the new features. That device is the Samsung Nexus S which is widely expected to be released alongside Android 2.3. Google’s CEO recently demoed the phone to show off its NFC capabilities, so hopefully we see the device soon.
The Nexus S was originally planned to launch at Best Buy on November 11th, but then TechCrunch reported a serious hardware issue had caused a delay. One of our tipsters said the original Samsung Nexus S was scrapped for a newer dual-core version, which shocked many people because they did not expect Samsung to have a dual-core phone this year, but another trusted source also confirmed that Samsung had such a device in testing.
Conclusion
In the next few weeks we should hopefully get an official list of new Android 2.3 features from Google, but don’t be surprised if Andy Rubin doesn’t announce anything on December 6th.
Google and Samsung already missed the rumored launch date, so they could delay this project till next year in order to iron out all the launch details. Some would say that Samsung has rushed their recent Android products to market without properly testing them (aka GPS issues), so I have no problem with them taking as long as they need.
I would love a taste of Gingerbread for Christmas, but if waiting till next year gets me a fully functional dual-core Nexus S then I’m all for waiting.
How do you think Android 2.3 is shaping up so far? Does this sound like a worthy update, or do you hope that Google is packing in even more exciting features? What other types of improvements would you like to see included with Android 2.3?
If you think I’m leaving off any confirmed features, please leave a comment and I’ll gladly add them to the list.
ANDROID AND ME

You should quote the source:
http://androidandme.com/2010/11/new...at-andy-rubin-might-announce-on-december-6th/

1) Has nothing to do with the X10, since a bunch of those new features are unsupported hardware wise by the phone.
2) NFC for payments is already around, and nearly every new Android phone in Japan includes it, plus Infrared and a TV Tuner.
3) Stock UI is absolute garbage, and from the leaked Nexus S shots, looks to have gotten worse.

iead1 said:
1) Has nothing to do with the X10, since a bunch of those new features are unsupported hardware wise by the phone.
2) NFC for payments is already around, and nearly every new Android phone in Japan includes it, plus Infrared and a TV Tuner.
3) Stock UI is absolute garbage, and from the leaked Nexus S shots, looks to have gotten worse.
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Actually, Japan has had NFC for many years. NTT's FOMA been promoting it LONG LONG LONG time ago. People in Japan r using it like its something normal for their lives now. Unlike us, where we all are still reluctant whether to use it or not when it comes...

Yeah, I was really sad when I changed to the X10 and lost my abilty to pay for McDonalds and the train via cellphone. At least smartphones are catching up, finally.

An Open Letter to Android via Google and Forwarded to Samsung

Hi XDA-Samsung Users,
I've been a member of XDA since Jan last year. I went from owning a Nexus One to a Samsung Galaxy S i9000. The reason for the change was for the better specs and superior hardware of the Samsung Galaxy.
The phone is an incredible piece of machinery, but is severely hampered by the modifications that Samsung makes to the Android OS. I admit that the codec support within TouchWiz is impressive, but too much of the core framework of the phone is inefficient and sluggish.
Even using the latest release of unofficial firmware Samsung, Android 2.2.1 (JPY), there is still the occasional hang and the missing RAM (which is there somewhere, but not for user applications).
Samsung is mostly to blame, but there is also a quality control element that Google should be responsible for.
I have prepared an open letter that I sent to Android via Google Press and then forwarded on to Samsung for their reference. This were all through publicly available channels so will have to filter through customer service centers and the like.
I'm not expecting much, Google appears to use Amazon's customer service approach, "No customer service is good customer service".
But would like to post it here to hopefully get it out into the wilderness.
I tweeted it here http://twitter.com/#!/ibproud/status/27528781828722688
and would appreciate if you agreed with the content to retweet it. Hopefully it should give it a bit more weight.
It would be interesting to get the communities feedback on how mature they believe Android is.
Do they need to keep trying to make everyone happy or can they start to use the weight of their OS to get manufacturers to align the user experience?
Dear Android Team,
I am writing this letter to air my frustrations and to hopefully get some peace of mind that your strategy for Android will resolve some of the main issues plaguing the platform.
I have now been with Android for over 12 months. I used to be an iPhone user, but couldn’t stand the walled garden that Apple put me in. I couldn’t download directly to the phone, replace the messaging app or sync wirelessly. I went to Android because I wanted the freedom to use my phone more as a desktop replacement than as a phone/mp3 player.
When I joined the Android family (January 2010), I started with the Google Nexus One. I was so keen to get into the Android community I didn’t even wait for it to be on sale in Australia to get it, thus I hit eBay and bought it outright.
I was very pleased with the platform but could still see a few rough edges around the Operating System. It had the usability I was looking for but was lacking the polish I had grown use to with Apple. There was good news on the horizon with an Éclair update that would give the already beautiful phone a nudge in the right direction. As I was in Australia and the phone wasn’t here yet, I had to push the update through myself, after seeing how easy this was and getting the feeling of being a little phone hacker, I was hooked, I started preaching Android to the masses. Australia is still building momentum for the platform and it’s taking some time. Most of the major carriers stock between 4-6 Android devices, most of which are low end or outdated in the overseas markets.
I follow all the key players in the industry through Twitter and have a majority of Google News trackers picking up articles with android related words. I have also now converted my Wife to Android (HTC Desire Z, also not available in Aus) and I picked up the Samsung Galaxy S and gave my sister the Nexus One. The problem I face now is that I’ve run out of money and can’t go out and buy a new Android phone just to be up to date with the latest Android OS (Gingerbread), this would also be the case for most consumers. The Nexus S is so similar to my current hardware that I must be able to leverage the extra performance from the update.
But alas, we reach the major problem with the platform. Fragmentation. I’m not referring to the Fragmentation of the various app stores and apps available based on different OS versions but more to the Fragmentation of the OS based on the custom skins and manufacturer update cycles. The open platform that is closed at 2 levels, Manufactures and Carriers. I will continue to buy my phones outright as it gives me the freedom and flexibility to upgrade my plans as better ones become available. This always guarantees that I’m free from the bloatware that is preloaded on most Carrier bought phones and free from 1 of the barriers to the true AOSP experience. The next barrier is one that is running rampant in the interwebs rumour mill at the moment and that’s manufacturer updates and in my case I refer to Samsung.
Samsung Galaxy S phones come loaded with Android 2.1, most of them internationally are running Android 2.2 and just recently as select group of the devices is getting Android 2.2.1. This is now a month after Android 2.3 was released. For Samsung I would consider this largely negligent, considering they had the opportunity to work with Google to build a Google Experience Phone (Nexus S). The specs of this phone are so similar to the Galaxy range that a port shouldn’t be too difficult. I understand that there are a lot of constraints and dependencies in the development cycle that could cause delays as well as manufacturers agendas (mostly in unit sales). It is great that Samsung have sold so many devices globally but at a cost of the user experience as well as potential damages to long term retention.
I understand the Open nature of Android and the push to encourage manufacturers to put there own spin on the platform, but Android is getting bigger and more mature, it doesn’t need to be High school girl bending to the whims and peer pressure from the carriers and manufacturers.
There are a team of Devs in Germany who are working to port CyanogenMod 7 (Gingerbread) to Galaxy S i9000, but these guys have now spent over four months just trying to get through Samsungs drivers. The team didn’t start just to customise the phone but to actually make the phone work properly, I of course refer to the RFS lag issue and Samsungs modification to the framework that slowed it down. The goal of the team is to maximise the potential of the hardware and operating system.
It would be great to see some muscle from Google thrown into the mix, there doesn’t need to be requirements dictated, but maybe ethics encouraged.
There seems to be a few options here:
- Encourage device manufacturers to share their drivers, if it is too sensitive to share at least work with the community to help them do it themselves.
- Start to break down the way the platform is customised so that way the manufactures (Samsung/HTC/Motorola) skin the platform can sit a layer above the core code, thus be a quick implementation/customisation to get their skins working.
- Get each manufacturer to offer the AOSP experience to advanced users. This can be done through an agreement between the user and manufacture that states this will void the warranty and have its own terms and conditions.
- This last one is a long stretch, but how about taking all the manufacturers drivers into a repository, the way Windows do updates. When a new Android version is developed the drivers can be updated or incorporated and be packaged out through the Android SDK.
I may be completely off the mark. I’m not a developer and couldn’t pretend to know what effort is involved at any stage of the process, from building Android to rolling it out into the latest and greatest phone. The one thing I am though is an End User, a person that wants my phone to do more, to get close to being a desktop replacement.
Maybe I’m also being a bit idealistic.
I hope the Android platform continues to flourish and for it to become the Windows of the mobile era.
Sincerely,
Irwin Proud
E: [email protected]
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It's really an excellent summary. Consider there're even more black sheeps out there. For example Sony Ericcson which ones recently made a statement like Android is their favourite Smartphone OS and left Symbian in Nokias hands.
But we found also the good ones like HTC, which every Manufacturer should have HTC as its Paragon concerning Android Software Development.

Great write-up; I agree 100%

I agree with your post fully, and concur that the Windows Phone 7 model for OS updates is more efficient, and strikes a happy medium between iOS and Android's approach to upgrades. However it is also more restrictive in terms of handset hardware limitations
I suppose the idea is that customers should vote with their wallets and buy from companies with good software and firmware support. The problem with that is a majority of phone users (android or otherwise) are technically savvy enough to take such support into consideration when looking at the latest and greatest fancy phone in a store. We could all buy the Nexus One or Nexus S only, but this too is restrictive to the customer as other phones offer more/different features

my 2 cents worth:
I agree on your points - but I'd skip the first few paragraphs if I were the one who write the letter. Other than that, thank you for making the effort.

What exactly are you hoping to achieve with this letter? Google has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that samsung don't want to update their phones. In these type of situations it's just better to vote with your wallet and buy another manufacturer's phone next time and let Samsung know why you don't want to use their phones in the future.
Writing letters like these is just a waste of time imho.

What Google should do?
Toss3 said:
What exactly are you hoping to achieve with this letter? Google has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that samsung don't want to update their phones. In these type of situations it's just better to vote with your wallet and buy another manufacturer's phone next time and let Samsung know why you don't want to use their phones in the future.
Writing letters like these is just a waste of time imho.
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Click to collapse
Please allow me to politely disagree. Google can do a lot about this and they have done this also. When I say they have done this - I am talking about not having Market application on Android OSes which come on non-phone hardware.
Google should put similar restrictions for loosley coupled skins, upgradable drivers. I had been giving this a lot of thought lately. I will sum up my thoughts with above letter as above:-
i) Device manufacturer skinning - Google should mandate that it should be just another APK within AOSP and users should be given a choice to turn it off.
ii) Device Drivers - Google should mandate there should be a better way of installing device drivers - similar to what we have in MS Windows (MS Windows is an excellent model of how hardware device should be handled - this lead to the exponential growth Windows is enjoying now).
iii) Android OS Update - If Google can achieve the above two, then the choice to upgrade the OS should be at user discretion. Of course, Google should mandate that there is OTA availble as an option. And obviously this OTA would be served by Google, not by device manufacturers. This would also free up time, effort and cash spent by device manufacturers in upgrading the OS.
So this is in the best of interest of everybody.
These restrictions if put in place, would free us all from this phenomena of running outdated OS.

Not sure what ti say on this one. It's true that Samsung has failed on some levels, however I must say that this is the first phone that has allowed me to get to know so much about the internals of the Android OS.
Modifying kernels, ROM's, reading about different file-systems etc... it's not a thing for the common user but I expect the people on this forum to be interested in such things.
Ok, if Samsung had done it right, we may have discussed these things anyway but it would've drawn less attention as people would not be looking for solutions to their problems.
But of course we have to strive to quality for everyone and this letter may just open some people's eyes at both Google and Samsung.

Thank you so far for the feedback.
poundesville said:
my 2 cents worth:
I agree on your points - but I'd skip the first few paragraphs if I were the one who write the letter. Other than that, thank you for making the effort.
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Remember most members of XDA would be a cut above the average user. The reason this letter was written the way it was, was to demonstrate that I am a typical end user. Although I would consider myself leaning slightly to the more advanced side I wrote the letter based on a very general experience of the platform, an experience a lot of consumers would go through.
Toss3 said:
What exactly are you hoping to achieve with this letter? Google has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that samsung don't want to update their phones. In these type of situations it's just better to vote with your wallet and buy another manufacturer's phone next time and let Samsung know why you don't want to use their phones in the future.
Writing letters like these is just a waste of time imho.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What am I trying to achieve with this letter?
I really don’t know, but it helps to just get the thoughts out there.
With approximately 300,000 activations daily, I don’t think Android sees the true reflection of how their platform is received.
When the Galaxy range of phones was released in the US, they would have been seen as the closest thing to an iPhone that non-AT&T customers could get. So sales and activations shouldn’t be seen as the indicator of clever consumers or consumers wanting an open platform, but of consumers who wanted an iPhone but for the various reasons didn’t want to go with AT&T.
Remember: The international Samsung Galaxy is the only Android phone I know of that looks more like an iPhone than any other phone.
What I would really like to see is, that annually google will release a major version of Android. So V1, V2, V3, etc…. the mobile manufacturers commit to any minor or incremental updates per major version. So if Google says they are releasing Android 2.4 then they are saying to the manufacturer that this version will also work on any phone that currently supports v2.1 to v2.3.
As more and more people move to smartphones and tablets, more and more will we see hackers, spammers, botnets and so on attempt to access our devices. If we can’t have the latest updates that close any open holes then our phones become a huge liability.
Pierreken said:
Not sure what ti say on this one. It's true that Samsung has failed on some levels, however I must say that this is the first phone that has allowed me to get to know so much about the internals of the Android OS.
Modifying kernels, ROM's, reading about different file-systems etc... it's not a thing for the common user but I expect the people on this forum to be interested in such things.
Ok, if Samsung had done it right, we may have discussed these things anyway but it would've drawn less attention as people would not be looking for solutions to their problems.
But of course we have to strive to quality for everyone and this letter may just open some people's eyes at both Google and Samsung.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not really sure if Samsung has failed as such, but have put too much focus on unit sales rather than quality control and great user experience. They started releasing different iterations and modifications to the same phone without considering that each minor tweak to the hardware would mean more resources to develop updates and maintain each device.
I also agree that without Samsung I would know very little about linux filesystems, kernel and custom roms, but shouldn't all of these be more to push the phone above it's limits and not to just get it working properly?
There's nothing wrong with knowing the advanced stuff, however it shouldn't be a necessity.

The problem ironically is that Android is open source. I agree wit the letter above, but I can;t see how you can stop manufacturers doing what they want.
Also the Drivers being proprietary isn't going to change and device manufacturers aren't going to suddenly start releasing their closed driver sources.
Agreed Google should stand up and restrict the Skins to a single APK that can be removed, this would stop all the associated problems with HTC and Samsung skinning too deep in to the OS that it becomes impossible to remove it. The problem with that is, then any manufacturers APK will be installable on any phone. Which is something we know they don't want.
We already know Androids biggest downfall and so does Google. Fragmentation.
I believe once Google has the strong position they want and users demand Android when they buy a new phone, they will start to put their foot down and try to enforce standardisation across Manufacturers, but until they get to what they feel is that point, we're stuck.
Anyway much luck with the letter, I hope someone who matters get's to see it.
Logicalstep

Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie Release Date, News And Rumours

Android 5.0 release date
Google has announced that its next developer conference - Google IO - will take place from May 15 to May 17 2013, a month earlier than 2012's June dates. Given that Google announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at 2012's IO conference, it's not unreasonable to expect to see Android 5.0 at this year's event On 31 January, a Google IO showing of Android 5.0 looked more likely when screengrabs of a Qualcomm roadmap were leaked, showing Android 5.0 as breaking cover between April and June 2013.
Android 5.0 phones
Rumours of a new Nexus handset started trickling in during the third quarter of 2012, as we reported on 1 October 2012. There was speculation that this phone would be sporting Key Lime Pie, but sources who spoke to AndroidAndMe correctly claimed that the handset, which turned out to be the Google Nexus 4 would be running Android Jelly Bean.
While the Nexus 4 didn't appear with a helping of Key Lime Pie, speculation that we reported on 21 January 2013 suggests that the Motorola X Phone is the Android 5.0-toting handset that will be revealed at Google IO. According to a post on the DroidForums website, the phone will also feature a virtually bezel-free, edge-to-edge, 5-inch display.
The same leaked Qualcomm documents cited above also made mention of a two new Snapdragon devices, one of which will be, unsurprisingly, a new Nexus phone.
Android 5.0 features
For 24 hours, it seemed as though the first kinda, sorta confirmed feature for Android 5.0 was a Google Now widget, which briefly appeared in a screenshot on the company's support forum before being taken down. As it was so hurriedly pulled, many people assumed it was slated for the big five-o and accidentally revealed early.
As it happened, the following day, on 13 February 2013, the Google Now widget rolled out to Jelly Bean.
So while we wait on Key Lime Pie features to be revealed and scour the web for more Android 5.0 news, TechRadar writer Gary Cutlack has been thinking about what we want to see in Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie. Hopefully the new mobile OS will feature some of these things...
Performance Profiles
It's bit of a fuss managing your mobile before bed time. Switching off the sound, turning off data, activating airplane mode and so on, so what Android 5.0 really needs is a simple way of managing performance, and therefore power use, automatically.
We've been given a taste of this with Blocking Mode in Samsung's Jelly Bean update on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Note 2 but we'd like to see the functionality expanded.
Something like a Gaming mode for max power delivery, an Overnight low-power state for slumbering on minimal power and maybe a Reading mode for no bothersome data connections and a super-low backlight.
Some hardware makers put their own little automated tools in, such as the excellent Smart Actions found within Motorola's RAZR interface, but it'd be great to see Google give us a simple way to manage states.
Another little power strip style widget for phone performance profiles would be an easy way to do it.
Better multiple device support
Google already does quite a good job of supporting serious Android nerds who own several phones and tablets, but there are some holes in its coverage that are rather frustrating.
Take the Videos app which manages your film downloads through the Play Store. Start watching a film on one Android device and you're limited to resuming your film session on that same unit, making it impossible to switch from phone to tablet mid-film.
You can switch between phone and web site players to resume watching, but surely Google ought to understand its fans often have a couple of phones and tabs on the go and fix this for Android Key Lime Pie?
Enhanced social network support
Android doesn't really do much for social network users out of the box, with most of the fancy social widgets and features coming from the hardware makers through their own custom skins.
Sony integrates Facebook brilliantly in its phones, and even LG makes a great social network aggregator widget that incorporates Facebook and Twitter - so why are there no cool aggregator apps as part of the standard Android setup?
Yes, Google does a great job of pushing Google+, but, no offence, there are many other more widely used networks that ought to be a little better "baked in" to Android.
Line-drawing keyboard options
Another area where the manufacturers have taken a big leap ahead of Google is in integrating clever alternate text entry options in their keyboards. HTC and Sony both offer their own takes on the Swype style of line-drawing text input, which is a nice option to have for getting your words onto a telephone. Get it into Android 5.0 and give us the choice.
A video chat app
How odd is it that Google's put a front-facing camera on the Nexus 7 and most hardware manufacturers do the same on their phones and tablets, yet most ship without any form of common video chat app?
You have to download Skype and hope it works, or find some other downloadable app solution. Why isn't there a Google Live See My Face Chat app of some sort as part of Android? Is it because we're too ugly? Is that what you're saying, Google?
Multi-select in the contacts
The Android contacts section is pretty useful, but it could be managed a little better. What if you have the idea of emailing or texting a handful of your friends? The way that's currently done is by emailing one, then adding the rest individually. Some sort of checkbox system that let users scroll through names and create a mailing list on the fly through the contacts listing in Android Key Lime Pie would make this much easier.
Cross-device SMS sync
If you're a constant SIM swapper with more than one phone on the go, chances are you've lost track of your text messages at some point. Google stores these on the phone rather than the SIM card, so it'd be nice if our texts could be either backed up to the SIM, the SD card, or beamed up to the magical invisible cloud of data, for easy and consistent access across multiple devices.
A "Never Update" option
This would annoy developers so is unlikely to happen, but it'd be nice if we could refuse app updates permanently in Android 5.0, just in case we'd rather stick with a current version of a tool than be forced to upgrade.
Sure, you can set apps to manual update and then just ignore the update prompt forever, but it'd be nice to know we can keep a favoured version of an app without accidentally updating it. Some of us are still using the beta Times app, for example, which has given free access for a year.
App preview/freebie codes
Something Apple's been doing for ages and ages is using a promo code system to distribute free or review versions of apps. It even makes doing little competitions to drum up publicity for apps much easier, so why's there no similar scheme for Android?
It might encourage developers to stop going down the ad-covered/freemium route if they could charge for an app but still give it away to friends and fans through a promo code system.
Final whinges and requests...
It's be nice to be able to sort the Settings screen by alphabetical order, too, or by most commonly used or personal preference, as Android's so packed with a huge list of options these days it's a big old list to scroll through and pick out what you need.
Plus could we have a percentage count for the battery in the Notifications bar for Android 5.0? Just so we know a bit more info than the vague emptying battery icon.
(Source)

Okay I wanted to drop this in about video chat. You say that Google doesn't have one right? Of I remember correctly Google talk has video.
Sent from my PC36100 using xda app-developers app

jlmancuso said:
Okay I wanted to drop this in about video chat. You say that Google doesn't have one right? Of I remember correctly Google talk has video.
Sent from my PC36100 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This one is built in,you dont have to look for it and install it from 3rd party.

Diablo67 said:
This one is built in,you dont have to look for it and install it from 3rd party.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google talk has built in video chat, you don't have to install anything its preloaded on every android phone for as long as I can remember.
I like to break stuff!

-EViL-KoNCEPTz- said:
Google talk has built in video chat, you don't have to install anything its preloaded on every android phone for as long as I can remember.
I like to break stuff!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most of the gapps i ever installed didnt,but yes on a sense rom you can find it and maybe an official ICS or JB that is meant for a certain phone.So i should have reworded that.You are correct though.