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The article makes the assumption that this device uses a brand new OS but I suspect it's just android with some additions. A team of 40 cannot create anything

by bostand 10y ago

The article makes the assumption that this device uses a brand new OS but I suspect it's just android with some additions. A team of 40 cannot create anything that competes with the android of today. Not even Andy can do that.

Nexxxeh 10y ago
While you're probably right, it could be something very different. It could be running a custom GUI on NetBSD or something. How it competes is unknown. Phone, sms, camera, email and web browsing are the essentials. Everything else, FB, Instagram, Reddit etc that are usually done in apps on Android, they can be done with a decent browser. And in many cases, you could potentially pass that stuff off to the cloud. Heck, voice recognition, AI and Hootsuite. "Clara, show me that photo in monochrome." "Here you go Nexxxeh, I've applied a filter called 'HDR Noir Pop'. Would you like to see other filters for monochrome? " "Post this to Insta, caption 'Phone mirror selfie hashtag Essential hashtag swag'. Then link that on Twitter, caption 'hashtag essential'." "Immediately or schedule for your usual time of 7pm?" "Schedule." "That's been scheduled for 7pm, alongside publishing the YouTube video entitled 'Essential Phone Unboxing' on your main YouTube channel and a link published to Facebook. Your flight for 6pm is still on time, your Uber is booked for 5pm and the estimated journey time is 30 minutes. Your packing checklist is complete. Would you like to watch today's Philip DeFranco show on YouTube?" That's all stuff Alexa /could/ do if she was made a bit more proactive. Arguably the hard problems have been solved elsewhere. You've just got to pay for them and integrate. I don't think it's inconceivable.
- untog 10y ago
  > It could be running a custom GUI on NetBSD or something. How it competes is unknown. I think the point the OP is making is that any custom OS will, at this point, fail. Windows Phone, WebOS and FirefoxOS all tried and couldn't compete with the sheer number of apps on other platforms. You say that a decent browser will be a fine substitute for apps, I'd argue that every OS that has tried to do this and failed is evidence that it is not an acceptable substitute at all.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Ugh don't remind me of WebOS. What a beautiful OS, wasted by an incompetent company. Some days I still wonder what the world would look like if geeks had picked WebOS instead of Android to rally around.
    - gman83 10y ago
      Given that Matías Duarte had a big hand in both Android and WebOS, I would imagine it wouldn't look all that different.
      - canuckintime 10y ago
        Unfortunately there are still many features[1] that Android (and iOS) haven't stolen from webOS. The few features implemented have merely been copied poorly. I still multitask much more comfortably on a Pre 3.6" screen phone than on the 12.9" iPad Pro. And while we're in the topic of AI assistants, I still think these voice-only interfaces on iOS/Android, don't match the simplicity of webOS' Just Type. You have to memorize the capabilities and/or syntax for Siri and Google Assistant whereas webOS would autocomplete/autosuggest as you 'Just Type'. That experience is still profound imo. (If any of Andy Rubin's Essential team is reading this, please add 'Just Type' as a core feature to your assistant) [1] http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2012/02/21/steal_webos_features/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2012/02/21/steal_webos_feature...
oh_sigh 10y ago
I agree, but on the other hand, it might be 40 full time employees and 2,000 contractors, or some other unique arrangement.
xiphias 10y ago
Yes, and it's quite hard to do compete with the big companies on what they're trying to achieve with much more people.
- zaroth 10y ago
  More people can be as much of a liability as not. A core team of 40 people can certainly make the software and hardware design. It's as big as a core team should ever be for a product the scale of a smartphone, IMO. Obviously it takes 1000s to scale, and optimize, and automate every last thing. But to build the first 1? Team of 40.
  - iainmerrick 10y ago
    Android was originally built with a small team, and Andy Rubin resisted growing the team for a long time. But a lot of the worst parts of the design were laid down at that point, so I'm not sure it was necessarily such a good approach!
    - HillaryBriss 10y ago
      yes! imho, that's the noteworthy aspect of this story. those two features (Andy Rubin. small team.) of the original Android platform are going to try again? the track record is not great. if Google hadn't bought it and used its vast powers to promote the thing, would it even still exist? i don't know. maybe they'll get it right this time...
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Of course. I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise. Trying to create a competitive and compelling mobile experience today requires an ecosystem of apps, tooling and most importantly developers. You get all that with Android for free. Unless he's come up with some revolutionary technology that eschews the need to rely on the Android ecosystem he doesn't really have much choice if he wants consumers to buy his phone.
- untoreh 10y ago
  you can always offer a well refined android compatibility layer :p
  - cuu508 10y ago
    The more refined apps (which are the ones customers care about) use a variety of Android platform services, not just the barebones stuff -- homescreen widgets, rich notifications, bundled notifications, app-defined quick settings, fingerprint authentication, Vulkan API, Cast support, Material themes, Play services etc. etc. etc. Building a complete compatibility layer means pretty much reimplementing all Android userspace.
    - akjainaj 10y ago
      You don't need to reimplement all Android userspace. You only need to implement 90% of what the top 20 apps use.
      - eli 10y ago
        90% of Android is a whole lotta code
        akjainaj 10y ago
        Microsoft did something similar with the Astoria project, but they gave up on it, probably because of the Play Services dependency of most apps. And yes, you could enable it in Insider builds, and it mostly worked. Slap microG on it and you'll see it can be done.
Zigurd 10y ago
Android has gotten bloated and has grown extra layers in part because it had to maintain compatibility, and in part because some development wasn't tightly integrated with the platform. It may be possible to develop a phone is that does all of what Android needs to do with a team of 40 and is much cleaner. Especially if the alternative means making substantial modifications to Android. Alternatively, one could build a dual stack Android, with one compatible UI stack and one built for the edge to edge UX.
- vosper 10y ago
  I'm not sure why you got downvoted for this. I had a similar idea - what if the phone could run a faster, leaner version of Android by ditching backward compatibility? Or perhaps they have really focused their team on performance, or lowering power consumption, through software improvements. Granted, the article seems to focus on AI mixins, but "it runs 90% of the top 1000 apps, and all of the most popular ones, with 30% better battery life" could be compelling too. I know very little about Android, but I thought your comment has some merit.
sidcool 10y ago
I would call it difficult, but with a few years with them it's not entirely impossible. They are not going to reinvent the wheel, no one does, but may be provide a platform for great ideas. I am optimistic about this bet.

by bostand 10y ago

Nexxxeh 10y ago

While you're probably right, it could be something very different. It could be running a custom GUI on NetBSD or something. How it competes is unknown. Phone, sms, camera, email and web browsing are the essentials. Everything else, FB, Instagram, Reddit etc that are usually done in apps on Android, they can be done with a decent browser. And in many cases, you could potentially pass that stuff off to the cloud. Heck, voice recognition, AI and Hootsuite. "Clara, show me that photo in monochrome." "Here you go Nexxxeh, I've applied a filter called 'HDR Noir Pop'. Would you like to see other filters for monochrome? " "Post this to Insta, caption 'Phone mirror selfie hashtag Essential hashtag swag'. Then link that on Twitter, caption 'hashtag essential'." "Immediately or schedule for your usual time of 7pm?" "Schedule." "That's been scheduled for 7pm, alongside publishing the YouTube video entitled 'Essential Phone Unboxing' on your main YouTube channel and a link published to Facebook. Your flight for 6pm is still on time, your Uber is booked for 5pm and the estimated journey time is 30 minutes. Your packing checklist is complete. Would you like to watch today's Philip DeFranco show on YouTube?" That's all stuff Alexa /could/ do if she was made a bit more proactive. Arguably the hard problems have been solved elsewhere. You've just got to pay for them and integrate. I don't think it's inconceivable.

untog 10y ago
> It could be running a custom GUI on NetBSD or something. How it competes is unknown. I think the point the OP is making is that any custom OS will, at this point, fail. Windows Phone, WebOS and FirefoxOS all tried and couldn't compete with the sheer number of apps on other platforms. You say that a decent browser will be a fine substitute for apps, I'd argue that every OS that has tried to do this and failed is evidence that it is not an acceptable substitute at all.
- freehunter 10y ago
  Ugh don't remind me of WebOS. What a beautiful OS, wasted by an incompetent company. Some days I still wonder what the world would look like if geeks had picked WebOS instead of Android to rally around.
  - gman83 10y ago
    Given that Matías Duarte had a big hand in both Android and WebOS, I would imagine it wouldn't look all that different.
    - canuckintime 10y ago
      Unfortunately there are still many features[1] that Android (and iOS) haven't stolen from webOS. The few features implemented have merely been copied poorly. I still multitask much more comfortably on a Pre 3.6" screen phone than on the 12.9" iPad Pro. And while we're in the topic of AI assistants, I still think these voice-only interfaces on iOS/Android, don't match the simplicity of webOS' Just Type. You have to memorize the capabilities and/or syntax for Siri and Google Assistant whereas webOS would autocomplete/autosuggest as you 'Just Type'. That experience is still profound imo. (If any of Andy Rubin's Essential team is reading this, please add 'Just Type' as a core feature to your assistant) [1] http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2012/02/21/steal_webos_features/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2012/02/21/steal_webos_feature...

oh_sigh 10y ago

I agree, but on the other hand, it might be 40 full time employees and 2,000 contractors, or some other unique arrangement.

xiphias 10y ago

Yes, and it's quite hard to do compete with the big companies on what they're trying to achieve with much more people.

zaroth 10y ago
More people can be as much of a liability as not. A core team of 40 people can certainly make the software and hardware design. It's as big as a core team should ever be for a product the scale of a smartphone, IMO. Obviously it takes 1000s to scale, and optimize, and automate every last thing. But to build the first 1? Team of 40.
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  Android was originally built with a small team, and Andy Rubin resisted growing the team for a long time. But a lot of the worst parts of the design were laid down at that point, so I'm not sure it was necessarily such a good approach!
  - HillaryBriss 10y ago
    yes! imho, that's the noteworthy aspect of this story. those two features (Andy Rubin. small team.) of the original Android platform are going to try again? the track record is not great. if Google hadn't bought it and used its vast powers to promote the thing, would it even still exist? i don't know. maybe they'll get it right this time...

bitmapbrother 10y ago

Of course. I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise. Trying to create a competitive and compelling mobile experience today requires an ecosystem of apps, tooling and most importantly developers. You get all that with Android for free. Unless he's come up with some revolutionary technology that eschews the need to rely on the Android ecosystem he doesn't really have much choice if he wants consumers to buy his phone.

untoreh 10y ago
you can always offer a well refined android compatibility layer :p
- cuu508 10y ago
  The more refined apps (which are the ones customers care about) use a variety of Android platform services, not just the barebones stuff -- homescreen widgets, rich notifications, bundled notifications, app-defined quick settings, fingerprint authentication, Vulkan API, Cast support, Material themes, Play services etc. etc. etc. Building a complete compatibility layer means pretty much reimplementing all Android userspace.
  - akjainaj 10y ago
    You don't need to reimplement all Android userspace. You only need to implement 90% of what the top 20 apps use.
    - eli 10y ago
      90% of Android is a whole lotta code
      - akjainaj 10y ago
        Microsoft did something similar with the Astoria project, but they gave up on it, probably because of the Play Services dependency of most apps. And yes, you could enable it in Insider builds, and it mostly worked. Slap microG on it and you'll see it can be done.

Zigurd 10y ago

Android has gotten bloated and has grown extra layers in part because it had to maintain compatibility, and in part because some development wasn't tightly integrated with the platform. It may be possible to develop a phone is that does all of what Android needs to do with a team of 40 and is much cleaner. Especially if the alternative means making substantial modifications to Android. Alternatively, one could build a dual stack Android, with one compatible UI stack and one built for the edge to edge UX.

vosper 10y ago
I'm not sure why you got downvoted for this. I had a similar idea - what if the phone could run a faster, leaner version of Android by ditching backward compatibility? Or perhaps they have really focused their team on performance, or lowering power consumption, through software improvements. Granted, the article seems to focus on AI mixins, but "it runs 90% of the top 1000 apps, and all of the most popular ones, with 30% better battery life" could be compelling too. I know very little about Android, but I thought your comment has some merit.

sidcool 10y ago

I would call it difficult, but with a few years with them it's not entirely impossible. They are not going to reinvent the wheel, no one does, but may be provide a platform for great ideas. I am optimistic about this bet.