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Well I can blame OEM because I never asked for special features and skins on top of Android. I want stock Android and stock should be easier to update. Speaking

Well I can blame OEM because I never asked for special features and skins on top of Android. I want stock Android and stock should be easier to update. Speaking about testing of updates: I'm sure this abstraction layer will not reduce the testing time and it will only slightly reduce the release time of new version.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
There's no such thing as "stock Android" from an update distribution view. Each Android release, currently, has to be custom-fitted to each given hardware model. That is the problem being solved here, and it's not the OEM's fault, it's the architectural design of Android itself, which is changing.
- nileshtrivedi 9y ago
  It's not just Android design's fault though. ARM does not have the equivalent of Bios for hardware discovery and initialization. So you can't have a generic OS image to be installed on any device.
MBCook 9y ago
> Well I can blame OEM because I never asked for special features and skins on top of Android. Did you buy an Android phone? Then it wasn't enough pressure. There simply aren't enough people in the market who care about this to put much pressure on phone companies. Basically EVERYONE has a phone, and since almost none of them know about this issue they'll always make the purchases of people who do care a rounding error on the books. Just like the 'I need a removable battery' or 'I want a hardware keyboard' people. They're real groups, but they have little sway in the market compared to the people who are indifferent (or at least willing to accept the trade-off grudgingly) so they don't get much traction.
maxsilver 9y ago
> I want stock Android and stock should be easier to update. That's not actually true, unfortunately. The BSPs are where the majority of the work is, and zero percent of that work is different between "Stock Android" and "Weird OEM Customized" Android. If you look at what it takes to get "Product X" from an existing Android version, to a new Android version, very little of that time is updating the crapware everyone hates, and the vast majority of that time is updating the BSP + drivers needed to get any Android working properly at all. For instance, if you build a product, you might buy a board from a random OEM, and that board might be built around a Qualcomm SOC on it. If Qualcomm doesn't support "the next android" for that particular chipset, your basically stuck unless you re-invent all of the Qualcomm-specific drivers and tools yourself. Since Qualcomm isn't supporting it, the OEM you bought your board from isn't either, and the product itself gets stuck on old Android. ocdtrekkie is getting downvoted for this, but he's mostly right. Google could easily solved this problem years ago by letting Android devices reuse existing BSPs, and it looks like they are finally doing exactly that.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

There's no such thing as "stock Android" from an update distribution view. Each Android release, currently, has to be custom-fitted to each given hardware model. That is the problem being solved here, and it's not the OEM's fault, it's the architectural design of Android itself, which is changing.

nileshtrivedi 9y ago
It's not just Android design's fault though. ARM does not have the equivalent of Bios for hardware discovery and initialization. So you can't have a generic OS image to be installed on any device.

MBCook 9y ago

> Well I can blame OEM because I never asked for special features and skins on top of Android. Did you buy an Android phone? Then it wasn't enough pressure. There simply aren't enough people in the market who care about this to put much pressure on phone companies. Basically EVERYONE has a phone, and since almost none of them know about this issue they'll always make the purchases of people who do care a rounding error on the books. Just like the 'I need a removable battery' or 'I want a hardware keyboard' people. They're real groups, but they have little sway in the market compared to the people who are indifferent (or at least willing to accept the trade-off grudgingly) so they don't get much traction.

maxsilver 9y ago

> I want stock Android and stock should be easier to update. That's not actually true, unfortunately. The BSPs are where the majority of the work is, and zero percent of that work is different between "Stock Android" and "Weird OEM Customized" Android. If you look at what it takes to get "Product X" from an existing Android version, to a new Android version, very little of that time is updating the crapware everyone hates, and the vast majority of that time is updating the BSP + drivers needed to get any Android working properly at all. For instance, if you build a product, you might buy a board from a random OEM, and that board might be built around a Qualcomm SOC on it. If Qualcomm doesn't support "the next android" for that particular chipset, your basically stuck unless you re-invent all of the Qualcomm-specific drivers and tools yourself. Since Qualcomm isn't supporting it, the OEM you bought your board from isn't either, and the product itself gets stuck on old Android. ocdtrekkie is getting downvoted for this, but he's mostly right. Google could easily solved this problem years ago by letting Android devices reuse existing BSPs, and it looks like they are finally doing exactly that.