How is Android doing in your Country?

[Michael Rivera]

Well in my case i live in the Philippines and i can say from 2008 it was slowly gathering its pace and hopefully the Android Market will have us visible in the merchant and publish paid apps!

[Hauke Ingmar Schmidt]

Oh yes, market availability, the one annoying thing... borrowing a friend your SIM because he lives 5 km to the north and could only get unpaid apps (until his country was added last year).

[Michael Rivera]

That sucks, but i don't know if in-app purchase can be helpful soon?

[Hussein Baghdadi]

This is one of the reasons why I will not buy an Android device:
http://gizmodo.com/5751435/why-you-should-never-buy-an-android-phone-because-you-hope-itll-get-updated
And an excellent comment:
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/02/03/cliq

[Michael Rivera]

it is all up to the handset manufacturers!

[Ulf Dittmer]

John Todd wrote:This is one of the reasons why I will not buy an Android device

That's not different from buying any technology that will get better and/or cheaper later - buy what you need now, not what you think you might need or want later. Each phone is going to reach the end of the upgrade line at some point, no matter who manufactures it. If they're reneging on a binding commitment (like Motorola possibly did with the yet-to-be-fulfilled Android 2.2 update for the Milestone), then they can expect to be party to a class action lawsuit.

Michael Rivera wrote:it is all up to the handset manufacturers!

and/or the carriers

[Michael Rivera]

@Ulf Dittmer - I couldn't agree with you more

[Hauke Ingmar Schmidt]

I agree with Ulf, hoping for updates is a bad idea, expecting them forever is unreasonable. Technology should be bought at the time you need it, in the state you need it. Few exceptions: Before buying a phone I would wait one week for the MWC to start. But I wouldn't wait two months.

But John's second link showed in a somehow sarcastic way that Android is not as open as some people think. The way to build Android as presented there does not work for not only one reason. You need the hardware specific software (drivers), you wouldn't get the Google apps if it would work that way (and Android without market... works, but it is not fun).

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Agree with you Ulf,
But I noted many Android devices manufacturer (especially Samsung) aren't trying hard enough to bring Android updates to current customers base.
Samsung is somehow forcing customers to buy newer phones with newer Android versions and leaving old versions users in the dust.
Apple at least promised to bring iOS 4 to iPhone 3G users and they did it.
I'm not anti-Android but I think Android current state is messy and a tighter control is required.
Being number one in devices count in the market is thing but being number one in customers satisfaction is completely another thing.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Define "hard enough" - what do you know about the internal processes at Samsung or elsewhere? What do you know about what it takes to prepare and test an OTA upgrade? I know nothing about either, so I wouldn't rush to judgment on this matter.

While it may be disappointing not to get upgrades after a year, bear in mind that many phones are part of a two-year contract cycle. It's no wonder carriers don't want the hassle of upgrading a, say, 18 month old phone which is going to be replaced in just another 6 month anyway.

Having said that, I think both manufacturers and carriers went a little overboard with respect to the number of Android phones they got into the market, and are still learning the ropes of maintaining the Android ecosystem. As a result of that, I expect Android itself -as well as the phones it runs on- to become easier to upgrade in the future, so that more phones can and will be upgraded sooner/more regularly/for a longer period of time.

[Hussein Baghdadi]

I know nothing about the internal process at Samsung neither any makers and of course I'm not disdaining the amount of work it takes to prepare and test OTA upgrade.
But at the end of the day, if the big manufacturers (like Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC ..) didn't do it, who is supposed to do it?
I'm just a user who paid some money to buy their phone and got excited when newer version of Android is released.
To me, the best option if I want to get an Android phone is to get Nexus One or Nexus S or any device with plain vanilla Android version.

[Ulf Dittmer]

John Todd wrote:or any device with plain vanilla Android version.

Not even that is a guarantee of getting updates - the Motorola Milestone is a plain Android device, but its signed ROMs make it impossible to update through something like CyanogenMod. Shame on you Motorola, for this unwarranted complication - the largely identical Droid (for the US market) doesn't suffer from this.

[Hauke Ingmar Schmidt]

Didn't the Milestone come with Motoblur? - But I think I remember Motorola announcing "a solution" for the signed bootloader problem a few days ago.

The Nexus One, really a plain vanilla device, a showcase device, didn't get 2.3 yet; announced for "within a few weeks" in December.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Hauke Ingmar Schmidt wrote:Didn't the Milestone come with Motoblur?

Nope. I have one, I would know :-)

But I think I remember Motorola announcing "a solution" for the signed bootloader problem a few days ago.

That would be interesting, but a quick search came up empty - do you have any links, by any chance?

[Hauke Ingmar Schmidt]

Ulf Dittmer wrote:

But I think I remember Motorola announcing "a solution" for the signed bootloader problem a few days ago.

That would be interesting, but a quick search came up empty - do you have any links, by any chance?

A note on Facebook seems to be the root.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Hauke Ingmar Schmidt wrote:A note on Facebook seems to be the root.

Thanks. That's so vague that I wouldn't put any stock in things changing, even less so for existing devices than for new ones. Wait and see, I guess.

[Hauke Ingmar Schmidt]

Ulf Dittmer wrote:Thanks. That's so vague that I wouldn't put any stock in things changing, even less so for existing devices than for new ones. Wait and see, I guess.

Yes, thus the quotation marks. I don't own a Motorola, so I didn't follow it closely, just read it somewhere where people where a bit too enthusiastic about it. The original tweet which this Facebook note answered seemed to be a little harsh so the Motorola folks had to ease it down.