The greatest news to anyone owning an Android device may have just been released today from Engadget. If you haven’t read their article on “stemming platform fragmentation” please do so right now, take a deep breath, and thank Google for continuing to be so awesome.
The fragmentation many have written about over the last few months might soon be a problem of the past. Google is showing customer satisfaction will always be on their minds simply by realizing that the various forms of their Android operating system on the market could cause quite the concern to users over the long run. They also seem to have realized that carriers and phone manufacturers can’t keep up with a quickly changing mobile world.
An excerpt from the piece…
We’ve been given reason to believe that the company will start by decoupling many of Android’s standard applications and components from the platform’s core and making them downloadable and updatable through the Market, much the same as they’ve already done with Maps. In all likelihood, this process will take place over two major Android versions, starting with Froyo and continuing through Gingerbread. Notice that we said apps and components, meaning that some core elements of Android — input methods, for instance — should get this treatment. This way, just because Google rolls out an awesome new browser doesn’t mean you need to wait for HTC, Samsung, or whomever made your phone to roll it into a firmware update, and for your carrier to approve it — almost all of the juicy user-facing stuff will happen through the Market.
While we continue to watch others receive Android 2.1 ahead of us, this news brings great hope for the future. We will no longer be waiting for Motorola and Verizon whom have failed over and over again when it comes to updating their devices in a timely fashion.
Obviously there is no time frame for any of this to actually happen, but knowing how Google has worked in the past, I wouldn’t expect them to put the fragmentation issues on the backburner.