Comments on: How Android is just going to be J2ME hell all over again

By: Kevin Gadd

Kevin Gadd — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:52:52 +0000

Google intends to prevent J2ME-style fragmentation by restricting a bunch of the ‘essential’ Android applications to phones that meet their standards and are sold by Google partners. These applications are closed-source, which prevents random handset manufacturers from trivially distributing them (at least legally). This includes applications like Maps and Mail.

Of course, handset manufacturers could just make their own applications to replace them on top of the Android platform, and you’d end up in a similar situation to J2ME. I haven’t used an Android phone so I don’t know how hard it would be to compete with Google by offering your own alternative for the omitted applications; based on the quality of the apps Google offers for the Pre and iPhone, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be that hard; just a matter of some time invested into your own engineering and QA.

By: fabio boldrini

fabio boldrini — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:19:32 +0000

seem like developing games for a pc platform (different CPU, different RAM size, different VGA, DX9, DX10, DX11) vs developing for a console (same hardware until the next generation, even this is not entirely true for the last generation)

By: Mustang

Mustang — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:02:13 +0000

Doesn’t Google have an Android compatibility test to certify Android running phones?

They could just as easily force mobile makers using droid in their phones to pass the test in order to call their OS ‘Android’ or use the OS which is free and extendable and call it anything else but.