Android? Why Android?

It's been a long time since I've written a tech orientated blog post so I'll take this opportunity to talk about my reasons for choosing the Android platform over iOS (iPhone OS at the time) and why I wasn't swayed by offerings from the Windows Phone and Blackberry camps. If I had to summarise it in a few words? Openness, Customisation, Choice.

Why openness? Well Android is an Open Source operating system (which essentially means that anyone can see the source code for the software and can use/modify it for their needs, subject to the licence agreement) that uses the Linux kernel (which is also Open Source). This means that anybody can use Android on any device, even devices that it wasn't originally designed for (typically phones and  tablets). Examples include the Android x86 project and the Ouya games console. Apple likes to take control of its devices creating a "Walled Garden" for it's its users which mean that the users are free to use their environment as they've set it up but if they want to vary the formula a bit they've few choices. I'm no iOS developer but am told that a third party app cannot duplicate the functionality of a system app. For example the phone dialer, the contacts, the on screen touch keyboard, and for a long time this included the browser, Opera were able to get away with it as they did the processing on their servers and not on the device itself.

Android is the complete opposite. Don't like the camera app? Change it, the on screen keyboard? Change it, The phone dialer? The contacts app? The web browser? Yep change it. There are alternatives both free and paid in the Play Store (I know terrible name) for literally everything, amongst the the normal apps such as games, gps apps, social media apps etc. You can even completely change the look and feel of the device with themes and custom app launchers (yep, if your phone maker hasn't supported the latest release of android, you can change the theme and app launcher to emulate the look and feel of the new version).

Now this part is where I get really nerdy, it's not for everybody, it's not even for the vast majority. Custom Roms. Custom Roms are custom builds of the Android operating system, and it sounds exactly as it sounds, Some completely change the look of Android, an example of this is MIUI (pronounced My U I) where they've taken the Android core and totally changed the UI (or User Interface) to their custom needs, and when I say completely, I mean COMPLETELY, every graphical interaction the user has with the phone has been completely rewritten with this design in mind. It's a totally new way of interacting with the phone.

In sharp contrast to this is Cyanogen Mod which has been there since the very start with one guy "Cyanogen" who got the first phone and started messing around with the code to see what made it tick, decided he mostly liked the direction Google was going with it but decided to add in a few custom tweaks by himself. He also noticed that manufacturers weren't necessarily supplying legacy hardware with the latest versions of Android (understandable vested interest, why would consumers upgrade to newer phones if the older ones had the latest software version) so he started porting over these new software updates to older phones (provided they had the capabilities to run the new version). I've had several Android phones. While I've been using Android since 2.1 (Nexus One), my latest is the Samsung Galaxy sII (i9100), which originally came out with Android 2.3 and then 4.0.4 (first by CyanogenMod and then officially) and then finally 4.1.2 (again first by CyanogenMod and then officially) but this is where the official support seems to stop. CyanogenMod has continued on to 4.2.2 (as you can see from my screenshot below). Any phone that can run Android 4.0.4 can run 4.2.2 in terms of processing power as 4.2 is actually faster and more responsive. The problems that are plaguing the CM team are that the i9100 uses Samsung's own Exynos processor and that the drivers either have to come from Samsung or have to be reverse engineered. This problem doesn't affect the North American variants (as much) as these tend to use the Snapdragon and thus don't have to rely on Samsung to release any new drivers for OS updates.

So why the sudden resurgence in my love of the Android operating system. Well I recently got quite a scare when I tried to upgrade to the version you see above, my phone all of a sudden became sim locked and wouldn't accept my sim card. I had to get a local IT shop guy to "downgrade" my phone to the  official 4.1.2 rom with Samsung's Touchwizz UI so he could unlock them sim card (it seems all he did was use an app from the Play Store (I prefer when it was called the Android Market) to accomplish this and charged me 20 euro for the privilege. That seems to misrepresent him slightly, it seems changing to the official rom was a bit of a challenge on his part as he told me to come back the next day.

But you do not understand how much I think Google have hit the nail on the head with their Holo theme. They hired one fine gent called Matias Duarte (responsible for the design of webOS also). Samsung's Touchwizz just rubs me the wrong way by comparison. Everything is just well designed and integrated but with a futuristic minimalist almost Tron-like look. I had to, simply had to, get back to that design and integration. I suspect this is how OSX and iOS fans wax lyrical about the design of their operating systems.The difference is this was an operating system that I felt passionate about, I liked the interface elements but maybe not the aesthetics of them, it didn't really bother me that it didn't seem to get me enthused about the aesthetic design like other operating systems seem to do for their fan base. Now Android finally has reached that point with 4.0 and it's only refining it with 4.1 and 4.2. Now not only do I prefer the operating system because of it's roots in openness and customisation. I also love the aesthetics of it.